1939-02-21

OFFICIAL REPORT


[Stage Direction]
Jfyav&t of Commons! debates
[Stage Direction]
Tuesday, February 21, 1939


[Stage Direction]
Mr. A. L. BEAUBIEN (Provencher) presented the first report of the special committee on radio broadcasting, and moved that the report be concurred in.
Motion agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
On the order for motions:
Hon. R. J. MANION (Leader of the Opposition) :: Mr. Speaker, I rise to a question of privilege, something which I have rarely had to do in the number of years I have been in this house. On Friday last I spoke in this house on the trade treaty and in opening my remarks I made some reference to those who were continually lecturing us to get on with the business of the people. The Toronto Globe and Mail carried a report of that speech with a large heading which read, "Lecturing by Ballots Irks Manion," and further down they quote me as follows:
Before he got well into his two-hour onslaught against the trade treaty the opposition leader declared his annoyance with the flood of ballots which has deluged parliament hill for the past week.
That statement is an absolute misrepresentation of the facts. I wish to state definitely and positively that I did not refer to those sending ballots, in any shape, manner or form. Hansard will bear me out in this. I was referring to certain editorials that had been written during the discussion on the Bren gun affair and to a few letters which some of us had received, the editorials and letters suggesting that we were not dealing with the business of the house. In view of the fact that I had not mentioned those who sent ballots, indeed did not have them in 71492-73
mind in any shape or form, on Sunday morning at eleven o'clock I sent the following telegram to the office of the Globe and Mail:
Statement front page Saturday's Globe and Mail that I expressed resentment against sending here of ballots absolutely untrue. I did not mention or refer to ballots or their senders in my speech and they were not in my mind in the remotest manner in my remarks. Please make correction.
I checked up and I found that that telegram was telephoned to the Globe and Mail at 11.38 a.m. on Sunday, and was delivered at the office of the Globe and Mail at 3.30 p.m. on Sunday. I had hoped that the Globe and Mail would itself make the correction, but as it has not done so and as I have been advised that some of those who sent in ballots took this as an affront to them, I am therefore making this correction and trust that the Globe and Mail will carry it with the same prominence as it did the misinformation; for I have every respect for the sincerity of purpose of the senders of the ballots.



STANDING COMMITTEES


Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING (Prime Minister) moved:: That the name of Mr. Stirling be substituted for that of Mr. Casselman on the standing committee on public accounts.
That the name of Mr. Brown be substituted for that of Mr. Graydon on the standing committee on public accounts.
That the name of Mr. Green be substituted for that of Mr. Church on the standing committee on public accounts.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.


[Stage Direction]
On the order for motions:
Hon. C. D. HOWE (Minister of Transport):: At the last sitting of the house the hon. leader of the opposition (Mr. Manion) asked me a question with reference to the resignation



Civil Service-Special Committee
of Mr. Murdoch as a director of the Canadian National Railways. I replied briefly then. I am tabling all the correspondence exchanged between Mr. Murdoch and myself, and in doing so I might say that the difference between Mr. Murdoch and his fellow-directors had reference to the reappointment of Mr. Hungerford as president of the railway for a further term. Yesterday at a meeting of the remaining directors Mr. Hungerford was unanimously recommended for further appointment.



CIVIL SERVICE


[Stage Direction]
Hon. CHARLES A. DUNNING (Minister of Finance) moved:
That a select special committee of the house consisting of Messrs. Anderson, Baker, Blanchette Bradette, Davidson, Dunning, h rancoeur, Hansell, Heaps, Hill, Lockhart, McCann, McLean (Melfort), Mallette, Mutch, Pottier, Wood, be appointed to inquire into the terms and operation of the Civil Service Superannuation Act, and all matters pertaining thereto, with power to call for persons, papers and records, to examine witnesses under oath, to consider evidence taken at the last session of parliament before a select special committee of the house on the same subject matter, and to report from time to time, and that standing order 65 be suspended in relation thereto.
Motion agreed to.

Hon. FERNAND RINFRET (Secretary of State) moved:: That a select special committee of the House be appointed to inquire into the operation of the Civil Service Act, and all matters pertaining thereto, with power to call for persons, papers and records, to examine witnesses under oath, and to report from time to time;
And that standing order 65 be suspended in relation thereto, and that the select special committee shall consist of twenty-five members and the following be appointed members of the said committee: Messrs. Barber, Boulanger, Clark (York-Sunbury), Cleaver, Deachman, Fournier (Hull), Glen, Golding, Hartigan, Hyndman, Jean, Lacroix (Quebec-Montmor-ency), Lennard, Maelnnis, MacNeil, McNiven (Regina City), Marshall, Mulock, O'Neill, Poole, Pouliot, Spence, Tomlinson, Tucker, Wermen-linger.
Mr. JEAN-FRANCOIS POULIOT (Temis-couafa): Mr. Speaker, the civil service committee last year carried on its arduous work without the slightest trace of political partisanship. I see the hon. member for Dufferin-Simcoe (Mr. Rowe) laughing. He said once that that committee was like a circus. He

could have been the circus and every other member of the committee could have been the manager.
The chairman of the civil service commission, speaking of the committee of last year, said:
This committee has gathered more information than ever before.
There are three branches of the civil service commission:	The organization branch, the
examination branch and the assignment branch.
With regard, first, to the organization branch, Mr. Putnam, the chief organizer, said once that it was composed of self-taught men.
I will now give the duties of each one of these branches, according to a chart which was tabled before the committee, and which was included in report No. 15:
Organization Branch
Functions: To investigate and report on the organization, personnel establishment and procedure of departments and the classification of all positions in the service, rates of compensation and allowances, and maintain the classification and official classification files. To investigate all proposals for more staff and to check as to need, requisitions for the filling of vacant positions.
Examination Branch
Functions: To examine applicants for entrance to and promotion in the public service; to select and list eligibles in order of merit; to maintain examination records.
Assignment Branch
Functions: To make assignments from eligible lists; to maintain eligible lists in order and up to date; to notify appointees and departments of temporary and permanent assignments and to issue certificates of appointment; to issue extension of temporary certificates as authorized.
That is the designated work of the three chief branches of the civil service commission. There is another branch, administrative and personnel services, with which I shall not deal at the present time.
A distinction should be made between the oral and the documentary evidence which appeared in the committee's report.


Mr. HEAPS:: May I ask what has all this to do with the appointment of the committee?


Mr. POULIOT:: Wait and see.


Abraham Albert Heaps: I will wait.


Jean-François Pouliot: As I said, Mr. Speaker,
a distinction should bo made between the oral and the documentary evidence of the committee last year. The documentary evidence comprises the final report of the committee

Civil Service-Special Committee
and includes a very interesting statement given by Sir Francis Floud; a speech by Lord Stamp which was not included in the report but which the committee was authorized to print, regarding the civil service in British industry; the minutes of the civil service commission, and an index of those minutes; a report on civil servants sixty-five or over; a submission by the professional institute; some data of the treasury board, and data on the personnel of the civil service commission.
I must congratulate the government on having superannuated two people, one of them who was supreme in the civil service commission and without whose recommendation no report of the chief of the organization branch could be considered, no report from any examiner in charge could be considered, and no promotion could be awarded. Those powers were found exorbitant by the last committee.
President Roosevelt in a recent letter to Mr. Justice Reed of the Supreme Court of the United States, who is the head of a committee appointed by the president to study methods of improving government personnel and efficiency of the civil service-I am quoting from the Times of Sunday last-after explaining that he was sorry he was away at the time the committee opened its sittings, said:
I should not have asked men with your responsibilities in other fields of government and business to undertake this study if I did not deem it of vital importance to the nation.
The growing complexities of modern government require the development of a trained personnel of men and women of outstanding ability, resourcefulness and breadth of mind willing to devote their lives to the public service.
Upon the development of such a personnel tlie future of our democracy may in no small measure depend.
That committee includes Attorney General Frank Murphy and Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter.
I do not wish to go further without mentioning that the government should be congratulated upon having superannuated and taken out of the service a man-a high-standing official,-who was guilty of dirty favouritism.
Now with regard to the documentary evidence already mentioned, if some hon. members object to the publication of the oral evidence they cannot object to the publication of the documentary evidence for the perusal of members of the committee and of members of the House of Commons. I wonder whether hon. members of this house realize what is the amount paid to dominion civil servants. According to a report published by the Bureau of Statistics in 1935. in
1931-32 the amount paid to dominion civil servants was 892,590,000. Of course it was a little less years afterwards. At that time the number of civil servants mentioned in that report was only 44,000. I have been in communication with a very able official of the Department of Finance, Mr. W. C. Ronson, who is assistant deputy minister, and who amongst the people who have foggy minds is one of the few who has a clear mind; he did exceptionally bright work, and I told him that I would commend him to his minister, but is it not much better to commend his work to the house? I obtained some very interesting information from him with regard to t ? number of civil servants. The total un April 1, 1937, was 57,426. Of them, 40,523 were Canadians, 13,474 from the British Isles, 512 from the British possessions, 451 from the United States, 1,068 from Europe, 95 from elsewhere, and 303 not stated. I wish to draw the attention of the house to the fact that in 1932 there were 44,000 civil servants, and now there are more than 57,000.


Mr. MacNEIL:: What is the total payroll?


Jean-François Pouliot: I may give it later. A few years ago it was $92,000,000, but it must be more now.
A very interesting editorial was published by Mr. Charles Lynch, then president of the parliamentary press gallery, in the Civil Service Review of September 30, 1938, expressing views which were shared by the officers of the civil service associations. The council of the professional institute met early in February, 'and according to the Ottawa Citizen of February 6, 1939, they said:
Concerning the recommendation for rating of employees by a board of three department officers, doubt was expressed that ratings could be established by anyone other than individuals closely concerned with the work of the employee.
This was suggested to the Civil Service Associations when they appeared before the committee, and they agreed to that; and also Mr. Nelson, the chief examiner of the commission, agreed with it. In the Legionary of January, 1938, I read that Major Bowler, who represented the Canadian Legion before the committee, and was accompanied by Mr. J. C. G. Herwig, assistant general secretary of the dominion command,-
-received an extremely courteous hearing from the chairman, Mr. J. F. Pouliot (Lib., Temis-couata), and the members of the committee, several of whom are themselves ex-service men and fully familiar with the problem.
During the recess I asked some questions of the chairman of the civil service commission. He has answered some of them, but

Civil Service-Special Committee
did not answer them all. I am told that he has forwarded to the government a memorandum to the effect that the civil service commission has already implemented most of the unanimous recommendations of the committee last year-which of course is untrue: the commission has made very little progress since the last sitting of the committee.
Here is a point of which hon. members should be informed. In spite of the arduous work of all members of the committee, without exception, some official of the professional institute used. unparliamentary language in public about members of the House of Commons. I shall not read all that was said, but it appeared in the press; it appeared in the Ottawa Journal of November 29, 1938, as a front-page article, and it was also broadcast by the Canadian Press. The then president of the professional institute has sent a satisfactory apology and withdrawal of the language he used; so have other civil servants who belonged to the Department of Mines; another connected with the Department of Agriculture sent a withdrawal which was rather an apology and which may be considered in due course by the members of the committee if they think that is the thing to do; and another one has done nothing, because his minister was unwilling to act. The. correspondence is confidential, but with the permission of the minister I will show it to hon. members concerned and they will do what they please with that.	'
We hear a lot about the merit system. Does the merit system really exist, or is it only a catchword? I have received from Mr. Bland, of the civil service commission, a list showing the number of the employees of the commission from 1908 until now. Here are some of the earlier figures:
Number of
Year	employees
1908		 5
1909		 8
1910		 10
1911		 13
1912		 20
1913		 20
1914-15-16	 17
1917-18	 25
At that time the civil service commission was not such a huge body as it is now.
Before giving the figures for succeeding years, may I say this. It might be interesting to hon. members to know what happened in the house in 1918 when a real merit system, as some hon. members believe in it, was brought into force. One must consider that at the time of the Union government there were some Conservatives and Liberals who did not know at all by how many Liberal [Mr. PouliotJ
and how many Conservative votes they had been elected. Therefore, of course, they did not know whom to reward by giving them positions in the civil service. Those prominent amongst the advocates of the merit system were: Mr. Justice Maclean, of the exchequer court, who was a prominent Liberal of Nova Scotia; the Hon. Newton Wesley Rowell, a former Liberal leader of Ontario, and Mr. Fred Pardee, who died a senator and who was the chief whip of the Liberal party in power and in opposition from 1909 until he supported the Union government. In Hansard of April 12, 1918, page 697, I find that Mr. A. K. Maclean, then acting minister of finance, spoke as follows:
This reform could only be possible under present political conditions. Had my right hon. friend (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) been returned to power, I have no doubt that he could not have inaugurated such a reform in the public service. Moreover, had the present Prime Minister been returned to power at the head of a Conservative government, it -would have been impossible for him to institute such a reform as this.
Very interesting: the thing could not have been done by any party, but it could be done only by a unionist government. It was one of their accomplishments. To prove that it was one of their accomplishments may I quote the words of one of the most distinguished front benchers of the house, the right hon. Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe).


Mr. WOODSWORTH:: I rise to a point of order. If I understand aright the motion, it is to appoint a committee. What is being said may be very interesting indeed from the political point of view, but I cannot see how it can bear on a motion to appoint a certain committee to consider civil service matters.


Jean-François Pouliot: Speaking to the point of order, we have only to see that the motion is for the appointment of a committee of the house " to inquire into the operation of the Civil Service Act, and all matters pertaining thereto, with power to call for persons," et cetera. It is the operation of the Civil Service Act that is being inquired into, and the foundation of the Civil Service Act is the merit system. Therefore I am perfectly in order in continuing to relate what happened in the past.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Mr. Speaker, I ask for your ruling. Do we need to have the history of the Civil Service Act from time immemorial brought before the house on this occasion? I fail to see it, and I ask for your ruling.


Mr. SPEAKER:: I am of the opinion that the hon. member is in order in the remarks

Civil Service-Special Committee
he has been making. The motion is that a special committee of the house be appointed to inquire into the operation of the Civil Service Act, and all matters pertaining thereto, and I do not think that up to the present moment the hon. member has discussed any matters that are irrelevant to the motion. I would ask him, however, to confine what he has to say to such questions' as are strictly within the' scope of the motion.


Jean-François Pouliot: I am not going to go as
far back as the deluge, but as we are considering the operation of the Civil Service Act it is important to know what progress has been made during the past twenty years under the merit system.
I was about to quote from page 703 what the right hon. Minister of Justice, who was then a back-bencher, said:
Here rve have an exemplification of the advantages of union government.
The so-called merit system was brought in by two kinds of individuals. There were the big manufacturers who wanted to make more money by showing their devotion to the empire, and also the Liberals who had supported the Union government, and the Conservatives as well, who were much embarrassed by patronage and had become in one day statesmen, not bothering about petty jobs. They did not want to reward anyone. They were thinking of great and important matters concerning the whole world.
We still have the same kind of statesmen even among back-benchers. They are not numerous; some are front-benchers, and others are back-benchers; but they are not vulgar politicians. They are statesmen, statesmen, statesmen, going higher and higher. The merit system was created to satisfy the greed of profiteers who wanted to promote their own business outside Canada: the sale of bacon manufactured by the friends of Sir Thomas White, who was then minister of finance; starch manufactured by the minister of railways and canals, J. D. Reid; tinware manufactured by Sir Albert Edward Kemp, minister of overseas military forces; paint manufactured by the minister of the naval service, Hon. C. C. Ballantyne; the products of the Cockshutt plant, and so on and so forth.
On April 12, .1918, at page 707, no less a gentleman than that great Haligonian, Mr. Fielding, said:

I think we are getting away from the purpose for which the civil service commission was created. It was never intended to be a patronage distributing body, but a body with distinct purposes, a body to hold examinations
and to take means of guaranteeing the qualifications of applicants for the public service. That, I think, is a correct statement of its original purpose. But now the government seem to be obliged-I am not saying they could do otherwise-to make this commission a patronage distributing body. Now say to A, B and C, who are members of parliament, that they shall have no right to nominate anybody, but that D, E and F, who are called the civil service board, shall nominate' and appoint the men, does not seem to me to be abolishing patronage; it is simply transferring it from a number of gentlemen who, whatever their faults may be, have some knowledge of local conditions, and turning it over to gentlemen who have no knowledge of local conditions. It seems to me that is the effect of it.
So spoke Mr. Fielding. There is something further that is interesting in the working of the civil service commission. In my humble view it is a hoax, it is a farce; they are passing the buck. No one is responsible. We ask the government, any government, who is responsible and we are told, the civil service commission; and if we ask the civil service commission the answer is, "We have no responsibility whatever; the responsibility is on the shoulders of the government." Therefore no one knows where he is at.
If hon. members will look into those most interesting publications called blue books they will see the names of prominent people who do not belong to the civil service commission and who have been thanked in every report of the commission since 1908 for their valuable services in sitting on examining boards. Mr. Justice Angers of the exchequer court is not a member of the civil service commission, and there are many others. I have not the last one, 1938, but I direct attention to page 29 of the report of the commission for 1937. They will see a formidable list of men who are supposed to be competent when the civil service commission is not. In the organization branch there are self-taught men. Perhaps there are a couple of sensible men there; the others are fools, and they direct the organization and classification of all departments, the classification of all civil servants. They are the big men of the civil service commission, the "number one" men; and then there are the examiners who, most of them, could not successfully teach in primary schools; and yet they pass upon questions put to applicants regarding astronomy, geology, engineering and every other science for which civil servants may be employed. Most ridiculous!
If the house has no objection, may I table some figures? They give a classification of those persons acting as advisory examiners on civil service boards, divided into civil servants from Ottawa on the one hand and

Civil Service-Special Committee
from outside on the other, and not civil servants, from Ottawa on the one hand and from outside on the other. Does the house agree to that?	.
Some lion. MEMBERS: No.


Walter Edward Foster: The hon. member cannot
file it without unanimous consent.


Jean-François Pouliot: Then I will keep it in
my pocket.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Read it.


Robert James Manion: Pass it around.


Jean-François Pouliot: If the house agrees I will have it stencilled and send a copy to every member. I say, it is most ridiculous. The civil service commission looks to a mounted policeman, an R.C.M.P. constable either in British Columbia or in Nova Scotia, to decide whether a caretaker for a public building, a lighthouse, is competent; and if at times some other choice is made, it is the principal of a high school, who has to judge the competency of some man whom the civil service commission has never seen and who is appointed without any civil service commissioner ever having seen him.
There are some amusing things in connection with the civil service commission. After 1918 the number of employees on the staff of the civil service commission has increased year by year. These are the numbers from 1918-19 on-and remember, Griffen-hagen and Arthur Young & Company were brought in to introduce American efficiency into the dominion public service:
1918-	19	
1051919-	20	
2041920-	21	
3151921-	22	
2001922-	23	
2321923-	24	
2241924-	25	
1841925-	26	
1881926-	27	
1741927-	28	
1821928-	29	
1951929-	30	
2441930-	31	
2331931-	32	
1701932-	33	
1481933-	34	
1361934-	35	
1441935-	36	
1091936-	37	
2311937-	38	
228
These men and women are there; many of them are good stenographers, but they know nothing about the structure of any department; they know nothing about the qualifications of civil servants and those who try to get government jobs. They are there; they do not decide anything, but they take for 
granted that what is done is correct. Suppose there is a vacancy for a chemist; there are no chemists on the civil service commission, no one is able to say anything about the qualifications of the applicants. But they constitute a board and ask for the qualifications of the various applicants. These are sent to the civil service commission. There a minor clerk who knows nothing about chemistry eliminates some of the applications, and the others are left for the decision of the board. Very often the board do not see anyone, at any rate they do not see the applicants who have been eliminated by the minor clerk. They take it for granted, although they know nothing, that they have done fine work. Then they decide that A shall be appointed because he is the first on the list. It is taken for granted because that man is such a prominent man in the city of Ottawa, or such an eminent chemist in the city of Winnipeg, and so on.
Probably no one in this house has ever read the form of the oral examination report. Look at it. "Factors to be considered"- they are the same forms as were there twenty years ago. Nothing is changed; it is tradition, the holy tradition of Foran, the civil service commissioner. He is their guiding star and their inspiration. Observe this:

Make a careful observation of the candidate. Notice his personal appearance and his neatness in dress. How do his personality and manner impress you? If he had to deal with the public, do you think he would be tactful, courteous and firm-
Firm!
-or inclined to be abrupt .or overbearing? Where would you rank him in comparison with a 100 per cent "ideal" candidate and a "barely satisfactory" 60 per cent candidate?
The margin is from 60 to 100 per cent. If you like him, 100 per cent. If you don't, he has no personality-60 per cent. All the most important officials of the civil service commission were asked, "What is personality?" and every one of them answered, "I don't know." But it is there, and if the examiner finds that the fellow is neatly attired, buys his clothes from Fashioncraft, has engaging manners, and is "firm," then he is 100 per cent. If the examining clerk does not like him, he is not.
But that is not all:
In the column headed "Rating" express your judgment by writing in ink the percentage at which you would rate him. If your rating is less than 60, place a check mark after the word -unsatisfactory.

Civil Service-Special Committee
Below 60, below zero! Then the next
section:

Having checked over the career of the candidate with him briefly-
Was your father a respectable man? Was your mother a good mother? Have you many sisters-many brothers? Probably you have been a clerk in a general store; oh, yes; you have sold sugar; you have sold apples and flour and biscuits-biscuits are most important. -what value would you attach to it as fitting him for this particular position?
Note: It is not necessary that his experience should have been exactly in the line required in the position-
It is not necessary. No training is necessary.
-but consider whether it has been of such nature as to indicate his probable success if appointed. Again express your opinion as in factor A.
Personality!

Consider the intelligence and mental alertness of the candidate.
Alertness!
How does he react to questioning? Is he quick to grasp the trend of your questions and able to express himself intelligently and readily? Again indicate your judgment as in factor A.
This is sissy talk. Then D:

Taking into consideration the actual work to be performed in the position in question, do you consider the candidate to be in possession of the requisite health, strength and other physical attributes required? Do not-
Those words in block letters.
Do not in this instance compare him with a 100 per cent physically fit man, but view him only from the point of view of the work to be performed. As far as his physical fitness is concerned can he carry on with reasonable efficiency? Indicate your judgment as in factor A.
Now, sir, for whom is personality required? It is required for inspectors of dairy products, hatchery assistants, dairy produce graders, poultry inspectors, junior swine graders, stock car inspectors, foremen spat and breeding, stock distribution, customs excise clerks, customs excise examiners, customs excise enforcement officers, immigration guards, customs truckmen-these need personality. Also immigration inspectors, fisheries inspectors, Indian agents-personality, of course! Park wardens, park caretakers, cleaners and helpers -they need personality. Head stewards, investigators of drawback claims-these all need personality. I have a long list, pages
of it. Orthopaedic appliance makers, clerks grade 4-they need personality. It is incredible.
Sir, one of the recommendations that was made on behalf of youth, and it was only one, was the superannuation of men at sixty-five and women at sixty. It was in a report presented to the house last year. That report was agreed to by the members of the civil service commission; the members of the house were satisfied with it and of course it was the unanimous report of the committee on which all parties were represented. In the Montreal Standard of February 4 we find the following:
All-Canada civil service plan is now proposed.
That is the headline.
Junior business men in forty-nine cities and towns propose extension of civil service plan into provincial and municipal fields.
Poor youth! What an illusion! I have sent to Mr. Bonar, who occupies the post of chairman of the national committee on the civil service of the junior chamber of commerce of Canada, the whole report of last year to show him what is being done in the civil service commission.
In the old times civil servant appointees were young men who were open-minded, intelligent, had just an ordinary education but were willing to learn, and at that time the chiefs were ready to teach. Therefore young men entering the civil service progressed naturally until they became expert in their branch. But now it is entirely different. With the over-teaching that is done by all universities from coast to coast we do not have any more young men who are open-minded and willing to learn; we have a lot of young B.A's, M.A's, Ph.D's, who are unwilling to learn but always ready to teach, and the chiefs are unwilling to teach but become indispensables, staying in the service after sixty-five years to get a little more than their superannuation. Therefore there is now no cooperation between the young people who get into the civil service and most of those who are over them. Of course there are complaints of favouritism; several complaints were made by all the civil service organizations, but when we asked them to point their finger to the sore spots, everyone refused-they did not want to compromise themselves. Therefore the only part of the oral evidence which is worth anything is that which comes from the files themselves. In the office of the clerk of the committee we had five hundred files which were perused by the members of the committee and which showed how extraordinarily the applicants were dealt with by the civil service commission.

Civil Service-Special Committee
I wonder -whether many hon. members have read a small book called A Message to Garcia. It is by Elbert Hubbard, and I take the liberty of quoting a few lines:
And a man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or doing aught else but deliver it, never gets "laid off," nor has to go on strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long, anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall he granted. He is wanted in every city, town and village-in every office, shop, store and factory. The world cries out for such; he is needed and needed badly-the man who can "carry a message to Garcia."
I wish to apply those words to the hon. members who sat with me on the committee last year. I appreciated their work, which at times was both painful and arduous. We knew nothing about the operation of the Civil Service Act; we received a message from the house, and it was our duty to discover whether the operation of that act was a joke on the house and the country or whether a good purpose was being served.
Now, sir, may I say that I do not know at all what I will do this session. I have informed the government that I want the report of last year, which was unanimous on the part of members representing all parties, submitted to the house. We worked very hard, at times seven days a week, in order to reach conclusions which we thought would be in the best interests of the service and the best interests of the country. That has been done, and I hope the matter will be very seriously considered in the light of the public welfare.


James Shaver Woodsworth: A few months ago, Mr. Speaker, I objected to a discussion of this kind being carried on when We were supposed to be considering a more or less formal resolution with regard to the selection of a special committee. However, since the discussion has gone on I should like to say that it does seem to me highly improper that in connection with this resolution the hon. member who has just taken his seat (Mr. Pouliot) should have attacked civil servants who have no chance to defend themselves.


Jean-François Pouliot: Let them run in my constituency.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Quite so. The hon. member has been making a violent attack upon civil servants, calling them all sorts of names without, of course, those civil servants having any chance whatever to defend them-

selves in this place. But that is not the worst of it; he has made an attack on the whole merit system.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No, no.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Yes; he stated that the merit system had been promoted to satisfy the greed of certain persons.


Mr. McLEAN (Melfort):: The civil service commission-


James Shaver Woodsworth: That is what we are discussing just now.


Malcolm McLean: not the merit system.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I would say the whole question involved was the merit system, which is the basis of the work of the civil service commission. The hon. member said it was a joke. I took this down, and I think I am quoting him correctly; he said the merit system had been promoted to satisfy the greed of certain persons.


Jean-François Pouliot: The so-called merit system, which is very different.


James Shaver Woodsworth: He was referring to the system under which we are operating at the present time. He said the commission was essentially a patronage distributing body, and even at this late day in our political development he pleaded that patronage should be kept in the hands of those who have knowledge of local conditions, which in effect means that patronage should be almost entirely under the control of the local politicians.


Jean-François Pouliot: Mr. Fielding said that.


James Shaver Woodsworth: It may have been said by Mr. Fielding but I fancy the hon. member who spoke is quite in sympathy with Mr. Fielding in this regard.


Jean-François Pouliot: Surely.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Well, whatever may have been true in the earlier days of our history I submit that to-day the people of Canada as a body are heartily sick of the patronage system even to the extent to which it now exists. We are never going to get very much further in the way of cleaner politics as long as the patronage system exists.


Mr. MULOCK:: Under the civil service commission.


James Shaver Woodsworth: As long as it exists, I say.

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An hon. MEMBER:: Under the civil service commission.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I will not say we have no measure of patronage under the civil service commission, but at least the setting up of that commission is an attempt to get away from party patronage. It would seem to me that the hon. member who just spoke is anxious to return to the old idea of party patronage. Why, only to-day I heard the possible appointment to a rather important post being discussed. I do not mind mentioning what it was-the appointment of a parliamentary librarian. What was the trend of the discussion? It was that we had always appointed a librarian who was a good party heeler, that the position was considered to be a reward for party services.


Mr. HOWARD:: And have they not been very good appointments?


James Shaver Woodsworth: I will not say that.


Mr. ROGERS:: What does the hon. member mean by "party heeler"? Would he apply that term to the late Hon. Martin Burrell?


James Shaver Woodsworth: One who has given good party service. That was the trend of the discussion to which I listened to-day.


An hon. MEMBER:: Where did you hear
that discussion?


James Shaver Woodsworth: Never mind; let
me finish my statement. I say that undoubtedly in this country the general feeling is that appointments, especially to certain classes of positions, are made because of party services. I would take that very library position as an illustration, if you like. Most of us liked the late Martin Burrell very much. We thought he was a fine man. He was a literary man, but I would venture to say that Mr. Burrell had no special training as a librarian. He was a splendid literary critic, and possibly it may be a good thing that we should occasionally give some sort of emolument to literary people in this country in order to encourage them to continue writing. I have no particular objection to that, but I have some objection to anyone being appointed to the position of librarian who is not a qualified librarian. That is my position. It is a technical post to which should be appointed a man with the highest technical qualifications.


Jean-François Pouliot: I rise to a point of order. Mr. Burrell was a privy councillor; he is now dead, but he was a most able man.


Charles Benjamin Howard: May I ask a question?
Just because-


Walter Edward Foster: Order. If the hon. member who has the floor does not give consent, he should not be interrupted.


James Shaver Woodsworth: Mr. Burrell's name was mentioned from across the floor. I was dealing with a general principle and as an illustration said that only an hour or so ago I heard that matter under discussion. It illustrates my point, namely, that to-day a great many appointments are made primarily in order that certain people who have given party service may be rewarded. That is my submission. I could give very many other illustrations; it just happened that this was the matter under discussion at the moment. My point is-and I think that I rightly interpret the feeling of the majority-that the people of Canada are sick of this kind of thing.


Mr. TOMLINSON:: Did you ever ask for anything?
Mr.	WOODSWORTH	: No.Mr.	TOMLINSON:	Yourself?Mr.	WOODSWORTH	: No.Mr.	TOMLINSON:	Your party?Mr.	WOODSWORTH	: No.Mr.	TOMLINSON:	Any of your


James Shaver Woodsworth: Not that I know of.


Jean-François Pouliot: The hon. gentleman is as firm as the civil service forms require.


James Shaver Woodsworth: I do not claim any
particular credit for that, simply because we are not in a position where we can expect to get favours.
. An hon. MEMBER:	That is the simple
reason.


James Shaver Woodsworth: It may be the simple reason, but I am speaking about a principle. I care not whether the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, the Conservatives, the Liberals or any other party may be involved; the principle is that in this country we should have a system by which appointments should be made on merit after competitive examinations. That is the policy which I think ought to be maintained. We are constantly in danger of encroachment upon even the degree of non-partisan appointment that has so far been attained; for everyone knows that again and again in connection with certain appointments we have the phrase, "notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the Civil Service Act." This matter is brought to our attention



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constantly, and I am really surprised that my good friend from Temiscouata (Mr. Pouliot) should have the courage, at this stage in the development of our political institutions, actually to plead or demand that we should go back to an earlier state of affairs from which we thought we were at least beginning to try to escape. I regret exceedingly the speech of the hon. member for Temiscouata and I desire to dissociate myself entirely from the sentiments that have been expressed.
There is one other matter to which I should like to refer. I submit that in so prejudging the work of the committee the hon. member has definitely disqualified himself from acting on the committee to which he is to be appointed for the present session. It is not so long since the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) quoted from Beauchesne's parliamentary rules and forms, as follows:
It shall always be understood that no member who declares or decides against the principle of a bill, resolution, or matter to be committed, can be nominated of such committee.
The Prime Minister went on to say:
Each hon. member of the committee will be expected, on his honour, to investigate fully the matter which has been referred to the committee of which he is a member. He will be expected, as one who is privileged to sit on the committee, to form his judgment with respect to what should be reported to the house.
And again:
no hon. member who had expressed views in this house which prejudged the situation would be entitled to sit on that committee.
That seems to me fairly clear. This motion is distinctly with regard to a certain special committee. We have the chairman of last year, who according to frequent custom would naturally be the chairman this year, prejudging the case. I would say that he has absolutely disqualified himself from serving on-that committee.


Jean-François Pouliot: I have refused to act as chairman.


James Shaver Woodsworth: From sitting on the committee, I said.


Charles Grant MacNeil: Mr. Speaker, as a back-bencher who served on the committee last year, I cannot let this occasion pass without saying a word or two. May I remind the house that a very searching inquiry was made into the operations of the Civil Service Act by the committee under the chairmanship of the hon. member for Temiscouata (Mr. Pouliot). As the hon. member has indicated, a report which was unanimously assented to by all members of the committee was tabled in this house last

session. It was our expectation that there would be a motion for concurrence in the report and that on such motion there would be a debate with regard to the principles involved. It is a matter of personal regret to me that the hon. member should seize this occasion to anticipate the decision of the house with regard to the report and draw his own conclusions with reference to the evidence heard before the committee. May I make this point, and make it most emphatically: The conclusions which he has presented to the house this afternoon are not incorporated in the report of the committee as unanimously assented to by all the members of the committee.


Jean-François Pouliot: If my hon. friend will permit me? The report of last year is not before the house. I am simply expressing my personal views on the motion of the minister, which is entirely different.


Charles Grant MacNeil: The report was agreed to by the hon. gentleman as chairman of the committee and it appears on the records of the house, although it is not formally before us at this session. I draw the inference from the motion of the Secretary of State (Mr. Rinfret) that it is the intention to proceed with the inquiry where we left off last session.
I have just this point to make, and other members of the committee can express their own personal opinions. Since the matter has been opened up this afternoon I submit that the weight of evidence indicated that during the past few years the staff of the civil service commission had been making a very honest and efficient endeavour on the whole to carry out the merit system of appointments in the civil service. That was the impression I gained personally as a result of listening day by day to the evidence presented before the committee. No charges of inefficiency or irregularity were made, and certainly there was nothing in the evidence to indicate that there was any less efficiency in that department than in any other department of the government. After hearing the members of the staff of the civil service commission, it was the general impression of members of the committee that after all they were efficient, that they had integrity of purpose with regard to the work entrusted to them, and that they were doing a first-class job.
May I make this point? The chief handicap imposed on the commission has been imposed by hon. members of this house who are determined, to force political patronage upon the civil service. One of the most

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astounding revelations made before that committee was that which showed the growth of political patronage in connection with appointments to the civil service under the present administration. We were presented with long lists containing thousands of positions which had been exempted from the provisions of the Civil Service Act, first by statute, again by the estimates, and again by orders in council. This has had a demoralizing result within the civil service, since we have attempted to merge two systems, a merit system under the civil service commission, and a political patronage system, with all the conflict and confusion thus involved.
Those of us who sit in opposition have knowledge of the method by which appointments are made by defeated Liberal candidates. We know of the antagonistic public opinion that has been aroused by reason of the interference of political patronage with regard to appointments to the civil service. The civil service commission has made an honest attempt to establish the principle that appointments to the civil service of Canada should be available to every citizen of the dominion, and that appointments should be secured by open competitive examination. There is no proper system of qualification, there is no suggestion of competition, when appointments are secretly made on the recommendation of a sitting member, a defeated candidate or a political committee. We have a sad state of affairs in the civil service, but that sad state of affairs is due to the deter. mination to foster political patronage. I should like to refer again to the evidence given by Sir Francis Floud, then high commissioner for the United Kingdom. He spoke very eloquently and very convincingly of the British tradition of appointments now maintained in the United Kingdom. I think that when we heard his evidence many of us desired that the day should come soon in Canada when we would have a similar tradition in the Canadian civil service and get away entirely from all the miserable intrigue that is associated with political patronage.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I did not wish to interrupt my hon. friend when he was speaking, but there is just one statement I should like to make in order to make clear a certain situation. He referred to orders in council which had been passed taking a number of employees out from under the jurisdiction of the civil service commission, and the impression that might be left with the house would be that
71492-74$
the government itself had initiated that procedure or that particular course of action. I think I am right in saying that wherever that was done, and it has been done in some cases, it was at the instance of the civil service commission itself. The commission reported to the government that in its opinion there were certain classes of appointment in connection with which it would be much better for the government to accept responsibility rather than the civil service commission, and action was taken accordingly. I am certain I am right in that.


Hon. J. E. LAWSON (York South):: Mr. Speaker, before the Secretary of State (Mr. Rinfret) speaks I feel I should make a comment or two with respect to the subject matter under discussion, in view of my past experience in connection with the civil service. I was originally a member of the committee which sat last year, but I had myself replaced because of the fact that other committees of which I was a member were meeting at the same time as the civil service committee. So I was not a party to the report made last year.
In 1932 I had the honour to be chairman of a small special committee of this house which conducted a somewhat extensive investigation into the administration of the Civil Service Act. I will be frank to confess that when I first entered upon that inquiry, representing as I do a constituency some 275 miles from Ottawa, I had the general impression which seemed to prevail in that part of the country from which I came that a civil service job was something of a sinecure, and that the best-off people in this country were the civil servants. From my experience in that exhaustive inquiry and from experiences I have had before and since in departments of government, I would be unfair and unjust did I not say that, taken by and large and all round, I think we have in the civil service of Canada a group of men of whom we can well be proud. I will admit quite frankly that I have gone into offices in some departments of the government service here and seen practices prevailing which would not be permitted or tolerated in private enterprise, but such cases are very few and far between. I am always-I was going to say amazed, but I will put it in this way-I am always surprised at the ability and the energy displayed by a great many of our civil servants in the course of their duties, having regard to the comparatively small remuneration which many of them receive.

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Having said that much, I concede that there are many absurdities in the so-called merit system. As pointed out by the hon. member for Temiscouata (Mr. Pouliot) I did when I was chairman of the civil service committee, realize the absurdity of attempting to select floor sweepers and window cleaners and truck men on any so-called merit system and competitive examination basis. I want to be frank and say that much of the report which I as chairman moved in the house in 1932 did not contain my views in their entirety with respect to the civil service. In order to obtain unanimity in the committee there had to be a considerable amount of give and take, and in the long run my job as chairman was to present not my own views but those of the majority of the committee.
So far as the civil service commission itself is concerned, I am confident that they are making a real effort to carry out the job which this parliament has assigned to them. But when you assign to them the job of selecting people for minor positions involving manual labour, I think it is a huge joke to fill these positions on a competitive merit basis.
I do not know, Mr. Speaker, whether my hon. friend from Temiscouata intended to convey in his remarks his opposition to nonpartisan appointments for civil service positions in general. If he did I must say that I do not subscribe to that policy. It is a great blessing that we have not in force in the Dominion of Canada a patronage system without any qualification attachments thereto, and I for one shall not advocate such a system. But I am free to say that many improvements might be made in the system which now prevails, particularly in two respects: (1) Eliminate from the so-called merit system minor positions where physical effort and physical labour are required; and (2) change the whole basis of examination for many of the minor positions in the civil service in respect of which examination now prevails.


Mr. ANGUS MacINNIS (Vancouver East):: Mr. Speaker, I have I think been on every special civil service committee that has been appointed by the House of Commons since 1936. I sat on the committee last year, and I am rather sorry to hear the hon. member for Temiscouata (Mr. Pouliot) say many of the things he did this afternoon. It was reminiscent of some of the committee's meetings last year. I think he will agree with me that after the committee had had a number of sittings and said a number of things, some

of which I think should not have been said, we got down to business and I believe did some very good work.
I was also sorry to hear the hon. member for Temiscouata make certain references to employees under the civil service commission. I do not think the evidence given by these persons when they appeared before the committee last year bears out the statements that he made in regard to them to-day. If there was anything that stood out in the committee last year it was that these employees demonstrated to the committee that they were fully qualified to deal with the matters with which they were called upon to deal.
I do hope that when this year's committee is organized and gets down to work we shall give our attention wholly and solely to matters with which it is necessary to deal in order to have the civil service function in the best possible way. I have too much respect for the business instincts and business ability of most members of the cabinet to think for one moment that they are not in favour of the merit system, and of appointments to the civil service being made on the basis of ability and merit. The patronage system would make their work even more difficult than it is to-day, and we must all admit that it is difficult enough as it is.
The hon. member for York South (Mr. Lawson) referred to the great blessing of not having an absolutely unqualified patronage system. Now if it is a blessing to have a merit system, even if it is not a complete one, if we have a good system through having eliminated a great deal of patronage, surely we could have a better system if we eliminated all patronage. That is a matter which the committee can go into this year. Before I sit down I must again say that I deeply regret that the hon. member for Temiscouata made the references he did in his remarks to-day to certain members of the civil service.


Charles Benjamin Howard: Mr. Speaker, I do not want to detain the house on this question at the present time. I am entirely in favour of setting up a special committee on the civil service this year, as there are certain defects in the present system which I think it is important to remedy and in respect to which I hope the committee now to be appointed will recommend appropriate action.
On the question of patronage I would say to the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) that I cannot see that it would be worse to place the patronage in the hands of the elected representatives of

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the people of Canada than to leave it in the hands of an irresponsible body, one which is not responsible to the electors in a democracy. I am entirely in favour of the merit system and of the educational test. I think nobody questions that, but I do say to those who approve that system one hundred per cent that at a time when we are appealing to our manufacturers and industrialists not to let men out because they are over age, thereby throwing them on the country for support, we have no right to limit the age for appointment to the civil service and say that because a man is over thirty-two he shall have no opportunity to get this or that particular position, especially when it is a junior position. When this matter is brought up I can submit two cases.
Let me say further that during my fourteen years as representative of the city of Sherbrooke I have been but twice to the civil service commission: once, when I first arrived here, to be introduced to the personnel, which has since changed; and once when I went down on an appeal in such a case as that to which I have just referred. In the administration of justice in this country we have courts of appeal, the Supreme Court of Canada and the privy council; but we have set up a civil service commission beyond which there is no appeal. In this respect, and it goes to the fundamental aspects of the matter, the principle is entirely wrong. I will give an example. Not very long ago an examination was set by the civil .service commission in English, and quite properly so; then the English paper was handed over to departmental officers to be translated into French so that French-Canadian students could answer the questions in their own language. In the translation they used in one question three words which changed entirely the sense of the question, so that French-speaking candidates did not have the same chance as the English-speaking ones. I have been to the civil service commission three times, and they refuse to rectify the mistake, which they admit, saying "We will just take that question out"-but they refuse to hold a new examination.
I am entirely in favour of a civil service commission, but I think it has been going too far. I hope that the committee to be set up this year will see to it that there is a court of appeal from the commission, responsible to the parliament of Canada, where grievances such as I have just mentioned can be redressed.
Another thing:	Let us not forget that,
while the maximum age of appointees has
been limited to thirty-five years, and an educational test has been provided, there is another factor which to my mind is more important than any other, and it is the suitability of the candidate for the position he is to occupy. In the constituency I represent, which is eighty per cent French-Canadian and Catholic, I defy anybody, no matter what part of the country he comes from, to show that there is any one as well qualified to tell which man is best suited to a job as the elected member of the constituency of Sherbrooke, who at this time happens to be myself.


Mr. COLDWELL:: What about the defeated candidate, if there was one?


Walter Edward Foster: Order.


Charles Benjamin Howard: Well, he is not responsible. From 1930 to 1935, when the Tories were in power, I was still the elected member for Sherbrooke. Let me tell the hon. member who just interrupted that during that time I was perfectly satisfied that the defeated Conservative candidate, who happened to be a supporter of the then government, should make the appointments, and during those five years you will not find one single word of criticism from me of his having done so. But I do say this, that when it comes to the aptness of the candidate to suit the mentality of the people he is going to serve, whether you have a civil service commission or not, whether the choice is made by the elected member. Conservative, Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, Independent, Labour or Liberal, where is there as good a judge of the suitability of the candidate as is the representative of the people?
Several other points occur to me, but I am not now going to take time to discuss them. I hope that when this subject goes to the committee it will be considered from a nonpolitical point of view, a businessman's point of view, and that we shall set up or increase the machinery in such a way as to render to the people of this country a service which will be more in line with real democracy.


Mr. WILLIAM HAYHURST (Vegreville):: Mr. Speaker, I was not a member of the civil service committee, but as a new member of this house, after listening to the arguments which have been set forth, it seems to me that there are some factors which we must develop in the merit system administered by the civil service commission. The last speaker remarked that appointments should be non-political. Possibly most hon. members are in favour of non-partisan appointments, but they feel also that they can be

Civil Service-Special Committee
made in a business manner, after appraising the educational and tactual equipment of the candidates.
Speaking educationally, it is generally understood, that there are two general types of people: those who respond to mental tests -the intelligence quotient, if you like-the sum of the qualities making for the mental personality; and those whose physical personality is the primary essential. The latter is adjusted more to responses due to ability to learn to do things in a physical way-for instance, to learn to ride a bicycle and make a good errand boy; whereas by intelligence tests you select and determine the mental efficiency of an applicant. Consequently we must consider the question from the standpoint of psychology.
Let me say as a new member that I have found the most efficient and courteous services rendered to us by every civil servant whom we have approached in the House of Commons and the houses of parliament generally.


Mr. BLACKMORE:: Hear, hear.


William Hayhurst: So we feel that some good has been accomplished through the merit system. At the same time we believe that in regard to the appointment of persons whose work requires tactual skill, the selection is best made by a committee which will test the tactual ability as well as give consideration to his personality from the point of view of the mental qualities required in the particular position.
Certainly we should not overthrow the merit system. The civil service requires an entirely different personality from political life:	I
believe that a politician would be about the last person who could successfully pick out candidates to fill certain civil service posts. I wish to place myself on record as being fundamentally in favour of the merit system, with probably some additional consideration given to the type of person required for jobs other than those in which mental capacity is most important.


Mr. H. C. GREEN (Vancouver South):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Temis-couata (Mr. Pouliot) with his usual alertness, has placed the rest of us at a great disadvantage, because he came down to the chamber to-day prepared to make a detailed and comprehensive speech, whereas all the rest of us are taken by surprise. In fact, as he was speaking on personality, I could not help feeling that he would be certain to get one hundred per cent of the marks for that quality, no matter who might be the examiner.

It was my privilege last year to serve on the special committee to consider the civil service of Canada. We went into the matter very thoroughly. I believe we held over fifty meetings. Some of them were exciting. Certainly they were all interesting. The members who served on the committee learned a good deal about the civil service. But the committee meetings lasted so long that a report was not brought in until a day or two before the house closed and there was no opportunity to consider the report. It was our understanding, however, that the government at this session would afford an opportunity very early in the proceedings of the house to discuss the report. I suggest most earnestly to the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) that he provide an opportunity for the discussion of last year's report before going on to set up a new committee. If the former report were considered many points would be cleared up and the work of this year's committee would be greatly simplified. No doubt, the Prime Minister will see what advantages would follow from such a course, merely from the discussion that has taken place here to-day.
My impression was quite different from that of the hon. member for Temiscouata with regard to the findings of last year's committee. There were many things on which we did not agree, but I think that the civil service commission came out of a most searching investigation with flying colours. We were unable to consider the examination branch, and yet to-day the member for Temiscouata has attacked the work of that branch without the committee having considered it in detail last year. I think he will agree with me that this is correct. It is most unfortunate, and I am afraid that such an attack hurts our civil service. I do suggest to the members of the house that the merit system, instead of being inefficient, instead of having broken down, was shown by last year's investigation to be so good that it should be extended. For example, it should be extended to the employees of the national harbours board. It should be extended to the small post offices which were taken out some years ago.
I do not agree with the hon. member for York South (Mr. Lawson) that the positions of cleaners and helpers should be removed from the operation of the act. We debated that point in the committee last year. We fought over it for a long time and in the end the majority opinion was that the positions of cleaners and helpers should be kept under the act where they are at the present time.

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Let me make this suggestion in conclusion. Democratic governments are on trial to-day as never before, and democratic government cannot function without a first-class civil service. After all, members of the house and of the senate are only one part of the democratic system. The civil service is a very important part of the system, and we cannot have good government without a first-class civil service. I believe that in Canada to-day we have a first class service, and I hope that this parliament will do everything in its power to give that civil service a chance to go ahead and do its job.


William Rae Tomlinson: I did not intend to speak on this question this afternoon, but after listening to some of the remarks that have been made, especially by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth), who describes the committee as more or less a joke, I must say that the members of that committee who sat last year for a period of four months, two hours a day and sometimes four, were not sitting there for the good of their health. I remember quite well going into that committee as a new member of the house, as one who had discussed the whole civil service question with Mr. Parker of the commission in Great Britain, and who had some idea of the civil service in Great Britain, and I had a very high opinion of the civil service commission in Canada. I still have a very high regard for the merit system in Canada. I do not desire anyone in this house or anyone in the country to feel that I have in my mind no other idea than to go back to the old patronage system.
May I here refer to what Sir Robert Borden did in 1918. I did not know him personally but I had read about him and I honoured him. When he came back from Great Britain he immediately placed under the civil service commission all the positions in Canada, but he had no sooner done so than he realized his mistake. He saw that there were certain small positions in regard to which merit did not enter, and we have since seen certain exemptions made. For instance there are positions of $200 and under which are not under the commission, and there are revenue post offices of $3,000 and less which are not under the commission. Why are they not under the commission? Because the people are becoming tax conscious; that is why. We set up a civil service commission to make appointments on merit, that is, with regard to positions that require merit. But when you tell me-and I spoke on this question in my maiden speech in this house-that I cannot
appoint somebody to a little lighthouse, a lighthouse keeper who lights the lamp in the evening, turns it out in the morning and cleans it, when you tell me that I am not capable of making such an appointment and that we must have someone from Ottawa, from the civil service commission, travel up there, or have a high school principal in Port Elgin or Kincardine make the appointment, then I say we are simply wasting the money of the people of this country for the reason that members of this house will not take their own responsibility. The people of Canada are to-day conscious of that fact.
During the sittings of the committee I was perhaps the one who brought forward the question of taking out the small positions from the civil service commission. I questioned the chairman of the commission, a man for whom I have a great deal of respect, because he gave his evidence in a straight forward manner. He is a man who knows what he is talking about, and he informed me that the small positions in the civil service caused more trouble than anything else that they had to deal with. I believe that. He said, " We would be glad to get rid of them." That is correct. When the matter came before the committee, as mentioned by the hon. member for Vancouver South (Mr. Green), the majority of the committee decided that all the positions should be under the civil service. That is ridiculous, but I had to abide by that decision and naturally the report came in with that recommendation. *
I did not come down prepared to speak on this subject. However, I do not like the insinuations from the third party in this house in connection with patronage. Nobody in my riding can accuse me of patronage.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


William Rae Tomlinson: Let them prove it.
Not one of them can. I do not like that insinuation from parties who have never had the responsibility of government. They have never had that responsibility. But they desire to spread throughout this dominion the idea that they never ask for a favour. Let them stand in their place and tell me they have not asked a favour on behalf of their constituents; I would tell them that if they do not look after their constituents they are not representing their ridings as they should.


Miss MACPHAIL:: I should like to ask the hon. member a question. What does he mean when he says that hon. members do not carry the responsibility of their constituencies, do not look after their constituencies?

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William Rae Tomlinson: I did not say that. I said if they stand in their place and say they never asked a favour on behalf of their constituents-


Thomas Miller Bell: A right.


William Rae Tomlinson: -a right, whatever you wish to call it, they are not looking after their constituents. Correct? I say that.


Agnes Campbell Macphail: What would be the use of asking a favour when the defeated candidate in each constituency has complete control over even the smallest appointment?


William Rae Tomlinson: I do not know about the hon. member for Grey-Bruce-


Mr. TAYLOR (Nanaimo):: If we are called upon to rise in our places I rise in mine and say that I have never asked any patronage favours for my constituents.


William Rae Tomlinson: The hon. member can speak after I have finished. I am not in favour of this patronage system without proper qualifications. I try in every instance, and I think every hon. member does, to present a man who is fit, and work for that particular man. And I believe the civil service commission as it is now constituted renders a useful service. It has control of salaries, it has the recommendations for reclassification, one may say; and I think it renders a great service. As I have indicated, I sat on this committee last year, and I admit I brought in no recommendation or minority report as to the qualifications of the commissioners. But I did notice that in 1932-I see the hon. member is not present now-and in 1934 the committee recommended the removal of all the civil service commissioners. In our report did we recommend the removal of the civil service commissioners? No. Everyone knew there was one commissioner that I would remove if I had the opportunity; I refer to Mr. Potvin, and I stood in the committee and said so. I say that he is not capable of acting on the commission because of his own admissions in that committee. He admitted that when he was appointed he had no special qualifications. He admitted that he went to Montreal and charged 8125 for taxi fares. He was appointed in the spring of 1935 by the former government, and was supposed to represent the French-Canadians. His residence of course is Manitoba. This civil service commission should include a properly qualified person from the province of Quebec; it would save a great deal of the difficulty we are now having. The province of Quebec, the French-Canadian citizens of this country, are entitled to proper representation, but they

are not receiving it. A man who would place a note on the files before they came over here, to the effect that "this young man cannot be appointed because he belongs to a drama league"-that was his reason for not agreeing to, the appointment-how ridiculous it is that a man like that should be on the civil service commission! He should be removed immediately and a proper appointment made from Quebec in whom the French-Canadians would have faith. I say these things because they appear to me to be very important.
The chairman of the committee of last year did not agree with everything I said, and of course I did not agree with everything he said, but it was the first committee of the house on this subject, regardless of 1932 or 1934, that actually conducted its investigation without an eye to political expediency. I say that without fear of contradiction. There was no question in our investigations last year of pulling out files to try to affect the Conservative party. But we did try to ascertain what was the difficulty with the merit system as it now stands, and I was surprised when a certain witness-I may as well mention his name; it was Mr. Phelan, the head of one of the civil service federations,-admitted that he could not answer our questions properly because of certain effects that might follow. Is that the way the heads of these federations should present their case to a committee that is trying to investigate? They should be prepared to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, without fear. That is why we are there; we are not sitting there for fun-at least I am not.
I shall be pleased to act on this committee and to cany forward the work of last year. And I want it to be known that it is not for patronage that I am sitting on the committee. It is a nuisance, but it will be done in the service of the country.


James Earl Lawson: On a question of privilege, Mr. Speaker, the rules of the house do not permit me to accept the challenge issued by my hon. friend, but I shall be pleased to do so at the first opportunity. I would however call attention to a direct misstatement made by the hon. member. He stated that the committee of 1932 recommended the removal of all the commissioners. That is not so. We recommended the removal of two for cause, and that recommendation had the unanimous approval of the committee, including the two Liberal members of this house who were members of it.

Civil Service-Special Committee
Mr. T. J. O'NEILL (Kamloops): I am pleased that it is the intention of the government again to set up this committee on civil service matters. In view of the fact that we have so many people in the civil service it is an excellent idea that this committee should be continued. In fact I think it should be a permanent fixture, just as the railway committee and the public accounts committee or the banking and commerce committee are permanent.
A great deal has been said to-day with reference to the present system. Some hon. members have stated that the hon. member for Temiscouata (Mr. Pouliot) is apparently trying to destroy the merit system. I do not see how the system as we have it to-day can be properly termed a merit system, or how it could ever function as a merit system when those at the top of the ladder, the commissioners, are appointed by the government which is in power at the time the position becomes vacant. Can the leopard change his spots? You cannot change a man simply by putting him in a government position; he remains just what he was before. I would be the same, and so would even hon. members who claim to the contrary-they would still be of the same mind with regard to politics. If we are to have a merit system, it must start at the top. Those who are at the head of the civil service commission should get there through merit, by promotion from the ranks.


James Earl Lawson: The chairman of the commission reached that position through promotion.
Mr. O'NEILL:	I quite agree, as far as
the chairman is concerned.
Reference was made to the age limit. We know that in the civil service to-day there are many men far beyond the age limit, and I see no reason why such men, who have enjoyed large salaries for a number of years, should retain those positions after reaching the age of sixtv-five when we have so many young men in the country out of work.
I do not see how there can be a merit system under the procedure of holding oral examinations. After the candidates have written the first part of the examination, a committee is formed to conduct an oral examination, and the chairman of that committee may be a man who knows absolutely nothing about the subject on which he is examining. After the oral examination the candidates are given their rating, which is based principally on that oral test. I quite agree with the hon. member for York South (Mr. Lawson) when he says that minor positions should not be under the civil service
commission. Let us assume a caretaker is required for a building in the west; after the written examination there will be an oral one, with perhaps the school principal as chairman of the committee. He probably would not know how to start a fire in a furnace or how to fix a leaking tap; yet he would sit in judgment on those applying for the position. How can a merit system operate under such conditions? It is absolutely impossible. As far as the higher positions are concerned, I quite agree that they should be under the merit system.
I was very much surprised to hear the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Woodsworth) say what he did with regard to the merit system. Every man who has belonged to a labour organization for any length of time knows that the merit system does not work as far as labour men are concerned, because views differ with regard to merit. The employees say one man has the merit; the employer says another man has the merit, so in connection with the railways in particular the merit system had to be discarded and the seniority system adopted.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I am glad the government has seen fit to continue this committee.


Mr. J. A. MARSHALL (Camrose):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to dissociate myself from most of the remarks of the hon. member for Bruce (Mr. Tomlinson). I think it was absolutely unfair of him to introduce the name of either a member of the commission or a member of the civil service into this house for censure. I believe pressure is constantly brought to bear upon the civil service commission with reference to appointments, but I also believe the men on the commission are above such things as playing polities. I honestly believe the work of the civil service commission can be extended to include positions under the Post Office Department. I find myself in complete opposition to the patronage system in all its forms, whether it has to do with minor positions or with more important positions of trust.
I was a member of the committee last year. We worked faithfully, for long .hours, and brought in a report which I believe reflected the opinion of all members. I do hope that in the near future we shall have an opportunity to discuss the recommendations which were brought in at that time. I should like to repeat that I am heartily in favour of the merit system and will do all in my power as a member of that committee to oppose any individual or any member of the committee who may endeavour to introduce any form of patronage.

Civil Service-Special Committee


Thomas Miller Bell: Mr. Speaker, I do not wish to prolong this discussion, but I, too, wish to dissociate myself from many of the remarks made in this house this afternoon in criticism of the civil service commission and the present method of making appointments apart from political patronage. The hon. member for Bruce (Mr. Tomlinson) criticized hon. members of this house and said that the taxpayers expected us to assume our responsibilities as members. I do not wish to assume responsibility in connection with appointments for the making of which I have no' particular qualifications, and about which I may know very little. But I would point out that to-day, under the patronage system, very often neither the sitting member nor the defeated member, men who enjoy or have enjoyed the confidence of a majority of the electors of the constituency, is responsible for appointments that may be made. I look at page 955 of Hansard for February 15 of this year and find, according to the reply to a question which I asked the Postmaster General (Mr. McLarty), that an appointment in my constituency was made on the recommendation of Mr. W. Richardson of Rosetown. Mr. Richardson is an estimable gentleman, but he was never elected as a member of this house. Mr. Loucks, the former member, is not consulted regarding appointments, nor is the sitting member; a gentleman who could not secure election to this house recommends the appointments in the constituency which I represent.
I do not believe that the member, the previous member or the defeated government candidate should make appointments. As has been pointed out, there are minor appointments in regard to which competitive examinations are perhaps not satisfactory, but there are ways, other than political patronage, of making such appointments. As regards promotions, I believe the merit system should be followed where possible, though I realize that there are positions in connection with which seniority ought to be the determining factor. When we talk of the responsibility of members of this house, I am amazed that hon. members should want to exercise political patronage.. After all, I think the recommending of appointments frequently makes enemies for a member. Moreover, I believe there are other matters of greater importance to our constituents and to the country than the matter of making petty appointments and having our time taken up in that way.
I should like to see our civil service placed upon the same basis as the civil service of Great Britain or New Zealand. I remember when the Minister of Finance of New Zealand,

Hon. Walter Nash, was here several years ago. I had met him when he was in Canada on a former occasion. His last visit was in 1937, and at that time his secretary told me that he knew Ottawa because of the previous visit he had made as private secretary to Mr. Nash's predecessor. He told me that in New Zealand .civil servants were not changed when a change in government occurred. He told me also that only seven changes had been made in the service of that country since the new government took office in 1935. We are told that the civil services of Great Britain and New Zealand are efficient.
The other evening I was glad to compliment the Minister of National Revenue (Mr. Ilsley) when he said that he had not used his powers under the national revenue act to make appointments. I think that is something which should be commended by all those who desire good government. In my opinion political patronage is a form of corruption. Promises of jobs are made prior to an election, and to my mind that is only a form of bribery.


William Rae Tomlinson: That is just the hon. member's opinion?


Thomas Miller Bell: It is my opinion that the promise of a position as payment for support is bribery and corruption. I do not think you can get away from it.
Mr. O'NEILL: Who does it?


Thomas Miller Bell: I ask the hon. gentleman to ask some of his friends.
Mr. O'NEILL: Did the hon. member ever make such a promise?


Thomas Miller Bell: No, I have never done it and I am very proud of that fact. I have been in public life, municipally and provincially, for a long time and I have made no promises of jobs.


Mr. FLEMING:: I heard the hon. gentleman make several promises last year.


Thomas Miller Bell: The hon. member for Humboldt (Mr. Fleming) says that I made several promises during the provincial byelection in his constituency. He is quite right, but they were not promises of appointments; they were promises of good government and promises to further certain policies. That is entirely different from political patronage. I want to place myself behind those who support the civil service commission and the merit system. In my opinion patronage is a baneful influence in our public life. A few years ago I had the privilege of looking into the working of the civil service of one of our

Civil Service-Special Committee
provinces, and I protested against men being dismissed because of their political activities. While I believe there are limits beyond which a public servant should not go in his capacity as a citizen, still every citizen ought to be permitted to hold whatever political and religious opinions he desires. Political patronage tends to prevent that being done and helps to discredit our democratic institutions.


Louis Édouard Fernand Rinfret: Mr. Speaker, I admit candidly that it was not the intention of the government to precipitate a debate this afternoon on civil service matters; the desire was merely to obtain the assent of the house to reviving the committee which I think accomplished excellent work last year. It was thought desirable to continue the work of this committee during the present session. I would point out that one of the reasons why the government is recommending this to the house was the first recommendation made by the committee in its report to the house last session. This recommendation reads:
1. Your committee deems it expedient and in the interest of the public, the civil service and the civil service commission that a standing committee on civil service matters be appointed at the commencement of each session of parliament, and therefore recommends to parliament that standing order 63 be amended by adding after clause (k) of said order, the following clause (1): "on civil service matters to consist of fifteen members, nine of whom shall constitute a quorum."
We -were not quite ready to recommend the appointment of a standing committee, and we thought the next best thing would be to recommend the reconstitution of this committee. In our opinion it had not completed its work, and we thought that during the present session it might serve the purpose recommended. We did not feel that the membership of the committee should be reduced to fifteen. I think it is desirable that on a committee to deal with civil service matters all parties, provinces and groups should be represented. After discussing the matter with the Liberal whip, who had been in touch with the whips of the other groups, I came to the conclusion that a committee on civil service matters should consist of twenty-five members. The representation of certain groups would be reduced considerably, if they had any Vepresentation at all, with a committee of only fifteen members. If the committee to be reconstituted should renew the . recommendation of the previous committee for the setting up of a standing committee on civil service matters, I suggest that consideration should be given to whether the limiting of the membership of such a committee to fifteen would not be a mistake. I would point out to hon. members that there was no time last session to consider the report submitted by the committee. The report was submitted on June 29 and, as all hon. members know, parliament prorogued two days later. Without prolonging the session there was no opportunity for a careful consideration of the report, much less for taking any action in connection with it.
During the recess I have had several interviews with the chairman of the civil service commission. He pointed out to me that of the twenty-five recommendations made by the committee, only five would require parliamentary or legislative action in order that they might be implemented. In most instances a change in regulations would bring about the purposes sought by the committee. I was told that the civil service commission had given study to this matter and had carried out a number of the recommendations made by the committee. In all fairness I think I should state that the former chairman of the committee took the stand when I met him that this was an optimistic statement, and that the commission had not carried out the recommendations to the extent mentioned.
I believe it should be one of the first duties of the new committee to call in representatives of the civil service commission, possibly the chairman, to find out exactly what action the commission has taken in connection with the recommendations which could be carried out by regulation. I must say also it has been suggested to me that two of the points raised in the report should be submitted to the committee dealing with superannuation because of its connection with this work. One of the recommendations is in regard to the eighty per cent of permanent employees in the different departments. It has been pointed out to me that if the present regulation were done away with, for which course quite a number of members have expressed a desire, this would add materially to the charges on the superannuation fund. The other recommendation is in regard to the age limit of sixty-five years.
I do not intend this afternoon to discuss any of these points. Although I respect your ruling, Mr. Speaker, I take the stand personally that the motion at present under consideration is to relieve the house of the discussion of many of the points which have been brought up this afternoon, and I propose to Dave them for the committee to deal with. I merely remind the house that we have already in the civil service a regulation whereby a civil servant is not supposed to serve after sixty-five years of age. The recommendation

Civil Service-Special Committee
of the committee of last year could mean only one thing, namely, that this regulation should be more drastically enforced. But surely it is not intended, just because the age limit of sixty-five years has been reached, to deprive the government of authority to retain in the service in special cases a man who is of great value and who would be veiy hard to replace. One other point I would indicate in that connection is that if the regulation were rigidly enforced immediately, this would add a considerable burden to the superannuation fund by throwing out many hundreds of employees whose services could under ordinary circumstances be continued by order in council.
These questions I consider should be reopened for further study by the committee, and there can be a merging with the new recommendations so that when this committee brings in its report during the course of the session we shall have only one report to deal with.
I have only to add a word to alleviate the fears of any hon. member that the continuance of the work of this committee may in the least degree weaken the authority of the civil service commission. On the contrary, the appointment of the committee is meant to strengthen the civil service commission and to surround it with the proper guarantees which it has a right to expect from parliament. I need hardly repeat what has been so often said by my right hon. leader (Mr. Mackenzie King), namely that the present government is strongly and unequivocally in favour of the merit system, and I believe that parliament, if the question were put to a vote, would pronounce by a very large majority in favour of the merit system. But we all know that in the application of that system regulations of all sorts have to be considered. There have been inquiries into the administration of the civil service during the course of every parliament. I have myself served on several such committees. The present inquiry was promised early in the life of this parliament, but on account of the shortness of the sessions the inquiry was started only last year, and the expectation in all quarters of the house was that it would be continued this year.
Let me assure hon. members that there is not the least desire on the part of the government, either in instituting the committee last year or in continuing it this year, to do away with the principle that obtains in the civil service. The committee is asked to inquire into the operation of the act and to recommend changes in the regulations. Of course, when you have a parliament of 245
[Mr. Rinfret.l
members you cannot prevent all sorts of opinions from being voiced and all sorts of demands from being made, but I wish to say again most emphatically that so far as the government is concerned it stands strongly for the merit system. It wants that system applied fully, and it wants to surround the application of that system with all the guarantees that will make it worthy of our country. That is all I have to say, and in commending this resolution to the house I trust that the interesting debate we have had this afternoon will be referred for continuance to the committee when it is constituted.


Mr. STEWART:: Would the hon. gentleman allow me to ask him one question as to the age for retirement, seventy or sixty-five? Is retirement now compulsory at sixty-five unless in individual cases an extension is made, or is it merely optional?


Louis Édouard Fernand Rinfret: At sixty-five it is optional, although it does require an order in council. After seventy it is compulsory.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from Friday, February 17, consideration of the motion of Mr. Mackenzie King that the house go into committee on the following proposed resolution:
That it is expedient that parliament do approve of the trade agreement entered into at Washington on the 17th day of November, 1938, between Canada and the United States of America, and that this house do approve of the same, subject to the legislation required in order to give effect to the provisions thereof.
Hon. J. L. ILSLEY (Minister of National Revenue):: Mr. Speaker, the resolution before the house reads:
That it is expedient that parliament _ do approve of the trade agreement entered into at Washington on the 17th day of November, 1938, between Canada and the United States of America, and that this house do approve of the same, subject to the legislation required in order to give effect to the provisions thereof.
We are debating this resolution, which is an important government measure effecting far-reaching reductions of duties in this country, and indirectly, perhaps it is fair to say, in Great Britain and the United States. We are debating the principle of this resolution, not the details, and if it had not been for some of the remarks made in the debate, principally

Canada-United States Trade Agreement
by the speaker who preceded me (Mr. Stirling), I think I would try to avoid any mention of any particular commodities or any individual industries, because once one embarks upon a discussion of details it is pretty hard, within the time limit, to cover any ground at all.
What has interested me particularly in the debate has been the issue that seems to be developing between the government and the Conservative opposition. The opposition seems to be disinclined to come out strongly against this trade agreement, but rather to take the position that time alone can tell whether it is a good agreement or not. It is true that time alone can tell what the effect of some of the changes in individual tariff items will be, but it does not require time to tell a reasonably intelligent and patriotic Canadian whether he should be for or against the agreement. If it did, no government would dare sign such an agreement, and no opposition would dare oppose it. But this agreement is not pure speculation; it is not a leap in the dark; it is an agreement that is based on certain principles, and whether one is for or against the agreement should depend not upon the passage of time but upon one's belief or disbelief in those principles. The people of Canada will, I submit, judge the opposition, just as they will judge the government, according as they approve or disapprove those principles.
What does this trade agreement do? What are the principles underlying the making of it and the provisions of it? It seems to me that they are four in number: First, that it was the duty of the Canadian government to facilitate rather than to obstruct the making of the agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States. If one believes, as this government did and does, that the frustration of the negotiations between those two great democracies would have been a calamity, economic but not wholly economic, conditions being what they are in the world to-day, then he believes in one of the principles underlying this agreement, because an agreement of this kind was a pre-requisite to the other agreement.
The second principle is this, that it is in the interests of this country and all countries that the United States and the United Kingdom keep to the pathway of greater freedom of trade instead of greater restriction of trade. The two latter are now protectionist countries. We are not directly affected by Great Britain's protectionism to more than a very small extent, because she lets most of our products into her markets free of duty. But nothing has hurt this country more, economically, in the past than the extreme protectionism of the United States of America;
and in my opinion very few things have hurt the United States or the world more. This is not a theoretical question. Many industries in this dominion have had bitter experience of the exclusion of their products from the United States market. And, if we assume that a turning point was coming in the course of the fiscal policy of the United States, it clearly was the duty of Canada to take a course that would lead to the stemming of this protectionist tendency in the United States instead of the encouragement of it. There is in the United States, as in most countries, continuous pressure on government by special interests to exclude competitive products from abroad. By this agreement this tendency is checked and a direction given to United States fiscal policy which will be of immeasurable benefit to mankind. If one believes that this development is important and salutary, he believes in another of the principles underlying this trade agreement.
The third principle is that the stabilization of our trade relations with the United States and the United Kingdom is desirable. The agreement with the United States was terminable by notice at any time after December 31, 1938. By that I mean that a notice could have been given before or after December 31, 1938, provided the agreement itself did not terminate before that time. It would have been most unsatisfactory for Canada to drift precariously in ignorance as to whether the agreement would be terminated, and if so, when. It was most important to give the future of our trade relations with the United States some certainty, and equally important to do so conformably to the wishes of the United Kingdom, so that when 1940 arrives we can expect a continuation for a considerable period, of the satisfactory trade relations which exist between Canada and the United Kingdom. The making of this agreement accords with the trade agreement policy of our two great customers, and places our own trade relations with both on a stable basis. This, it seems to me, is the third principle of the agreement.
The fourth is that our main trade interest as a great exporting nation, the fourth exporting nation in the world, is to have tariffs low in this world rather than high. The conclusion of a trade agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States with a large number of reductions in the tariffs of both countries, the benefits of which extend to many most favoured nations, is bound to have far-reaching reciprocal effects, of which we, as a most favoured supplier of those nations, will in the future receive the benefit.
1172	COMMONS
Canada-United States Trade Agreement
These, it seems to me, are the main principles of the trade agreement. I do not know whether the opposition believe in them or not, but I think they will have to make up their minds. They have not told the house. The main feature of their attitude is one of rather- gloomily predicting that time alone can tell. They do, however, say something else about the trade agreement. They say that it is an exchange of a certain market for an uncertain one. They say that we are losing a certain market in Great Britain and acquiring in lieu thereof an uncertain market in the United States. Neither one of these statements is correct. We are not losing, in any sense of the word, the British market, either partly or wholly; and we are not acquiring a market in the United States which under the circumstances is likely to be uncertain. It is said that if there is a change of government in the United States this agreement may be terminated and we may find our products once more excluded from that country. One of the surest safeguards against the cancellation of the Canada-United States trade agreement is the difference between the levels of our intermediate and general tariffs, which is a very great difference, and I am sure that no United States government will lightly consider the cancellation of an agreement with Canada which will subject their goods once more to the heavy disabilities of entry into this country under the general tariff. It is not reasonable that this would be the case. It may be that if their whole trading policy receives a new orientation at some future date, all their trade agreements will be cancelled; but I would point out that if that is the case, and if our trade agreement continues with Great Britain as we have every reason to expect that it will, the cancellation of the trade agreements as a whole will mean the restoration of our preferences in the British market-which will be a further deterrent to the cancellation of the trade agreements. So that I think we may expect a reasonable degree of certainty and stability to the arrangements that have been made under this trade agreement.
The next position taken by the opposition is that, whether this agreement is good in principle or not, we have paid too high a price for it. As the hon. member for Yale (Mr. Stirling) said on Friday night, the question becomes wholly one of price. What is the price that we are said to have paid for the agreement? It is said that we have lowered some of our duties too far, and undoubtedly that will be argued by a great many of the opposition speakers. On that point I can only say that, for an agreement

which extends to and affects so many thousands of products imported into this country, the volume of complaint which the government has received is very small indeed. Some industries are afraid that they will lose more than they will gain by the agreement. But that is not true of more than a very few. Canadian industry as a whole is not displeased with, but is rather in favour of, this agreement, as is evident by the expressions of opinion which one has heard and read since the agreement wras announced in November. The interests of Canadian industries have been carefully safeguarded, and for the most part they are not injuriously affected in the smallest degree.
The position taken seems to be that tariff concessions by Canada are necessarily sacrifices by this country. That is not the case. Tariff concessions are not necessarily sacrifices. It does not follow that because the other country is helped, this country is hurt. The concessions may help this country even more than the country to which the concessions are made. I have in mind, for example, Indian com. The duty is reduced by this agreement from twenty cents to ten cents a bushel on the corn which is used by persons feeding stock on farms. But I do not think there would be any opinion, certainly not very much, in this country that the reduction of the farmer's costs from twenty cents to ten cents a bushel on the corn he buys would be an injury to this country; on the contrary it would be a benefit.
The hon. member for Yale, speaking on Friday night, referred to fruits and vegetables. He said that this is the third blow which this government has struck the fruit and vegetable industry. I would point out that the interests of the fruit and vegetable growers have been very carefully safeguarded in this agreement. I have before me a list of the twenty-seven fruits and vegetables which are affected by the agreement, and I have here also a list of their assumed, invoice values when imported- I am confident that they are entirely fair, and they have been used in this house before. I have a computation of the protection that will still be extended to these fruits and vegetables during the seasons and in the regions where the protection accorded by fixed valuations applies, and I find that the average of ad valorem equivalents is still 65 per cent, while a great many of the ad valorem equivalents run to much higher figures, two of them going to over 100 per cent. These reductions in the valuations were not lightly agreed to. Everything was taken into account. The tariff rate was reduced from 15 to 10 per cent, but that benefits the consumer in

Canada-United, States Trade Agreement
the seasons when the fruits are imported. The agreement provides for sufficient protection in those regions and during those seasons when our growers can meet the demand.
It is said that we should not have consented to the modifications of preferences in the British market, and two products in particular are mentioned, namely wheat and apples. Wheat has been dealt with in the house by several speakers, and I do not feel particularly qualified to discuss it, but the impression I have received since this wheat preference went into effect in 1932 is that it has never had a beneficial effect upon the price of wheat received by the Canadian grower of that commodity. The reason is that the empire is a net exporter of wheat, and when a territory protected by a tariff wall is on an exporting basis the price within the tariff wall is always dependent upon, is always fixed by and cannot be higher than the price of the export surplus. It is true that some foreign wheat may have been shut out of the English market by the duty; but if Canadian wheat cannot all be marketed within the empire and some of it has to be marketed outside, it means that much additional competition outside, with the result that the price is depressed, bringing down the price within the empire to the world level. Under these conditions a duty has no beneficial effect on price.
If I remember correctly, and I meant to look this up, there was provision in the 1932 treaty that if the price were raised, if the price within the United Kingdom were higher than the world price, the protection should be withdrawn; and it never was withdrawn because the price in the United Kingdom market did not rise above the world price.
AVith regard to the other objection to the removal of the wheat preference, that such a removal will have an effect on ports, there are a great many things to be said. It must be remembered that Canadian ports do not handle only Canadian wheat which is shipped to United Kingdom destinations. Canadian ports handle Canadian wheat which is shipped to non-empire destinations as well; they handle United States wheat which is shipped to overseas destinations, empire and nonempire ; and it is a completely inadequate statement of the situation to deal with the effect upon the first-class shipments alone. It is probable that the preference had the effect of routing some Canadian wheat destined for the United Kingdom through Canadian ports, which otherwise would have gone through United States ports. But there may have been-I do not say there was-a corresponding routing of Canadian wheat shipped
to other overseas destinations and of United States wheat shipped to overseas destinations through Canadian ports, which otherwise would have been shipped through United States ports. One would have to go into the statistics to find out and it would require expert analysis, because it is far from easy to arrive at the true situation by a cursory examination of the figures. It does not follow that, because some Canadian wheat destined for the United Kingdom was diverted through Canadian ports, the Canadian ports gained on balance.
In the examination I have been able to give the figures, I find some curious facts. I find that even of Canadian wheat shipped to overseas destinations, including the United Kingdom, United States ports handled 30 per cent in the four preference fiscal years following 1932-33, as against only 43 per cent in the four pre-preference years, before 1932-33. In 1935-36, a preference year, the United States ports handled 37 per cent of Canadian wheat shipped to overseas destinations as against 34-7 per cent in 1931-32, a pre-preference year. I find that by far the largest quantity of wheat handled at Halifax was in the crop year 1928-29 when there was no preference, and one of the smallest quantities ever handled, if not the smallest, was in the crop year 1937-38 when there was a preference. So the amount of business done by the ports depends on so many other factors that it is a complete distortion of the facts to represent this as a major factor. Preference has always been a minor, varying and unpredictable factor in the production of Canadian port business.
I come now to a subject of which I know a little more than about wheat, namely, apples. The hon. member for Yale on Friday night said that he could not understand how the Minister of National Revenue could have gone to his constituency and have told the people of the Annapolis valley, who admittedly have a larger interest in the English market for apples than any other constituency in Canada, in fact more than the rest of Canada put together, that in his opinion this agreement would not hurt them but on the contrary would probably in the long run help them. The hon. member's theory, which was a most amusing and interesting one, was that the government had decided to throw away that constituency and to give up any hopes in his constituency, and therefore agreed to the reduction of the apple preference. AVell, I hope I do not look as if I had committed political suicide. I am not conscious of having done so and can assure the house that so far as I can appraise the sentiments
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Canada-United, States Trade Agreement
or the opinions of my constituents, they are in favour of this agreement, not against it, and I can give the reasons why they are.
To begin with, what was done? The duty on United States apples going into the United Kingdom was 4s. 6d. per hundredweight. We consented to a reduction, during the term of the agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States, to 3 shillings per hundredweight. The value of apples that we have shipped from Nova Scotia to the United Kingdom during the past ten years, according to the statistics here, was only a little over $2 a barrel f.o.b., shipping point, but I feel that this must be a little low and I am assuming that the average price during the past ten years was $2.25 a barrel. A duty of 4s. 6d. per hundredweight on that would be about $1.40 a barrel, which would be something over 60 per cent ad valorem on an f.o.b. valuation of $2.25. That is a pretty high protection; it was always recognized as such. As a matter of fact, I found that the apple interests of Nova Scotia in 1932 did not request a duty of 4s. 6d; they requested a duty of 2 shillings first, then 2s. 6d. and when other interests pressed for a duty of 5 shillings, they of course were agreeable to 4s. 6d.
I said that 1 think the apple growers of Nova Scotia are in favour of this agreement. They realize that the preference was the act of Great Britain, not of Canada; that the duties are British duties, not Canadian; that our agreement could be terminated by either Great Britain or ourselves in 1940, and that after 1940 Great Britain would have had the right to levy duties against our apples, or remove all duties against United States apples, or do anything else she wished with her apple duties. They felt also that it was important that we have some regard for Great Britain's wishes in this matter; that it would be folly for us to stand in her way merely for the sake of retaining an extremely high preference for one more season. It would have been dropping the substance for the shadow. Under this new arrangement our position is stabilized on what might be called a 30 to 40 per cent, rather than a 60 per cent, basis in the British market, which is a reasonable basis. They know that far more important than any duty against United States apples going into Great Britain is the preservation of free entry for our own apples. They feel also that with the new direction which has been given to the trade policies of the three countries, freedom of entry will not be threatened for a long time to come. They are aware that the high 4s. 6d. rate was unduly stimulating British production,

and many were worrying about a duty the height of which was raising up in Great Britain competition which would eventually destroy us. The natural result of orchards being set out in Great Britain on a large scale would be that after a while the apple interests there would insist upon duties against our apples. Indeed, as the hon. member for Yale must know, there had already been some agitation for a duty of 2s. 6d. per hundredweight against our apples.


Mr. STIRLING:: For many years past.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes. The new rate, being more moderate, will lessen the danger of over-production of apples in Great Britain with consequent restriction upon the movement of our apples. They recall that in 1930 and 1931 it was felt by Nova Scotian apple interests, probably for the reasons I have just mentioned, that 2 shillings and 2s. 6d. would be enough protection. True, the situation has changed somewhat since that time because of the stimulation of British production, but that process has not gone on so long that a correction cannot be attempted. They realize also that the chief benefit which the United States will get from lower British duties may be, not greater volume of sales in the British market, but greater returns on the same volume, on account of the fact that they will not have to pay so much to the British treasury in high duties. That expectation has been verified by the experience since January 1, as far as anything can be verified in so short a period. Shipments from the United States have not increased since January 1; they have gone along steadily maintaining the same relative proportion to the shipments of a year ago that they did before January 1, showing that the advantage for them is not an enlarged market for their apples but increased returns. Needless to say, our price cannot possibly be affected in the British market unless there is a substantial increase in the quantity of United States apples shipped into that market, and even then the effect on the price is wholly untraceable and unpredictable. I heard one hon. member, the hon. member for Royal (Mr. Brooks) I think, say that the reduction in this duty meant a reduction of so many cents a barrel in the price. It means nothing of the kind. The reduction in duty is not necessarily reflected in the price.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: That is a good argument for some of the minister's friends.


James Lorimer Ilsley: It is true. It all depends on the conditions, but under these conditions it is true. For instance, for the five years

Canada-United States Trade Agreement
succeeding 1932 the prices of our leading varieties were lower by several shillings a barrel than for the five previous years. I made a very careful study of that situation. They might, and probably would, have been lower still, had it not been for the preference, but it is utterly impossible to trace the effect of that particular kind of duty in increased or decreased prices.


Grote Stirling: As the Minister of Trade and Commerce says, time will tell.


Mr. EULER:: I was echoing what the
leader of the opposition said.


Robert James Manion: Keep on; it is worth
echoing.


James Lorimer Ilsley: The apple interests of Nova Scotia attach some importance to the antidumping provision in the agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom by which the British reserve the right to impose dumping duties or take other corrective measures if dumping is resorted to by United States shippers to the United Kingdom. They also attach importance to the letter from the United States government by which the United States have recognized the principle of regulation of shipments and have agreed to call the attention of their industry to the desirability of such regulation. That letter appears in one of the annexes to the agreement. They know that our position in the Canadian market remains unaffected, and they are gratified by the reduction in duties and import taxes, which is provided for by the trade agreement, on some of their supplies, particularly on spraying and dusting materials and fertilizers, and upon agricultural implements, including spraying and other orcharding machinery from which the 3 per cent special excise tax is to be removed. It is for these reasons that the apple growing interests in Nova Scotia are satisfied that the present level of preference, which, after all, on a S2.25 per barrel, price basis is still over 40 per cent, when taken with the other provisions of the agreement will prove a help rather than an injury to the apple growing industry of that province.
But even if the situation were different, I am satisfied that my constituents would not be disposed to be so narrow as to regard this agreement purely as a matter of a few cents a barrel on apples.


Mr. SPENCE:: The minister must have a wonderful country.


Mr. MICHAUD:: It is. .


James Lorimer Ilsley: I must admit that they are
perhaps a little in advance of myself in that
regard, and they are a long way in advance of the hon. member for Yale, if we are to take his speech of last Friday night as a true reflection of his feelings. When these trade agreements were first talked of, I found that they appreciated the situation with which this country and this government were confronted. They knew that when the United States and the United Kingdom started negotiations last year, this was a new and dramatic development in international trade. It appealed to their imagination, to the imagination of the people of Great Britain and the United States.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


James Lorimer Ilsley: The Tory party cannot
understand that. I knew that when I said that it would provoke a laugh from the opposition benches. But it is true, and true of the people of this country as a whole.


Grote Stirling: Such a happy truth!


James Lorimer Ilsley: They realized that vital
interests, fundamental principles and the future welfare of hundreds of millions of people were involved; they realized that Anglo-Saxon commerce was at the cross-roads. Would it take the way of rigid exclusionism or the way of mutual concession? And they were in favour of Canada adopting a policy of give and take, which they felt was the only policy for this country, as well as for the other two countries involved in the transaction, to adopt.
The people of my constituency, and I think the people of Canada as a whole, realized this, that in a day of totalitarian gibes and sneers at democracy, it was a matter of pride and satisfaction that great democracies could work together for great ends.
At six o'clock the house took recess.
After Recess
The house resumed at eight o'clock.



POST OFFICE ACT


[Stage Direction]
Mr. WILFRID LACROIX (Quebec-Mont-morency) moved the second reading of Bill No. 4, to amend the Post Office Act.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I consider it advisable, before asking the house to prevent the distribution by mail of all communistic propaganda, to define my conception of communism and to endeavour to penetrate hon. members with the importance for this country of pre-
[Stage Direction]
Post Office Act-Communistic Literature
venting the distribution of a species of propaganda opposed to our best traditions and to the Christian character of our country, symbolized every day in this chamber when, before beginning our deliberations, we invoke the help of God.
Communism is above all a philosophical system based on materialism. For communists, matter, that is whatever falls under the senses, was not created, but has always existed. Originally imperfect, matter has evolved and improved until it has produced, first, animals in general, then the human animal which is man.
To the objection that man has a soul spiritual and intelligent which, through the brain, can think and have ideas, communists answer that there is no such thing as the soul. Thought, according to them, is the product of the animal organism in activity. Ideas-yours and mine-are secreted by the brain, just as bile is secreted by the liver and urine by the kidneys.
If intelligence is solely the product of the brain, it disappears at death. There is therefore no future life. If man himself is only the result of evolution and the perfected descendent of eternally-moving matter, there is no creator, no God.
How is it, then, that the communists are so bitter against a God whose existence they deny? Why this inconsistency? Let us seek the explanation.
Communism is not only a religious heresy, it is not only atheism; it is also a system of economics.
The world is out of balance to-day, communists assert, because capitalism has become too powerful. It has upset the balance to the detriment of the working class. In order to rebuild an economic structure better suited to man, whom matter has begotten in view of temporal happiness, it is necessary that the vanquished force regain the upper hand, which is impossible without class war, without political revolution, without upsetting governments, so as to bring about a new economic order where the individual will be merged in the all-embracing proletarian society.
But the revolution of the oppressed masses against their oppressors cannot be carried on without hatred. And belief in God, the existence of religions, particularly of the Catholic religion, the presence of the Pope, of bishops and of priests, are so many obstacles in the way of hatred, so many obstacles to the setting in motion of the class struggle out of which the regenerative revolution is to come.

These obstacles communists seek to remove by attacking God, religion, the clergy and all movements of faith leading to the love of God and of one's neighbour.
Religion says: .Thou shalt love thy fellow-men, all of them without exception; white man, thou shalt love the negro; rich man, thou shalt love the poor; poor man, thou shalt love the rich; negro, thou shalt love the white man. To all, thou shalt wish well and, above all, thou shalt seek to do justice to others and respect their rights. Communism speaks otherwise. It says:	Thou
shalt devote thyself to thy class, to proletarians like thyself; but remember that whoever does not belong to thy class is necessarily thine enemy; remember that good is whatever is useful to thy class and evil whatever may weaken it.
This is a gospel of egoism, as opposed to the gospel of universal brotherhood.
But the opposition between communism and religion, particularly the Catholic religion, extends to other fields. Communism seeks happiness in the joy of ensuring material comfort to all men, while religion teaches that happiness is to be found only in the inner life, in peace of heart and rectitude of mind. Communism knows only the sexual instinct which assimilates man to the beasts, while religion seeks to raise man to true and constant love-conjugal love, paternal or maternal love, filial or fraternal love.
Communism, seeing only the body, recognizes only the individual, while religions honour the family.
Communism makes of truth and justice a matter of class, while religions teach that truth, justice and right are either universal or nothing at all.
Communism subordinates the individual to the social group whose blind servant he is to be, adopting its ideas, its loves and its hates, in a word, its ideology. Religion, on the contrary, places above all else human dignity and free responsibility by virtue of which every man must seek the truth for himself and freely embrace it-human dignity which respects the ideas of others and expects to triumph over error only by the methods of reason, and which places the individual conscience above collective opinion.
Such are the vast differences which separate communism from religion. A struggle is inevitable.
Lenin said:
I hate God as a personal enemy.
He spoke truly, for the real God uproots from the heart of man the god of hatred

Post Office Act-Communistic Literature
and violence, of blood and filth, which Lenin adored. That is why communists seek to destroy God. It is also Lenin who said:
We have dethroned the czars of the earth, we will now destroy those of Heaven. We shall pursue our attacks against God in due time and in the proper manner, and we are confident of overthrowing him in his empire.
Passing from word to action, the communists have in Russia, Mexico and Spain crucified, killed or tortured priests, monks and nuns, violated cemeteries and the corpses of nuns, and pillaged, profaned or demolished temples, tabernacles and sacred vessels.
In order properly to appreciate the malice and hatred of communism against God, religion, the clergy and the faithful, it must be remembered that its leaders have invented a religion whose very name should make the godless tremble. Godlessness exists since eleven years. Organized in 50 countries, it has 7,000,000 active members and 82,000,000 supporters grouped in 70,000 cells, against 9,000 six years ago. Its newspaper, Bezbonitz, has a circulation of 180,000. Every line is a blasphemy, every illustration a sacrilege.
And, in answer to Canadian propagandists who carry diplomacy to the point of distinguishing between godlessness and communism, and maintain that they have nothing to do with the godless, I would say that they are twins.
Words and facts prove it.
In March 1936, Yaroslavsky, leader of the godless, said:
Ten years of battle against the opium of religion bring the triumph of communism ten years nearer.
Lenin's wife admits that "atheistic education remains the aim of the soviet government." To those words which reflect the intimate relations between the godless and the communists, may be added the testimony of facts. Stalin encourages the godless and rejoices over their success.
On May 15, 1932, the communist government of Russia passed a decree containing 118 clauses and planning in great detail the fight against God. Pravda, the official organ of the Russian communist party, gives its assistance to the godless in the same manner as to the police agents, most of whom are active members of the godless movement.
Therefore, communism is a counter-religion whose creed and worship rest on the inexistence of God, the basis of which is materialism, and whose religious consequences are a battle against religion, against the clergy, the churches and the religious orders. But such an heresy has social consequences which materialized in Russia in a revolting manner.
Communists do not want war upon God for its own sake; they do not want class struggle for its own sake; they do not encourage revolution for the sake of revolution; they do not desire power for the sake of power. To their mind, class war, revolution, the fight against God, power are only means to establish a collectivistic economic system which will replace the capitalist system.
But it would be useless to destroy capitalism and capitalists if the working classes were to apply the same ideas, because they, in their turn, would become capitalists. What then, will be the principles of the communist system?
The first economic act of the working and peasant classes, were they to come to power, would be to put an end to profit. Everyone knows that profit is the spread between the sale price and the cost of production. Ten thousand pairs of shoes cost $15,000 to Company X; the company sells them for $20,000. Its profits will be $5,000, and it will be distributed in dividends to the stockholders. Under the communist system, there will be no profit. It will have been distributed in advance by way of remuneration to the workers. Because, according to the communists, the appreciation in value of a product is solely due to the labour put in it.
Therefore, money capital is not productive. Consequent^, interest on money will also be abolished.
If the manual labour alone is to be paid for, how will it be done? Labour is not a commodity, everybody is agreed on that point. It is the condition which must be fulfilled by each one of us, to the extent of his ability, in order that he may have the right to live. From that springs the great principle: from everyone according to his capacity, to everyone according to his needs.
As the labour of everyone varies and his needs also according to his health, his age, and his sex, society alone will distribute commodities and responsibilities. Commerce will be nationalized as well as production.
But. if production is to be commensurate with the needs of consumption, it must conform to predetermined plans to the realization of which labourers will work.
Therefore ,the new state will acquire the industrial plants, the soil, the water powers, the machines, the tools, the buildings, in a word all capital goods. It will be the end of private property.
You will easily see the social consequences of such doctrines.
.The communist does not admit other society than the whole of humanity. From
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that, follows the destruction of the family. In the communistic society, where the individual does not work for himself but where the whole giant community works for all, there is no place for the family. "The primary end of marriage is the support, the education and the future of the child." Now, the child, according to communist ideas, is only a member of the giant community working for all. He is bound to that community, and he should be, as any individual, fed, brought up and guided by it, and not by his parents.
Under our system, milk, swaddling-clothes, fuel, housing and education are goods which parents must buy for their children. Under the communist system:
There are no goods, but only products, which are not bartered. They are neither bought nor sold, but merely deposited in soviet warehouses and delivered to those who need them.
They are delivered to children as to others, in the State nurseries or kindergarten. And so, parents will be freed from the marriage bond which keeps them together in the interest of the child.
If, under the communist system, the family was merely useless, the bolshevists would not be very much concerned about it. They want to destroy it because it is for them an irreconcilable enemy. How could it be otherwise? He who has a wife; children and a home, will always have a tendency to work for his own family rather than for the giant State, to devote himself entirely to his own kin rather than to an anonymous community and to secure their future by taking something from the common stock. Communism must, therefore, even by resorting to violence, break that universal mentality. The individual should accustom himself not to place a screen between himself and the proletarian society dreamed of, to consider himself as a unit in the gigantic hive, and not, primarily, as a husband or a wife, as a father or a mother.
In order to attain that antifamily aim, communism permits free love, optional registration of marriages as well as of divorces, optional cohabitation, absolute freedom for each consort to organize his life as he wishes; abortion and action without restriction for affiliation.
Is it necessary to add that the application of such principles led to most spectacular failure? It would entail the description of the picture of millions of children slowly dying in concentration camps, where vice reigns supreme; the picture of millions of young men or young women living in the

same institutions in a depraved promiscuity encouraged by the State.
Lenin's widow did not hesitate to say:
For a Russian girl to oppose resistance to rape is to act in opposition to the communist revolution.
Is it a wonder, in those circumstances, that communists consider women only as instruments of pleasure available to all? No wonder that abortions are counted by the million every year, that this number is two or three times that of births. In 1935 alone, there were 150.000 abortions as against 70,000 births, in Moscow, the capital of the U.S.S.R.
Such is communism, considered from the religious, the economic and the social angles. Let us envisage it now from the political point of view.
Is it necessary to repeat that the communists consider that the world is at present divided into two classes: the capitalists, who make others work; the labourers, who work. Above them, governments which protect the capitalists as much as possible to the prejudice of the workers, or proletarians.
Communists insist that capital, wealth, goods and instruments of production belong to everybody, that is to say to the community, to humanity, which will comprise only one class, that' of the present proletarians, of the exploited of to-day.
In order to change the existing situation, to destroy the capitalist class and give its wealth to the whole community, communists claim that existing governments should be overthrown and the political power over countries turned over to industrial workers and peasants.
In order to overthrow governments, to conquer power, communists are advocating and organizing revolutions in Mexico and Spain, as they did in Russia.
I have said that they organize revolutions. To that effect, the Third International has been formed, to be the universal instrument of political revolution.
It is time to prove that the idealistic structure of communism, aiming at bringing heaven on earth by means of collectivism, is an immense farce, a colossal humbug.
I will demonstrate: first, that the Third International is the outgrowth of the Russian communist party and of the Russian soviet government; secondly, that the Russian soviet government is the tool, the creature of the Russian communist party; thirdly, that the Russian soviet government and the Russian communist party are ruled by a political bureau having jurisdiction over all the com-

Post Office Act-Communistic Literature
munist parties of the world; fourthly, that this political bureau is, in turn, dominated by one man: Stalin.
And we will all conclude that the famous rule of the proletarian class, which is supposed to lead us to an earthly paradise, is the rule, not of the working class, but of Stalin.
The Third International is the outgrowth of the Russian communist party and of the Russian soviet government. I will prove it: The Third International, called Komintern in Russian, was created in 1918 by three leaders of the Russian communist party, Lenin, Stalin and Sverdlof, at a congress, where 17 of the 35 delegates were members of the Russian communist party. At one of its sittings, Zinovief spoke as follows:
I say that our party considers that it is very urgent officially to establish the Third International.
Lenin stated:
The aim of the International, its essential function, which is the practical application of the marxist doctrine and the social ideal, of a hundred years standing, of the proletarian movement-that distinctive feature of the Third International-has immediately found its expression in the fact that the new International Union of Proletarians has just identified itself so to speak, with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, designated by the initials U.S.S.R.
Why have the communist party and the government of Soviet Russia created the Illrd International? In order to carry on revolutionary activities throughout the whole world. As an official organization of the U.S.S.R., the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs could not very well organize the overthrow of foreign governments. An organization free from suspicion, from scruples and from diplomatic sanctions had to be established. Such an organization is the Third International.
While the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs officially represents the Soviet government and maintains contact with the Foreign Offices of other countries in all official relations between states, the Third International deals, in its capacity of special organization of the Russian communist party and of the Soviet State, with all relations with the masses in foreign countries capable of being used for the purposes of world revolution. It endeavours by various means to obtain the adhesion of these masses to the bolshevist cause and to organize them under the auspices of the Komintern, an organization created for the special purpose of acting as an agency of propaganda and world revolution.
I think I have clearly established, first, that the Third International or Komintern is a revolutionary instrument, an incendiary torch
destined to light the fire of civil war in all countries. Secondly, I stated that the Russian government is itself the tool of the communist party. Let us look into the matter. It must be admitted that the new Russian constitution established last autumn grants to men and women of 18 years and over the right to vote, that is to choose their rulers. But they cannot choose between candidates. Candidates can be put forward by only one party, the communist party. Section 141 is clear on that point:
The right to nominate candidates is granted to social and workers' organizations, to organizers of the communist party, to trades unions, to cooperative societies, to youth organizations and cultural societies.
Section 126 makes this restriction still more severe, for it says that the communist party-
-represent the ruling nucleus of all workers' organizations, social as well as state.
The organizations which, under section 141, are allowed to nominate candidates are therefore directed by the communist party. If the candidates among which the rulers are chosen are tools of the communist party, whose iron discipline I shall indicate further on, the resulting government will necessarily be its tool also. Thirdly, the communist party itself is dominated by an executive acting under the orders of an all-powerful political bureau.
In short, the party, composed of only 2,000,000 Russians, holds both government and people under its control by means of its iron discipline. The heads of the party hold that informing and spying are among the duties of every member.
Spying and informing are practised on a large scale. The executive loses no occasion to remove from the party, if not from the land of the living, all those who think differently from the party leaders. Therein is to be found the explanation of the famous trials of the so-called Trotskysts and of others.
According to Ossingsky, the Political Bureau is the last resort. It is the most important section of the party, it is concerned not only with the most serious economic and political problems of Russia, but also with a multitude of less important questions.
Fourthly, it remains to be established that the Political Bureau is dominated by Stalin, that Stalin has the final say, that he is a dictator.
Voroschiloff said before the congress:
It is the Political Bureau that decides upon the policy of the U.S.S.R. ... I state that comrade Stalin is the most important member of the Political Bureau, although he never claims to be the first; he takes the most active part m the solution of the problems and his proposals are accepted more often than those of the other members.
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Stalin is general secretary of the communist party, but that is not the title under which he is acclaimed. At the conventions of the party and of the Third International he is hailed as "chief of the Soviet Union, of the Communist International, of the coming bolshevik world revolution."
The official newspapers of the U.S.S.R. and of the Komiritem hail Stalin as the Fuhrer of the U.S.S.R., the supreme chief of the proletariat and of the workers of the world.
In a word, he is the man of iron who, thanks to the G.P.U., terrorizes 161 millions of Russians and sends to the firing squad all those who give him umbrage.
All that is done in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity. In the name of liberty, Russian communism has executed 12,000 priests, 8,000 teachers, and caused the death of 35 to 40 millions of people. In the name of liberty, it has imprisoned millions who were suspected of non-communist opinions,- and still almost every day Stalin destroys dozens of his opponents. In the name of liberty, he has forced the citizens to work like mercenaries for thirty cents^ a day, under the watch of an army of police officers.
In the name of equality, the Moscow government has abolished military distinctions and placed its underlings in command. In the name of equality also, it has stolen the money of the capitalists and of the nobility, especially for the benefit of the heads of the communist party and of the organizers of the revolution of 1917.
Finally, in the name of fraternity, the Russian government has separated husbands from their wives and children. In the name of fraternity, children have been burnt alive or starved to death in concentration camps infested with vermin and vice.
Bondage, slavery, terrorism, persecution and barbarity spell the result of twenty years of communist government. And that is the kind of government that is proposed to the nations of the world! And it is to achieve the same results that the agents of Moscow try to enter America! And it is for such results that many Canadians prepare themselves for the struggle in the ranks of the Third Communist International!
Th-at must not be.
We must prevent the teaching of communism in our country. That is the object of the bill which I submit to this house.
I think communist literature could easily be traced by a proper utilization of the dead-letter branch of the Post Office Department.

The communist newspapers are all published in Toronto from where they are sent to different addresses in the province of Quebec. They are mailed free to the members of labour unions. The names of the members of labour unions are obtained from directories, and when those people move to a different address, a large number of those papers are sent to the dead letter office where they can be traced back to their publishers without extra expenditure to the Post Office Department.
Mr. T. L. CHURCH (Broadview):: Mr. Speaker, at the last session I moved an amendment to the Post Office Act. I introduced a bill having particular reference to newspapers; it passed this house, but it did not have much success in another place.
Christianity is part of the law of England. By the Constitutional Act of 1791, so much of the law of England was copied in Canada as was adapted to our circumstances, and automatically Christianity became in that year the law of Canada. Had I been at the Conservative convention last July I would have urged that there be incorporated in our platform, a declaration in favour of the Christian religion in Canada, because it was made part of the platform of the Chamberlain government and of the National Conservative party at the great convention which was addressed by Lord Baldwin and Mr. Chamberlain.
In my opinion this particular bill is not one which this parliament should pass. Hon. members need only read Lord Hewart's textbook, The New Despotism, to see where liberty is heading and will wind up if parliament divests itself of any part of its power, either to the Postmaster General or to the governor general in council, and thus gives his or its decision the force of a statute. I am surprised at the use here of the name "Liberalism," because we have no Liberals in this country as they have them in England. It seems to me that some of the real Conservatives are on the government front benches opposite.
I am not a communist, and I have no sympathy with what the hon. gentleman says is being done in the province of Quebec by those who preach subversive doctrines. Let me say something which I hope the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe) will heed, about Canada's foes within and without the country. I was glad to read, after all the abuse which public men are getting these days, the tribute that was paid to the right hon. gentleman in the venerable and ancient city of Quebec-a tribute which was as merited as deserved. I understand the assembly had a fine and witty chairman in the person of
FEBRUARY 21, 1939	ngi
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the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Cardin), whom I do not see present. But let me say this to the right hon. Minister of Justice, that after having sat in this house since 1921, I believe that some of the most distinguished Conservatives who can be found in this country are sitting on the government front benches.
I am opposed to any contraction in the liberty of the subject. The same speeches and the preaching of such doctrines, of which the hon. member has been complaining, are being heard almost every day in the British House of Commons from the communists. If the government want to do something to stop communism, let them go to work as a government and eliminate abuses, social and domestic, in Canada. They have not done very much this session-so little that our friends in another house, having taken three weeks' holiday, decided to take another three weeks. They have not this famous bill of mine to amend the Post Office Act, commonly known as the newspaper bill, but they might have had this Bill No. 4, introduced by the hon. jnember for 'Quebec-Montmorency (Mr. Lacroix).
The hon. gentleman wants to do something to stop communism. When I was chairman of the Toronto police commission, its members included Colonel Denison, the late Judge Winchester, and Lieutenant-Colonel Chief Grasset, a very good chief and for thirty-four years the head, who had served in and commanded the Royal Grenadiers in the Northwest Rebellion. His father was rector of St. James cathedral, having succeeded the late Bishop Strachan, the first Bishop of Toronto. When this communistic propaganda first started in Toronto, "It would be far better," said Colonel Denison, "to let these people get up and make some speeches, the way they do in Hyde Park-probably nobody will pay an awful lot of attention to them-than to have them meet privately in secret and do damage." That was the policy then. When this movement started, few belonged. That policy was reversed, and I do not say, wrongly, because concerted efforts had been made by a section of the people to attack the institutions of this country and preach subversive doctrines. I do not know all the circumstances, because I have not been a member of the police commission since 1921, and I do not wish in any sense to criticize the later commission who did their duty'. They were dealing with a different time, a different state of affairs, and a different set of facts; they were faced with unrest in the country'; their action may have been right or w'rong. But I will say this, that under the British constitution we are
supposed to have free parliaments, a free press, the rights of free speech and free assembly, and the blessings of Magna Charts. None of these things, in my opinion, exists in Canada to-day. Does Magna Charta exist in Canada to-day with imprisonment for debt; people imprisoned because they cannot find work; rights of property abolished; and youth cast into gaol because they go about the country seeking work, whose only fault is that they cannot find it? Yet we sit here and do nothing about the matter. What we should do is to remove the principal cause of communism, namely, unemployment and cure our social and domestic disorders in the state. Tens of thousands of our Canadian people are suffering untold hardships, many of them suffering privation such as has not been known since the failure of the potato crop in Ireland. Within almost a stone's throw from this building such conditions of unemployment and want exist around us. Why does parliament not do something, instead of discussing a long list of bills and motions to change flags, to change the British North America Act, and to make it impossible for efficiency in the civil service to function by providing that one man shall speak English here, another man French there, German and Danish somewhere else and all that sort of thing, instead of selecting men from the standpoint of efficiency. These are the bills that are brought down in the name of Liberalism in this country. instead of measures to solve the problem of unemployment. I suggest that the government should do something tangible to put a stop to communism, and the first thing for them to do is to remove the evils that create communism, those forces from within and from without. If they do that, I guarantee that there will be no more communism or little of it in Canada.
I am not here to support or justify communism ; in fact, communists have run against me many times. In my humble opinion, if the Postmaster General (Mr. McLarty) wants to pass regulations he should pass regulations to put a stop to the flood of United States magazines such as Scribrier's coming in with slanderous articles against the king of this country. Let him put a stop to the inroads of United States papers; let him pay some attention to the radio speeches that are being made attacking British institutions. There have been attacks against the Chamberlain government and the Munich pact for some time in the United States. Hardly a United States newspaper supported the Munich pact apart from the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and a few others. They denounced Chamberlain
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and peace. I say, put a stop to all these attacks upon the British empire, our king and our constitution. But these publications are coming in by tens, yes, and - hundreds. I do not blame the Postmaster General; he has been in office only a few days and the barriers were let down in 1935. I know he does not believe in this sort of thing. In 1935 the regulations were changed by this government with the result that all sorts of cheap United States weekly and daily newspapers began to come across the border, newspapers attacking every institution that we hold sacred-Christianity, the church of God, religion, the British empire. These publications with their violent anti-British propaganda, are thrown on the news stand and you can buy them right in every Canadian city including the city of Ottawa.
But these attacks have been coming over t.he radio, too. Why, they have professors broadcasting. It used to be that an apple a day kept the doctor away; but with the radio came the professor and now it is, a professor a day keeps the unemployed away. The only reliable information we used to get from the "Heart of Empire" came over the radio through Mr. Beverley Baxter. He used to address the Canadian people over the radio, giving them the real facts of what was going on in England under the Chamberlain government, but he was stopped because he was the only man on the radio who criticized the silence of the north American continent, by which I mean the United States and Canada, during the Munich crisis. "Mum" was the word before and after Munich by Canada and the United States. Yet this propaganda continues to come over the radio, and agents and debaters are engaged and maintained to transmit this sort of thing on the international and Canadian broadcasts.
I repeat, let us remove the evils that make for communism and there will not be a hundred communists in Canada to-morrow. Let us abolish some of the great social cruelties and ills from which the people and workers of Quebec and Ontario, the two industrial provinces of Canada, are suffering and there will soon be an end to this evil of communism. In the second place, let us remove, by reforms, the evils that beset the British empire. Canada is assailed by foes from within and without. Our enemies within we know, and we must reorganize and act quickly. We have waited since 1921 for sickness and unemployment insurance, but it is not yet on the statute books. Hon. gentlemen opposite promised that if they were elected they would put such measures into effect within

a month or two, but they have not done so yet. Let us reorganize and secure reforms from within the country. Let us revamp and reorganize our parliamentary system and bring it up to date so as to provide security more quickly for the working classes and some relief from the intolerable hardships which they are suffering at the present time. Many of them are being driven out of their homes. Let us reorganize our constitutional system, our cabinet system, our capitalist system, and lastly let us have some measure of law reform which will remedy the evils to which we are exposed both within and without. So far as our foes from without are concerned, we are exactly where we were in 1812. We are dependent on the mother country for protection on land and sea and in the air, and this $63,000,000 that is being provided will not amount to much.


Walter Edward Foster: I would remind the hon. member that this is a bill for the purpose of amending the Post Office Act with a view to preventing the spread of communistic propaganda. I must ask him to confine his remarks to the purpose of the bill.


Thomas Langton Church: I think I have kept pretty well to the point, Mr. Speaker. I have been giving reasons why the act should not be amended, and dealing with the principle of the bill, namely, communism and its causes. I am opposed to any interference with the liberty of the subject or to contracting it in any way here. There is not much liberty left to-Ray. Does Magna Charta exist to-day, with imprisonment for debt without bail, and high-school children being driven to ride the rods in Canada, seeking work and being imprisoned for not finding it? I am absolutely opposed to any further infringement of the liberty of the subject whether it be under this bill or not. We learn from Green's history what conditions were like in his day in England. They were going to put George Stephenson in gaol when he was eighteen years of age because they said he was a communist and thought he was insane-he had perfected the steam engine which has done so much for mankind.
Clause 1 of this bill does not give us any definition of communism. Our Lord, the lowly carpenter, was a communist according to the meaning given by a writer to the word in the Canadian Churchman, a Church of England organ. The word " communism " was defined by the able rector of Christ church in Toronto and has a varied meaning. For instance, communism means, in some instances, anything that is for the good of the community or for the common good. In 1910, when the hydro-electric movement came in, Sir James

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Whitney, Sir Adam Beck, and I were called communists and were described as nothing but " amateur anarchists " by Sir John Willison, an editor, because we wanted to preserve and reclaim the water powers of Ontario for the people of this province. It would have been *well for the province of Quebec had the same thing been done there.


Walter Edward Foster: Order. The hon. member is far from the subject.


Thomas Langton Church: This bill encroaches upon the liberty of the subject. It puts us back about two hundred years. It is proposed to give the Postmaster General power to make regulations. He may prohibit the sending of communist literature. I listened recently to a certain rector preaching on Sundays, and I heard him declare that some communist teaching is in the bible and some of it in the Anglican prayer-book. One of our Anglican rectors has told us that. I have no sympathy whatever with the doctrines of this third international, or of the communist party of Canada, or of such groups. But I have every sympathy with the principle of the liberty of the subject. I believe in the principles of Liberalism as they are understood in the old country, the old Cornish battle-cry. I believe the hon. member wrould do something far better if he would bring in something practical to help unemployment and solve our social ills in this country. For these reasons I cannot see my way to support the principle of the bill.


Right Hon. ERNEST LAPOINTE (Minister of Justice):: I ask my hon. friend's pardon if I speak in English in replying to him, because I desire to be understood by all the members of the house. In his explanatory notes he says:
The purpose of this amendment is to enlarge the powders of the Postmaster General as to the making of regulations.
And for that purpose he would insert some words about communist literature. As a matter of fact, the postal law as it stands, and the regulations which have been enacted under that law, cover anything that might be objectionable; and I believe that what my hon. friend seeks to do, would, instead of enlarging these powers, have rather the effect of restricting their application to the particular doctrine described in his bill.
The law as it is at present is reproduced in the explanatory notes, and reads:
7. The Postmaster General may, subject to the provisions of this act,
(d) make regulations declaring what shall and what shall not be deemed to he mailable matter for the purposes of this act . . .
And regulation 204 of the Post Office Department, which has been regularly published in the Canada Gazette and which is binding, reads:
204. If it be established to the satisfaction of the Postmaster General that any person is engaged or represents himself as engaged in the business of publishing any obscene or immoral books, pamphlets, pictures, prints, engravings, lithographs, photographs or other publication, matter or thing of an indecent, immoral, seditious, disloyal, scurrilous or libelous character, or in the business of an illegal lottery, so-called gift concerts, or other similar enterprise offering prizes or concerning schemes devised or intended to deceive or defraud the public for the purpose of obtaining money under false pretences, or in the business of selling or in anywise disposing of counterfeit money or what is commonly called "green goods," or of -drugs, medicines, instruments, books, papers, pamphlets, recipes, prescriptions, or other things with the object or with the pretended object of preventing conception or procuring abortion, and if such person shall, in the opinion of the Postmaster General, endeavour to use the post office for the promotion of such business, or if it be established to the satisfaction of the Postmaster General that any persons are using, or endeavouring to use the post office for any fraudulent or illegal purpose, then, in any such ease, it is hereby declared that no letter, packet, parcel, newspaper, book or other thing sent or sought to be sent through the post office by or on behalf of or to or on behalf of such person shall be deemed mailable matter.
Then regulation 205 prescribes:
It is forbidden to post for deliver}' or transmission by or through the post any obscene or immoral book, pamphlet ... or other publication, matter or thing, of an indecent, immoral, seditious, disloyal or scurrilous character. . . .
In short, anything that is subversive, seditious, that advocates the use of force for the purpose of bringing about any change in the government of Canada, is already prohibited under the regulations of the Post Office Department. This does not mean that some do not find their way into the mails, but as I stated, the regulations cover any literature of the kind described by my hon. friend, and cover more. They cover not only subversive literature coming from the communists but subversive literature coming from people who, under the pretence of fighting communism, are also circulating literature which is objectionable and is advocating illegality and other things.
I agree with most of what my hon. friend stated about communism and communists; I agree that we must combat such doctrines, especially the doctrine which is exemplified in the various writings which he has read to the house to-night. But the communists are not the only ones who have been using force to change governments in the world. They are not even the only ones who have circulated literature and committed acts against

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religion, just as bad as those described by my hon. friend. Just before coming to the house to-night, I happened to put my hand on an article in the Readers Digest for February, 1939, entitled Nazi Scapegoat No. 2, and that scapegoat is Catholicism. Perhaps some literature which is there described would be just as objectionable to my hon. friend as that of the communists. For instance, when they speak of "Roman internationalism, the ally of communism;" when the Angrifj, which is a very important paper, sneers at the "abnormal alliance between the clergy and Marxism", and when the Volkischer Beobach-ter speaks of the "criminal attitude" of the Catholic church and its Muscovite ally-well this as far as possible is all barred propaganda, and we ought to do our best to prevent it from being circulated or carried on in Canada.
I am getting reports from pretty good sources, reports which do not go to everybody, and I may say that there is literature propagated in Canada which comes from other than communist sources which as far as possible we would like to check the circulation of in this country. The trouble is that even with the best postal regulations this is a difficult matter to control. For instance, under their regulations the postal authorities do not open what is called first class mail matter, letters and so on; and I think hon. members of this house would be opposed to giving power to any minister to open private letters just because there might be some suspicion that there was something objectionable in them. I know by experience that much of this objectionable propaganda is being sent in sealed letters. Only a couple of months ago a gentleman brought me a letter which had been addressed to him, enclosing a very, very objectionable piece of propaganda literature, at the end of which was not the anvil but rather what the late head of Christianity described as a hooked cross which was not the cross of Christ.
I repeat, Mr. Speaker, that the postal regulations are sufficient in this regard. I know that in some quarters the mere fact that I do not accept my hon. friend's bill will be branded as a friendly act on my part towards communism, but I say the bill is more restrictive than the regulations are to-day. My hon. friend sent a copy of his bill to the premier of Quebec, and of course I find no fault with that. My hon. friend received that gentleman's blessing for the introduction of the bill, and with that also I find no fault. But in his letter, which he took care to publish in the press, the premier of Quebec attacked the federal government. With that I find no

particular fault, either, because we are accustomed to it; but he said he could not understand why this government had issued passports to communists who went to fight in Spain. This is not true. In 1937, as the house remembers, this parliament enacted the Foreign Enlistment Act, which made it a crime for any Canadian to go and fight on either side in the Spanish conflict or for anyone to recruit for either side. When that act was passed, an order in council also was passed prohibiting the issuing of passports to anyone for travel in Spain. As a matter of fact, all passports issued during the last two years contained that exception, reading as follows:
Not valid for travel to Spain, the Balearic islands, _ the Canary islands, and towns and territories under Spanish sovereignty in Africa.
No doubt some of the twenty odd thousand people to whom passports have been issued each year by the Department of External Affairs found it possible to go to Spain, but not because of their passports. They went there illegally, and just in passing I may add that I know of someone who certainly was on the other side of that conflict, who found a way to get to Spain without having a passport permitting him to do so. But how could the government control that? More than that, in the Foreign Enlistment Act, which made it a crime for a Canadian to enlist or recruit for enlistment in the armies of either side, there were provisions for penalties. All these were put under the sections of the criminal code. Under the law as it is now, if crimes were committed because of that Foreign Enlistment Act, the British North America Act-and I hope I shall not get on the nerves of anybody by mentioning that act-provides that it is the attorney general of the province who must put into execution any penalties of this kind. So perhaps this will give food for thought to those who criticize us in this matter.
Under the circumstances, sympathizing as I do with the purpose which my hon. friend has in view, a purpose which, if such a bill were necessary at present, I would enlarge to apply to other forms of subversive propaganda in Canada, I do think this is unnecessary. In our laws we have all that is required to permit the control which could be exercised by the Postmaster General in this regard.



TRADE AGREEMENTS


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Mackenzie King that the house

Canada^-United States Trade Agreement
go into committee on the following proposed resolution:
That it is expedient that parliament _ do approve of the trade agreement entered into, at Washington on the 17th day of November, 1938, between Canada and the United States of America, and that this house do approve of the same, subject to the legislation required in order to give eifect to the provisions thereof.
Hon. C. H. CAHAN (St. Lawrence-St. George):: Mr. Speaker, I am sorry the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) is not in his place to-night because I have a few statements which I should like to make in his hearing; but I trust some of his colleagues will bring them to his attention in Hansard. During the address made by the Prime Minister on Tuesday, February 14, referring to myself he said:
What was the nature of the remarks of the hon. member for St. Lawrence-St. George respecting a trade agreement with the United States, when he spoke in a previous debate of the present session? The hon. member has a number of pet aversions. I believe perhaps one of the strongest is his dislike of the United States, and particularly in those matters which relate to trade. He said in the house, and has said repeatedly outside of it, that there is no use in Canada trading with the United States, because we will always get the worst of it; in some way or another there is, he believes, an influence at work in Washington which makes it impossible for Canadians to protect themselves in the matter of their own interests.
These statements are without excuse. The last statement made can have an application only to one statement which I made in this house and one which I made outside the house, to the effect that the statutory restrictions placed upon the president by the congress of the United States in the matter of the negotiation of trade agreements rendered it impossible for the negotiators of the United States to concede fair and equitable terms to the negotiators of any other country when negotiating trade arrangements with the United States. That is the only reference which I have made upon which that interpretation could possibly be placed, and it is entirely incorrect.
I assume the Prime Minister has recently taken sufficient interest in me to read some of the speeches which I have made on former occasions. There is no doubt that I have aversions. There are few men in public life who are utterly devoid of them. One of my aversions is the conduct of the Prime Minister when he prepares for a general election. In private life and in public life, when there are no elections, he is undoubtedly personally worthy of high esteem and is usually an honourable political opponent. But in an election campaign, or in preparation for one, his imagination is unrestrained, and the 71492-75J
creative faculty of his mind is engaged chiefly in drawing erroneous inferences and in presenting biased and mischievous interpretations of the public utterances of his political opponents. Until recently I was not convinced that an early election was pending, but the Prime Minister's address on Tuesday last has served to convince me that he is now eagerly preparing for another political campaign of passionate propaganda.
I have no hostility to or dislike of the people who compose the great nation known as the United States of America and, so far as I can remember, I have never expressed one word of hostility to them or to their educational, cultural or political institutions. I do not believe that the Prime Minister can cite any such expression of mine. But during the past sixty years I have had occasion to discuss with some fervour the pronouncements and propaganda of some of the Washington politicians and the tactics they have pursued, not only toward Canada but toward the British commonwealth of which Canada is a member. On two occasions only, so far as my memory goes, I have in courteous but emphatic terms criticized the efforts of two presidents of the United States, one Democratic and the other Republican, to draw the boundary lines of British territory and to maintain those boundaries by threatened military and naval force.
The right hon. gentleman was perhaps a college student at Toronto when the Venezuelan boundary controversy arose and was not as deeply stirred by the events of that time as were Canadians of my age and older. I was in British Guiana for several months in each of the three years in which that controversy raged. It arose over the British claim to ownership of Barima point, at the eastern bank of the mouth of the Orinoco river. If one bank at the mouth of the river was British and the other bank was, as all admitted, Venezuelan territory, then under international law the navigation of the Orinoco river was free to the traffic of vessels of all nations. The issue was of special interest to the republic of Colombia, because if the British contention prevailed the vessels of Colombia could steam without permission from Venezuela up the Orinoco river and then up the Meta river, which was a branch of the Orinoco, to a river port from which there was in that time an old Spanish road to Bogota, the capital of Colombia, less than ninety miles away. Venezuela claimed both banks of the Orinoco and the right to close that jiver to commercial navigation and transport.
In December, 1895, President Cleveland in a message to congress declared that it was
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incumbent upon the United States of its own initiative to appoint a commission to draw the boundary, regardless of the British contention. It was in that connection that Secretary Olney declared that 3,000 miles of ocean "make any permanent political union between a European and an American state unnatural and inexpedient." His whole reference was to the situation in Canada. He contended that:
The United States is practically sovereign upon this continent and its fiat is law upon subjects to which it confines its interposition.
He contended also that this fiat reached north of the great lakes and the 49th parallel of latitude. It was then that President Cleveland and his secretary of state brought us to the verge of war with the neighbouring republic. Although I undoubtedly criticized and even condemned their claim to trace boundary lines for a British colony in another continent, I made no reflections upon the people of the United States.
Again, a few years later, there was a time when I criticized very freely the conduct of another president of the United States who threatened to draw another boundary line between British Columbia and Alaska. I happened to be in London in October, 1903, when the decision of the Alaskan boundary tribunal was rendered, and it became known in circles -close to the British government that Lord Alverstone, the chief justice of England, who .sat. with two eminent Canadians as the British members of that tribunal, had within a few days of the date of that decision apparently changed his point of view under political pressure from the British government in order to avoid a threatened expedition into Canada by the military forces of the United States.
Older members may recall that Canada's claims with respect to the Alaskan boundary line were declared by President Theodore Roosevelt to be "an outrage pure and simple" and that the Canadians "acted in a spirit of bumptious truculence." The president was even reported to have suggested that north America should thereafter be "inhabited exclusively by' citizens of the United States." Although the president had signed an arbitration treaty providing for the appointment as arbitrators of "six impartial jurists of repute," the Canadian public entertained no illusions as to the political prejudices of the three men whom he did appoint. When I was in London in October, 1903, it was alleged that President Roosevelt had notified the British government, through the United States ambassador, that if the boundary line, which the boundary tribunal might thereafter establish, was not in accord with his personal

views he would send into Canada a sufficient military force to draw the line as he saw fit. That correspondence has not been published, if it ever took place; and evidently if it did take place, it was excluded from the state papers of the United States.
But after the president had signed this arbitration treaty, we now know that Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, being then in London on a holiday, received a personal letter from President Roosevelt with a request that it be shown privately and unofficially to Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, then colonial secretary. That letter as published subsequently, contained the following:
But if there is a disagreement I wish it distinctly understood, not only that there will be no arbitration of the matter but that in my message to congress I shall take a position which will prevent any possibility of arbitration hereafter; a position I am inclined to believe, which will render it necessary' for congress to give me authority to run the line as we claim it, by our own people, without any further regard to the attitude of England and Canada.


Mr. SLAGHT:: Mr. Speaker, I rise to a
point of order. The hon. gentleman is speaking to a motion for the approval of a recently made trade treaty. I submit that when he is going back forty-five and thirty-eight years and raking up the old bones of disagreement between our neighbours to the south and Canada and the empire over matters territorial, he is entirely out of order.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: Mr. Speaker. I submit that
there is no point of order. I am reviewing an address of the Prime Minister, in which he undertook to lay before the house the background of certain negotiations, and I am not exceeding the limits to which he went in making a personal attack upon me with regard to some former speeches which I had made.


Arthur Graeme Slaght: I ask for a ruling, Mr. Speaker, on the point of order I raised. My point of order is simply this


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Arthur Graeme Slaght: that to discuss territorial differences is not dealing with the trade treaty.


Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER:: With regard
to the point of order raised by the hon. member for Parry Sound (Mr. Slaght), while perhaps technically he may be right, I would hesitate to call the hon. member for St. Law-rence-St. George out of order because in this debate there has been allowed a wide latitude. Therefore I think the point of order is not well taken.


Arthur Graeme Slaght: He is taking a grave responsibility, Mr. Speaker.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.

Canada-United States Trade Agreement


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: The fact also became known, Mr. Speaker, at that time that the president of the United States had established in the district of Alaska a special force which could have been used for that purpose. The Prime Minister may have retained in his scrapbooks some of the speeches which I made regarding the two events I have mentioned, but I said nothing which, with later knowledge of the facts, I now wish to withdraw, and nothing that reflected upon the people of the United States whom, in making any criticisms, I have always distinguished from some of their political leaders and their political representatives.
There was another incident-


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Before my
hon. friend leaves this one, may I ask, does he approve of Lord Alverstone's action in the matter?


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: I am not approving or disapproving, but I certainly am disapproving, as I did then, of the intimidation attempted by the President of the United States. The Prime Minister knows as well as I do that a great deal of feeling was aroused in Canada by the action of Lord Alverstone.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Yes, against
Lord Alverstone.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: Yes, but when the fuller
facts became known there was a great deal of feeling in Canada with respect to the intimidation which the President of the United States had, in a covert manner, attempted to exercise upon the British government.


Arthur Graeme Slaght: Shame.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: I was going to give another
incident, but in view of the objections of my hon. friend, who apparently needs a little information with regard to the political history of this country, I shall simply say that I returned from London to Mexico in November, 1903, when the secession of Panama from Colombia occurred. I shall not enter upon a discussion of the events connected therewith save to state that subsequently, during the administration of President Wilson, when a treaty was drawn up for the payment of 825,000,000 damages to Colombia out of the Washington treasury, Mr. Roosevelt himself published an article in which he said:
The proposed treaty is a crime against the United States. It is an attack upon the honour of the United States, which, if justified, would convict the United States of infamy.
The Prime Minister in his address on the 14th instant, stated that the late Conservative government were divided in opinion as to the merits of the trade treaty which was
offered by Mr. Cordell Hull in 1935. I certainly know of no such division. We were all in favour of a fair and equitable agreement. We were unanimous in our opinion that the terms offered by the government of the United States were not fair and equitable and not satisfactory to the Canadian public, and those terms, I submit, have not since then proven satisfactory, as we have clearly disclosed to this house, although a desperate effort is now being made to create the illusion in the minds of the Canadian people that grave sacrifices by our domestic producers of their markets in Great Britain will serve to appease competitive producers in the United States, and in some mysterious way make for world peace.
The covert criticism which the Prime Minister makes of my attitude with respect to trade treaties with the United States is really of no personal concern to me, because I think, in the constituency which I represent at least, my views have been clearly stated and are well understood. But I remind the Prime Minister that personally I consistently hold with certain leaders of the Liberal party to whose opinions my right hon. friend in former days gave due weight. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, speaking in this house on July 31, 1903, said:
The best and most effective way to maintain friendship with our American neighbours is to be absolutely independent of them.
And on May 7, 1907, at the imperial conference, Sir Wilfrid Laurier was quoted as saying:
There was a time when we wanted reciprocity with the United States, but our efforts and our offers were put aside and negatived.
And again in 1910, the late Right Hon. W. S. Fielding, then Minister of Finance, in his budget speech used these words:
We had had negotiations from time to time with our American friends in relation to better trade conditions, and they had not turned out very successfully. We had, after repeated efforts, taken the ground that we should not again approach the United States with proposals for betterment of our trade relations, and that, if the matter was to be reopened again, it should be reopened, not upon the initiative of Canada, but upon the initiative of the United States.
When, in 1911, it was proposed that each country should make corresponding reductions of duty of a temporary nature, a letter was written on January 21, 1911, by Messrs. Fielding and Paterson, the Canadian representatives, to Secretary of State Knox, in which they say:
It is agreed that the desired tariff changes shall not take the formal shape of a treaty, but that the governments of the two countries will
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use their utmost efforts to bring about such changes by concurrent legislation at Washington and Ottawa.
And again, in that letter, Messrs. Fielding and Paterson declared:
Nevertheless, it is distinctly understood that we do not attempt to bind for the future the action of the United States congress or the parliament of Canada, but that each of these authorities shall be absolutely free to make any change of tariff policy that may be deemed expedient.
That indicates the nature of the trade agreement which was subsequently laid before the parliament of Canada. Mr. Secretary Knox replied:
I take great pleasure in replying to your statement of the proposed arrangement. It is entirely in accord with my understanding of it.
There was nothing of a permanent nature in that, agreement, because it could be rescinded in whole or in part by the United States without notice at any time, and upon that unsatisfactory feature the Conservative opposition was at first based. Mr. Fielding presented the result of his negotiations to parliament on January 26, 1911. But Canadian sentiment was aroused, when on February 14, Mr. James Beauchamp Clark, democratic leader in the House of Representatives, declared in that house that he was in favour of the bill, framed to carry the proposed agreement into effect. He said:
I am for it because I hope to see the day *when the American flag will float over every square foot of the British North American possessions, clear to the north pole. ... I have no doubt whatever that the day is not far distant when Great Britain will joyfully see all her North American possessions become part of this republic.
Two days later, on February 16, Congressman Bennet of New York presented a resolution requesting the presidentto enter upon and prosecute from time to time such negotiations with the British government as he may deem expedient for the annexation of the Dominion of Canada to the United States of America.


Ernest Lapointe: When
was that?


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: That is on February 16, 1911, two or three weeks after that so-called agreement was introduced by Mr. Fielding to the parliament of Canada.
Congressman Bennet then declared in an interview that:
The sentiment for the annexation of Canada is practically unanimous in this country.
The Prime Minister speaks of the opposition of the Conservative party at that time to the treaty. That opposition was engendered by such statements as those I have quoted.
IMr. Cahan.]
As the politicians and press of the United States expounded their view as to the prospective annexation of Canada, public opinion against the agreement hardened in Canada, until on April 27, in an address at New York, President Cleveland distinctly raised the alternative issues: reciprocity between Canada and the United States, which Washington politicians proclaimed as a preliminary to annexation, or Canada's adhesion to a scheme of inter-imperial preference.
President Cleveland, in his famous "Parting of the Ways" speech said:
I have said that this is a critical time in the solution of the question of reciprocity. It is critical, because unless it is now decided favourably to reciprocity, it is exceedingly probable that no such opportunity will ever again come to the United States. The forces which are at work in England and in Canada to separate her by a Chinese wall from the United States and to make her part of an imperial commercial band reaching from England around the world to England again by a system of preferential tariffs, will derive an impetus from the rejection of this treaty, and if we would have reciprocity with all the advantages that I have described, and that I earnestly and sincerely believe will follow its adoption, we must take it now or give it up forever.
And President Cleveland proceeded to declare:
The amount of Canadian products, that we would take, would make Canada only an adjunct of the United States. It would transfer all their important business to Chicago and New York, with their bank credits and everything else; it would increase greatly the demand of Canada for our manufactures.
It was such references as those to the proposed arrangement, made in the United States and even by the president of the United States, which awakened a strong reaction in Canada, and these statements were followed by innumerable others.
Senator McCumber declared that:
Canadian annexation is the logical conclusion of reciprocity with Canada.
Hon. Samuel McCall of Massachusetts declared that under reciprocity:
The inevitable day will be more quickly reached when the two countries will be politically one.
Congressman Prince of Illinois, said:
Be not deceived. When we go into a country and get control of it, we take it.
Senator Cummins declared:
I am for the annexation of Canada.
Representative Madden of Illinois expressed the hope that:
Canada may become a part of us, as it should be.

Canada-United, States Trade Agreement
While James J. Hill, the railroad magnate, rejoiced that:
Reciprocity will stop the union of the British empire.
From the date of President Cleveland's "Parting of the Ways" speech, the views of the Canadian people became more definitely crystallized, and by reason of the issue which the leading United States politicians had then raised, the decision of the people of Canada became inevitable. Later, under the Underwood tariff, which came into force in October, 1913, and continued during the period of the war, exports from Canada to the United States increased considerably; but the United States emergency tariff of May, 1921, followed by the Fordney-McCumber tariff of September, 1922, reduced our exports of farm products by more than one-half. The government of the present Prime Minister, which had assumed office in December, 1921, were unable to do anything to overcome these disadvantages, and they frankly confessed their inability.
In the budget debate of 1923, the late Hon. W. S. Fielding, then finance minister in the cabinet of the right hon. gentleman opposite said:
The congress of the United States, in the exercise of its undoubted right, has established what is commonly called the Fordney-McCumber tariff, which is largely a high tariff, and which we realize operates to the disadvantage of Canada. Any desire that we may have towards modification of our tariff is naturally held in check by the high tariff of the United States.
And he added that when the opportunity offered-
-the Liberal party stands for reciprocity with the United States when we can get a fair and reasonable agreement.
That has always been and is now the attitude of the Conservative party in Canada. Towards the close of the debate, on May 23, 1923, the right hon. gentleman opposite, who is now Prime Minister, used these words:
What is the position with regard to the United States? Since the Liberal convention was held, there has been enacted by the United States a much higher tariff than ever before existed between Canada and the United States. The Fordney-McCumber tariff, so-called, to-day is operating to the disadvantage of Canada. Is there any member of this house who will stand up in his place and say: Notwithstanding that obvious fact we think we should throw down our bars against the United _ States and give them an opportunity to come in here and affect our industries in a manner even more seriously than they have already been affected?
The obvious answer was "no"! But the Prime Minister continued:
I think our American friends will come to see that if, as a result of their-and it is their own "business, of course-if as a result of their
action Canada is going to seek and obtain new markets in which to buy and sell in Britain, new markets in France and new markets in Italy, is going to develop a reciprocal trade and effect agreements with Australia and possibly other countries as well, if they begin to see that in all these directions we are striking out into and creating new lines of commerce, and that we can manage very well as we are,
I am inclined to think that that line of thought, quicker than anything else, will bring about the change which my hon. friends of the Progressive group opposite hope may come.
The present Prime Minister adhered to that attitude until June, 1930, when, while he was still in office, the United States congress enacted the Hawley-Smoot tariff, which practically prohibited Canada's exports of Canada's farm products to the United States, and brought this country to the verge of economic and financial ruin. That Hawley-Smoot tariff reduced in one year our total exports to the United States from $515,000,000 in the fiscal year ending March 31, 1930, to $350,000,000 in the following fiscal year. The United States congress enacted the Hawley-Smoot tariff against our products, although during the five fiscal years ending March 31, 1930, United States exports to Canada exceeded our domestic exports to the United States by $1,296,000,000.
The right hon. gentleman spoke of what he alleged to be my strong dislike of the United States, particularly in trade matters. Let him now tell parliament of his consternation and of his personal opinion of the United States in respect of its treatment of Canada in trade matters when the Hawley-Smoot tariff was under consideration and when it was finally enacted early in 1930. Early in 1930 I made the strongest speech that ever I made in my life against the United States conduct of its trade policy with respect to Canada, and I made it at Washington at the invitation of the United States chambers of commerce before 1,500 to 2,000 representatives from every part of the United States; but before I made that address I regarded the time as so critical that I endeavoured to obtain from two persons very close to the government of the day an opinion as to whether I was using too strong language in making that speech. That was before I went to Washington, and I was assured at that time that at least I was not prejudicing in any way the relations which then existed between the government of that day and the government at Washington. In fact, I think I received official approval of the speech before it was uttered.
Obviously, when the Bennett government came into office-the government of which the leader of the official opposition (Mr. Manion) and I were members-something had
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to be done. Obviously, when the United States had raised their tariff sky-high; when the Hawley-Smoot tariff had prohibited all our farm products from entering the United States at a time when they had in five years $1,296,000,000 of an excess of their exports to us over our exports to them, it was absolutely necessary to take some action to stop that continued importation from the United States which was destroying our financial credit- and reducing the value of our dollar to a very low rate.
The Prime Minister suggested that there was some maladroit action on our part, in that we raised at that time the general tariff which then applied to the United States. We did raise it; we raised it with the clear intention of diminishing that great, excessive export trade to this country which the United States then enjoyed; and then we took the other alternative of negotiating trade arrangements at the Ottawa conference of 1932, trade arrangements with Great Britain and with the other British dominions, in which any loss of our export trade to the United States was made up by the splendid increases which have taken place in our exports to these wider British markets, which are now threatened by the policy of the right hon. gentleman.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: May I say one word to my hon. friend before he concludes. He mentioned a moment ago that I had made a personal attack upon him and that his speech this evening was a reply to that attack. I assure him at once that there was nothing in the nature of a personal attack upon him. I did exactly what he did when he was speaking about- me in the course of a previous debate. My hon. friend, in referring to what he alleged was my desire to appease the United States talked about my capricious infatuation-


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: I quoted what the right hon. gentleman said.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: -and my
illusive infatuation, again referring to the United States. I replied, when I spoke, by making mention of the United States as his pet aversion. We were simply exchanging compliments, I take it.


Charles Hazlitt Cahan: I hope the right hon. gentleman will withdraw his remarks in view of what he has now said.


Mr. R. J. DEACHMAN (Huron North):: The speech to which we have just listened from the hon. member for St. Lawrence-St. George (Mr. Cahan) ought to make us feel at least grateful for some things. We ought to be thankful that God has given us the

power to forget. It would be indeed the greatest conceivable tragedy if all the dark bickerings of a past age should be carried in the mind of every person, and if after fifty years we should be able to rake over the old coals and set ourselves burning with a desire to promote new antagonisms in the different age in which we live.
I remember that Venezuela incident. I remember also the Fashoda incident in which we had a little trouble with France. But I am not forgetting that some years after the Fashoda incident we stood side by side with the people of France in a great fight for democracy. Perhaps a repetition of that may happen, and we may now be joined with those with whom we differed decades ago in the trifling incident about a few bars of sand in Venezuela.
But I am not going to direct much effort to the speech just delivered by my hon. friend. I congratulate him, however, upon one thing; he did not state definitely his opposition to reciprocity, as did his leader. Thus he did not give me the opportunity to reply to him as I intend to reply to the distinguished gentleman who is now the leader of the opposition (Mr. Manion).
The object of economic man is to improve his lot by increasing his production. In order to increase his production he must bring influence to bear upon the factors of production. The factors of production are land, labour and capital; and unless you can do something to increase the productivity of the land, the efficiency of labour or the reproductive power of capital, you will not increase your production. I venture to suggest that there is no one here to-night who will say that a tariff-and a high tariff at that-will help to improve the productivity of the soil. I have seen many times in western Canada when one trifling little shower of rain was worth all the tariffs which have ever arisen on earth since Adam quarrelled with the food controller down to the present day.
I recall one time a United States senator saying that the man who made two blades of grass grow where one grew before or two drops of water flow where one "flew" before was a benefactor of the human race. But the tariff will not help. Will a tariff increase the efficiency of labour or the activity of capital? No, it will not. No one will work harder or better-yes he may work harder, but he will not work more efficiently, because he works with dull tools. Nor will it increase the productivity of capital, because where tariffs are applied you get misdirected capitalistic effort. I could name items by the score to which that has happened. I give only one.

Canada-United,
States Trade Agreement
We have been for some time importing dates from Mesopotamia. Then it occurred to Mr. Bennett, when he called a special session for the purpose of increasing tariffs, that if he were to put a tariff on pitted dates, he could build up in this dominion an industry for the pitting of dates, and thus give employment to the Canadian people. So these dates in their unpitted state were carried across the Mediterranean sea, past the gates of Hercules, beyond the pillars of the grey Azores, across the foaming billows of the Atlantic and up the St. Lawrence-stones and all,

and finally were landed in Canada. Then they got people to pit them, and in order to promote the pitting of dates, a great industry for the Canadian people, they put on a duty of 2i cents a pound. The difference between the price of pitted and unpitted dates, if we import them in the normal way, was 1 cent a pound. So the people of Canada were asked to pay an extra 2 cents a pound for dates in order that they might have the great and glorious privilege of consuming dates which had been pitted in the Dominion of Canada. What a wonderful effort for statesmen busy solving the problem of unemployment!
I am not going further into this matter to-night; I merely desired to show what are the factors of production, and to add this one word: In addition to production you must have freedom of exchange, because then you are able to harvest the benefits which result from differing conditions for production in different sections of the world.
I turn now to some of the statements made by my hon. friend the leader of the opposition. I think they are particularly interesting. No. 1: This treaty makes for greater competition for our industries, which are very much the same as those of the United States. What does that, mean? Our friends suggest that these industries should not have competition, and, not having a larger measure of competition will be able to charge higher prices to the consumer. I want to tell hon. members now what the western producer of wheat pays. The Searle price index of 147 items that western, farmers buy now stands at 133 on the basis of 100 for 1913-14, which means that those items cost the farmers of the west at the present time 33 per cent more than they did before the war. The price of wheat, No. 1 northern, as of February 15, open market basis, is 30 per cent lower than it was in 1913-14 or, on board price base, 10 per cent. This means that a bushel of wheat in western Canada has, in relation to the commodities the farmer buys in the open market, a purchasing power of 46 in comparison with a purchasing power of 100 that it had before the war. On the basis of the board price its 71492-76
purchasing power is 68 per cent of what it was. Taking the average price of Canadian farm products we find that on the basis of 100 in 1926 it has slipped to 48-4 in 1932, while manufactured goods dropped to 69-8. And in 1939 the index number of farm products is 64-8, but the price of manufactured goods is 73-5.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I ask this question: Recognizing these facts; recognizing the position of the farmer in Canada; knowing something of the struggle through which he went during a period of depression, and realizing that he is not yet out of that condition, would a man not need to have considerable nerve if he tried to retain a high tariff so as to permit the manufacturing interests of this country to hold up the prices of manufactured goods, when it is admitted that nothing can be done as far as the price of farm products is concerned?
My hon. friend the leader of the opposition some years ago, speaking in the house, said,
" Trade is war." And it is cruel war against the farmer when it comes to a condition like that. General Sherman said, "War is hell." The late Mr. Euclid, whom I met in my old days at school, said that "things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another." So that in the judgment of Mr. Euclid we would have to put it in this way: Trade is hell. Therefore my hon. friends to the left will not have anything to do with it. and they, still keep up the same conception which they had back in 1930 when my hon. friend gave utterance to those words.
Then we are told, as No. 2, that it affords concessions to thirty-one favoured nations which give nothing in return. I am curious about that. When these nations negotiate treaties they will give us something in return, and at the same time these countries which gain from the agreements are countries with which we have done a very large measure of trade. I wonder if my hon. friend is aware of the fact that to foreign countries outside the United States, outside the British empire, in five years before the depression we sold $1,300,000,000 worth of goods. Surely that is a substantial market for Canadian goods.
Then item No. 3:	My hon. friend says it
brings unfair competition from favoured nations, such as Japan, Germany, Italy. Well the hon. gentleman is always talking about a favourable balance of trade. One of our largest balances of trade is with Japan. In 1937 we sent to Japan $21,000,000 worth of exports and brought back $4,790,000 worth of imports, and the figures are even larger this year. There we have the perfect ideal of Tory trade; we have a favourable balance,

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and that is true in regard to a number of the other favoured nations with which this treaty will help us expand our trade.
But I am delighted with No. 4: "It is the beginning of the destruction of the whole British preferential system for which we have been struggling since 1897." Well, they struggled against it in 1897, so they have not been keeping up a very consistent struggle. The British preference will be able to stand, no matter what may happen. We are not destroying it; we are modifying it. There is a marked difference between destruction and modification. But may I point out that Canada needs the world for a market. It cannot do without it. In 1938 the British empire took approximately 50 per cent of our products, which means that 50 per cent of our products had to be marketed somewhere else. The people of Canada cannot afford to confine their trade to half the nations of the world. They need every market they can get.
Then in No. 5 the hon. gentleman suggests that this cuts into the British market, which he says is our best market for wheat, fruits, lumber and so on. I have grave doubts as to the accuracy of the prophecies of these hon. gentlemen. They were wrong in 1911; they were wrong in 1936, when we brought in the other reciprocity treaty. I recall hearing man after man tell of the ruin that would follow the introduction of the provision permitting duty free imports up to 8100. It was going to wipe out the merchants along the border. But I am not going to deal specifically with these items to-night, because they were dealt with very carefully this afternoon by my hon. friend the Minister of National Revenue (Mr. Ilsley).
Now I come to No. 6:
It injures our Canadian traffic and damages the transportation system, railways, steamships and so forth, sending traffic north and south instead of east and west.
I want to make this suggestion to my hon. friend the leader of the opposition or to any other Conservative or Liberal in the house. Look at the earnings of the Canadian railways; the report can be found in the Canada Year Book. Look at the imports from the United States. Select to your own satisfaction the four years during which our imports from the United States were largest and the four years when they were lowest in recent years, and I will tell you what you will find. In the four years when our imports were highest our railway earnings were highest, and in the four years when our imports were lowest our railway earnings were lowest. But these boys never learn anything. Of course 
they suggest this is merely a coincidence, but if that coincidence occurs all down through our economic history I wonder what the hon. gentlemen will have to say. If, looking over this house to-night, I noticed a number of gentlemen who had very beautiful heads of hair and knew they were using herpicide, I think I would use herpicide too. I would not think it was a coincidence. But my hon. friends can look at the records of the facts, can stare them in. the face, and the only result is that they intensify their drive in the opposite direction. They think the more emphatically they state their claim that our railways will be ruined by imports, in some way eventually some people 'will come to believe it.
Another argument is that this treaty gives too much in return for too little. Well, what does that amount to? Suppose it increases our trade by 10 per cent and increases the trade of one of the other nations by 25 per cent; we would still be 10 per cent better off than if we accepted the advice of our friends and voted against the treaty. But they seem to have the idea that if it does not benefit all equally it should not be supported. That is a most preposterous suggestion.
Then it is said that we shall lose revenues through the elimination of the 3 per cent excise tax. The 3 per cent excise tax was first applied in 1932. Speaking in this house at the time Mr. Rhodes said:
I have not the slightest hesitation in saying to my right hon. friend that the government is not wedded to it, other than as a necessity of the moment, as a means of taxation.
Later on Mr. Bennett came along, and what did he do? He was not wedded to it at all, because in April 1934, he cut it in half as far as British imports were concerned and in 1935 removed it from those imports .altogether. In those circumstances I wonder if it is not fair to say that if Mr. Bennett had been given the chance, eventually he would have removed it entirely. At least I hope he would have done so, and I am sure he would unless he were persuaded to the contrary by the hon. gentlemen to my left who now hold the view that no tax may be reduced under any circumstances unless they are given the opportunity to do it.
Then my hon. friend said the treaty would probably increase unemployment through greater competition in industries such as coal mining, manufacturing, and so on. Let me say to my hon. friend that time will write that record. In fact, time has already written it. My hon. friends have tried their method of solving the problems of the country, and it has not succeeded. We have succeeded in proving that there is at least some hope for

Canada-United States Trade Agreement
us when we go in this direction, and we propose to go a good deal further than we have gone as yet.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Robert John Deachman: Oh, I am not speaking for my hon. friend at all; he can speak for himself.


Mr. CASSELMAN:: Nor for the government?


Robert John Deachman: For the people of
Canada, for the people whom I represent, for the people who want it and know we are going to get it.
That brings me to a very interesting point. Referring to the Americans, my hon. friend said:
Third, they are shrewder traders than we are. I had the word "sharper" in my notes, but I do not like to use it because it might be taken as offensive-
Then he goes on to speak about the down-east Yankee and has this further word to say:
I simply say, Mr. Speaker, that the United States cares for its own people when it is making a trade treaty of this kind.
I want to show how they are taking care of their own people. It is astonishing that in the House of Commons of the Dominion of Canada we should so frequently hear members speak with an attitude of extreme contempt for the Canadian people. Let me show what we have done as far as Canada is concerned. The Economist of December 3, 1938, said that the business recession in Canada was by no means as intense as it was in the United States. The monthly bulletin of the Cleveland Trust Company, written by Leonard Ayers, made practically the same statement. The last issue of the Bank of Nova Scotia bulletin stated that industrial production, factory payrolls, factory employment and revenue carloadings were distinctly higher in Canada than in the United States. That is in relation to the standard index. The only point at which the United States is temporarily ahead of us is in connection with building construction,.where the enormous governmental expenditures of the United States have helped their progress to a certain extent.	*
What happened in regard to trade? Let us consider the index of trade in the two countries. Take 100 as the index number for 1929 in the United States and Canada. In 1932 the United States trade was represented by the figure 31. In Canada in that year, when our Conservative friends were in power, it was represented by an index number 42. In 1938 the United States index number was up to 59, while the Canadian index number 71492-76J
had gone up to 79. I wonder what my hon. friends have to say about that? Are they not proud of their own record back in 1932 when the index number was down to 42, and do they not think they should express at least some appreciation for our efforts when we brought it up to 79?
My hon. friend the leader of the opposition was good enough to tell us that the United States was not a stable market in which to do business, but here again I want to point out that the hon. gentleman was wrong in his conclusion. In our trade with the United Kingdom we moved from an index of 100 in 1926 to 34 in 1932 and up to 80 in 1938. In our trade with the United States we moved from a figure of 100 down to 41 in 1932. We did not go down so far and our recovery was better. In 1938 we had come up to 88. Surely this is a satisfactory indication of the progress we are making so far as trade is concerned.
My hon. friend was good enough the other day to quote from The Economist. I want to quote from the same publication merely to show that it is rather dangerous to quote to this house one part of an article and then forget that in the same article there is a concluding part which alters completely what has been said before. My hon. friend_ made this quotation from The Economist of November, 1926:
It is more questionable whether there will be a corresponding increase in British imports. Very few of the concessions made to the United States will result in any category of American goods being placed in a more favourable competitive position vis-a-vis the domestic producer. Most of the agricultural products affected are not grown in this country, or where they are, the domestic producer is already safeguarded.
My hon. friend quoted that, and he took it to be supreme condemnation of the treaty so far as the Dominion of Canada is concerned. But I want to read the concluding paragraph, and then I shall ask my friends if they are going to vote for this treaty, because I do not think they are. I quote:
The immediate effect of the agreement is not to be measured in terms of a diplomatic reinforcement, still less of a strengthening of the military or economic defences, of either of the signatories. But its long-term effects in the purely political field can be negatively assessed by imagining the derisive joy in certain European capitals and the profound depression in others that would have been produced by a failure of the negotiations. To have brought to birth not merely an agreement, but such a good agreement, is a decisive act of economic statesmanship.
I ask hon. gentlemen behind the leader of the opposition what they are going to do when it comes to a vote upon this issue?
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With utter irresponsibility I know they will certainly vote against it. But I ask them: If you were in power would you vote against it? Would you vote against, it when one of the leading papers, a paper which was quoted by my distinguished friend, tells you that your action would be greeted by derisive joy in certain European capitals and profound depression in others, and that depression would be felt in the nations with which you are affiliated? Oh, yes, it is all right to do it when you think you can do it, and then go out to the people and show what you have done. But it is somewhat different when you face the realities of what it means not only to Canada but to the world. It is a good agreement; it is considered a decisive act of economic statesmanship. Perhaps I should not expect my hon. friends to agree with it.
But I turn to one more item, the famous balance of trade. My distinguished friend, the leader of the opposition, always wants us to have a favourable balance of trade with the United States. May I point out that during the last three years we have had a larger favourable balance of trade than ever before in all the history of our dealings with the United States. Not a word from them. Not a cheer. I want to point out that in 1912, 1913 and 1914 when they were in the seats of office, not only was there an unfavourable balance of trade, but it was the largest unfavourable balance that had ever existed between Canada and the United States. I have looked through the Hansards of those years; I have gone over the remarks of some of the distinguished gentlemen who were making history at that time, and I could not find a cheep from them. There was not even a flutter of a wing. Never can you find in the records of Hansard any discussion of the balance of trade when our friends are in office, not because the balance is favourable but because when they are at the helm all is well and they do not care.
I will tell them the remedy for any unfavourable balance. If they should have the misfortune to get back to office, I can tell them how they can straighten up this balance of trade. We import from the United States a great many products, such as rubber and so on which are not produced in that country. We also import a number of raw materials for our manufactures. A few of these are manila, sisal, raw silk, bauxite, coal, crude oil, raw cotton, rubber, and so on. I have figured out the total, which by no means covers all the items, as $106,582,000. Why do we buy those materials? What a strange thing for protectionist manufacturers to do!
'Mr. Deachman.]
They buy where they can buy the cheapest, just as ordinary people do. If they want to make my hon. friends happy, they should order them in some other country and pay larger amounts for hauling a greater distance. Most of these items are free or nearly free of duty, and they represent raw materials for our industry. What matter if we have an adverse balance? As far as that is concerned, Canada is capable of paying her debts; she always has been and always will be. What does it matter whether we buy in one country or another?
I should like to quote just one more statement which shows where we are going in regard to these things. This time I quote from the London Spectator of November 25, 1938. In discussing these treaties it has this to say:
The fundamental value of the Anglo-American trade agreement lies as much in the sacrifices each country was ready to make as in the advantages it secured for its own traders- for till it is realized that every such negotiation must be based on the simple principle of give-and-take the attempt of each side to concentrate on taking must spell inevitable disaster.
That is the fundamental basis of negotiation. There must be giving and taking. If there is concentration upon the one factor of taking all for themselves, then the agreement on the day it is signed will contain in itself the seeds of decay-it will break down; it will not work out in practice. There must be a freedom and breadth of view. Alas I am sorry to say we shall not get that from my friends on the left. But we shall get it from those who are associated with me spiritually, although on the other side of the house. Then the article goes on to say:
It means that the principle of modifying the Ottawa agreements of 1932 has been conceded. Ottawa, creating the British imperial zollverein of which Joseph Chamberlain dreamed, had good effects and bad. It increased trade within the empire. It to some extent decreased the trade and to a considerable extent increased the suspicions and antagonisms of states outside the empire, particularly the United States and Germany. Since then, and to some extent in consequence, Germany has developed a closed economy based on trade by barter, which makes the prospect of any beneficial commercial agreement with her remote. But that fact, unfortunate in itself, has had some favourable reactions, in producing the recognition among states which still prefer free interchange of the need for increasing trade among themselves. The Anglo-American agreement has gone far to meet that need, for through the operation of the most-favoured-nation clause it means that the tariffs of both countries are lowered not merely in relation to one another but to all countries with which they have signed mostfavoured-nation treaties.
And finally:
In what form and by what methods the Ottawa circle can be widened, with economic

Canada-United States Trade Agreement
consequences that would produce political results no less valuable than the economic, are matters for further thought. But Mr. Hull, Mr. Mackenzie King and Mr. Stanley have performed a service of no small value in turning the minds of all reflective men in that direction.
Please note that the suggestion is that it was turning the minds of reflective men to that solution of the problem.
The measure of a master is in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later. Well, I think if Sir Wilfrid Laurier could look down upon the scenes of to-day he would say that it was a little late. It is twenty-eight years since he made his great venture in bringing about better relations, wider trade, better feeling and a closer understanding between the two neighbouring nations. In making that estimate of twenty years Emerson, who wrote those words, was of course not familiar with the resistance of certain characteristically protectionist minds in the Dominion of Canada; but it is worth while to think that what we are doing to-day, though it may not be accepted now, will, in the fulness of time, with broader minds and deeper conceptions of human interest, bring at least even the most reactionary to a realization of the facts and enable us to establish better relations not only on this continent but throughout the entire world. And the world must be taken into consideration in the things we are doing. We shall be fair not only to those who are on this continent but to those on every continent, broadening our trade, expanding our effort, bringing about the betterment of the human race, a better standard of living and the establishment of broader conceptions in the world we are trying to build.


Mr. T. A. THOMPSON (Lanark):: Mr. Speaker, I do not intend to follow the argument of my eloquent friend from Huron North (Mr. Deachman). We have been treated to this free trade lecture of his on so many occasions that it has become quite familiar to us.
I wish it to be clearly understood at the outset that I am not opposed to trade treaties with the United States or any other country so long as those treaties are mutually beneficial. I am thoroughly convinced that no trade treaty made with any country will have the slightest effect upon either country in case of war. Trade treaties were never consummated with the idea of making goodwill between nations. They are simply a coldblooded business proposition. Trade treaties are very often objectionable not so much in themselves as in the unjust manner in which they are too frequently administered. This particular trade treaty lends itself to just that
sort of abuse. It has as many holes in it asa sieve. I intend to deal with this trade treaty on a business basis, ignoring the assumption that it may affect in the slightest degree the relations between Great Britain or Canada and the United States.
This treaty covers so many classes of goods and such a variety of items that it is bound to have repercussions, the importance of which it is difficult to estimate until the treaty has been in operation for some time. Nevertheless it is quite apparent, upon even a casual perusal of its provisions, that Canadian industry and Canadian agriculture will be adversely affected, and that our preferences in the British market will be seriously impaired. And mark you, Mr. Speaker, it was not incumbent upon Canada to sacrifice the principles of empire economic unity to retain good relations with the United States because we already have them. To my mind this treaty displays an absurd idealism, and is the height of economic folly. It is too great a venture in altruism for a young country like Canada to take, and it was altogether unnecessary that Canada should make these concessions to retain Anglo-Saxon unity.
Let us look at a few of the provisions of the treaty. Take cattle, for example. The duty has been reduced from two cents to one and a half cents a pound, so that the average steer, weighing one thousand pounds, will now pay a duty of $15 entering the United States instead of $20. Now, $15 is a very high duty with cattle prices as they are on. both sides of the line to-day. There is also a joker in this tariff-two of them, in fact. One of them is that only 60,000 head of cattle can be sent across into the United States in any three months. We know that in Canada our cattle are largely shipped twice a year. The stall-fed cattle go out in late winter or early spring, and the grass-fed cattle go out in the fall. The other joker is that the quota of 225,000 head of cattle is not Canada's quota but the maximum number of cattle that the United States government will permit to enter their country in any one year, and we just get a share of that quota.
What has happened already this year? This treaty went into operation on the first day of January, and before the month of January was out the quota was taken up, Mexico having shipped into the United States almost as many cattle as Canada; so from February 1 to April 1, a period of two months, the duty will be doubled to three cents a pound, or $30 on the average steer, and it will be the first of April before our cattle can be shipped in again at the reduced treaty rate-
1196	COMMONS
Canada-United, States Trade Agreement
Take dairy cows and calves. The duty has been left the same, but the quota has been increased. But our quota in neither dairy cows nor calves was taken up last year; yet the treaty increases quotas which we have not been able to fill in the past.
The duties on live hogs and dressed pork are reduced to such an extent as to permit United States producers to have the trade they had in the Canadian market before these duties were imposed, and that trade was a substantial one. [DOT]
Take the duty on cream. It has been reduced from 35 cents to 28-3 cents. These fellows at Washington did some close figuring, with their 28-3 cents. That duty is just as prohibitive on a gallon of cream as a duty of 35 cents. They have also increased the quota to 1,500,000 pounds. How much did we ship last year? Only 5,096 gallons of cream; that is all. It is quite easy to raise the quota on something we are not shipping into the United States.


William Daum Euler: How about potatoes?


Thomas Alfred Thompson: I shall tell the hon.
gentleman in a moment if he will just wait.
Again, take milk. The duty has been cut in two, from six and a half cents to three and a quarter cents. It may induce the exportation of more milk, but last year we sent them the bagatelle of 2,470 gallons. We are not shipping milk there, and the concession is of no consequence.
I will now come to the potatoes referred to by the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Euler). The duty was formerly 45 cents upon exports to the United States and 75 cents upon imports into Canada. What has been done? The duty on exports to the United States has been reduced from 45 cents per 100 pounds to 374 cents-not a very material reduction. But here is the joker: it is good for only nine months. For three months- December, January and February-the exporter must pay 60 cents per 100 pounds, and those are the months when farmers who have stored their potatoes in root houses and cellars are sending them out. What has Canada done? Where is her 75 cents duty? It is gone-"gone with the wind." Potatoes come in here free with the exception of six weeks, and during those six weeks, from the middle of June to July 30, all they pay is 374 cents. In other words, for nine months Canada must pay 374 cents to get potatoes into the United States, and for the remaining three months of the year we pay 60 cents, while the Americans send in their potatoes free for ten and a half months and pay only 374 cents during the other six weeks.

I have heard a great deal in this house about the splendid men whom the government sent to Washington to make this treaty, but I venture to say they did not know potatoes. You could not have picked any three farmers out of this house-I do not care what side you picked them from-who would have signed a lopsided, jug-handled treaty of that sort.
Canada receives no concessions upon wheat, wheat flour, corn, or corn products, and malting barley retains the almost prohibitive duty of 40 cents per 100 pounds.
In this agreement the interests of Canadian manufacturers and Canadian growers of fruit and vegetables have been ignored, and our agriculture has received a staggering blow. The United States have made no concession to Canada which has cost them anything. Suppose that all the concessions they have made belonged only to Canada; suppose that Canada alone were to fill all the quotas which the United States have given-which we shall not do-it would be only a fraction of one per cent of the requirements of the United States. They have kept over 99 per cent of the market for themselves. I repeat that they have given us nothing which- has cost them anything.
On the other hand, what has Canada done? Canada has opened up her market to her principal competitor, the United States of America. She has opened it up to a country with from ten to twelve times her population, and not only to that country but to some thirty other nations which, under the favoured nation clause, will have the same concessions in the Canadian market as has the United States.


Robert James Manion: Without any return.


Thomas Alfred Thompson: One of the principal
objections to this treaty is that it has seriously impaired our preference in the British market, that preference which, since 1932, has been the economic lifeblood of this country. This treaty, Mr. Speaker, is destined to bring Canada more and more under the economic domination of the United States. I ask hon. members, how long can a nation of eleven millions of people, living on the northern -part of this continent beside one hundred and twenty-five millions of people on the more southern half, retain its economic independence if it is buying from that great nation from fifty to one hundred million dollars a year more than it is selling to them? On top of that we are endeavouring to pay them interest on a mortgage of four and one-quarter billions of dollars which they hold on

Canada-United, States Trade Agreement
Canada by way of loans which have been made. How long can we retain our economic independence?
More than that, we are selling to the United States largely raw materials and buying back from them finished products. Canada, with her eleven millions of people, is the greatest customer the United States has for manufactured goods.


William Daum Euler: She is our best customer, too.


Thomas Alfred Thompson: We can go into the
bush and cut pulpwood; we can mine gold and do all the rest of the heavy work. With this treaty and a few more like it, Canadians will be nothing more than hewers of wood and drawers of water for the Americans.
Some non. MEMBERS:	Oh, oh.


Thomas Alfred Thompson: That is all they will be.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Thomas Alfred Thompson: I am glad to hear
that applause, because *what I have said is the absolute fact. Canada and the United States are natural rivals. That is particularly true with respect to agricultural products. The United States is a great agricultural country, and she has a surplus of and is exporting everything that we are producing. Since the great war, economic nationalism had largely closed the European markets to foreign exporters, and the British market was the only stable market left in the world.


William Daum Euler: It is still free.


Thomas Alfred Thompson: Since 1932 the United
States has looked with a great deal of envy on the preference which her competitor had in the British market. She set herself resolutely to destroy those agreements. I say that no country can prosper or give to its people permanent employment if she permits the importation of goods which she has the capacity to produce. When we send our money out of the country we never see it again. When we spend our money at home we are giving employment to our people, and we are building up markets for both industry and agriculture.
Everything which is required to satisfy the needs of humanity can be and is being produced within the confines of the far-flung British empire. Joseph Chamberlain was the first man to be seized of this great idea, and he was the first British statesman who advocated empire preferences. It is true that he went down to defeat advocating them; but his son, the present Prime Minister of Great Britain, had the honohir of signing at Ottawa in 1932 agreements containing the very provisions for which his father had met
defeat. Those provisions kept this country solvent and saved our farmers from bankruptcy. Those of us who were in the house at that time well remember how the present Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King), then leader of the opposition, opposed these treaties, how he kept us here week after week, denouncing them, and stating that when he caine into office he would repeal them, and how he gathered into line his followers and had them vote against the treaties to a man; not quite to a man; there was one hon. member who voted with us at that time, and he will go down in history as the only Liberal in the house who had sound judgment. Yet, with all the opposition they have received, these treaties have kept this country from bankruptcy since 1932.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: And hon. gentlemen opposite renewed the agreements.


Ernest Lapointe: They
improved the agreements.


Thomas Alfred Thompson: The treaties with the
United States have always been precarious affairs. Their tariffs have moved back and forth like a weaver's shuttle, and have no stability; and I am afraid we are getting into the same rut in Canada. Industry in Canada to-day is being paralyzed by constant monkeying with our tariffs. When one government gets in, down they go; when another gets in; up they go. There is no stability. Tariffs should be taken altogether out of politics. What are tariffs? Tariffs are instruments in the hands of governments whereby they can deal on equality with other countries in which climatic conditions, scales of wages and living conditions are so different that adjustment is necessary. That adjustment should have some permanence; otherwise men will refuse to put money into industry. They will not put money into industry until they have some reasonable assurance of stability.
The hon. member for Huron North (Mr. Deachman), speaking on the address, said he regretted that Canada had rejected the reciprocity treaty of 1911. That treaty contained a clause whereby it could not be terminated without mutual consent, and that gave a foreign country for the first time a say in the domestic affairs of Canada. The late Champ Clark, speaking in the House of Representatives of the United States, gave utterance to the naked truth, when he said that if that treaty passed, as he expected it would, Canada would become an adjunct to the United States. The people of Canada can always look back with pride and pleasure upon having defeated that agreement.
ligg	COMMONS
Canada-United, Stales Trade Agreement
But what happened two -years afterwards, in 1913? There was a change of government in the United States. Woodrow Wilson placed agricultural products on the free list, and we had n very much better bargain in 1913 with the United States than was contained in the reciprocity agreement. From 1913 to 1921 agricultural products went free into the United States, but from 1921 to 1930 we lost our markets there while a Liberal government sat on the treasury benches in Canada. It was in that period that the Fordney-McCumber and Hawley-Smoot tariffs and all the other regulations were passed that shut us out of that market. What did the government of that day do? They sat idly on the treasury benches, just as they are sitting to-day, doing nothing, and their only policy was, "We must not provoke that great nation to the south of us." They saw our markets receding; they saw the European market closed, the United States market closed, and yet they sat idly by and allowed the Canadian market to become the dumping ground for the surplus products of every other nation in the world.
Prior to the war Italy, Germany and France bought millions of bushels of Canadian wheat; but the war brought home to them the lesson that they were dependent upon a foreign country for their bread and they were determined not to be caught in that condition again. Therefore they placed on foreign wheat a duty greater than the world price of wheat, until to-day they have become self-sustaining. At any rate, they are no longer a factor in the market in the purchasing of wheat. So in 1930, when the Conservative party came into office, they found the European markets closed and the United States market closed; the only market left was the British market; and they met competition there, on even terms, from their greatest competitor, the United States, a country whose crops were ripe and whose produce was ready for the market from a month to six weeks before our's was.
In the securing of the agreement's of 1932 giving us a preference in the British market there was brought about one of the greatest accomplishments in Canadian history. It must always be borne in mind that the United States is our greatest competitor. The United States has a surplus of the same articles that we export and that we are trying to sell to that country, while on the other hand Great Britain must annually buy hundreds of millions worth of foodstuffs which cannot be produced on that small island. That is where our market lies. Another fact to be borne in mind is that the British market is not a dumping ground where the surplus products

of the entire world can be disposed of. Britain has her limitations in purchasing, and every bushel of wheat that the United States sells to Great Britain is just a bushel less that Canada will be able to sell there.
Before this treaty was consummated, the leaders of industry, boards of trade, and leaders in agriculture were consulted in Great Britain and the United States. Delegates from Great Britain and the United States went to that conference, fortified by the advice and the wishes of industry, agriculture and labour in their respective countries. What about Canada? Who was consulted here? These men went to Washington to bargain with men who had agreed upon what they were going to do. Our men had asked advice of no one in Canada, and it was natural that when they came up against the shrewd bargaining power of those two great countries they had it put over them.
The Prime Minister's statement that this treaty will create closer relations with the United States and Great Britain has to my mind no foundation in fact. It is many years since there was even a ripple among these three great democracies-Great Britain, Canada and the United States-and I ask the house, since when has it become incumbent upon a country that has made a trade treaty with another country to fight for that country? We have trade treaties with Germany, Italy and Japan. Did we send our soldiers to fight for Japan in her war? No; the very idea would be repugnant to us. Yet we have trade treaties with those countries.
It is also stated by several prominent British statesmen that the imperial government would never ask Canada or any part of the empire to modify any part of those agreements. That is not the way in which Great Britain does business. When she makes a treaty she stands by it, and it is perfectly obvious that the pressure to have those treaties modified came from our great competitor, the United States.
To my mind the treaty before us is the beginning of the end of our imperial preferences. The United States will never rest content until they have completely wiped them out. The British market to-day is the only stable market there is left in the world, the only market which we should make major attempts to develop. The brevity of this treaty condemns it, in our opinion. Channels of trade cannot be altered every few years without tremendous loss to the exporters.
The other day I read a report from Washington dated November 18, 1938, stating that prior to these preferences going into

Supply-Public Works
effect in 1930 they had sold large quantities of wheat to the United Kingdom; that their trade had gone down materially, but that they expected to regain it on getting free entry. They gave these figures: In 1930 the United States sold to Great Britain 39,267,000 bushels of wheat. In 1933, one year after these preferences went into effect, this dropped to 9,000 bushels. In 1930 Canada sold to the United Kingdom 97,234.000 bushels, and in 1933 that increased to 140,459,000 bushels. In other words, prior to these treaties being signed and the preference of six cents a bushel being given to Canada, the United States were supplying 20 per cent of the requirements of the British market in wheat, and after they went into effect, this fell to [DOT]05 per cent; while in 1930 Canada was supplying 40 per cent, and after the preference this rose to 67 per cent. In the face of those figures we have this remarkable statement from two of the ministers. The Minister of Trade and Commerce said the other day that this 6 per cent preference was of doubtful value, and this afternoon the Minister of National Revenue (Mr. Usley) said that it was a minor factor.


James Lorimer Ilsley: A minor factor in creating port business.


Thomas Alfred Thompson: All I have to say is that there is none so blind as those who will not see.


Mr. ROWE (Dufferin-Simcoe):: The same effect on apples.


Thomas Alfred Thompson: Every trade treaty this government has made with the United States has been detrimental to the interests of Canada. In 1935, with all due respect to the figures given by the hon. member for Huron North, we had a favourable trade balance with the United States amounting to $57,688,000, but in 1938 we had an unfavourable trade balance of $67,981,518. That is, in three years after this treaty was signed, our trade with the United States fell off to the extent of $125,669,518, and in the same years our trade with Great Britain had risen from $191,000,000 to $225,000,000.
Another alarming feature about this agreement is that it permits some thirty-odd nations to get the same concessions in the Canadian market that the United States have been given. I want also to register my protest against treaties of such great importance being made effective without the sanction of parliament. The Prime Minister said the other day that they had authority to put this agreement into operation without presenting it to parliament. In 1932 Mr. Bennette called a special session of parliament, presented his agreements
and had them ratified by parliament before they were made operative. The agreements which were made in 1935 were put into effect on January 1, 1936, and parliament was called together a month later. The agreement of 1938 was put into operation on January 1, 1939, and parliament was called twelve days later. We are now discussing an agreement which is already law, and no hon. member had any say whatever in its provisions. The members of this house who are elected and sent here to look after the business of the country have been ignored. In such an important matter as this, even though the government may argue that they had the legal right to do it, there are things which are not expedient and should not be done.
After examining this treaty carefully I have arrived at the conclusion that Canada has been made a catspaw to pull American chestnuts out of the fire. In conclusion, because I made an agreement that I would allow the government ten minutes to-night, and I am going to do it-


An hon. MEMBER:: Too much.


Thomas Alfred Thompson: No, I said it, and at ten minutes to eleven I stop. But I say that the future welfare of Canada and the happiness and prosperity of her people depend upon closer union with the British empire, and the further development of inter-empire trade. Both of these this treaty tends to destroy.
On motion of Mr. MacLean (Prince) the debate was adjourned.

The house in committee of supply, Mr. Sanderson in the chair.



DEPARTMENT OP PUBLIC WORKS

[Stage Direction]
292.	Departmental administration, $190,540.
Hon. P. J. A. CARDIN (Minister of Public Works):: This amount covers salaries and travelling expenses, stationery, et cetera, of the members of what is called the administrative section of the Department of Public Works at Ottawa. It covers the office of the minister, the offices of the deputy minister, the assistant deputy minister, the secretaiy and the purchasing agent of the department. There is a little decrease of $130; that is the result of readjustment of positions in the department.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Chief architect's branch-
293.	Branch administration, $226,280.
This is the administration of the branch of the chief architect's office at Ottawa. There
Supply-Public Works
[Stage Direction]
is an increase, also on account of changes in positions in the service and statutory increases.
Hugh Alexander Stewart: What attracts the attention at once in reading this item is the substantial increase from $5,000 to $11,560 in temporary assistance. When one looks over the skeleton of these estimates, what impresses one is the almost complete absence of anything in the nature of a program for the construction of public works. The amounts are strikingly small. I think the total of these estimates is $11,000,000, the greater part of which is made up of salaries, administration and all that sort of thing. I can come to no other conclusion than that the minister and the government have in mind bringing in as supplementary estimates a very heavy program of public works. If such is not the case, why should we find in different items increases such as I have mentioned, providing for temporary assistance that cannot possibly be required for the execution of any program embodied in the main estimates? Possibly between now and the next time these estimates are up, the minister may be able to consider this matter and be in a position to make a statement to the committee. I am sure, if this is the main body of the public works program for this year, the minister must be ashamed of it. It is so trifling that it is perfectly clear that it is not the real program of the government at all. It is just a sort of smoke-screen that is put up, and there must be something else behind all these details of administration and so on, which compose the skimpiest, smallest program in the history of the department.
I should like to ask the minister when he hopes to be able to take the committee into his confidence and tell us when those supplementary estimates will be brought down. As the minister knows, it is desirable that the public works department should get its program under way as early in the season as possible. That is one reason why the estimates of this department are usually taken up early in the session, and when they are passed and approved the departmental officials prepare their program and get to work as early in the season as possible. It is difficult to get started as soon as they would like, but unless the supplementary estimates are brought down and passed by this house within a comparatively short time it will be late in the season before it will be possible to undertake this work.
Would the minister be good enough to give us some information as to why these estimates are so emaciated, so abbreviated, so very small as to hardly justify him in opening his

department at all at this stage? Apparently he is only asking for a great deal of money for salaries, because he has no program of works in these estimates. That is the very opposite to the usual procedure. The main estimates are supposed to contain the main features of the program of the government, while the supplementaries really cover things that have developed after the preparation of the main estimates. In this case the order is reversed. The main estimates which are here ought to be the supplementary estimates, and apparently the real main estimates are to be brought down some time later, possibly quite late in the session.
I should like the minister to take the committee into his confidence and let us have a statement in regard to the exceptional, extraordinary situation which is disclosed in these estimates.


Pierre-Joseph-Arthur Cardin: I heartily welcome the suggestion of my hon. friend, who has had some experience in the matter, that I should ask for a larger amount of money for my department. I am sure that is in agreement with the view already expressed by most of the members of this house, that the Department of Public Works is not spending enough money.
The reason why the estimates are presented in this form is that we wanted to show in the main estimates what was absolutely necessary for the proper carrying on of the business of the government. That is why we have included only the items which appear in the main estimates. Another reason is that at this early hour of the session we are not in a position, as my hon. friend knows, to determine what expenditures will be required. In connection with works already begun we have not the reports of the engineers and are unable to determine, when the main estimates are brought down, what amounts of money may be required to complete those works. The reports of the engineers and architects are not all in so early in the year. That is one reason why we do not find in the main estimates what may be necessary to complete the works which have been undertaken during the year.


Robert James Manion: At the banquet which was given to my right hon. friend the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe), I think I heard someone say there was a very fine list of estimates all ready.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, no.


Robert James Manion: Oh, yes; I was listening. You gentlemen were at the banquet; you may not remember, but I was sober, listening in up here. I do not remember who it was,
but somebody made that statement. Perhaps

Privilege-Mr. Pouliot
the minister could tell us something about that splendid list of estimates which were to be brought in.
Just now the minister said these estimates showed what was absolutely indispensable or absolutely necessary. In other words, the supplementary estimates he is going to bring in are not indispensable or absolutely necessary. That was the only conclusion I could reach. Of course I admit that they may be necessary for an election, but I mean necessary as public works. I should like the minister to tell us a little more about the program that is to be brought in, about which we have been hearing so much. Really members of the house should not be the last people in the country to know about these matters.


Pierre-Joseph-Arthur Cardin: I was just proceeding with my remarks when the leader of the opposition interrupted me. I have, however, no objection to letting the item stand.


Hugh Alexander Stewart: I am glad to know that the door is not yet entirely closed.


Pierre-Joseph-Arthur Cardin: Oh, no.
Item stands.


[Stage Direction]
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
Wednesday, February 23, 1939