1938-02-03

[Stage Direction]
Mr. WILFRID LACROIX (Quebec-Mont-morency) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 14, to amend the Railway Act (telephone tolls).
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. R. A. PELLETIER (Peace River):: Before the orders of the day are called I should like to direct a question to the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King). Will the government appoint a committee to investigate alleged levies made in connection with Canadian National Railways contracts?


Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, I would
suggest that the hon. member place his questions on the order paper, where they can be answered in the regular way. Questions asked on the orders of the day should be confined to matters of exceptional significance or urgency.
The Address-Mr. Poole



DRILLING OF UNIFORMED CLASSES

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. J. S. WOODSWORTH (Winnipeg North Centre):: May I direct a question to the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe)? In the Montreal Gazette of January 31 there is an item accompanied by photographs showing uniformed classes drilling under former officers of the regular army. May I ask the minister whether this matter will be investigated, and whether he will consider applying section 99 of the criminal code which authorizes the governor in council to prohibit military exercises, movements or evolutions?


Right Hon. ERNEST LAPOINTE (Minister of Justice):: I have seen the newspaper article and the photographs to which my hon. friend refers. I will take his question as a notice, to be answered to-morrow if possible.



GOVERNOR GENERAL'S SPEECH


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from Wednesday, February 2, consideration of the motion of Mr. J. N. Francceur for an address to His Excellency the Governor General in reply to his speech at the opening of the session, and the proposed amendment thereto of Mr. Bennett.
Mr. E. J. POOLE (Red Deer):: Mr. Speaker, before we adjourned last night I endeavoured to point out to the government the vagueness of the government policy as represented by the speech from the throne. I also dealt briefly with living conditions, as well as the discrimination shown against the province of Alberta. In view of the remarks of the hon. member for Huron North (Mr. Deaehman) I should like to make a few observations. May I say to him that Alberta never failed. The question between that province and the dominion government is a constitutional one. I have clearly in mind, however, the words of the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King), uttered some two or three years ago, when he said that his policy would be "Hands off Alberta." Since that time, however, beyond all question we have seen evidence of discrimination. Only two years ago the dominion government refused to meet the maturing obligations of the province of Alberta, while at the same time it met the obligations of the other provinces. Recently it disallowed acts of the Alberta legislature, but it has not seen fit to disallow the so-called padlock law of the province of Quebec.

The question I asked last night, and which I emphasize today, is this:	Is the government going to disallow a measure brought down in the Alberta house, a measure which definitely forms part of the mandate given to the Alberta government in 1935, and which they are entitled to carry out, and on the other hand allow Quebec to get away with the padlock law, which deprives sections of Canadian citizens of the right to express themselves?
While in the house I have heard much talk about democracy. What kind of democracy have they in Quebec? While we are on this question I should like to place on Hansard a few extracts from The Instructor, a magazine published in Quebec, which deal with the same question in a different way. I quote from the speech of Sir Edward Beatty, one of our foremost businessmen, delivered at Vancouver, in which he says:
The leadership we need in this country is not that of outstanding national figures making resounding speeches. It is the leadership of ordinary men and women in their own small spheres.
The article goes on to make this comment:
That sounds like the right note; but is it as good as it sounds? Will any man or woman in the employ of the Canadian Pacific Railway, or in the employ of any of the companies under the control of the financial group of which Sir Edward is an important member, venture to make a move in any direction until Sir Edward leads the way?
It is not so long since an eminent scholar, Arthur E. Morgan, left the position he held as principal of McGill University under the chancellorship of Sir Edward. The reason was not made public but rumour persists that Principal Morgan had to leave because he permitted and defended free speech on the part of his staff. Did Sir Edward support him? Or did he let him go? He went.
Mr. Morgan went. The Toronto Globe and Mail takes up the question in an editorial in which comment is made upon the speech of Sir Edward made at Queen's university when at that institution of learning a few weeks ago he was given an honorary degree. The editorial offers the following challenge to Sir Edward:
Certainly no professor should be silenced merely because his words are likely to offend wealthy university benefactors, or because he has departed from the beaten path of hitherto accepted theories.
I contend that there is too great an effort in Canada to silence the views held by some people. We want free access to information,

The Address-Mr. Poole
and further we want free speech. The government should move with the greatest rapidity to disallow the padlock law of Quebec.
Yesterday I spoke briefly about living conditions. Today I was handed a list of figures which I find most interesting. They relate not to the standard of living of people in western Canada, but to that of people living within a few hundred yards of this chamber, in the capital city of Canada. The following table sets out the monthly relief ratio for the city of Ottawa:
For	a	family	of	two. .	.$21.77	plus	$10	rentFor	a	family	of	three.	.$26.32	plus	$11	rentFor	a	family	of	four. ..$30.77	plus	$12	rentFor	a	family	of	five. .	.$36.07	plus	$13	rentFor	a	family	of	six. .	.$40.41	plus	$14	rentFor	a	family	of	seven.	.$44.63	plus	$15	rent
Out of that meagre sum people have been trying to exist for the past six or seven years. These men are endeavouring to support the democratic system. Is this the kind of freedom we are to have in Canada? Is this the kind of freedom and the kind of democracy I am asked to support? The kind of freedom and democracy I support is the one which will reflect happiness in the lives of all the people.
The instructor sets out another set of interesting figures, and, when compared with the figures applying to the most destitute of our race, they are astonishing. I find that the president of an insurance company in Canada receives 8200,000 per year, while the lowest paid vice-president-and there are several of them-receives 8160,000 per year.
In Canada we have heard a cry raised against people who are classed as radicals or communists. May I point out to hon. gentlemen on the ministerial benches and to the private members of the -house that while they are in the city of Ottawa they ought to visit the soup kitchens in this vicinity. Go into the homes of the people who are dependent upon help. We must -conclude that when these people have n-o freedom, all this talk about freedom and democracy is stupid. Their freedom is limited by the distances they can walk, because they have no money to go anywhere else. They are denied the recreation which men and women should have, and yet they are just as worthy of consideration as presidents of insurance companies and other big business executives.
When I said the speech from the throne was vague I meant just that; it contains nothing. I have spoken briefly about financial reform. Let me once more place upon Hansard the views stated at one time by the Prime Minister, because while I am a member of the house he will never be permitted to 51953-9
forget the promises he made. I read from a pamphlet issued by the Liberal party which, under the heading "Mr. Mackenzie King,"
states:
The right hon. W. L. Mackenzie King, leader of the Liberal opposition in the house, in
opposing the Bank of Canada bill clearly enunciated the policy of the Liberal party upon the issue and control of national currency and national credit. Condemning the Bennett Bank of Canada bill, Mr. King said:
"I want to take very strong exception to what the government is doing. They are declaring for a privately owned and privately controlled bank.
This is going to an extreme . . . which will be found to be very much against the public interest."
With that I agree. I quote:
Repeating the policy enunciated by him on February 27, 1933, he said:
"The Liberal party believes that credit is a public matter, not of interest to bankers only but to direct concern to the average citizen.
It stands for the immediate establishment of a properly constituted national bank to perform the functions of rediscount and the control of currency issue considered in terms of public need."
That means relief needs, giving to these people a chance to live. That is what the Liberal government was elected for. Platitudes concerning democracy or expressions of contempt and hate for radicalism will not change by one iota the conditions that exist. This is a job that should be done this session, not the next. The people of Canada will become tired of promises; they will soon weary of listening to high sounding phrases just before -an election. They are beginning to question the sincerity of the government. The very foundations of the things we love so well are apt to be destroyed. If you want to stamp out radicalism and communism you will have to go to the breeding grounds. You will have to go to the soup kitchens and visit the poor families in western Canada who are shackled down with debt.
There are many ways in which our national credit can be used without inflation. It is not necessary to have a rise in prices over and above the volume of goods. We have sufficient national wealth to enable us to build highways and carry out the necessary housing schemes. We should be able to reduce the debt of the farmer and give him a chance to live. Some consideration should be given to the men who have homesteaded and pioneered in this country.
The first step the government should take should be to abolish all kinds of relief. There should be a program of national development, which could be carried out through the use

The Address-Mr. Poole

of the credit which the bankers have always used. We could use our own credit and our own national resources. We should try to develop the youth of our country to make their lives happier and richer. If we do that, communism and radicalism will disappear like the mist before the morning sun.
I am surprised that any hon. member who sits on the government benches should question what is being done in Alberta. If we fail in Alberta it will be because the Liberal government did not keep its promise to keep its hands off Alberta. We know what we are about.
Another condition that has developed during the past six or seven years is the lack of training of our youth. In the last few years at least four new trades have developed. Diesel engineering and refrigeration are only two of the newer trades. If we were to use our national credit to-morrow and bring about a real prosperity, if we were to do all the things that should be done, we would find that there was not a sufficient number of trained men available.
We speak of money credits, but the greatest credit we could have is the intellectual and physical resources of the nation. The youth of the country is our greatest asset, but their development has been neglected in the last few years. Let us call a halt to this befogging of issues; let us get down to causes and not effects. Let us carry out the principles which we have been sent here to carry out. Let us act in the interests of all people, not only of some. When we issue credit, let it be to all the public, not to just a part.
Many Liberal members have advocated monetary reform, but they have been very quiet since they have been in power. Now is the time to do it. They will never be able to do it in opposition. All they will be able to do then will be to point out what should be done to those in power, as I am doing now. We cannot wish our national problems out of existence. They cannot be remedies by platitudes or fine speeches. What is needed is the necessary legislation to make these things possible and the first thing that should be done is the issue of national credit. This credit should be used to build up national assets. When this is being done consideration must be given to the question of prices. The necessary machinery must be provided to keep prices down to reasonable levels. We should increase the value of the dollar and increase the volume of goods produced.
So on behalf, not only of the people of western Canada but of the other poor people in this country who have been ignored and who are defenceless against those who are

criticizing them for their radical tendencies, I make this appeal to the Liberal government: For God's sake show some leadership. Any legislation brought down for monetary reform will be supported by hon. members in this corner. We are ready to support any program which will provide work for the people, which will build up again the morale of our youth. If you want to maintain democratic institutions, I suggest that you act in a democratic way and carry out the mandate of the people. You should give these people a hope of a new life and of greater security than they have ever known before. It is quite possible to provide a standard of living commensurate with our ability to produce.


Hon. H. A. STEWART (Leeds):: Mr. Speaker, we have entered upon the third session of this parliament, and we are now considering the motion for an address in reply to the speech from the throne. The first session was devoted largely to repealing legislation passed by the former government. There was an apparent disposition to destroy the legislation which the previous government believed was in the interests of the people. The second session went by without any really constructive legislation being enacted. In this, the third session of the eighteenth parliament, the people of Canada are looking forward to legislation calculated to deal with the more pressing problems that confront the country.
We looked for some indication of this in the speech from the throne. One or two matters were mentioned, such as the economic recovery, the condition of trade, and the strains and stresses which have been placed upon Canada's government structure, the latter being dealt with under the heading of the appointment of a royal commission. I think it is not unfair to say that the speech from the throne is disappointing in that it does not contain more in the direction I have indicated. It is really a pale, ^ pallid, anaemic imitation of what we had a right to expect at this time.
Reference is made in the speech to the imperial conference recently held in London. That conference had an extensive agenda, and one would have expected that after weeks of deliberation in the conference this government might well have had something concrete and definite to present to parliament as a result. For instance, in the opinion of thoughtful people, and those in this house I believe belong to that class, I think the time has arrived when there should be submitted to parliament a well-considered scheme of immigration. I know that at the present time this subject is a difficult one, but for

The Address-Mr. Stewart
the ultimate development of Canada there is undoubtedly need of a substantial increase in our population.


Mr. DUPUIS:: Is the hon. member speaking for his party or for himself?


Hugh Alexander Stewart: I am speaking for myself, as I assume my hon. friend is.


Vincent Dupuis: I am glad to know it.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: I say that we have in Canada a nucleus around which could be built a much larger population than we now have, and while it might be undesirable in certain respects that large numbers should be admitted, still I do think we should be developing a plan for bringing into Canada, placing them in areas where they are required, selected immigrants of a class and kind that can be easily assimilated and who will fit into our national development.
I am sure that at the imperial conference the subject of defence was also discussed, but we have no reference to any policy in connection with defence in these troublous times. These are two subjects, Mr. Speaker, upon which I think we might have expected some pronouncement from the government in the speech from the throne.
Reference is made in the speech to the coronation. Those who had the privilege of attending and witnessing that splendid spectacle will never forget it. It had a peculiar significance. It was a magnificent demonstration of the strength, unity, and dignity of the British commonwealth of nations, all coming together and taking part in a solemn dedication. We believe that their majesties are firmly established in the affection and confidence of the vast numbers of their subjects, and we recognize Great Britain today as the greatest single national influence making for peace and security. I am sure that as a member and partner in this great commonwealth of nations, we all agree that it is our privilege and our duty to keep in constant communication and consultation with Great Britain, and to cooperate so far as circumstances will permit in achieving that peace and security which this world so sorely needs, if indeed it is possible to achieve it at this time. The impression made upon the world must indeed have been most favourable, the coronation coming, as it did, just after a great constitutional crisis. The two taken together must have convinced the representatives of the different nations of the world assembled in London of the strength and capacity of the commonwealth to which we belong.
51952-9$
The next subject referred to in the speech from the throne is that of economic recovery and trade expansion. That has been dealt with so thoroughly by many speakers who have preceded me that I do not propose to discuss it at any considerable length. Emphasis is placed upon our expanding revenues. So far as these indicate an increase in the volume of our trade it is a matter for satisfaction, but so far as our expanding revenues are attributable to increased taxation the condition is not so satisfactory, because, as we all know, the revenues of this dominion are derived from taxation, and the people of Canada are groaning today under the weight of taxation that they have to bear in the various fields.
We used to hear a lot about nuisance taxes. But we still have them. We used to hear from our friends opposite that the revenue required for the operation of radio should be obtained from a tax on tubes or by some means other than through a licence fee. It was suggested that the licence fee of one dollar should be abolished. It was raised to two dollars, and that was pointed to as an act of injustice and unnecessary taxation. But a recent proposal was to raise the fee to three dollars, and finally a compromise apparently was reached at $2.50. So that to those who thought the licence fee of one dollar should be wiped out, and that two dollars was an excessive charge, $2.50 now seems to be just about right. And not only is it $2.50 for a radio licence, but $2.50 is to be exacted in respect of every radio which one may have, whether in his house, in his car, or anywhere else.
If one had time to analyze the extent of our trade expansion it would be found that a substantial part of it is due to the negotiation of the empire trade agreements that were completed in 1932. There is no doubt that our increase in percentage is greater on our trade with the empire than in any other direction, and the cumulative effect of the working of these agreements over a period of four or five years is very important in connection with our trade expansion. There will be an opportunity at a later time to go more extensively into details in connection with this matter. Suffice it for me to say at the moment that we have a preference in the best and most extensive market in the world, a preference that was acquired after years of effort by both political parties. Let us see that that preference is preserved, and in our commendable anxiety to expand our trade in other directions let us be careful that nothing
The Address-Mr. Stewart

is done that will detract in any way from the great and permanent advantages secured by that undertaking.
New trade agreements have been negotiated. That is of course satisfactory, but I would suggest to the government that they are inclined to place too much emphasis upon the foreign market. There is an old saying that faraway fields look green, but sometimes when you arrive at those far-away fields they are not as fresh and green as they appear from a distance. In our desire to secure foreign markets let us not overlook or neglect or endanger the great home market. It is a market which is under our control, it is ours, it cannot be taken away from us unless we give it away, and it consumes a very large portion of our natural products. Already there is alarm on the part of primary producers of agricultural products in the dominion that in the negotiation of trade agreements their interests may be adversely affected. I have had representations in this connection from vegetable growers and other primary producers; and I hope that the government, in the negotiation of these treaties, will not open too many doors for entry into our own market, which it may be difficult to close. It is all very well to say that tariffs should be lowered, but it is in times of depression that these tariffs are most needed. Living as we do beside a nation of 130,000,000 people, immediately a depression sets in there is an inevitable tendency to dump on the markets of Canada the products of that country, and it is then that a tariff reduced below a reasonable level fails to protect Canadian producers.
I say again, we have the home market; let us appraise it at its true value-for I fear we do not always appreciate its value. Let us be careful that in our agreements we do not barter it away, that we do not leave it, in the times of depression which will inevitably come, in an exposed and defenceless position.
Reference is made to prairie drought rehabilitation. This is the continuation of a policy which was started some years ago; it is commendable, and I hope that the results will be satisfactory. The same remark applies to youth training. The Department of Agriculture reorganization is hardly worthy of mention in a speech from the throne. Such reorganizations take place from time to time, and I have looked in vain for any new policy or anything different from what has prevailed
in that department in the past with respect either to administration or to the marketing of farm products.
Reference is made to the reports of commissions that have been investigating subjects referred to them from time to time. A great deal has been said, and some of it with force, to the effect that governments are inclined to pass over to commissions responsibilities and the discharge of duties which in the ordinary course they should assume themselves. That is not always true. Commissions are in some cases useful and helpful. But I submit that at least one of these commissions is an expensive and a useless duplication of existing machinery. I refer to the commission appointed to investigate the textile industry. As hon. members know, we have a well-constituted, well-established tariff board set up in an independent position, free from political influence, with all the machinery, staff and equipment required for the investigation of conditions in connection with any industry in the Dominion of Canada, competent to discharge that duty, and from day to day discharging it on references to it in the ordinary course by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Dunning) or by the government. We naturally ask ourselves, why was this competent organization not entrusted with the duty of investigating conditions in the textile industry? It would appear to be within the scope of its authority and in the line of its duty; it would appear to be an undertaking for which it has special qualifications.
Another objection which I take to this investigating commission is that at times its proceedings appeared to have a political slant. Of the other commissions I have no similar remarks to make. As to the veterans' assistance commission, we have been expecting a report from it for a long time; we pressed for it last session but for some reason we were not able to get it. The national employment commission is of a different type. It has made a report which will be read with interest by hon. members. From time to time interim reports have been made, and statistics have been gathered and classified; that appears to have been the principal work of the commission. We hope that as a result of its report we shall have some action by the government which will help in the solution of this question.
The facts about unemployment as I gather them are these, that it began its last cycle in 1929, continued in 1930, and has been with us since. The extent of it in 1929 and 1930 was not appreciated or understood by the

The Address-Mr. Stewart
government of the day, and accurate, reliable statistics were not available at that time. I have endeavoured to follow the proceedings of this government and of this commission, and I can find no really effective change in the policies that were adopted from 1930 to 1935 to deal with this very difficult problem. In fact, in what is being done I see a tendency on the part of the government to back-track and to pick up some of the policies which they condemned in the years I have referred to. They condemned, of course, the camps, and having condemned them they abolished them, with the result that we find travelling up and down the country on the trains men who ring doorbells and beg from house to house-men who when these camps were in existence found a comfortable lodging and proper care and attention.
The speech from the throne refers to the appointment of a body of investigation known as the Rowell commission, and in that paragraph it refers to the stresses and strains that have developed in confederation and the need for Canadian unity. We all agree that these conditions exist. Some of them are the results of changed and changing conditions and of misunderstandings in a federal constitution, with a divided authority, the line of demarcation being in some cases difficult to define. Another cause is the temptation, for purely political expediency and advantage, to proclaim conflicting policies in different parts of Canada on fiscal and other questions. There is an old saying that if you sow the wind you will reap the whirlwind. A political party may advocate in some parts of Canada, no tariff, in other parts of Canada, a low tariff, and in still other parts and at other times a tariff for revenue, and free trade, wherever such appeals may be advantageous; and that party may secure power on the strength of such conflicting appeals. But the advantage is temporary. You may for a time criticize and condemn an expenditure of eight or ten million dollars for national defence, and later-not very much later-attempt to justify an expenditure of thirty-five millions for the same purpose. When such a policy is adopted it is easy to understand why there are differences of opinion, why there is misunderstanding, and why there are these stresses and strains that have developed over a period of years.
Unfortunately the present government and some of their supporters have adopted this policy in years gone by; they have sown the wind and we are now reaping the whirlwind of misunderstanding and enmity and. national divisions in Canada. There is a lesson in this for us all, for every party, and

a lesson for the individual. I hope that we shall take it seriously to heart. This should be avoided if the spirit of confederation is to be preserved and if we are to develop harmony and a national outlook. Parochial, provincial and sectional policies, if they ever had any value in Canada, have outlived their usefulness, and through them we cannot deal with and solve the problems that confront us to-day.
A subject that is mentioned in the speech from the throne is the amendment of the British North America Act, our constitution, now seventy years old. This is a subject that must be approached with great care; it is a subject that must be dealt with if we are to go forward, if we are to achieve the objects of confederation, and if we are to discharge our duties and responsibilities at this time. We must go slowly, with patience and tolerance, with good will and a sympathetic desire to understand all the conflicting views and interests. At the outset there should be, in my opinion, unanimous assurance that the rights of minorities as defined and set out in the British North America Act will not be the subject of discussion and will not be a matter for consideration in the revision of the constitution. If this is done and if the amendments are properly considered, I am sure the same courage and faith that were manifested by those who framed our constitution will enable us to solve our present problems.
As regards unemployment insurance, I think it is long overdue. It was, I believe, a plank in the platform of the present government as far back as 1919; and now, almost twenty years after that time, they are proceeding to deal with it. We had a law providing for unemployment insurance. Efforts were made to establish a scheme, but that law was destroyed by premature reference to the courts on material that was by no means exhaustive and definite or concrete. Unemployment insurance will not give any immediate relief *to a very large number who find themselves out of work; it will be limited in its application and there will be a lag between the time of its enactment and the time it comes into effective operation.
Another matter is the export of electrical power, a subject which I submit is of great importance to this dominion. During the years that have passed in this century, from time to time commissions of conservation, governments, and others familiar with the production of hydro-electric power in Canada have emphasized its value, its importance to the development of the country; and from time to time it has been pointed out that the
The Address-Mr. Stewart

interests of Canada demand that as far as possible this valuable resource should be retained for the benefit of the Canadian people. This has been the policy of succeeding governments, and I hope that when the matter comes up for discussion we shall approach it from that standpoint; that we shall deal with the question entirely upon its merits and not be influenced by challenges, threats, propaganda or lobbying, even though these proceed from the premier of a great province in the Dominion of Canada.
There are one or two other matters to which I wish to refer briefly, matters more or less of local interest. The Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act was passed in 1934 and was brought into force in different parts of the dominion at different times during that year. Its objects were the very worthy ones of keeping efficient producers on the farm; of enabling them to effect compromises or reductions of their liabilities.; of bringing the best possible results to the creditors at the same time, rather than having the assets liquidated to the disadvantage of both. A large number of proposals have been submitted under the act. The return brought down recently by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Dunning) carries the operation of the act up to March 31, 1937, and as of that date 26,543 proposals had been submitted, of which some 19,000 had been disposed of. The average reduction on the secured debt was 28-78 per cent and on the unsecured debt 44-14 per cent. The total average reduction on both was 30-69 per cent. The total debt dealt with in this way was $107,500,000 odd and the total reduction about $33,724,000. A large number of these applications remain to be dealt with yet. During the year preceding March 31, 1937, there were 5,776 applications dealt with, and on that date there remained to be considered some 4,261 applications, while new applications filed during the year numbered 5,407. It would seem that the applications disposed of almost equal the new applications received.


Mr. DUNNING:: Rather more last year. They have speeded up quite a little bit.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: I would expect that to be the case last year; I think the minister is right. My personal knowledge agrees with his statement in that respect.
This return gives detailed statistical information which is very interesting. It is well known, Mr. Speaker, that it was not the intention that this act should remain on the statute book for all time. It was passed to meet an emergent condition which existed, a condition w-hich to some extent has cleared up since that time. I am going to ask the

minister to consider very carefully the situation, to review the statistics for the past year and to decide whether in his opinion and in the opinion of the government the time has not come when the operation of the act should be limited to the applications that are now on file. I should judge that it would take a year or so to clear those up. The minister might also consider whether it would not be wise to have the act repealed on this basis in certain of the provinces and allow it to remain in force in other provinces if that is deemed advisable.


Charles Avery Dunning: Would my hon. friend permit a question there? That is a very interesting suggestion. As a lawyer how would he regard that suggestion from the constitutional point of view?


Hugh Alexander Stewart: I should not think there would be any real difficulty, because the act was brought into force in different parts of Canada at different times. I should think legislation might be introduced that would terminate the operation of the act, we will say, in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, when the applications now pending before the boards of review in those provinces have been dealt with, and allow it to go on in other parts of the country, if that is thought necessary.


Charles Avery Dunning: Perhaps my hon. friend would be good enough to look into that phase of it.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: I shall be glad to do so, but it is not my responsibility to decide as to that. I am making these suggestions because a number of farmers have told me that they believe the operation of the act, while beneficial and useful, in the province of Ontario has practically reached the limit of its usefulness, and that in their opinion it is standing in the way of their securing new loans. Not only do they advocate its repeal for that reason; at the same time they suggest the repeal of provincial moratorium laws along the same lines. I admit that it is a complicated and difficult subject, that conditions are not the same in all the provinces, and I am asking the minister to take the matter into consideration in, the light of the circumstances. I know he must have a substantial body of representation asking for action along the lines I have indicated.


Charles Avery Dunning: Every day since coming into office, on that question.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: And possibly some in the other direction also.


Charles Avery Dunning: Yes, in both directions.

The Address-Mr. Ross (Moose Jaw)


Hugh Alexander Stewart: The statistics are interesting in some of the provinces, as to the total cost of the administration of the act.


Charles Avery Dunning: If my hon. friend will permit me, I was serious in asking him to consider the constitutional aspects of the suggestion he made, because I value his judgment. The act was sustained, I take it, on the ground that it fell within the federal power with respect to bankruptcy, and I am suggesting a careful examination of his suggestion in the light of that fact and of that judgment. I am not offering an opinion. I know my right hon. friend the leader of the opposition, will complain if I again state that I am not a lawyer. He will say that is perfectly obvious. Perhaps it is, 'but we are all anxious to do the best we can with this very difficult problem, and this is one of many suggestions that have been advanced.


Mr. BENNETT:: It is not obvious; it is apparent.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: I think the minister has been studying law recently, and perhaps in a few years he will be a fairly good lawyer.
The other matter to which I should like to refer is not dealt with in the speech from the throne. It is a matter not only of local concern to the constituency which I represent; it is of importance to the whole dominion. As many members of the house are aware there is in course of construction at Ivy Lea an international bridge-


Mr. SPEAKER:: Order. I am sorry, but the hon. gentleman has exhausted his time, unless he has the consent of the house to continue.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Go on.


Charles Avery Dunning: It would be too bad to
cut the hon. member off in the middle of Ivy Lea.
Mr. STEW'ART: There is in course of construction an international bridge crossing the St. Lawrence through the Thousand islands. This crossing is unique in that from one bridgehead to the other, including the connecting roadways, it traverses a distance of about six miles. In building the bridge they have crossed the channels where they are narrow and, where suitable, use of the islands, has been made. A request has developed for the establishment of a national park at the bridgehead in Canada and another at the bridgehead in the United States. If this matter is dealt with properly by the federal government it will work to the great advantage of the dominion. I am told that about
one-third of the population of Canada and about one-fourth that of the United States is within three hundred miles of the bridgeheads. I need not emphasize the value of the tourist trade, and I must point out that we have here an opportunity of attracting to Canada, over this unique route, a large volume of the tourist traffic from the densely populated areas I have indicated. I do not propose to develop the matter further than to ask the government to give it careful consideration. The idea involves the acquiring of a property known as Hill island. This property is used for farming purposes. It is not extensive or of great value, but if acquired it would prevent the establishment of cheap hot-dog stands, and would tend towards the preservation of the natural beauty of the scenery among the Thousand islands, which form one of the wonders of the world equal in attraction to the falls at Niagara. I have communicated with the Minister of Mines and Resources (Mr. Crerar) and shall not discuss the matter further at this time.
For the reasons given by my leader in the very able and interesting speech he delivered in this debate, I propose to vote for the amendment moved by him and which I seconded.


Mr. J. G. ROSS (Moose Jaw):: Mr. Speaker, I wish first of all to congratulate the mover and seconder of the address in reply to the speech from the throne upon their able first presentations in this chamber.
May I take this opportunity to thank the government of Canada for the efficient manner in which they handled the distressed conditions in the drought area of western Canada. I want, too, to thank all the people of Canada for the great contribution they made to that part of the country at that distressing time. Had they known the exact situation of the people in the drought areas, and had they been able to see what I saw during the summer and fall, they would have realized the position in which those unfortunate people found themselves, and would feel amply repaid for what they have done. It is unfortunate that those who made the contribution were not privileged to hear the expressions of appreciation I have heard of the help given to the drought area by citizens of other parts of the dominion. I would hope that in any national calamity of the future, that which is now the drought area may be able to do a similar kindness for any other part of Canada wmch finds itself in a position as distressing as that of the people in the drought area during the past year.
136	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Ross (Moose Jaw)
During the course of my observations I intend to touch upon only one subject, because I believe it is far more important than any other to the people of the three western provinces. I want it clearly understood however that I am not directing my remarks to any one section of Canada, but that I am criticizing the people in every section of the dominion who are taking advantage of a certain situation.
In the development of any country the purpose is generally to arrange matters so that the people within that country may have available to them all the advantages which they should enjoy, so that none will be oppressed and all may have a more abundant life. As I understand it, democracies are formed so that there may be majority rule, at the same time safeguarding minority rights, with the understanding that the government is to give equal opportunity to all and special privileges to none. Democracy abhors regimentation; it abhors privileges or special favours for the few as against the many. It glories in freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom for all the people to carry on their natural vocations and to have the fullest and freest life possible within that democracy.
Do we, who call ourselves a democracy, enjoy these privileges? Have we just laws, fairly administered, which carry out the spirit and the purpose of confederation, or has the greed of some, through the formation of pressure groups, by the use of propaganda, by the stirring up of racial and religious hatred and at times by the threat of loss of employment, forced upon many the rule of the few; has that greed given special privileges to some at the expense of the many? I contend that has been done in Canada, and the agency which more than any other has been responsible for bringing about this condi-dition, has been what is known as the protective tariff system.
When confederation was formed customs rights were turned over by the colonies to the dominion for the purpose of raising revenue. These rights have now become a trade control instrument, an instrument employed to regiment the people, to force them to purchase only in certain places and from certain people at prices set by those people for their benefit. The protective tariff is a tax upon the consumer of this country; it is a disguised form of subsidy to the industries of Canada. I believe it is against the spirit of constitutional government and parliamentary procedure.
When a tax is levied in this country, first of all it must be sponsored in the House

of Commons by a responsible minister of the crown. It must be introduced in open parliament where all the elected representatives of the people may have the right to know the amount and the extent of the tax before the executive is given authority to levy. Every tax imposed should have due regard to the amount of revenue that is necessary for his majesty's government. It should be levied in such a way as to provide the greatest amount of revenue at the least possible cost to the people. It should be levied in such a way as not to discriminate between the subjects of his majesty.
The customs tariff bills levying taxes upon imports invariably are brought down in accordance with parliamentary usage by a responsible minister of the crown. The direct effect of the protective tariff is to levy upon the people of Canada an altogether different tax from that levied by the customs tariff acts. Customs tariff acts levy a tax upon imports, but the effect of the protective tariff is to levy a tax upon goods manufactured and sold in Canada. This latter tax is not levied by parliament. It is not levied by means of a measure sponsored by a responsible minister; it is not levied having regard to the need of public revenue for the carrying on of government, it is levied by the executives of the manufacturing companies in this country who have no responsibility whatever to the consumers upon whom the -tax is levied.
In effect the protective tariff is a subsidy, and it is open to even more serious objection as being an evasion of the provisions of sections 53 and 54 of the British North America Act. If this tax in the form of increased prices to the consumer was properly levied and was to be paid over to the manufacturers as a subsidy, clearly it would fall within the provisions of section 54 of the British North America Act, and could not be levied without being first recommended to the house by message of the governor general and brought down by a responsible minister who would give all information with regard to the amount of the subsidy and its purpose.
Every year subsidies are approved by this parliament. We grant subsidies to Canadian steamship companies because we believe them to be necessary in order that a strong merchant marine may be built up for the benefit of national trade. Subsidies of this kind are brought down in the way I have mentioned. Contrast with that the procedure of granting subsidies under the protective tariff system. A customs bill is introduced in par-'liament by a responsible minister, the stated

The Address-Mr. Ross (Moose Jaw)
object of the bill being to levy a tax on imports, ostensibly to supply needed revenue for the public requirements. Although it is not so stated in the bill, it is understood that the main object is to grant a subsidy to private industry in Canada. This subsidy is to come not from the treasury of Canada, but from the consuming public. It is to be paid direct by them to the manufacturer of goods. These bills are passed every year without the members of the House of Commons or the public generally having any knowledge as to how great the subsidy is to be. I claim that the levying of taxes in this way is against the spirit of constitutional government and parliamentary practice as carried out in this house.
Many speeches have been made both in and out of this house to show the effect of this protective tariff tax upon the people. Reports have been made by experts to show the average tariff imposed, but it is hard to get the total cost of this tax to the people of Canada. We all know that the average rate of tariff is about 25 or 26 per cent, and that the sales tax is eight per cent. In 1936 the sales tax provided $122,000,000 in revenue, whereas the tariff, averaging 26 per cent, provided only $83,000,000.


Charles Avery Dunning: It is not 26 per cent.


John Gordon Ross: What is it, 25
per cent?


Charles Avery Dunning: It is not quite 13 per
cent.


John Gordon Ross: You are taking
in all the free items.


Charles Avery Dunning: Of course.


John Gordon Ross: The average tariff I am referring to is that given by the Minister of Labour (Mr. Rogers) to the Jones commission. That was the average tariff on dutiable goods.


Charles Avery Dunning: For what year?


John Gordon Ross: 1931. The Minister of Labour made a report to the Jones commission sitting in Nova Scotia which showed that the average ad valorem duty at that time was 26 per cent. He has been criticized for giving that figure. It has been said that the figure was too high, but my criticism is that it was much too low.
The consumer in Canada is more affected by the tariff on finished articles than by anything else. He is more affected by the tariff on goods manufactured or produced in Canada. and after all that is the high tariff. The
26 per cent that the minister used at that time was got by taking the average tariff on all imported goods, many of which were imported by manufacturers for further processing, and many of which were lower tariff goods because they were not competing with goods produced in Canada.
Again, in the very high tariff brackets, there is much less volume of trade on account of the height of the tariff. That again makes a difference in your average. Of course, if you had a tariff that was altogether prohibitive, it would not enter into the picture at all. Therefore I say that the rate of 26 per cent as used at that time by the Minister of Labour was a low, and not a high, figure. It is therefore fair to say that the people of this country paid at that time an average of 26 per cent more, by reason of the tariff, for the goods that they purchased. The figure may be lower now, and for the purposes of my argument I will take the figure of 20 per cent, instead of 25 per cent. Then what do we find? The salaried people, the people in the primary industries, and the wage earners of this country are paying 20 per cent more for the goods that they purchase than they would pay if it were not for that protective system.


Mr. EDWARDS:: Where would they get the money to pay for them?


Mr. McLEAN (Melfort):: You do not pay for goods with money.


John Gordon Ross: I am not going to be diverted from my argument, but I shall be glad to answer any questions my hon. friend wishes to ask after I have finished my speech.
Take the figure of 20 per cent as the average tariff. What does that mean? It means for the farmer growing wheat on the western plains, which gives him the money to buy the goods he needs to purchase, that he has to give one load out of every five in order to bolster up some of the secondary industries of this country through the protective tariff system; or one head of cattle out of every five, one head of sheep, one head of hogs out of every five. The farmer's wife, when she gathers five dozen eggs, turns over one dozen to the protectionists, and one pound of butter out of every five that she churns. The fisherman on our coasts or on the lakes is in the same position. He makes a donation of one-fifth of his catch to carry the protected industries in this countiy. The logger and the lumberman can figure that every fifth blow of his axe, or every fifth cut
138	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Ross (Moose Jaw)
of his saw, is his contribution to the protected industries. The miner working down in the dark can ponder the fact that every fifth ton of coal he raises is his contribution to Canadian protected industries. It matters not where you go in Canada, you will find that this protective system is taking one-fifth from the doctor, from the lawyer, from the street-car conductor, from the bus driver, from the stenographer, and from every wage earner. That is what they have to pay to carry the secondary industries that are supported by the protective tariff system.
It is said that the tariff is the mother of trusts and monopolies, and I believe that is true. You will find that our people say it is very difficult to deal with monopolies. It is. But at least we can stop protecting them and giving them more control.
When the Minister of Finance (Mr. Dunning) next makes a submission to the tariff board, let me suggest that he ask them to find out at what rate of duty the government can raise the greatest amount of money for their purposes. I do not believe that a submission on that basis has ever been made to the tariff board. Let the tariff board determine the amount of money that it is costing the people of Canada to raise the 883,000,000 that was received in tariff taxation last year. Let the tariff board find out the exact extent of the cost to the people of Canada of carrying uneconomic secondary industries. They can do it, and we ought to have some figures on these questions at this time. The protective tariff has fostered in this country secondary industries many of which are inefficient and unnatural to our economy, and this has placed a heavy burden upon our primary producers.
In Canada to-day we have four geographical divisions: the maritime provinces, comprising Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick; Ontario and Quebec, which we in the west ordinarily call eastern Canada; the three prairie provinces, which are ordinarily called western Canada, and British Columbia.
That part of Canada lying east of the great lakes, this central part, has fine agricultural land; it has in large part a wonderful climate; it has great waterpowers for the development of electrical energy; it has lakes, canals and rivers, furnishing cheap transportation for imports and exports to and from world markets.
That part of Canada comprising the three prairie provinces extending from the eastern boundary of Manitoba to the western boundary of Alberta, is a large plain or prairie country admirably suited to the raising of small grains and live stock. We have there,

as you have in eastern Canada, lumbering, fishing, mining and agriculture as our primary industries. But we have no lakes or rivers or canals for cheap transportation. We have little electrical energy. We have a severe climate, and we can grow only some of the things that we need to use. Our costs of transportation are high and our rail hauls are long. In western Canada we can manufacture or process only those natural products which it is cheaper to process there than to carry an added weight of raw material to a more favourable position for manufacturing, because we have to travel over such long and costly transportation routes. Therefore there is little chance of building in the three prairie provinces any great manufacturing industry. A protective tariff can help them in no way. On the contrary, it increases the cost of production of every one of our primary industries. In western Canada to-day we have come to this position, that we must cut our production costs or quit. We cannot go on paying an added amount of twenty or twenty-five per cent, for which we get nothing in return, and be able to make a living, much less a profit.
I came to this house in 1925, almost thirteen years ago. I have consistently and persistently endeavoured to have tariffs in this country lowered. I have finally come to the conclusion that no matter what party is in power we can never get a tariff that will be satisfactory both to the three prairie provinces and to the rest of Canada. If it is low enough to suit the prairie provinces it will be too low for the rest of Canada; if it is high enough to suit the rest of Canada it will be too high for us to be able to carry on in our western country. Having come to this conclusion, let me say that I am just as sincere now in advocating what I am about to advocate as I have been with regard to the tariff in past years. I do not believe that we in the west can carry on under the present protective tariff system. I do not believe we have the right to place obstacles in the way of any other part of this country. If the people elsewhere in Canada believe that it is best for their economy to have a protective tariff system, by all means let them have it. I say you have a right to your opinion, you have a right to that policy, but for your own part of the country, not for mine. If we have come to the place where advantages to one part of Canada become a great disadvantage to another part, there must be some way of straightening out that situation. Nobody here will deny that, as a free trade area, western Canada would develop greatly, it would prosper and grow, and would thereby help to develop the whole dominion. I admit we

The Address-Mrs. Black
have no right to try to prevent the rest of Canada from having a protective tariff provided they think that that is best for their economy, but I am just as emphatic in saying that they have no right to place in the way of our part of the country obstacles on account of which we cannot carry on and prosper.
There has been in Canada a lot of talk of secession. In parts, there has been more thought than talk. The protective tariff has driven a wedge into confederation. I do not know how long it will take, but sooner or later a split will come. I am not advocating it. I am endeavouring to save Canada from it. Is it just or fair that parts of this dominion that are endowed by providence with a much more equable climate, that can raise many fruits and vegetables which in our severe climate cannot be grown at all, should, endowed as they are with this boon, ask us to contribute further in their behalf? Is it just or fair that the people occupying a territory within the dominion where transportation costs are low, where electrical energy can be freely developed, where there are many natural advantages, should be allowed to take a heavy tribute from their less fortunate brothers in this confederation?
I repeat that the protective tariff system placed upon this country by parliament has been a great detriment to the three prairie provinces. They cannot carry on under a system such as we have to-day; and here and now I say, for the people of western Canada, that we demand fair play within this confederation. We are a British people, and no British people have long remained inside a country and stood for what we are standing for to-day. We demand justice. We demand a free trade area in the three western provinces of Canada.


Mrs. MARTHA LOUISE BLACK (Yukon):: While congratulating the hon. members who moved and seconded the address in reply to the speech from the throne, I have wondered if they realized the compliment that their government has paid them. It is somewhat over thirty-five years ago that a former hon. member of this house told me he had been selected by the then Mr. Wilfrid Laurier, leader of the Liberal party, to move the address in reply to the speech from the throne. This young man, afterwards a commissioner in the Yukon territory, was at that time only twenty-one years of age. It was a privilege and a compliment that he will pass down to his children and grandchildren.
I have listened with a great deal of attention to the previous speaker. The hon. member
lived in the Yukon in the very early years of his life. I thought, as I listened to his statement on the conditions of the middle prairie provinces, that he was either very brave or very foolhardy. Time will tell which.
We in the Yukon have perhaps fewer problems than the majority of people in Canada. We have fewer desires; our main desire, our chief wish, is to be let alone. That we seem to have gained in some small measure. We would ask the government, however, for consideration of old age pensions. Men and women living in the Yukon territory work for their living or they starve; as long as they are able to work they work. Young and old alike, they feel that if they have the strength and ability they must work rather than accept help from the government or from individuals. But when old age comes on or ill health strikes them, then they do ask that the government help them. Twenty dollars a month is given in the Yukon. It is given more in the form of a dole than as an old age pension, and our people there who are obliged to accept it find fault with the way in which it is passed out. There are many Yukoners who have lived there since 1896, 1897 and 1898, who are now too old or too poor in health to work. They would like to go to the coast to live. That is impossible; no matter how long they have lived in the Yukon or how hard they may have worked or no matter how diligently they may have helped in building up the mining industry in that country, if they leave the Yukon the government does not. give them that paltry sum of S20 a month. While I realize that the Minister of Finance (Mr. Dunning) has burdens which he sometimes thinks are almost too heavy to bear, I should like him, if he has an odd moment to spare now and then, to consider what $20 a month would mean to the Yukoners who would like to finish their days on the coast. The increase in population is very small. We had from March 1936 to March 1937 eighty-eight deaths, largely of men and a few women who had been in the Yukon since the very early days, who had worked there and lived and died in the country they had grown to love.
Recently there has been considerable talk about air mail in the north. I heard a Vancouver man, a friend of the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Mackenzie), say that Vancouver had finally awakened and emerged from the tomb when the people there asked that an air mail service be established from Vancouver to the north. It was only a few short days ago that the first trip was made from Vancouver into Dawson, Yukon. The
The Address-Mrs. Black

ship was piloted by W. S. Holland, a very well known pilot. The only passenger was the president of Northern Airways who owned the plane-George Simmons. On the way to the Yukon they stopped at Ashcroft, Bums Lake, Telegraph Creek, Atlin, Carcross, Mayo and finally Dawson. The trip was made with these stop-overs, in winter weather, in wind and storm, in less than forty-eight hours.
This is the logical air route from Vancouver and the coast cities; for over ninety per cent of the mail and freight going into the Yukon goes via Vancouver. Why not send it by that route as far as we possibly can to help to build up the coast city of Vancouver? When men or women, in the fall, wish for a surcease from the cold weather, they wish to spend their winter holidays either in Vancouver or in Victoria or some other city on the coast; and when one reads in the newspapers of the temperatures in the prairie provinces one wonders-"Coming from the Yukon, why go to Edmonton?"
The tourist traffic is a matter of vital importance to us. The local government does comparatively little to build it up, but what it can do, it does. The one transportation company there does its very best in every possible way, but it is hampered every season by changing river conditions. Every time the ice goes out, every time there is high water, there are new river beds both in the Yukon and in the Stewart and the Mayo rivers, ft is impossible for new pilots to come in and carry on as the old pilots have done. A year ago last summer we lost two of the finest vessels in the fleet. This summer we were fortunate, both in regard to steamers and in the air. In fact, not one of the three concerns in the Yukon, owning the fleet of ships we have now, has ever suffered a fatal accident, which I think is probably a record for most enterprises of this kind.
I have seen in the newspapers recently, and have heard considerable talk, about the increase in the radio licence fee. This pronouncement of mine may not be very favourably received by either friends or enemies, but I do not think that S2.50 is too much to ask.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Martha Louise Black: I would rather have the
applause come from this side, but I think I hear someone say I won't get it. However, we in the north want better music; we want better broadcasts; and if the labourer is worthy of his hire, surely we can afford to pay that S2.50, with all due apologies to others.

The territory of Alaska is beating us in one respect; I refer to the care of game. At present we have no bounty on wolves, nor have we had for a number of years past. The territory of Alaska has a large bounty. We want all the tourist trade we can get, not only the ordinary visitor who may come in-and we had over 4,000 last year-but the big game hunter as well. They are the people who bring the money. The big game hunter coming into the Yukon and going into the Kluane and other districts never spends less than from $5,000 to $10,000, and that money is largely spent locally. We feel, therefore, that not only the local government but conservation committees and the federal government should consider ways and means of protecting our game by paying bounties both on wolves, which are a horrible menace to larger game, and coyotes, which are a menace to birds. Only three or four years ago bands of wolves attacked great herds of caribou, and my husband saw hundreds of caribou lying dead on the ground. They had been killed by wolves. The wolves do not eat the carcass; they sever the jugular vein, drink the blood, eat the entrails, and the carcass is left to rot. Our game will not last forever and we should endeavour to protect it.
Speaking of game naturally brings me to the fisheries and the fur trade. When I went to that country thirty-five or forty years ago I saw small creeks when the salmon were coming up the Yukon river to spawn, and I saw these creek beds so filled with salmon that one could almost walk across. Now, however, whether it is owing to the wheels and the traps that are used by the Indians on the lower river, or whether it is due to the canneries that are operated in the open water by the Japanese, our fisheries have gone down rapidly. A few years ago the value of our production reached about $70,000, while in 1936 it amounted to only $14,000. That is bad for the country and bad for the natives, who depend upon the wild game and fish for their food.
There is some talk, of course, among far westerners in regard to the Japanese question. It is a matter that must be approached very delicately but, as I have read my history, Holland, followed by Portugal, Spain, France, Great Britain and finally the United States, went into the orient following the cannon. They did not want us, and now I am just wondering if we are not reaping what we have sown. Perhaps it is not so easy for us to

The Address-Mrs. Black
think that we have to suffer for what our forefathers did, but if we have that feeling we had better think of what those who are coming after us may have to suffer because of our actions in many ways. I believe it was a member of the British House of Commons who, while making a speech, said they must do a certain thing for the sake of posterity. He was immediately followed by another member who threw up his hands and asked, "After all, what has posterity ever done for us?"
In the north our exports consist principally of minerals and some furs. The Yukon produces 1-8 per cent of the fur pelts that are placed on the market in Canada, so that our production of fur does not amount to very much. We do send out gold, silver, lead, coal and a very small amount of petroleum. The present high price of gold, silver and lead, is what has saved the Yukon mines. The Yukon Consolidated Company in the Dawson district employs about six hundred men. The Treadwell Mining Company, in the Mayo district, employs perhaps four hundred men. If those mines were closed down the Yukon would be almost on its uppers. Mining is carried on now in mines that had been abandoned because of the low price of gold. A few years ago $16 was the average price received, but now with gold at over $30 it is possible to work property that could not be operated a few years ago.
I should like to congratulate the Minister of Finance (Mr. Dunning), if I may, on the new silver coins. The ten cent piece and the twenty^five cent piece, or the two-bit piece, as we call it in the north, are artistic and beautiful, but I have yet to see a coronation silver dollar. I have asked for one at five different banks and the answer has been, "We have none." We all know that British Columbia and the Yukon depend on silver production to a large extent. How easy it would be to help those miners in some degree. I do not know that it would be possible for a government to order a bank to give so many silver dollars when a person gets a certain amount of money, but if that were possible it would help us. If we were patriotic enough to think not only of the farmers of whom the hon. member for Moose Jaw (Mr. Ross) spoke, but also of those silver miners, when we go to a bank to cash a cheque for $25 we might ask for five silver dollars. I believe our silver dollars are not large enough to be called cart-wheels. They are not awkward to carry, at least so I have been told, though as I say I have yet to see a coronation silver dollar and-of course I was in the
north-not until about five months after the jubilee did I see a jubilee silver dollar, when one was very kindly sent to me.
I see on the order paper a notice of motion by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) regarding the appointment of a deputy chairman of committees. I feel very keenly about this question. As many hon. members know, I was intimately associated with a former Speaker. His deputy was an invalid during the four years that he served. I have kept a diary for over forty years, so I am very sure of my ground when I make the statement that the deputy was not in his seat for more than twelve days during any one of those four sessions. The Speaker had to ask members of his party to take the chair, and there are many hon. gentlemen here who helped out that Speaker. It is a difficult task to sit in the chair and listen to the talk of 245 members, day in and day out. If I may 'be allowed to say so, my sympathy is always with the Speaker, especially when I am speaking, and I should like to see a deputy chairman appointed and paid, because the workman is always worthy of his hire.
Foreign goods entering the Yukon come directly through Vancouver. Every cent of customs and excise is paid in Vancouver, to the federal government. Last year $160,000 was paid into the federal treasury, through the port of Vancouver, on goods sent in to the Yukon. There is no telling how much duty was paid on goods coming from other parts of Canada, but in any case I think the Yukon has been a pretty fat plum for the province of British Columbia. The telegraph system in northern British Columbia has always been charged to the Yukon. That is not right; it should not be done. The Yukon has been a very happy hunting ground for that province. According to the Handbook of Canada for 1938, which contains a summary of the value of production in Canada according to provinces, the value of production of British Columbia is given as $187,087,995. There is a note at the bottom of that statement which says, "This includes the Yukon." The per capita net commodity production of Ontario for 1935 is given as almost $286; British Columbia produced about $250 for each citizen-and as I said before that includes the Yukon-while poor little old Alberta, whose hardships we have been hearing about for years, had a per capita net commodity production amounting to $203. I am rather losing my sympathy for those Alberta people. In 1935 the Yukon produced $1,263,567 in gold; $90,165 in silver; $7,250 in lead; $3,483
The Address-Mrs. Black

in coal; $25,575 in oil, and $230,070 in furs, making a total of $1,620,114. We have a population of less than 5,000 men, women and children, but for the purposes of computation I shall place the population at 5,000. If we divide $1,620,114 by 5,000 we have a per capita net production of $340. I do not think the Yukon has much to be ashamed of.
There is considerable shipping industry in the Yukon. There is this difference, however, that the money spent for the maintenance of lights and buoys in other places [DOT]is not spent with us; the companies spend their own money.
I am sick and tired of the whispering I can aear with respect to the great expense the Yukon is to the federal government. If the truth were known, and if hon. members on both sides of the house would study the question, they would find that for years the Yukon has pap-fed the federal treasury. Of course there have been some injustices in the Yukon, owing to the change in the political complexion of parties in power. Those changes are to be expected. The Conservatives come in and harass the Liberals; the Liberals in *turn come in and harass the Conservatives. That always happens. Perhaps I believe, as much as anybody else, that to the victor belongs the spoils. Possibly it is too bad that that is so, but until we sprout not our wings but our pin feathers, it will last.
I must say however that I do deprecate conditions in the Yukon which have arisen because of personal animosities. I do not like to speak of these things, because at my age I am not looking for trouble. I want life to be as pleasant and easy as it can be, not only for myself but for everyone else. But I firmly believe the time will come when those of us here and those in the government at home will reap as we sow. If we are unjust, if we are unchristian and dishonest, we will reap exactly as we sow.


Mr. J. C. LANDERYOU (Calgary East):: Mr. Speaker, the speech from the throne contains reference to the coronation in the month of May of Their Majesties King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, an event of special significance to the nations of the British commonwealth. We find, too, in the speech from the throne a review of the progress made along certain lines during the past year. We are reminded 'that the royal commissions which have concluded their duties will submit their reports. It indicates what legislation will be brought down during the present session.

Then, the following paragraph appears:
Cooperation of the provinces will be sought with a view to an amendment of the British North America Act, which would empower the parliament of Canada to enact forthwith a national scheme of unemployment insurance. My ministers hope the proposal may meet with early approval in order that unemployment insurance legislation may be enacted during the present session of parliament.
We are in favour of any legislation which will improve the economic conditions of the working man in Canada. We are in favour of legislation designed to give a greater measure of economic security to our working population. However, we will have to wait until the bill is brought down before we can arrive at a proper understanding of the government's proposals.
It must be' pointed out that certain provinces of Canada are not prepared to relinquish any of their power to the federal parliament. There are forces in the country which are attempting to centralize power in the parliament of Canada. For a number of reasons we are absolutely opposed to this, because we believe if it is done grave disturbances would be the result and confederation itself would collapse. If power were centralized in the federal parliament we would have a few men forming a cabinet, with powers almost as great as those exercised by Mussolini and Hitler. True, a measure of control would be exercised by other hon. members, but it is well to remember and to consider the fact that more than sixty per cent of the voting strength in the house is controlled by members from Ontario and Quebec. In fact, Liberal members from those provinces outnumber the members of all parties from western Canada.
Practically all our great financial and industrial institutions have their headquarters in Quebec or Ontario. The interests of those provinces are not the same as those of the western or maritime provinces. Certain policies of trade and tariff have increased the prosperity of Ontario and Quebec to a greater extent and sometimes to the cost of other parts of Canada.
When engaged in an investigation in eastern Canada on the effects of tariff the Minister of Labour (Mr. Rogers) brought to light the fact that the enhancement of prices due to tariff costs in western Canada amounted in one year to approximately $124,000,000. The following table will serve as a comparison of the tariff costs and tariff benefits in the three western provinces:
Tariff costs Tariff benefits to the people to the people
Manitoba	$29,185,740	$19,910,971Saskatchewan.	..	29,288,285	3,275,850Alberta	
27,909,396	8,211,148
*

The Address-Mr. Landeryou
While the west paid millions in tariff costs, Quebec gained $31,685,885 and Ontario gained $51,989,761. The west has suffered from the great disequilibrium in prices as between the manufactured goods of eastern Canada and the primary products of western Canada, as well as from high interest and freight rates.
As an instance of that, may I mention the farmers of western Canada who sell their wheat to the cereal plants in the east? We will suppose they sell at $1.20 per bushel, or two cents per pound. That wheat is puffed and sold back to the consumers, some of whom are the original producers in western Canada, at a price of 67 cents per pound. So we have the farmer who sold his wheat for two cents a pound buying it back for 67 cents,-two cents for the wheat and 65 cents for the puff. We know, too, that farmers have sold their hides for just enough to buy a pair of shoe laces. Whole carcasses have been sold, returning to the producer scarcely enough to buy a pair of shoes. We know, too, that the west has suffered from high freight and interest rates. It is a matter of common knowledge that agriculture, the great industry of the west, has suffered to a greater extent than the large industrial, commercial and particularly the financial institutions which have their headquarters in eastern Canada, principally in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec.
The province of Alberta has no member in the cabinet and no one acceptable to that province was appointed to the Rowell commission. In fact, the personnel of the commission was criticized by the leader of the Conservative party.
Little has been done by this parliament to enable the coal producers of western Canada to increase their markets, particularly in eastern Canada. It is felt that these injustices cannot be corrected by relinquishing any of the powers now possessed by the provinces.
The Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe) was reported in the press as having said during the recent by-election in Quebec that the Liberal party has always stood for the preservation of provincial autonomy. I was encouraged by his remarks. It is my opinion that the Minister of Justice recognizes the need of maintaining provincial autonomy if we are to avoid fascism or communism. The minister also expressed himself last year in the house as being opposed to fascism or communism; in fact he said he hated them both. I suggest to the Minister of Justice that if he hates communism and fascism he should do everything in his power to safeguard the autonomy and sovereignty of our provinces. The preservation of the democratic rights of our people can best be maintained by safeguarding the sovereign powers of the provinces.
The Minister of Justice is reported in Hansard of March 30, 1937, as saying he was surprised that an hon. member would suggest the disallowance of provincial legislation. Recently certain acts of the Alberta government were disallowed by the governor general in council. I ask this question of the minister: Why were the padlock laws of Quebec and the Ontario legislation dealing with power contracts not disallowed? Judgments pronounced by the supreme court and the privy council have clearly established the fact that the provinces have jurisdiction over social measures. The parliament of Canada maintain that they have jurisdiction over banks and the issuing of money.
We find many provinces, like hundreds of municipalities and hundreds of thousands of our private citizens, unable to support financially many of the social reforms that they may feel are necessary. The Liberal government assured the people of Canada before the last election that if they were elected money and credit would be issued to meet the needs of the people. If, in the opinion of the government, unemployment insurance is necessary and desirable, then let the government finance it by issuing money to the provinces under terms satisfactory to all. Why should the provinces be asked to give up any of their powers? We do not want a dictatorship in this country. In fact, I will go so far as to say that if the financial institutions of Ontario and Quebec will keep their hands out of the pockets of Alberta, that province will do all right.
The speech from the throne also contains the following paragraph:
The government is convinced that, in seeking to cooperate with the United Kingdom and other countries in efforts to promote international trade, it is pursuing one of the most effective means of ensuring economic security and progress in Canada, and the betterment of conditions in other parts of the world.
However, in spite of the great increase in world trade, which has equalled in volume, if not in money value, some of Canada's best years; in spite of a favourable trade balance, we have failed to bring about the improvement in our economic conditions which many of us were hopeful would be brought about. Do we have to feed all the world before we ourselves can eat? We still have our great housing, unemployment and debt problems. For years the United States enjoyed an extensive foreign trade. In thirty years that countiy piled up favourable trade balances estimated to be in excess of $27,000,000,000.


Mr. T. A. THOMPSON (Lanark):: Mr. Speaker, the speech from the throne, now before us for consideration, is a remarkable document. It gives to the members of the house no definite idea of the legislation they will be called upon to consider. There was a time in this country when the speech from the throne gave to the house and the country a definite intimation of the legislation that would be presented during the session, but the document now before us appears to be skilfully drawn with the evident intention of mystifying the house as to the government's program. As I said, it gives to the house and the country no definite idea of the legislation that is going to be presented during the session. Indeed, so barren is the speech from the throne that it puts me in mind of the frame of a turkey that one might see on a platter the morning after Christmas-just a sorrowful skeleton. It would appear that the government has no policy for dealing with the questions of supreme importance that are facing the country and demanding the attention of parliament. I speak particularly of the problems of unemployment and relief. Why, in normal times, should we have the amount of unemployment that we have to-day, and the amount of relief that we have to provide? These are really better than normal times because the greater prosperity we are now enjoying has largely been brought about through the purchase by other countries of war materials of every description from Canada, and so we have normal times but our prosperity has been augmented by the purchase of these war materials.

The Address-Mr. Thompson
The Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King), in speaking the other day, seemed to take great satisfaction in comparing present conditions with those of the dark days of the depression, but to my mind his comparison was very unfair. We have in Canada a debt that is a veritable nightmare, and there seems to be no solution coming from the government for the reduction of that debt. We have also a railway problem which it will take the very best brains of this country to solve, and let me point out that this railway problem is the child of the Liberal party. It was the Liberal party that built the roads which afterwards became bankrupt and were taken over by the dominion. It was a Liberal government that brought to Canada Sir Henry Thornton at a salary of $75,000 a year, with expenses, which very often mounted to as much as his salary, and it was a Liberal government that permitted him to go on the wildest spending spree that ever was known in any civilized country. During his term of office as president of the Canadian National he added to the debt of the railway $460,000,000, and almost ruined it financially; and not only did he almost financially ruin that road but he did a great deal of injury financially to the Canadian Pacific Railway, because they thought they had to keep up with the Joneses. During Sir Henry Thornton's presidency, money was spent lavishly, in building palatial hotels the like of which one would not see elsewhere on this continent, buying up branch railways, building ships, creating great parks. Money was spent as if it could be gathered off the trees by the roadside.
We have also a housing problem in this country. I have no objection to the government building houses for poor people, but I would point out that an abundance of money is lying idle in our banks to-day, drawing one and a half per cent, money which people would be only too glad to invest in the building of homes and houses throughout Canada if only a man could build a house, pay the taxes on it, and then rent it and make a profit. But he cannot do that to-day. Neither can he build a home and sell it for what it would cost to build. That is why we are short of homes.
How is it that the governments are getting the easy money they are getting today? They are getting it because the people of this country have lost confidence; they have no longer a sense of security in Canada, and they are afraid to put their money into agriculture or industry. They leave it in the bank, drawing one and a half cents on the dollar.
and the government comes along and gives two or three cents on the dollar for the use of it. But if our people had confidence in this country the government would not be getting money so easily; our people would be building homes, and industry and agriculture woud not lack for money as they are doing today.
We have in these days provincial unrest such as we have not had since confederation. While the government is numerically strong, it would appear to me that it is morally too weak to grapple with the serious problems which confront Canada at the present time; it appears to be allied with the big interests and the money barons, and neglects the farmers and the working people, and it is doing nothing to better the condition of the average citizen.
The fathers of confederation gathered together the provinces on the northern half of this continent and formed them into a federation known as the Dominion of Canada. They had a vision of building up this country into a great nation that would be the pride of the British Empire, building it up from the French and British stock that was here, representing two of the finest civilizations in the world. They looked forward to a united, happy people, to Canada becoming a great nation, with a strong central government. One of the powers that was given by the fathers of confederation to the central government was the power, under the British North America Act, to disallow any provincial legislation if the parliament of Canada felt that it was not in the best interests of the country as a whole. But what do we see happening now? This "happy family" of provincial and federal Liberal governments seems to have brought about such unrest and distress and disquietude from one end of the dominion to the other, that the very foundations of confederation and of our democracy are being shaken. What did we see in Ontario not very long ago? We saw the government of that province repudiating their solemn contracts. But that was not bad enough, for in repudiating the contracts they robbed thousands of investors of the money they had invested in power bonds. That would have been bad enough, but after robbing these people of their rights-for they brought these securities because the seal of the province of Ontario was attached to them

the Ontario government passed a law prohibiting the owners from appealing to the courts for justice. We in this country are proud of the fact that the poorest man in it, as well as the wealthiest, can appeal to an impartial court

The Address-Mr. Thompson

and get justice. Where was the dominion government, which had authority to disallow such an act as that? Here were citizens robbed of their property and denied the right to appeal to the courts for redress.
Then in Quebec they have passed a statute; I do not know what it is but I am told it is a padlock law, and from what I can learn about it, in that province a man's home is no longer his castle. Under British institutions a man's home is sacred to him; no officer of any government has the right to go to his hearth and take away the literature he is reading. Action of that kind is an infringement of the liberty of the British subject, f ask, why was nothing done about that?
We come to Alberta. We find that that province passed certain laws which the federal government felt were not in the interests of the people, so immediately they disallowed those laws. I am not finding any fault with the disallowance of them; in fact I rather agree they should be disallowed. But the point I want to make is, why was Alberta treated one way and Ontario and Quebec another way? These are the things which are causing distrust and dissatisfaction in this country. If we want to preserve our democracy we must have a strong central government that will not shirk its responsibilities.
It would appear that the present government is staking its very existence on international trade and the export market, to the utter neglect of our home industries and our home market. In this connection I should like to point out that at the last session several hon. members called the attention of the government to the fact that a serious menace to our domestic dairy industry had arisen because of the importation of vegetable oils. Some years ago parliament deemed it necessary and proper to forbid the importation and sale of oleomargarine, because it was coming into competition with butter and lard. Today we are faced with a much worse menace in the sale of domestic shortening made out of these vegetable oils that are shipped in. In 1933, 81.000,000 pounds of vegetable oil were brought into Canada; by 1936 the amount had increased to 195,000,000 pounds. In 1932, 61,000,000 pounds of shortening manufactured from these oils were sold in Canada, and in 1936 the amount had risen to
103,000,000 pounds. In eastern Canada the dairy industry is what wheat growing is to the west-though dairying is now being followed in western Canada as well-it is our
TMr. Thompson.]
staple business. Looking over the government returns, I find that in each of the last ten years the value of the daily products of the dominion exceeded by some millions of dollars the value of the wheat produced. We have a very large industry to protect. Now this vegetable oil is brought from tropical countries where native labour is very cheap; it is landed at a few cents a pound, and is refined and manufactured here to the immense profit of a few large concerns but to the detriment of the producers of our butter and other animal fats. The United States impose a duty of 3| cents a pound against animal fats imported from Canada, and they levy the same duty against vegetable oils brought into the United States. So while our market is a dumping groimd for these oils, our animal fats are excluded from the United States.
I listened this afternoon with great interest to the hon. member for Moose Jaw (Mr. Ross). He made a very clear statement, and it was a pleasure to listen to him, but I cannot agree with his arguments. I believe that if we followed the policy he enunciated we might as well all pack our bags and leave this country, because industry, to a larger extent than agriculture, must take up the slack of unemployment. Industry and agriculture must work hand in hand. The farmer buys the product of the factory, and the men and women engaged in our industrial life represent the best market that our farmers have for their produce. I repeat that industry and agriculture are partners in the development of this dominion, the one supplying markets for the other.
I think all hon. members will agree with me that it is the first duty of any householder to see that those dependent upon him are housed, clothed and fed. Likewise it is the duty of any country to feed and clothe its citizens as far as lies in its power and to buy nothing outside if it can be profitably produced at home. But what are we doing? In Canada to-day we are producing surpluses of every foodstuff that can be profitably grown in this country. What about clothing ourselves? Fifty per cent of our people are wearing garments that are imported from a foreign country where the standard of living and the scale of wages are far below those enjoyed by Canadian workmen. We shall never have prosperity until we learn to clothe ourselves in the same way that we have learned to feed ourselves. I have never worked a day off my farm, and it is my experience that the man who is a success as a farmer buys nothing that he can produce

The Address-Mr. Thompson
himself. If he can produce an article he should produce it, and not buy his eggs, butter, or cheese elsewhere. The same policy must be adopted by the country as a whole so far as clothing ourselves is concerned. By so doing we shall build up a wonderful market for our agriculturists. The present government's tariff tinkering has in many instances slowed up our factories. I know of several of them to-day where the hands are working on short time because such great quantities of goods have been dumped into Canada from other countries.
A great deal has been said about spending public money in order to produce prosperity. That cannot be done. There was an example of that sort of thing in the country to the south of us, where billions have been spent; and they are worse off to-day than when they started. You might as well try to pull yourself out of the mire by tugging at your bootstraps as try to bring about prosperity by spending public money. When the money is gone, where are you? What we want to do is to build up agriculture and industry and give our people work. That, and nothing else, will bring prosperity. A great deal of the prosperity we enjoy to-day is due-and it is rather a sad reflection-to the purchase of war materials.
I want to say a word about by-elections. The Prime Minister seemed to find great satisfaction in declaring to the house that the government had carried practically all these by-elections. Well, if the reports that come from the constituencies where the by-elections were held can be verified by facts, it was no credit to the government that their representatives were returned, because the reports go to show that bribery and corruption unprecedented in Canada were carried on in these ridings. The right hon. gentleman twitted the Conservative party for losing these by-elections. We are not numerically strong on this side of the house, but we are here honestly; and the leader of the Conservative party was never forced to stand up in the house, after revelations had been made by a commission, and say: This has put my party in the valley of humiliation. We would, therefore, just as soon be numerically weak as have strength of that kind. One man said the other day, "Oh, your party is dead." I replied, "It may be dead, but Conservatives are very staunch Christians and they believe that there will be a glorious resurrection."


Mr. FINN:: On the last day.


Thomas Alfred Thompson: Yes, the last day of this government.


Robert Emmett Finn: Which will be years hence.


Thomas Alfred Thompson: The Canadian people are alarmed at the prospect of some change being made in connection with the imperial preference which we enjoy at the present time. Why should Canada make any great effort to get markets in the United States? I am willing to sell to people in the United States or to anyone else who will buy from me at a fair price; but there is not one agricultural product that we are exporting to-day to the United States of which they have not a surplus that they are exporting. Furthermore, our markets there have no stability; they depend upon the whim of government. When the government changes, the tariff policy changes. We have had some experience in this regard with the American people. There is no stability about any agreement made with the United States so far as trade arrangements are concerned. Take the British market, on the other hand. The British people are obliged yearly to buy hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of foodstuffs which they cannot possibly produce. That is where the stable market is; that is the market we should encourage.
Let us for a moment look at the British preference. It was first brought to the attention of the British people by the late Joseph Chamberlain, one of the brightest minds of his day, and it had been the dream of every Prime Minister of Canada from confederation down to get some preference in that market. But they failed. It was a herculean task to get Great Britain, whose proud boast it had been that her ports were all open to the commerce of the world, to break away from her old moorings and to declare a tariff against other countries. It was a tremendous task, but it was accomplished by the present leader of the opposition, (Mr. Bennett) then Prime Minister of Canada, at the Ottawa conference in 1932. At the conclusion of that conference it was agreed that the delegates should go back to their respective parliaments and ask them to endorse the agreement, and every government in the empire endorsed it at once, except Canada. They knew they had received what they had been longing for; they knew it was a good bargain. But what was the spectacle in Canada? The present Prime Minister, (Mr. Mackenzie King) then leader of the opposition, kept us here week after week denouncing that treaty and declaring that if he ever got into power he would repeal it. But it was made law in Canada by forcing a vote through the house, with every Liberal member, with the exception of one man, voting against it. That man will go down in history as the only Liberal of sound judgment of that day.

Main Estimates-Mr. Dunning
These British preferences have kept Canada solvent and her farmers from bankruptcy. Take one commodity, pork. When these preferences came into force pork was selling at from S3.75 to S4; at once it went up to $8, and the price has been hovering between $8 and $9, having been as high as S10. We have a preference of $1.50 on apples; we have a preference of six cents a bushel on wheat. The British Empire produces within its own borders everything that mankind requires. Why not build up within our own bounds a great nation, trading among ourselves, and buying outside only those things that we cannot produce? That is what will make this country prosperous.
At six o'clock the house took recess.
After Recess
The house resumed at eight o'clock.



MAIN ESTIMATES, 1938-39

[Stage Direction]
A message from His Excellency the Governor General transmitting estimates for the financial year ending March 31, 1939, was presented by Hon. Charles A. Dunning (Minister of Finance), and read by Mr. Speaker to the house.
Hon. CHARLES A. DUNNING (Minister of Finance): Mr. Speaker, at this time of course I cannot make the customary motion referring these estimates to the committee of supply, because that committee is not yet set up and cannot be set up until the debate on the address concludes. At the appropriate time I shall make the motion of reference. In the meantime, due to the fact that there is a complete change in the form of the estimates this year, I desire to ask the indulgence of the house so that 1 may make a brief statement with regard to the estimates in order that hon. members may have it before them in Hansard to-morrow morning when they are studying the estimates.
In the budget speech of last year I made an attempt to show the percentage distribution of our revenues and expenditures, but found it necessary to point out that the form of our estimates and appropriations made it impossible to achieve accuracy in such calculations. I then stated that before another year had passed I hoped to be able to introduce such changes in our procedure regarding estimates and accounts as would make it possible to determine more accurately the real costs of the various services of government.
I am glad to be able to announce to the house that the main estimates for 1938-39,

which are now being tabled, are being presented in a new form, with what I believe is a greatly improved classification and with much greater detail. The purpose of the revision is to facilitate a greater control over expenditures and to present a clearer and truer picture of the operations of government.
The need for revision has been recognized for years, in that items in the estimates did not reflect the cost of services. In this respect they were actually misleading, because, with few exceptions, they were supplemented from civil government or other appropriation of a general character. Other defects included provision for numbers of distinct activities under one general item, and assembly of items under obsolete captions without relationship to existing departmental responsibility. The principal object of the revision is to give to parliament, by removal of these defects, a reasonably accurate estimate of the costs of functions, assembled under the departments responsible for administration.
Application of this principle involved rearrangement of votes and disappearance of the civil government and miscellaneous sections. It also involved selection of the distinct services or projects on which the taxpayer's money is spent and insertion of an item for each. As all expenses cannot be allocated on this basis, the remainder for the department or branch has been included under an item for administration of the department. As comparison with estimates of the previous year are always of first rate importance to parliament, these have been shown in each instance. The amount entered for 1937-38 is the sum voted for that particular function, though it may have been authorized under several general or specific votes for that year. Any member interested may obtain details of these allocations of former votes in committee of supply.
The new form is composed of two main sections. The first, to page 53, is made up of items to be included in the supply bill, together with statutory appropriations, each of which is marked with the letter S. The second section, from page 54 to the end, is for the information of parliament and will not be in the supply bill. In the first section, division by items has been with the object of showing clearly the cost of the various services carried on by the government. The second section, which is entirely new, is designed to furnish parliament with detailed information as to how the various proposed votes are to be spent. For convenience the page number of the details is printed opposite each item.

The Address-Mr. Thompson
In effect, items in the first section will become votes which must be administered strictly in accordance with their terms and amounts. On the other hand, the details by Objects of expenditure contained in the second section may be varied to meet administrative requirements. In general, they will be the basis of classifications compiled by each department at the beginning of the fiscal year under the terms of section 26 of The Consolidated Revenue and Audit Act. These classifications are submitted to the Department of Finance at the beginning of the fiscal year, and may not be amended except with approval of the treasury board.
The ruling principle of this revision has been the endeavour to furnish the cost of functions. At the same time, it has been necessary to give due consideration to the requirements of administration, accounting and audit, since all are necessary to a full measure of parliamentary control. While the new form is an attempt to meet all essentials, it is not regarded as final. Rather, it is believed that experience in operation and consideration here will suggest further improvements for future years.
I need not say that the changes which have been made have resulted in a great deal of work during the past year for all the departments and for the treasury board. It will be clear, also, that the larger number of votes will probably increase the work of my colleagues and their departmental officials in getting their estimates through the house. We have, however, received the cooperation of all departments in making the revision possible, and I trust that the changes which have been introduced will, after study, commend themselves to the house.
This explanation appearing in Hansard in the morning, Mr. Speaker, together with copies of the estimates which will be distributed to hon. members as soon as the distribution office can arrange it, I am sure will enable hon. members to achieve a thorough understanding of the revision itself and particularly of the objects which it is sought to attain.


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. J. N. Francoeur for an address to His Excellency the Governor General in reply to his speech at the opening of the session, and the proposed amendment thereto of Mr. Bennett.
Thomas Alfred Thompson: When the house rose for the dinner recess, Mr. Speaker, I was discussing the imperial trade agreements. I wish to repeat that in my opinion they were the greatest accomplishment of the Canadian people in the last fifty years. They were something we were all proud to get. They have benefited all classes of our people, and they are something that the Canadian people as a whole wish to guard zealously.
If at this session something is not done to increase the prosperity of the masses of our people we may have some trouble in Canada which we do not anticipate. We look at Italy, at Germany and at Russia; we say these things cannot happen in this country, but when we realize the dissatisfaction that exists to-day from the Atlantic to the Pacific, who can tell what will be the outcome.
There is another question to which I should like to direct the attention of the house. I refer to those underpaid men who deliver the mail in our rural sections. Last year this question was brought to the attention of the house but nothing was done. We have no more faithful servants in the Dominion of Canada than the men who daily, rain or shine, deliver the mail at the farmers' gates, but they are the most underpaid class in this country. All they ask is fair treatment. I should like to suggest this to the government, that they put the rural mail carriers on the same basis as the men who deliver mail in the cities. A salary is set for those men; positions are advertised, at SI,200 a year, or whatever it may be. The government say: "Here is a position worth so much money," and they select from the applicants the man whom they consider best qualified for the position. In the country they say; "You fellows bid against one another and we will give the job to the man who bids lowest." I think that is an injustice. These men in hard times have been bidding rural routes down for less than half the proper amount. Why not establish a mileage percentage? A route is surely worth so much per mile. Advertise for the drivers and select from the applicants the man best qualified, not the man who puts in the lowest estimate on the value of his own services.
I have very little time left in which to speak. In the few minutes left to me, however, may I say that we are living in a country composed of men of different races, different creeds, and different nationalities, and the greatest task lying before the statesmen of Canada to-day is to weld these peoples together into one harmonious whole in building up a great Canadian nation. We all have something to learn.
The Address-Mr. Thompson

Nothing annoys me more than to hear one class of our people speaking against another class. We must learn that the man at our right hand or at our left hand, whether he worships at the same altar as we worship at, whether this is the land of his birth or the land of his adoption, or whether he speaks the same language as we speak, is after all a brother Canadian and one who is building on the same foundations as we are, the foundations laid by the fathers of confederation, a structure which we hope may be the pride of the whole British Empire.
Let us throw aside these petty differences and let us judge our political questions on their face value and not in the manner they are too often judged. I am sorry to say that in my opinion the present government does not possess the courage to grapple with the momentous questions which present themselves to-day. Faced with responsibility, they choose to shirk it. They say, "Oh, we will appoint a royal commission," and they keep on saying this until, in order to prevent collisions, traffic officers have to be called in to regulate the commissions on the road. They say, "We will refer it to the courts," or "Let parliament settle it," or "Let George do it"- anything to evade responsibility. If in this session legislation is not brought down to improve conditions in which our people find themselves I would call upon the ministry to resign. I would say: Give the people of Canada a chance to elect a government which will have the courage and fortitude to do its duty by the people.


Hon. J. G. GARDINER (Minister of Agriculture) :: Mr. Speaker, before proceeding with what I have to say on the address in reply I should like to join with other hon. members who have spoken, and with those who have not spoken, in offering a word of welcome to the mover and seconder, who are new members in the house. I think there could be no time more fitting than the present for two men with experience in the two older provinces of the dominion to come to the house. We are considering changes in our constitution which have to do with the relationship existing between the dominion parliament and the legislatures of the provinces, and I am sure the two men coming to the house at the present time, one with experience in the old province of Quebec, and another with experience in the legislature of the old province of Ontario, will add greatly to the strength of the house in dealing with questions of this kind. The manner in which each of them acquitted
himself in moving and seconding the address must add to the welcome which hon. members will extend to them.
In listening to the address of the right hon. the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett), I was of course interested in the remarks he had to make relating to the department I have the honour to administer, and more particularly was I interested in the pleasure he seemed to get out of referring to the activities having to do with the relations between myself and the Minister of Labour (Mr. Rogers) and myself and the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Euler) during the past summer.
With reference to the Minister of Labour I wish to say only this, that we are in entire agreement with regard to all matters having to do with labour, even with regard to the Committee for Industrial Organization. During the late fall I had occasion to discuss in the province of Ontario the activities of the former federal government, which held office prior to 1935, and the activities of the present government of Ontario in dealing with labour matters. I had occasion to call attention to the fact that on every one of three occasions on which the former federal government came into Saskatchewan to deal with labour questions the result was that certain persons were taken to the graveyard, others to the hospital and still others to gaol. But whatever else may be said of the present government of Ontario, they have settled their labour troubles without cracking any heads, without sending anyone to the penitentiary, and certainly without sending anyone to the graveyard.


Mr. LAWSON:: A tribute to the people of Ontario.


James Garfield Gardiner: The activities of the government in power prior to 1935 extended not only to Saskatchewan but to other provinces, and with similar results. In making those comparisons it was not necessary for me to refer at all to the Committee for Industrial Organization. In settling labour troubles in Canada we have been able to deal with them in the manner in which the Minister of Labour has stated is the proper way to deal with them, and on all those points I agree with the Minister of Labour in the federal government.
One other matter which is of great importance has to do with the distribution of feed and fodder in the drought areas of western Canada. I should like to read to the house, in order to recall the statements made, what

The Address-Mr. Gardiner
was said by the leader of the opposition in connection with this matter. The right hon. gentleman said:
I feel quite sure, however, that if we could set up the machinery suggested by that report we might be able to provide, shall we say, some provincial premier with larger powers, as were proposed with respect to a high commissioner.
However, I have only this to say with respect to the administration of the act: It is still a politically administered act. At the proper time and place I have an enormous number of communications I should like to bring to this chamber, provided the reading of them would not worry the house. But with respect to the relief afforded to those who have been so unfortunate as to live within the areas in question, it is quite clear that this government has divorced itself from some of its responsibility, and has left it with the provincial administration.
Then the right hon. gentleman proceeded to give what he looked upon as a statement of what might occur in the drought areas of western Canada. I wish to state for his benefit that I think, after I have reviewed the method of administration which has been set up, he will realize no such situation could have developed in the drought area and have been dealt with in the manner in which in his address he stated certain cases had been dealt with.
Before doing that, I should like to call the attention of the house to the fact that the leader of the opposition states that he has in his possession numerous communications, from western Canada I assume, containing complaints based upon cases similar to that which he submitted to the house. I have in my office several files of communications containing complaints and expressing appreciation of what has been done in the drought area. I have had a search of the files made, but I mould find no complaint similar to the one brought to the attention of the house the other day by the leader of the opposition.
That being the case, what I want to point out is this:	If after the expenditure of
hundreds of thousands of dollars-it will extend into millions-in western Canada, it is being insinuated that money is being wasted through the distribution of feed and fodder, then the leader of the opposition is the only one connected with the affairs of the house who has had sufficient information to stop that expenditure of money. Instead of placing his information before the department which I happen to administer, for political reasons he has been talking about the matter up and down the length and breadth of Canada. Finally he has brought it into the house, not in the form of a charge or by reading correspondence, but by saying that he has numerous
letters which he will present some place, somewhere, some time, after the money has been spent and any loss incurred. Any hon. member, whether sitting in opposition or otherwise, who receives that kind of communication should place it immediately in the hands of the responsible minister in order that an unnecessary expenditure of money may be stopped. The right hon. gentleman goes on to say:
His efforts may induce the authority to say that the ten may be increased to fifteen.
There are no such figures in connection with any of the regulations that have gone out from this department. He continues:
This government is not doing it, but it is being done by the provincial government. However, the effects are reflected upon us because we are providing the money with which these matters may be taken care of. That is going on, and it is only natural that it should.
With all due respect to the leader of the opposition, I say that if there are cases where it is going on they have not been brought to our attention. I refer to the type of case of which he has been speaking. If it is going on, it should not be going on. If it is going on, I would say that it is not going on with more than five per cent of the people of western Canada who have been given assistance by this government. There is no reason for a member of the house who holds the high position which the leader of the opposition does, to say at this stage, when we are in the middle of the season, "it is only natural that it should." It is not natural that it should. The right hon. gentleman continues:
These conditions are inevitable if the conduct of business is left to purely political sources.
And again:
I repeat that when the money of the taxpayers is being spent in this way it certainly should be done by some independent commission, if possible, so as to prevent not only the opportunity but the temptation for political administration.
I intend to deal with those statements by outlining to the house what has happened during the past few months by way of criticism outside the house, and also by outlining the method of administration set up and what has been accomplished under that method. About October 6 last the leader of the opposition made a statement in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, which was reported by the Canadian Press, in which he levied charges against me as Minister of Agriculture in connection with the administration of relief in western Canada. The right hon. gentleman was reported as having said that I was building up an enormous political machine through the administration of relief.
The Address-Mr. Gardiner


Richard Bedford Bennett: Hear, hear.


James Garfield Gardiner: And my right hon. friend says, "Hear, hear." He then proceeded from Charlottetown to Brandon, Manitoba, where he made almost the identical statement. He then proceeded to Regina. I then thought it about time that I paid a little attention to this matter, seeing that he was in my home province. I sent a statement to the press pointing out that the administration of relief was being conducted through the municipalities in Saskatchewan. Speaking to an audience in Regina the right hon. gentleman came back with the reply, "Yes, it is turned over to the municipalities, but the municipalities are only a cog in the Liberal political machine."
In Saskatchewan there are some 301 municipalities with councils of six; there are somewhere in the neighbourhood of seventy-eight or seventy-nine towns with councils of five; there are some 400 villages and hamlets with councils of three, and there are some eight cities with the usual city council. He was saying that the members of these councils throughout the province were simply cogs in the political machine of the Liberal party in Saskatchewan. There is no one in that province or outside it who believes that. I am certain that my friends of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, some of whom come from Saskatchewan or of the Social Credit group, two of whom come from that province, will not admit that the councils in the municipalities which they represent are composed of men who are cogs in any political machine, Liberal, Conservative or otherwise. If I had the time to-night I could recite the conditions existing in many of these councils and convince even the leader of the opposition that his statement was not correct.
What I wanted to point out was this: When the leader of the opposition spoke in Charlottetown and Brandon he placed the blame on my doorstep; when he spoke in the city of Regina he placed the blame on the doorstep of the councils who he said were only a part of the Liberal political machine in that province; when he spoke in Vancouver he repeated the statement. But when he comes into the house, after having gone all the way across Canada, he does not say the Minister of Agriculture is to blame; he does not say the councils in Saskatchewan are to blame; he says the provincial government is to blame. But he does not say it is the provincial government of Saskatchewan or the provincial government of Alberta that is t-o blame; he does not say that he checked the cases in the

federal or provincial departments; he simply makes the blanket statement that something has happened somewhere which is not exactly right. When he reaches the point where he can be faced by the administrators of the department he then lays the blame at the door of a provincial department that is miles away.
In order to indicate whether or not there has been a political set-up in connection with the organization I should like to call the attention of the house to what has happened in connection with the administration of relief in the drought area. In 1936 we determined very early in the season-not as early as this year-that some assistance would have to foe given in the areas which had been dried out in the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta over a period of some five or six years. We took the number which had to have assistance on September 1 and adopted those people immediately as the particular care of the federal government. We said to the provincial governments that we were prepared to enter into an agreement to deal with those particular municipalities and provide them with feed and fodder and direct relief. I am dealing only with feed and fodder at the moment because it is in connection with this that the attack is made. As time went along and other municipalities found it absolutely essential that they receive assistance, they would submit their requirements to the provincial government, the provincial government would consider them and if they passed upon them favourably they would turn the matter over to the federal government. We examined into conditions existing in the municipality and determined finally whether it should foe admitted or not. We started off with, I think, somewhere about 105 municipalities in Saskatchewan, about nine in Manitoba and about sixty or seventy in Alberta. Then we added to them from time to time until we came to the middle of the month of February, and by the end of that period we had a considerably larger number of municipalities admitted.
What I want to point out to the house is that we found this weakness in that method, that many of the municipalities had to wait for days and weeks, and on occasion even a month, in order to get a final decision from Ottawa after all the inspections had been made; so this year we determined upon a different line of action in order to take care of that area. The Minister of Labour and I, together with a representative of the Saskatchewan government-and when we were in Alberta we got into touch with those who were interested in the matter there-drove over

The Address-Mr. Gardiner
that whole area. We skirted the boundaries of it all, passing first along the United States boundary; then we went up to Medicine Hat, from there to Brooks, from there to Hanna in Alberta. Then we went down the Goose Lake line to Kindersley, then north to Battle-ford, from Battleford to Saskatoon, and from Saskatoon down the east side of Long lake to the city of Regina. In that drive I think we covered somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2,500 miles in order to find the boundaries of the area that would require assistance this year, and we located them fairly closely.
We also had information from the municipalities and the provincial governments as to the requirements of these different areas, and finally we made an arrangement of this kind with the provincial governments: We said to Alberta: We are prepared to take in fifty-two municipalities in this province, beginning with the first of September, and carry all the costs of providing feed and fodder and direct relief for these fifty-two municipalities to the thirty-first of March next. We went into Saskatchewan and said: We are prepared to take care of 170 municipalities in Saskatchewan, bearing the entire cost of providing feed and fodder and direct relief from the first of September to the thirty-first of March.
Application was made from Manitoba on behalf of three or four municipalities, but we took the position that three or four municipalities-and I think the number might have been extended to probably nine or ten had the matter been pressed further-or even nine or ten municipalities requiring relief in one whole province did not constitute a problem sufficiently great to warrant the federal government stepping in and taking care of them. In other words, we said that in view of the fact that Manitoba had had a good crop over the greater part of the province they should be able to take care of the requirements of nine or ten municipalities this year. May I say that when the other two provinces get anywhere near the position that Manitoba occupied this year, it will be the policy of the government to stop giving this assistance to Saskatchewan and Alberta.
When we adopted those 170 municipalities in Saskatchewan and fifty-two in Alberta, there was still left a very considerable area outside. In Saskatchewan there are eighty-nine other municipalities that are almost as bad this year as any of the 170 municipalities were in the worst years they went through prior to 1937. Conditions are almost as bad as they were in the worst part of the province in 1931, or in 1934, 1935 or 1936, and the drought has extended over the whole of Saskatchewan this year. The province said to
us:	We are not in a position entirely to
take care of that other area, and they asked us in the first instance to pursue the same policy as we had followed last year. But we suggested this change, that this year we would allow them a definite cash grant to take care of the area outside the 170 municipalities in Saskatchewan and outside the fifty-two municipalities in Alberta, and that we would give 81,000,000 to Saskatchewan and
S100.000	to Alberta, and would expect them to find any additional money that was required beyond that 81,000,000 in Saskatchewan and S100,000 in Alberta to take care of the situation. That is the policy we have been following this season. We have one hundred per cent of responsibility in the 170 municipalities in Saskatchewan and in the fifty-two municipalities in Alberta, but the provincial governments are taking care of the administration of relief in the whole area, taking care of any costs over and above the cash we have granted to them outside the federal area, and they are entirely responsible for deciding the time at which these municipalities shall come in throughout the year and for carrying on negotiations with regard to them.
I wanted to make that plain because there is just the possibility that the leader of the opposition has been getting his information from the area that is outside the federal area altogether, and if so, any criticism of his remarks here would naturally come from the provincial government rather than from this government. But any criticism with regard to the other area, the area in connection with which we keep a close check on expenditures-by "we" I mean the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Finance, through the check which the auditor's are making-concerns the federal government because we are taking responsibility in connection with all expenditures there.
As to the suggestion that a commission should be set up, this is not the first time such a suggestion has been made. As a matter of fact, a commission was set up previously so far as Saskatchewan is concerned. A commission was set up there in 1931, during the period when the last government was in office at Ottawa; and when the leader of the opposition says, as he did in the words I have just read to the house-
I repeat that when the money of the taxpayers is being spent in this way it certainly should be done by some independent commission, if possible, so as to prevent not only the opportunity but the temptation for political administration-
The Address-Mr. Gardiner

-I say, Mr. Speaker, that we do not have to look ahead to see what the right hon. gentleman might do if he were in charge of government, because we have only to look back to see what he did do. He was in charge of this matter from 1931 to 1935, and there were relief areas in Manitoba in those years; there were relief areas in Alberta, and there was a considerable relief area in Saskatchewan, but not so great an area in any of those years as we have had to deal with this year. What did the previous government do with regard to the matter? They set up a commission, yes, but they set up only one commission, and it operated in only one province. They did not set up a commission in Manitoba; they did not set up a commission in Alberta; they set up a commission in Saskatchewan, the only province that had a government which was favourable and friendly to the government then in power at Ottawa.


Richard Bedford Bennett: May I correct the hon.
gentleman? He is in error. The commission was set up by Saskatchewan and named by it; there was no commission in Alberta or Manitoba because of the limited nature of the relief operations that were carried on there. They were carried on by the provincial governments and we gave them assistance.


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, and those areas were somewhat limited as compared with other areas during last year. I have no doubt some of the criticisms of which the right hon. gentleman speaks, are coming from Alberta. I venture to say that I have as many criticisms from Alberta as I have from Saskatchewan with regard to administration, and I assume he has too. In so far as the matter of principle is concerned, if we are spending say a million and a half or two million dollars in Alberta and seven or eight million dollars in Saskatchewan, it is just as essential that there should be a commission in one province as in another, and it always has been so from the beginning. But in so far as the leader of the opposition is concerned, when he was in office he appointed or stood for the appointment of a commission only in the one province which had a government that was friendly to the government at Ottawa.


Richard Bedford Bennett: We did not spend any money for Alberta or Manitoba except through the provincial government.


James Garfield Gardiner: Well, we have not spent any money in either Manitoba, Saskatchewan or Alberta except through the provincial government.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Oh, yes, you have.


James Garfield Gardiner: Now the right hon. gentleman is suggesting that in one province we should spend through the commission and in the other provinces, I suppose, spend through the provincial governments. I have on my desk a list of the people the commission employed. Do hon. members know how many were employed by the commission or rather by those who were administering its affairs? It might be well at this stage to point out the way these commissions are usually set up. The commission was set up in this manner in Saskatchewan. They took five men, all of whom were busy men, all of whom had their own businesses to attend to, made them a commission, and said, "We are going to make you responsible for administering relief in the province of Saskatchewan."


Richard Bedford Bennett: There was a woman besides.


James Garfield Gardiner: One of the commissioners was running a whole banking system in the province. Another was carrying on an important business. There was one woman, the wife of a farmer, and every one in the house knows how busy the wife of a farmer is. These people were put in charge of the administration of relief in Saskatchewan. Well, they did what any one does under such circumstances. They went out and hired a group of men to administer relief. Do hon. members know whom they hired? They hired the organizer of the Conservative party from Moose Jaw to take charge of the work; they hired the organizer of the Conservative party from the city of North Battleford to take charge of the field staff, and they hired another organizer of the Conservative party to take charge of the distribution of food relief. They put these men in the office. Do you know, Mr. Speaker, how many men and women they hired during the time they were operating? Eight hundred and thirty-nine. They did not stop there. They would not work through the councils of the municipalities. They went out into the municipalities and selected a senate for those municipalities, an appointed body to do this work. They took one man and made him a paid official, and then they had four persons selected from the municipality to sit in the central office or some other room-they usually hired another room in the town where the municipal offices were-and administered the relief of the province in that way, the council sitting one day and considering the affairs of the municipality, and this selected body of the commission sitting another day and considering the matter of the distribution

The Address-Mr. Gardiner
of relief in the particular place. The paid officials formed a field staff ia the pay of the province, and all the money for the payment of relief was provided by grant made by the right hon. gentleman's government from Ottawa.
I do think, with the system we have now under which this government is paying, when we are at the peak of our movement, forty-five men, our administration, in matters of cost at least, compares very favourably with the eight hundred and thirty-nine that the leader of the opposition had through the province in charge of relief at the time he was in office.


Richard Bedford Bennett: It is necessary to correct that. The eight hundred men were not employed by the federal government, nor were any of them. They were employed by the commission which was appointed by the province.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is quite right, Mr. Speaker, but I happened to be leader of the opposition in Saskatchewan during the time this was going on, and I know whom they selected in my constituency. During the time I had been conducting elections in that constituency I had had three opponents, and every one of them was represented among those employed. The opponent in the previous election of the hon. member for Melville (Mr. Motherwell) who represented the same seat in this house, was employed, and two out of the four men I have mentioned lived in the same municipality.


Richard Bedford Bennett: But they were not
employed by the federal government.


James Garfield Gardiner: Well, the right hon. gentleman did not make very many checks on how they were employed. Apparently he was not so concerned about checks then as he is now. We have forty-five men going about seeing that these things do not happen.
When we came into power in Saskatchewan, what did we do? I mention this because the right hon gentleman, speaking in the city of Regina, had called to his attention by a previous speaker that there had been no criticism in Saskatchewan while that commission was in office, and I think he repeated the statement at the Regina meeting, that he understood these were prominent citizens and that there had been no criticism. I believe I spoke in pretty nearly every town in Saskatchewan during the time the former provincial government was in office, and I did not miss any opportunity in any town of criticizing them, just as I am criticizing them now, pointing out to the people exactly what
I am pointing out to the house, namely that a commission cannot properly check such an administration. As a result, when the election was over every man who had stood for that kind of commission administration in Saskatchewan was defeated, and all but five of those who opposed it were elected. When we came in, of course we dismissed the commission and set up the organization that is there to-day.
There was one other criticism that was made, not by the leader of the opposition but by the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell), to which I wish to call attention. He said, as reported on page 106 of Hansard of February 2:
Much more was I depressed last year to see that the government were not taking effective steps early enough-and may I emphasize those words "early enough"-to meet the situation that was upon us last summer. At the end of June in the town of Rosetown, in my own constituency, I attended a meeting of farmers and business people at which resolutions were passed urging the government to take immediate and effective steps to retain in its present position the grain that was then in the elevators in that constituency, in order to protect the people of that area.
And then he says he was invited to another meeting:
There again resolutions were passed pointing out the situation and emphasizing the need for the conservation of the seed and feed then in that area. Those resolutions, I am told, were forwarded to Ottawa, yet my observation was that in the weeks that followed, the elevators were virtually emptied of the grain that was there.
I have been in both of these towns, Mr. Speaker, and indeed in most of the towns in Saskatchewan. I want to point out that there are a thousand and more pool elevators in that province. There is one at every important loading point in the province, and those elevators have the grain in them. If there is any grain there the pool elevators, by themselves, will have more than fifty per cent of it, because they take in approximately fifty per cent. Located as they are in both the north and the south-and they are about the only elevator company that is so located-a large percentage, I would say at least sixty per cent and probably seventy-five per cent, of the grain that is moved from the northern areas of the province to the southern areas or that is retained in its possession in order to take care of the farmers' needs, is held in the pool elevators. For that reason I suggest to my hon. friend that the elevator companies that owned the grain belonged to the farmers who wanted the grain.
The Addrets-Mr. Gardiner


Mr. COLD WELL:: Will the hon. gentleman permit a question?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes.


Mr. COLDWELL:: I would ask the minister if he expects the pools to carry a load which properly belongs to the government.


An hon. MEMBER:: Why?


Major James William Coldwell: Because of the position of the market at that time in relation to cash and future prices. The government cannot expect the pools for ever-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Major James William Coldwell: -to carry this business for the country.


James Garfield Gardiner: It is quite all right. No, Mr. Speaker, I do not expect the pools to carry what ought to be carried by the government, but I am going to point out to the hon. gentleman in a moment that we did not leave it to the pools to carry it either.


Major James William Coldwell: Why blame them?


James Garfield Gardiner: I am not blaming them. It was my hon. friend who blamed them, and I am going to read something else he blamed them for which is more important. My hon. friend said yesterday afternoon-I had better read it now, because it just covers his point-
On the part of the elevator companies I say that wras perfectly natural.
It is strange how nearly the language of the hon. gentleman approximates that of the leader of the opposition. I say, Mr. Speaker, that no elevator company in western Canada has ever done any such thing at any time; it has never taken grain out of Saskatchewan when it was needed by the farmers of Saskatchewan. That has never been done either by the pool elevators or by any elevator company. To continue with the quotation:
I say further, however, that the government, if it had wished, could have closed the speculative market; it could have discontinued the trading in futures and indemnified the companies involved, if necessary, against subsequent loss due to that governmental action.
Let me tell the house what we did do. We gave certain instructions to the wheat board, about which my hon. friend has something to say. Without any blowing of trumpets, or waving of flags, or answering letters from people who make criticisms at times when criticism does more damage than good, we instructed the wheat board to get the wheat needed for seed next year, without telling anyone that they were getting it, and to put it into the storage elevators or, where it was

not advisable to do that, to keep it in storage where it was. In other words, the wheat necessary for seed next year was provided in very large part long before my hon. friend attended these meetings at all. So that so far as early action was concerned, the fact is that while these meetings were being organized we were busy doing the job. The hon. gentleman goes on to say:
But it allowed that speculative market, about which I have complained from time to time, to continue to operate. The government, which had destroyed the effectiveness of the wheat board method of marketing-
As a matter of fact, we made it very effective in order to do the thing he is worrying about. -again remained inert in the face of the pending situation. Can we wonder if the farmers believe the statement that the party now in office at least to some extent was a beneficiary in connection with campaign funds from members of the grain trade?
Again, the language is very similar to that used by the leader of the opposition; and, again, it is only an insinuation and not a charge. To the hon. member for Peace River (Mr. Pelletier) I would say that when he has been longer in the house, or it may be in some other house, he will realize that when a man across the floor throws out vague insinuations in his remarks he is not making a charge. When a man makes a charge in the house he stands up and places his constituency at the disposal of his electors. The leader of the opposition has not made any charge of that kind in connection with anything, within my hearing, since I have been in the house, and I do not think he is very likely to do so on this particular occasion. The hon. member says further:
That is a suggestion which is made from time to time.
He does not want to take responsibility for it; no, he never does want to take responsibility for anything like that. He throws out an insinuation and has it spread broadcast to do all the harm it can to the party he opposes, and his objective is reached. To continue the quotation:
The other evening in the house we heard a more specific statement by the leader of the opposition, and, later, briefly mentioning the matter in his speech, the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) said that he would like advice as to how the situation could be dealt with.
And the hon. gentleman leaves it there.


Major James William Coldwell: No, read on; read the next sentence.

The Address-Mr. Gardiner


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes. he has something else to say, but not with regard to that. He says:
The time has come, in the interests of clean and decent government in Canada, when political parties should be compelled to publish the sources of all their campaign funds-all of them-in order that we may know the interests and influences behind the election of the governments in this country.
I assume that by this he means that opposite their names you should put the amount you have collected. Well, I believe that there are some hon. members who have had some experience in politics, and I have no doubt they will agree with me when I say that if you published on the front pages of the papers any amount of money that you collected for campaign funds, whether $5,000 or $500,000, before night there would be twenty times as many men to take it away from you as there were contributors. Yes, and someone suggests that even some members of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation would be there to get some of the Liberal funds. Further, the hon. gentleman says:
The result of the condition to which I have referred means that the government has had to ship in grain for feed and, in the spring, will have to ship in grain for seed. This means that farmers unfortunate enough to have neither seed nor feed, or only one or the other, will be penalized both ways on that account.
The federal government is paying the bill so that the farmers will not be penalized on account of feed.


Major James William Coldwell: But the taxpayers are paying it and the farmers are taxpayers.


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, and the federal government represents the taxpayers of all Canada. We shall have to worry about more people than those that are getting feed and fodder; it is because we are worrying about these people that we have had these forty-five men checking up both grades of feed and distribution in the areas in which the feed is given out, and where we have had complaints we have sent out the mounted police. I will say further that if my hon. friends, whether they sit in the Conservative opposition or in the ranks of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation-


An hon. MEMBER:: Which is the same thing.


James Garfield Gardiner: Someone says it is the
same thing. I say that if hon. gentlemen, whether among the Conservatives or the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation or the
Social Credit group, will bring to our attention any complaints they think should be investigated, and will produce sufficient evidence to warrant it. we will send the mounted police out to look into all those eases in regard to which there are complaints.
There are one or two remarks I wish to make with regard to the criticism that we did not act soon enough. I have on my desk a list of orders in council and the dates upon which they were passed. My hon. friend says that in the latter part of June he went through the area and knew that conditions were difficult. I was in the area in the early part of June and was aware of the difficulty, and I came back to Ottawa and placed before the government the conditions as they existed out there at that time. We discussed the matter in council and on June 24, 1937, passed the first order in council to deal with it. That order in council had to do with the shipping of live stock out of the drought area. We passed a second order in council on July 22nd, authorizing agreements with the provinces for the purpose of dealing with the provision of feed and fodder. On July 23rd we passed an optional marketing plan, and on September 29, a food distribution plan. Governor general's warrants were issued in order to cover the cost. On August 6, there was one for $5,900,000; on September 29, $7,640,000; on September 29, $1,000,000; on October 29, 86,850,000, for feed and fodder in Alberta and Saskatchewan. I quote these dates and figures to indicate that action was taken in the last week in June by order in council, and orders in council were passed from time to time as required to take care of the situation.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Will the minister file
the orders in council?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, I have copies
before me. I said a moment ago that we started at first with a shipment of live stock, and I wish to explain why that was done. The only legitimate criticism that I have heard with regard to the matter of policy is to the effect that if we depleted the breeding stock of that area we would be doing a disservice to the people there instead of a service. In order to show that nothing of that kind has happened I shall submit a few figures to the house.
The drought area in Saskatchewan is composed of crop districts 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7. The cattle population of that area in 1931 was
726,000	head. The live stock population of
15S
The Address-Mr. Gardiner

the same area in 1935 was 833,000 head, an increase of 107,000. After five or six years of drought in that area there was more live stock there than in the beginning. Some people may say that is a reason for criticism, and it may be at this stage, but I am not sure that it was at that stage. In 1931, when the first crop failure came, those who were considered to be experts in agriculture, whether provincial or federal, said they thought it would be a good thing to get the people of that area into live stock and particularly into cattle, and they encouraged people, instead of taking their milk out of a can, to get a cow. Of course if you get one cow you are likely to have two the next year, and so the increase goes on. These people in that area obtained cattle and those cattle began to increase.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Some were brought in from the outside, too.


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, some were brought in. At any rate in the drought area of Saskatchewan in 1935 there were 107,000 more cattle than in 1931. In Alberta in 1931 there were 491,000 cattle in the drought area. In 1935 there were 621,000, again an increase of about 130,000.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Perhaps it would be fair, would it not, for the minister to say that there was no drought area where those cattle were during the years immediately preceding 1937, which to some extent accounts for the increase in both Alberta and Saskatchewan?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, that is. true, and these dates I am giving are for June 1 in each year. I am giving these increases not by way of criticism but rather to answer the criticism that is now made, that the area has been depleted of cattle.
In 1936 in the drought area of Saskatchewan we had 826,000 head as against 833,000 the previous year. In other words, on June 1, 1936, a decrease was shown amounting to some 7,000 head. In the drought area of Alberta, as of June 1, 1936, there were 606,000 head, a decrease of about 15,000. Then there was quite a decided change by June 1, 1937. I am not going to say that this was due to the fact that there was a change of government in the interval There was a change of policy, and I think the change of policy was advised by people who were getting more and more information as time went along. Finally they came to the conclusion that this thing was becoming so long drawn out that the shipping in of feed and fodder was much more costly than it would be to provide the amount of relief that would be afforded by

having the extra numbers of cattle. So by June 1, 1937, before we started our operations this year at all, the number in the drought area of Saskatchewan was down from 826,000 to 796,000, a decrease of 30,000 in that year. In Alberta the number dropped from 606,000 to 534,000, showing a greater decrease than in Saskatchewan, due largely to the fact that in Alberta there are large ranching areas, and the ranchers were dealing with the situation as they found it.


Richard Bedford Bennett: And the area in Saskatchewan is much larger.


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes. In the one province there are small farms with a few head of cattle and in the other there are large ranches with many head.
I might give the total figures for both provinces. In 1931 we had 1,188,000 head of cattle in the entire province of Saskatchewan. In 1937 we had 1,441,000. In other words, we still have 252,000 head more than we had in 1931, so if that number of cattle are still in Saskatchewan no one can say that the country has been depleted of cattle. On June 1 last there were more cattle in Saskatchewan than there were in 1931. In Alberta we have a similar situation. In 1931 there were 1,124,000 cattle and in 1937 there were
1,457,000,	or an increase of 333,000.
Now let us look at the figures with regard to shipments during 1937. I said a moment ago that we considered it necessary to get many of these cattle out, and I want to explain why. In the latter part of June we went to the provincial government and asked them to prepare immediately an estimate of the number of cattle in the province and of the number of cattle with which the families in those areas could get along. We also asked them to estimate the cost of obtaining feed and fodder for the total number if they all remained and to estimate the cost in connection with the number that they considered the farmers could get along with. After they made that survey they came back to us and said, "If you allow a family of five in Saskatchewan to keep two cows, and you increase the number from two up to four, depending upon the size of the family; if you allow the same family to keep one beef animal and allow them so many chickens, so many pigs and so on, just what is absolutely essential in order for them to get along, you will require a million tons of fodder to feed that live stock, along with the horses that must be left there in order to put in the crop next season."
Anyone going over that area, as some members of the house did, during the month

The Address-Mr. Gardiner
of July, would see that there was no feed in that area in that month. There were no signs of feed at all. Any feed that was in that entire drought area was in the form of old straw stacks carried over from a previous year, and even those were only around the rim of what had been the drought area, because in some sections there had not been a crop for five or six years. So at that time you could see there was no possibility of figuring that there would foe any fodder out of that area at all, and it looked as though we would have to import a million tons of fodder into the drought area. Some of our friends say there is plenty of fodder in Manitoba, but the best records we can obtain from the statistics branch indicate that Manitoba produces only three-quarters of a million tons of fodder in a year, and this was not a good hay year in that province in spite of the fact that their grain crop was good.


Mr. BARBER:: What about British Columbia?


James Garfield Gardiner: There is very little in British Columbia, when you compare the number of farmers in that province with the number in Saskatchewan. There are 70,000 farmers in this area about which I am talking in Saskatchewan alone, and when you start to supply the necessary feed and fodder for 70,000 farmers the little you would have in British Columbia, and even the surplus you would have down east here, if there were no other surpluses available, would not go very far in feeding that stock. So they went into Manitoba and got a line on all the surplus fodder that was there; they went into Alberta and got a line on all the surplus fodder that was there, and the estimate was that we could not get more than 300,000 tons from the two provinces combined. I may say that estimate has not yet been fulfilled, and is not likely to be fulfilled by the end of the season.
Realizing that, the provincial government determined that they would have to go outside those provinces, so they went into the state of Minnesota and bought all the hay they could get and had it shipped into this area. Then we made arrangements with the railways whereby they cut the rate almost, though not quite, in half as between the western part of the province of Quebec, the province of Ontario and the drought area, in order that hay might be shipped in from the eastern part of Canada to the drought area. With it all they hope to be able to get into the drought area this year somewhere in the neighbourhood of 300.000 tons of fodder for the live stock of that area.
I can quite understand people complaining. I can quite understand people saying that the hay, was not there early enough, but I want to say this: Instructions went out from my office, knowing western Canada as I do know it, that no hay was to be delivered until it was absolutely necessary to have it there. I was much more concerned about having hay there in the middle of February than I was in having hay there last October. I was much more concerned about having hay there on the first of March than in having it there on the first of November, when there was no snow on the ground. But hay was in position to move, all the provincial government could get of it, at all times. It has been moved, and in practically every area in Saskatchewan and in Alberta it will be found they have feed and fodder for the numbers of live stock indicated in the figures which were given out at that particular time.


Walter Edward Foster: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member, but his time has expired. He may continue, but only with consent.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Go on.


James Garfield Gardiner: Those numbers were there, and that amount of fodder was required.


Richard Bedford Bennett: I understand a million tons of fodder was required.


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, one million tons.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Yes, and you were able to get only 300,000; is that right?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, but I should like to finish the point.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Yes, I wanted you to do that.


James Garfield Gardiner: About the second to last week in July we had rain in the area which had been affected by drought, and that rain resulted in the growth of some of the seed which had been put in the ground early in the year. It resulted also in the growth of Russian thistle. Russian thistle is a little more than ninety per cent salt, and it does not make particularly good feed. However, if it is cut at the proper time of the year live stock will consume it. Mixed with straw it makes a passable food for live stock. The farmers of that area cut the Russian thistle, along with any little bit of growth which they found on the field. They piled it up and, I assume, would have in the neighbourhood of probably 100,000 or 200,000 tons. It is hard to estimate the amount that is scattered over the area. That has been
The Address-Mr. Gardiner

added to what was shipped in, and by rationing the whole supply, along with increased grain, we hope there will be sufficient to carry the live stock through.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Will it interfere with the minister if I ask a question?


James Garfield Gardiner: No.


Richard Bedford Bennett: What would be the reduction in herds that would take place by the arrangements which were made by the government as to the numbers which were to be kept?


James Garfield Gardiner: I have those figures. I might point out that those cattle that are there, and particularly in the condition they are in, would not sell on the market for more than S10 or S15 per head at the present time.


Richard Bedford Bennett: They are unsalable, in fact?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, they are now. There was a time when probably some of them could have been sold. However, to-day they are unsalable. When you are shipping hay from Ontario with a $10 freight rate on it; when you pay $7.50 for the hay and feed an animal a ton and a half-which our friends out west say is not enough-and when that animal is worth only $17 after you have fed it, you can readily see that you have your winter's work for nothing.
In order to avoid that kind of thing going on, and the live stock dying before spring, we undertook to do two or three different things. In the first place, one of the orders in council I mentioned provided for the shipment of cattle out from the area, under provisions whereby the federal government pays all the freight from the farmer's home to some feeding fields which he may be able to find in Manitoba or Alberta. Then we pay the cost of shipping the stock back in the spring. A provision is made whereby we send the breeding stock of persons who can find places to send them, and who have the money to feed them after they are moved.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Do you supply no fodder in those cases?


James Garfield Gardiner: No, not in those cases. I shall deal with the pasture at Carberry in a moment. It was suggested to us that some horses might be fed more cheaply by taking them to the Carberry pasture, and putting them in there. In those cases we paid for the cost of caring for the horses in pasture through the winter, because it is cheaper to feed them there than to feed them in the drought area itself.

On July 23, we passed an order in council setting up what is known as the optional marketing plan. This was a new experiment in connection with this work. However, we thought that in view of the fact that the live stock population had been increasing in the area, we should get the number down. We felt that the government should handle the stock. So, on the basis of the information the government had gathered with regard to the needs of the farmers, we drew up a set of regulations, and those regulations ran somewhat in the terms I have already mentioned to the house.
A farmer with a family of five could keep two cows and, on an average, nine horses. Farmers with larger families could keep up to four cows, depending upon the size of the family, and in addition one beef animal, a certain number of fowl and some hogs. We said to the provincial government, "We would like you to go out to the municipalities, any one of the hundred and seventy the dominion government is going to take care of, and say to them, 'We want you to get your live stock down to these numbers, if you expect the government to supply feed this winter. If you do not expect the government to feed them, you can keep all you like. On the other hand if you do expect the government to feed your live stock this winter we want you to get that live stock down to these numbers' ". Then we were told, "But there are no buyers, and those that are here are beating down our prices." We said, "All right; if you will arrange to asemble the cattle at points we will name we will send men there to grade them. Immediately they are graded we will pay you the Winnipeg price for those cattle in the town where they are graded." That applied to all cattle, with the exception of those ready to go to the butcher. For the butcher cattle we paid the Winnipeg price, less freight. On the canners, on the breeding stock, and on feeder steers, we paid the Winnipeg price at the local market.


Richard Bedford Bennett: What was the total expenditure?


James Garfield Gardiner: I shall come to that.
We purchased approximately 90,000 cattle, and those 90,000 were bought in 250 municipalities in Saskatchewan and Alberta. I have the figures for each province, but I believe it is unnecessary to give the details. However the fact is that 90,000 head were purchased.


Richard Bedford Bennett: At what expenditure?


James Garfield Gardiner: At a cost to the government of $340,000, net. That works out to

The Address-Mr. Gardiner
an average of about 83.80 per head on all the cattle we handled. Those cattle were handled in three different ways. The can-ners we sent immediately to the abattoirs, and took what we could get for them. We had paid a flat price of one and a quarter cents and sent them in and sold them. In previous years we had guaranteed a flat price of one cent, whereas this year we paid one and a quarter. May I say that we got out a lot better than we expected. During the early part of the period, before we got the pasture at Carberry, we had to ship the feeder cattle to the stockyards. However, during the later part of the season we had the pasture at Carberry, which consisted of 130.000 acres of grass land. We shipped the cattle there and let them run on the grass a couple of weeks to freshen them up. Then we classified them into carloads and asked the eastern and American buyers to come and bid on them at auction sales.
They were sold outright and taken away and we pay half the freight, if the farmer who bought them keeps them somewhere in eastern Canada and feeds them for three months. Through that policy we got rid of
90.000	head from the area. Under the halffreight policy we got rid of another number. All told, under the government policies we moved 160,000 head out of the area.
In addition to that, a considerable number of cattle were sold in the ordinary trade. The figures I have before me show that the total number of cattle taken out of the drought area in 1937 was 474,000 head.
I should like to give the number of cattle and calves taken out of Alberta and Saskatchewan. They are:
Alberta Saskatchewan
1937	
450,746	611,5741936	
472,917	401,6261935	
340,936	335,772
From Saskatchewan we took out 200,000 more in 1937 than in 1936, and 276,000 more than in 1935.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Would the minister
indicate as a matter of record what the cattle population of those provinces was at the end of 1937? I realize this would be only an estimate.


James Garfield Gardiner: I gave those figures a few moments ago, but I can repeat them.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Do not bother repeating them.


James Garfield Gardiner: The total cattle population of Saskatchewan in 1931-


Richard Bedford Bennett: I was referring to the population after the shipments out in the manner indicated had been made.


James Garfield Gardiner: I tried to get those figures, but I am sorry they are not complete. I should think the figure would be somewhere near what it was in 1931. There will be as many cattle in that area at the end of this season as there were in 1931. This brings out the point I started to make, that there is no danger of the cattle population being depleted by anything that is done this year or has been done in previous years. I think this is sufficient to answer the concern which appeared to be in the minds of those who have discussed this matter earlier in the debate and I hope it will settle the question in so far as those who may discuss the matter later on are concerned.
There is only one other matter I should like to deal with before I take my seat, namely the distribution of food in this area by the federal government. Approximately a million dollars has been spent in the distribution of food. There have been one or two criticisms of this work, which criticism I regret but which I do not think it necessary for me to bring to the attention of the house. On the whole, much has been said to commend this matter to the house.
The principal criticism which came from the drought areas in previous years has been that the relief schedules provided for the different-sized families have not been sufficient. I think any one can understand why that criticism has been made.
These families have been accustomed to running out to the garden to get whatever vegetables they required, or to the henhouse to get whatever eggs or fowl were needed, or to have recourse to meat supplies on their own farms. They probably used food much more liberally than other people who might have had to be more careful as to obtaining the food or using it after they had obtained it. There was some difficulty in placing vouchers at the beginning of the month to carry a family of five or ten through to the end of the month.
There is one matter raised by the leader of the opposition which I shall discuss later on in the session. We have had in mind the development of a marketing branch in the Department of Agriculture. For the benefit of those who have been discussing this question during the debate, I may state that we had in mind the fact that between SO and 90 per cent of the food products of this country are consumed in the country. Therefore we consider it necessary to spend probably 80

The Address-Mr. Gardiner

or 90 per cent of the money we do spend in order to grade or to classify or to package our products on products to be used in Canada rather than anywhere else. Some of the money voted last year and the year before was for the purpose of setting up an organization in this country to take care of marketing and an organization in the old country and in other countries to check our products to the consumer in order to see that the standard was maintained.
One thing which has always appeared strange to me is the fact that while we claim to make the best cheese in the world in Canada-I think it is acknowledged in the British market that Canadian cheddar cheese is the best cheese made for general purposes-our production dropped from 220,000,000 pounds in 1900 to 100,000,000 pounds in 1935. This decrease in production has been gradual all through the years, no matter what policy was in force or what government was in power. In 1907 there were 190,000,000 pounds of Canadian cheese consumed in the British market, whereas in 1935 this consumption had dropped to 52,000,000 pounds. In so far as New Zealand was concerned, the British market used
27,000,000 pounds in 1907 and 197,000,000 pounds in 1935. In other words, the positions of Canada and New Zealand had been reversed about exactly during those thirty years.
When I came into the department I made some inquiries as to why this was the case. I went to England and the first morning I was there I walked out on the Strand. One-half mile away, facing a stretch of street through which more people walk than any other similar stretch anywhere else in the world, I saw this sign, "Eat New Zealand cheese." Under those words was something about New Zealand butter. Out on the street I saw a bus going by bearing a sign, "Eat Australian lamb." Then I saw another sign, "Eat Australian butter." I walked all the way down to Canada House without seeing the word "Canada." Even when I got there I could hardly see it as it was so bleached out that it could not be seen unless you made a special effort to look for it on the stonework across the top of the door. I make no reference to any government that was in power previously, or to the present government; all I say is that in this modern age you cannot sell Canadian or any other products by that method when you are in competition with a country using the opposite method. The sales of New Zealand and Canadian cheese I think will demonstrate that fact to the satisfaction of any one who examines the figures.
This state of affairs was changed to some extent when the "Canada Calling" campaign

was put on. The cheese producers of Ontario, with the assistance of the Minister of Agriculture of the Ontario government of that time, cooperating with the dominion government, sent their secretary over to England to advance the sale of cheese in that market. The result is that the figures show that exports of cheese to the British market last year increased by about 15,000,000 pounds, if I remember rightly, and this year they have gone up an additional 14,000,000 pounds. This year we have sold something in the neighbourhood of 81,000,000 pounds of cheese, whereas we sold only 52,000,000 pounds in 1935. I do not like to comment upon the fact that we took something away from someone else, but the fact remains that sales of New Zealand cheese went down during the same period.
It might be interesting to the house to know that of the sixteen countries in which records are kept, Canada consumes the smallest amount of cheese per capita; yet we are trying to convince the world that we produce the best cheese in the world. There were 74,000 families in western Canada who were not accustomed to eating cheese, but this year they are in the position that they will eat any good food you give them.


Richard Bedford Bennett: They had to eat it this year.


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, as my right hon. friend says, they had to eat it this year. We went into Ontario and into Quebec, where we purchased the best cheese we could buy in the fall of the year and shipped it out to Saskatchewan, and we put an average of thirty pounds of cheese into each of these 74,000 homes in the drought area of Saskatchewan and Alberta. We did that, Mr. Speaker, not only to provide them with good food but as an advertisement for the good cheese which is produced in eastern Canada. So that bill might be in part charged up to advertising the merits of eastern Canada cheese.
I also remembered that in my early days in Ontario I used to go down to the corner grocery store and see those piles of dried cod looking very much like the snowshoes that are used to-day, and just about as hard and dry. I have never seen any of it in western Canada. We conceived the idea of taking some of this good food that will keep well out in the cold, dry climate of Saskatchewan and Alberta, and putting some of that in these homes. We put an average of forty-four pounds of this dried fish into each of these homes, and along with it we sent thirty

The Address-Mr. Taylor (Nanaimo)
different recipes showing how it could be prepared, knowing that many of the people there would never have seen it before. We considered that also good advertising for the products of the maritime provinces.
We found that in the province of Ontario, around the city of Toronto, some people had produced too many vegetables, and we went into those areas, bought these surplus vegetables and shipped them west. We did the same in areas around Winnipeg, and I want to add my word of appreciation to what the hon. member for Moose Jaw (Mr. Ross) who spoke earlier to-day, had to say. For every car we bought, people living around these areas sent three or four more cars as a gift to the people in the western drought area. Then we bought apples in Nova Scotia and in British Columbia and shipped them in. With some two thousand cars of all these supplies sent in to that area, by gift and purchase, containing beans, fish, cheese, vegetables and fruit, the people of that area had something in their pantries and their basements to draw upon when they were getting near the end of their vouchers for supplies, with the result that there have been fewer complaints coming out of that area this year than have come in any previous year. I might add that I do not think anyone in that area has been overfed as a result of these supplies being sent in. When you find 74.000 families in need of assistance- and with an average of five to a family that would be over 370,000 people-and when you give this assistance as well to those who otherwise would have gone on relief and to those who should have gone on but did not, these people I think will be feeling more kindly not only to governments as governments but also to the great mass of our people in other parts of Canada who made possible the sending in of these supplies.
In conclusion I would say, Mr. Speaker, that if we want to cure communism, which has been talked about; if we want to stop people dressing up in uniforms and holding up their right hand or their left hand-I do not know which it is-and saluting someone else; if we want to make people satisfied with the country in which they are living. I think this method of spending a little money in order to give satisfactions that are not otherwise possible for people who are going through great suffering is the best thing we can do, and the more of it is done the better it will be for our country and the better for those of us who come to this house.
51952-11^
I appreciate this extra time which the house has accorded to me to deal with this question, which is very near to the hearts of everybody in Canada.


Richard Bedford Bennett: Will the minister be good enough to table to-morrow the orders in council to which he referred, and would he indicate under what authority the wheat board purchased the seed grain, in view of the fact that the limitation is imposed that purchases shall be from the producers only? Second, he might indicate whether they bought wheat or futures.


James Garfield Gardiner: It was done not by way of purchase but by way of exchange of contracts held for the actual wheat.


Richard Bedford Bennett: That is what I wanted
to know.


Charles Avery Dunning: Retention, not purchase,


Mr. J. S. TAYLOR (Nanaimo):: Mr. Speaker, to avoid vain repetitions, it is not my purpose to make any major comments on the address in reply to the speech from the throne, but in the manner somewhat of an intellectual Autolycus, a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, I want to make some special references to things which I have noticed.
The Bank of Canada, the central bank of our country, authorized by the government to be the custodian and guardian of the people's currency, has recently issued the bilingual notes. Canada is already a fully established commercial country, and the fine arts and printing industry is definitely and well established here, and can be said, I think, to be second to none. The British American Bank Note Company is probably able to produce as excellent a bank note as any other bank note company in the world. Then why is it, Mr. Speaker, that in launching these notes in a public issue they should be of such a nature as to cause considerable distress and demand continuous acuteness of attention because of their faulty identification? Since coming to the house this session I have already from the cash desks of the house received change for a two-dollar tender instead of a five-dollar tender. True, the error was immediately corrected, but it indicates that there is something wrong with the currency when one is liable in the rapid handling of money to make such mistakes. I think greater care should have been taken in the production of these notes, not only as to their colour but as to their type, and I do hope that in any future printings these same mistakes will not be repeated.
164	COMMONS
The Address-Mr. Taylor (Nanaimo)
A great many people in this country, a great many more than we are disposed to think, are colour blind as to one or more colours, and when you have your five's and your one's so closely related in colour, green and blue, it is not at all unlikely that in certain coloured lights mistakes will be made. Not only that, but the backing of certain of the notes is very confusing alongside the old issue. I think if the matter is carefully considered by someone in the interests of the currency issue, we shall soon determine that something should be done.
Another thing, in somewhat happier vein. I desire very sincerely to congratulate the government and everybody more particularly connected with the stone carving which has been executed on the front porch or entrance of this stately building. More particularly do I feel satisfied and pleased that the supporters are symbolic. I remember when I left here last session learning that they would probably be, if not Atlantes, then typical of our historic past. The choice of the symbolic supporters for the shields is in my mind more permanently acceptable and I think will prove to be truer to the heraldic significance. Especially was I delighted to discover that the eastern escutcheon is left polished and uncharged. May I hope and have faith that that is left there so that our neighbour whose destinies lie in the isle so long ago discovered by the doughty Bristol rover John Cabot will recognize our quality as a nation and join us and blazon his charges on that waiting shield. Again, let me express pleasure in the treatment of the bosses around the stonework of the building, and with particular reference to the delicate idea which placed the initials of Edwardus Rex and the Roman numerals VIII on the boss immediately over the foundation stone of the Victory peace tower. These things are worth remembering while we are struggling with our political issues, because they represent to us sermons being carved in stones as well as in the hearts of our people.
But there is another matter of an entirely different nature to which I wish to refer. It is almost exactly two years ago since the hon. member for Nanaimo stood in his place to make his speech in somewhat similar case as to-night. In those exciting moments he definitely proclaimed and orientated the political parties in the house and declared, with W. S. Gilbert, that:
Every little boy and gal
That comes into this world alive Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative.
[Mr. .T. S. Taylor. 1
Nor was he nonplussed at the obvious question: Where, then, is the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation? Let me read just a few words from that speech, on page 181 of Hansard, February 13, 1936:
If the house is composed of Liberals and Conservatives, where does this puny group of seven orientate itself? The answer is really simpler than the question. For the first time in the history of this august parliament we have come to a truly foundational opposition by a coherent group; and we, sir, are that foundational opposition and that small group, the outgrowth of the long continued and persistent efforts of our respected leader. . . .We are the scientific students of economics which in this day and age of the downfall and portending holocaust of capitalism must discover to the world the personal advantages, the national security and the universal brotherhood which underlie as foundation stones the social structures and the social culture and advancement of the system of society called socialism.
Nor was he to know that within five months of that night he would be placed on suspension by that coherent group and thrown into line for complete expulsion in February of 1937. And so, sir, to be consistent and honest, I say with the deepest regret that in British Columbia at least the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation is not a coherent group, nor does it represent any longer a truly foundational opposition to the existing so-called capitalist parties. Tragically, there has been lost to the cause of the constitutional and transitional development towards socialism the greatest mass movement which Canadian politics has ever experienced. I am not talking in spleen or in personal antagonism when I state those facts. I have been too closely identified with the very commencement of the movement in British Columbia to be in doubt of what I say. But I declare with sorrow that the ambitions and machinations of dogmatic and doctrinaire Marxian socialists brought about control of the British Columbia party's convention in 1936 and left no resting or abiding place for the socialists of a liberal structure of mind who would otherwise, in the enthusiasm of their desires, have provided added strength and intelligence to the new and greatly promising party. Whatever my personal thoughts may be, I shall not here lay blame on any particular person or persons, but I have little admiration for the intelligences that could conceive of the possibility of dominating one structure of mind by another without giving it even the opportunity of expressing itself or voicing its discontent. Of course this brings me to the unequivocal statement that the Cooperative Commonwealth Fed-

The Address-Mr. Taylor (Nanaimo)
eration is losing ground in British Columbia and, I would say, in every other province where the same or similar conditions obtain.
It must be apparent, sir, that if I am correct, and there are two structures of political mind, the Liberal and the Conservative, then these must be present in the interpretation of socialism as well as of capitalism. And they are, but not in the manner of the man in the street, who classifies the parties in their approach to socialism as conservatives, liberals, radicals, modern socialists, doctrinaire socialists, communists. The facts are that in capitalism we have the conservative and the liberal; in socialism we have the modern socialist and the doctrinaire or Marxian socialist. The liberal and the modern socialist have similar structures of mind. The conservative and the doctrinaire socialist have similar structures of mind. And if we want any verification of that fact, the obvious statements made by the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bennett) and remarked upon by the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) will at least have some value in bearing me out.
It thus follows, and it can be proved by numerous examples, that the conservative turned socialist becomes a dogmatic and doctrinaire socialist, and, according to his cultural and ethical outlook, a potential communist. If I am correct, then it must be right to say that fascism is an excess in the cultural and ethical expression of capital conservatism, and evidences will doubtless considerably support me. Through all this, it will be observed, I give communism no place;
I give fascism no place in the intellectual structures of our political life. They represent excesses in the moral and ethical development of the conservative, just as unbridled freedom and licence, or, under other conditions, bureaucracy, might represent excesses in the moral and ethical field of liberalism. It matters not whether it be a big stick of wood or a big rod of steel, fascism or communism, it means excess and is to be condemned and despised as such.
Now always, the dogmatic doctrinaire Marxist is a pro-communist; and here lies the grave danger developing out of the separation of the elements in the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. Marx wrote the Communist 'Manifesto in German for the Germans in January, 1848, and Frederick Engels, who to my mind was very often his evil genius, made the following observations in January, 1888, in his introduction to Samuel Moores translation of the German Communist Manifesto published by Charles H.
Kerr and Company, of Chicago. With reference to the time when this was written, Engels says:
Whatever portion of the working class had become convinced of the insufficiency of mere political revolutions, and had proclaimed the necessity of a total social change, that portion, then, called itself Communist. It was a crude, rough-hewn, purely instinctive sort of Communism; still, it touched the cardinal point and was powerful enough amongst the working class to produce the Utopian Communism, in France, of Cabet, and in Germany, of Weitling. Thus, Socialism was, in 1847, a middle-class movement, Communism a working class movement. Socialism was, on the continent at least, "respectable"; Communism was the very opposite. And as our notion, from the very beginning, was that "the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself," there could be no doubt as to which of the two names we must take. Moreover, we have, ever since, been far from repudiating it.
Now let me read from the last few lines of the fourth part of the Communist Manifesto:
In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.
In all these movements they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.
Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the riding classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Working men of all countries, unite!
With such sentiments I will have no truck, nor will I blindly attach any adherence to them. Karl Marx I admire for his most excellent analysis of capital and capitalism

the capitalist economy of his day. His analyses were excellent, but his formulae for the most part leave me entirely unimpressed. Do I then fear the communists? No, save that they destroy everything and every organization to which they attach themselves. And they have attached and are attaching themselves with great assiduity and cunning to the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation.
Through sixteen years, from the meeting of the Third International in Moscow in 1919 until 1935, the Russian-directed communists throughout the world had attempted to foster and project internecine war in every country of the world. In June, 1935, when the International again met in Moscow at their seventh communist congress, they acknowledged having pursued the wrong tactics and declared that thenceforth they must penetrate all

The Address-Mr. Taylor (Nanaimo)
human, ethical, social and political organizations everywhere. And this the least observant individual is able to discover to-day. This was in June, 1935. By November, 1935, they were already able to boast of their successful general penetration of the Canadian Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, as perusal of the reports and speeches at the ninth plenum of the central committee of the communist party of Canada in November, 1935, will most abundantly demonstrate. Let me read three short extracts from this publication-and I choose three at random from probably a hundred throughout the book, wdiich it is extremely difficult to get hold of:
We Strive to Remove All Barriers.
On all of these things we have common ground with the C.C.F. How can we win the C.C.F. for common action on all of these issues? How can we open up every possible avenue towards unity of action and remove every possible barrier that stands in the way?
We declare that in the interests of unity of action we are prepared to affiliate to the C.C.F., retaining our freedom of independent action on the basis of genuine democracy and to sincerely work with all our strength to transform the C.C.F. into the broadest united front party, embracing all the trade unions and farmers' organizations and endeavouring to come to an agreement and understanding with the mass organizations of middle class people on the basis of a united front program of action for peace, for democratic rights and to ease the economic position of the masses by shifting the burdens of the crisis on to the shoulders of the ruling class.
Then again on page 50 I find the following:
Cadres Decide Everything.
Let me explain what is meant by " cadres." Three, four or five communists whose loyalty is not doubted are assigned to inter-penetrate an organization. By dint of great purpose of mind, by strict attention to their duties and by working together ultimately they secure positions on committees: possibly a secretariat; possibly a chairmanship; possibly a delegateship, and so on. They wait until all the men who are toilers have gone home, then push through resolutions in their own interests. It is not long before the organization so interpenetrated is directly controlled, with a lightly gloved hand, by the communists. Those are the cadres, and this is what is said:
The organizational commission that we have set up at this plenum is taking up the problem of cadres as the central key problem confronting the party to-day. At the seventh congress of the Communist International this question was placed before all the parties as the decisive key problem. Comrade Dimitroff stated:
" The problem of what should be the correct policy with regard to cadres is the most vital one of our parties as well as the Y. C. L's-

That is the Young Communist League.
-and all other organizations of the entire labour movement."
Comrade Dimitroff pointed out six basic considerations in respect to the problem of cadres: first of all, we must know our people. Secondly we must institute a proper systematic promotion of new cadres. Thirdly, we must use all of our people to the best advantage. Fourth, wre must properly distribute our cadres. Sixth, the party must care for the proper preservation and protection of its cadres.
In this connection may I state that one of the delegates to the 1936 national convention of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, coming from the Fraser valley, was an avowed communist. Again I quote from page 94, and this is the last quotation:
First of all, we want to make the Young Communist League an organization that will have in its ranks not only communists, but also young socialists and youth who are not as yet communists, even youth who may still be Christians,-
Let me emphasize those words, " even youth who may still be Christians."
-an organization which stands on a program of the defence of the economic and political needs of the young people, the cultural interests of the young people, that stands on a platform of struggle against fascism and war and for socialism, but such an organization will not necessarily take a position on soviet power. Such an organization does not fight for soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is the task of the communists inside such an organization to convince and educate the young people inside the organization to agree to accept such a position.
I offer no comment, but I do say, after the most mature consideration, that the development of emotional adherence to new political parties and the sway of emotional political adherents by sectional dogmatism, are suicidal errors in political life. Based on this I declare the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation party in Canada to be already doomed as a constitutional transitional movement to socialism. It already, too, definitely represents, in British Columbia at least, doctrinaire and dogmatic socialism of the Marx-Engels- Lenin-Stalin type. Though I greatly respect the high quality and purpose of every one of its representatives in the house, I fear they are doomed to find themselves compelled by the body of their procession to march in directions differing entirely from those indicated by the signposts of the Cooperative' Commonwealth Federation.
So it is that while still a socialist I declare that I am essentially of the liberal structure of mind, and while my election in 1935 constrains me to call myself an independent for the time being I recognize the weakness to the country and my people in the stand I am constrained to take. I definitely believe that

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there are many not only potential but essential socialists in the Liberal and Conservative ranks, and I believe it would be to the advantage of the country and its progress if the leaders of the old line parties would declare their readiness to embrace all proper to their particular structure of mind, no matter how their intelligence and purpose may desire constitutionally to vary the country's present economy and economic social system.
In closing, and because I still have an earnest message to deliver, I must advise the government that I intend to vote for the amendment, not essentially because of its contents but as a definite protest against the continuance of orthodoxy in the treatment of the staggering problems of the country to-day.


Mr. H. R. FLEMING (Humboldt):: Mr. Speaker, I shall not attempt to follow the hon. member for Nanaimo (Mr. Taylor) in his address in connection with the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and socialism.
In accordance with established custom and constitutional procedure the speech from the throne was presented by His Excellency the Governor General with the usual formalities that mark the opening of parliament. Its adoption was moved by the hon. member for Lotbiniere (Mr. Francoeur) and seconded by the hon. member for Renfrew North (Mr. Warren) in addresses that did credit to the occasion and to the house. The speech reviewed, as was its purpose, the situation that confronts the people of Canada to-day, and foreshadowed the more important issues in connection with which we may expect legislative action this session. It took due cognizance of the exceptional conditions under which the people of Canada are labouring at present and of the trying times through which we are passing. It sees problems that ordinarily would be national only in scope seriously complicated by world conditions and economic uncertainty, and it is to those more pressing of our problems that it directs our best efforts at this time.
Before proceeding with what to me, as a westerner, is a matter of paramount importance, I should like to pay tribute to the leader of the government (Mr. Mackenzie King), who represented us so ably and so creditably at the coronation ceremonies of their majesties last spring. All Canadians, regardless of party affiliations could not but feel a glow of pride in the fact that the senior member in the British Commonwealth of Nations was fortunate in having as its representative one so eminently fitted to fill such a difficult role. Tact and urbanity, the prime requisites in state functions, were not wanting in our distinguished Prime Minister
on that glorious occasion. Indeed, if the comment of the British press is any criterion, the Canadian Prime Minister deported himself with that dignity and diplomacy befitting the occasion.
To those of us who have followed his public career, and are familiar with his grasp of international affairs, it was not surprising to learn that he was able to enter so understandingly into the spirit of such an occasion, and favourably to impress all those who had so much at heart the success of that important event.
Bound together as we are, not only by ties of race and blood but by ties of common interest, the problem of every section of this great dominion becomes the problem of all. All our thoughts, all our hopes, all our inspirations and all our objectives were unified in that historic document which gave us national birth three-quarters of a century ago and which, throughout the years, has held us together in good report and in evil report, and has enabled us to discharge our national responsibility in a manner which has won the respect of the civilized world and commands the admiration of friend and foe alike.
When the supreme test came in the great war, it was through that test that Canada attained her majority and rose from beneath the wand of the Statute of Westminster to a proud place among the nations of the world. No true Canadian will raise issues which would divide section against section, or do anything to dim the lustre of that proud record. On the contrary. I am sure all with listen sympathetically and understandingly to each economic group as it pleads its case before the House of Commons. No section will discriminate against another on the ground alone of geographic location. Saskatchewan will listen to the maritimes as they present their fishing problem, to Ontario and Quebec as they debate their power issues, to British Columbia in her demands for better marketing conditions, and to Manitoba and Alberta as they offer a solution to the wheat problem. But all these provinces will in turn have to listen to Saskatchewan as she pleads in this, her hour of direst need, for that consideration which is due a people who gave with a lavish hand when they had it to give, and who come now as a member of that great Canadian family for temporary assistance, until the storm shall have passed.
She comes not as a stranger in quest of charity, but as an integral part of that great Canadian family, claiming the consideration which is due her. She stands upon her unquestioned right to temporary shelter within that home which she, by her pioneering spirit,
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has helped to rear. Discriminated against by transportation rates and tariff walls, under various federal administrations, she did not threaten secession, nor did she openly advocate the formation of any defensive alliances. On the contrary she relied on the goodwill and understanding of those sections of the dominion which had profited by the new market she had opened up to them.
It is upon that goodwill that she relies to-day, in her appeal for a permanent solution of her drought problem. I have studied the speech from the throne which was read in this chamber by you, Mr. Speaker, and in this memorable document one finds many commendable suggestions with respect to legislation which will be brought forward by parliamentary enactment for the betterment of the Canadian people. After careful perusal of that document I find the one problem which in my opinion is most urgent is dealt with in this manner:
The recurrence, in a more acute form, of drought conditions in certain areas of western Canada has unfortunately made it necessary to provide assistance on an unprecedented scale. The government intends to continue its activities under the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act.
Drought, Mr. Speaker, for some time has been considered a national responsibility, financially and administratively. The drought area covers many millions of acres of all types of land. About forty million acres are occupied and about twenty million acres of that are improved; that is, that land has been used for crops or pasture. About a quarter of the whole area is semi-arid. It was so described by LaVerendrye the explorer, when he crossed the plains in 1733, because it was referred to as the great treeless desert.
Thompson in his Narrative of Explorations in Western America stated:
The great plains may be said to be barren for great spaces, even, of coarse grass. . . . Even the rivers that flow through the plains do not seem to fertilize the ground adjacent to them.
Also, Macoun, in 1879, in his autobiography states at page 184:
There were at least 400 miles from Moose Jaw where there were no trees and scarcely a shrub. ... In 1879 I found a parched surface, dried and withered grass. ... In 1880 there were numbers of dried creeks on each line of travel. ... In 1894 the country was drying up, the lakes were disappearing, and many of the settlers were leaving the land. At this time nearly all the lakes and streams on the prairie had ceased to flow. We found the country everywhere dried up and the grass crisp and brittle. ... In all my explorations so far we found the country extremely dry.
However, the railway was built through this region and people swarmed in. The land

was taken up as homesteads. It was broken up and produced wonderful wheat crops. That land would produce bountiful crops again, if only we had sufficient moisture. Mr. George Avery who won first prize in the durum wheat class at the recent International Grain Show in Chicago makes this comment in the Regina Leader-Post:
Give us some moisture and we will have bumper crops. The people who say the west is "through" are mostly people who have not been here long. I have seen wet years and dry years; this is but one of the dry cycles. This year has been the driest I have ever seen.
I am sure all hon. members are interested in the problem and wish to help. If phople are thoroughly to understand the grave and ever increasing problem confronting Canada to-day, a well marshalled campaign must be waged. The editor of the Sunday Dispatch, London, did not make a rash statement when some time ago he wrote in his paper:
Whatever solution is attempted, the world will shortly watch one of the most romantic passages in the history of any people and see again demonstrated that refusal of British stock to be defeated by nature.
It might be worth our while carefully to examine the tragedy of the prairies, to estimate the cause of our troubles and perhaps to lay out some definite future course of action. When we ask the simple question as to what causes drought the simplest and most obvious answer is lack of rain. You may say that is elementary, but as a general answer it is perfectly correct. There is no evidence to show that the climate is changing. All meteorological records go to disprove that the west is growing drier as the years go by. Drought has been known in the west before. The claim is made that it runs in cycles, and that this is the longest cycle since Saskatchewan has been settled. The west is amazingly resilient. Its optimism is proverbial. "A good crop next year and all our troubles will be over" seems to be the thought. However it is difficult to be optimistic after seven or eight lean years, with all the accompanying reverses.
From the beginning of the development of western Canada in the early eighties the necessity and the possibility of irrigation were the subject of study. History has revealed that for centuries the prairies have been subject to recurrent periods of drought of varying intensity and duration and there is no reason to believe that in this respect history will not repeat itself in the future. Recently an expert was quoted as stating that the west will always be subject to drought periods. It would be only rational to expect that we should take advantage of our experience of

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the past eight years and provide for the storage of available waste water as far as it is possible by means of agricultural engineering. This must be done since "drought is going to be a permanent problem," in the judgment of a western farmer now prominently engaged in an effort to solve some of Alberta's problems.
The use of irrigation as an aid to the growth of vegetation is a very ancient art. The paintings and sculptures of ancient Egypt show that it was in use at least 4,000 years ago. There are irrigation works in southern India which were built by the Hindus and which antedate the Christian era. In many parts of the western hemisphere, notably in Peru and in the southwestern part of the United States, there are to be found the remains of ancient irrigation works which are evidently centuries older than any historical record. In some countries irrigation has arisen and disappeared with the civilization of which it formed a part. This is true of the irrigation works connected with the civilization in the western hemisphere. There are evidences of prehistoric irrigation in the Hawaiian islands.
More land was irrigated for the first time in the last half of the nineteenth century than in all preceding centuries. The increase in the world's population, the higher standards of living, the improvement in methods of transportation and the opening up of new markets are combining to bring about the reclamation of lands hitherto neglected and * to increase the productiveness of lands hitherto cultivated. Irrigation is one of the most potent factors in both directions. The area irrigated along the Nile has been doubled in the last fifty years. Four million acres were irrigated from government works in British India in 1850; twenty million acres in 1900. Although irrigation in Italy dates back to the Roman empire, the area irrigated has more than doubled since 1848. The most significant extension of irrigation, however, has been in newly settled countries. In Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, irrigation in recent years has been an important factor in agricultural production. Statistics for 1930 give a total area of 19,547,544 acres under irrigation in the United States, and this has been greatly increased during the last long drought cycle. As to the beneficial effects of irrigation, the Toronto Evening Telegram had this to say editorially on April 2, 1935, with regard to Lloyd barrage:
A country about the size of England, peopled by agriculturalists, but practically without rain, and dependent for its water supply on a single river-that is the province of Sind in
India. Under British rule the primitive canals have been greatly improved and extended, and now the province has the largest irrigation system in the world, with a dam about a mile in length, pierced by sixty-six sluice gate openings, and seven great canals, every one bigger than the Suez.
In 1769 India suffered from drought. A large percentage of the population received drought relief through voluntary contributions. This condition has been removed by means of irrigation. Irrigation systems were built extending from the Himalaya mountains through northern India covering twenty-five million acres. To-day because of irrigation engineering systems in the Nile and in the Ethiopian mountains the British engineers have made Egypt the most productive agricultural country in the world. Why should such a system not be feasible in western Canada? Mr. O. R. Galbraith, secretary of the Saskatchewan-Alberta Irrigation Association says of the situation in the west:
There is no doubt about the need for irrigation in western Canada, and there is no doubt about its feasibility. We have the Rocky mountains covering a breadth of over 200 miles in which are located thousands of lakes which drain themselves back into the Pacific ocean. No effort has ever been made to divert some of that water down over the prairies and fill the innumerable river beds and lakes now gone dry, to provide a greater head of water in the Saskatchewan rivers and by means of dams provide sources of power and irrigation projects throughout the drought stricken areas; whereas a number of such instances can be shown throughout the United States.
I am aware that this is a view which is not shared by the Saskatchewan Minister of Agriculture whose evidence before the Rowell commission in Regina on December 16 last was both interesting and illuminating. The Hon. Mr. Taggart is afraid that engineering difficulties are too great to be overcome. While I am prepared to concede that these difficulties are great, I am not willing to admit that they are insuperable. The old adage that necessity is the mother of invention is peculiarly applicable to Saskatchewan's drought problem. Assuredly the necessity is impelling enough to stimulate to action the best engineering skill the country has available. The drought situation in the dry areas of Nevada and California was a challenge that did not go unanswered. The wonderful engineering feats of to-day would in days past have been thought impossible. Will any one say that their necessity was greater than ours?
I refuse to admit defeat until the resources of our universities have been exhausted, until the whole problem has been thoroughly investigated, until every means that human
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genius can devise has been tried. I would respectfully suggest that a group of the best engineers on the continent be engaged to devise a scheme of irrigation that will effectively solve our drought question and that a supreme effort be made to implement their recommendations if the cost of the same be at all within the limits of our financial resources.
The very nature of wheat farming is production to the nth degree, it demands little and returns little to the soil. We find that after centuries these prairies are as fertile as when first formed and contain all the essentials necessary for growth-all they need is water. In this western country we have a soil that is far from being mined out; a soil that produces the finest type of wheat in the world; a country that deservedly bears the name of the bread basket of the world, a country that produces the best bread in the world; a country that year after year receives the prize for the best wheat grown in the world; a country that does not need any artificial fertilizers or the reinforcement of chemicals All that it needs is water, and water at the proper time. Why, therefore, should we hesitate to assist nature to overcome physical obstructions? Why not irrigate?
Statistics show the remarkable effect of irrigation on wheat yield. On a section of the Canadian Pacific railway a census of the yields obtained and the water used by a group of farmers shows that the average yield of wheat was 19i bushels per acre with an irrigation of four inches deep plus rainfall; with two four-inch irrigations, the yields were 30 to 35 bushels and with three four-inch irrigations the yields were as high as 43 bushels per acre. In this district the rainfall was 11-24 inches, of which 9-68 inches fell during the growing season.
Nature itself has created the necessity for irrigation in that portion of western Canada between the Rocky mountains in the west and the province of Ontario in the east, especially the western prairie section, where drought is more frequent than in the central and wooded areas. This region, which is characterized by scanty rainfall, is the northern terminus of a series of plateaux on the eastern side of the Rocky mountains which begins in Mexico, and includes much desert land there and in the southwestern part of the United States. It is frequently referred to as the Great Plains. That portion which is included in the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan contain from 40 to 50 million acres. Though arid or semi-arid, the soil contains all the elements necessary for the production of abundant crops-all that it requires is water and water at the proper time.
After the completion of the Canadian Pacific railway in the early eighties there was

an influx of settlers to the western prairies, and it was then that Canadian government officials and engineers became interested in the necessity of irrigation. In 1893 a bill was introduced in the dominion parliament dealing with irrigation. In that same year J. S. Dennis, Chief Inspector of Surveys, was commissioned to visit the United States for the purpose of studying and reporting on the irrigation laws of that country. It was upon his information that the Northwest Irrigation Act was passed by parliament on July 23, 1894. To quote from Mr. Dennis' report to the government in 1894;
The existing climatic conditions, and the necessity for irrigation, have been frequently referred to in the reports of dominion land surveyors employed in surveying this arid region into townships and sections, but it is probably due to the lengthy reports upon this subject and to the persistent advocacy of the principle by Mr. William Pearce, Superintendent of Mines, more than to any other cause, that the public has at last recognized the necessity for irrigation and the benefits to be secured therefrom.
The quantity of water required for irrigable lands depends primarily upon such climatic influences as rainfall, temperature, sunshine and evaporation, and to a less degree upon such factors as time and quantity of application, and the character of the soil and crops.
In the great drought areas of western Canada, there is abundant opportunity for the use of every known method of irrigation that has been tried in the world.
The impounding of flood waters is especially necessary to compensate for deficient rainfall.
The Canadian Pacific Railway Company constructed the largest irrigation project in Canada, extending along its main line between Calgary and Medicine Hat. When the railway was built, it received from the dominion government, as part of the consideration, a land grant of approximately 22,000,000 acres in what now forms the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. This land was to be given in alternate sections, twenty miles on each side of the main line, and it was stipulated that the company might reject any land not well adapted to agriculture, making up the deficiency elsewhere. The company exercised its right by refusing the land between Moose Jaw and Calgary, and in the final settlement it was agreed that the company should take about 3,000,000 acres in a block between Calgary and Medicine Hat and construct an irrigation system upon it. As an indication of its value we find that some farmers who paid $15 an acre for their land have earned enough to pay for it from the sale of one crop. Some of the wheat crops

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average from 40 to 56 bushels per acre, and the farmers are also growing clover and alfalfa, and are raising cattle and hogs.
The Deputy Minister of the Interior in 1894 appeared very skeptical as to the feasibility of irrigation as contained in Mr. Pearce's report, and commented, " It will be a long time before settlement will reach the class of country to which Mr. Pearce's suggestions relate." However, it was not long until irrigation was a practical issue, and the next forty years saw the development of irrigation in western Canada. Sixty-three projects are shown as being in operation in 1894, ranging in area irrigated from seven to twenty-five hundred acres.
The most extensive irrigation project in Canada is the system constructed by the Canadian Pacific Railway between Calgary and Medicine Hat. Irrigation development has not been so extensive in Saskatchewan as in Alberta, largely because of the absence of an adequate or readily accessible water supply. A large number of small schemes have been constructed in the southwestern part of this province, utilizing the run-off from the Cypress hills. They are mostly individual floodwater schemes, built at low cost in connection with ranching operations. Some of these date back to 1890 and earlier, but no accurate records seem to be available.
In 1935 irrigation was begun under the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act. This Act was passed after we had had five years of the most unprecedented drought. The government provided funds for rehabilitation and irrigation to the extent of three-quarters of a million dollars per year. The present Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner), under whose department this act is being administered. has done wonders with the increased amounts at his disposal. He has given his time and energy, under adverse financial handicaps, to help in reclamation. We must take a long range view and plan for the future if we are to save the prairies for future generations.
Miss Betty Hudson, writing in the Winnipeg Free Press, states:
Sixty million acres and the future of millions of people are at the mercy of dust, wind and drought (if we do not do something in the line of irrigation). Who will be bold enough to say that some day desert sands will not bury Regina and Medicine Hat as they have buried the cities of Asiatic and African civilization?
Under this program there is conservation of water, for both stock and irrigation purposes. Engineering and financial assistance has been given to individual farmers for
building dug-outs, stock watering dams and small irrigation schemes. Under the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act, irrigation projects have been undertaken in Saskatchewan at Valmarie and Eastend, and scores of smaller schemes are in operation.
Of the work accomplished so far and that now under construction by the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Commission, Mr. T. C. Main, assistant chief engineer for the Canadian National Railway, has this to say:
I have nothing but praise for what has been done, and I hope the good work will continue. My only complaint is that not enough is being done and not enough money is being made available to have any considerable effect on rehabilitation.
In his report to the Canadian National Railway, Mr. Main suggests that:
-a board of capable technical men be appointed to investigate the whole drought problem. Such men should be free from political or other influence so that their recommendations should not be guided by political expediency. They would be an advisory body, so parliament would not be bound to carry out their recommendations; on the other hand, as their advice would be public property, it is very likely that those in control would carry out the policies recommended by these experts if such policies were favoured by the public.
Mr. R. O. Sweezey, a prominent engineer in Montreal and a man of whose resourcefulness we have much evidence, has made the suggestion that the government should undertake a huge 8400,000,000 irrigation scheme. His plan is to build thousands of ditches throughout the millions of acres of the drought area. He estimates the cost of such a project to be less than two years' losses from drought conditions.
Mr. Sweezey writes:
The drought situation in western Canada is one which can be completely and effectively cured by the artificial diversion of water through irrigation ditches, captured from the streams which now flow mostly into the Arctic regions. The project is gigantic, but simple and entirely feasible, at a cost which is probably only less than two years' losses incurred by the present drought conditions. This is a matter of engineering opinion based on facts. It is regrettable that the authorities in Ottawa, through the several departments concerned, have not yet completely compiled those facts in such a manner as to formulate definite engineering conclusions. It is also unfortunate that the technical men of the various departments have in the past exhibited only defeatist opinions, and they would seem to have been overawed by the suggestion that a giant engineering undertaking for the handling of water would overcome the then growing menace which has since developed to such an appalling condition.
Mr. Sweezey also suggests that a commission be formed, consisting of technical men
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and men with commercial and agricultural knowledge, and that this commission should first ascertain the truth about drought in western Canada and the feasibility of irrigation.
The question is, are we going to adopt a program of small irrigation or are we going to adopt a larger project? Whichever scheme is decided upon, money will have to be expended from the federal treasury. Would it not be much more feasible to finance some irrigation project than to spend large sums of money maintaining thousands of families on direct relief? Our universities failed us in not studying the Palliser report and the drought cycles. Our Research Council failed us in not doing work along this line. If that had been done, we would have obtained some information and we might have at least prevented a national disaster.
The Toronto Globe and Mail in an editorial comment in connection with Mr. Sweezey's huge scheme, states:
There is no doubt about the extent of the calamity, and there can be no doubt that huge expenditures are justified if the climatic hazards of the semi-arid regions in the south, and even in the north, can be evaded by intelligent forethought. There are at stake the lives and futures of the people settled on the largest continuous tract of arable land in Canada. There is no question that much of this land which is of high fertility is destined from time to time to have all the aspects of desert country if plans are not developed for conserving for future use excess water when it is available.
Think of the difference between $350,000,000 annual production in the prairie provinces in the drought years and a total of $1,000,000,000 in such a year as 1928. Think of what an important part in that difference a crop of 150.000,000 bushels in a bad year like 1937 makes when compared with a crop of from 400 million to 600 million bushels such as western Canada has produced in years of abundant moisture.
There have been no irrigation projects of vast extent in the world which have not been criticized in advance and during their construction by people who say that the money is being wasted and that the results will be negligible. There is now too much history on the other side for that argument to hold. Large parts of the fertile districts of California would to-day be desert but for irrigation. Many of the huge sugar plantations of the Hawaiian Islands would be impossible without irrigation.
_ Some will say that there is not enough water in the south and north Saskatchewan and other rivers to irrigate the vast extent of land involved. Assertions of that kind from nontechnical sources did not deter Australia from embarking on huge projects though her rivers are fewer and the rainfall much less dependable than in western Canada.
In 1857, that great Irishman Captain Palliser, as mentioned before, was sent out by the British government and he reported that the great plains of Saskatchewan were unfavour-

able for agricultural development owing to the dryness and lack of moisture in the soil, but years afterwards these same plains became the most fertile and productive grain growing areas in the world. It may be that after years of deficient rainfall in the west, a change for the better may be expected, but can we leave things to chance?
Like a great many people, I was rather skeptical of the truth of statements made regarding the drought of southern Saskatchewan. and I decided to get the information first hand. So, accordingly, I travelled over eight hundred miles of the dried out area and found that conditions had not been exaggerated. I found that practically the whole area I visited was a blanket of Russian thistle of unbelievable growth and unbelievable thickness. I did not see one field that would yield more than three or four bushels to the acre excepting a few acres of oats that were irrigated at Yalmarie. In the extreme south cactus plants, which frequent only the extremely dry regions, were flourishing. Soil was drifting and in some places had buried fences and blocked the road allowance.
The drought, which has been continuous for eight years, has given westerners a very pessimistic outlook and they are beginning to fear that the west will not be able to stage a real comeback. If this proves to be the case, eastern Canada will suffer a permanent loss from the result of economic disaster in the west.
The Montreal Herald on December 21 last contained an editorial, " What the West Means to the East."
Lest we forget what western Canada means to eastern Canada, and what the harmonious union of both means to the continued existence of British North America as the home of a people free to go about their peaceful avocations with none to make them afraid, let us look at Canada as a whole for a few moments.
First, look at it in the light of the land-hungry nations. What would Germany or Italy not give to gain possesion of the three prairie provinces of Canada. Provinces which not only constitute one of the choicest agricultural territories in the world, but are richly endowed in metals, coal and oil?
Now let us look at the history of these provinces.
In the first decade of this century the filling up of the west by agricultural settlement exerted a profound influence on the general development of the dominion. Vast amounts of capital were attracted to Canada for the construction of transportation and other facilities and the building up of such cities as Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary and Edmonton.
Where was this money spent? Largely in the east for materials-for the steel and rolling

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stock for the railways, for agricultural implements for the new farms, home furnishings and clothing.
This activity laid the foundation for an era of factory building that contributed greatly to the growth of population and prosperity in the eastern provinces.
What built the Angus shops in the east end of Montreal and contributed much to the activity of the Point St. Charles shops in the west end?
The trade of the western provinces.
What built up the grain ports of Fort William and Port Arthur, and made Montreal one of the world's greatest seaports?
The grain trade of the western provinces.
What for years has been the biggest single factor in our export trade?
The western wheat crop.
What has given the greatest amount of employment to men engaged in the inland and ocean shipping and railways centering upon Montreal ?
The western wheat crop.
What single product has brought more ready cash than anything else into this country to be spent on the products of industrial Quebec and Ontario ?
The grain crops of the western provinces.
Italy would love to include the western provinces in the Roman empire. Germany would revel in their possessions.
And, coming nearer home, there is a general feeling in the west that the United States would be ready to assume all the obligations of the prairie provinces in return for the privilege of making them the 49th state of the Union.
Yet here in eastern Canada are some who are talking as though the western provinces were a liability instead of an asset-some who would grudge generous help to these provinces to tide them over the troubles caused by a depression that hit these provinces harder than any other part of the dominion.


Walter Edward Foster: Order. The hon. member has already occupied forty minutes.


Ernest Lapointe: Go ahead.


Walter Edward Foster: With the consent of the house.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Yes.


Harry Raymond Fleming: Fortunately, there is still hope for the great plains of the west if engineering science is to be relied upon, and there is reason to believe that these years, so full of disappointment and misery, are passing into history, and a more cheerful story is about to unfold.
The rumblings which our demands in the west have produced in the east, the repercussions this question has already produced among men in positions of responsibility, would indicate that this matter unless faced in a spirit of goodwill and understanding might easily have serious constitutional consequences.
Saskatchewan is grateful for the assistance which has been given her by sympathizers from one end of the dominion to the other. Too much cannot be said for the kindness
and the generosity of the various welfare organizations that sent clothing and food in such quantities to the people of the stricken areas. The work of the government in the matter of relief has been splendid and Saskatchewan has no complaint to offer in that respect.
Her fear, however, is that her sister provinces and the people of the country as a whole are not sufficiently impressed with the necessity for a permanent solution of her drought problem. It is the conviction of the people of Saskatchewan that this is a national issue and one which should be faced and permanently disposed of.
The whole issue, as hon. members can see, is fraught with danger to the integrity of the nation and with peril to her economic future. Magnificent in the days of her prosperity. she is not cast down in the days of her adversity. The potentialities which were hers when she entered confederation over thirty years ago are hers to-day.
The spirit in which she was conceived is the spirit which has kept her unerringly on her course ever since.
Solve the problem permanently; reclaim her drought areas through a comprehensive program of irrigation, and Saskatchewan will return to the economic fold, in a manner that will restore the confidence she inspired, and once again we shall be able to say:
These are the gardens of the desert, these the unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, for which the speech of England has no name, -the prairies.
On motion of Mr. Lapointe (Quebec East) the debate was adjourned.


[Stage Direction]
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
Friday, February 4, 1938