1936-02-19

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

Mr. HANSELL:: 1.	What is the total amount of interest that has been paid on our national debt since confederation or as far back as our records of borrowing show?
2.	What is our present national debt?
3.	How much of this is original principal and how much is interest?


Mr. DUNNING:: 1.	$2,823,245,404.93 to January 31, 1936.
2.	Net debt at January 31, 1938, $2,895,124.262.99.
3.	Borrowings are not allocated to particular purposes under consolidated fund system.



CANADIAN FARM LOAN ACT

Mr. LACROIX (Beauce):: 1.	How many farmers of Beauce county applied for a loan since the Farm Loan Act became law, giving the number of such applications for each year separately?
2.	How many inspections were carried out for which the farm loan board received $10, in connection with each such inspection, giving the number for each year separately?
3.	In how many cases was the inspection carried out without the $10 being paid, giving the number for each year separately?
4.	In how many cases was the loan application granted and the loan made, giving the number for each year separately?
5.	What was the amount of the loan made in each case and in each year?
6.	In how many cases did the farm loan board require two inspections, giving the number for each year separately?
7.	In each case where a loan was made, on what date was the loan application presented and on what date was said loan granted and documents completed, giving the figures for each year separately?


Mr. DUNNING:: 1,	2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. The following answers are furnished by the Canadian farm loan board: Records of the Canadian farm loan board are not kept by counties and the information asked for is not now available.


Mr. GOLDING:: 1.	How many applications were received from the province of Ontario for a loan under the provisions of the Canadian Farm Loan Act during the year 1935?
2.	In how many cases was the loan application granted and the loan made?

3.	How many applications were received from the counties of Huron and Perth, Ontario, for a loan under the provisions of the Canadian Farm Loan Act during the year 1935?
4.	In how many cases was the loan application granted and the loan made, in these two counties?
5.	What are the names and addresses of the persons who secured loans in this manner in the two counties?
6.	What was the amount of each such loan in the counties of Huron and Perth?
7. What has been the total cost to the government for the administration of the Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act from the time it began to function to December 31, 1935?


Mr. DUNNING:: 1. 2,484 from May, 1935, to January 31, 1936.
2.	607.
3.	4, 5 and 6. The records of the Canadian farm loan 'board are not kept by counties and the information asked for is not now available. Moreover, the transactions between the board and borrowers are regarded as confidential and it is not considered in the public interest that information revealing the names of persons who have obtained loans should be given.
7. $840,562.88.
(Answers 1 to 6 furnished by Canadian farm loan board).



QUESTIONS PASSED AS ORDERS FOR RETURNS


Mr. REID:: 1.	What lawyers and law firms, if any, of the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, were retained by the federal government of Canada during the period from August 1, 1930, until December 31, 1935?
2.	What sums were paid by the federal government and all departments thereof to each such la-wyer and law firm?
3.	What services were rendered by each such lawyer and law firm for the amounts so paid to each?
4.	What sums, if any, are still owing, or claimed for such services, and to whom?


POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT
Mr. BOULANGER:: 1.	According to the records of the Post Office Department, how many postmasters at present occupy their position because they brought about the dismissal of their Liberal predecessor?
2.	Is a postmaster who secured his position after having informed against his predecessor and brought about his dismissal, guilty of political interference or of an injustice which may justify his own dismissal?


Mr. BOULANGER:: 1. According to the records of the Post Office Department, from August 7, 1930, to

Retiring Allowances-Mr. Heaps
October 29, 1935, how many times did the Postmaster General exercise the discretionary powers vested in him under Section 67 of the Post Office Act, whereby mail contracts are not always awarded to the lowest tenderer?
2. According to the records of the Post Office Department, from August 7, 1930, to October 29, 1935, how many mail contracts were awarded to persons who, not being originally the lowest tenderers, were allowed to reconsider their tender and reduce the figure thereof?



MOTIONS FOR PAPERS


Mr. BOULANGER:: For a copy of the complete file respecting the contract for mail delivery on rural route No. 1 of Armagh Station, awarded to Georges Roy, April 1, 1932, expiring March 31, 1936, and renewed on October 9, 1935, for a period of four years.


Joseph Oscar Lefebre Boulanger: For a copy of the complete file respecting the contract for mail delivery on the Armagh rural route awarded to Mrs. J. A. Blais, January 11, 1932, expiring December 31, 1935, and renewed September 24, 1935, for a period of four years.



AVABASSO COTTON COMPANY

[Stage Direction]
On the order for motions:
Mr. WILFRID GARIEPY (Three Rivers):: Mr. Speaker, there is a matter of great urgency which I should like to bring to the attention of the government. In my constituency is located the Wabasso Cotton Company which under normal conditions employs around 2,000 people and operates day and night. I am informed that last night a strike was declared. A strike had been declared last fall on the eve of the general election, but the differences were settled after some negotiations. The men now claim that the conditions of labour, wages and other matters have not been complied with; serious trouble has arisen, and the matter is one which should receive immediate consideration by the government. I gave this information this morning to the Department of Labour, but I should like to know if the government is possessed of all the information and if it intends to take steps to remedy the conditions obtaining in respect to this plant at Three Rivers. Both parties should be protected, especially the labour element, which are likely to suffer most if these conditions are allowed to continue.
Hon. NORMAN McL. ROGERS (Minister of Labour): Mr. Speaker, I am not sure that my answer is in order. The hon. member for Three Rivers (Mr. Gariepy) was kind enough to give me this morning notice of his question.
I immediately took up the matter with the chief conciliation officer of the Department of Labour, who communicated with our representative in Montreal. I hope to receive a report on the whole situation very shortly.



RETIRING ALLOWANCES


Mr. A. A. HEAPS (Winnipeg North) moved:: Whereas there exists in Canada an acute unemployment situation;
And whereas, it is desirable that as many as possible be absorbed into the useful industrial life of the dominon;
Therefore be it resolved, that, in the opinion pf this house, the government he requested to immediately introduce legislation granting adequate retiring allowances to all citizens over sixty years of age, thereby giving an opportunity to large numbers now unemployed to be reabsorbed into useful productive activity.
He said: As I rise this afternoon to propose this motion I cannot help being reminded of the fact that it is just about ten years ago that the house passed the existing old age pensions law. Even at this late date I would express my own appreciation and that of my colleague the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) of what was done by the then government, many members of which are in the present cabinet, and thank them for the kind and courteous reception we were given in 1926. I trust that on this occasion we shall receive the same sympathetic consideration as we got about ten years ago.


Mr. JACOBS:: The majority is a little larger now.


Abraham Albert Heaps: Yes, I know that; I realize quite well that conditions to-day are not exactly what they were in 1926. Two votes are perhaps not as important in this parliament as they were ten years ago. Nevertheless, I say again that we appreciate the kindly sentiments expressed on that occasion, and I do hope that the resolution now on the order paper will meet with the same sympathetic consideration. For, after all, a principle is the same, whether it is endorsed by a majority of two or of one hundred; and I assume the principle underlying the question of old age pensions is the same in 1936 as it was in 1926.
The scope of the present act is rather wide; it takes in, I believe, seven of the nine provinces of Canada. There are at present two provinces in which the old age pensions scheme has not yet become operative, but in those provinces where the act is an established fact we can regard that piece of legislation,

Retiring Allowances-Mr. Heaps
in my opinion, one of the most important in the way of social legislation which the house has ever enacted, as a permanent part of their social law's. I do not think any government, whatever its political complexion may be, will ever see fit to repeal the act once it has been in operation.
1 was rather surprised to discover that, in the seven provinces in which the scheme is in operation, there were prior to and including March 31 of last year, 101,051 persons in receipt of old age pensions. That number was exclusive, of course, of Quebec and New Brunswick. When those two provinces come under the provisions of the act we shall have, I am satisfied, a considerable addition to that number. I understand that in New Brunswick legislation is pending in that regard, and I am also led to believe that in Quebec legislation is likely to be introduced in the near future to extend to the old people of that province that long needed relief which I know many of them have been looking for in the past few years. The situation in Quebec at the present time is somewhat similar to the state of affairs that existed in this house in 1926; they have not a stable government there, so that the old people in that province are likely to come into their own at an early date.
The constitutional difficulties that have so often been thrown in the way of the passage of social legislation in Canada seem bo have been successfully overcome so far as old age pensions are concerned; and to-day, I am pleased to say, there is no question about the validity of this particular law in this country. Further, I think it can be asserted that, considering it was a new piece of legislation in this dominion, and presented difficulty in many ways because it was a dominion statute operated by provincial authorities, the act is working fairly well, with one or two exceptions which it is not necessary for me to go into at this time.
One point which during the past few years must, I think, have become obvious to practically every member, irrespective of his party affiliations, is the necessity for a much lower age limit than that which applies at the present time. I believe we must all regard seventy as too high an age limit for pension after a person has served the state in one form or another practically throughout his life. In other countries-and I am referring now to countries within the British empire-the age limit is much lower than it is in Canada. In Great Britain it is sixty-five, and in Australia it is sixty-five for males and sixty for females, while in certain instances, in the event of

incapacity, the age limit for men in that country is sixty. Practically the same age limit is in force in New Zealand; therefore it is much lower than it is in Canada.
There is to-day a very large volume of opinion, not merely in this country but in other parts of the world, in favour of reducing the age limit at which people receive pensions, not only because such a measure is humane, not only because it is an act of humanity to take care of the aged and the needy, but also on account of the problem confronting us from the economic standpoint-the problem of unemployment. In the last election the present leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) came ,out in favour of old age pensions at the age of sixty; he thought it would be a good thing. In the United States there is a large and growing body of opinion in favour of paying old age pensions at the age of sixty. I am not referring at the moment to what is commonly called the Townsend revolving plan; I am not sufficiently familiar with it to be able to discuss it at all. In addition to that plan, which is taking a firm hold on the people of the United States, we find one of the prospective candidates for the Republican nomination for president there, Mr. Borah, in favour of granting old age pensions at the age of sixty, the pension to be between fifty and sixty dollars a month.
The reasons that can	be given	why	weshould grant pensions to persons of sixty and over are very many, but I shall discuss only a few of them. To-day we are living in a competitive age, an age which is different from any former time. We are living under conditions that are different from anything we have known heretofore. The struggle for existence is becoming keener and keener, and men to-day at the age of sixty find themselves in a position in	which	it	is practically impossible for them because of their age to obtain the means of livelihood. In the second place, when a man has worked under such keen conditions as those under which he is compelled to work, he is practically of little value in the industrial field when he reaches the age of three score. There are very few employers of labour who employ men when they have reached the age of sixty. The consequence is that	when	a	man	hasreached that age he has	either	to	shift	for
himself as best he knows how, or become the recipient of either public or private charity. There is very little opportunity to-day for men to save out of their earnings anything to put away for what we may term a rainy day, or for old age. I know of many firms in this country who will not employ men when

Retiring Allowances-Mr. Heaps
they are even over forty years of age. At fifty, positions become extremely precarious, and at sixty it is almost impossible for men in these days to find work; in fact a man at sixty or over becomes a drug on the labour market.
We often ask ourselves the question: What is the nation's greatest asset? It has been asked in the house during the past few days. Some might say it is property; it is buildings, or it is natural resources, but I believe if we ponder the question a little further we shall arrive at the same conclusion, that the greatest asset we have in the Dominion of Canada is the people themselves, our Canadian people. Then, if we come to determine the question whether we should look after the rights of property or the rights of our Canadian people, I think our sympathies as well as our interests will lead us to assist the human beings who comprise our Canadian population. It is often stated that the individual has a duty to the state. I believe that, but at the same time I believe the state also has a duty toward the individual. For after a person has worked and given of his best during his life time to help in building up the country and making it a proper place to live in, when he reaches old age; when he has arrived at the age of sixty, he is entitled to receive something in return for his services. There ought to be between the state and the individual as reciprocal relationship which does not exist to-day. An individual can give of his best until he is sixty or sixty-five years old, and all of a sudden he finds that he is cut off without any means of subsistence. The duty of the state as well as that of the individual is to promote the well-being of all concerned. Is it fair to ask the individual at times so to humiliate himself or herself as to become the recipient of either public or private charity? We have at this time in the dominion 1,200,000 men, women and children in receipt of public relief. That figure does not take into account the vast number of men, women and children who are recipients of private relief in one form or another. There must be in these days a very large number of these people who are sixty years of age or over and who find themselves on the bread line through no fault of their own.
I think I can state with a certain amount of assurance that practically every hon. member would say he is sympathetic to the idea of pensioning people when they reach the age of sixty. But I suppose those same hon. members who will tell me they are favourable and sympathetic to this idea, will comt along wdth a very hoary and musty question: Where is the money to come from? If
the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) were in his seat, I would ask him whether we have in this country enough in the way of foodstuffs to give to all the people in Canada who are sixty and over, a reasonable amount by way of food, and I believe the minister would reply to me that we have more than sufficient for that purpose. Then, if I were to turn to the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Euler), I would ask him, if he were here: Have we in this country sufficient clothing and shelter to satisfy all the reasonable requirements of our people over the age of sixty? I think I should receive from the hon. minister the answer that we have more than sufficient for those purposes. Then I would turn to the Minister of Finance (Mr. Dunning), whom I see in his seat, and I would say to him: Have you enough money to satisfy the requirements of those over the age of sixty? And I would be met with a most emphatic "No." There is the contradiction. Enough food, clothing and shelter in the Dominion of Canada to satisfy all the reasonable requirements of these people of sixty and over- no doubt, that would be admitted by the members of the government-and yet when it comes to trying to give to these people of sixty and over those requirements which in our corporate capacity we have produced in this country, we say: You cannot have them, because there is something that stands in the way of your being able to receive those things to which you probably have a right. When I ask the question whether the money will be forthcoming, knowing as I do that I shall receive that negative reply from the Minister of Finance, I feel like inquiring whether that same question was asked in the years 1914 to 1918, when this country spent approximately two billions of dollars. Was ever the question asked when that money was being spent, not to conserve or to preserve human life, but for the very reverse purpose:	Where is that money coming
from? The money was there for the very simple reason that we had its equivalent in the way of goods and services that we could give either to the people of this country or to those who required it. So if to-day we have in Canada the goods and services to maintain our population of sixty and over, there should be no difficulty, if only there is the will to do it, to find ways and means of providing for those people that reasonable standard of living which they have a right to expect. Between 1914 and 1918 approximately half a million people were taken out of productive work in this country, and were engaged in destructive work. Yet in spite of

Retiring Allowances-Mr. Heaps
the fact that half a million of the flower of the country's manhood were taken out of productive employment those who were left behind were able to maintain that half million in the work they were doing and to provide for themselves a decent standard of living. We can go even beyond that. During that period there was no shortage in Canada either of men or of money to carry on the work of the war.
If to-day everyone at the age of sixty were taken out of productive employment this would have a twofold effect:	First, it
would provide for people many of whom are hardly able to give a proper day's service in industry, and then it would give to our young people an opportunity to do some useful work, an opportunity which has been denied to thousands of them since they have left school.
The government also must find money with which to carry on the services of the country, and part of that money is obtained by borrowing. I remember very well-and I want to bring this incident to the attention of the house-that in the fall of 1930 we had a session of parliament lasting only a few weeks. We were called into session in order to provide the means of giving relief to large numbers of men and women who at that time were out of work. The government of the day came to the house and asked for a large appropriation, out of which $20,000,000 was set aside for the provision of food, clothing and shelter for the unemployed in Canada. What happened? The first thing done by the government of the day, as by both previous and subsequent governments, was to go to New York where they obtained a loan of $100,000,000. In the meantime there were vast numbers of people anxiously awaiting relief, but until such time as that money was obtained from the bankers of New York the people of Canada were unable to obtain the relief that was so badly required. The farmers of the west, together with the workers in the cities, had produced wealth in abundance, food, clothing and shelter; yet before our people could eat that food and before they could obtain that clothing and shelter we had to go to a foreign country for permission to do so. If there is anything more topsyturvy in our economic structure than a situation of that kind I should like to know where it may be found. In other words we must get permission from the bankers of New York before we can aat the foodstuffs we produce in our own country.
I realize,^ further, Mr. Speaker, that to give a pension of $50 a month, which is the sum I have in mind, to people sixty years

of age would probably require half the total revenue of the dominion. I know the minister could not afford that; I know it would require a vast sum of money, but we must bear in mind that this sum of money would go into circulation in this country in the purchase of food, clothing and shelter, because as a rule the workingman lives to the limit of his income, and the same would apply to those in receipt of a pension of $50 a month from the government. To take care of such a situation I am in favour of a limited form of controlled inflation. Some hon. members may be afraid of that. I know in Great Britain people thought the whole country was going to collapse when a few years ago it was feared that she was going off the gold standard. An election was fought and a government was returned on that issue, to keep Great Britain on the gold standard, but it was not long after that election before she went off the gold standard. In those countries which have gone off the gold standard and where there has been a limited form of inflation, nothing very serious has happened.
Perhaps at this point, while dealing with that aspect of the question, I might give the figures relating to the older population, as prepared for me by the bureau of statistics. In 1931 the number of these people in Canada was as follows:
Age	Number
60	and	over	
870,42861	and	over	
792|93665 and	over	
575,83170 and	over	
344,697
At the present time slightly less than one-third of the people of seventy or over, numbering 344,697, are in receipt of the old age pension. When Quebec and New Brunswick come under the scheme, naturally that proportion will be materially increased; it may be nearer one-half than one-third. I shall assume, however, that of the 870,428 people over the age of sixty probably not more than twenty-five per cent would be .eligible for or entitled to a pension, when all things were taken into consideration.


Charles Avery Dunning: Would my hon. friend permit a question? Evidently I have misunderstood his resolution, because I thought it called for adequate retiring allowances for all citizens over sixty years of age, and I have been preparing to deal with that question.


Abraham Albert Heaps: I knew the minister would try to find a little loophole on which to argue. Let us take the intent of the resolution rather than its exact wording, and I am giving the intent now. I. am sorry if I have punctured the minister's argument.

Retiring Allowances-Mr. Heaps


Charles Avery Dunning: Does my hon. friend want all citizens to be pensioned or does he not?


Abraham Albert Heaps: It is just as I have said.


Charles Avery Dunning: The resolution says so.


Abraham Albert Heaps: In any measure enacted by parliament there are always regulations saying who may be entitled to come under the act, and so it would be with a measure granting pensions at sixty. There are many people in executive and other positions who, at the age of sixty, might well be allowed to remain in their position, who would still find something to do. As I am pointing out, less than one-third of the people of over seventy years of age are receiving old age pensions at the present time, and we can base our arguments in connection with this matter on a somewhat similar mathematical calculation, except that on the average there would be fewer people requiring pensions at sixty than there would be at seventy. I think that is quite obvious, because at sixty a person has an opportunity of putting something away to provide for himself and those dependent upon him, but when he lives to the age of seventy, what he may have saved in the interval will have disappeared.
I am free to admit that this problem of old age is becoming more important as the years go by. Medical science has made such rapid strides that the average span of life has been greatly increased during the last few generations. Unfortunately the application of our economic laws has not kept pace with our knowledge and application of the laws of medical science, with the result that the percentage of our old people to-day is greater than it ever has been. I was surprised when I received these figures from the bureau of statistics, showing the large population of what I might call elderly people here in Canada.
Now we may speak of the cost.- Many things may be offset against that. At the present time it is costing us a large sum of money in the way of relief to maintain our people, to maintain them in institutions for the care of their health, or even in our penal institutions, for it has always been found that in times of unemployment penal institutions are filled to overflowing. I venture to say that if we set off against the cost of pensions at sixty the advantages that would be gained, the cost would be much less than it would at first appear to be. I mentioned a few minutes ago that in 1914 and the following years we spent approximately two billion dollars on a war in Europe and all that that entailed. The product of that war was little other than
misery. I believe few people in Canada would ever again be willing to have this country become a party to a war in Europe or anywhere else. But if we could afford to spend that enormous sum for human slaughter, disease, misery, and all that follows from war, does not the house think it is far better in this day to spend some money, not for the slaughter of human beings but in a war that will preserve life, a war against poverty and disease? May I quote what the present Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) said recently; I do not do this very often. Speaking on the night of October 14, after the election results were known, he said:
The struggle for the rights of the people will, in the realm of economic liberty and security, be carried on as never before. Poverty and adversity, want and misery are the enemies which Liberalism will seek to banish from our land.
Those are fine sentiments; they sound even better to me because they were spoken after the election instead of before. I say to the Liberal party: Carry out to the very letter that statement of the Prime Minister. I want to see the Liberal party in this house war against those evils which the Prime Minister mentions, against poverty and adversity, and fight for the economic liberty and security of the masses of the people of this country. What security have they to-day? What security has the man of sixty, or even the man of fifty, to-day? None whatsoever. To-day, as I know and as most of us know, there are innumerable instances of men who have worked ten, fifteen, twenty years for a large corporation; then at a moment's notice a man may receive a slip stating, "Your services are no longer required," and he has to go out on the street and shift for himself as best he can. Yet these same large corporations use , horses and when those horses have done their work and are no longer required they are not told to go out and shift as best they can. No; they are kept in the stable; they are fed and sheltered for the rest of their days. It is in the very nature of our modem industrial life that these large corporations treat human beings much worse 'than they treat their old horses.
I may be told that the statement of the Prime Minister will be lived up to by the Liberal party. All I can say is that I hope they will do much better in future than they have so far. May I say to my friends of the Liberal party that although they won the last election by a very large majority they have not yet achieved victory. Far from it. Victory will be achieved by the Liberal party and by
320	COMMONS
Retiring Allowances-Mr. Wermenlinger
this parliament only when we have eliminated those conditions of which I have spoken, when we have given to the people of Canada that economic security, that liberty to which every Canadian citizen is entitled.
So far we have heard very little as to what the future policy of the government will be. We are told that it will be unfolded from time tp time during this and other sessions of parliament. I am free to admit that some of us are rather impatient; we want to know with as little delay as possible what the policy of the government is going to be in regard to giving our people that economic security which they have a right to expect. The mere lowering of trade barriers between this and other countries is not a remedy for the evils from which we are suffering, for if all the trade barriers between the nations of the world were thrown down to-morrow we should still have a tremendous unemployment problem. I do not believe in sending our foodstuffs and other goods of which we are supposed to have a surplus to other countries when our own people are compelled to go without them; we should first satisfy the needs of our own people. I say to the government: Adopt a bold and definite policy. If they do that they will receive the support not only of the small group I have the honour to represent in the house but of a large section of public opinion outside as well.
The motion I have proposed has a number of specific objectives. First, it aims to take out of industry people aged sixty and over and so give to the younger people the opportunity of doing something useful instead of being recipients of public relief. It aims at putting into the hands of the people a much larger volume of purchasing power than they have at present. For any minister or any hon. member to rise in his place and say that this or that is impracticable is not sufficient in the circumstances in which we live. We Look for something definite and positive from the government. If this is not the right way of going about what we seek to do I hope the government will show what is the right way. Instead of meeting this resolution with negative criticism I hope the house will deal with it constructively, and if this is not at least a partial way out of the difficulty I shall be only too happy to support something which will show better results.


Mr. E. J. WERMENLINGER (Verdun) (Translation):: Mr. Speaker, with your leave I wish to discuss the resolution of the hon.
rMr. Heaps.]
member for North Winnipeg (Mr. Heaps). I promise that my remarks will be brief.
The hon. member moved:
Whereas there exists in Canada an acute unemployment situation;
Every one realizes this fact and I, perhaps, more so than the majority of members in this house, owing to my association with the school board and city council of Verdun.
And whereas, it is desirable that as many as possible be absorbed into the useful industrial life of the dominion.
Such is the wish of all; however, a paragraph seems to be missing between the second and the last one. The hon. member for North Winnipeg concludes:
That, in the opinion of this house, the government be requested to immediately introduce legislation granting adequate retiring allowances-
I agree to this. In fact, in a greater degree than any other hon. member have I the privilege of representing in this house a constituency whose population is composed entirely of workers, who find themselves today in dire straits. However, I only wish that, between the second and third paragraphs of his resolution, the hon. member for North Winnipeg had inserted: "Unless work can be provided," either revenue-producing work, useful work or necessary work; for it might be dangerous, at present, to grant pensions to people over sixty years of age. I do not know, Sir, whether I am transgressing the rules of the house, but, representing a constituency made up in equal parts of people of English and of French descent, one half of which are artisans such as bricklayers, carpenters, joiners and plumbers, at present unemployed, the other half belonging to the so-called "white-collared brigade," it strikes me that, at this stage, our main object should be to provide legitimate and remunerative employment for our people.
I fully endorse the speech delivered yesterday by the hon. member for Broadview (Mr. Church); I did not hear it in full, but I read it with pleasure in hansard. However, I am not ready to express an opinion on the questions of housing and of slum-clearance.
On behalf of the workers of my constituency may I say, Sir, to the hon. member for North Winnipeg that I should have preferred to find an additional clause in his resolution, between the second and third ones, for I agree with the hon. member for Broadview (Mr. Church) and the hon. member for Grey-Bruce (Miss Macphail) that it is work that our labouring classes seek. I shall not stress the point further, as I shall

Retiring Allowances-Mr. McLean (Meljort)
have an opportunity in the near future to deal more thoroughly with this important question of remunerative work.
May I point out that' during the past forty years Verdun has suffered from numerous floods; we have been constantly compelled, in order to protect ourselves, to raise the level of our embankments. These floods are due to works carried on by the dominion government down stream, either in Montreal harbour or at Victoria bridge, where the piling up of the ice in the spring raises the level of the water. Because of its low-lying ground, the city of Verdun is in a unique situation and has always suffered from floods. We have never asked for aid; we have perhaps shown ourselves too-self-sacrificing.
I do not wish to discuss any further the motion of the hon. member for North Winnipeg (Mr. Heaps). I wish the house to understand that I am in favour of pensions being granted at a reasonable age, but before fully endorsing this resolution I would like to see our artisans obtain remunerative work.
In closing, I wish to thank the members of this house for the courtesy shown me, especially the members of my party, who have so cordially welcomed me in their midst.


Mr. MALCOLM McLEAN (Melfort):: Mr. Speaker, I do not intend to take up much time in discussing this resolution, but because many meanings could be comprehended in so many words and because some hon. members may attribute to the motion meanings different from those intended by the mover, I think it would be well to look at one or two aspects of the matter, and to review the underlying philosophy governing the thought of those supporting the proposal.
The resolution states that it is desirable that as many as possible be absorbed into the useful industrial life of the dominion; then it proposes to take out of the industrial life of the dominion a great many men who have become expert in their respective lines, and whose labour has been most useful not only to themselves but to the communities in which they have been employed and to the country at large. The resolution contains these words:
Therefore be it resolved that in the opinion of this house the government he requested to immediately introduce legislation granting adequate retiring allowances to all citizens over sixty years of age, thereby giving an opportunity to large numbers now unemployed to be reabsorbed into useful productive activity.
The argument is advanced or implied that by this method large numbers now unem-12739-21
ployed would be reabsorbed into productive and useful activity. I notice however that while the hon. member for North Winnipeg (Mr. Heaps), who moved the resolution, gave the numbers enjoying old age pensions in seven of the provinces of Canada, and while that burden is such as to bear very heavily upon many of those provinces, he gave no estimate, at least that I could hear, of the number of citizens who are not suffering from old age, the number who at sixty years and beyond that are young men and women and are usefully employed. He did not give an estimate of the number who would be withdrawn from useful occupation, or the cost to which the country would be put in giving adequate retiring allowances as a result of legislation to be passed immediately by this chamber. No evidence either in numbers or in money was given as to the cost of such retirements. No evidence was given as to the capacity of the country to pay such retiring allowances, nor did we hear any evidence deduced as to the wish of individuals to retire from useful employment.
I know that at one time the right hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) suggested the payment of a retiring allowance to people over sixty years of age, and the country overwhelmingly rejected that idea.


An hon. MEMBER:: No, they did not.


Malcolm McLean: Absolutely.
Wherever one went he heard that young men of sixty, like the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) and the leader of 'the government (Mr. Mackenzie King), and many other young men-and I was going to say young women, but the plural would not be in order; I will content myself with saying young people of both sexes-


Mr. MacNICOL:: Why the singular?


Malcolm McLean: I did not hear
the hon. member.


John Ritchie MacNicol: The hon. member suggested that the plural would not be in order. Why use the singular?


Malcolm McLean: I am afraid
that for the moment I ceased to address Mr. Speaker, and was addressing the house. However, young people of both sexes-


Mr. BENNETT:: I am bound to correct
the hon. member, because he has not correctly stated what I said.


Malcolm McLean: I should be
glad if the right hon. gentleman would correct me.

322	COMMONS
Retiring Allowances-Mr. McLean (Meljort)


Richard Bedford Bennett: I corrected it once. I
did not suggest that anyone at sixty years should be compelled to retire.


Malcolm McLean: I do not think
I said that. I believe Hansard will bear me out in my statement that I did not say the right hon. leader of the opposition insisted that it be done compulsorily. I said that the right hon. gentleman some time ago gave support to n proposal to retire people at the age of sixty, on an adequate retiring allowance.


Richard Bedford Bennett: No, not to retire them

to provide for their retirement if they so desired.


Malcolm McLean: I leave it to
the legal or literary purist to say how much difference there is between what I have said and what the right hon. gentleman has indicated as to the meaning of what he said. No evidence was given as to the capacity of the country to absorb this added load, and to compensate it for the loss of material, physical, intellectual and mental wealth which would be entailed if this change were brought about. Furthermore, no evidence was given that such a change would result in increased employment for the younger men, or increased production in those industries about which the hon. member for North Winnipeg has spoken.
Let me go a little further and give the house my opinion of what is the underlying philosophy of our friends of the socialist party in their attitude toward this and similar questions. After listening to their proposals for the past few years it seems to me that they are of the opinion that the principal trouble to-day with this country is that we are overwhelmed with wealth or the means of producing wealth. Because we have so much, they say, we are suffering from a state of poverty. There is no truth at all in that philosophy, as I see it. I listened very carefully to see if my hon. friend would attempt to prove that this country was suffering from an overproduction of wealth or from the capacity to overproduce wealth. During the last few years the socialist party has sent its members up and down this country spreading this theory abroad. They have contended that the main trouble is the fact that we are able to produce or have produced an overabundance of goods. The hon. member for North Winnipeg touched upon that theme today. He said that he left it to the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) to say that we had far too much food in this country, to the

Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Euler) to say that we had far too much goods in this country.


Abraham Albert Heaps: I never said anything of the kind.


Malcolm McLean: I leave it to the judgment of the house and of those who read Hansard.


Abraham Albert Heaps: If the hon. member will allow me, that is not what I said.


Malcolm McLean: I leave it to the readers of Hansard to decide the meaning of what the hon. member said when he addressed the Minister of Agriculture and asked if there was not much more food in this country than we could use. I made a note of what he said. He said that we were sending foodstuffs to other countries while our own people were suffering. Since I have been challenged, I should like to point out that our people are not suffering from a lack of foodstuffs, because we have too much foodstuffs. Many of the people are suffering because of the lack of certain kinds of food or certain kinds of clothing, or a certain kind of wealth. We have not in the past produced, we are not producing and we are not likely to produce in the future, any large quantities of these foods-


Mr. LANDERYOU:: How about coal? The farmers in the western provinces are not getting enough coal.


Malcolm McLean: Where?


John Charles Landeryou: Right in the province of Alberta.


Malcolm McLean: There must be a reason. It simply means that they are not producing coal or are not producing some other form of wealth to exchange for coal, or that the facilities for exchange are absent.


John Charles Landeryou: Is it necessary to ship coal out of Alberta when the farmers cannot buy it and when the coal miners are on relief?


Malcolm McLean: If my hon. friend produced a ton of coal and I went to him and said I was his neighbour living only twenty miles away; if I told him I had no coal and would like to have some, he would ask me what I had to exchange for it. If I told him I had nothing to give him for the coal, and someone from Saskatchewan came to him for his coal and had something to exchange for it, to whom would my hon. friend give his coal?


John Charles Landeryou: I should like to point out to my hon. friend that the farmers of

Retiring Allowances-Mr. McLean (Meljort)
Alberta were producing pork which could be turned into bacon at a time when the coal miners were on relief.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Malcolm McLean: That argument is quite familiar to me. It is one of the falsities that underlie their philosophy. Their argument is that so much wealth is being produced by the coal mines of Alberta that they ought to go and give it to everyone, whether or not they have anything to exchange for it.


Mr. COLDWELL:: Is the hon. member
aware of the fact that three years ago the miners in southern Saskatchewan were prac-ticaly starving beside their coal mines at a time when the farmers were unable to sell their meat, their eggs and their produce and yet had no coal with which to keep themselves warm?


Malcolm McLean: My hon. friend's question is put in the form of an absolute statement. I do not know whether his statement is correct. However, I do know of some people who have been living in northern Saskatchewan, in the midst of the forest. These people have suffered from cold because of lack of fuel, and yet they were living in the midst of the woods. There were so many trees they could not see the forest. The other day the hon. member for Rose-town-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell), I think it was -I will apologize if I am wrong-stated that in the wooded areas of northern Saskatchewan he had seen people living in small one-roomed log shacks. These people had gone in to hew out homes for themselves and make farms. At that time I asked him why they did not build larger shacks when the logs were so abundant. Hon. members will remember the answer I received-because they did not control the saw mills. All around me in this chamber are hon. members who know that you do not have to have a saw mill in order to build a log shack.


Major James William Coldwell: May I correct the
hon. gentleman?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Malcolm McLean: I have no intention of letting my hon. friend correct what I say.


Mr. SPEAKER:: The hon. member should not interrupt unless the hon. member who is speaking gives his permission.


Major James William Coldwell: I rise to a question
of privilege. The hon. member has said that I stated that these people could not build larger log shacks because they did not con-12739-21}	*
trol the saw mills. That is an incorrect statement of what I said, as will be shown by Hansard. Am I permitted to state what I did say?


An hon. MEMBER:: Hansard speaks for
itself.


Malcolm McLean: I hope a note
is being made of these interruptions so that I may be given a little extra time if necessary. However, I do not expect that I shall require any extra time, because I believe I can demolish this argument in less than my allotted time.
The hon. member stated that he had seen these one-roomed shacks, and a little later I asked him why these people had not built larger shacks, and he replied, because they did not control the saw mills. The fact remains that he stated that these people were living in these one-roomed log shacks in the midst of the woods. The hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar spoke of the coal miners at Estevan not having enough coal for fuel. I should like to make a statement which any hon. member may correct if he thinks it to be wrong. There are only one or two things to be done by the people of this country in order that they may have a comfortable supply of material things. One is that they shall produce the goods or wealth that they are most fitted to produce from the resources which the country possesses. If they produce more wealth than they can use, the quantity over and above what they require can be exchanged with their neighbours, whether they be in the same town, in the same province, in the same dominion or across the seas, for the goods that they need but cannot produce. If institutions such as this parliament, the provincial legislatures, the town and city councils, the school boards, the banks and trust companies and all other lending agencies refrain from charging, or if the people refrain from agreeing to pay, an undue amount for such services as may be rendered, then with the initiative and energy of our people, with the industry and equipment that we possess, we cannot help but prosper. This country has the climatic conditions-even in Saskatchewan where it sometimes touches sixty below zero-the resources and other things necessary to the creation of sufficient wealth for the people. This statement must be amended to the extent of saying that there are bound to be exceptions. There will always be people who cannot earn a living, and our governments have taken cognizance of the fact that there are always the sick or injured, the aged poor and the helpless young to be taken care of.
324	COMMONS
Retiring Allowances-Mr. McLean (Meljort)
I should like to go a step further and refer again to the underlying philosophy of our friends who move such resolutions as this. You who have been in this house so long, Mr. Speaker, know it. I want to give an instance that came to my notice. I am going to quote from a gentleman who is a leading member of the socialist party and endorsed by the present titular head of the Saskatchewan socialistic party.
An lion. MEMBER: Name?


Malcolm McLean: I do not know that I should name him; I do not wish to bring him into notoriety nor have I any desire to cast any reflection on him. He has never done anything to me; in fact he has helped me and I want to thank him for it. But he came to the village near which I live and addressed a meeting, and he had distributed this blue-coloured pamphlet. One of these pamphlets came into my possession legitimately and I will quote a few lines as indicating the philosophy that underlies the argument of my hon. friend to-day. I know that my hon. friend does not mean this resolution in its entirety; I know him only too well to know that he does not intend it, in its entirety, to be taken practically, but politically. It may be all right at times to say some things, and that is one of the troubles at the moment in this dominion- people taking advantage of conditions to make statements which in their sober moments they might hesitate to make. In any event, this booklet was distributed; it was sold to anyone who cared to buy it. It is entitled, Co-operation or Catastrophe, and as I say, it is written by an eminent member of the socialist party who occupied a seat in this house for many years. It is:
An interpretation of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and. its Policy, by William Irvine, M.P.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Malcolm McLean: My hon. friends say, "oh," and perhaps they think I should not demean myself by quoting such a pseudoeconomist. But I want hon. members who say "oh" to remember this. While they are familiar with the value of these theories, while they know them for what they are worth, there are hundreds of thousands of people who find themselves in a difficult position when my friends come along with these pseudo-economic theories and tell them that unless they follow these theories something disastrous is likely to happen. That is the cause of a good deal of our trouble. These pseudo-economists tell the people that the

reason we are hard up is that we have produced too much and exchanged too much and that governments take too little from us, whereas the opposite is the truth so far as these three conditions are concerned.
Let me read a few lines from this pamphlet *-and remember this is not a newspaper. The argument is intended to show that there is no way in the world whereby Canada can exchange her surplus commodities for the surplus commodities of other lands and so enjoy the benefit both of the things that nature has endowed us with in this country and the things that nature enables people in other countries to produce-people in other lands more favourably situated with respect to the production of certain commodities. I quote from page 13:
Every country has a surplus of almost the same kind of goods. There are no new countries left for capitalism to exploit. There is not in the entire world a foreign market sufficient to keep capitalism going. In other words, capitalism cannot exist without foreign markets and there are no foreign markets.
I would point out that in this paragraph "capitalism" is used interchangeably with "private ownership." There is no market for the things produced under private ownership; there is no market in the world for goods because too many goods have been produced or could be produced. And here is the proof-I quote:
Take, for instance, automobiles. Someone has estimated that the United States of America could make a sufficient number of automobiles to supply eight worlds the size of our world at the same ratio of users to the population of the eight worlds as now applies to users in the U.S.A. to-day in relation to the population of that country. With such a capacity output the U.S.A. must try to sell its automobiles to all the other countries of the world. But at the same ratio of users to population Canada can produce automobiles for three worlds the size of ours, so she must also try to sell her automobiles outside of Canada. Great Britain can make enough automobiles to serve five world's as large as our world, so she also must find a market; then France, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Japan, etc., can all make more automobiles than the world could use. Where, then, is the foreign market for automobiles? Obviously no such market exists, nor is there a foreign market for all the other commodities which are produced in common by the industrialized nations of the world.
I do not need to enter into any argument to convince the house that all industrialized countries have not the same kind of goods in the same abundance; and as my hon. friend has pointed out, even in Alberta, coal is not common under all circumstances and in all places, because he said some people there suffer from lack of that commodity in Alberta,

Retiring Allowances-Mr. McLean (Melfort)
and in southern Saskatchewan, where some coal fields are located. But let us follow the argument; let us try to get at the truth or the fallacy of it. I realized at once the ridiculousness of the argument. If it were true, then the Liberal philosophy of trade and exchange would fall to the ground absolutely. If every country were self-contained, if every people had within their own surroundings all the wealth they needed, there would be no necessity for them to exchange anything with any other country; they could supply all their own requirements from within. If all industrialized countries had the same wealth in the same quantities, there would be no point in seeking to exchange one form of wealth for another, so long as men with health and intelligence cared to work.
If I do not put anything else on Hansard, I certainly wish to have this go on record as an indication of the fallacy of the argument of this economist, formerly a member of the socialist party in this house. I find that in the United States to-day there are a little over 125,000,000 people. The population of the world is estimated at something over two thousand million people. These figures, of course, are not exact. At best they are but estimates, but they are the closest that we can get. There are in the United States over 25 million motor vehicles, one to every five of the population. If the United States had to produce automobiles for another world the size of this, at that ratio of users to cars, there would have to be built in that country 400 million cars. To supply eight worlds the size of this world with motor vehicles the United States motor industry would need to produce 3,200 million motor vehicles.


An hon. MEMBER:: Some production.


Malcolm McLean: That would be
some production. Now coming to Canada, I find, according to this statement which I have quoted, that Canada could produce cars for three worlds the size of this world, as compared with a possible production in the United States of cars to supply eight such worlds; consequently Canada would produce three-eighths of the automobiles produced in the United States if she supplied the people of three worlds. That would mean 1,200 million automobiles to be produced in Canada if this dominion had to fulfil the prophecy made by Mr. Irvine on behalf of his party.
I have inquired what the life of the modern vehicle is and I have had various estimates of four, five and six years. Suppose we put it at six years. That means that the Canadian automobile industry would have to renew the supply.of cars for these hypothetical worlds at the rate of 200 million a year.


An hon. MEMBER:: He did not say that in Alberta.


Malcolm McLean: No; he was all right in Alberta as long as he could get away with it. But when he came to Saskatchewan the people there did some mental arithmetic and they took pencils and made their own calculations. At the rate of 200 million automobiles a year, it would seem that the industry in Canada has been very lax during the last few years, turning out 250.000 per annum-many of these cars assembled in Canada from material manufactured across the line. Many of the cars coming into this country, moreover, have been imported entirely from other lands. Taking the weight of materials in modern motor vehicles, we find it requires an average of about 3,500 pounds apiece. That is a ton and three-quarters, equivalent to 350 million tons of material that have 'been fabricated into them without any allowance for waste; 350_ million tons of steel, rubber, copper, and other materials of that nature. And the statement is calmly made here to those who will accept it without thinking that the Canadian automobile industry could easily turn out and use 350 millions tons of material in a year in turning out 200 million automobiles. Possibly some people would still believe that that was true. In looking for the truth or falsity of that argument I was not satisfied to use my own judgment completely. I took up a little booklet, which I hold in my hand. It is called America's Capacity to Produce, a digest of a study made by the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., published in 1933-34, and this is what I find. I want to give it to my hon. friends opposite who really believe that industry in this and other countries could do the things that they have been saying they should do and could do if properly organized. I want to tell him, what everybody will acknowledge, that the industries of the United States have been efficiently and effectively organized to turn out large volumes of wealth. I find on page 18 of this digest of the studies made by the Brookings Institution an article regarding automobiles, and this is what it says:
The magnitude of the motor vehicle industry and its growth during the period under review give it particular interest. By and large, production has trod hard on the heels of capacity from the birth of the industry up to 1923. An apparent recession in 1918 was due to the transfer to war work. The slump in the depression of 1921 was succeeded by an even faster rate of growth in the two following years. After 1923 there was a pronounced flattening out in the rate of growth, whereas the building of additional capacity continued.
326	COMMONS
Retiring Allowances-Mr. McLean (Melfort)
The percentage of utilization was comparatively high up to 1923, "but since that time it has shown a clear trend downward, averaging 83 per cent of practical capacity for the period from 1925 to 1929.
Our friends who use this booklet in their campaign, and the gentleman who wrote it, argue that the United States should be able to turn out 500 million cars a year. They have been turning out 3 to 5 million annually, and the Brookings Institution says that that is within eighty-three per cent of practical capacity. Is it reasonable to believe they could have turned out anything like the numbers that the speaker says? When you find the principal witness in a case or a plaintiff coming to the bar of justice and making a statement which the jury, the judge and all the spectators can demonstrate to be notoriously false and inaccurate, is it reasonable to place much dependence on anything else he may say? I submit it is not.
We find that other statements made in 'campaign gatherings by our friends of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation are just as inaccurate. I hold in my hand a press report. If I am not allowed to read it, I will quote it from memory.


An hon. MEMBER:: Read it.


Mr. ROWE (Dufferin):: You are out of order, anyway.


Malcolm McLean: I know I am out of order. If I were in order I would do a whole lot better than I am doing.


Walter Edward Foster: I would remind the hon. gentleman that he is not in order. He must confine himself to the matter under discussion.


Malcolm McLean: At this stage, Mr. Speaker, I want to rectify something that I had forgotten-to congratulate you on your elevation to the chair. I do it now with the greatest of pleasure, because I know, sir, that I myself and every other member of this house can look to you confidently, knowing that we will receive the utmost courtesy and ;he utmost consideration.


An hon. MEMBER:: Justice.


Malcolm McLean: And justice will also be part of the courtesy and consideration which will be given to new members like myself.


Mr. WOODSWORTH:: Mr. Speaker, there is no rule, I believe, that prevents the reading of an article such as that to which the hon. member refers. But I do submit that for the last quarter of an hour the speaker has not been confining himself in any degree to the resolution before the house. If we

are to throw this debate wide open, all very well; we on our side will claim also the right of the widest discussion. But I submit that the purpose of the resolution is to discuss a concrete proposal, with which, I also submit, the present speaker has not been occupied for the last quarter of an hour or twenty minutes.


Walter Edward Foster: I think the point of the hon. gentleman is well taken. I have just called the hon. member (Mr. McLean) to order, and I think he is now abiding by my decision and directing his remarks to the resolution before the house.


Malcolm McLean: Yes, I am anxious and determined to obey the rules of the house in every respect. I am surprised that during the speech of the sponsor of this motion my hon. friend's attention was not drawn by other members to the fact that he was out of order. He told the house that trade was no solution at all; that we are sending foodstuffs to other countries when our people are suffering-many similar extracts from his speech may be taken out of Hansard. I submit that I have not been within a mile of being so far out of order as he was, and for the leader of the socialist party to take up two or three minutes of my time in suggesting that I am out of order is, may I say, scarcely courtesy.
An article from which I wish to quote very briefly is directly linked to the resolution now before us. The resolution asks that people over sixty years of age should be retired with an adequate allowance, thereby giving an opportunity to large numbers now unemployed to be reabsorbed into useful employment. The mover referred to that as the reason for the proposal. I have here a news item entitled, "Outlook hopeless for young people, says Garland,"-that is Mr. E. J. Garland, who was the representative of an Alberta constituency at the time this speech was reported. It says:
Mr. Garland emphasized the tragedy of the hopeless outlook for the rising generation, stating that the youths of to-day were being simply poured out into the world, with no prospect for any kind of jobs.
I submit in that case it was not fair to these people to say that there was positively no hope for the young people of the country. I submit there is much more hope for them to-day than if the socialist plan were adopted. I hold a chart of that plan in my hand. The idea is to put all the unemployed in the civil service, to divide society into seven groups-
-and the particiilar function of our price fixing and adjustment board is to fix the

Retiring Allowances-Mr. McLean (Meljort)
remuneration for services rendered, to each of these groups of society so that an equilibrium may be maintained as nearly as it is humanly possible to do so.
In the civil service they would put the third group, and-
-this includes our unemployed, who are already maintained by society as a whole.
They are to be given the same remuneration as farmers, industrial workers and other people of this country.
I submit that the resolution before us is not wise, that no evidence has been submitted that it would be a good thing for the country or a good thing for the people. I said a while ago that many people of sixty feel that they are in the prime of their lives, that they are able to turn out better work than they were able to do before. I know that there are many over sixty among our returned men who have the right, perhaps, to expect more generous treatment than they are receiving at the present time. The law provides for them at sixty the same old age pensions as it provides for others at seventy, and it may be that it is desirable to extend special consideration to them; but to say that for all the workers who wish to retire, even if it were not compulsory to do so, adequate retiring allowances should be given, I think is a mistake.
We are sometimes told that the trouble with the world is that there is so much of everything we might have and that we are not using. I remember, and I wish to quote from memory, the words of one of the greatest economists in Europe to-day, Doctor Gustav Cassel, of Stockholm. He says: "We are told to-day that the trouble is that this is an age of plenty, that we cannot distribute it. It is not yet an age of plenty. In 1928, when production was at its height, when the factories were open for longer hours than they were before, and when the machines were running faster than they ever did before, we were turning out barely as much wealth as was required to satisfy the people of the world on the scale upon which they were accustomed to live at that time." That being true of 1928, when the wheels of industry were running at their fastest and when there were no unemployed at all who were able and willing to work, if this economist was correct-and I submit that there is no greater name in the economic science of Europe to-day-we were producing barely enough for the needs of the people on the scale to which they had become accustomed.


John Charles Landeryou: May I ask a question?


Malcolm McLean: Just a moment and I will be through. Why is it, then, that to-day we are living on a poorer and lower scale? There are three principal reasons. One is that we are not producing the wealth we were producing at that time; we are not producing the amount of wealth this country could produce. Why is that so? One principal reason is the mistaken policies of this and many other countries that have not allowed us to exchange our surplus wealth in the markets of the world in order to bring home our wages. It is not enough to sell our wealth; we must be allowed an opportunty to bring home our wages in the form of goods o.r services we wish to buy from other countries, and during the last five years in particular in this and many other countries we have not been allowed to do so. There is another difficulty, to which I have already referred. Many governments have provided services at which our forefathers would have scoffed. These services may be and in some oases are desirable, but many of the things that have been done were neither imperative nor essential. That is another factor contributing to present conditions.
Now I want to give my hon. friend, who wished to ask a question, and who was courteous enough not to interrupt me, an opportunity to put his question.


John Charles Landeryou: If it is true that we are in an age of scarcity I should like to ask the hon. member why we do not put the unemployed to work to create more.


Malcolm McLean: That is a fair question, and I will try to answer it. It is absolutely true that to-day we are in an age of relative scarcity in Canada. Let me give an illustration. I was going to say that for the last five or six years providence has failed to shine, but that is not what providence has failed to do. Providence has failed to rain on southern Saskatchewan, Alberta and parts of Manitoba, and because providence failed to weep on that land it did not produce the wealth we had been accustomed to see there. The grain was burned up by weather conditions, and the people in that part of the country are hard up to-day principally because they were unable to produce that wealth. That is true in many other lands. It is not possible to put the unemployed to work to remedy that situation. I do not know how many unemployed it would take to water even an acre of wheat. We have no rain producer, like Mr. Hatfield, who came to Alberta and took a good deal of money from the farmers of parts of that province on his undertaking to produce rain. I have no doubt
328	COMMONS
Retiring Allowances-Mr. McLean (Meljort)
my social credit friends are quite sincere; they think they have found something that will be helpful. I hope they have, and that they will have an opportunity to apply it, but the real reason we are poor and hard up is that we have not produced wealth to the extent to which we were accustomed. Take the grain production of the prairie provinces; my hon. friend knows as well as I do that for five or six years we have not produced anything like the amount of grain we formerly did, and as a result we have not had it to sell or exchange for the things we cannot produce ourselves to advantage.
It is another fallacy, I think, to say that this is not an age of scarcity, that we need not suffer for the lack of things we might like to enjoy. Anyone who has produced plenty, who has used it carefully, who has exchanged the surplus for something produced by his neighbour, who has not had too great a toll taken from him by any institution and who has not suffered misfortune, injury or ill health, knows that he is well off.
Another favoured assertion of my hon. friends is that to-day we have an age of machines as against men. This is not an age of machines at all; this is the great age of men, and machines are only the evidence of it, machines that have been made to take over the physical labour, the drudgery, the slavery, the long hours, to take them from the human frame and put them on the machine, where they belong. Do any of my hon. friends think machinery is going to come down from above like manna, that it can be made without physical labour? You cannot find the machinery that is needed in Canada in the drop of ink that lies at the point of a fountain pen. Machines have to be made. Machines do not produce wealth; they simply process further the wealth that men have produced from the resources of nature.
I think my time is almost exhausted, Mr. Speaker, and I wish to thank you and the house for the very courteous reception you have given my argument. It has not been delivered, perhaps, in a very eloquent way, or as clearly as I might like to present it, but when hon. members investigate it they may find that the kernel is there and that if they take advantage of the opportunity of chewing that kernel it will be to their economic enlightenment.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Mr. Speaker, the resolution before us looks in the direction of extending the Old Age Pensions Act. It is perhaps rather unfortunate that the administration of that act 
has been transferred from the Department of Labour to the Department of Finance. I suppose the transfer is very natural; the actual administration is so largely under the provinces that so far as the dominion is concerned it is almost entirely a matter of finance, but still I think it puts this kind of legislation in rather an unfortunate position. It makes us think in terms of finance rather than in terms of the needs of the people, and it is to that latter point of view that we should direct our attention to-day.
This is not quite the place or the time to discuss the failings of the present act, but in passing I should like to point out that a great deal of hardship has been caused because of the long residence in Canada that is required. There are many people who came from Great Britain as bona fide settlers who have not lived in this country long enough to qualify under the act. Further, there is an even greater difficulty in Canadian citizens passing from one province to another, which often means that for a good many years they cannot qualify in the province to which they finally removed. I hope the time will come when we will consider Canadian citizens as such irrespective of the actual part of Canada in which they have been living. Again, I think, because of the property qualifications, a good deal of hardship has been caused in the actual administration. A great many people find themselves unable to qualify because of tiny bits of property which perhaps to-day are liabilities rather than assets. In addition we all recognize that the amount of $20 a month is a very, very meagre allowance. I wish that could be increased.
In the resolution now before us we speak of adequate retiring allowances, and there are two points that we should keep in mind. The first is that the amount we give the old people should be adequate to maintain them in a respectable way. It is hardly adequate to-day. Further than that, I am glad to note that my colleague has adopted the phrase "a retiring allowance." As it is to-day, frankly, the old age pension is more or less on a charity basis. I hope the time will come when we will consider that during their working period the older people of this country have done enough work to enable them to claim this allowance as a right rather than as mere charity. You will note, Mr. Speaker, that the resolution links up the necessity for a lower retiring age to the present situation of employment in this country, in these words:
Whereas there exists in Canada an acute unemployment situation-

Retiring Allowances-Mr. Woodsworth
The debates of the house during the last few years will, I think, make clear to anyone that we have had an acute unemployment situation in this country; at the present time some 400,000 people are out of work.
And whereas it is desirable that as many as possible be absorbed into the useful industrial life of the dominion.
The very question that we were discussing on Monday; I do not think it necessary for us to traverse that ground again. Various solutions have been proposed, among others shorter hours. I think that would be a good thing. If there are 400,000 people unemployed there is no reason why the work should not be distributed more equitably so that everyone would have something to do; that is one line of attack. And we have in this resolution a second line of attack, that is reducing the working forces. Now it is quite evident that a good many people at sixty are well able to carry on; on the other hand many people at that age are not in their prime. At the other end of the age scale we have tens of thousands of young people for whom there is no opportunity of work. It is to those young people that we seek to give a chance. I have known homes in which the father, a man of sixty to sixty-five years of age, halfcrippled, is working in the shops while his young healthy son of twenty-five is living on the family simply because he cannot get work. Surely it would be a good thing if the father should receive a retiring allowance that would take him off the labour market and give that young man a chance to go to work. That is the spirit of the resolution.


Charles Avery Dunning: Does the hon. member
intend that such a man should be compelled to retire?


James Shaver Woodsworth: No; we do not
intend to compel him to retire any more than under the present Old Age Pensions Act we force men to retire at seventy. But if a man wishes to retire or is incapable of carrying on, then we give him an opportunity to retire.


Mr. TOMLINSON:: Would the leader of
the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation be agreeable to retire at sixty?


Abraham Albert Heaps: Let the hon. gentleman put
that question to his own leader first.


Charles Avery Dunning: How much has my hon.
friend in mind as "an adequate retiring allowance," in the terms of the resolution?


James Shaver Woodsworth: I think my hon.
friend who proposed the resolution suggested $50 a month. I do not mean that that would
bring great luxury, but it would be an advance on the present S20 a month. We are attempting to set a certain standard by suggesting an "adequate retiring allowance," a high standard if you will. In the actual working out of legislation a great many factors would have to be taken into consideration.


Charles Avery Dunning: I do not think it is very high.


James Shaver Woodsworth: It is a great deal
higher than the present $20 a month, and we think it would be more or less adequate, having in view the ordinary salaries and wages being paid to-day.


Charles Avery Dunning: When I said that I
thought it was not very high I had in mind the argument which my hon. friend was making previously, which I am sorry I interrupted, in which he was developing the idea of making it sufficiently attractive for the old men to retire in order to make room for the sons.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I think at the
figure suggested it would do that. Perhaps both my colleague and I are thinking more particularly of the great masses of the people engaged in manual work. There are large numbers of those people who would gladly retire on $50 a month.


Mr. MACDONALD (Brantford):: Does the hon. member include women in that?


James Shaver Woodsworth: Yes. Any individual-man or woman-should have the right to retire. I fancy that in working out legislation of this kind in the case of a man and wife, we might give the wife a smaller amount, say S30, so that the total for the family would be $S0 a month, something of that nature. At the present time a very large number of wage earners in this country are receiving only $600 or $700 a year. If we offered a family $50 to $80 a month this would make reasonable provision for their old age and I think a great many would be willing to accept that retiring allowance and thus give their sons and daughters a chance to take their places.
I do not propose to follow the speech of the hon. member for Melfort (Mr. McLean); I hope the line of attack which he has taken is not going to be characteristic of the approach of the Liberal party to this subject. He made quite an elaborate disquisition on what he regards as the position of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. He said our position is that we have too much wealth in this country. None of us has ever taken that position. We do believe that
330	COMMONS
Retiring Allowances-Mr. Woodsworth
there is in this country an enormous amount of potential wealth which is not being fully developed. I am quite familiar. with the pamphlet of the Brookings Institution from which he quoted, but may I point out that the Brookings Institution were speaking of the machinery of production as we now have it, and its utilization to full capacity. With that we can produce a great deal more than is being produced to-day.


Malcolm McLean: On a question of order, Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask whether the hon. member, who raised the point of order as to myself, is now in order in traversing my argument.


Walter Edward Foster: I do not think the hon. gentleman is absolutely out of order. Considerable latitude is being given in the treatment of these questions.


James Shaver Woodsworth: The arguments of the members opposite, if you can call them such, were put forth long before we called attention to the point of order. I say that we believe there is great potential wealth in this country. Referring to the document of the Brookings Institution which was quoted;, I point out that the consuming power mentioned was limited to what economists call effective demand, that is what the people can pay for. Undoubtedly there never has been any very great surplus over and above what the people can afford to purchase. But if you take another document issued in the United States by a group of economists and technicians, to which I have referred before, that report to the president not long ago clearly showed that if the machinery of production that exists in the United States were used to full capacity it is quite possible to produce the equivalent of $4,400 a year income for every family in the United States. I do not need to go further along that line.
These contentions of ours may be characterized as pseudo-economic theories. I submit, however, that in view of the actual situation and in view of the great need of finding markets for our products, and the huge number of unemployed, it is high time that the Liberals should revise their theories and adopt some plan that would enable them to take care of the present situation. The hon. member for Melfort said that there was no evidence as to the numbers eligible and the cost. That reminds me strongly of the arguments advanced ten years ago when some of us proposed that there should be old age pensions at seventy. It is true that one can make only a guess at these things; that was 
true in England when old age pensions were first proposed, but the population of the different countries conforms to certain general laws, and other countries which have had social legislation of this character for some years are now in a position to advise us as to what the numbers and approximate cost would be. My colleague referred to those figures.
As I have said, there is nothing in the resolution suggesting that any person would be compelled to retire at the age of sixty. When the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) received a delegation from the Trades and Labour Congress he passed off somewhat lightly the demand made along the lines of this resolution when he suggested that if every person over sixty were bound to retire this would affect both himself and the leader of the delegation, Mr. Draper. That may be quite true. As a gentleman to my right said a few moments ago, it might be that I would have to go, because I have gone beyond the sixty mark. It would probably mean that the Prime Minister would have to go and it would certainly mean that the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) would have to go. But such a pleasantry does not answer the question. Some of us may be able to carry on for a few years longer, especially those of us who have been engaged in intellectual work.
No one wishes to force a man capable of carrying on to retire, although sometimes I think it would be to the advantage of our country if we had a larger proportion of young men in this chamber. We might get some new blood which would bring something of greater value than we have been able to give in the past. I suggest however that such a reply as that given by the Prime Minister does not solve the problem. If some of us were forced to retire, without adequate superannuation, I rather fancy a good many of us might find it extremely difficult to obtain suitable employment. University presidents who are retired at sixty or sixty-five sometimes find it extremely difficult to find other suitable positions. I need not stress that point to hon. members. Any person who has been away from his own profession for ten, fifteen or twenty years and suddenly finds himself thrown out, without any reserve, would, even though intellectually acute and able, find himself in grave difficulties w'hen he went about securing another position. I have known only too many people who have been in that position.
I am not thinking however so much of the intellectual workers, but rather of the

Retiring Allowances-Mr. Woodsworth
manual labourers. To-day in many industries men are being laid off not at sixty but at fifty, and sometimes forty years. Certainly no man is taken on in ordinary industry after he has reached fifty years of age. A great many people find themselves in very distressing conditions when at sixty years they are laid aside and cannot hope to obtain old age pensions until they reach the age of seventy. I would call the attention of hon. members to the fact that with the exception of the farming population five-sixths of the working class population in Canada are employees. That means that with the wages they have been receiving they have had no opportunity to lay up very much by way of reserves. Further, we know there is a considerable turnover in the personnel in nearly all our factories, which means that many of our people may have worked in ten, twenty, thirty or forty different establishments between the ages of, shall we say sixteen and sixty. No one particular establishment has any responsibility for such an employee who reaches old age. The last firm which employed him has no special responsibility when he reaches the time he must retire. Some employers who may have a greater sense of responsibility and are more humane than others may seek to keep employees in their service after they have passed the period of greatest efficiency. There should be some general provision, however, and industry as a whole, or the state, should have the responsibility of seeing that a man who has done good work between the ages of sixteen or eighteen and sixty should be decently looked after in his older days.
There is nothing very radical in the resolution, notwithstanding the observations of the hon. member for Melfort (Mr. McLean). There is nothing particularly socialistic in it. I say it is an honest effort fairly to meet one of the outstanding practical and personal problems facing us to-day. I would hope that the Minister of Finance (Mr. Dunning), who since this affects his department will undoubtedly reply, would give the matter serious consideration. The resolution is not offered by way of criticizing the government for what it has not done in the past. We have a new government to-day. The resolution is not put forward as a result of any special theory, unless it be this, that the needs of Canadian citizens should have priority, and that in a country potentially as rich as Canada there is no reason for elderly people suffering hardship. That is our plea for reducing the age at which old age pension or retiring allowance may be received.


John Alexander (1874-1948) Macdonald: Would it suit- the purpose and carry out the intention of the hon. member if the present act were amended, or if the age were changed to sixty years instead of the present seventy years?


James Shaver Woodsworth: It would go quite a long way, but not the whole distance, because I believe the present allowance is too low and under present arrangements the old age pension is virtually a charity. I should like to have it on a basis whereby a man reaching the specified age and otherwise qualified might receive the pension without any sense of humiliation. We have retiring allowances for judges, for members of the civil service, and for certain other classes of employees. I do not know why we could not have an arrangement whereby others might receive retiring allowances without suffering humiliation thereby.


Mr. BAKER:: Does the hon. member not think that the age of sixty-five would provide sufficient change?


James Shaver Woodsworth: Certainly if we
cannot have sixty we would welcome a compromise of sixty-five.


Richard Langton Baker: Many men are young at sixty-five.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Quite so.


Mr. WILTON:: Is it assumed in the resolution that the federal government will take full responsibility for the added cost or is it to be added on the percentage basis, as now exists, a certain proportion of the cost being placed on the municipalities, many of which are now in a very unsatisfactory financial condition?


James Shaver Woodsworth: We are not drawing up a bill, but simply advancing a plea that the age be lowered. I believe there is much to be desired by way of revision of the present act. Personally I should like to see a larger proportion of the cost borne by the federal authorities. I realize that the municipalities are in no position to contribute more than they are contributing to-day. Further than that, it may be advisable to include old age pensions as part of a still wider scheme of social insurance. If I understand the Prime Minister's position I believe it has been more or less in his mind through the years that old age pensions would simply form part of a wider scheme including disabilities of different kinds.
Before taking my seat may I suggest that among other things I should like to see included provision for the blind, because blind
Retiring Allowances-Mr. Walsh

people are virtually old from the time they become incapacitated. However may I repeat that we are not drawing up a bill, but merely urging a principle.


Mr. W. A. WALSH (Mount Royal):: Mr. Speaker, with your kind permission, before saying a few words about the subject under discussion may I offer congratulations to the hon. member for West Kootenay (Mr. Esling) upon passing another milestone in life. Perhaps I may be permitted also to express the hope that he has many years ahead of him and that many of them will be spent, not on this but on the other side of the chamber.
I would not intrude into this debate did I not realize and appreciate that a new member making his initial effort is given every possible consideration by older members who have had more experience. My main reason for taking part in this discussion is my long experience with young men and young women. I concur with the mover of the resolution (Mr. Heaps) in his expression of sympathy for the young men and women of this country because of the position in which they find themselves to-day. That position is not of their own making; they have been called upon to suffer intensely because of conditions prevailing at the present time. I gained further encouragement from listening to the very able address made earlier this week by the Minister of Labour (Mr. Rogers). I offer him my sincere congratulations upon his address. I hope that some of the principles which he enunciated will be brought down in the form of legislation in the very near future so that we shall have something concrete to discuss and not have to continue to deal with abstract problems.
For the past eight years we have been going through a period of distress, but this is not the first time in the history of the world that a period of distress has overcome us. I look back to the latter part of the seventeenth century when our forefathers were changing over from hand to machine labour and think of the distress that followed in the wake of that change. I look back to the social revolution that followed immediately the change in the economic life of the people of that time. Conditions which prevailed then were similar to those which have prevailed during our own lifetime. We have seen a remarkable economic change in the adoption of electrically driven machines and other types of machinery which have largely relieved man of heavy labour. Between the industrial and social revolutions occurred the Napoleonic wars which aggravated a rather unfortunate situation. In our own day the great war accentuated conditions which would have occurred even though the war had

not taken place. We are in the midst of change and we must readjust the social fabric of this country to meet the changes that have taken and are now taking place. The main trouble and difficulty in Canada is the fact that compared with other countries of the world we are many years behind in social legislation. We have not kept up with the economic and industrial changes which have occurred during the past twenty-five years.
I should like to point out one peculiar fact in connection with conditions which prevail in this country. During the early part of this century we entered upon a period of tremendous expansion. I recall the words of that great Canadian statesman, a man who led this house for many years, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, when he said that the nineteenth century belonged to the United States of America, but the twentieth century would belong to Canada. That statement was true then and is true to-day; the only difficulty is that we started to build on the expectation of an immediate realization of that statement. The development of Canadla has been impeded by the war and by industrial conditions which developed after Sir Wilfrid made that statement. We are overdeveloped in our railway system; we are overdeveloped in our industrial system ; we are overdeveloped in our governmental system, and the result is that we find ourselves unable to cope with a situation which at its best would have been bad enough but which was further aggravated by this period of tremendous expansion.
We have considerable unemployment in our midst to-day. The other evening the remark was made from the other side of the house that unemployment began to be felt only after 1930. Unemployment actually made its presence felt in this country in 1925; it was only accentuated and forced upon our attention in 1930. Government reports show that in the heyday of our prosperity, in 1928, the number of unemployed in Canada was actually 146,000 people. That figure did not take into account those who are usually unemployed, such as the indigent class which we have with us always, or those who are seasonally unemployed. The figure shows that the unemployment situation began to develop long before 1930 when it was brought home to us so forcibly.
It would be useless for me to attempt to inquire into all the various causes and reasons which might be advanced for the depression out of which we are striving to find our way at the present time. It will be sufficient for me to direct the attention of hon. members to some figures. Lack of income on the part

Retiring Allowances-Mr. Deachman
of our Canadian citizens is responsible to a large degree for the over supply of materials and commodities with which we find ourselves. I notice that in 1929 the total income of the Canadian people was $5,500,000,000; in 1932 this had shrunk to $3,181,000,000. a shrinkage of over two billion dollars. When you take out of circulation in this country a purchasing power of over two billion dollars the natural consequence is a lack of employment and a lack of ability on the part of the people to get the wherewithal with which to enjoy life.
There is another point I should like to raise, one with which all hon. members on this side may not agree. A year ago my faith in the Conservative party was emphasized and reestablished in no uncertain degree by the series of addresses given by our leader. The statements that he made at that time were implemented by measures passed by the house, which measures represented considerable progress in social legislation. It is my hope and expectation that something further will be done along that line and that the legislation passed last year will be found to be in order and will be supplemented by additional legislation introduced at this session by the present government. We are in dire need of advanced social legislation; the Canadian people are clamouring for that type of legislation, and rightly so. I feel that they have a right to demand it, for in my opinion it is the first duty of the state to provide for the sustenance of the people living within it. The statement I wanted to make, with which many members might disagree, I would put in these words: We have reached a point where we know there is a surplus of labour. I am going to say this, and I am open to contradiction and correction if I am wrong in my line of reasoning and the conclusions I have reached: Never again in the history of Canada are we going to have a balanced budget in respect to labour conditions in this country. There will always be a surplus of labour in the labour market not only of Canada but of the world, and for that reason I am keenly urging that some action be taken in relation to social legislation in order to meet a necessity which has arisen and is bound to remain with us. This surplus of labour must be looked after; it is	our duty to look after every
class of citizen living in Canada. And these people can be taken care of only by means of legislation such as is proposed in the motion before us and legislation of a similar type.
As I said in the first place, I am expecting great things from the new Minister of Labour (Mr. Rogers). Although he sits on the opposite side, I admire his capacity; I know his ability and I feel that if he is given a free hand by other members on his side of the house he will bring in legislation that will tend to alleviate some of the distress with which we are faced at the present time.
In conclusion I wish to emphasize this fact as forcibly as I can: Social legislation must immediately be introduced and we must take cognizance of the fact that there is a surplus of labour in the labour market; we must take cognizance of the fact that there will always be a surplus of labour, and we must adjust our social legislation to meet a circumstance of that kind.


Mr. R. J. DEACHMAN (Huron North):: The resolution brought forward by the hon. member for North Winnipeg (Mr. Heaps) will not increase the total number of men employed. One section of the working army is to be retired and a new section is to take its place, but the unit strength of that army will remain the same. It will not increase the total amount of production and therefore will not increase the total amount of purchasing power. I go further: it will decrease the wages paid.
My friends are a bit uncertain as to the cost, one mentioned a total army of 870,000 which was to be retired, and another suggested a payment of $50 a month or $600 a year. There would therefore be a total bill to meet of $120,000,000 a year. That sum must be met; it must be paid out of total production, and therefore there will be a smaller total to distribute, and as a result a lower net or real wage going to the worker. I go further; it will decrease the total number of men employed, for the simple reason that when you add a burden of this kind you have greater taxes to pay; and in the matter of taxation there is even now in the dominion a burden too great to be borne. Certain industries under pressure now would decline, fail and go out of business.
It would add a greater burden to the industries which are competitive in the export market of the world, and therefore they would not be able to produce in the same volume as before, and so there would be a decline in the total number of men employed.
I know that my hon. friends who have spoken this afternoon represent largely the labour interests. It is most astounding that we should see standing up in this house to-day leading representatives of labour bringing forward a proposal, which can do nothing but reduce the wages of the employee and decrease the total number of men employed. I wonder if this is the greatest constructive

Retiring Allowances-Mr. Maclnnis
suggestion they can offer. I leave that baby on their doorstep; it is their own. I ask them, if the opportunity comes and they may have the chance, to explain in what way this is going to improve the position of the worker, either in so far as numbers are concerned or as regards the wages paid to the individual.


Mr. ANGUS MacINNIS (Vancouver East):: In seconding this resolution proposed by the hon .member for North Winnipeg (Mr. Heaps), I felt that I was merely supporting a resolution that would direct a certain matter to the attention of the government, asking that a certain principle should receive consideration. We did not nor could we lay down the exact terms in which this matter could be carried into legislation. That ,vill be the function of the government if ind when they feel that the resolution has merit. Before going any further I wish to quote very briefly from a statement made by the present Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) in this house in the session of 1925, which can be found in Hansard of that year. Old age pensions were being discussed at the time, and this is what the present Prime Minister, who was also at that time Prime Minister, said:
There is need for society to assist in the protection of its members against a condition which simultaneously places Durdens upon the workers whose day's work is done, and>
on the worker whose day's work is just beginning. If the young are to be given a fair start in life, the care of the aged should not be their first responsibility.
That principle holds true to-day in a far greater degree than in 1925, because the conditions that exist to-day, which put a greater responsibility on the young as well as on the aged, are intensified. There was never a time when it was more necessary than it is to-day to make provision for people for whom industry has no use. There was never a time when this could be more easily done, because there was never a time when the means and the material with which to do it was as great as it is to-day.
The hon. gentleman who has just sat down (Mr. Deachman) asks whether we have taken the expense into consideration. Yes, we have taken expenses into consideration, and we know what they are. All the expenses involved are the labour it requires to bring those material things into being. All other expenses are merely those that arise because of the property relationship that exists in human society to-day. When one set of people own and another set of people do not own, every single item that enters into the lives of those who do not own must come

out of the property and income of those who do. So as long as this property relation exists the question of expense will be always with us. But once we overcome that question of property, the matter of expense will disappear, and we can go on and develop the resources of this country so as to provide not only for the necessities of life but for the comforts and luxuries as well. To-day, because of the profit system, the masses of the people are living in poverty, in misery and in insecurity in the midst of plenty. That is the situation.
So far as we in this corner of the house are concerned, we ask the government to do, not the limit that we should like to see done, not the things that we believe are possible to be done, but the things that we believe are within the ambit of their own program. That is where we stand on the matter. I have been a member of the working class all my life. I know that there are many men to-day over the age of sixty who would be very glad to retire on a pension of much less than fifty dollars a month. I know also that there are many people in industry whom their employers are keeping at work, although they realize that their industrial efficiency is gone. There are various reasons for this. In some cases they do not wish to throw them on the scrap heap of unemployment; in others, some protection is afforded to the employee by trade union regulations and such things as that. Recently the province of British Columbia made a survey of unemployment in that province. It shows very clearly how unemployment increases with advancing age. In examining figures for a ten year period experts find that there are 4,300 persons on relief between twenty and thirty years of age, 5,188 between thirty and forty, 5,636 between forty and fifty, 6,526 between fifty and sixty and 4,345 between sixty and seventy. I think that gives an indication of how difficult it is for people who are getting up in years to find employment in industry at the present time. In British Columbia employers in the lumbering and fishing industries do not want men over the age of thirty-five. In the lumber industry they can get all the active young men they want below that age. I visited quite a. number of plants in British Columbia this year, particularly the works of the Consolidated Mining & Smelting Company in Trail, and it was really amazing to note the youth of the employees as a whole. It appeared to me that there was not a man over fifty years of age working in the whole of that huge plant.

Retiring Allowances-Mr. Maclnnis
Something must be done to take care of these people. The hon. member for Melfort (Mr. McLean) said that the means of overcoming the situation that confronted us today was quite simple. All we had to do was to go on producing all we could produce and then clear away trade barriers and exchange our surplus goods for the surpluses of other nations. That is quite a reasonable and a logical thing to do. But the fact of the matter is that it cannot be done; that is, it cannot be done at the present time and under the present system. Let us take as an example the largest free trade area in the world. The United States of America, with its 130 million people and with an enormous territory where they are capable of producing almost every known commodity, is to-day the largest free trade area in the world, and if free trade in itself could effectively distribute the fruits of industry, why are there eleven million people unemployed in the United States? Why are there approximately 21 million in the United States on relief? You cannot settle the question by declaring that it can be solved simply through clearing away trade barriers. The reason it cannot be done in that way is that certain people in the world to-day, even in the Dominion of Canada, are receiving so much of the total pool of production that they do not know what to do with it; they could not exchange it and use the commodities that they could get in exchange even though they wanted to do so.
During 1934 and 1935 we had a commission sitting on price spreads and mass buying. I am not going to take up the time of the house with any extensive discussion of this report, but I would like to call your attention to one of the industries investigated at that time. It was found that the average wages in the tobacco industry were $555 a year. Reference was made in the investigation of one of the tobacco firms to others beside the workers who produce the wealth by manufacturing the raw material into saleable commodities:	others were getting income as
well. The president, Gray Miller, was receiving in those years of depression, from 1929 to 1933, $25,000 a year. Besides that salary he received as a bonus in 1929, over $45,000; in 1930, over $61,000; in 1931, over $40,000; in 1932, over $32,000, and in 1933, over $44,000. How can people receiving incomes of that size exchange the values which that income represents and consume the values received in exchange? It cannot be done. Going on a little further: the vice-president, D. C. Patterson, was receiving a salary of $40,000 a year. Compare that with the average wage
of the employees, $555 a year. And besides that salary of $40,000 he received a bonus each year: in 1929 it was $75,000; in 1930 it was $102,000; in 1931 it was over $67,000 and in 1932 it was over $53,000. Do you wonder that there is a surplus of commodities that cannot be consumed, although there are people who are ready to consume them?
Now I shall take up another tobacco manufacturing plant, the Macdonald manufacturing plant.


Charles Avery Dunning: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, I think you once ruled that this discussion should relate to old age pensions.


Walter Edward Foster: I would ask the hon. member to confine himself to the subject matter of the discussion. We have wandered a little too much in the discussion to-day.


Angus MacInnis: I assure you, Mr. Speaker, that I will try to keep within the rules of the house, but the question has been raised as to where the money is to be found and I am trying to show the house where the money can be found. I have referred to the Imperial tobacco company; I refer now to the Macdonald tobacco company. One man took out income at the rate of $5,000 a week or $260,000 a year. It would take an individual employee of that factory 468 years to take out of the industry as much as the owner took out in one year. That is where the money can be found. I do not find very much fault with the Minister of Finance (Mr. Dunning) for trying to stop the discussion there, because it does not look very well, but still these things will have to become known.


Charles Avery Dunning: I must object, Mr. Speaker. I merely raised the point in the interests of compliance with the rules of the house, and with no other motive. My hon. friend cannot impute motives to me, and I must ask him to withdraw that imputation.


Angus MacInnis: I accept the minister's explanation and withdraw-


Charles Avery Dunning: There is no explanation at all; my hon. friend must withdraw the imputation of motive which he has attributed to me.


Angus MacInnis: I said on the explanation given by the minister I was willing to withdraw. The minister said he was calling your attention merely to the rules of the house, with no other motive, and I am accepting that.
There is not very much more I wish to say, Mr. Speaker, except to express the hope

Retiring Allowances-Mr. Church
that the government will take this matter into consideration, having in mind not merely the wording of the resolution but also its intent. If they cannot go all the way I am sure that those of us in the little group in this corner will be very grateful if they can go any distance at all.


Mr. T. L. CHURCH (Broadview):: Mr
Speaker, I am opposed to the proposal enunciated in this resolution; I am opposed to putting any more burdens or artificial barriers on business to-day in the two industrial provinces of Canada. The other night, it is true, I did support the expenditure of public money, and I am prepared to support it again. Today we are spending $100,000,000 on relief in this country, federal, provincial and municipal, and it was shown before the housing committee last year that about two-thirds of that amount, or $60,000,000, if distributed among the carpenters, bricklayers and labourers of all kinds in wages would get thousands of people off the dole and back to work. I believe an economic arrangement of that kind could be made.
Let us have a look at the cause and effect of this resolution. It is simply state socialism, to which I am absolutely opposed. I do not think it will afford the unemployed any more relief than the special academic pleading of the Minister of Labour (Mr. Rogers) the other night, when he had before him the example of England and the United States as to what could be done in regard to reconstruction and housing within the ability of this country to pay. This question of unemployment is a matter exclusively for this parliament. Here we make the tariff, the immigration laws, the banking and commerce laws and so on, and for that reason we must be responsible for unemployment. One of the glories of the Victorian era was the fact that the people kept the state. If the socialists both in and out of this house go much further it will be a case of the state keeping the people, first, last and all the time. William Pitt was prime minister of Great Britain at twenty-three-
A sight to make surrounding nations stare,
A kingdom entrusted to a schoolboy's care.
-but every age does not produce a Pitt.
In my opinion, Mr. Speaker, this resolution would have the very opposite effect to what I think is intended by the mover (Mr. Heaps). I am sorry I did not bring down with me the return asked for by the late Mr. McCrea, an old member of the house for Sherbrooke, which showed that eighty per cent of the cash taxes of this dominion were paid by the two central provinces. The heavy burdens and artificial barriers placed upon business to-day in Ontario and Quebec are driving

many business men to the wall and are one of the main causes of unemployment and unrest. Let me say to my socialist friends that the right to possess private property such as a job is derived from nature, not from the state or from man. That is a principle that has been known for many years, and is not the title to a job property? This parliament of Canada and the state has no authority to abolish that right, but only to control its use and bring it into harmony with the public good. The state has no right to abolish private property; a man's job is his private property, and the government has no right to take that away from him.
Last year the party to which I belong provided a new deal and a new future for the people. I cannot speak for this corner of the house officially all or any of the time but I can say that we are just as much opposed to state socialism as we are to the laissez-faire policy of the Liberty party and to economic liberalism and state and social credit socialism. As it is, this country is burdened with debt to an almost impossible extent owing to the war and the cost of daily increasing social services, so that we are threatened with a condition in which no one would be working and the state would have to keep not some of the people some of the time but all of the people all of the time. We are consistent protectionists; we believe in protection all the time for all the people, not some of the people some of the time. We favour protection for the iron, the coal and steel industries for the farmer and for all classes, and for the industrial worker who is foreclosed, the same as the farmer and fisherman. Who but the former Prime Minister (Mr. Bennett) would have done the work he did. for this country for the past five years? What man of sixty or under could have done this so efficiently? This party is just as much opposed to economic socialism as we are to the economics of the Manchester school and economic liberalism held by the Minister of Labour. We do not want mob coercion. Modern capitalism shares a great deal of the blame for economic conditions in this country and must clean house and adopt a new set of rules-every living game has to have new rules from time to time and the capitalistic system requires a new set of rules to bring it up to date. But in any system the principle must be retained of every man working for himself, instead of state socialism as called for in this resolution. We in this country will never become slaves; the state will never take away our freedom. We must cure these evils of unrestricted competition, starvation wages,

Retiring Allowances-Mr. Church
sweat shops, long hours, monopolies, child labour and all such things; we should ibe better employed in giving our attention to these matters rather than to the proposed resolution, which will get us nowhere and destroy every industry in central Canada which pays the 'bills mainly for all Canada.
Who is going to pay for all this? It would just go on the taxes of the industrial provinces and industry would practically have to close up. This whole idea started about twenty years ago. Most of us remember a distinguished citizen of Toronto, Sir William Osier, who graduated from McGill and went to the great Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore and became professor of clinical medicine there and afterwards went to Oxford. The hon. members for West York (Mr. Streight) and North York (Mr. Mulock) represent the ridings in which the father of this celebrated man lived. In 1905 Sir William Osier made a speech in which he said that men at forty are inefficient and at sixty are useless. That has since been proven to be wrong; the war proved it wrong, and conditions after the war have proved it wrong. If we took away from the arts and sciences, from literature and medicine what the men over forty or even over sixty did, we should be back in the middle ages. Of course there are exceptions. Sir William Osier's idea was that the man over sixty is settled in a rigid mental groove so that he no longer has imagination enough to develop new ideas and adjust himself to new conditions. Henry Ford declared recently that men of middle age are stable and experienced and do better work, calling for endurance, which is often shirked by younger men. Had the experience and judgment of the older men been heeded in 1929 the world might have been saved some of the consequences of the stock crash disaster. They gave warning against the vast speculation. The value of their judgment is incalculable, especially in industrial affairs. If all the men over sixty were withdrawn from the financial institutions, banks and insurance companies and labour generally in this country, I do not know what would become of it.
The first duty of the government is to solve the problem of unemployment and distribution and I regret that the government of the day in the speech from the throne have not brought down some measures for the help of what Disraeli called the suffering millions. Those people-the entire working classes- have little to hope for from the statement of the purely academic Minister of Labour in this house the other evening. If that is the best that twentieth century liberalism which put him in the cabinet can do, we have little to
hope for from them. I have studied this matter for some time. Twentieth century liberalism is content to sit back and 'leave these great economic problems to solve themselves. The young Minister of Labour the other night gave a learned treatise of special pleading which might well have been delivered to a mock parliament or in a debate between McGill, Queens, and Varsity, and his announcement to the unemployed was: We can do nothing. Etconomic liberalism calls for wider markets, which are not available in a world in which there is only economic nationalism. Where are the jobs to come from? Instead of having a real labour man to find jobs in Canada for Canadians, are we to continue the policy of the government that was in power from 1921 to 1930, when over 750,000 young men had to go to the United States to find jobs, many of them returned soldiers who had fought for this country in France and Flanders, at the hazard of their lives, owing to the free trade policies of the government of the day.
In conclusion I want to read a few words bearing on this subject from an article in the English Review for November. The editor of this magazine is a noted economist in the old land, the famous Douglas Jerrold. The writer says:
As examples of physical as well as mental strength in old age, we have Von Moltke, who was chief of staff of the Prussian army at eighty-eight; John Wesley, who was constantly travelling and who preached almost daily at the same age; and Gladstone, who began his reat Midlothian campaign at eighty, and ecame prime minister, for the fourth time, at eighty-three. Two great artists and a noted actor close the record of aged yet efficient workers. Michel Angelo at eighty-nine was busily engaged on his immortal frescoes; that other master, Titian, painted his Battle of Lepanto at ninety-eight, and Charles Macklin, the Shakespearean actor, performed at Covent Garden theatre as Macbeth at eighty-four and as Shylock at ninety-nine.
The list of the mentally virile in old age is fairly lengthy; too long to quote with any approximation _ to completeness, but a few instances extending into our own times may be added.... Among soldiers the most notable were Lord Roberts, and Marechals Joffre and Foch.
Referring to Thomas Edison, the article states he died in 1931 at the age of 84. He produced inventions that benefited the whole world when he was well past 60 and worked in his laboratory till his last illness:
He declared that a man ought to "work with increasing efficiency" between thirty-six and sixty. Robert Dollar, the founder of the Dollar steamship lines, who died recently at the age of eighty-eight, was convinced he had accomplished more in his later years than before he had reached sixty. Of those still with us, and still at work, the most prominent,



Retiring Allowances-Mr. Douglas
perhaps, are President Masaryk. the efficient head of the Czechoslovakian Republic, now eighty-four, Mr. Henry Ford, the poet Rabindranath Tagore (who is still busy conducting his college at Shantiniketan), and that outstanding example of indefatigable physical and mental energy, George Bernard Shaw, who, vigorous at seventy-four, recently circumnavigated the world. His opinion of Sir William Osier's incautious ana unreasonable condemnation of all above forty, as partially or wholly incapable, has not, I think, been made public, but it would be worth hearing.
At another point the article reads:
Bacon, it is said, outlined his Novum Organum at the age of fifteen-a statement difficult to believe-but completed it for publication at fifty-nine. Kant wrote his Estimate of Living Force at twenty-three, but published his Critique of Pure Reason when fifty-seven. Handel and Meyerbeer, both precocious composers, wrote, the former his oratorio The Triumph of Time, at seventy-two; and the latter, at the same age, produced his opera, L'Africaine. Verdi, at seventy-one, composed his masterpiece, Othello, and his other brilliant work, Falstaff, in his eightieth year. Isaac Disraeli published his Amenities of Literature at seventy-five, at which age Bismarck was deposed from his chancellorship by the egotistical ex-Kaiser. Victor Hugo, at seventy-five, wrote The History of Crime; at seventy-seven Le Pape; at seventy-eight, L'Ane; at seventy-nine, Les Quartre Vents de l'Esprit; and at eighty, Torquemada. Humboldt began to write at seventy-six his great work Kosmos. and finished it at eighty. Lamarck completed his famous zoological treatise, the Natural History of the Invertebrates at seventy-eight. Goethe completed his Faust when eighty, and Ranke commenced at this advanced age his History of the World, and actually lived to complete it. He died at ninety-one. Tennyson was eighty-three when he wrote Crossing the Bar. Walter Savage Landor -wrote his Imaginary Conversations at eighty-five.
What right has the mover of the resolution, an hon. member of the house, to interfere with industry in this way? Why should the house pass a resolution of this kind without first knowing how industries stand? Only last session we had information as to the number of unemployed in the country. We would have to see the cause and effect of the suggested change, and I suggest the cause and effect would not be that which the mover suggests. If we were to develop our natural resources, the products of the sea, the soil, the forests and the mines, there would be work for everybody. A few nights ago I referred to what the Hon. Miss Perkins, Secretary of Labor in Washington, has done for the high school population. In Denmark high schools have been erected which will give adult education and will have the effect of creating work. When speaking on Monday of this week I referred to a former president of the board of education, sitting as a member of the Baldwin government, and

indicated he had said that within three years there would be an agricultural economic revolution in the old world, Lord Eustace Percy.
I do not wish to assume responsibility for talking this resolution out, which I can do in three minutes more, because undoubtedly some reply will have to be made by the government. I will state, however, that we should consider seriously cause and effect. Legislation such as is suggested in the resolution would involve greater taxes, and would amount to a restraint of trade and commerce and increase unemployment a hundredfold. I would state further that the government should consider seriously the problem of unemployment, because it is the most important one before us. The very basis of society is at stake, unless we find some up to date solution.
I am in favour of liberal pensions for those who are incapacitated, but I do not favour pensions for people such as I have mentioned, people who are efficient and who are able to work for many years after they have reached the age of sixty. I do not believe there is any demand or agitation from industry that the resolution be accepted. I should like to hear from labour unions and business men before the government would accept the suggestion contained therein.


Mr. T. C. DOUGLAS (Weyburn):: Mr. Speaker, I am quite prepared to assume responsibility for talking this resolution out. I rise to support the resolution proposed by the hon. member for North Winnipeg (Mr. Heaps). I trust however that we shall not have an organization such as that existing in the United States, because I would hate to see a Heaps plan with the slogan, "everybody for Heaps and heaps for everybody."
I have been amazed this afternoon to hear the variety of subtle objections raised to the resolution. Naturally I expected there would be an objection to the expenditure of the large sum of money involved, but I was more amazed to hear some of the other objections voiced. For instance I was surprised to hear the last speaker deal with state socialism when, after all, the reform suggested in the resolution has been in effect in Denmark since 1861, at which time there was a beginning of a system of non-contributory pensions. If I remember correctly, listening to the radio speeches of the right hon. leader (Mr. Bennett) of the last speaker I heard him make a proposition very similar to the one contained in the resolution. It was similar at least in some of the details and would have helped the same people.

Bureau for Translations-Mr. Pouliot
The hon. member for North Huron (Mr. Deachman) made an even stranger objection. If I remember correctly he left the baby on our doorstep; I hope the hon. member will not make that a habit, because it is a most unbecoming one. The suggestion he made that we were advocating lower wages and a decrease in employment and production is beside the point, in view of the fact that in 1927 the party to which he belongs, headed by the present Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) suggested this very thing, but with an increased age limit. In the present instance we are asking simply that the age limit be lowered and the amount increased; we are not asking for state socialism or for any legislation which would increase unemployment. It seems to me therefore that the arguments advanced by these hon. gentlemen have been beside the point. The hon. member for Melfort (Mr. McLean), too, advanced some objections.


[Stage Direction]
At six o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
Thursday, February 20, 1936