1939-05-08

Mr. SPEAKER:: I have the honour to inform the house that I have received the following message:
Ottawa, May 3, 1939.
Sir:
I am commanded by the governor general to inform you that His Majesty the King will proceed to the Senate chamber on Friday the 19th of May at three p.m. for the purpose of proroguing the present session of parliament, or alternatively, to give the royal assent to certain bills.
I have the honour to be, sir,
Your obedient servant,
A. S. Redfem,
Secreta.ry to the Governor General. COPYRIGHT ACT



ROYALTY PAYABLE ON PHONOGRAPH RECORDS, ROLLS AND OTHER CONTRIVANCES

[Stage Direction]
Mr. E. J. WERMENLINGER (Verdun) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 133 to amend the Copyright Act.

He said: The purpose of this bill is to repeal subsection 2 of section 19 of the Copyright Act, chapter 32, revised statutes of Canada, 1927, which reads thus:
The royalty as aforesaid shall be two cents for each playing surface of each such record and two cents for each such perforated roll or other contrivance.
And to substitute therefor the following:
The royalty as aforesaid shall be five per centum on the ordinary retail selling price of the record. Provided that the royalty payable in respect of a record shall be not less than one cent and not more than two cents for each playing surface and the royalty shall be two cents for each such perforated roll or other contrivance.
When the Copyright Act was passed in 1921 the popular price of phonograph records was ninety cents. Five per cent royalty on the retail price would have been 4J cents, but it was decided at the time to follow the custom of the United States and make a flat rate of two cents per playing surface. Since 1921, however, and especially during the last ten years, records of cheaper quality retailing at 39 cents have been manufactured having both educational and entertainment value. A royalty of four cents on such records would be too expensive to justify any longer their manufacture. This is merely to follow the English custom.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.

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

Mr. BLACKMORE:: 1* What is the total of moneys granted as subsidies to the lines comprising the Canadian National Railways by the dominion, provincial and municipal authorities:	(a) prior to the
formation of the Canadian National Railways, and (b) since its formation?
2.	What is the estimated cost of the Montreal Canadian National Railways terminals?


Mr. HOWE:: 1.	Cash subsidies paid by the dominion to the Canadian National Railways, as reflected in appendix No. 28 B, pages 115 to 120 public accounts 1938, amount to $44,179,077.92. The amount applicable to the period since 1921 is a refund to the dominion of $1,521.82. Cash subsidies paid by provincial and municipal authorities, as reflected in pamphlet published by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics entitled "Canadian National Railways 19231937" are as follows: Provincial, $16,698,208; Municipal, $7,393,867. The amounts of pro-

Questions
vincial and municipal subsidies paid since 1921 are as under: Provincial, $250,000; Municipal, $280,563.56.
2.	To December 31, 1938, $16,651,345. The substantially modified terminal plan now contemplates an additional expenditure of $12.600.000. which will provide the company with modern central station facilities.


TORONTO POST OFFICE-COLLECTIONS FROM STREET LETTER BOXES
Mr. WALSH:: 1.	Is H. W. Bacon, or are H. W. Bacon and Sons, the collectors from the street letter boxes and sub-post offices in Toronto?
2.	If so, on what date did the contract become effective?
3.	What sum has been paid to H. W. Bacon, or H. W. Bacon and Sons, from February 15, 1938, to February 15, 1939?


Mr. McLARTY:: 1.	H. W. Bacon is contractor.
2.	15th February, 1938.
3.	From 15th February, 1938, to 14th February, 1939, inclusive, $91,900 for contract work, plus $820.33 for extra vehicular service during Christmas season, 1938.


PRODUCTION OF GRADED CHEESE
Mr. CASSELMAN:: 1.	What quantity of cheese grading 94 score was produced in Canada in the year 1938?
2.	What quantity of cheese grading 93 score was produced in Canada in the year 1938?
3.	What quantity of cheese grading 92 score was produced in Canada in the year 1938.
4.	What quantity of cheese grading less than 92 was produced in Canada in the year 1938.


Mr. GARDINER:: 1.	23,363 boxes.
2.	414,479 boxes.
3.	692,090 boxes.
4.	98,849 boxes.


Mr. CASSELMAN:: 1.	What quantity of cheese grading 94 score was produced in Grenville-Dundas county in the year 1938?
2.	What quantity of cheese grading 93 score was produced in Grenville-Dundas county in the year 1938?
3.	What quantity of cheese grading 92 score was produced in Grenville-Dundas county in the year 1938?
4.	What quantity of cheese grading less than 92 was produced in Grenville-Dundas county in the year 1938?


Mr. GARDINER:: 1.	Grenville, 369 boxes; Dundas, 203 boxes.
2.	Grenville, 9,199 boxes; Dundas, 23,612 boxes.
3.	Grenville, 13,567 boxes; Dundas, 30,417 boxes.
4.	Grenville, 1.511 boxes; Dundas 3,793 boxes.


DRESSED BABY BEEF-EXPORTS TO ENGLAND
Mr. SENN:: 1.	How many hundredweight of dressed baby beef have been shipped to England in each of the last three fiscal years?
2.	Has any assistance been given by the government to exporters or others engaged in the business of shipping beef to England?
3.	If so, what was the nature of such assistance?
4.	How much did such assistance cost the dominion government?


Mr. GARDINER:: 1.	Fiscal year, 1936-37, nil; fiscal year, 1937-38, nil; fiscal year, 1938-39, 358.607 lbs. or 3,586-07 cwt.
2.	Yes, to packing companies cooperating in making experimental shipments of beef in fiscal year 1938-39.
3.	The government paid the packing companies cooperating in the experiment, and who gave their services and facilities at cost, the difference between the cost of the beef, c.i.f. London, and the price realized on Smithfield market, London. England.
4.	$23,636.87, in fiscal year 1938-39.


BIG BRAS D OR, N.S., POSTAL SERVICES
Mr. BROOKS:: 1.	Who is the postmaster at Big Bras d'Or, Nova Scotia?
2.	When was he appointed?
3.	Is it proposed to establish a rural route at Big Bras d'or?
4.	If so, what are the reasons for the institution of this service?
5.	Has any survey been made to determine
whether a majority of the citizens desire this service?	.
6.	If so, what proportion of the citizens have expressed such desire?


Mr. McLARTY:: 1.	N. G. Morrison.
2.	8th July, 1937.
3 and 4. Question of establishing a rural mail service in vicinity of Big Bras d'Or under consideration following receipt of petition for same.
Authorization of such service depends on applications for boxes from at least 50 per cent of the eligible residents.
5 and 6. The matter is at present under investigation.


H. S. ARKELL
Mr. McGREGOR:: 1.	Is Mr. H. S. Arkell in the employ of the dominion government?
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2.	If so, in what capacity, and what was paid to him by way of salary and expenses during each of the years 1936, 1937, 1938, and to date in 1939?


Mr. GARDINER:: 1.	Not at present.
2.	1935-36-nil.
1936-	37-special investigator in agricultural marketing. Salary, $1,203.76; expenses, $314.90.
1937-	38-special representative of Department of Agriculture to investigate the marketing of Canadian potatoes and other agricultural products in South American countries. Salary, $5,666.67; expenses, $5,148.53.
1938-	39-special representative of Department of Agriculture to United Kingdom to arrange for the establishment of the agricultural commissioner's office in London, England, and to investigate marketing conditions. Salary, $6,000.00; expenses, $4,071.50.


CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAYS-PURCHASING AGENTS
Mr. FRANCOEUR:: 1.	What are the Christian names and name or the vice-president of the purchasing department of the Canadian National Railways at the head office in Montreal?
2.	What are the Christian names and name of the general purchasing agent of ties and timber who is at the same time an official of the Canadian National Railways purchasing department?
3.	What are the Christian names, names and residences of the purchasing agents in the province of Quebec under the purchasing department whose general offices are in Montreal?
4.	Are these agents on salary or commission, and in either case, what salary or commission is paid to them?


Mr. HOWE:: [DOT]
1.	Robert Charles Vaughan.
2.	Walter Edgar Evans.
3.	There are no purchasing agents in the province of Quebec, but there is a general purchasing agent in Montreal, whose name is David McKechnie Ford.
4.	All of those named are salaried officers of the company, and are not paid commissions. Information as to amount of salaries paid concerns a detail of railway operation which the management does not consider of public interest.


CANADIAN FARM LOAN BOARD
Mr. McKENZIE (Lambton-Kent):: 
Mr. DUNNING:: The following reply is furnished by the Canadian Farm Loan Board-
1.	1929.
2.	British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
3.	British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.
4.	5, 6. Loans granted and loans disbursed by provinces and total loans disbursed to farmers from inception of operations in 1929 to March 31, 1939:
	Loans granted		Loans
Province	No.	Amount	disbursed
British Columbia	885 $ 2,171,350 $ 2,137.640		
Alberta	3.828	7,629,400	7,543,194Saskatchewan.. .	3.067	6,780,475	6,608,652Manitoba	2,163	4.777,490	4,694,370Ontario	1,956	4.020,500	3,840,381Quebec	5,325	11,070,125	10.742,239.New Brunswick..	734	1,062,650	1.052,886Nova Scotia.. ..	804	1.265,050	1,240,442P E. Island.. ..	481	807.500	767,45819,243 $39,584,540	$38,627,262
Included in the $39,584,540, of approved loans is the sum of $4,022,850, advanced to 7,136 borrowers by way of second mortgage.
7.	Loans disbursed April 1, 1938, to March 31, 1939, $4,338,857.
8.	Amount of arrears interest and principal as at March 31, 1939, $1,807,256.
9.	Amount of interest in arrears as at March 31. 1939, which was over six months in arrears, $339,877.
10.	Amount collected on instalments year ended March 31, 1938, $1,952,758.
11.	Amount collected on instalments year ended March 31, 1939, $2,412,615.

Prairie Farm Assistance


STEWIACKE, N.S., PUBLIC BUILDING
Mr. PURDY:: 1.	What was the total cost, including equipment, of the public building recently erected at Stewiacke, Nova Scotia?
2.	To whom was this amount paid, and for what purpose?


Mr. CARDIN:: 1.	$18,213.59 (including site purchased in 1914).
2.	L. Taylor, site, $1,500; A. J. Campbell, legal services, $26.55; Morrison & Parker, survey of site, $105; Advertising for tenders in sundry newspapers, $151.74; W. R. Brenton, Clerk of Works, $713.71; Fundy Construction Co. Ltd., erection of building, $13,403.09; Robert Mitchell, letter boxes, $735; Ruben-stein Bros., brass plates, $160; Lemeline & Lacroix, interior fittings, $778.50; G. E. Mack, installation of clock system, $640.


MONET COMMUNITY PASTURE
Mr. COLDWELL:: 1.	How many miles of fence enclose Monet community pasture ?
2.	What was the cost of erecting this fence?


Mr. GARDINER:: 1.	Mileage when pasture is completed, 534 miles; mileage constructed to date, 414 miles.
2.	Cost to date, $378.88 per mile.


QUESTION PASSED AS ORDER FOR RETURN
Mr. McGREGOR:: 1.	Is Mr. Huntley Sinclair in the employ of the dominion government?
2.	If so, in what capacity, and what was paid to him by way of salary and expenses during each of the years 1936, 1937, 1938, and up to date in 1939?


MOTION FOR PAPERS
[Stage Direction]
Mr. HfiON:
For a return showing names of all the workmen, salaries received by each and the dates of their employment by the Department of Public Works on the deepening of the Beauport river, in the county of Quebec-Montmorency; also for the cleaning and deepening of the said river; also for the protection works on the river, for each of the years 1936, 1937 and 1938.

[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from Saturday, May 6, consideration of the motion of Mr. Gardiner for the second reading of Bill No. 83, to assist agriculture in the prairie provinces.
Mr. M. J. COLDWELL (Rosetown-Big-gar):: When the house rose Saturday evening we ivere discussing the basis upon which we thought the amount set as the initial payment on western wheat had been fixed. At that time I was saying that in my opinion the adoption of the large mechanized farm as more or less the basis of the argument conveyed an entirely wrong impression to this house. The records show that out of some
295.000	farms in western Canada only some
20.000	include more than one section. If all these were located in the superior soils area- and they are not-they would amount to less than seven per cent of the farms of Saskatchewan. Let me remind the house that Professor Hope said that not more than one per cent of the farms fell into this category.
In my opinion to emphasize these farms as the basis of the argument for the comparatively low initial price is to render a distinct disservice to the western farmer and to the entire dominion. What of the remaining farms? I have gone to some little trouble this week-end in looking up some of the records, in order to find out exactly what were the conclusions at which Professor Hope and Professor Allen arrived in a series of bulletins which were issued by the department of farm management of the university of Saskatchewan. Professor Hope said that on the mixed texture type of soil, which the university terms average prairie, the cost of producing a bushel of wheat is 71 cents on the half-section and 50 cents on the section, with no allowance for debt charges. If these were added, according to bulletin No. 64 the farm cost would be 91 cents and 70 cents respectively. These texture soils include the area adjacent to Swift Current, a part near Weyburn and another part near Wilkie. Professor Hope next took the silty loams, of which the Gravelbourg area is typical, the brown soils zone. The yield here over the period investigated was a little lower, 13 bushels to the acre as against 13-6, and the farm cost on a half section is 70 cents and on a section 50 cents, with no charge for debt, which, if added, would give a farm cost of 99 cents
Prairie Farm Assistance

on the half section and 79 cents on the section. May I remark that two-thirds of the cultivated area of Saskatchewan, according to Professor Hope, falls into these classifications; but when we were discussing this matter the other day the minister used about one per cent of the farms of Saskatchewan as the basis for his statement that wheat could be produced at from 30 to 40 cents with an average crop of 20 bushels to the acre.
Now let us turn-because we have to do this-to the other returns that may be expected from the farms in these areas, and again I quote the bulletin. This bulletin gives the additional income from farm products, which would be only slightly more if you allowed something earned for threshing and so on, as S119 yearly on average prairie, on a half-section, and on fair prairie an additional average income of something less than $100, also on a half-section. One other thing should be said, that with an average farm price of 77 cents for No. 2 northern the half-section farm in the area southeast of Wilkie and northeast of Weybura, which is the average prairie, could retire a maximum debt of $482 in twenty years, amortized at six per cent; and included in that calculation are returns from live stock and other farm sales. In the district comprising the Gravelbourg, Rich-mound and Golden Prairie areas, fair prairie, according to the same bulletin, with an average farm price of 77 cents per bushel for No. 2 northern the annual cash income from all sources would be $4, and thus no debt could be amortized. Of course I am now quoting not my own opinion but the statement contained in bulletin No. 64, and Professor Hope emphasized at the Bracken conference that these soils are typical of two-thirds of the cultivated area of Saskatchewan.
Hon. members will understand why we say that the bills now before the house reduce a large percentage of western farmers to the level of the European peasantry and are ineffective to meet the situation confronting the country not only now but possibly in the immediate future. I have used the halfsection farm as an illustration because the minister says he wants to encourage the smaller rather than the larger units; but the story for the larger farms, that is the section farms, on this type of soil, is not very much more encouraging. With an average farm price of 77 cents for No. 2 northern wheat the net farm income on fair prairie would be $859 a year, sufficient to amortize a debt of $9,852 at six per cent in twenty years, or an average of $15.39 an acre. In the average prairie [Mr. Coldwell.J
section, at the same rate per bushel, 77 cents for No. 2 northern on the farm, the section would yield a net yearly income of $703, sufficient to amortize $8,086 at six per cent in twenty years, or $12.63 per acre. Again I would emphasize this:	Seventy-seven cents
for No. 2 northern, of which I have been speaking, is the farm price, which would require, therefore, approximately $1 per bushel for No. 1 northern at Fort William.
We begin now to understand perhaps what Professor Hope had in mind when he said at the western conference last December:
Conservatively it would require with average yields of average grades (not No. 1) a farm price of about 90 cents, with coarse grains in proportion to maintain a reasonable standard of living and service the debt on western farms. It would require somewhat more than this to restore farming community to the condition of 1931.
Therefore to quote Professor Hope as the authority for the statement that wheat can be produced for from 30 to 40 cents per bushel is in my opinion to convey the wrong impression of what Professor Hope actually meant.
In my opinion western Canada faces the greatest crisis in her history. The policy elaborated by the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) will reduce western grain growers to the subsistence level of European peasants. What was the real basis for the adoption of the initial price of 70 cents per bushel at Fort William which is, I repeat about 47 cents on the farm, having in view the experience of last year? The minister said on April 5 that if he were asked how they arrived at 60 cents he would say that in only two years out of the last forty-nine for which we have records has wheat been below 60 cents on an average at Fort William throughout the year. In one of those years it was only one-fifth of a cent below. He remarked he had read in the debates of 1935, in a speech of the then leader of the government, the Right Hon. R. B. Bennett, that up to that time in only ' one year out of 400 had that been the case. He had cheeked for himself the last forty-nine years and he found there were only two years during that period in which the average price at Fort William was below 60 cents. In one of those years it was 59-8 cents and in the other it was 54 cents and a fraction. Those were the years of 1932 and 1933.
The minister went on to add:
We therefore, think that the government is taking little, if any, risk in a scheme of this kind, as far as the 60 cent advance is concerned.

Prairie Farm Assistance
Nor, may I add, does the 70 cents mean anything really worth while to the western farmer. The other evening the minister delivered what was in many respects an excellent speech, and a good outline. But as I sat and listened to him I felt he was really arguing for a set price very much higher than the initial price mentioned in the bill. I am quite sure most hon. members in the house overlooked one salient feature of what he was doing in those bills, namely not improving the situation for the western farmer but, in many instances, actually reducing the benefits and lowering the government's obligations under the acreage bonus plan. In other words, the original intention of the 60 cent price for No. 1 at Fort William was to set it at the lowest level to which wheat had fallen in 398 out of 400 years.
And now the outcry against.this policy in western Canada which, may I add, is just as loud to-day against the new figure as it was against the old, has caused the government to increase the initial payment by ten cents per bushel. The minister must know, as do other hon. members, that it is not unlikely that the initial price of 70 cents at Fort William may be the maximum price. For in July next there will be a world surplus of at least 1,150,000,000 bushels. Of course all kinds of things may happen between now and the end of July to change that picture; but we have to consider the situation as it presents itself to-day. If we reap, or if there appears to be the chance of reaping, a moderately good crop in Canada and in the spring wheat areas of the United States, then I think the initial price will indeed also be the maximum price.
I object to this policy very largely because it does not guarantee what the farmers of western Canada have been asking for years, namely, the establishment of a national system of marketing under producers' control. It is true that we could not expect that from the government. The Liberal party was opposed to the permanent policy of marketing wheat through a wheat board and guaranteeing an adequate minimum price. Apparently the Liberal party still believes that we can rely upon the operation of the law of supply and demand, which to-day in a world of realities no longer operates over a very wide field. This was emphasized by the minister himself when he was discussing the question of storage, and was not discussing precisely the matter about which I am speaking at the moment. Speaking about storage he indicated that he
pinned his faith, in the final analysis, to the law of supply and demand. At page 2622 of Hansard he is reported to have said:
When there is an open market, the companies which have the wheat in store in Canada are anxious to dispose of it at a reasonable price and thus save carrying charges. That is, once they have taken delivery of wheat and have it in their storage facilities, they are naturally anxious to sell it at a price which will get them out of the transaction. Therefore, they become active agencies to sell the wheat.
It seemed to me when I heard those words that they indicated that the minister relied rather upon the buyer to set a price than upon the seller. And to my mind, in a world such as we live in to-day, that is bound to have disastrous results to unorganized groups of producers like our western farmers. If we contemplate the marketing of wheat in this manner in the future, I submit we are in for a period of very low prices.
In defence of this the minister said wheat was not a luxury food, and that it must be eaten in considerable quantities by working people, if it is being consumed at all. It must therefore be available at competitive prices. While that is true when I pick up, for example, the report of the speech delivered before the empire marketing conference held at Sydney last year by a gentleman who is now the Minister of Agriculture in Great Britain, I see very clearly that he and others present at that conference are fully aware of the disastrous consequences a philosophy of that kind can bring.
In other words, it seems to me, the minister believes that the western farmer must sell his wheat at the price offered him. No other country takes that attitude.
It seems to me the government of Canada is about to force upon the prairie farmer a policy of despair. And moreover, the minister himself condemned his own government's proposal on Friday last when at page 3644 of Hansard he is reported to have said:
. . . for the last thirty years the farmer of western Canada has had an average price of 95 cents a bushel for No. 1 northern at his farm.
If with an average price of some $1.15 per bushel at Fort William for over thirty years- for that is what a farm price of 95 cents means-the western farmer finds himself in a poverty-stricken condition, what will a price of 48 cents per bushel less do for him over a period of time? Shall I say that it would reduce him to a lower level than the subsistence level of the European peasant? Therefore, this house can see why we from western Canada now contend that an initial price of 80 cents per bushel for No. 1 northern at Fort William is the irreducible
Prairie Farm Assistance

minimum the west can accept even in this emergency. Anything else, even if accompanied by a crop failure bill, will be ruinous to the wheat industry of western Canada.
Some of the western papers are stating that the 70 cent price represents a compromise. A compromise between whom? Having watched the various conferences that have been called to discuss and deal with this situation, I came to the conclusion that a compromise had been reached at 80 cents. Most of the farmers were asking from 90 cents to $1.15 as an adequate guaranteed price. When the price of 80 cents was suggested, it was considered the lowest price upon which the industry could operate. May ' I remark also, as I did on Saturday, that it is entirely wrong to believe that the farmer has no right to figure the interest on his investment and on his debt, the depreciation on his machinery and so on, as legitimate costs of production.


Mr. GARDINER:: I am sure my hon. friend does not want to misquote me. I did not say he had no right to charge interest as a part of his cost of production.


Major James William Coldwell: I did not quote the minister to that effect. If I did, I am glad to be corrected. What I meant was this: When the minister referred to 30 to 40 cents as being the cost of putting in and taking off the crop and went on to say what he did, he gave the impression to this house that wheat can be produced for 30 to 40 cents per bushel. He objected to figuring in the debt, and I contend that if we are going to consider the cost of production in this house in relation to these bills, we ought to include depreciation, return on capital invested, and such other legitimate costs as any normal business would include. If that were done I submit that it would be only right to say-


James Garfield Gardiner: If the hon. member is going to figure all that into the cost, then he should include all returns from the farm, not only the return from wheat.


Major James William Coldwell: That is exactly what I did earlier this afternoon. I referred to bulletin No. 64, as the minister will remember. Professor Hope gave the return that might be expected from other products on a halfsection farm in the average prairie district as some $119. In the other areas mentioned it was slightly less than $100. I was thinking of that all the way through. While $100 or $120 is an important matter to a farmer under these conditions, it would not affect very materially the position we are taking, I say that no other business would be expected to compute its

costs of production upon that basis. Certainly not the implement companies, which were investigated by this house a couple of years ago; certainly not the Canadian National Railways; certainly not the Bank of Canada, whose governor we have been examining lately; certainly not Sir Herbert Holt or Sir Charles Gordon of the textile industry, and certainly not any other industry in Canada.
The minister said that the Saskatchewan government brief to the Rowell commission would prove his statement that wheat could be produced upon the basis he represented- I shall put it that way-of from 30 to 40 cents per bushel. The minister has the brief before him, and he will find on page 177 that Doctor Mackintosh bases his estimate on the bulletins of the farm management department of the university of Saskatchewan. He stated that for the period 1921 to 1930 the cash cost of growing wheat in Saskatchewan, for an average yield of 16-7 bushels, was not far from $9.81. Doctor Mackintosh was quoted the other day by the minister.


James Garfield Gardiner: Read the next sentence.


Mr. STEVENS:: $9.81 for what?


Major James William Coldwell: $9.81 per acre. I may say that this period referred to was the period of highest production in Saskatchewan history. On this basis, the average cost per bushel on all farms in the province works out at about 58-7 cents. Where is the justification for the other statement? Where can the government find justification for that?


James Garfield Gardiner: The justification is in the next sentence and in the second paragraph on the next page.


Major James William Coldwell: Will the minister read that?


James Garfield Gardiner: The next sentence reads:
In 1933, Dr. William Allen, after intensive surveys in many areas, estimated that $6.80 per acre was necessary to clear minimum expenses without interest on debt.
That is the exact figure I quoted.


Major James William Coldwell: Without interest on debt.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is exactly what I stated.


Major James William Coldwell: Should one suggest that in western Canada the farmer must go into wholesale repudiation of his debts?


James Garfield Gardiner: We were not discussing that.

Prairie Farm Assistance


Mr. COLD WELL:: As a matter of fact one province is being criticized and penalized to some extent because it has brought about a drastic reduction of debt in the province. I have stated already that Professor Hope says that on a farm of two sections or more, with superior soil and equipped with the latest type of machinery, wheat can be produced for 34 cents per bushel, neglecting debt and interest. But this would apply to only one per cent of the farms of Saskatchewan, according to Professor Hope in the same statement. I contend that to discuss this matter on the basis of large farms with superior soil is entirely wrong.
If these proposals regarding initial price are approved by this house it will mean that the farmer will continue to do what he has long done-work from daylight to dark with the unpaid labour of his wife and family to have the privilege of producing wheat at an average loss of 43 cents per bushel on the average farm with average soil and under average conditions. If this initial farm price of 47 cents should prove to be the maximum price, as I suspect it will, with a cost of production of 90 cents per bushel as given by Professor Hope, there would be a loss to the farmer of 43 cents per bushel. The minister said that he was opposed to a permanent policy of marketing through a wheat board and guaranteeing an adequate minimum price to the producer. In that he is at entire variance with us in fundamental thinking. I believe with world conditions such as they are, with international cartels and monopolies in a position to set prices irrespective of demand in the areas they serve-a demand which comes largely from the individual producer of commodities like wheat-the time has come, if these organizations are to be allowed to operate as they have been operating, when we must protect the worker by providing a minimum wage, and we must provide a minimum return to the farmer by adopting minimum and guaranteed prices that will be adequate to meet his cost of operation. I know that is a fundamental difference in thinking. When the original wheat bill was before the house Colonel J. L. Ralston, speaking in the house on the wheat board legislation, noted that it provided for a minimum guaranteed price, and that such was an emergency policy. Indeed he quoted Mr. Bennett as saying that it was not a permanent policy, and that even while it was in force it was subject to the government of the day. Upon that statement the government has, it seems to me, set aside a statute of parliament.
During the campaign of 1935, western Liberals stated that they supported the wheat
board, and some of them at least appealed to the electors on a policy of adequate prices for farm products, and that is why many of them are here to-day. It seems to me that in this debate members who represent western prairie wheat-growing constituencies ought to stand in their places in this house and express the opinions they hold regarding these matters and their opinions on these bills. It is no use going back to the prairie people and telling them that we wished to prorogue parliament. The business of the country must come first, and the people of the constituencies affected by this legislation will expect the members whom they sent to this house to express an opinion on their behalf in respect to these matters.


Mr. T. F. DONNELLY (Wood Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, before making a few remarks on the measures now before us, Bill No. 83 and Bill No. 63, I wish to compliment the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) upon his speech of Friday last in introducing these two bills. It was a lucid, convincing and businesslike address. I wish also to compliment the government upon having brought down these two bills. Never before in my experience of thirteen years in this house has there been introduced into parliament a bill that has met with such universal favour in western Canada as Bill No. 83 is meeting at the present time. Even our friends to my left may be hearing from their part of the country. Certainly when they go back home they will hear a different story from what they are telling here; for every person I hear from in western Canada says: Whatever you do, do not give up this acreage bonus legislation, but see that Bill No. 83 goes through and becomes law. That is what I hear universally, from every section of the country.
In proposing this bill for an acreage bonus the government is following very good precedents, because we find the same thing is done in England. England gives assistance to her farmers on an acreage bonus plan. Let me quote from the Commercial Intelligence Journal, where at page 667 I find that H. A. Scott, Canadian trade commissioner, says;
United Kingdom Oats and Barley Subsidy Payment
The subsidy is arranged so that growers are compensated upon an acreage basis.
The minister now announces that in view of the fact that the average price of oats in the United Kingdom for the seven months ended March 31, 1939, was determined at 5 shillings
Prairie Farm Assistance

9 pence a hundredweight the rate of subsidy payable under the act for the 1938 crop will be 10 shillings 10 pence an acre for barley and 13 shillings 2 pence an acre for oats.
Australia also gives an acreage bonus as well as a bushelage bonus. Even in the United States they are paying some of their bonuses on the acreage bonus plan. True, the bonus is paid there for the acres taken out of cultivation, but they have found the act so difficult to administer that they are seriously thinking of dropping that plan and paying a bonus on much the same lines as those proposed here. I consider this acreage bonus payment as fairer and more equitable than any other bonus or form of relief that we are now giving to the western provinces.


Major James William Coldwell: We are not objecting
to it.


Thomas F. Donnelly: But we have heard a
lot of criticism and objection to these things from over there.


Mr. TUCKER:: You have to take them
together.


Mr. DOUGLAS (Weyburn):: Take the
bills together.


Thomas F. Donnelly: I will in a moment.
Bill No. S3 I hope to see made permanent, with its scope enlarged and its details changed in some respects, because of course the bill is no't perfect. No bill was ever perfect as it was introduced into the house. I notice that the hon. member for Weyburn (Mr. Douglas) in condemning the government said that the government did not know what they were doing, and that they were trying to please everybody. Well, if any member of this house has tried to please everybody more than the hon. member for Weyburn, I should like to know who it is. I remember that before his election he did not know whether he was a social crediter or a C.C.F.'er. He was trying to please everybody indeed, and we find him doing the yapping now. Not very long ago one of the members of his party came to Ottawa to object, in 1928, before the immigration commission, to the policy of bringing in people from central Europe.


Major James William Coldwell: What was that?


Thomas F. Donnelly: You and some others w.ere condemning the government for bringing in people from central Europe. You came down here as a witness at that time.


Major James William Coldwell: Mr. Speaker, I rise to a point of order, to make a correction of what the hon. member has just said. Nothing of

the kind. I criticized the government for what I considered at that time an improper use of immigration permits.


Thomas F. Donnelly: You never said a word about immigration from central Europe?


Major James William Coldwell: No.


Thomas F. Donnelly: If you did not, everyone else in your party did.


Walter Edward Foster: I must ask the hon.
member for Wood Mountain to refer to the hon. member who is addressing him as the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar.


Thomas F. Donnelly: Certainly, Mr. Speaker. That was the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation's policy at that time, condemning the Liberal government for bringing in some immigrants form central Europe. And now what do we find? They are condemning the government for not doing it. They have in their platform a plank to bring in refugees from central Europe. On top of that we know, because the hon. member for New Westminster (Mr. Reid) put it on Hansard the other night, that their national secretary, Mr. Garland, is going through the country condemning the government because, he says, there is a possibility they may adopt the Hornby settlement plan and bring in some British settlers.


Major James William Coldwell: What has this to do W'ith wheat?


Thomas F. Donnelly: It shows the attitude of mind of your party. It shows the way you people talk and act. Not only that; I might mention your policy in Saskatchewan. At that time your party was going to have what was called the useless lease-the socialization of land and resources.


Major James William Coldwell: No.


Thomas F. Donnelly: And now you are
going to look after the fifty big shots. Not socializing of land.


Major James William Coldwell: Tell us your idea of the wheat bill.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Are you in favour of seventy cent wheat?


Thomas F. Donnelly: They don't like to be reminded of these things. It hurts them. When you hurt some animals they squeal.
There are, and have been for years, two outstanding problems before western Canada; the first the production of wheat, the second the marketing of wheat.
With regard to production, we in the west have had many things to contend with. First we had frost. I have been farming in western Canada for some thirty-three years, and I

Prairie Farm Assistance
remember that in the early days a frost would come for one or two hours in the early morning and as a result whole fields of grain would be unfit for anything. Thanks to our experimental farms and to other research work we now have earlier ripening wheat and improved methods of cultivation, with the result that wheat can safely be grown very much further north than was formerly possible. To-day it may almost be said that frost as a serious cause of damage is a thing of the past. But when that difficulty was overcome, other things came along, such as the grasshopper plague. I have had three or four crops destroyed by these insects, and I speak with some knowledge of their activities and what they can do. The grasshopper lives in hot, dry countries. In cold, wet seasons we are not troubled with them very much. Also, summer-fallow land, or land which has been summer-fallowed during the previous year, is a protection against grasshoppers; they will not lay their eggs in the soft soil, and you can safely sow your crop in the summer-fallow without expecting to have grasshoppers to contend with; all you have to do is to scatter poison around the edges of the summer-fallow to prevent them from migrating on to that land or into the crop as they will be doing about this time of the year. As regards stubble land, land where you had stubble last year and which you expect to put in crop this year, the grasshoppers will lay their eggs in that land if you have not worked your stubble the previous fall. All that is necessary is to cultivate the land in the fall of the year in order to destroy these nests of grasshoppers in the stubble, otherwise there will be grasshopper eggs all over the land and you will not be able to keep them down even though you put out lots of poison. I would advise anyone who intends to summer-fallow land to begin on the outside and plow in, leave a narrow strip in the centre and scatter poison for grasshoppers in that narrow strip.
The grasshopper pest promises this year to be one of the severest we have ever had in western Canada. This legislation will probably take care of people who are in that area and may lose their crops because of these insects. It is one of the justifications for the acreage bonus that it will assist people in such areas.
Besides grasshoppers, the west has had to contend with drought. In 1932, 1933 and 1934 I spoke in this house and asked for assistance for people in the drought area. Over a period of ten years, beginning in 1929 and lasting until 1939, we have had no crops in the area
in which I live-nine crop failures due to drought, and one due to rust. We asked the former government to provide and supervise assistance and to put in a prairie farm rehabilitation project, but it was only during the last year they were in power that they saw fit to do so. Since then the program has been enlarged, and magnificent work is being done; make no mistake about that. We are doing our best to retain the water from snows and rain and prevent it from running off into the Hudson bay or the gulf of Mexico. Big irrigation projects are good things and are to be commended, but the small dam, the small irrigation project which takes care of a half an acre or an acre or two or three acres on the single farm, is the best type of project; it is the one which is doing the most good. It is the people living in that drought area who will be benefited by the acreage bonus, the assistance given under this bill.
We in the west have had many other things to contend with. One of them is rust. We hope that this year rust is a thing of the past, because we now have rust-resistant wheat, thanks to the experimental farms and to the work done in our rust laboratories and elsewhere.
It is the people who have been contending with these difficulties that this bill is intended to help. It ensures that they will have some assistance. If you like, it is in the nature of a relief bill. But anybody who has lived in a district such as mine, where ninety-five per cent of the farmers are on relief, knows what relief has done to their morale. It has destroyed the morale of the farmers in the district; and if this bill has no other effect than to do away with relief measures, it is justified on that ground and that alone. A man with a family of five living in the drought area receives, if he is getting full relief, including coal, clothing and food, 1250 to S260 a year. Under this bill he is guaranteed somewhere in the neighbourhood of $300, but he will be self-reliant, he will be depending upon himself and upon his own knowledge and efforts, and that more than anything else is what we need, What has happened to our farmers there is the same as has happened to the men in the cities who are on relief. It cannot be helped, but we are anxious to get away from that condition and to put our people back into a situation where they will be self-reliant and self-dependent. Even upon that ground alone this measure is justified.
I now wish to refer for a moment to Bill No. 63. This measure sets the guaranteed
Prairie Farm Assistance

initial payment at 70 cents. I often wonder, when I hear people talking about 70 cents as being the price which the farmer is going to get for his wheat, what makes them so absolutely sure of it. It puzzles me, hearing people talk about the future of the market, where they get their knowledge. How can they tell whether the market will go up or down, and whether the price of wheat will be more or less at any future time? This measure simply guarantees to the farmer that much as an initial payment. For example, the price of wheat in two or three weeks might be a dollar, or 95 cents. I do not see that there is any justification for asking the government at this time to say what the price of wheat will be next fall. Think of saying during the winter what you are going to get for next year's crop, and then begin to argue that 60 cents is not high enough! How can anyone tell what the price is going to be? The initial price should not be set by any government until about the first of August. I think the government have made a mistake in saying now that they are going to guarantee a price of 70 cents; that might have been left until the first of August. It is possible that when the first of August comes we shall be wanting 90 cents. I can imagine some of my hon. friends wanting $1 or $125, because what they want is sure to be above whatever price is set.


Mr. JOHNSTON (Bow River):: We shall have to get it to pay the doctor.


Thomas F. Donnelly: When I hear my hon. friends talking about the cost of producing a bushel of wheat I often wonder. I agree with the hon. member for Qu'Appelle, (Mr. Perley) who is a practical farmer, that there is nothing the farmer produces of which the cost of raising is harder to tell than a bushel of wheat. I have been farming in western Canada for some thirty years and in one section where I have been farming for the last ten years it has cost me $5 a bushel at least; in the other section where I am farming it has cost me far less than $1 a bushel. Yet these people say: "Oh, there is no trouble, all you have to do is get out a yard measure and measure it just as you would a building." These professors and others who sit in arm chairs and tell a working farmer what it costs to raise a bushel of wheat just make the practical farmer laugh.


John Horne Blackmore: Your Minister of
Agriculture quoted professors.


Thomas F. Donnelly: That is all very well, but I am talking as a practical farmer. I have seen two farmers side by side, one a good farmer and the other a poor farmer, not a thing separating them but a bit of barbed wire fence; and the poor farmer's crop cost him less than $1 a bushel, and the good farmer happened to get frost or a poor kind of wheat and his cost two dollars or more. I saw a farmer last year who had 400 acres of Thatcher wheat and he harvested 32 bushels per acre; right beside that field he had one sown in Marquis wheat and in that field he did not put in a binder. How can you calculate the cost? It is the most absurd thing; no wonder people laugh when they begin to tell what it costs to raise a bushel of wheat.


John Horne Blackmore: We have all seen things like that.


Thomas F. Donnelly: With regard to the limitation of the amount that they are allowed to sell to the pool, I quite agree with what has been said, but in a different way. I do not think there should be any limit put on, because when they begin to market wheat you would not find a thousand farmers in western Canada who would have more than 5,000 bushels. I know the farmer. He will sell wheat in his father's name, his brother's name, the hired man's name and in the name of his relations all over the country and not one of them will have more than 5,000 bushels. I do not like to see this limitation; it is just an inducement to do that sort of thing. It should be taken out;
I do not see any advantage to it at all. At the present time I do not see that the government are going to lose money anyway, even if they do give that initial price of 70 cents. I have just as much right to say that the price will be 80 cents or more as these people have to say that it will be below that. Why not let the initial price stand for all, and let them all market their wheat?
One thing that I like to see is the provision in this bill for the farmer of Ontario and the east to come in and benefit, if there is any benefit in it for him. On that account I am glad to see the bill brought in. Otherwise I would say to the minister that he would be well advised to withdraw it, fix the price at the first of August and take out the 5,000 bushel limit, and on the other hand go ahead with that measure in regard to the eastern farmer.
I have here a table showing what this proposed legislation means to the western farmer. It shows the results for a hypothetical half-

Prairie Farm Assistance
section farm that might be in my section of the country, at various yields to the acre. It is a 320 acre farm, with 160 acres in wheat. It would take about 14 bushels to the acre for seed; when it was cleaned there would be half a bushel to feed to the chickens and pigs, leaving one bushel for seed. Last year's price
of 80 cents, less the cost of delivering it to market and other costs, represents a return on the farm of 60 cents a bushel. This year at 70 cents at the head of the lakes, with 20 cents off for delivery, leaves 50 cents on the farm. At various yields per acre the results would be as follows:
Yield	Yield	Return perYield	Yield	at	1938	at	With	bushelper	for 160	60c	at	50c	Bonus	1939acre	acres	(1938)	60c	(1939)	(1939)	basis12	
1,920	$1,008	.60	$840	$1,000	$ ,59i11	
1,760	912	.60	760	920	.6010	816	.60	680	840	.629	
1,440	720	.60	600	760	[DOT] 63J8	
1,280	624	.60	520	760	.737	
1,120	528	.60	440	680	.776	
960	432	.60	360	600	.835	
800	336	.60	280	520	.914	
640	240	.60	200	520	1.303	
480	144	.60	120	440	1.832	
320	320	....1	
160	....	320	0	
320	320	
It is assumed that the total of 320 -acres -are broken. The bonuses paid on half the cultivated acreage at the rate of $1 per acre when the yield is 9 to 12 bushels per acre, $1.50 per acre when yield is 5 to 8 bushels, and $2 per acre when yield is 0 to 4 bushels per acre.
All those having under twelve bushels to the acre will be much better off under this scheme than last year, on a half-section farm. This in every case will assist the half-section farm and the small farmer. I support these bills and I think the government have done well in introducing them.
Before I take my seat I should like to make one criticism and offer one suggestion to the government. First I should like to refer to the remarks of the hon. member for Qu'Appelle and the leader of the opposition (Mr. Manion), who eulogized the work of Mr. McFarland and the profits he had made. They went on to tell us how much they did for the western farmers, how much good they had done and the profits they had made. They may have made some profits, but I do not agree that this profit went to the farmers of the west. The leader of the opposition quoted the prices received by the farmer for his wheat, but I should like to quote some figures from page 23 of the Turgeon report, from which they were quoting also, as to the prices paid during the last fifteen years:
Cents per
Crop year	bushel
1924-	25	
169-01925-	26	
151-21926-	27	
146-31927-	28	
146-31928-	29	
124-01929-	30	
124-0
Then the Conservatives came in, and see what happened:
1930-	31	
64-21931-	32	
59-81932-	33	
54-31933-	34	
68-11934-	35	
81-8
Then the Liberal government came back, and these were the prices:
1935-	36	
85-11936-	37	
122-71937-	38 (8 months)	
139-0
These figures show that while the Liberals were in power we received over SI per bushel every year but one, but that we never received $1 while the Conservatives were in power. Yes, Mr. McFarland did make a profit, and how did he make it? At one time they were buying wheat from the farmer for 18 or 19 cents, paying only 38 cents at Fort William. If they could not make money buying wheat at that price they could never make it. Is any credit coming to Mr. McFarland for having made money in buying wheat at that price? When these people talk about the price of wheat they should consider the fact that at one time, under the Conservative government, wheat went down to 18 and 19 cents on the farm.
I intend to support both these bills, and at the same time I should like to offer one suggestion. At present the wheat growers if

Prairie Farm Assistance

the west have a very difficult problem on their hands, a problem which from all appearances they will have for some time to come. We have had our markets contracted; we have lost many markets, in my opinion entirely because of this extreme nationalism we had in this country and the higher tariffs we imposed. Whether we like it or not, those markets are gone, and I believe we should try to find some other uses for our wheat than grinding it into flour. I think our research laboratories should try to find some other way to use our grain. I should like to offer this suggestion, which was made in the agriculture committee, that the government consider the advisability of taking feed wheat, No. 6 northern and No. 5 northern, grinding it into feed and calling it No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 feed. Do not let it be ground into flour at all; do not let it be exported, because it only destroys the value of our good wheats in the markets of the world. Let us feed this wheat to our cattle, our pigs and our chickens and take it off the market.


Mr. PERLEY:: Who really suggested that to the agriculture committee?


Thomas F. Donnelly: I could not say at the moment; it was suggested to the committee.


George Halsey Perley: I think the hon. member was present the day I suggested it.


Thomas F. Donnelly: We have been advancing that suggestion for the last five or six years.


Mr. McLEAN (Melfort):: The hon. member for Melville (Mr. Motherwell) suggested the same thing.


Thomas F. Donnelly: It has been suggested for a very considerable period, and I am advancing the suggestion once more to-day.


Charles Edward Johnston: I
am sure the people of the constituency of Wood Mountain will be pleased to read the speech to which we have just listened, because from my experience in the southern part of Saskatchewan those people are in dire need of something along the line of crop insurance. I would suggest to the hon. member who has just taken his seat (Mr. Donnelly) that it has never been implied in any shape or form from this comer of the house that the people in southern Saskatchewan should not have crop insurance. We believe very strongly that those people, as well as farmers all over the dominion, should have such insurance, but what we do take exception to is that under this legislation the people of southern Saskatchewan are going to be taken off relief at the expense of the rest of the three prairie provinces.

It is interesting to note that very few Liberals, and only one Conservative, have taken part in this debate. I believe that is outstanding-


An hon. MEMBER:: Two Conservatives.


Charles Edward Johnston: One and
a half or two. The hon. member for Qu'-Appelle (Mr. Perley) presented a very good argument, but so far as I know it was the only argument that has come from the Conservatives. Likewise I believe there has been only one good argument presented by the Liberals, and I think that should be noted because I have before me a Saskatchewan Liberal newspaper of recent date which states that the Liberals are vigorously protesting against this policy. I have not heard any such protests so far. While I am on the subject, I can imagine the enthusiasm of the people of Edmonton West when they read the vigorous protest of the hon. member for that constituency (Mr. MacKinnon) in regard to this wheat legislation; I am sure they are going to be tickled to death with it.
I have been wondering just why the government introduced such legislation, and I am sure almost every one is wondering the same thing. I have gone carefully over the speeches that have been delivered in this house, but as yet I have not discovered any reason presented by the Liberals as to why the price to the farmers should be 37 cents. On February 16 the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) spoke at some length in regard to this matter, and I read his speech in an endeavour to discover why the figure was set at 60 cents, but without success. Neither, so far as I know, has he given any reason whatever for advancing the price from 60 to 70 cents. There must be some valid reason for jumping the price 10 cents. If the farmers were getting enough at 60 cents I say they have no right to get 70 cents. If on the other hand 70 cents is not sufficient they should get 95 cents. I challenge anyone in this house to tell me why the figure has been raised from 60 to 70 cents.


James Garfield Gardiner: It has not been changed in Bill 82; it is still 60 cents.


Charles Edward Johnston: That is
what it is going to be after the next election, but until the election comes along it will be 70 cents.


Malcolm McLean: Even that will
be better than the promise you made, of S25 a month.


Charles Edward Johnston: If this
Liberal government will keep hands off of

Prairie Farm Assistance
Alberta we will soon give the $25 a month. By the way we might bring that up in two or three minutes. Just listen to this:
Mr. MeLEAN (Melfort): Bring it up of your own free will.


Charles Edward Johnston: The
Minister of Agriculture said this:
I should like to place before the committee information as to who has received the greater part of the bonus-
Did you get that?
-which has been paid, in order that we might have information upon which policy might be based for the handling of wheat in the future if we are going to give assistance of any kind to wheat growers.
During the last few months I have had prepared a statement of just what happened in relation to the bonus paid to date in one province, Saskatchewan-
Is there any sound reason why the minister should not have made a detailed study of the other two provinces, namely, Manitoba and Alberta? I think that would have been getting down to a business basis. Why take just the province of Saskatchewan? Surely it would not be because that was his own home constituency or his own home province? Surely it would not be because that is the province to which he intends to give assistance, to the detriment of the other two provinces?
Mr. MeLEAN (Melfort): It might have been where he got the most cooperation from local authorities.


Charles Edward Johnston: It probably was. And that remark of the hon. member is exactly the kind of patronage and politics that we find in this matter. That is the unfortunate part of the whole situation. I am pleased to agree with that.
Mr. MeLEAN (Melfort): Will the hon. member permit a question?


Charles Edward Johnston: Not until I am through. Then you can get up and speak for your forty minutes.


Walter Edward Foster: The hon. member may not interrupt without the consent of the hon. member who is speaking.


Charles Edward Johnston: I am glad to agree with that. The minister continues:
During the last few months I have had prepared a statement of junt what happened in relation to the bonus paid to date in one province, Saskatchewan, which is the largest wheat-producing province in the dominion, and of course the figures I have before me are of necessity still based upon estimates, but I think 71492-234J
the committee will realize that they are so close to what will actually happen that they can be taken as authentic.
It is estimated that Saskatchewan farmers will receive, at the rate of 20 cents a bushel, on the wheat they will market, a minimum of $18,000,000 above the market value of the marketable surplus of wheat in the province in the year 1938-39 through the operation of the minimum price policy of the federal wheat board.
Let me repeat that. An average of 20 cents a bushel-
I wonder why emphasis was laid on that? Repetition for emphasis.
An average of 20 cents a bushel paid on all the marketable wheat in Saskatchewan will net to the farmers by way of bonus $18,000,000. But if one were to estimate the net returns to the farmers of the three western provinces on the same basis of 20 cents a bushel, I am given to understand-
And this is just gossip, may I say. The minister does not say where he got the information.


James Garfield Gardiner: From Alberta records.


Charles Edward Johnston: Who was speaking?


James Garfield Gardiner: One of the members of
the Alberta legislature.


Charles Edward Johnston: And do you know who it was?-because I do. And a very- I was going to say a somewhat unreliable source.
Mr. MeLEAN (Melfort): Order.


Charles Edward Johnston: But, mind you, the point I am getting at is that this is the basis of establishing the price. Hon. members from this corner of the house have given facts and figures to show that the price is too low. Yet the Department of Agriculture puts up an argument such as this to make 60 cent wheat, and then it does not give any good reason for making it 70 cent wheat. He continues:
I am given to understand from a discussion which took place in the Alberta legislature the other day that Alberta would collect $22,800,000-
Now, isn't that a shame-that the province of Alberta should collect $22,800,000 and Saskatchewan only $18,000,000! Certainly that is sufficient ground to see that Alberta does not get any more! The other day we gave Saskatchewan $2,000,000-and I am not objecting to that in the least. But Alberta did not get it. And when it came to assisting in the distribution of vegetables in Saskatchewan, they got it again. Alberta was refused it- and yet because Alberta gets $22,800,000 and
Prairie Farm Assistance

Saskatchewan $18,000,000, this is the reason- or at least one of the very flimsy reasons why Alberta should be discriminated against once more. The minister continues:
-although the crop acreage in that province is very much lower than the crop acreage in Saskatchewan.
Taking all three provinces-
And up to that time the minister had forgotten one.
-Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, the estimated amount would probably reach some $48,000,000. . . .
And the minister should have made that $25,000,000, because that is the estimate given by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Dunning). I cannot see for the life of me why, when the Minister of Finance brings down his budget and mentions the sum of $25,000,000, the Minister of Agriculture should raise it to $48,000,000.


James Garfield Gardiner: Wheat has gone up seven cents since.


Charles Edward Johnston: But the farmers won't get anything out of it, you can be sure, by the time they pay the interest on their bills. These poor farmers of Saskatchewan who have to pay $120 for an appendix operation-well I would wonder how they would figure that in bushels of wheat. The minister continues:
What I wish to point out in that connection is this, that all of the area in western Canada which had a complete crop failure during this past year is in Saskatchewan. There are 80 municipalities in Saskatchewan that have an average crop of less than 6 bushels to the acre; more than half of these have an average crop of less than 4 bushels to the acre; the greater part of that half have an average crop of less than 3 bushels to the acre, and a number of them have no bushelage whatsoever. Yet, out of $48,000,000-
And this is four times the minister has stressed the point.
-which will be paid out of the treasury of Canada this year, if this estimate is correct, only $18,000,000 will go to Saskatchewan. . . .
It seems to me that I have laid before the Minister of Agriculture one of the main reasons why he is endeavouring to change this legislation. I would ask the minister how many municipalities there are in Alberta which have the acreage yields as given in his speech. How many municipalities in Manitoba have had those acreage yields? I have tried to find that out from the dominion bureau of statistics, and I could not get the information.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is the best reason we have for going to Saskatchewan for the information.


Charles Edward Johnston: I do not say that we should not go to Saskatchewan for the information. But why not take in other provinces as well?


Malcolm McLean: They did not have the information.


Charles Edward Johnston: The
dominion should have it, and you could get it from the province. But as I understand it, there has been no request for it by the dominion government. There should be some arrangement whereby the acreage would be known from all the prairie provinces. According to the first bill introduced into this house, the Searle Grain Company in its issue of April 19, 1939, put out a map. Probably hon. members did not see it, but there was only about one-quarter of the area of Alberta that would come under that acreage bonus plan. I should say there was only one-quarter in comparison with what Saskatchewan would get. In Manitoba there was none. I doubt if the province of Alberta would have 135 municipalities that would come under this plan at all, and I am certainly positive Manitoba would not have.


James Garfield Gardiner: It is townships, not municipalities.


Charles Edward Johnston: All right, "townships." I am quite sure Manitoba would not have any. In all fairness why should these other two provinces be forced to take southern Saskatchewan out of a relief condition, and why should these other provinces be taxed for that? I agree that the southern part of Saskatchewan should be taken out, and should be given an acreage bonus; by all means do that. But what advantage is there when you are going to substitute one form of relief for another, as the hon. member for Wood Mountain said a little while ago?


James Garfield Gardiner: May I correct the hon. member? There were sixty-one municipal areas in Alberta this year with eight bushels or less per acre.


Charles Edward Johnston: And how many in Saskatchewan?


James Garfield Gardiner: One hundred and ninety-eight.


Charles Edward Johnston: When I tried to get the information from the dominion bureau of statistics I could not get it.

Prairie Farm Assistance


James Garfield Gardiner: The hon. member should have come to the Department of Agriculture.


Charles Edward Johnston: Moreover,
I was refused permission to put the question on the order paper.	,


Malcolm McLean: Why could you not get it from Alberta?


Charles Edward Johnston: Because this is the place we are supposed to get it from.


James Garfield Gardiner: I got that from Alberta.


Charles Edward Johnston: Alberta never gets anything from this government.


Malcolm McLean: They have some responsibility, surely.


Charles Edward Johnston: It seems to me, from reading Hansard, that the Minister of Agriculture is determined to reverse the situation and see that Saskatchewan, his province, gets it all, and Alberta doesn't get anything.


Walter Adam Tucker: All he wishes to see is that Saskatchewan gets a fair deal.


Charles Edward Johnston: What about the people in northern Saskatchewan? Go up there and speak in the next election.


Walter Adam Tucker: They have grasshoppers up there, and they want this legislation.


Charles Edward Johnston: It was a deliberate attempt to sell out western Canada, to gain votes in the east, and I think all of Canada is realizing that fact.


Mr. EULER:: You will not gain many votes in the east.


Charles Edward Johnston: And they will not gain much in Alberta.


Malcolm McLean: Oh, it might surprise you.


Charles Edward Johnston: We were amazed a short time ago to see legislation brought down the effect of which will take taxes off the back of industry. In order to keep up revenue I suppose we shall have to tax the western wheat grower another _ ten per cent to make up for the reduction given to the large industries of Canada.


James Garfield Gardiner: Are they taxed ten
per cent in Alberta now?


Charles Edward Johnston: The taxation on the big industries is being reduced fen per cent. Of course that is a different proposition as you do not get such large campaign funds from the farmers out west.


Walter Edward Foster: Order.


Charles Edward Johnston: Let us
examine the basis of the cost of raising a bushel of wheat. Here is what the minister said, as reported at page 2623 of Hansard, when giving another reason why this price should be adopted:
It has been proven over and over again that 20 bushels to the acre of wheat can be produced at a cost of from 30 to 40 cents a bushel.
There is no proof there at all. The minister is simply saying that it has been proven over and over again. He continues:
We have had a great deal of discussion about the cost of producing wheat.
Later on I asked this question:
What is the basis of that estimate of from 30 to 40 cents a bushel as the cost of production?
I think we should get down to facts and quit fooling around. Just because an election may be in the offing we should not raise the price from 60 to 70 cents for some "no good" reason. It seems to me that we should endeavour to find out the costs. We shall then be able to get some place. In answer to my question, the minister said:
Estimates have been made by authorities in Saskatchewan university, and there are also the figures submitted by the Saskatchewan government to the Rowell commission.
We will deal with those later on. There was another place which I have not marked where the minister is reported as saying that it is only guesswork anyway. It is rather interesting to note that the farmers are not going to take it as guesswork this year. On the same page the minister is reported as saying this:
Since the 30 cent costs are on large mechanized farms, and the 40 cent costs on smaller farms, the tendency to change from the small to the large farm is greatly encouraged by increasing profits in that manner.
May I say in all seriousness that I believe this legislation will tend to increase the number of larger farms. Wheat cannot be raised at from 30 to 40 cents per bushel on small unmechanized farms, and the people will be forced to operate larger farms in order to obtain their costs of production. Let us see what this conference on marketing had to say about it. This has been mentioned before, but I think it is well to draw attention to it again. The extract from Hansard which I read refers directly to what Professor Hope said in this connection, as reported on page 151 of the proceedings of the conference. I am going to read this again so that the people of Canada may know exactly where that estimate came from. He said:
On the basis of average yields of wheat of 20 bushels per acre (1918-1930) for the Regina
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plains and Kosetown area the costs of production are approximately 55 cents per bushel for the half section farm,
The minister said, in the speech from which I quoted a while ago, that it was greatly to be desired to have people living on halfsection farms. I am not disputing that; I am simply saying in all seriousness that this legislation will induce people to go on large farms. The minister is going to miss his point by putting through the legislation as now contemplated. Professor Hope continues:
-44 cents for the section farm and 34 cents for a two section power farm with tractor, combine and truck. This two section power farm is the most efficient wheat producing unit which it is possible to set up. Probably not more than one per cent of the farms of the west are as efficient as this.
The minister has always contended that we were including debt charges in the figures we were giving, but that figure of 55 cents does not include that cost. Further down in the same paragraph Professor Hope says:
The cost plus interest charges per bushel of wheat would amount to an average of 72 cents for the half section farm.
It may be taken that Professor Hope did not include those in his estimate. The Minister of Agriculture contends that debt should not enter into the cost of producing wheat. Probably it does not enter into the actual cost, but in every industry, no matter how large or small, debt charges are always allowed for. These industries allow not only for a profit, but for large salaries for the executives, and surely the farmer should be entitled to that. Agriculture should be put on a business basis so that the farmer may be able to pay his debts. A year or so ago the dominion made a contribution of something like $18,000,000 to provide for debt reduction in the province of Saskatchewan, and Professor Hope refers to this debt situation, on page 151 or 152 of these proceedings. He states that the situation in Saskatchewan is practically the same as it was before this contribution of $18,000,000 was made. The debt was reduced by that amount, but because of the fact that the farmers have had no crops in the last two years and have had to produce at a loss, because they have not been able to meet their payments on their machinery or pay their rent, if they were renting, their debt is now up to where it was before. The minister says that we should not take that into consideration, but I think it should be considered.


James Garfield Gardiner: I did not say that.


Charles Edward Johnston: I mean in setting this price. I think the minister is wrong there; he should include this.


James Garfield Gardiner: I did not say that that should not be taken into consideration in setting this price.


Charles Edward Johnston: The minister said that interest should not be included in the cost of raising wheat.


James Garfield Gardiner: I simply said that
interest was not included in the cost estimate of from 30 to 40 cents per bushel.


Charles Edward Johnston: Why should it not be?


James Garfield Gardiner: I do not know. I did not make that estimate.


Charles Edward Johnston: I think the minister should base his calculations on his own figuring and upon figures that are substantially correct. Those figures should include one of the main considerations of the western farmer, his debt charges. In my resolution, which I believe was considered on February 27, I suggested a price of 95 cents. I should like to quote a conclusion arrived at by Professor Hope as reported on page 152:
Conservatively _ it would require with average yields a farm price for wheat of average grade of about 90 cents,-
That is a farm price, not the Fort William price.
-with coarse grains in proportion to maintain a reasonable level of living and service the present debt on western farms. It would require somewhat more than this to restore the farming community to the condition of 1931.
In the light of the present world wheat situation a further drastic debt reduction policy is a partial solution of the western farm problem.
It has been suggested that farmers should learn how to live on a 'lower standard in order to meet the present debt situation. But any policy that compels such a solution does not solve the problem if w-e hope to maintain our present social system.
I think that sums up the situation very well. These are things which should be taken into consideration. Are we going to permit the western farmers to continue to raise wheat and live in the hovels in which some of them are living? Or are we going to give them a decent and fair standard of living so that they may be respectable citizens? That is the point Professor Hope was making, that they should be given, not barely sufficient to get their costs, but a little more so that they might enjoy some of the luxuries enjoyed by the big industrialists down here in the eastern part of Canada and by some of the medical doctors throughout Canada. I cannot for the life of me see why farm life should be made so unattractive. Some hon. members have said that we need a back to the land movement. But how in the world can you expect

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young people to go back to the land when they have seen what their fathers and mothers have had to endure and know what they themselves have endured? Platitudes will not do much towards getting them back to the land; you have to do more than that.
There is one other report to which I should like to refer in connection with the cost of raising wheat. We are taking our facts and figures from authentic sources; there is no guess-work about it. The hon. member for Wood Mountain (Mr. Donnelly) asked: How can you estimate the cost of raising a bushel of wheat? Then he went on to mention one place in his constituency where a farmer had raised wheat at a cost of two dollars a bushel. How did he know it cost two dollars a bushel? He did not know at all; he was just guessing. Then he said that another farmer right across the road raised wheat at a cost of something less than a dollar. He did not know what the cost was; he was just guessing. And the illustrations he gave contradicted his own statement that you could not estimate the cost of raising wheat per bushel.


Mr. HANSELL:: He was not practical.


Charles Edward Johnston: He was not practical. Now I quote figures from people who have made a scientific investigation of this problem. I quote from the Cost of Producing Farm Crops in the Prairie Provinces, by E. S. Hopkins, J. M. Armstrong and H. D. Mitchell, division of field husbandry, dominion experimental farms, bulletin No. 159-new series, Department of Agriculture. At page 11, under the heading, "Cost of producing wheat after fallow," I find these figures. So that when hon. members say that we cannot find out the cost of raising wheat, it is simply idiotic, nothing short of-I was going to say insanity, but I will not use that word. The report says:
The highest yield and lowest cost per bushel on any of the farms during the period from 1923 to 1930 occurred at Lethbridge in 1928, when 52-1 bushels per acre were produced at a total cost of $18.32 per acre, or 35 cents per bushel.
That is quite low. These figures are taken from costs of producing wheat on eight experimental farms in the prairie provinces. The report goes on:
The lowest yield and highest cost per bushel occurred at Scot in 1924 when a yield of only 7'0 bushels was secured at a total cost of $14.08, or $2.01 per bushel.
Will anybody tell me that we cannot strike an average cost between those two figures? The average would be $1.18.


James Garfield Gardiner: Between those two
points and for those years.


Charles Edward Johnston: Yes, but it is not an impossibility to strike an average cost, is it? It can be done, and it should be done. Then you would have a figure that would be equitable. There is no use in raising the minimum price from 60 to 70 cents for no good reason at all. There should be some sound, logical basis for the price you fix. Political pressure should not enter into it at all, or influence the government one way or the other. They should do what is just and right, and not yield to political pressure. Just because some members who are unfortunate enough to represent the Liberal party in the west at this time feel their seats slipping, they should not be permitted to bring pressure on the government. The government should present its legislation in a businesslike way.


Walter Adam Tucker: Without listening to the
members, is that the idea?


Charles Edward Johnston: Without
listening to members who do not give facts and figures for what they are saying. At page 74 of Bulletin No. 159, from which I have just quoted, there is another reference to this question, and I read it because the Minister of Agriculture was speaking about half-section farms. Professor Hope in his report showed that the 55 cents per bushel cost was the cost on a half-section farm, and that the 30 to 40 cents cost was on a highly mechanized farm. You cannot have such a farm on a halfsection, because it is not large enough for mechanized farming; you must necessarily go back to horses. Whether that is a good point or not I am not prepared to argue at the moment, but it is a factor that affects the cost of producing wheat. This report at page 74 refers to that and says:
The calculations are subject to modifications depending upon local conditions in different districts but undoubtedly indicate the effect of size of farm and method of operation on the cost of production and total net revenue.
The size of the farm is undoubtedly an important factor in profitable grain production. The one-quarter section farm seems entirely too small for this purpose, the reason being that the overhead costs for equipment and labour are altogether too high while the revenue obtained is much too small. The cost of producing wheat on such a farm, with an average yield of 18 bushels per acre, would be approximately $1.02 per bushel.
That is the position the Minister of Agriculture is putting these people in. While it may be possible on a two-section farm, highly mechanized and with everything to the best
Prairie Farm Assistance

advantage, to raise wheat at forty cents a bushel-I doubt if it could be done for much less-as this report points out, it is an impractical solution because on a half-section farm wheat cannot be raised for less than $1.02 a bushel. So it would seem, taking the costs at these eight experimental farms, that seventy cents is quite inadequate to meet present day conditions.
The report says in the next paragraph:
A half-section grain farm when operated by one man and seven horses would be able to produce wheat at 79-5 cents per bushel while, when operated with a 10 h.p. tractor and two horses, the cost would be increased to 85 cents per bushel.
Those are all farm prices. We are not guessing at these figures; we are giving figures produced by competent authorities, and surely no one will question the authenticity of the figures. So when members of the Liberal party stand up in the house and say that you cannot even estimate the cost of a bushel of wheat, that is just a little too far-fetched.
I have also statistics as to the cost per acre. These can be easily obtained, so that there should be no difficulty whatever in arriving at an average cost.
The hon. member for Wood Mountain referred to what other countries are doing. I should also like to place on Hansard some figures showing what different countries are doing. We are fixing a minimum price of 70 cents. I have a letter here dated January 31, 1939, from the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, in which they say:
7bu will note that I am showing no domestic price for the United Kingdom in the present crop year 1938-39. This average price will not be definitely ascertained until after the end of the crop year, but it should be in the neighbourhood of 44 shillings per quarter.
That is SI.17-Jr per bushel. Compare that with our 70 cents!


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Is that a farm price?


Charles Edward Johnston: Yes. I also received from the Dominion Bureau of Statistics at the same time the average domestic prices in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy. Bear in mind that we are paying our farmers a minimum price of 70 cents. Let us see what farmers in other countries are getting. The quotations run from 1922-23 to 1937-38 and part of 1938-39, and the bureau has converted them, for greater convenience, 
into United States cents per bushel. The prices for the United Kingdom are limited to the period 1925-26 to 1937-38:
Average domestic prices United	Ger-
Kingdom France many Italy
1922-23 ..	159	110	1431923-24 ..	135	104	1201924-25 ..	173	156	1851925-26 ..	158	145	161	2081926-27 ..	157	186	177	2081927-28 ..	137	173	162	1911928-29 . .	127	167	142	1871929-30 ..	120	147	165	1871930-31 ..	81	184	168	1561931-32 ..	61	172	152	1491932-33 ..	95	124	135	1511933-34 . .	126	212	191	1891934-35 . .	114	165	222	2201935-36 ..	121	159	225	2491936-37 ..	132	191	224	1951937-38 ..	133	163	223	200Aug.-Nov.	146	218	2121938-39 Compare these	prices	with	our 70	cents.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Forty-seven cents.


Charles Edward Johnston: Forty-seven cents, yes. We are expecting our people, in the face of government action such as this, to raise wheat at what amounts to 47 cents net. We surely are doing a lot for them; they ought to be tickled to death with this legislation.


James Garfield Gardiner: Why not refer to Australia and the Argentine?


Charles Edward Johnston: Yes. The Australian price is $1.12 at country stations.


James Garfield Gardiner: No.


Charles Edward Johnston: If the minister will look up the legislation he will find that my statement is correct. I have it up in my room.


James Garfield Gardiner: I have it right here. I did not leave it in my room.


Charles Edward Johnston: The price is $1.12 at country stations throughout Australia.


James Garfield Gardiner: No.


An hon. MEMBER:: When?


Charles Edward Johnston: That was in 1937-38 or 1938-39. I put the facts on Hansard when I was speaking on my resolution. I have the acts upstairs.


James Garfield Gardiner: Their price averages
less than ours now.


Charles Edward Johnston: Well, if $1.12 is less than 65 cents I do not know arithmetic.

Prairie Farm Assistance


James Garfield Gardiner: But that is not the
price.


Charles Edward Johnston: It is
amusing that reference was made to New Zealand. When marketing legislation was enacted in that dominion the main reason given was to enable the primary producer to carry on with a decent standard of living. You see no such references in our statute. The sort of legislation which is put forward here is going to keep the farmers in the peasant class for the rest of their lives.
Another problem which has been referred to is the position of the Canadian Pacific and the Canadian National railways, and we are wondering what will become of them. We are even proposing legislation to take business from the trucks and give it back to the railroads because the railroads are not doing the amount of business they should; yet by this wheat legislation we shall be taking about 30,000,000 acres out of the production of wheat, the transportation of which provides the railroads with much of their revenue. Not only that; the roads will be deprived of freight on machinery, because people out west cannot afford to buy it. At 47 cents a bushel for wheat one cannot pay $300 for a binder which on the other side of the line can be got for $150.


Mr. EVANS:: You cannot buy it for that.


Charles Edward Johnston: The
farmer cannot pay $1,300 for a tractor which he could buy in the United States for $500, or $1,200 for an automobile which can be purchased over there for $900.


Charles Robert Evans: Will the hon. member
permit a question?


Charles Edward Johnston: The other day it was announced that the three per cent excise tax had been taken off automobiles. One of the dealers in this city said to someone I know, "What are you talking about? We have not heard about this." He was asked if the price had come down. He said, "Certainly not". His price never will come down.


Charles Robert Evans: Will the hon. member again quote his price on tractors?


Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER:: I would ask the hon. member who has the floor to confine his remarks to wheat, and not to discuss automobiles.


Charles Edward Johnston: I am just comparing the cost of producing wheat with 71492-235
the cost of the articles the farmer has to buy. It may be that he should not pay any attention to such considerations but should just go on and raise wheat for nothing at all and pay to eastern Canada all the money he gets.


Mr. J. S. WOODSWORTH (Winnipeg North Centre):: It is not my intention to make a long speech, and this for two reasons: first,
I am very anxious not to delay the proceedings, and, second, the position of this group has been so well stated by my colleagues from Saskatchewan. I should like, however, as senior member for Winnipeg, to read a letter which I received from that city a few days ago. It was written, of course, before the revision took place in the bills now before the house:
May 2, 1939.
I beg to advise that the following resolution was adopted by council last evening, namely:
"Whereas bills and resolutions now before the House of Commons propose to amend the Wheat Board Act indicating that the price of No. 1 northern wheat shall be sixty cents per bushel basis Fort William, without reference to the wheat board;
And whereas such a set price will likely become the fixed price due to the depressing effects of the wheat carry-over, thus working a great hardship on western economy and western farmers as the stated price is below the cost of production;
And whereas additional legislation to bonus acreage will not compensate the farmers for low prices as it deals only with those whose crops are less than 15 bushels per acre;
Therefore be it resolved, that we, the Winnipeg city council appeal to the government of Canada to set the guaranteed price at not less than eighty cents per bushel;
Copies of this resolution to be sent to Winnipeg members of the dominion house/'
Yours truly,
(Sgd) G. F. Bentley,
City Clerk.
I think it will be manifest that in the west it is not merely the farmers who are concerned in this matter, but the whole population, dependent as they are to such a large extent upon grain and its proper marketing.
I do not pose as an authority in any sense whatever on wheat, but I went west as a child in 1882 and have lived there for the major part of the time since then. There are several points, as I see the matter, I should like to enumerate, stating them as briefly as possible.
First, 70 cents at Fort William, allowing for freight and inferior grades, means only some 50 to 55 cents to the farmer.

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Second, 50 to 55 cents is below the cost of production on all except a small percentage of the best lands under most advantageous conditions. Professor Hope, quoted by the minister, states:
Conservatively it would probably require with average yields a farm price for wheat of average grade of about 90 cents, with coarse grains in proportion, to maintain a reasonable level of living and service the present debt on western farms. It would require somewhat more than this to restore the farming community to the condition of 1931.
Third, the development and expansion of western grain growing were encouraged by this government. I think we all can remember the active immigration policy which prevailed for some years. Agents were sent to eastern Canada, to Great Britain and to almost all the European countries, and we had a very large immigration based on the idea that there would be continued export markets. That immigration policy was so arranged that a great many areas of the poorer lands were settled. It was the idea that the whole west should be occupied in as brief a time as possible. That was the first general expansion.
Then there was the war-time expansion referred to by the minister. Undoubtedly great areas of land were broken up that would not have been broken up under normal circumstances. In the southern part of Saskatchewan this period coincided with an exceptional rainfall. There had not been such rainfall for many years before and we have not had such rainfall since that time. I do not think we can count on it.
Fourth, the curtailment of markets as a result of world conditions was admitted by the minister. It is no fault of the people of the west that this has taken place. If any particular body is to be blamed it is the dominion authorities. I do not say they are particularly ;c blame; it is a matter of world conditions over which, after all, this house has little control.
Fifth, unless there is war I believe these conditions are likely to continue for a good many years to come. Let me read from the report of the proceedings of the conference on markets for western farm products held in Winnipeg in December, 1938. On page 326, a summary of the discussions is given:
Then the question was asked, Has there been
shrinkage in the world demand for wheat? The answer was, Yes. Within the last seven or eight years there was shown to be a shrinkage of about 200 million bushels per year in the demand from importing countries. This was considered to be the chief basic cause of the present problem.
Another question was, Is the annual production of wheat in the world being maintained? The answer was, Yes. In 1938 the crop

was the largest ever known in the history of the world. With the world import demand down, and the world export supply up, a third question scarcely needed an answer. That question was, Has the price of wheat declined in Canada? The answer was of course. Yes. The average price a year ago at Fort William was $1.31-to-day it is about 60 cents on the open market. The guaranteed price of 80 cents means about 55 cents per bushel to the grower, for average grades. If farmers in the prairie provinces were receiving the open market price instead of the guaranteed price they would be getting but little more than 40 cents a bushel. It seemed a sad commentary on international trade relations when we were told that while these distressed prices obtained in western Canada the prices being paid in England France, Germany and Italy ranged between $1.30 and $2.50 per bushel for inferior wheat of their own production.
It was then asked, Is this low price in the west likely to continue? The analysis of demand and supply as presented to the conference indicated that the demand continues to be down; that unless something is done to lessen production the supply is likely to remain high; that a large increase in carryover at the end of the year is probable, and that consequently low prices are again in prospect. WTe were told that at the end of July next there would be 1,100 million bushels of a world carryover of wheat, whereas the normal carryover is around 600 million bushels. Such an increase in surplus stocks inevitably spells low prices.
, It was the view of the conference that the situation which I have just described represented the result of broad international trends; trends of interference with world trade; trends which were bearing heavily and unfavourably upon the wheat industry in Canada. It was the unanimous view also that the prairie provinces alone could not withstand the effects of this impact; it was felt that tbe nation must continue to deal with this extraordinary situation, with measures fitted to the urgency of the ease at least until such time as the international trade picture has changed, or until such time as other adjustments can be made by which the wheat industry of Canada can be put on a better basis.
I am inclined to agree with that very careful statement. If so, I cannot think that we can call this situation an emergency, or that this proposed provision should be put on the basis of emergency legislation. In all probability the dry areas, or at least certain portions of the dry areas, will have to be abandoned and restored to grass, and I suggest that the sooner we do this the better.


Charles Robert Evans: We are doing it.


James Shaver Woodsworth: But doing it pretty slowly, and in the meantime the people are on relief.
Again, I would say that the fixed price should not be considered an emergency device, but under our present economy must continue for some time to come.
Sixth, the minister pleads that we owe something to the prairie people. I agree.

Prairie Farm Assistance
But the minister condemns them to produce under conditions that will not provide a decent standard of living. It is all very well to say that we owe something to the prairie people, but surely the least that can be done is to provide such regulations or enact such legislation as will enable the majority of them to live in decency. That, I think, is not possible under this legislation. The other day when the minister was pleading for his present legislation, it seemed to me that the very arguments which he used would be far more favourable to an 80 cent minimum than to the 70 cent minimum.
Seventh, the east cannot disregard the west. Sometimes the east does not altogether understand the peculiar problems of the west. But if it fails to care for the west and its needs at the present time, the east will suffer with the west.
One other quotation from this report of the conference on markets for western farm products, at page 7:
Let us hope it will be remembered that in the course of producing these commodities the people of the prairie provinces can be large consumers of Canadian made goods, goods that will be necessary to support their large scale production and maintain their 500,000 homes. Both as important producers and important consumers the prairie provinces have possibilities of continuing to be a great national asset to Canada.
The eastern people must remember that exports must be paid for by imports. The eastern people, particularly manufacturers, cannot have it both ways. They are afraid to allow goods into this country, but goods must come into this country if we are to export goods from this country. If we cease to do that we are tied up to a domestic market and if it is impossible for us to export goods from the west the domestic market in the west will vanish.
After all, this is not the first time in the history of Canada that we have bonused certain industries. For many years, through the tariff, we have bonused certain producers, largely the manufacturing producers. Ever since the first line of rails -was put through the west we have bonused the great transportation interests. The Minister of Finance (Mr. Dunning) has just introduced a bill which, if I understand it, is proposing to bonus certain groups of financiers through his mortgage bank. Why then, if that should be considered advisable, should we not bonus the primary producers of this country? I think we are reaching a point where even the Liberals, at least those who still adhere to the old laissez-faire policy, will have to recognize that the old policies will no longer work. I think the very 71492-235 J
fact that we are proceeding to bonus industry in this country is in itself an indication of the break-down of the present economic system. For a while we may possibly avoid something of the distress and dislocation which seems to be on the way, but I fancy it will be only a question of time until we shall have to face some radical changes in our whole system. At the present time I cannot see that as a nation we should neglect one of the most important sections of our community, a section upon which the welfare of our country seems so directly dependent.


Mr. WILLIAM HAYHURST (Vegreville):: In following the leader of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (Mr. Woodsworth),
I must say it is his concluding remarks that induce me to take part in this debate at all, because I feel that the political aspect of this subject is unimportant, that what we are really vitally interested in is the farmers of the west. Their problems are our problems; we are suffering from the cause of their suffering, the poverty of our people. So it seems to me that many of the speeches to which we have listened, particularly those taken from books, are rather deplorable. I do not see why I should have to listen to all these books being read; I can read them in my own office. Some of these professors say you cannot raise wheat for less than SI .50 a bushel. Certainly you cannot do it in a book. Some practical farmers can raise wheat for 50 cents a bushel on the farm. For many years my wife and I-she, being an American, is the farmer rather than I, an Englishman-raised wheat for a great deal less than $1.50, and we were very happy and prosperous until we left the farm to teach, in order that the family might go to school. Now, I must confess, I find it exceedingly unprofitable to run a farm from a distance.


Mr. MICHAUD:: Back to the land.


William Hayhurst: That is a wonderful movement. I think it is a bad thing if we bring into this House of Commons ideas which will pit the east against the west, the northern sections of Alberta against the southern sections, or the northern sections of Saskatchewan against the southern sections. The people in my area are mostly small farmers. I have one farmer who puts in 1,200 acres of wheat, but that is by far the largest farm in my constituency. Most of the farmers have only a half-section; many have only a quarter-section, and if in any year they have a thousand bushels of wheat to sell they consider themselves exceptionally fortunate. So when we read in these bills that 5,000 bushels is the
Prairie Farm Assistance

maximum amount that may be delivered to the board, it seems like a very large quantity of wheat to many of my people who have such small amounts to sell.


Charles Robert Evans: What is the average yield in the hon. member's district?


William Hayhurst: The average yield may be higher than in southern Saskatchewan, of course, and that fact, together with power farming, may bring about an entirely different problem. I do say, however, that if you are going to tax the northern people for the benefit of those in the drought area you will have trouble on your hands, because it means that you are going to subsidize the south at the expense of the north.
I have heard all this at farmers' meetings. I was one of the organizers of the United Farmers of Alberta, and we always said, " Don't go into politics or you will crucify yourselves. If you can actually deal with these matters from an economic point of view and improve the welfare of the farming population of western Canada, that is much better than going into politics." I remember Mr. Wood, now Doctor Wood, who became president of the United Farmers of Alberta, at a meeting in Wetaskiwin at which I was present warned the farmers not to go into politics because of the possible corruption and other factors for which the farmers would be blamed.
I have heard some people preach class legislation, for instance labour legislation against farm legislation, and the men on the railways wanting high wages. The farmer needs a return which is at least compatible with a decent standard of living. We have heard about the evolution of the west. I believe we should direct our common efforts towards making our people happy and contented. I feel keenly on this subject, and I know the small farmer does not want to bonus the large farmer. I believe this is largely a matter of education on the part of the Department of Agriculture. Even in regard to this legislation I find that many members of parliament who have 'been speaking about these bills have not even read them. Is that not a singular thing? They do not know how many thousands of bushels they can sell to the wheat board, yet they make speeches on this legislation. I do not care to what group a member belongs; when he speaks on a bill I think at least he should first read it. So I think the members of the agriculture committee, of which I am one, certainly would have liked to discuss these bills in that committee. I know I have gone through the grain act there, and though I have raised a [Mr. Hayhurst.3
tremendous amount of wheat during my lifetime I have found out more about grain than I ever knew before, because in the committee we hear from various people belonging to different parties, as well as from people who are not in politics, members of the grain board, civil servants and so on, who give us the benefit of their advice. I think we need common knowledge on this subject.
We have heard about the uses, and probably the abuses, of wheat. We hear about the dairy farmers of Quebec; we are told they should have just prices for their products. We quite agree with that. We do not want Canadians, no matter from what part of Canada they come, to think in terms of only that particular part. The town of Vegreville, from which I come, was originally settled by French-Canadians. Only a handful of these remain; most of the people there now are new Canadians. But they are all Canadians, fundamentally interested in making a living in this country. Hon. members have read what Professor Hope says and what some other man says. I have spoken to many Ukrainian farmers in my district, some of whom can raise wheat at half the cost to their neighbours across the road. Whatever these professors may write in books, I say they need to get back to the soil if they want to realize the problem of the farmer.
Just here, in order to illustrate how education is necessary, I should like to quote Sir John Russell, head of the Rothamsted experimental station in England:
The chief trouble about farming for national nutrition, however, lies not on the farm, but in the kitchen.
I have said in the house before that unless we can educate our people to use the commodities we produce, all this talk in parliament is of no use.
The nutrition expert may prescribe as much as he likes, and the agriculturist may produce the food, but nothing will happen unless the housewife will cook it.
We have a housewife in the house, a very sensible lady indeed.
And in her defence one must recognize that the difficulty of running .a house steadily increases; the modern young woman will do anything rather than prepare food.


Mrs. BLACK:: Oh, no.


William Hayhurst: Well, that is what they say in England; it is not my opinion. The hon. member for Yukon (Mrs. Black) will understand that better than I do. The article continues:
Hence the increased consumption of tinned and preserved foods.

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Probably we should not read books in the house, because there seems to be some disagreement on the facts.


Donald Elmer Black: That is not the condition in the Yukon.


William Hayhurst: The article continues:
Whether these are or are not as good as
fresh food from the point of view of national health is, of course, a question for medical experts.
In the house we have some medical experts- and I will not say anything about the lawyers. If there is anything I respect it is a good medical doctor. Medical experts are needed in Canada. It is a shame to come to the House of Commons and direct class against class. I know of many doctors in my own constituency who, hundreds of times, have attended women in their times of difficulties and sorrows, and have never been paid. That is possibly an altruistic motive, but I would point out that if we were all as altruistic as some medical men, Canada would not be suffering as much as she is to-day.
I have omitted some parts of my speech- probably it would have been just as well if it had not been delivered at all. That is an observation which might be applied to most speeches.
I was going to discuss the European situation to show why, in view of existing conditions, there should be an increase in the price of wheat. I could speak with respect to Italy, Germany and Great Britain, and particularly about Great Britain, because since I left the old country, I have been back many times. As late as to-day in the House of Commons I have heard condemnation of British wheat. Hon. members who condemn it do not know anything about British wheat. One of my brothers, who is a miller, says that British wheat is the best in the world. If we go back twenty years ago it may be that British wheat was not so good, but to-day the British farmer puts phosphates, nitrates, calcium and lime into his land, those factors which are necessary for the production of good wheat. It is in the wheat kernel that the protein content is found, and it is that factor which makes the wheat valuable. In these days in western Canada we are becoming more and more scientific in our farming methods, and are introducing the use of fertilizer to a greater extent.
Germany to-day has increased her population tremendously, and she needs food. Why does she need food? Because she has increased her army. Anybody who has served in the army knows that a man in the army
will eat more food than if he is loafing or drifting. Soldiers need a better and richer type of food. Bread is the staff of life.
The Slovak people of Czechoslovakia were receiving a high price for their wheat. I understand to-day they are not getting that high price. That condition will tend towards the production of less wheat in Czechoslovakia, and may make it necessary for Germany to get wheat from some other point-and they will get it. They may have to get it from Roumania. Our wheat will find a better market in that way. To-day, Russia is suffering from certain crop conditions which do not tend towards the production of a good crop.
If we read the papers we shall find, as the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) has pointed out, that in the past few days, the price of wheat has risen seven cents. Well, it is absurd not to realize that a few more increases to the extent of seven cents would wipe out that $25,000,000 mentioned by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Dunning) in his budget speech.
Over those factors we have no control. As hon. members know, the United States southwest is suffering from drought. I had a letter this morning from my own constituency stating that lilacs were beginning to bloom, and when lilacs begin to bloom a month ahead of time we can usually expect a dry year. I am not an Indian prophet, or anything of that kind-in fact, the Indians did not grow lilacs-but at the same time grain that gets an early start is very often subjected to drought conditions.


Charles Robert Evans: The acreage bonus will be a help, if it is a dry year.


William Hayhurst: Yes, it will be a help if the grain is dried out. Instead of a lack of understanding, we need confidence. We need to understand the problems facing Canada. I wish our dairy farmers could use more of western Canada grains in rations required for the production of dairy products. We would find a good market for lower grade wheat, as the hon. members for Wood Mountain (Mr. Donnelly) and Qu'Appelle (Mr. Perley) have said.
It is quite likely that the United States southwest in this year will produce 80,000,000 bushels less of winter wheat, and the spring wheat area at the present time does not look satisfactory. Russia is an unknown quantity, but with the increase in population taking place in that country it is altogether probable that less and less wheat will be dumped on the markets of the world from that country. There is an increase in the world's
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population which will take away some of the wheat surplus. We have heard about the wheat problem ever since the Israelites were in Egypt; however, at this time I shall not go into a discussion of that matter. We have had large quantities of wheat on hand in one year, and have wondered in the next year where it has disappeared.
Production must be controlled to protect producers and consumers. In Switzerland today wheat is being produced on the mountain sides, and it is absolutely uneconomical to raise it under those conditions. In Great Britain there is talk of putting about 2,000,000 acres of mountain areas into production. A British expert has written a poem on the subject:
Red is the wheat denatured
On which the fowl is fed;
Red the impending ruin
About the fanner's head.
Red glow Helvetia's harvests
Amid the glaciers cold	.
Where every frozen wheat ear
Has cost its weight in gold.
I believe it would be better to pay a higher minimum price on a lesser number of bushels and then sell the balance of the crop at the ruling prices. When we are in committee the minister may tell us why certain conclusions have been reached. I would point out, however, that I have had a great number of resolutions from chambers of commerce and farmer organizations in my district, and from all points in Alberta and Saskatchewan, which bear out the view I hold. I do not wish hon. members from Saskatchewan to think that just because I come from Alberta I do not consider the people of Saskatchewan my brothers. Their problems are the same as ours; we are all one.
I do not wish to make immature statements. At all costs we must persevere in our efforts to solve the problems facing the country. In this time of transition, when distance is being annihilated, it seems to me that the end of political geography is in sight. The people in the maritimes have the same problems as we have. That must be so in a day when one can fly from Montreal to Vancouver in fourteen hours, and it is reasonable to suppose that at some future time it may be done even more quickly than that.
Another important factor would be international goodwill and confidence. To-day I received from the old country a copy of the Manchester Guardian Commercial, which has this to say about the wheat conference in London:
But the difficulty of controlling a world-wide commodity like wheat can hardly have been reduced by the growth of international distrust.

That is my belief exactly. If Canadians in one part of Canada cannot cooperate with those in another part, how on earth can we expect to cooperate with other countries of the empire or with other nations of the world which may have ideologies different from ours? I do not wish to delay this measure because I realize that the government has a tremendous problem on its hands. So far as I am concerned. I would much rather work in cooperation with those who want to solve this problem than to put any stumbling block in their way.
Mr. F. D. MacIvENZIE (Neepawa): Mr. Speaker, in my opinion it is quite proper to consider Bills Nos. 82, 89, 83 and 63 under the general heading of aids to Canadian agriculture, and I shall use that as my general text for what I have to say on Bill No. 83 which is at present before the house. The subject covers so much ground that it cannot be comprehensively developed in the brief time at one's disposal, so I shall content myself by touching on only a few of its phases, some that have not been dealt with previously in the debate. I should like, therefore, to discuss briefly why the wheat industry should be saved in this emergency. First, it should be saved for the salvation of eastern agriculture and, second, it should be saved for its own sake because of its importance in the whole Canadian economy and especially its historical place in the building up of Ontario and Quebec. I want to deal with the usual type of newspaper and other objections to this agricultural assistance and finally with the economic background of the whole wheat depression situation. I hope to do this in much less than forty minutes.
First we cannot shift from wheat growing to other types of farming in western Canada without destroying eastern agriculture. I gave the reason for this in a speech which I made some time ago in this house, when I used as a single instance, dairy farming. I showed the disaster that would come to the eastern dairymen if the prairie farmer were to shift to dairy production to any great degree. It is vitally important to eastern agriculture that the wheat farmer of the prairie should continue to produce wheat. Surely I need not elaborate further on that. I should like to speak at somewhat greater length of the benefits of the wheat industry itself and its tremendous importance in the building up of the cities of Ontario and Quebec.
There are a great many people engaged in the industry, and many more are dependent upon it. There are not only the farmers

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themselves, but their families, the elevator and grain men in the towns and cities as well as the business men and their families, and the railroad men operating across the country and down to the sea coast. Directly or indirectly every one in the three prairie provinces depends for his living more or less on the business of wheat production and marketing. Under our Canadian economy practically one-quarter of the population of this country has been dependent on the export trade in wheat. Doctor Ekblow, of Clark university, an outstanding authority on economic geography, when speaking recently of the world wheat situation and of Canada's position particularly, supported this view emphatically when he said:
Canadian trade in wheat is so important that it has produced cities such as Winnipeg, notable as a wheat inspection and collecting centre. Most of the railway lines of the area and such a density of population would have been impossible but for the production of this staple. It has also resulted in the development of the canal system of the great lakes, new transcontinental railway lines, and a port on Hudson bay.
Speaking of the Canadian economic development and the great expansion which dates from the late nineties and what it means to Canada as the moving force of exports and investments in that development, Doctor Mackintosh of Queen's university says:
By 1920 the picture was completely changed, with the exception of sawmill products and base metals none of the exports of 1890 were of major importance. Wheat and wheat flour had become overwhelmingly the most important exports, and indeed, their total value by 1920 exceeded the total value of all Canadian exports as of 1910, and wheat, of course, was an export exclusively of western Canada. The economy of this country had been reorganized behind a single dominant export region. Instead of each region having its own contacts in the export market we had concentrated those contacts largely, not entirely, but largely in one region, and through it indirectly the other parts of the country entered the world market.
But should production not continue approximately as at present, or should its sale fail to be realized at a profitable price, then the prosperity of all Canada will be sadly impaired; because whatever economic set-backs so large an area may suffer, whatever economic difficulties and privations so great a population may be called upon to endure, it is surely a fact that the remainder will feel the effect to a considerable extent. That effect will be the more considerable in view of the fact that the western population is a very large fraction of the whole. Economically as well as historically Canada is one. Whatever the west suffers, whatever prosperity the west enjoys, there is a direct and instantaneous repercussion on the east. This was evidenced in
1937 when those farmers of the west who had some wheat to sell received a fair price. The result, was felt in the form of an upturn in business right across the country. Because of the large number of people dependent upon the production and export trade in wheat, it is essential that it should be helped in this emergency.
I said that historically as well as economically Canada is one. When the west suffers or when the west prospers, all of Canada suffers or prospers. Let us see what history shows in this regard. 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. Every one of us knows that to be true. 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, Edmonton, Moose Jaw, Brandon, and the other towns large and small, on the prairies. I have already quoted Doctor Ekblow on this fact, as well as Doctor Mackintosh. Where was this money spent? It was spent largely in the east for materials, for the steel and rolling stock required for the railways, for agricultural implements for the new farms, for 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. In fact, it was with the development of the west, and because of it, that the east developed. Easterners who know will admit all this quite readily. Let me quote the Montreal Daily Herald of January 10, 1939, as follows:
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.
Here are some of the substantial reasons they enunciate:
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.
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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.
The western provinces will come back-make no mistake about that.
It goes further along the same lines. We are glad to have this support from an eastern newspaper. It has an understanding and appreciation of the fundamentals underlying the Canadian background; but not so with some others. In the same editorial I find this:
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.
There are some, a few, who speak and write about all agriculture as if it should not be assisted.
Referring to the minister's measures for agricultural relief the Windsor Daily Star of April 7 in an editorial entitled, "Bonused Agriculture," omits even a passing word about bonused industry, but as it is the most intelligent criticism I have seen and sums up generally the objections, I shall deal with it briefly.
It states that the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) desires to establish the principle of minimum price applicable to dairying, the fruit industry and all other branches of agriculture across Canada. This is true. Also it is, in the circumstances, logical and sound. Agriculture did not ask for this until it was compelled to do so. It has been forced upon agriculture and newspapers which speak as this editorial does, must accept the principle and support it, or else watch the destruction of agriculture under our existing system.
I live in the west. Suppose I wish to buy an automobile at Windsor; the price of the wheat the farmer sells in western Canada is determined by the price in the Liverpool market, less transportation charges in getting it there. The price of the automobile I buy in Windsor is determined by the United States market, plus the tariff imposed by the government, plus, up until a short time ago, excise taxes, and any other costs of bringing the automobile across the border.
The situation, therefore, as defined by the editorial is this:	With 60-cent wheat and a
car costing, for example, $1,000, I must pay 1,666 bushels of wheat for the car. But the

price of the car is raised to $1,200-really an understatement of facts-by tariff enactments, and therefore I am compelled to pay 2,000 bushels of wheat for my Windsor car. Does it not seem fair to you, Mr. Speaker, that the government, which by legal enactment has given a United States firm manufacturing automobiles in Canada the right to charge me 20 per cent more for my car, should also provide me with a price for my wheat which will permit me to meet on terms of perfect equality my United States friends now manufacturing automobiles in the Dominion of Canada?
The answer to these questions is given in this editorial. I quote in part:
Any such principle would he a sharp departure from the system upon which agriculture has made its contribution to Canada up to the present time.
The wreck of agriculture under the very system they support is the perfect answer to that question. We have watched during the last few years the price of manufactured goods established at a level which makes it impossible for the farmers to buy. We have watched, too, the men on relief in the city of Windsor. They are on relief because you will not permit the farmers and other basic producers of Canada to purchase the goods produced in the city of Windsor. We cannot exchange products, the price of which is determined by the world level, for products the price of which is determined by the management of the company which produces them, aided by legislation passed by the dominion government. The editorial goes on:
In effect, of course, such a principle would be a step towards state socialism, which would mean that the government would fix the price paid by the farmer rather than the market doing so.
May I ask at this point:	Is the price of
an automobile determined by the market? Is the price of our textile products determined by the market? Or is not the tariff, which in some instances runs from sixty to eighty per cent on the conversion costs of changing raw materials into finished products, a factor in determining the price?
Do you want socialism for manufacturers, and capitalism for farmers and basic producers? And do you then expect to found a unified and prosperous nation upon what would be defined as directly opposite systems existing together in a democratic country?
The editorial also advances this contention, that the farmers will be dependent upon the government for their price. Some time ago it was proposed to remove the excise tax

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from automobiles as well as from other products affected by the recent trade agreement with the United States. The automobile manufacturers lobbied in favour of the retention of that tax upon the Canadian people with all the vigour and power and energy which concentrated wealth can exercise upon a government. I might logically have expected to find in the Windsor Daily Star a paragraph which would have read like this:
With tariffs to hold up prices of Canadian manufactured products, those interested in manufacturing might take the attitude quite logically that if they do not get the prices they wish for their products the government does not get their votes.
But that attitude is not a new one in Canada. It is a fair inference from expressed opinion in this case. In every election the bribe is openly placed before the workers and before the owners of industry. It is not uncommon in Canadian history for manufacturers to call their men together and state the case even as boldly as it is stated here, and that also is the common language at election time of members of parliament in industrial sections.
I quote again:
The tendency on the part of the government to swap prices suitable to the farmers (manufacturers) for votes suitable to the government.
Then take this-and it ought to be stated in letters of bronze on the lintel of every home and over the door of every legislature:
And remember that the country at large would be paying the piper.
And this is the concluding paragraph:
If a start is made towards bonusing all farm products, it will not be easy to turn back even if the system is found to be wrong. . . . Are Canadians generally in favour of binding their future to a system of making agriculture, Canada's basic industry, dependent upon a bonusing system?
How splendid if that would only be accepted as basic truth 1
Is it logical to bonus manufacturers and refuse to bonus agriculture? Is it economically possible to maintain the existence of the dominion under a condition which compels the people of one industry to pay bonuses to the people of other industries?
The bonusing of agriculture is wrong, fundamentally wrong; but the bonusing of agriculture is absolutely essential under the ^ very system which this editorial and others like it supports, a system which proposes to bonus industry at the expense of agriculture. The only alternative to equal privileges is the destruction of agriculture.
I should like now to deal briefly with the economic background leading up to the present difficult position of the wheat industry. May
I lead up to it in this way? To generalize, any increase in the productivity of industry, however caused, raises the standard of living and expands the volume of employment. The discovery of a new oil field, an increase in the supply of capital, an increase in the numbers of the working population, an improvement in the industrial organization-any of these factors will raise the standard of living and expand the volume of employment in the same way as would an increase in technical knowledge.
We see, then, that the national income is not a fixed sum. There is no wages fund which is fixed once and for all, and which sets a limit to the volume of employment available. Nor is there a definite amount of purchasing power which is fixed once and for all, and which sets a limit to the volume of commodities that can be produced and marketed. For every increase in production, whether it be the consequence of a new invention, a discovery of new resources, an increase in the supply of capital, or increased efficiency of the workers, brings with it a corresponding increase in purchasing power. Professor Marshall puts it thus:
The national devidend is at once the aggregate net product of, and sole source of payment tor, all the agents of production.
Some reflection will convince us of the truth of this proposition. The production of a commodity involves for the producer an outlay for land, labour and capital in the form of wages, rent and interest. If he increases his production he increases his outlay on wages, rent and interest. But wages, rent and interest, while they are costs from the point of view of the employer, are income to the recipients. Hence any increase in production involves a corresponding increase of income. Writes Professor Henry Clay:
There is always a demand for this additional product, because the addition to society's income enables society to pay the additional workers or machines or organizers. . . . What we call supply and demand are the same thing looked at from the different standpoints of producer and consumer; and producers and consumers are the same persons. The real national income is the goods and services produced to satisfy the nation's wants; it is these that land, labour and capital produce, and it is with these that land, labour and capital are paid; any increase in the product is an increase in the payments.
Doctor Stockton puts it something like this: All this is not to say, however, that any industry or any firm in an industry can increase at will or by its own unaided efforts its production, and market the additional product at a remunerative price. The growth of production must proceed, not by haphazard,
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Mr. JOSEPH NEEDHAM (The Battle-fords) :: I rise on behalf of my constituents
to oppose the 70 cent wheat bill. Let me state briefly one or two reasons why I do this. The first is that agriculture, especially in my constituency, is not in the position it was in a few years ago. Had the grain growers been in what we might term a normal position they might not have the criticism that they have at the present time. But there have been a number of years of depression, from the point of view of returns to the farmer, and the reserves they had a few years ago, not only their reserves in cash but their farm implements, home utensils and things of that kind, are depleted, so that they are not in the position they were in some years ago to take this reduction in price. I am safe in saying that the crop year on which we are now entering is perhaps the most serious for agriculture up to the present time. For that reason this reduction in price is very hard on agriculture.
Then again, a new problem has arisen lately; that is our possible market is not what it was. It has in a measure disappeared. I suppose this is really the first time in sixty years that the world does not want our Canadian wheat, that is the amount we produce. In the 1920's we exported something like 800 million bushels a year, now our export has dropped to 540 million. The question is how this wheat that we have on hand at present, plus a possibly fair crop this year, is to be disposed of. I do not know whether I understood the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) correctly the other night when he spoke of barter. I have not read his speech in Hansard
since, but I understood him to intimate that if we adopted a policy of barter, say with Germany, we would be at a great disadvantage in the exchange of our wheat for the commodities the farmer needs, such as implements and so forth.


James Garfield Gardiner: My statement was to the effect that at present those countries are not anxious to barter for our wheat at any price.


Joseph Needham: Well, there is the situation; our markets are largely gone; a new problem has arisen.
Again, if this reduction in price goes into effect, I am much concerned as to the consequences to agriculture generally. I am thinking more of the youth who are coming of age who should be starting out to farm. I remember last fall talking to a man whom I have known for twenty-five years, during which time he has raised an average of perhaps
8,000	bushels of grain annually. He has two boys who wanted to leave and go somewhere. He said, "I have persuaded them to stay another year." But the oldest one said, "Well, dad, you have been here thirty years and the condition you are in to-day does not offer me much encouragement to follow farming." Those lads know nothing else so far as training is concerned, but are well qualified in every way as farmers. But what future is there for the young farmer in the west to-day? That is a serious problem.
I have here a petition from my constituents opposing this wheat bill. It is signed by 10,028 farmers, merchants and other electors in my constituency.


Charles Robert Evans: Schoolboys?


Joseph Needham: This petition reads:
We the undersigned petitioners pray that the amendments to the 1935 Wheat Board Act be not now enacted; that the wheat board be permitted to continue as provided in the act now in force; that the guaranteed price for wheat delivered in the 1939 crop season be not less than eighty cents basis one northern at Fort William; and that additional legislation be enacted to provide relief assistance for those who suffer a partial or complete crop failure.
In addition, I have had many personal letters and petitions from groups that have met together. I want to read a resolution passed which was sent in from the Edan district:
We the undersigned electors of the Dominion of Canada hereby petition the government to consider well the amendments to the Wheat Board Act before putting them on the statutes. Sixty-cent wheat means that western Canada will not be able to support themselves, leave alone paying past debts. The farmers must have at least eighty cents for their wheat in order for them to survive and for the business men in the west to carry on.
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It is for these reasons that I protest against this price of 70 cents. Of course, when that petition came in, the people were for the most part thinking of 60-cent wheat. It is for these reasons that I oppose this bill.


Walter Adam Tucker: In dealing with the bills now before us relating to agriculture, we must bear in mind three considerations which to a certain extent appear to have been lost sight of in the speeches that have been made in opposition to the particular bill at present before the house. The first consideration is that there seems to be an idea on the part of many hon. members who have taken part in this debate that in some way we in western Canada who are supporting the government in this legislation contend that it will remedy the unfairness, the disabilities, under which western Canada has suffered owing to tariff policy and monetary policy in the past. It seems quite clear to me from the speech of the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) that he did not contend that this legislation was intended to compensate western Canada for the disabilities under which it suffers on account of the tariff policy of this country. Indeed, it would be rather strange for anyone to suggest that these disabilities could or would or should be cured by two bills brought in by the Minister of Agriculture. And when our friends of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and the Social Credit group attack these bills because they are not adequate compensation for all the disabilities under which we suffer, it appears to me that they are not touching the main problem now before us, namely, whether these bills are good bills and should be supported.
I intend to deal with these matters only in outline, Mr. Speaker. First, in regard to the tariff; I do not believe any thinking person or any thinking economist would doubt that we in western Canada suffer terribly under the tariff policy of this country. Not only do we have to sell in the markets of the world, without any protection whatever, in competition with the lowest paid farmers throughout the world; we even have to meet the competition of subsidized farming in certain parts of the world. Further, as though that were not enough, an extra burden is put upon our backs by virtue of a tariff policy which enables prices to be charged higher than we would have to pay if it were not for that tariff wall and, in the second place and more important still, it enables cartels and combines to be. set up behind that wall which fix prices regardless of competition.

Before the Rowell commission certain figures as to the extent the west suffers owing to the protective tariff were given which had been prepared by the present Minister of Labour (Mr. Rogers), on behalf of the government of Nova Scotia in connection with another inquiry. Experts were engaged by the government of Manitoba, among them Professor Viner, an outstanding economist of one of the United States universities, to examine the claim put forward by the government of Ontario that there was little substance in the minister's claims, and after the most exhaustive examination Professor Viner came to the conclusion that the net annual loss to the three prairie provinces because of the protective tariff policy was at least $47,000,000 a year. Does anyone suggest that by two or three bills brought in by the Minister of Agriculture this whole set-up can be changed and the west compensated for its losses; and that if they do not do so they should be defeated even though beneficial bills.
There is no doubt in my mind, that one of the causes of the present situation in Europe has been the attitude after the war in regard to trade, of the United States particularly, and of Canada in somewhat less degree. Before the war Germany paid for her necessary imports of food products and raw materials by means of manufactured goods to the extent of 85 per cent, and by way of services, such as were rendered by her merchant marine, to the extent of 15 per cent. Then, by virtue of the fact that we took away her merchant marine, we made it impossible for her to render those services which paid for 15 per cent of her imports. So, in order to feed her people and keep together her industrial organizations, she had to step up her exports to the extent of another 15 per cent. I need not go into the question of reparations, which were also demanded and could only be paid ultimately by increased exports. What was the attitude of the rest of the world? Tariffs were raised, first by the United States in 1920. Tariffs against Germany went up all over the world, preventing her from paying by means of manufactured articles for the foodstuffs she required. What was Germany to do? Unemployment was increasing; her people were on the verge of starvation. She did the only thing she could. First of all, she strictly organized her people in order to try to carry on under that set-up. Then, in accordance with the fixed principle that people will fight rather than starve, Germany began to take the attitude that if the nations of the world would not trade with her and enable her to procure

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foodstuffs for her people, then she would have to get control of enough land to be able to feed her own people. Once she embarked upon that policy of aggression, in order to build up her military machine and her armaments she had still further to cut down her imports, so that she would have the necessary foreign exchange to buy the commodities required for her armament program. So we have Germany embarking upon her present policy of restricting imports of foodstuffs.
Economists all over the world foretold that very thing. It was foreseen by President Woodrow Wilson in his fourteen points, when he said that if the separate new nations were established in Europe, provision should be made for low tariffs between them. So the thing that has been foreseen by economists since 1918 and 1919, when the high tariff people of the world demanded and obtained higher tariffs, has come about; and to-day, I believe one of the reasons why the world is once more facing war is a result of an economic policy which sought to sell but would not buy.
That affected us in western Canada, Mr. Speaker, that high tariff policy of those who sought to protect secondary industry in this country. The countries of Europe, which would have been glad to get our foodstuffs, were not permitted to buy them. Our markets were sacrificed on the altar of economic nationalism. The farmers of western Canada are the victims of the high tariff policy which has closed our markets to us; and the farmer on the western plains, who has been placed upon the verge of bankruptcy by the considered protective tariff policy of this country, is now entitled to come to this government and say, "In the distress in which you have placed me I am entitled to defence and protection."
Those are the two branches of the tariff question: the increasing burden placed upon the farmer in higher prices, and the destruction of his markets brought about by deliberate tariff policy; and by deliberate governmental policy must the farmer be protected as a result.
In addition, there was the monetary policy, under which a deliberate endeavour was made to keep our money on a parity with that of the United States. The inordinate increase in tariffs brought about by the previous government-the Bennett government-was put into effect deliberately in order, among other purposes, to cut down our imports from the United States so that our dollar could be kept pretty well on a parity with the dollar of that country. And that was done in the face of repeated requests from
representatives of farming communities that it be not done. The then premier of Saskatchewan, the present Minister of Agriculture in this government, on behalf of the Liberal party of Saskatchewan asked that our money be kept more or less on a parity with the money of our main customer, England, in order that when, we sold a bushel of wheat for, say, four shillings we would be able to exchange that money here for about one hundred cents instead of, as was the case at one time, getting something under eighty cents.
I have had the figures from the bureau of statistics in that regard. First of all, I asked for the figures showing what would have happened if we had maintained parity with sterling. Then I asked for the figures indicating what would have happened if we had done as Australia did and kept our money at a discount compared with English money. I will just take time to give the results of the latter. If we had followed the monetary policy that was adopted by the government of Australia, our producers of wheat alone would have received 8229,000,000 more than they did between 1930 and 1936. The policy that was followed in this country represented a definite effort on the part of the federal government to maintain a position whereby it, corporations and others could more easily pay debts in the United States. That was the reason given by the Prime Minister of Canada at that time. Whether or not the policy was wise for that reason is not for me to say at this distant date in this debate. I do say, however, that it ivas the considered policy of the government, designed to help us pay our debts in the United States without regard to the way in which it bore upon our farmers on the western plains. Is it any wonder, then, that the farmers of the west say now, "You have destroyed our markets. You have permitted us to be exploited to the extent of $47,000,000 a year. By your monetary policy you have taken away from us $229,000,000 in a period of about four years. Having done all this, we are now entitled to have you stand behind us, as part of this Dominion of Canada." That is one of the things, Mr. Speaker, that I should like to draw to your attention.
There is another point, and this is something I would say to hon. members from eastern Canada. When western Canada was set up, the immigration policy of the country was dictated by the federal government at Ottawa. Even in 1905 when the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta were established, the dominion for 25 years namely until 1930 very carefully kept control of the natura'
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An hon. MEMBER:: The west is.


Walter Adam Tucker: But that is not the issue before the house. That is a condition which can be brought into force only when the whole of Canada has been convinced as to its wisdom. I, for one, will not get up and rail against the Minister of Agriculture because my ideas of monetary policy are not carried into play in every bill which comes before the 'louse. We are confronted with the definite question: Are these bills good or are they not? The question is not, do they meet my monetary views? It is not, do they redress all the troubles of western Canada? but, are these good bills?
That is, I think, the proper way to approach the question. I do not demand a complete upset of the system over-night. I do not say this: "Even if this is a good step forward, I am going to vote against it, because it does not go all the way at once." Under our British

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system the only way we will get real progress is by persuading people as to the wisdom of any step which may be taken, and we must go forward step by step. The sure way to destroy progress is to say, " I will not support a forward step because it does not go all the way I want it to go." That seems to be the attitude which has been taken by some of my hon. friends in regard to these bills.
And that brings me to the question: Are these bills good or are they not? Is this a forward step? Let us first consider the 'bill to amend the wheat board act. Under the act as it now stands, the government of the day is left free to set any initial price it wishes for wheat. When I hear some of my hon. friends say they are going to vote against the bill because they want a higher price than 70 cents, then I say this: If this measure is defeated in the house they are not attaining an 80-cent price, for the government of the day or any government that succeeds it can set a price as low as 40 cents a bushel or lower if it wishes.


Miss MACPHAIL:: They would not be a government long.


Walter Adam Tucker: When hon. members vote against this bill they place it in the power of the government to do that very thing. But if they vote for the amendment now before us they will be sure that the price will not be less than 70 cents.
Why, if I had as low an opinion of the government as my hon. friends of the Social Credit party and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, if I thought the government were out to betray the west, I would certainly think they would probably set a price lower than 70 cents. I would want to see that this bill went through so that they could not put it lower than that amount.
But my hon. friends rise and say that the government are betraying the west and are not to be trusted; that although they have the power to-day to set the price even at 30 cents a bushel, whereas this bill proposes to tie their hands and to say they cannot set it at less than 70 cents; yet, because my hon. friends mistrust the government they will still leave them power to set the price at 30 cents and not tie their hands at 70 cents.
I do not follow that logic. My own attitude is that when this parliament has the right under this bill to say that the price must be 70 cents this year, 70 cents next year and 70 cents the year after, that the minimum price shall be at least that much, and that, no matter what happens, we are sure that is the basic price for wheat, then I know the same thing will not happen after this amendment
goes through as happened in 1932 when the farmer in western Canada had to sell, as I did myself, good wheat for as low as 19 cents a bushel. I know we are being guaranteed against that happening again. My hon. friends who say they are voting against this amendment are leaving themselves open to that very thing happening again, and for that reason I cannot follow their attitude.
Then there is this further feature: We know that in western Canada we grow a wheat of high gluten content, a wheat which can be grown only in semi-arid countries, or areas subject to crop failures. One of the real things we have needed, one of the things my father wished for and I have wished for, since I lived on the western plains, was some measure of security by means of crop insurance against periodic crop failures due to drought. This government comes forward at the present session and gives us that measure of security as part of its general policy.
I am satisfied that this measure alone, Mr. Speaker, means more to the future security of the people on those western plains than any single measure hitherto passed in any session of parliament since confederation. And my hon. friends say that they will vote the government out because it wishes to set the initial price at 70 cents instead of leaving it to be set later at any price, and that they would put it in a position where it could not put this policy of crop insurance into effect. When I go back to western Canada I will tell my constituents that those who would have killed the wheat board amendment would in doing so have destroyed the government and destroyed the acreage bonus bill and destroyed the hope of some security that western Canada had from it. I will remind them of 1911 when because some people in the west were not willing and able to see clearly the way their best interests lay, they helped destroy the Laurier government when it was giving them some real measure of help in its reciprocity agreement, although perhaps it was not ready to go as far as they wanted it to go. I say to my hon. friends from western Canada, to the members of the Social Credit and Cooperative Commonwealth Federation groups: If you try to destroy this government by voting against the 70 cent amendment and call on us from western Canada to join with you in doing that, if we answer your call we will destroy the government and lose the whole program. I ask my hon. friends: Do you think we should do that?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Sure.
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Walter Adam Tucker: Oh, sure. I ask hon. members who say that we should destroy this program to stand up, if they have the nerve to do so. If you destroy this government, you destroy the whole program. I take it, as no one stands, that there is not one hon. member willing to do it. I realize it is good politics to say: Yes, we put you on the spot because you have to support the whole program and we can attack one weak point. They know just as well as I, that if they vote the government out on one part of this program, they destroy the government and lose the whole program. They know as well as I, and the people of western Canada will know, that would be the result.
There is another part of this program to which I should like to draw attention. My hon. friends say that they are in favour of an 80 cent a bushel payment. I realize it is easy to take a simple program and say, "80 cents or fight." It is easy to say that if we depart from that, we are betraying western Canada. Our people however have a right to expect from our representatives in parliament that they will study the program of the government, that they will see if the government are doing more than any other possible alternative government to solve our problem.


An hon. MEMBER:: No.


Walter Adam Tucker: I shall go on to show why I think they are. I want to see prorogation by the king, and I want to cause as little delay as possible in that regard, but when it is suggested that I am afraid to rise in my place in this House of Commons and say why I support this government, then I think it is time for me to rise and say why I take this position. I hope hon. members will be satisfied when I have concluded my remarks. They say that with an 80-cent payment they do not care about the acreage bonus scheme.


An hon. MEMBER:: Oh, no.


Walter Adam Tucker: Some say that. They demand 80 cents, which means they are ready to vote out the government and destroy the whole scheme. The hon. member for Rose-town-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell) is an old enough parliamentarian to know that what I say is true. With those opposing, it is either 80 cents or destroy the scheme.


Major James William Coldwell: You know we could not do that if we tried.


Walter Adam Tucker: That is the point. The hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar says, "You know we could not do it even if we tried." That is the point.


Mr COLDWELL:: In this house.


Walter Adam Tucker: They know they are safe in taking that attitude-that the program will be carried by government supporters-that it is not endangered by their attitude. They can safely leave us to carry the program and jeer at our supporting one item they think unpopular.
Let us deal with the question of the 80-cent payment. Take, for example, a man who had
5,000	bushels of wheat to sell. Such a man got roughly $1,000 from this government as a bonus. Last year most of my constituents had no crop at all and were forced to live with their families on from $300 to $400 for the year. They did not get that $300 or $400 given to them, they had to sign that they would repay it and charge their land with repayment of same. What kind of system is it when a man with no crop must agree to repay the $300 or $400 to keep his family alive, must have it charged against his land, while the other man receives $1,000 as a straight gift? Oh, yes, my friends say that is the policy they want, and if they do not get it, they will vote the government out.


Major James William Coldwell: Who was responsible
for it?


Walter Adam Tucker: We were not responsible. It was put in force in the last parliament and we are trying to cure it. I am simply pointing out what would be the effect of your vote that we do not cure it.
There is another matter to be considered, the effect on the supply of wheat. It is all very well to rise and advocate an 80-cent payment. We know full well the cry that will go through the west against those who do as I am doing. Eighty cents fixed by the government is not the solution. In my opinion we cannot get by on 80 cents or 90 cents or anything less than a dollar which can only be obtained by trade treaties opening up markets so we can sell our wheat. Are we to throw away the acreage bonus scheme for 80 cents guaranteed for one year which will not save us?
What would be the effect on the present economic state of Canada and the world if we bonused wheat only and raised the price out of all proportion to the prices of other commodities? Professor Hope has been quoted as an authority a great deal by those who condemn this bill, but here is what he had to say, as reported on page 240 of the proceedings of the conference on markets:
One more word I might say about the present system of bonus this year. This year it may cost the federal government $60,000,000-we don't know-but whatever it is, personally I think it is about the most unfair kind of bonus you can possibly give western agriculture, because it gives a definite bonus to the man with

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a big crop, and nothing to the man with a crop failure. There is no bonus on coarse grains. The farmer with no crop is out of luck. If there is no change in policy by next spring-
Here is the important point:
-we will have a shift to increased wheat acreage. If I were a farmer I would plant more wheat next year. Why? Because oats are 15 cents a bushel and wheat is between 58 cents and 60 cents. A farmer would be dull if he did not react in this manner; and this is exactly what he is thinking of right now. To make the bonus fair, if it should be necessary in another year, it should be based on the total acres of crop land. In western Canada we have approximately 60,000,000 acres broken up-summerfallow, oats, barley and all crops combined. One dollar an acre on all land broken gives no special emphasis on either oats, barley or wheat. It gives equal emphasis to all, and if wheat is sold at, let us say, a market price of 40 cents the total cost would be the same as this year and probably some wheat would be fed. This wheat is not fed at 60 cents. At a dollar an acre basis it wouldn't cost any more money to the government of Canada. But bonusing the price of wheat prevents the very thing you are trying to do, it does not help to feed any of that surplus. As long as the farmer can get 60 cents for wheat he will not feed wheat to hogs.
The total storage capacity for wheat in Canada is roughly 419,000,000 bushels. If you raise the price of wheat by a guaranteed price out	of all proportion
to everything else you will stimulate the growing of wheat, and you will make the situation which to-day is difficult even more difficult. I say to my hon. friends of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and Social Credit groups and to others who are opposing the amendment to the wheat board act: Is it not better to help the farmer, regardless of whether he grows wheat or anything else, than to help him only if he grows wheat and encourage him to grow more and more wheat until you have your elevators plugged and you cannot do anything with the wheat?


Major James William Coldwell: The wheat board bill limits it to 5,000 bushels.


Walter Adam Tucker: I do not see what that has to do with my argument being wrong. If you limit it to 5,000 bushels, you do not encourage them to grow more wheat because you say, "We are paying only on 5.000 bushels, there is a 5,000 bushel limitation."
At one time I considered advocating that the proper thing to do was to leave the price at 60 cents and give a far more generous acreage allowance than that proposed and thus get away from encouraging the growing of wheat. Here is the thought which struck me in that connection and which I think should be considered. There are certain areas in Canada

which probably would not benefit from an acreage bonus scheme. Then there is this other consideration. If we give all the necessary assistance for people to live comfortably, whether or not they are growing wheat, and let the price of wheat go down to 40 cents, the tendency might be that we would not grow enough wheat to hold our share of the world market. Once we lost our share of the world market, we might have difficulty in regaining it. I think we should keep the price high enough to encourage the growing of sufficient wheat to retain our place in the world market.
There is another point to be considered. If we bonused the western farmer on an acreage basis entirely and let the price go down to ruinous depths, he would be forced to go more and more into the production of dairy products and beef and pork products. As a member from western Canada, am I justified in asking for that policy? The effect would be that the western farmer would turn into heavy production of dairy products and live stock and drive down the prices of his eastern brother farmer's products. I decided that this would be most unfair, and so I take my present attitude in common with many Liberal members from western Canada. I regard it as a fair compromise-70 cents and the acreage bonus scheme.
Taking everything together, the fairest thing to do for the farmers of the east and the west was, in addition to providing for this acreage bonus, to put the price of wheat high enough that we could hope to hold our own in world markets; to encourage the western farmer to stay substantially in the growing of wheat; and also to extend the policy of a guaranteed initial price for wheat to farmers in the rest of Canada. That, it seemed to me, was a compromise which took into consideration all the factors, and I defy any member of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation or of the Social Credit party to meet the arguments I have advanced and show how their policy would meet the objections I have raised and the objectives mentioned which I think should be kept in mind.
In regard to the effect of the western farmer being forced by low wheat prices to turn his attention to mixed fanning, as would happen if the policy advocated by some of our friends from eastern Canada were adopted, and how important it is that the western farmer should be encouraged to stay substantially in the growing of wheat, I quote the opinion of Hon. Mr. Taggart, minister of agriculture of Saskatchewan, who is regarded, it will be admitted by all, as one of the out-
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standing agricultural experts in the whole Dominion of Canada. He says:
I think I mentioned the total crop area in Canada is 58 million acres, 40 million of which is in the three prairie provinces. The large share of the acreage of the three prairie provinces is in cereal crops. If it became necessary for any big proportion of the 40,000,000 acres to be changed into say hay crops or coarse grains, which in turn produced live stock, you can see at once the impact of the 40,000,000 acres on the 18,000,000 acres. Even though the 18,000,000 acres may produce twice as much hay per acre, a large shift in the three prairie provinces would have a terrific effect on the economy of the rest of the country. If the shift were very large the effect would be absolutely disastrous on the farmers of the other provinces. I do not think the disaster to the fruit grower or to the highly specialized grower would be much less than to the dairyman or the man who raises beef cattle. That is why I think it is essential in the interests of the entire country that our problem be considered as a national problem, and some plan should be designed to protect the agriculture of the whole country and not of any particular region alone. I think, too, if this reasoning is right, since the farm population is roughly half the total population, the result of a failure to deal adequately with our problem here will have a disastrous result on the whole economy of the country, because you can't regulate the business enterprises of half the people without seriously damaging the enterprises of the other half. It is not only a question, in my judgment, of the inter-relationship of agriculture of the different regions, but it is also a fact that if there is a large part of our agricultural economy depressed or ruined, it must affect the whole industry of the country.
There is the considered opinion of one of the leading agricultural experts in western Canada who attended the conference on markets for western farm products. His considered opinion was that we should see to it that the western farmer was not forced into competing in hay and beef and butter and cheese with the farmers of eastern Canada. I say to the representatives in this house of eastern Canadian farmers who are being told, I have heard, that it would be in their best interests to vote against this bill, that they can go back to their farmers at home and say: "By virtue of the fact that we kept the western farmer in the growing of wheat we probably kept your butter and cheese and beef and pork from being driven down to levels at which you could not sell it and live." And hon. members can ask their farmer constituents who criticize: "Is that what you wanted me to do as your representative in parliament?"
During the war the wheat fields of western Canada practically saved the situation for Canada and the empire; we know that the time may come when the wheat fields of Australia may not be available to Europe, and when once again the fate of civilization will depend upon western Canada being able

to feed it. For that reason, if for no other, I say that in these days when one part of the British commonwealth, the centre of it, is spending billions and billions in arming itself, surely we should make our contribution to our own defence, and I think it more important than spending money on guns and destroyers that we should maintain our farming industry so it may do its part, if the time comes once more, by feeding the peoples of Europe.
There is another feature upon which I wish to touch. Some people seem to think that the wheat situation is quite hopeless. The *world carry-over in August, 1939, will be between 1,000 million and 1.100 million bushels; in 1934 the carry-over at the same time of the year was 1,199 million bushels, much higher than it is this year, and that did not prevent the price from going in the crop year 1936-37 to an average of S1.29 a bushel; it did not prevent the price from going in the crop year 1937-38 to SI .18 a bushel. I ask hon. gentlemen to bear in mind that the carry-over today is not as great as it was in 1934. The price can again as it did in 1934 rise to over one dollar a bushel. Some people seem to overlook the fact that the total disappearance of wheat is almost four times the total carryover, that the world needs to eat almost 3,900 million bushels of wheat in one year and the carry-over is just a little over one-quarter of that.
I should like to wind up on the monetary theme, and my friends will, knowing my strong feelings in that respect, forgive me for that. There has been a great deal said in the past about the cost to Canada of looking after the unemployed and the farmers of the west and doing all the things that we as a civilized nation had to do to justify the existence of civilized government in this country. We talk of the 900 million dollars that Canada has gone into debt, but I draw the attention of hon. members to the fact that that 900 million dollars has fed men and women and children who otherwise would have starved to death. It has helped us to keep in existence the great farming industry; it has looked after the unemployed, the sick and the homeless. And at what cost to the people of Canada? Let me quote one sentence from the budget speech of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Dunning) :
Although our dominion funded debt has increased substantially since 1930, the annual interest burden of that debt, allowing for elimination of tax-free securities, is lower than in any year since the war. So the increase in dominion debt has not required any increase in taxes to carry it.

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Those words of the Minister of Finance were, in my opinion, the most significant in his whole budget speech. They mean that all that was done for the people of Canada since 1930 was done in such a way, accompanied as it was by proper monetary action on the part of the Bank of Canada, that it has not meant a single dollar of increased taxation to the people of Canada. And yet people will run up and down this land and say that because of what the government did here and there, the people have to pay more taxes.
I say, Mr. Speaker, that what was done between 1930 and 1939 can be carried still further. We can reestablish the people of western Canada, we can reestablish the factories of eastern Canada and have the unemployed working happily in them, by extending that monetary policy whereby as we increase our national debt we decrease the interest cost of carrying it. I look forward to the time when the cost of carrying that debt will not be greater than the mere cost of the bookkeeping necessary to record it. Whether my hon. friends agree with me in that or not, I do not think there is any doubt, when the average debt interest is still at three per cent, that we can go a long way further in looking after our own people in the way I suggest without increasing the burden of taxation on the people of Canada by a single dollar.
And so, Mr. Speaker, when I bear in mind what I have mentioned of the budget speech and the speech of the Minister of Finance upon introducing that far-reaching bill setting up a mortgage rediscount bank providing for long-term credits, for which I have fought and to which I have looked forward for many years; when I consider the other forward steps which this government has taken, although some people may say that the government should be thrown out of office because it has not gone all the way they would like it to have gone; when I see the government doing the things which I want done for our country and I hope to see it extend still further, I say from my place in this house that I am proud to support the government on these bills, and I do not think my people will censure me for doing so. I believe on the other hand they will say, "We wanted you to do as you did, and we are glad that you have stood 'by the government and have not done as others have done in that regard."


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Question!


Ernest George Hansell: I notice that some hon. gentlemen on the Liberal side are calling for the question. We in this corner of +be house represent a great agricultural
district in Canada. Every one of us in this corner is from the west. I believe, therefore,' that we have a good deal of right to speak on these agricultural bills. Also we were elected on the platform of monetary reform. There are many subjects upon which we have not spoken, but upon these two I believe we should be heard, and I wish to add my small contribution to the present discussion.
When I decided to speak I did not know that it would be my privilege to follow the hon. member for Rosthern (Mr. Tucker). Perhaps I should say one or two things about the matters he mentioned in his speech. If he will read Hansard to-morrow he will discover, I think, that he particularly directed his remarks on about six occasions to our own group and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation members. I have a great deal of respect for the hon. member; he is one of the most progressive in the house; but I feel that in his speech he was labouring under a tremendous difficulty, and I appreciate his position. The hon. gentleman worked hard as he was speaking. He had to do so, for he had to try to make his case. He had to try to make a case whereby he would be in good favour with the Liberal party and yet remain in the good graces of his constituents.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: And of his own
conscience.


Ernest George Hansell: The hon. member for Grey-Bruce (Miss Macphail) has said " and of his own conscience." I wonder how he is going to answer his constituency in the light of the petition which was offered to-night by the hon. member for The Battlefords (Mr. Needham). It is so heavy I can hardly hold it up.


James Garfield Gardiner: That petition asks for Bill No. 83.


Ernest George Hansell: I believe that the hon. member may have had a similar petition. At any rate the government got from his constituency a petition signed by nearly 6,000 people, almost as many votes as the hon. member for Rosthern got in the last election.
For a few moments I should like to review the history of price setting by governments. First, let me allude to the Conservative administration which brought in legislation to establish the wheat board. I believe that that was a good move. The Conservative government set a price of 87J cents for wheat. They never had to pay anything because the price did not go down to the pegged price. The Liberals were returned to office in 1935, and the following year they passed an order in council which virtually did away with the chief function of the wheat
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board; that is, the wheat board would not receive any grain from the western farmer until the price dropped to 90 cents. The result was that the farmers of western Canada lost millions of dollars to the grain trade. I contended at that time that this action was beyond the powers of the government.


Mr. QUELCH:: It was not disallowed, either.


Ernest George Hansell: A year later the Liberal government set the pegged price of grain at 80 cents. This year the price is to be 70 cents. I know that some Liberal speakers have played up the term "initial" price, but we have not heard the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) or any other speaker on the government side intimate for a moment that the price is likely to be fixed eventually at higher than 70 cents. It is a foregone conclusion in the minds of agriculturists that the price of grain this year will be tantamount to a fixed price of 70 cents.
May I ask why there has been a fluctuation of pegged prices? At one time it was 874 cents, at another SO cents, and this year it is 70 cents. If once upon a time it was 874 cents, and that was a reasonable figure at which to set the price, it must be right this year to set the same price. The cost of production has not gone down. I cannot give the Conservative government a great deal of credit for setting a price of 874 cents, for I think it reasonable to conclude that the policy of government seems to be to look over the world situation, to consider the surpluses and the grain situation generally and as it may appear to be in the coming months, and then to try to guess a figure to which the world price will not fall.
It is true that for the last crop year the government will have to bonus the wheat farmer perhaps thirty or forty million dollars.
I am wondering whether, if the government had known last year that the price would drop, involving such a bonus, they would have set the price at 80 cents. I affirm again that if the set price of 874 cents was reasonable one year then it is reasonable this year.
I believe that the reason why the price has not been set at 80 cents or 874 cents is that the government recognize that it is a money problem. They recognize that this year it may cost them something if they set the price any higher than 70 cents. The money problem seems to be worrying the government in this connection. But I do not see why they have any need to be worried. I recall those great and flashing speeches and promises preceding the last general election when they said that they would do battle with the money powers and issue currency and

credit in terms of public need. They said they would issue currency and credit in terms of industrial need-in terms of domestic need. Surely the great wheat-growing industry of this country is in need. Yet now they seem frightened lest they should have to pay a little bit in order to keep that wheat-growing industry on its feet. I see the hon. member for Rosthern is not in his seat, perhaps he is getting his breath behind the screen; oh, he appears again. I cannot follow his logic when he says that to vote against this bill will destroy the program, or to vote against this government will destroy the program. Surely he must recognize that there are people in Canada who are just as capable of bringing down legislation as is the Liberal government.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No, no.


Mr. HOWARD:: That is beyond question.


Ernest George Hansell: I say that when once there is a progressive government sitting on the treasury benches, progressive along the lines of monetary reform, as the hon.. member for Rosthern preaches, they will be able to bring down legislation that will give the farmers of western Canada the cost of production of their crop, plus a profit that they can live on.


Walter Adam Tucker: If they have to wait that long, it will be too bad for the farmers of western Canada.


Ernest George Hansell: I suppose the hon. member for Rosthern can make a guess which may be as true as mine. But an election will tell the tale.
I said that the money problem seems to be worrying the present government. When the hon. member for Bow River (Mr. Johnston) brought in his resolution a few weeks ago asking for a minimum price of 95 cents, the hon. member for Lethbridge (Mr. Blackmore) spoke to that resolution. He had not got very far in his speech when one of the ministers "twigged" that he was attempting to show the government how they could get the money to pay 95 cents a bushel; and what happened? Of course that minister raised a point of order, and the hon. member for Lethbridge was ruled out of order. I say that with no reflection whatsoever on the chair, but simply to bring out the picture of that day's debate. I read it in Hansard the other day, and if anyone will turn over just two pages he will find that the Minister of Agriculture spoke on the resolution and bemoaned the fact that it was impossible to pay such a bonus because they did not have the money. Well, we have been trying for a long time to tell them where they can get the money.

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An hon. MEMBER:: Just print it.


Ernest George Hansell: I did not catch that
remark, but someone tells me it did not amount to anything. In this debate there has been a good deal said concerning east and west. I am not going to say very much along that line. Enough has been said about tariffs and so on. This agricultural problem can be solved to the entire satisfaction of the whole Dominion of Canada by a proper adjustment of the money system. But just so long as we have a government operating within the confines and framework of the present financial system, the problems of this country from coast to coast will never be solved to the satisfaction of all sections. It is the government's insistence on remaining under this present financial system that is causing the disunity in Canada to-day. Let no hon. member of the Liberal party say that those of us who are progressive are trying to upset the unity of this dominion. It is policies that can lead only to sectionalism that are wrecking the unity of this country, and these policies are within the control of any sitting government.
The hon. member for Wood Mountain (Mr. Donnelly) this afternoon referred to correspondence; he said that we are coming to conclusions on the basis of correspondence, that we have not been out there, that we did not get the feel of the people of western Canada. Well, it happens that I was out there at Easter time, just a day or two after the Minister of Agriculture had announced his wheat policy. One of the first men I met came to me and said, "What do you think of the government's wheat policy?" I looked at him and said, "What do you think?" "Oh," he said, "let it go down to nothing; the sooner we split from eastern Canada the better." That hurt me. If there is one thing that the Social Credit forces of Canada stand for, it is a united Canada. We believe that it can be united by a proper money policy to deal with all these various problems.


Mr. LECLERC:: Money from the east.


Ernest George Hansell: No, not money from the east. My hon. friend has not the proper money technique at all. He still thinks that the only place to get money is from the east. Social credit as a movement is loyal to this country and to the unity of this country. The leader of this movement in Alberta is continually putting before the people that this is a great Canada and that we must not countenance a single suggestion of a break between the east and the west. I suppose the members of this group have attended perhaps more political meetings during the last six years
than most other members of this house. Not a political meeting do we attend at which the national anthem is not sung; not a political meeting do we attend which is not closed with the singing of 0, Canada; and if you want to hear people really sing you should come out to Alberta. I make that statement because it is my firm conviction that the only thing which will bring about a really united Canada is a change in the money policy that will give security and contentment to the citizens of Canada; and where you have a contented people you never have dissension.
Just here I should like to refer to a statement which I was sorry to hear the Minister of Agriculture make the other night while endeavouring to give an illustration in regard to the wheat and coal policies of western Canada, showing that western coal could not be brought east. He referred to a meeting between the dominion cabinet and some members of the Alberta government and stated that when he asked the premier of Alberta how coal could be brought from Regina to eastern Canada and sold for less than imported coal, the premier said, "That is your problem." The impression he left with the house was that the premier meant it was a personal problem of the minister.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


Ernest George Hansell: The hon. member for Mel-fort (Mr. McLean) says no. Then he means it is the government's problem. All right; I am glad he mentioned that. It is the government's problem.


Malcolm McLean: If the hon. member would permit a question, was it not part of the problem of the man who was making the suggestion, who would gain from the shipment of western coal more than any other public man would gain? Was it not part of his own problem?


Ernest George Hansell: Yes, but he cannot solve the problem of bringing western coal to eastern Canada when the dominion government, through the transport commission, has control over the setting of freight rates. He cannot solve that problem while this government has jurisdiction over the money policy of the country. I was sorry to hear the Minister of Agriculture give that illustration. I do not want to be unkind to the minister, but I am going to say this: It was extremely unethical to give the substance of a conversation that took place at a cabinet meeting, when the other man concerned had no chance of defending himself.


An hon. MEMBER:: It was not a cabinet meeting.
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Ernest George Hansell: Those are the very things that divide. The minister could have put over his point without mentioning any names. He could have cited the freight rates and so forth. I say again it was an extremely unethical thing to do.


James Garfield Gardiner: It was not a council or cabinet meeting.


Ernest George Hansell: I quite expected that the minister would rise in his place and have something to say about it. Again, the minister mentioned foreign markets, and I should like to say something about that, because it is the policy of this government to rely upon foreign markets. We have no objection to foreign markets, but we do object to any government simply sitting tight and waiting until normalcy returns, in order to solve our trade problems. I should like to quote a few lines from Hansard in order to indicate that the policy of the government is a sit-and-wait policy. L refer to page 3640 of Hansard for May 5, where the minister said:
But I think no one who has made a study of these problems will deny that by far the greater part of the causes of the difficulties we are experiencing in connection with agriculture are a result of world conditions, and more particularly conditions existing on the European continent. And that brings me to this statement, that there is associated with agriculture on the European continent at present a system of organized government control which prevails only because of the great uncertainties that exist with regard to future political relationships among the countries of Europe, as they are associated with Great Britain herself. When one examines the conditions existing in France, Germany, Italy or Great Britain, which were previously the four best markets for our Canadian wheat, one can understand in large measure the reasons for the difficulty that the wheat grower in Canada is having at the present time. Some people have said that we could exchange wheat with Germany as a matter of barter, and obtain from Germany machines and manufactures and textiles that we require in this country. Without discussing the proB and cons as to whether we should carry on a barter of that kind at this time, I think I am in agreement with all who have made close study of the question when I say that Germany at the present time would not barter with Canada or any other democratic country for any foodstuffs that she can provide within her own boundary lines.
I could continue reading; I have some choice bits here, but I do not think I will take time to do so. Oh, yes; there is another bit I should like to quote. The minister refers to the probable impending war, and blames war for a good deal of the interference with world trade. That has always been the reason for world depression, he says, and at page 3643 of Hansard he goes on:
There never has been a world depression develop for any other reason, and those world depressions will never cease to exist until that 
fear of war has passed into history. At that time they will cease to exist and we shall have better times. If they cease to exist now we shall have better times.
So, you see, we shall just have to sit and wait until these international difficulties blow over. But there is one little flaw in the minister's argument. In 1929, at the commencement of this depression, there was no war and no one expected a war. It was not until the early part of this decade that nazism in Germany began to rise. Yet the depression came upon us; the price of grain dropped to almost nothing and we lost our world trade. The Conservatives were going to blast their way into the markets of the world. Why could they not get there? Was it because there was an impending war? Not at all; these international difficulties have arisen only in recent years. The reason was that this financial system under which we operate knows no such things as international boundaries.
Then the minister referred to trade with Germany, and I desire to bring out this point because I believe it to be important. The point was raised again to-night by the hon. member for The Battlefords. I understood the minister to say that Germany did not want to trade with us at any price. If the minister will turn back to page 995 of Hansard he will find something that would be interesting to him. Perhaps he thought we had forgotten about it. At that time the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Johnston) asked a question with respect to Germany offering the nations of the world to trade machinery for 50,000 tons of wheat and some lard, the total value of which was about 130,000,000. Perhaps some difficulties have been experienced, but if that offer is correct-and the Minister of National Revenue (Mr. Ilsley) in his answer said it was correct-then how can the Minister of Agriculture say that Germany does not want to barter her machinery for wheat?


Charles Edward Johnston: He just forgot that.


Ernest George Hansell: There must be some
difference of opinion in the ranks of our Liberal friends. I was saying the policy of this government seems to be a sit-and-wait policy. What we need in Canada is a government that will tackle the money problem and all the sectional problems in an effort to bring about a great national unity and a supply of money that will raise the standard of living and bring contentment to our people.
But a sit-and-wait policy will not accomplish that. One day I was sitting on a park bench which had been only recently painted, and I noticed someone had inscribed some

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writing thereon. It was this, "Some come here to sit and think, while others come and just sit." Perhaps that would suit the Liberal party of Canada when they refuse to think their way through the problems, on the basis of a readjustment of the money system. Then I say they are just sitting, and that is all.
I say to hon. members that if we are going to sit and wait for normalcy, for international trade to return, then we shall have to sit here from now to doomsday, because world trade was broken down, and the present international money system has been responsible. The Liberal philosophy is built upon the basis of world trade. But world trade is growing less and less, and I say that the present international money system is on the verge of collapse. We cannot depend altogether on foreign trade to solve all our problems. The cancerous growth at the root of our troubles is a wrong ordering of money.


An hon. MEMBER:: That is all right.


Ernest George Hansell: Oh, my hon. friend says, "that is all right." Listen to that! Well, then, why does he not go ahead and do something with the money problems of the country? Well, there he is, and all he has been doing has been just sitting, for he certainly did not think much when he made that remark. My time is almost exhausted, so I think I, myself, will now sit-but I am going to do a little bit of thinking, just the same.


Mr. YOUNG:: If the hon. member had thought before he spoke, it would have been better.


Mr. S. J. FURNISS (Muskoka-Ontario):: Mr. Speaker, I have listened patiently and earnestly to the debates in the house, and particularly to the observations of hon. members respecting the wheat legislation. I am sorry I cannot treat the house to the flow of oratory to which it has listened from the two hon. members who have preceded me. However, I am in a position to speak from an experience of a lifetime of hard work on the farm, and perhaps that carries as much weight as anything else.
In my lifetime I have come through several depressions. I can remember the depression in what was described as the "black 90's" when wheat sold at 50 cents a bushel, when hogs sold at $3 a hundredweight, when good cattle were worth only 2J cents a pound, when butter could be bought for 10 or 12 cents a pound, and when one could buy all the eggs he wanted at 8 cents a dozen. That was about the middle of the 90's. About that time the
prices of farm produce began to increase; we came gradually out of that depression, and for the next fifteen years we enjoyed perhaps the longest period of uninterrupted prosperity Canada has ever known.
We came out of that depression without the aid of the social credit theory. It had not been heard of at that time. We enjoyed prosperity until 1914, when war was declared. Following the war there was a short period of depression, which was followed by prosperity from 1922 until 1930. Again, in 1930, another period of depression set in.
I venture to say that when farm products return to normal prices, good times will be here again, and the social credit theory will be forgotten.
I wish to say I am expressing not only my own thoughts but the sentiments of those who sent me here when I say that this government has done more to assist agriculture than any other government since confederation. I make that statement without fear of successful contradiction. It has given assistance not only through trade agreements, but by the lessening of tariffs, and through the bills now before the house in the names of the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) and the Minister of Finance (Mr. Dunning), agriculture is receiving the greatest assistance it has ever received since confederation, and receiving it at a time when it is most needed.
Much has been said by hon. members of the opposition to belittle trade agreements. They compare the quota we are allowed to export to foreign markets with the amount of our total production. So far as volume is concerned, I admit that the home market is the more valuable, but I must point out that, so far as value goes, the foreign market is the more important. Agriculture is not in the same position as manufacturing, so far as the home and foreign markets 'are concerned. The farmer cannot adopt the practices followed by the manufacturer. The farmer cannot group his products in two lots, as the manufacturer does, and say to his clerks, "This lot will go to the foreign market where it will meet world competition, and must be invoiced at a price where it will sell in competition with the prices of foreign manufacturers." Then he turns to the second lot and says, "This lot"-which is by far the largest-"is for home consumption. It is protected by a tariff of 10 per cent"-or 15 per cent or 20 per cent, as the case may be-"and you must write the price of that up accordingly. The Canadian farmer has to have it, and he must pay that price."
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It is the price of the exported product that sets the price of the product sold in the home market. When a farmer takes a load of ten hogs to the market he cannot say to the meat processor, "The bacon from nine of these hogs will be sold on the home market. You must write the price up 10 per cent or 15 per cent."
That is the difference between the value of the home market to the farmer and its value to the manufacturer.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: He could if he were
the processor.


Stephen Joseph Furniss: When he is told this cannot be done and he asks what sets the price of his hogs, he is told that it is the price of bacon from the one hog that is exported that sets the price of the other nine.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: Do you agree that it
should be that way?


Stephen Joseph Furniss: What would be the result upon the prices of the cattle that we produce if from three to four thousand more were placed every week in the stockyards of Canada? That is about the number of cattle exported under the Canada-United States trade agreement. A small glut on the market reduces the price of the entire offering. If that glut is sold in a better market it not only stabilizes prices but has a tendency to increase them as well. I should like to draw attention to a remark made by the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell), a gentleman for whose intelligence and ability I have every respect. At page 3707 of Hansard he is reported as follows:
My contention is that in estimating the cost of producing anything at all, you must add all the legitimate costs of producing that article, and I do not think that the farmer should, in his industry, be expected to operate on a basis different from that of every other well-conducted industry.
I assume he means that we should apply to agriculture the principle that is applied to industry. That cannot be done. If we were to attempt to do it we would simply be starting a vicious circle. We would have round after round of ever-increasing prices until a dollar would not be worth any more than a dime. We would need all the money we could print to carry on our business.
I should like also to refer to what was said the other day by the hon. member for Wey-burn (Mr. Douglas) when referring to the limitation of the bonus to 5,000 bushels. He is reported at page 3692 of Hansard as follows: The fact is that in order to meet the increasing costs of production by virtue of the rise in farm machinery prices farmers are more and 
more going into larger units which they can operate on a mechanized basis. Here are these thousands of farmers operating large farms who are going to be directly penalized by this 5,000 bushel limitation.
That is exactly what was done by the British government a number of years ago in connection with rubber production. When the price of rubber produced in the British colonies fell below the cost of production, the British government undertook to stabilize the market. First, they offered a certain price for the first lot produced, which gave the producer a fair remuneration. When a further lot was produced, the producer was paid a price which only met his costs of production. If the producer produced a still further amount, he was paid a price so low that it absorbed all the profit he had made on his first lot, and thus diminished production resulted. I was surprised at the attitude taken by the hon. member for Weyburn. He is evidently preaching the doctrine:
To him that hath, shall be given: and from him that hath not, shall be taken even that which he hath.
That is an exact contradiction to the principle which he and his hon. friends enunciate. It seems to me that in order to criticize and condemn this government, he does not hesitate for a moment to forsake the principles which he and his colleagues consider to be the basis of their doctrine. I do not regard what is being given to the western farmer as a bonus on wheat; I look upon it as a return to him of that part of the national income which rightly belongs to him but which he cannot retain for himself because of the impossibility of organizing agriculture. As I see the situation in Canada to-day, on the one side we have the great industry of agriculture producing foodstuffs for the nation, and on the other side we have the manufacturing industry producing the manufactured needs of the people. Both industries are highly mechanized, but there is a vast difference in the effects of that mechanization. While mechanization has lowered the cost of production on the farm, the farmer has passed that lowered cost on to the consumer. Not only has the manufacturer failed to pass on the benefits of the mechanization of his industry, but he has increased his prices. Mechanization has lowered the cost of production in both instances, but through organization and amalgamation industry has elminated practically all competition and all costs are passed on to the consumer. That is the reason why we have in Canada a condition where about 46 per cent of the population have only one-fifth of the national income.

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I come now to consider the increase of ten cents a bushel which has been suggested by several hon. members. This would have to come out of taxation, and the farmers of eastern Canada pay just as much in taxation as do the farmers of the west. The farmers of Canada are the ultimate taxpayers. The other evening the hon. member for Broadview (Mr. Church) referred to the income tax, and deplored the amount of tax it would take to meet the bonus on wheat. I should like to read what his former leader had to say about income tax. During a discussion on a farm implement resolution last session, that right hon. gentleman enumerated different items that went into the cost of production. He is reported at page 2681 of Hansard of 1938 as follows:
We have at this moment a 15 per cent corporation tax, which is a higher figure than it was in 1930. That tax must be borne by the manufacturer, and he passes it on, of course, to the ultimate consumer,
Then he continues on page 2682:
How look at the taxes. There is income tax, 15 per cent; that is the corporate tax. Then there is the provincial tax, if you are in Ontario.
Mr. Dunning: That is after cost of production.
Mr. Bennett: I say that is included in the cost of production.
Mr. Dunning: No.
Then the right hon. gentleman continues:
Mr. Bennett:	Surely, but the manufacturer
has to make allowance for these taxes in fixing the price at which he is to sell if he is to make a profit. Does anyone suggest that when I go to sell my goods I have not to consider the tax I have to pay on my earnings?
There is absolute proof that the income tax is figured in the costs of production and passed on to the consumer. The fact that this is done is borne out by the report of the textile commission. After Sir Charles Gordon had complained that the government had taken $42 per share of the preferred stock of the Dominion Textile Company in taxes, the report says:
In making this statement to the public, indicating that the company is especially burdened with taxation, it, however is not disclosed to the public that these taxes are all paid by the consumers. While, in fact, it is ordinary business practice for any corporation to pass on to the consumer its municipal taxes, this company passes on its income tax to the consumer.
The farmers of Canada are the greatest consumers and, therefore, they are the greatest taxpayers.
I want to say something to western members which may appear a little antagonistic; at least I cannot agree with them in everything they say. We all know the west was hard hit and that some of its people were destitute, and I have been pleased to note the gracious acknowledgments made by western members for the assistance that Ontario and eastern Canada gave to the people . of the west who were in distress. If the same need arose again, I have no doubt that it would meet with the same response. I say further that if eastern Canada were similarly afflicted, western people would be just as liberal and just as generous as the people of Ontario and the east were in helping them.
The member for Rosthern (Mr. Tucker), in his speech to-night, complained bitterly' of tariff protection as if the farmers of western Canada were the only ones who contributed through the tariff. I want to tell him and other members from western Canada that the farmers of eastern Canada have contributed just as much through tariff protection as have the farmers of western Canada.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: No.


Stephen Joseph Furniss: Every bit. The farmers of western Canada have no complaint to make over the farmers of eastern Canada.
Again, the farmers of the west complain of nigh freight rates. We know there are high freight rates, but the farmers of western Canada went there knowing there were high freight rates, knowing just what they were. An hon. member near me says that they have always had to fight those freight rates. But they were there when the people of western Canada went there. I can remember quite well a young man-I went to school with him as a boy-who had a good farm in Ontario, 150 acres, with well equipped buildings and implements. He had friends in the west making money easier than he was and they persuaded him to go west. At the end of twenty years he had three sections of land, three times as many pure bred stock as when he sold out in Ontario, and twelve to fifteen thousand dollars in the bank. I have another family in mind, a man and his three sons, who went west. They homesteaded and preempted, bought a half section, a whole section, and two sections, and now they go down to San Francisco or somewhere else in California for the winter. What induced those people to go west? It was simply because it was cheaper to till the soil there, cheaper to produce wheat and cattle than in the east; and if they have been penalized in some

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respects, that has been more than made up by the lower costs of production in the west compared with the east.
From where my home is I can see in the season trainload after trainload of freight cars passing, each carrying from fifteen to twenty cars of cattle, coming down from the west to the markets of eastern Canada. Ranchers have gone out there simply because range cattle can be raised more cheaply than in the east, where cattle have to be stabled for five months in the year. So when members from the west complain of high freight rates, I say that the farmers of the west are fully compensated by lower costs of production in the west.
Some members have asked for a 10-cent increase in the bonus to be paid on western wheat. I have reckoned what a 10-cent increase would mean on the total production of the eastern Canada wheat grower; it is Ontario that produces practically all the wheat grown in the east, and I find that it amounts to about $2,000,000 a year. To the western farmer, with a 350 million bushel crop, it amounts to $35,000,000. It simply means that the western farmer, out of the common fund of taxation to which the eastern farmer contributes in equal share, profits by $35,000,000, while the Ontario or eastern farmer profits to the amount of only $2,000,000. I have no objection to seeing the western farmer get all he can; he needs it. But business is business, and when farmers in the east have to contribute an equal amount to the taxation fund from which these bonuses are granted, I think the farmers in the east are entitled to the same bonuses on the products they produce.
There is another aspect to bonusing wheat or any other product, and that is the effect it has in getting into foreign markets. Look at what happened to Germany when they adopted the barter system, which is nothing more or less than a system of bonusing their products. They depress their goods in value and trade them for a quantity of goods from another country on a barter basis instead of a valuation basis. Just as soon as Germany adopted that method, the United States imposed a surtax of 25 per cent on all German products, and it also undertook to meet the German barter system by lowering its exchange in the foreign markets of the world. Apart from that, there is the danger of piling up surpluses of wheat because, if the price is such that there is a profit to be made, then undoubtedly lands are going to be turned into wheat production, and I would ask the hon. member (Mr. HanseJI) who has just taken his seat where

the Canadian government would sell the vast stores of wheat that they would accumulate if they were to pay a price so much in advance of the world market price.
These are some of the matters I have thought about in this debate. I believe this government has done more to meet the situation than any other government that has been in office in this country since confederation. We are having difficult times; we are living in times of stress month after month, such as we bore for perhaps one month before the great war, and there is fear throughout the whole world, so that no one will venture to do anything. There is a backlog of work to be undertaken in this country, and if we get out from under that fear of war, that work will be undertaken and we shall again enjoy a period of prosperity-it would be better perhaps if it were not a boom-such as .we have enjoyed in the past.


Mr. W. J. WARD (Dauphin):: Mr. Speaker, my first words should be to express the thanks of my constituents to the government, and particularly the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner), for their efforts to produce something that would have for its effect the amelioration of the condition of western agriculture.
I was pleased to hear the hon. member for Muskoka-Ontario (Mr. Furniss) refer to the contribution that the Ontario or eastern Canada farmer had made towards the maintenance of the industrial life of eastern Canada. But as I listened to the speeches of the farmer members from Ontario, I could not help being struck by the fact that pretty nearly all of them are protectionists to-day. I am not critical of them because they are protectionists. They are protectionists because it is good economics for them to be so, because there is a compensation for them by reason of the industrial development which has taken place in their constituencies or in adjoining districts. The hon. member for Broadview (Mr. Church), speaking the other night, said something to the effect that there would be a day of reckoning soon for the legislation-referring to the legislation on marketing brought down by the Minister of Agriculture. I want to tell the hon. member for Broadview and others who may hold similar views that the day of reckoning is here now. The farmers, particularly those of western Canada, have slept on their rights for a long time; and I want to warn not only the government which now occupies the treasury benches, but those who may occupy those benches in the years which are to come, that

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the day of reckoning will continue, and any group of men who have occupied the treasury benches in times past or present who do not realize that we cannot go on bonusing one industry or group of industries at the expense of another great industry and not have a reaction, are not taking into account the full significance of their actions.
I was amused and astonished at some references made the other day by the leader of the opposition (Mr. Manion), in a speech on one of these bills, to a publication written by the Minister of Labour (Mr. Rogers), I believe before he became a minister, showing that the cost to western Canada of protecting or bonusing secondary industries was somewhere around 850,000,000 a year. The leader of the opposition made light of these figures, suggesting that they were absurd and could not be substantiated. But I believe that during the last few months, particularly at the Winnipeg conference, those figures were amply substantiated, and it was proved conclusively that without allowing for profit imposts which continue as a result of tariff impositions, it has cost the west somewhere in the neighbourhood of forty-five to fifty million dollars annually to protect the secondary industries of the east. So, if for the rest of the life of this generation we granted subsidies to the west to the extent of $50,000,000 annually, we should do no more than pay a very moderate rate of interest on what is owed to the west by reason of the cost of bonusing these eastern industries.
Turning now to the wheat legislation, I noted the other day that Mr. MacAulay, who was leader of the Conservative party in the Ontario legislature, made the statement:
I cannot blame the administration for feeling that Ontario has been made the milch cow for Canada where western farmers get 85 cents per bushel for wheat, and the Ontario farmer can get only 50 cents.
That is so wide of the mark that it is hardly worthy of a reference. When I read that statement I sent over to the bureau of statistics to get some figures on the actual net returns of grain grown in some of the provinces of Canada, those from Ontario to Alberta from 1934 to 1938. I shall not quote all the figures of each year from 1934 to 1938, but for the purpose of brevity I shall give those relating to the first and the last year. As regards wheat, I might remind you, Mr. Speaker, that, as I understand it, Ontario
No. 1 fall wheat is equal only to No. 3 western hard wheat. I am, however, disregarding that fact:
_ Saskat-
Ontario Manitoba chewan Alberta
Wheat-	$	c.	? c.	$ c.	$ c.1934.. ..	87	65	61	581938.. ..	58	61	58	58Oats-	1934.. ..	35	29	27	251938.. ..	29	19	16	15Barley-	1934. . ..	50	48	47	391938.. ..	41	25	22	20Rye-	1934.. ..	55	49	46	471938.. ..	44	25	25	24Flax-	1934. . ..	1	33	1 15	1 13	1 091938.. ..	1	34	1 12	1 11	1 10Nor does that tell the whole story.	I alsosent over	for	the	figures	relating to	otherfarm products,	and	here is	the result	which,
I think, has a direct bearing on statements
made by the hon. member for Rosthern (Mr. Tucker):
Ont.	Man.	Sask.cents	cents	cents
Creamery butter (per pound)
1934 ....	21-6	19-2	18-61938 ....	26-2	24-0	21-0Eggs (per	dozen)1934 ....	18-5	12-0	10-51937	....	19-5	150	13-51938	not yet available.Beef (per	pound)1934 ....	6-2	3-9	3-91938 ....	8-7	7-0	6-8
Alta.
cents
23-2
12-0
7-0
For pork pretty much the same prices obtain in the western provinces as in Ontario:
Mutton	Ont. cents (per pound)	Man. cents	Sask. cents	Alta. cents1934 ..	.. 13-1	8-7	8-2	8-91938 ..	.. 18-6	13-1	12-2	12-4
I quote these figures merely to indicate that there is a difference. I do not blame the Ontario farmers, representatives, or the farmers themselves, for their protected position. They are protectionists because it pays them to be so. But I hope hon. members realize the significance of the difference between these prices that I have quoted for the Ontario farmer and those for western Canada, and the great disadvantage the western farmer is really at.
I have some other interesting figures here. Last year I stated that had it not been for the west, and its development from 1900 to the present time, Toronto, for example, would be just a nice little city, just what it was forty years ago.
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An hon. MEMBER:: Put the figures on
record.


William John Ward: I shall in a moment. Some of our thriving Ontario cities were just nice little towns at that time, just beginning, and would have continued so had there been no western Canada. It will be interesting to note how eastern cities have grown exactly coincident with the development of the west. In the last decade of the last century the population of Toronto grew only about 28,000. Is that not striking? Then the west started to develop; settlement began in Saskatchewan and Alberta, and in ten years the population of Toronto jumped from 209,892 to 381,833. In the next ten years it increased to 521,893, and from 1921 to 1931 it grew to 631,000.


Mr. REID:: What is it now?


William John Ward: In 1931 it was 631,000, I do not know what it is now. I could give many more illustrations. Take London, represented by the hon. leader of the opposition. In 1891 it had a population of 32,000; by 1901 it had reached 38,000; then by 1911 it had jumped to 46,300; in 1921, to 61,000, and in the next ten years it grew to 71,148, again exactly coincident with the development of western Canada. I have here figures for twelve or fifteen other leading industrial centres of Ontario showing a similar picture, showing in every instance that for the last twenty years of the preceding century the population remained almost static but from 1900 went right on up. Mr. Speaker, that tells the large story.
Then the value of manufactures bears out my contention as well. The annual value for Toronto from 1880 to 1S90 was just about $20.000,000. The figure for 1891 was $44,963,922. In 1901 it was $58,000,000. Then what happened? In 1911 it was $154,307,000, an increase of almost $100,000,000 in the first ten years after the west started to grow. In the next ten years, which was perhaps the greatest
ten years in the development of the west, the value of manufactures in Toronto increased to $371,000,000 by 1921. And by 1931 it had increased to $426,583,000. Do any hon. members suggest that the great proportion of this did not come from western Canada? If they do they do not know what they are talking about. It came absolutely coincident with the development of the west.
Last year I put on Hansard figures from the statistical records to show that for the years from 1917 to 1937 the agriculture of western Canada produced seventy and a quarter billion dollars' worth of farm products alone. Where did it go? It went to build up eastern cities through the medium of that vicious practice, high tariffs. When the leader of the opposition rises in his place and says that the manufacturers are not taking full advantage of the protection afforded them through the medium of the tariff, he is either talking with his tongue in his cheek or he does not know what he is talking about at all.
I referred to the city of London a moment ago. In 1891 its manufactures had an annual value of $8,000,000. By 1931 this had jumped to over $39,000,000, again fed by the west.
Take the city of Guelph; its manufactured goods jumped from $3,000,000 in 1891 to $11-
654,000	in 1931.
I should like to have the privilege of putting this list on the record; it would be of great value to both the east and the west to have a table like this on the records of the house.


Walter Edward Foster: The hon. member can do so only if he has the unanimous consent of the house.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Agreed.


Walter Edward Foster: Do I understand the
hon. member has unanimous consent?
Some lion. MEMBERS:	Agreed.


William John Ward: Thanks. The first table is
a statement of the value of manufactures:
Gross value of manufactures in certain Ontario cities and towns
Locality	1891	1901	1911	1921	1931Toronto	.. $44,963,922	$58,415,498	$154,306,948	$371,090,034	$426,583,692Hamilton	.. 14,044,521	17,122,346	55,125,946	109,803,883	125,164,616Kitchener	.. 1.825,722	3,307,513	9,266,188	27,688,420	34,991,982Woodstock	.. 3,089,695	2,508,247	3,200,216	7,910,256	8.147.999Windsor	.. 953,030	1,260,947	3,771,706	16,113,891	13,686,998St. Catharines. ..	.. 2,444,680	2,070,543	6.024.217	11,647,843	13,387,502Chatham	.. 2,116,161	2,714,977	5,023,560	20,618,655	8,645,517Guelph	.. 2,973,927	3,689,183	7,392,336	9,592,823	11.654,289Brantford	.. 4,280,999	5,564,695	15,866.229	28.104,005	19,422,441Dundas	.. 664,709	1,017,150	1,308,388	2,371,295	1,752,648Galt	.. 2,621,310	2,225,343	5,252,600	12,108,176	9.645,225Ingersoll	.. 1,242,206	2,515,469	3,113,495	2,967,829	2,364,360London	.. 8,225,557	8,122,185	16,273,999	34,988,354	39,126,557Peterborough.. ..	.. 2,594,996	3,789,164	10,633.119	28,214,981	23,530,247Sarnia	.. 976,508	2,645,797	4,018,901	20.916,723	24,870,447Stratford	.. 1,491,462	1,935,176	5,133,840	8,325,589	9,053,059Waterloo	.. 969,835	1,052,177	2.812,595	4,953,159	4,546,771Welland	.. 233,738	152,087	1,375,374	14,571,857	11,269,533
XMr. Ward.]

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The next table gives the populations:
Populations of cities and towns, decennial censuses 1871-1931
Populations
City or town-Province	1871	1881	1891	1901	1911	1921	1931Toronto, Ont	.. 59,000	96,196	181,215	209,892	381,833	521,893	631.207Hamilton, Ont	.. 26,880	30.661	4S.959	52.634	81.969	114.151	155.547London, Ont	.. 18.000	27.867	31.977	37,976	46,300	60.959	71,148Windsor, Ont	. . 4.253	6.561	10.322	12,153	17.829	38,591	63.108Kitchener, Ont	.. 2,743	4,054	7.425	9,747	15.196	21,763	30,793Brantford, Ont	. . 8.107	9,616	12,753	16.619	23.132	29,440	30.107St. Catharines. Ont	. . 7,864	9,631	9.170	9,946	12,484	19,881	24.753Peterborough, Ont	.. 4.611	6,812	9.717	12.886	18,360	20,994	22,327Guelph, Ont	. . 6,878	9,890	10,537	11,496	15,175	18,128	21,075Sarnia, Ont	.. 2,929	3,874	6.692	8,176	9,947	14.877	18.191Stratford, Ont	. . 4.313	8,239	9,500	9,959	12,946	16,094	17.742Chatham, Ont	.. 5.873	7,873	9.052	9.068	10.770	13,256	14,569Galt. Ont	.. 3.827	5,187	7,535	7.866	10,299	13,216	14.006Woodstock. Ont	.. 3,982	5.373	8.612	8,833	9.320	9,935	11,395Welland, Ont	.. 1,110	1,870	2.035	1,863	5,318	8,654	10,709Orillia, Ont	.. 1,322	2,910	4.752	4.907	6.828	7,631	8,183Waterloo, Ont	.. 1.594	2,066	2.941	3,537	4.359	5,883	8,095Smiths Falls, Ont	.. 1,150	2,087	3,864	5,155	6,370	6,790	7,108
We now come to the income tax. I do not want to delay the taking of the vote to-night. Toronto, a city with perhaps 700.000 people, in the year 1938-39 paid in income tax $48,884,000. Winnipeg, with a population of about 240,000, say one-third the size of Toronto, paid income tax amounting to only $3,993,000. Why? Because all our wealth comes down here to eastern Canada. The west has been the milch cow that has built the industry of eastern Canada and has brought about the vulgar display of wealth that we find in the cities of eastern Canada. It is vulgar to those of us who come from the parts where the average income of our farmers is perhaps not more than $400 a year. In Oshawa about a year ago a strike was called by people who were getting an average wage of $1,400. I refer to the General Motors' strike. Yet we ask our farmers to continue growing wheat or feeding hogs and raising cattle on a basis of an annual income of $400. I like farming; I think it is the finest vocation in the world, but the disparity is not right; it is too great.
I said at the outset that I wanted to thank the Minister of Agriculture on behalf of my constituents for the effort he has put forth to ameliorate our condition. But I was terribly disappointed when he modified the acreage bonus bill. I do not think that was necessary. I do not think it was necessary in order to get it through this house. No evidence has been given to me that the house would not support the acreage bonus as submitted at the outset. I do not think there is any evidence to support the rumour that the house would not have supported an 80-cent initial price for wheat. The Minister of Agriculture told us that for the last thirty years the price of wheat had averaged 95 cents a bushel.
I have not heard so much superficial theoretical nonsense talked in this house on any subject this session-unless it was the two days' speech of the hon. member for Greenwood (Mr. Massey)-as I have heard on this question. Why on earth should we have to go to Professor Hope and a dozen other sources of doubtful information to prove the condition of agriculture in western Canada or the cost of growing wheat? All we have to do is to look up some of the records of the mortgage debt of western Canada to prove the condition the farmers of that section of the country are in. If the average price of wheat for the past thirty years has been 95 cents, and the present situation is the condition in which it has left us, then I say 70 cents is only half enough. If these figures prove anything, the price should be at least $1.50. According to the brief submitted to the Winnipeg conference last fall, the mortgage debt on lands and chattels in Manitoba is estimated at $92,730,000; which, with 19,500 farms reporting mortgage debts, means an average of $4,702 per mortgaged farm, or 65 per cent of the total farm land value of Manitoba.


James Garfield Gardiner: What is it in Ontario?


William John Ward: For the moment I am dealing with western Canada. According to the Saskatchewan brief, the burden of agricultural indebtedness in that province as at the end of 1937 was $482,000,000, which amounts to $15 an acre of the crop land of that province. I hope the house appreciates these figures, which indicate a debt of $15 an acre on the cultivated land of Saskatchewan. That is an average of $7,000 per mortgaged farm, and 82 per cent of the farms of Saskatchewan
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are under mortgage. The Saskatchewan brief goes on to point out that not more than five per cent of the farms of that province are free of debt.
So. Mr. Speaker, if with 95 cent wheat for the last thirty years that condition has been brought about in Saskatchewan, I want to say to the government and in particular to the Minister of Agriculture that in this legislation we are far short of meeting the question of the solvency of western Canada. I farm one of the finest pieces of nature's soil, as I think perhaps the Minister of Mines and Resources (Mr. Crerar) will agree. Perhaps there is very little land in the world equal to that of the Dauphin valley, where I farm three-quarters of a section of that rich, alluvial soil. I would say that over a period of twenty years my average yield has been not less than thirty-six to thirty-seven bushels to the acre. The other day the hon. member for Dufferin-Simcoe (Mr. Rowe) was boasting about his yields of wheat. I have frequently cut fifty bushels to the acre and yields have gone as high as sixty-five bushels in my district. I have kept accurate records of the exact cost of growing wheat on my farm, and there has not been one year since the war when I have grown wheat for less than 83 cents a bushel. At times the cost has gone over SI. If with yields like that I cannot grow wheat for less than 90 or 95 cents, how in the name of common sense can the average farmer throughout the length and breadth of western Canada grow wheat for 70 cents? It "can't be did;" that's all. I do not think I would be fair to my constituents if I accepted this measure as being satisfactory to us. It will not bring about the hoped for solvency in my part of the country.
In conclusion, I want to say to the government and to all parties in this house that I fully appreciate that this administration has gone further along the road of lowering tariffs than any other government since confederation. I think I can make that statement without fear of contradiction. I believe the trade agreements between Canada, Great Britain and the IJnited States constituted the greatest step towards freeing our trade ever made during any one session of a Canadian parliament. For that I am grateful. I believe it is going to do a great deal towards improving our economy and that of western Canada in particular. We see how our external trade has increased since the first of this year, no doubt largely as a result of the trade agreement, so we should be grateful to the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King)
lMr. Ward.]
and those associated with him in the negotiation of it. But if we are going to continue to play Santa Claus to the manufacturers of Canada to the extent of tariffs ranging from 7i per cent to 30 per cent, as we are still doing I say to the Minister of Agriculture that no government can escape the bonus-ing of agriculture. For fifty years the farmers of this country have been sitting on their rights, while the manufacturers were in the saddle. Why, there were no farmers in this house until 1911, when the first independent farmer candidate to enter the House of Commons came from the constituency which I have the honour to represent. Until about that time the manufacturers were the government of this country. It is only within the last few years that the farmers have made their voice heard in this house. To raise the economic and social level of agriculture to the level enjoyed by 75 or 80 per cent of the people in our cities and large towns we would need $2 wheat. It could not be done with less.


James Garfield Gardiner: What about Michael Clark and a few of the other farmers who were here? Was not Michael Clark a farmer?


William John Ward: He did not come here as a farmer.


James Garfield Gardiner: What about Senator Douglas?


William Daum Euler: Does it follow that if a man is not a farmer he is a manufacturer?


William John Ward: I realize that it is not within the power of a member of parliament to offer amendments to these bills. I should like to do so, and I would if I could, because I am not at all satisfied. I know these measures are not sufficient to ensure the solvency of the people whom I represent. If the acreage bonus had been left as it was, beginning at fifteen bushels to the acre with two bushels reserved for seed, it would have applied to a fair portion of the constituency which I represent. I want to remind the minister of what I said previously, that while I do represent a very rich portion of Manitoba, which produces large crops, where we harvest forty bushels to the acre, we farm land worth 840, $50 and $60 an acre, on which we pay from $1 to $1.25 an acre in taxes. This land costs much more to farm than the lighter land costs. The minister was quite correct the other day when he said you could farm light land, so long as it was not pure sand, much more economically than you could farm heavy land, but I am not at all satisfied with this measure. I do not know what I am going to do about it.

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I do not want to vote against the government, because it has done a great many things that ought to commend and, I am sure, do commend themselves to every hon. member, I care not what his politics may be. I do not want to have to vote against such a government, but this is a very, very important matter to my constituents. If they have to sell their wheat for 53 or 54 cents a bushel, or perhaps as low as 46 or 47 cents a bushel, they are not going to meet the cost of production. I can produce wheat as cheaply as any farmer in Manitoba, and I know I would have to have at least an additional 15 cents in order to make it pay. The other day a man said to me in a critical way, "Why do you keep on growing wheat?" As a matter of fact I do not. At one time my annual harvest was five or six thousand bushels of wheat. That is not the case any more. I used to seed 175 and 180 acres; now I seed 30 to 50 acres. If I had continued to put a large acreage in wheat from 1930 on,
I would not own my farm to-day; I would have lost it. But we switched to other things; we used our heads a bit, and we have managed to remain solvent.
I wonder if I could not appeal to the minister; I wonder if he would not even now consider raising the acreage bonus to where it was previously. I believe if he does, I can go back and sell the idea or plan to my constituents. I will do the best I can. But with the acreage bonus where it is and the price where it is, I find myself just where I cannot very well support the government.
Miss AGNES C. MACPHAIL (Grey-Bruce): I want to speak very briefly. I do not consume very much time of the house, and I am sure if every hon. member spoke as briefly we would have no difficulty in finishing, and would not have all this worry about prorogation in time for the visit of their majesties.
I wish to say only two or three things. First, I listened with great interest to the speech of the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner), and while listening to speeches delivered afterwards, I concluded that some of his facts were -well, how can we say this?-carefully chosen. He made such a good case of it and his argument was so strong that I would have been prepared to go much farther than 70 cents. It seemed to me that, after building up a case as ably as he did, 70 cents was an anticlimax, or a terrible effort for only ten cents a bushel. But I suppose western Canada will be glad they are getting the extra ten cents, although some people in the west may
think it is just the difference between drowning in twenty feet of water and drowning in ten feet. They are over their heads in either case.
It seems to me that it is always the Ontario members who bring me to my feet in these questions. The hon. member for Muskoka-Ontario (Mr. Furniss) said that in his opinion the eastern farmer had borne as heavy a burden in regard to tariff as did the western farmer. All hon. members know I am not in favour of a high tariff, but any person who is familiar with any of the facts must know that what the hon. member says is not true The figures given by the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Ward) established the fact that that statement is not true, that prices of products of Ontario farmers are always at a higher level-I am talking about the whole field of production-than prices in western Canada.
At the conference held at Montreal an excellent brief was presented by Premier Bracken of Manitoba. He built up a long and elaborate case, much longer than could be used here, to show that between 1901 and 1931 the amount of land farmed in the five eastern provinces decreased by 8 per cent and the population in eastern Canada increased by 150 per cent, whereas in western Canada in the same years the amount of land farmed increased by 1,000 per cent. There are one or two paragraphs which could be read, if I had time. If we had time to go through this section of the brief, it would be clear that the rapid building up of eastern urban Canada in those years was as a result of the expansion of farming in western Canada. And it is also true that western Canada's expansion was built on an export market. Therefore the west has suffered very much by having always to buy in a protected market and to sell its great surplus of wheat, amounting to possibly two-thirds of the total production, on the markets of the world. The prairie provinces would have been very much farther ahead had they been a country by themselves and not tied to the industrial east.
I think the farmer in eastern Canada has suffered on account of the tariff, but to nothing like the same extent. On account of the great distances, western farmers pay high freight rates, they sell on world markets and buy in protected markets. They have received less for what they have sold, and have paid more for what they have had to buy. Those facts are perfectly clear, so that I say the western farmer need not apologize for himself. Due to him the industrial east has developed very rapidly. Only a little while
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ago I was saying to the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Euler) that even Kitchener and Waterloo have grown, not so much on account of the tariff as on account of western Canada which has bought the industrial products they have produced.


William Daum Euler: One could hardly blame eastern Canada for the long distances; they did not make the distances.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: No, but they punished the west for those distances.


William Daum Euler: Oh, no, it has punished itself.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: If western Canada had dominated the policy of Canada as eastern Canada did, that difference in distance would have been taken into consideration to a much greater extent than it has been.
I turn to that part of the brief presented by Premier Bracken, in which he dealt with loss of farm income in western Canada. He said that in the seven years following 1930 the total farm income of the prairie provinces declined by twenty-five hundred million dollars, compared with the seven years prior to that time. That is a great deal of money, I should think-twenty-five hundred million dollars! If the manufacturers in eastern Canada had lost that much money, something w'ould have been done about it long before this. We can imagine the howls there would have been-well, one does not even like to contemplate them.
_ In fact, agriculture in all parts of Canada is not paid anything like the proportion of national income it should be paid. In this same brief Premier Bracken said that when we realize that nearly one-third of the people of Canada, w'ho are actually engaged in farming, receive only one-sixth of the national income, it is not a situation we can look on with any degree of happiness. I am not using his exact words, but that is the essence of what he has said.
The other night I agreed entirely with what the hon. member for Qu'Appelle (Mr. Perley) said. I think we ought to have a two-price wheat policy. The one-third that is consumed in Canada should sell at a price comparable with the general price level, and the loss on the two-thirds sold abroad absorbed to some extent by the Canadian government. I feel quite sure we are going to have a two-price agricultural policy, one price for domestic consumption and one for world consumption.
The hon. member for Muskoka-Ontario (Mr. Fumiss) said that the farmers of Ontario or of any other part of Canada could not say that so much of their product was for the 
world market and so much for the home market. Of course they can. When they get dominion marketing legislation, and when they are not only the producers but the processors and marketers they can and will do it.
I can imagine many Ontario farmers will take the view that the west has everything and the east gets nothing. But that is an uninformed view. However, an uninformed view is one that prevails at election times and it might be well for me, if I were playing politics, to take the position taken by some eastern farmers, that the west is getting much more than it deserves. I do not believe that. I think the west, has suffered to an extent which is affecting not only the west but the whole Canadian economy.
I do not pretend to know much about the wheat question, other than it is a matter affecting the whole of Canada. If we cannot get back the markets that we had, we are facing a terrible time in Canada; there is no doubt about that. Those are problems which cannot be laid upon the shoulders of westerners only; we shall have to bear them together. I want to say again what I said the other afternoon in connection with another bill, that the greatest calamity which can happen eastern Canada is to have 30,000,000 acres now devoted to the export, if not of wheat, at least of all grains, turned into the production of products which eastern Canada specializes in now. If that happens, there will be a collapse in all agricultural prices. That is the way in which eastern farmers should be thinking at the moment. At least we should be able to understand and sympathize with that portion of agriculture which has borne the brunt of our loss in export markets.
It seems a sad thing to me that we should go on saying that we have a great surplus of wheat, possibly a carry-over of 100.000.000 bushels in Canada and an estimated world carry-over of 1,150,000,000 bushels, and yet in a civilized country like Canada and in a fairly civilized world there are great numbers of people who are not getting enough to eat. I am inclined to agree with the hon. member for Greenwood (Mr. Massey) in his very much discussed criticism that there are people in Canada who are not well fed, and that these people are dying in numbers none of us knows. I think he was more right in his statement than was the Minister of Labour (Mr. Rogers) When he quoted an official in British Columbia as saying that the poorer and more destitute we are, the healthier we will be. That is a curious attitude.

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Mr. GRAY:: Not in the numbers the hon. member gave.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: The numbers are
unknown, but I know one can hardly pick up a paper without reading that someone has been picked out of a river or from the side of the road or from some other place, and no one knows who he is. What did all these people die of, and who are they? I am sure there are many of them. We have too much wheat, yet people are not getting enough to eat. Women generally have more to do with food than men, and we appreciate its value.
I am sure that most of us were brought up by careful mothers *who saw that we ate the leavings.


An hon. MEMBER:: The crusts.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: The crusts. It has always seemed to me it is a reproach upon this parliament that we should have this tremendous amount of wheat when there are people on and off relief who undoubtedly are not eating sufficient food.


William Daum Euler: It is not wheat that they want.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: It may not be wheat that they want, but if they had all the wheat products they needed they would not want much more. I was interested in the speech recently delivered by Sir John Boyd Orr in which he referred to the need of food to sustain the body in health. I noticed that before he left Canada he stated that while they have a great many people in Great Britain who do not have a sufficient amount of the right kind of food, there were proportionately more in Canada. It may seem a wild idea, but why could not the government buy up a large quantity of wheat and go into the public ownership of at least one mill? They could then turn out a vast amount of flour and wheat products and these could be distributed to everyone in need, whether or not they were on relief. That would get rid of it.


William Daum Euler: It would not get rid of very much.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: Perhaps the Minister of Trade and Commerce will agree with me when I say that Canada has not begun to do her duty in taking care of the starving people throughout the world who are in their present condition because of their loyalty to democratic ideals.


William Daum Euler: That may be true.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: 

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wheat for domestic consumption. Third, I see no reason why we should not send large quantities of wheat as a gift to the refugees that have been driven out of different countries because they believe in democratic ideals. Many of these refugees have been willing to sacrifice their living, if not their lives.


Mr. NORMAN JAQUES (Wetaskiwin):: Mr. Speaker, I speak as a farmer for farmers. I have farmed in western Canada for more than thirty years, and I know what it is to fight the conditions of soil and climate that prevail there. Perhaps as compensation for that I have the satisfaction of representing what is possibly the finest agricultural district in western Canada, the district of Wetaskiwin. I do not want to take up very much of the time of the house, but I should like to endorse what has been said on this bill by other members in this corner of the house and particularly by the hon. member for Acadia (Mr. Quelch).
In my riding we have never had a drought problem to face. Where the farmers in the drought areas are fighting destitution, the farmers in my riding are fighting debt. I have made fairly general inquiry and I am told that the debts on the farms in the finest agricultural districts of western Canada generally speaking exceed the value of the land. I attended many conventions in my riding last fall, and there were many resolutions presented. Most of them were demands that a fairly high price be guaranteed for a limited number of bushels. As a rule we have no really big wheat farmers; a section is quite a big farm in my riding, and the desire of most of the farmers, in that part of Alberta, is that they should be guaranteed, let us say, one dollar a bushel for 1,500 to 2,000 bushels. We are not troubled with drought; we have never had a drought problem, and most of our farmers are not anxious to be taxed for guaranteeing the drought areas.
We believe that there is no necessity to tax the farmers for crop insurance. We believe that with the facilities of the central bank the money required for the purpose can be created without cost to the people of Canada. That may sound a little strange, but when I hear members speak of the cost of this wheat policy I would ask, what has been the cost to Canada of the ruinous prices for agricultural products in the last ten years? When I hear the word "relief" mentioned in connection with granting a better, or a living, price to the farmers of western Canada, I wish to point out that the low prices, the ruinous prices, that have prevailed over the last ten years were not an act of providence but were deliberately and

designedly brought about. The costs were first counted, and then they were imposed on the agriculturists of Canada. That policy was the greatest blunder and the greatest injustice in the history of the British empire, and whatever the farmers may be granted now, it is only part of what is owing to them. More than that, when it is suggested that this is relief and that the farmers are attempting or have been attempting to escape their liabilities, it is only adding insult to injury.
I often hear the word " pioneer " mentioned in this house. Members refer to our pioneering forefathers, but it is mostly those who have never done any pioneering and do not intend to do it who make that reference. I think I can claim that I was a pioneer in western Canada. I went there as a young man and settled one hundred miles from a railway. I know what it is to go without the necessities, but there was no help for it. It was often physically impossible to get certain necessities, and we suffered in consequence. But that is no reason why we should continue to suffer when there is no physical justification for it. Others have said that they have put in a lifetime of hard work. Well, most of us have put in a good spell of hard work, and if hard work were the remedy there would be no need of a remedy. It may be said that we worked our way into this mess, but we have to think our way out of it.
What would be the cost of bonusing wheat and, if you like, other farm products, so that the agriculturists could obtain at least a decent living wage? We speak of so many millions of dollars. That really should not mean anything. The real cost of that better price would be the labour necessary to produce the goods to correspond with that increased price, and that labour, I take it, would be furnished by those who are at present clamouring for the privilege of performing the work-the unemployed. It would cost nothing. But what does it cost to have a million people on relief? That is the way to look at the problem. That is part of the price we pay and have been paying for years for the policy of deflation which has been followed, and which has fallen chiefly on the agriculturists of this country. The same applies to cattle, if I am in order, Mr. Speaker, in mentioning cattle in a debate on wheat.
I have no wish to break any of the rules of the house, but we hear so much said about agricultural surpluses. I saw figures the other day showing that if the consumption of beef were increased fifteen pounds a head per year, we would not need to export a single head of cattle, and if the standard of living were raised by that amount we would not need to

Prairie Farm Assistance
hunt a market for our cattle and for a great many other things which are troubling us to-day. The best market is right here in Canada.
We are often reminded that wheat farming is not the best kind of farming. But in a great many parts of western Canada, although not in my district, it is the only farming that is possible. Sheep are a desirable aid to farming, but what do we find? I have received a petition from the wool growers of Alberta protesting against the adulteration of woollen garments. If the government is really desirous of helping the farmers and bringing about better farming, why do they allow the woollen manufacturers to lower the standard of their woollen goods by adulterating them with shoddy? It seems to me that by allowing that adulteration the agriculturists are cheated and the consumers of Canada as a whole are cheated.


William Daum Euler: Does my hon. friend not
know that parliament this very session passed a bill dealing with that sort of thing?


Norman Jaques: I am glad to hear it. I
can only hope that it will be effective.
Again, if I may mention it, a great part of my riding is new country, pioneer country, and the soil in those districts, districts which comprise a very large part of western Alberta, is entirely different from the soil of the rest of the prairie. I should like to bring this to the notice of the minister and to ask him, because it has been pressed upon me many times, if he could see his way to instal a small experimental station to examine into the best ways of treating the soil peculiar to these very large districts. If he will do that, it will, I am sure, return great profits to districts which are now being opened up.
In regard to pioneering, as I said before, I was a pioneer, and pioneered, as we all did in the west, until there was no more pioneer ing to do in a physical sense. We have reached the mountains, and there is the end. But we have in the west, I think, the pioneering spirit, and having finished our course in a physical sense we are now pioneering in an economic sense. We do not believe that we can go back to the ideas of our grandfathers. We believe that there is just as much scope for economic pioneering as once there was for pioneering in a physical sense, and that until we do a great deal of economic pioneering we are not likely to make much progress. I recall that some time ago, when one of the members of the Rowell commission was in Alberta while we were broadcasting these pioneer ideas, he referred to the money we 71492-237i
were talking about as "toy money." Well, since that time Germany has experimented with some of that "toy money," and if that is what it is, at least it is true that when Mr. Chamberlain got to Munich he did not find any toy guns as a consequence of that "toy money," he found real guns, because the money was real too. And what they can do there we can do here, if we want to.


Mr. BOUCHARD:: He found more guns
than butter.


Norman Jaques: Quite; but Hitler is using
those methods to achieve his end. If with money of that kind you can prepare for war,
I say you can also preserve peace with it.


Charles Robert Evans: But he cannot buy food
with that kind of money outside Germany.


Norman Jaques: We have plenty of food here which we cannot buy. As Sir John Orr of Great Britain said the other day, hundreds of thousands of people are underfed and undernourished, and the only idea apparently is to have marketing boards so that they can curtail supplies of food in order to raise the price.


Mr. POULIOT (Translation):: Nothing so
pretty as phoney money!


Norman Jaques: That is an example of
orthodox economics. What idea is more idiotic than that of destroying food in order to raise food prices? Why not consume it and issue more money to compensate the people who produce food in plenty? That seems more sensible to us, and we can do it any time we want to.
I do not know that I can profitably say any more. I see it is nearly eleven o'clock. I hope the minister marked those two requests that I made-one with regard to wool, and the other for some kind of experimental station in the west of my riding.
The remark was made to-night that pressure should not be brought to bear on the government to raise the guaranteed price, but I should like to know just what did raise the price from 60 to 70 cents if it were not the pressure of the western farmers? I do not know what else did it. If we could put on a little more pressure, maybe we could get the guarantee raised to 80 cents, if not this year, then next year.


Malcolm McLean: Why not a dollar?


Norman Jaques: I am sure of this, for I have had a long enough experience to speak with certainty, that taking the average fanner
Prairie Farm Assistance

on the average farm in the average year, he cannot make ends meet on a less than 80cent basis. I do not believe that the occupation of farming is intended to be, as they say, a money-making proposition; at the same time no man in his senses can argue that the people who raise the food of the country, fundamentally the most important thing raised in the country, should be rewarded for their work with bankruptcy and destitution, or if not actually that, then the fear of it; and believe me, the fear of it is always present, and has been for a great many years. I believe that the farmers of western Canada, and probably of Canada as a whole, expect that this government will see to it that they are at least protected from ruin so long as they do their duty as they most certainly have done it in the past.
Mr. Speaker, it is eleven o'clock, and I move the adjournment of the debate.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Question.


An hon. MEMBER:: Finish your speech.


Walter Edward Foster: The hon. member may
finish his speech if that is the wish of the house.


James Shaver Woodsworth: It is eleven o'clock.
Motion agreed to and debate adjourned.


[Stage Direction]
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
Tuesday, May 9, 1939