1941-04-07

OFFICIAL REPORT


[Stage Direction]
House of Commons debates
[Stage Direction]
Monday, April 7, 1941

Mr. SPEAKER:: I have the honour to
inform the house that I have received a communication from two members notifying me that the following vacancy has occurred in the representation, viz:
Of Frederick Clayton Casselman, Esquire, member for the electoral district of Edmonton East.
I	have accordingly issued my warrant to the chief electoral officer to make out a new writ of election for the- said electoral district.



THE WAR


Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, over the
week-end, as hon. members are aware, the war entered on a new phase. At dawn yesterday, the German army and air force launched an attack on both Yugoslavia and Greece. Reports from the fronts are meagre as yet. They are sufficient, however, to make clear that attacks against both countries have been of the ruthless and barbarous character witnessed during the invasion of Poland at the beginning of the war and repeated again against Norway, the low countries, and France during the course of the spring campaign of 1940. They mark, in fact, the launching in deadly earnest of the 1941 military campaign. The attack on Yugoslavia was made by German divisions operating from southern Austria, from Roumania and from Bulgaria toward the Varder valley; that on Greece, by a combined German and Bulgarian onslaught down the Struma valley, directed at the capture of the Greek seaport of Salonika.
The world is again witnessing the determination of nazi Germany to ride roughshod over all countries which dare to oppose the demands of her leaders, or to stand in the way of German domination.
It appeared as recently as the 26th of March, that nazi Germany, by a process of intimidation, was about to add Yugoslavia to her already extended list of victims, thereby achieving through deceptive diplomacy and overwhelming intimidation, another bloodless victory. On the previous day at Vienna, the government of Yugoslavia in desperation had adhered to the tripartite pact, signed at Berlin on September 27, last year, by Germany, Italy and Japan, and agreed that Germany might make use of Yugoslav roads and railways in its projected attack on Greece. The pact, however, was never ratified. The mere announcement of its terms provoked widespread resentment in Yugoslavia. Popular opinion made itself so strongly felt that the council of regents, responsible for the country's betrayal, took refuge in flight. The young king, Peter II, assumed the throne, and a new government was formed which soon gained the support of every section of the Yugoslav people. It made clear the determination of the country to maintain its independence. Because of this attempt by Yugoslavia at self-preservation, Hitler is now seeking to gain by violence what he failed to obtain by subtle means.
The courage of the Yugoslav nation in standing up to the armed might of Germany is enheartening beyond words. It is the more heroic in that Germany within the past few months has gained all the advantages of a complete occupation of Roumania and Bulgaria, and is supported in her present onslaught by Italy and by her control of Hungary, each of which countries have had designs on Yugoslav territory. Italy has, in fact, already boasted of attacking Yugoslavia.
The nazi attempt to subjugate Yugoslavia followed what has come to be the classic nazi pattern of aggression. Just as Czechoslovakia was half conquered by the occupation of Austria; just as Poland and Hungary were half conquered by the occupation of Czechoslovakia; just as France was more than half defeated by the invasion of the low countries; and just as the nazis hoped by the conquest of Norway and the occupation of France to outflank Britain; so the nazis expected that
2196
The War-The Balkans

the outflanking of Yugoslavia by the occupation of Roumania and Bulgaria would serve to undermine the spirit of resistance in the Yugoslav people. The nazis expected that, almost surrounded, Yugoslavia would consider resistance hopeless and surrender without a struggle. The action of Yugoslavia in offering resistance in the face of well-nigh overwhelming odds has undoubtedly come as a surprise to Germany.
Throughout their troubled history, the Yugoslavs have given proof on a hundred battlefields of great military virtues and of a stubborn courage in the face of heavy odds. Their determination to resist this latest act of brutal aggression, to fight, and if need be to die in order to preserve their homeland and their hard-won liberties, opens a chapter, however tragic, which does the highest honour to their great traditions. A reversal of policy so sudden and complete as that witnessed in the case of the Yugoslav administration in the past few days is rare indeed, even in a generation which has become accustomed to kaleidoscopic changes. The Yugoslavs, however, to cite as examples only their immediate neighbours, had before them the fate of Hungary, of Roumania and of Bulgaria. One by one these countries in turn, having yielded to a succession of threats, first economic and then military, have found themselves in the end the victims of German aggression. Whatever form the so-called cooperation took, in practice it was discovered to mean the occupation of their territory by nazi forces, and a complete submission to nazi domination in economic, political and military spheres. All three countries ceased to be the masters of their own destinies and became the tools of German policy. This fate the Yugoslavs were determined to avoid, if at all possible, at however great a cost.
In Yugoslavia's noble resistance, nazi diplomacy suffered a signal defeat. In her attempt to subjugate the Balkan peninsula, Germany has been forced to fight. War on two fronts, the spectre which long has haunted German strategy, has become a grim reality. To what lengths the new front may extend, to what proportions the war itself may grow, time alone will dislose.
The nazi attack is directed mainly at Greece as the key to the situation in the eastern Mediterranean. Having voluntarily met the attacks of Germany's ally for five long months, after having inflicted heavy losses upon the Italian invaders and driven them from Greek soil, Greece has now to face the force of nazi Germany herself, on another and more exposed section of her extended frontiers. It is a tremendous task: in terms of

military equipment and power, one that would seem to be almost overwhelming. Greece, however, has revealed that a heroic spirit is more to be desired than all else. The Greeks have already risen to face their new enemy with indomitable courage and with the united will of the whole Greek nation.
The nazi attack on Yugoslavia and Greece is a major development. It is too early even to surmise what it may portend. We must be prepared to witness a stupendous conflict. We should realize, too, that the nazi design of conquest in the Balkans is not an end in itself. It is another attempt at ouflanking positions which are obstacles in the path of world domination. Each country Germany occupies serves two purposes: the resources of the conquered people are added to her strength, and a new base is acquired for the next act of aggression. Germany is seeking the subjugation of the Balkan peninsula as a step in the outflanking of Britain's position in the Mediterranean.
In their struggle, the Yugoslavs and the Greeks will have all the support in materials and men that it is possible, in the circumstances with which they are faced, for Britain and the British commonwealth to provide. They will have, too, material aid from the United States under the terms of the lease-lend act.
The announcement from London of the presence in Greece of an expeditionary force of British, Australian and New Zealand troops makes clear that British support is already at hand. The word that British and South African forces have taken Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, gives promise also of the early release of additional British forces for employment in other theatres of war in the near east.
In the whole situation, however, nothing could be more significant than that once again the great nazi military machine has not been able to impose the nazi will by threats, fear and intimidation. That is in itself symbolic of ultimate victory. The feeling of hope and encouragement it affords should not, however, blind us to the realities of the situation. The great nazi army is still intact, and still undefeated; it outnumbers the Greek and Yugoslav armies many times over. The aid which can be sent to these two countries is necessarily restricted. Moreover, the Balkan peninsula is not the only or even the major theatre of war. Indeed the opening of the Balkan campaign may well be the prelude to a great battle for the whole Mediterranean basin. The nazis had hoped that a bloodless conquest would secure their supplies from the Balkan region and bring them a step nearer to the consolidation of the whole of continental

Visit of General Sikorski
Europe as a nazi stronghold. We can all be profoundly grateful that in the nazi path,
Greece and Yugoslavia have become active obstacles.
But the chief obstacle to nazi ambitions is still Britain, and Britain can afford to devote but a part of her effort to the Balkans. The threat of invasion of her own island has not passed; that danger will grow as the spring advances. The battle of the Atlantic has not been won and it is, as we all know, the most vital struggle of all. The unsettled state of France and the presence of the nazi army of occupation on the Spanish frontier, constitute a source of danger to Gibraltar and to British communications in the western Mediterranean, The situation in the far east also is by no means without its dangers.
In a world struggle, events must be viewed in perspective. The conflict must be seen as a whole. Facile optimism and exaggerated expectations may be just as dangerous as abject fear. We must be prepared, in the new phase of the war which has now actively begun, for a bitter struggle. In the end, the spirit of freedom will conquer. Meanwhile, there is certain to be frightful destruction of life and property, and we must be prepared for setbacks and disappointments. The heroism of the Greeks and the determination of the Yugoslavs may well fill with fresh courage all of those who love liberty.
Some may be inclined to feel that hostilities in the Balkans are very remote from this continent. The truth is that the outbreak in the near east, far from being remote, has in fact brought the conflict closer to us than ever. In a realistic calculation of this world struggle, it should not be forgotten that the subjugation by Germany of each new country amounts, in fact, to the addition of another slave state as a dependency of nazi power. In the nazi design for Europe- the so-called "new order"-Germany would be the workshop and arsenal of the European continent. Within her borders, or under her control, the important and highly technical industries would be concentrated, while the conquered territories became hewers of wood and drawers of water, ministering to the nazi war machine, and adding to its staying power. It is important that all should realize that, sooner or later, the successful accomplishment of this great nazi design, were such a thing ever to come about, would in fact result in world domination by the nazi power. Apart from what it would mean to the survival of Britain and the continuance of the British commonwealth, its effect upon this continent, in other respects, would quickly make itself felt. While it might not of necessity be followed by an attempt at mili-14873-139J
tary invasion of this continent, it would, through competition of standards, drive North America into economic isolation and to the use of totalitarian methods in seeking its survival. Nazi control of Europe would in fact involve the outflanking of North America. It is, of course, inconceivable that so long as free men are able to resist, this dark day will ever come to pass.


Hon. R. B. HANSON (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, I am sure the house and the country will be obliged to the Prime Minister for the statement which he has just made. I have no desire to make any addition to it. My mind has been running along the same channels as his statement indicates ever since we heard the announcement. I should like, however, to ask the government whether any consideration has been given to Canadian participation in the battle of the near east.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The leader of the opposition I am sure will be the first to realize that the disposition of troops is a matter which comes pretty much exclusively within the purview of the high command. The government has every reason to believe that the high command in Great Britain, in the disposition that it is making of troops, is following the course which it believes, in the interest of all, it is wisest to take. I am afraid I cannot add more to that statement.



VISIT OF GENERAL SIKORSKI


[Stage Direction]
On the order for motions:
William Lyon Mackenzie King: I should like to place on Hansard a declaration of friendship which was made at the close of last week as a result of the visit to Canada, and to Ottawa in particular, of General Wladyslaw Sikorski, Prime Minister and Commander in Chief of Poland.
General Sikorski has come to this continent to visit both Canada and the United States on an important mission which relates to Poland's effort, assistance and cooperation in the present great war. As a result of General Sikorski's short stay in Ottawa, the following statement was signed by the general and n^self on Saturday afternoon and later in the day was given to the press:
Ottawa, April 5th, 1941.
The visit of the Prime Minister of Poland to Canada has permitted a helpful interchange of views between the governments of Poland and Canada, and an examination of mutual problems arising out of the war. With profound pride we have reviewed the heroic resistance of the Polish nation against the enemy
Alberta Natural Resources

forces of occupation, and the contribution by land, sea and air of Polish and Canadian armed forces to the allied cause.
Arrangements have been completed for constituting a Polish armed force in Canada for service overseas. The Canadian government will give its full cooperation in the establishment of this force, which, after ,a period of training in Canada, will join the armed forces of the Polish nation.
We avail ourselves of this occasion to record the determination of the peoples of our respective countries to continue to share to the utmost of their strength with Britain, other nations of the commonwealth and our allies in the preservation and restoration of freedom. Already, we look beyond that horizon to the day when the joint efforts of all who love liberty may combine to bring into being a world order founded upon international cooperation, justice, toleration, and good-will.



DEFENCE OF CANADA REGULATIONS


Hon. J. E. MICHAUD (Minister of Fisheries) moved:: That the second report of the special committee on the defence of Canada regulations, presented to the house on Thursday, April 3, 1941, be now concurred in.


Richard Burpee Hanson: Would the chairman of the
committee be good enough to explain to the house the general effect of this recommendation? My own understanding of it is that it takes Czechoslovakian nationals out of the category of alien enemies. Is that the effect?


Joseph Enoil Michaud: That is the effect.


Richard Burpee Hanson: That is, prior to a certain day?


Joseph Enoil Michaud: Yes.


Richard Burpee Hanson: Is it unanimous on the part of the committee?


Joseph Enoil Michaud: Yes.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.


[Stage Direction]
Hon. T. A. CRERAR (Minister of Mines and Resources) moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 60, to amend the Alberta Natural Resources Act.
Richard Burpee Hanson: Explain.


Mr. CRERAR:: Late last autumn the decision was reached to establish an ammonium nitrate plant at Calgary, for purposes of aiding in the manufacture of certain classes of munitions in Canada. The question of power

was an important one. It is estimated that the plant when completed will utilize about
23,000	horse-power. As the matter was one of considerable urgency, an application was made by the Calgary Power company, supported by the Department of Munitions and Supply, for power to raise the level of lake Minnewanka, in the Banff national park. By raising the level of the lake a dependable flow of water could be assured, particularly during the winter months. After full consideration, the decision was reached to grant the application of the Calgary Power company to proceed with this work. It was desired to have the power available not later than November first of this year. Accordingly permission was given to the Calgary Power company, by an order in council under the War Measures Act, to proceed with the work, subject-I desire to make perfectly clear-to approval by parliament.


Richard Burpee Hanson: And the province of Alberta.


Thomas Alexander Crerar: Yes, subject to approval by the parliament of Canada so far as the federal interest in it was concerned. The province of Alberta, through its government, had already requested that the government here take the necessary action. The procedure will be to amend the Alberta Natural Resources Act. That procedure is necessary because, wihen this additional water is stored, some of it which is now in the province of Alberta will come inside the boundaries of the national park, and of course when it passes through the power plant which is to be erected near Anthracite it goes again into the domain over which the Alberta government have control.


Richard Burpee Hanson: The effect of this bill, if passed, will be to deliver for all time the entire power production of the Bow river. That is the effect of it.


Thomas Alexander Crerar: I beg your pardon?


Richard Burpee Hanson: It will be the delivery to the Calgary Power company for all time of the entire hydro-electric power of the Bow river.


Thomas Alexander Crerar: That is a matter that is not within the control of the federal government. What will happen in that respect depends upon the Alberta government so far as their works outside the park are concerned. The leader of the opposition is quite correct in saying that once these works are established they will likely remain. That is to say, it is not contemplated -that $2,000,000-because we are informed that is about what the works will cost-would be expended and then the works

Private Bills-Procedure
dismantled when the war was over. That is not contemplated, nor indeed would it be a wise procedure.


Mr. HOMUTH:: Has any work been proceeded with as yet?


Thomas Alexander Crerar: Yes. Some of the work is being proceeded with under the order in council passed under the War Measures Act about the middle of December last. That was to enable the work to be gone on with at once in order that the power might be available not later than November 1 of the present year.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



PRIVATE BILLS


[Stage Direction]
Mr. H. B. McKINNON (Kenora-Rainy River) moved the first reading of Bill No. 26a, respecting the Ontario and Minnesota Power Company Limited.
Richard Burpee Hanson: Explain.


Mr. McKINNON (Kenora-Rainy River):: The explanatory notes explain the bill.


Richard Burpee Hanson: But we have not seen it. The bill is just being introduced.


Hugh Bathgate McKinnon: The Ontario and Minnesota Power Company Limited was given certain rights with regard to power on the Rainy river by a 1905 statute of Canada. 4-5 Edward VII, chapter 139. The company is a subsidiary of Minnesota and Ontario Paper company and is about to be amalgamated with four other subsidiaries of that company. Provision for the amalgamation is made in the plan of reorganization of the parent company which is effective February 28, 1941. Under the amalgamation the financial structure of the five companies will be considerably simplified and one operating organization will carry on all the undertakings of the five companies.
All five subsidiaries being amalgamated are incorporated under the Companies Act (Ontario), and the amalgamation is being effected under that act which provides that the rights and liabilities of the amalgamating companies shall extend to the company formed by the amalgamation.
The purpose of this bill is simply to ensure that the rights and obligations of the Ontario and Minnesota Power Company Limited under the 1905 statute will extend to the amalgamated company.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



PROCEDURE IN DIVORCE LEGISLATION

[Stage Direction]
On the order for first reading of Senate bills:
Georges Parent: There are a number of divorce bills on the order paper.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Mr. Speaker, is it not possible to make one motion respecting the lot?


Georges Parent: Mr. Mcllraith, seconded by Mr. Roebuck, moves that the bills standing on the order paper numbered from 30 to 59 inclusive be now read a first time. Is it the pleasure of the house to adopt the motion?


Karl Kenneth Homuth: Does not this look a little like wholesale slaughter of homes? I do not know why the members of this house should sit here and pass on these bills year after year. Surely some better method could be evolved without members of the House of Commons having to sit here and pass these bills wholesale.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Mq hon. friend surely realizes that this is but the first reading and does not commit anyone to any principle or to anything else. What has been suggested is but the shortening of a very unpleasant and unprofitable process.


Mr. COLD WELL:: Protests have been made in this house from time to time regarding this procedure in relation to divorce bills. I understood last year that some consideration might be given some other method of dealing with these bills. To-day we have a large number and the motion is to give first reading to all of them en bloc. I wish to protest against this method of granting divorces. This ought not to be the function of this house; it is a judicial function. The relief that is requested by act of parliament should be given through a regularly constituted court of law. As a member of this house I do not feel that I ought to take responsibility for voting on these bills as they come before us here without having given some attention to the evidence, and I am quite free to confess that the evidence which comes in an envelope to my office, with a great deal of other material, can only find its way into the W'aste-paper basket. Someone says "oh", but I believe that is probably what happens to the evidence that goes to many other members.
To my mind this condition is a reflection on the Dominion of Canada, and it ought to be grappled with. Either we are going to grant divorces or we are not, and if we are to have divorces they should be proceeded with in a proper judicial manner and not in this way I wish to protest.
Private Jtsius-Procedure


Richard Burpee Hanson: This is
one of the functions of parliament and we may as well do our duty in the premises. The constitution contemplates that divorce may be granted. The only point that could be made with profit at this stage is the question whether or not we should give first reading to the bills in one motion. On the broad question of divorce, if any hon. gentleman wants to attack the principle he can do it on the second reading of bills. In the meantime, this is merely an effort to save a little time.


Mr. LAPOINTE (Quebec East):: So far
as these bills are concerned, the interested parties come from provinces in which there are no divorce courts, and the only means by which they can get divorce is through an act of parliament. I am more opposed to divorce than hon. gentlemen who have spoken in opposition to this procedure, but it is the only way. This method of giving first reading to all these bills simply means that instead of devoting half an hour to them at this stage they are advanced to the point where they will come up for second reading. It is on second reading that the principle will be open for consideration, and I shall be opposed to the principle. The present motion has the effect only of ridding us of a disagreeable process in two minutes instead of in half an hour.


Karl Kenneth Homuth: I am not criticizing that.


Mr. JOHNSTON (Bow River):: I think there has been-


Georges Parent: I would point out that the first reading is not debatable.


Charles Edward Johnston: Is not the introduction of the bill debatable?


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 30, for the relief of John Hubert Fox.-Mr. Abbott.
Bill No. 31, for the relief of Dorothy Jean Fletcher.-Mr. Whitman.
Bill No. 32, for the relief of Lillian Bald Ellison.-Mr. Bercovitch.
Bill No. 33, for the relief of Clavell Filliter Stroud-Mr. Abbott.
Bill No. 34, for the relief of Mary Marion Grey McKay.-Mr. Abbott.
Bill No. 35, for the relief of Frances Goldberg Joseph.-Mr. Bercovitch.	*
Bill No. 36, for the relief of Alice Weill Sedlack.-Mr. Boucher.
Bill No. 37, for the relief of Marguerite Marie Rita Duchesneau Goulet.-Mr. Abbott.
Bill No. 38, for the relief of Edna Irene Yertaw.-Mr. Mcllraith.

Bill No. 39, for the relief of Gordon Alexander Cowan.-Mr. Bercovitch.
Bill No. 40, for the relief of Marion Cameron MacLaurin Nelson.-Mr. Bercovitch.
Bill No. 41, for the relief of Kenneth Grier Thornton.-Mr. Abbott.
Bill No. 42, for the relief of Hubert Earl Roberts.-Mr. Macmillan.
Bill No. 43, for the relief of Annie Elizabeth Cunningham Wheatley.-Mr. Abbott.
Bill No. 44, for the relief of Dorothy Theresa Downard Street.-Mr. Abbott.
Bill No. 45, for the relief of John Greig.- Mr. Bercovitch.
Bill No. 46, for the relief of Lloyd Charles Edward Francis Fulford.-Mr. Bercovitch.
Bill No. 47, for the relief of Joseph Gaston Yvano Rene Dupuis.-Mr. Hill.
Bill No. 48, for the relief of Audrey Alexine Stephenson Smyth.-Mr. Bercovitch.
Bill No. 49, for the relief of Lillian Shapiro Denenberg.-Mr. Bercovitch.
Bill No. 50, for the relief of David Rain-ville.-Mr. Abbott.
Bill No. 51, for the relief of Hortense Bien-venue.-Mr. Bercovitch.
Bill No. 52, for the relief of Evelyn May Grey Ladouceur.-Mr. Mcllraith.
Bill No. 53, for the relief of Marie Jeanne Germaine Grenier Legendre.-Mr. Hill.
Bill No. 54, for the relief of Marie Adeline Alice Miron Lefebvre.-Mr. Bercovitch.
Bill No. 55, for the relief of Helenorah Keturah Donowa Harris.-Mr. Roebuck.
Bill No. 56, for the relief of Henry John Barrington Nevitt.-Mr. Bercovitch.
Bill No. 58, for the relief of Pauline Myrtle Barr Gauld.-Mr. Mcllraith.
Bill No. 59, for the relief of Marie Alice Veillet Piche.-Mr. Boucher.

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

Mr. BRUCE:: 1.	How many clerks were engaged for the national registration?
2.	Were they engaged on a temporary basis?
3.	Were they required to pass a civil service examination?
4.	How many of these were men and how many women?
5.	How many so engaged are getting exemption from military training?
6.	How many men between the ages of twenty and twenty-one and betw-een twenty-one and forty?
7.	Could this work be done, (a) by war veterans over the age of forty, or, (b) by men who are too old for military service?


Mr. GARDINER:: 1.	815, working under the direction of the bureau of statistics. The numbers employed varied greatly from time to time, from 389 in September and 572 in October to a maximum of 815, being reduced in March to 511. The work of approximately 350 of these will be completed soon.
2.	Yes.
3.	They were certified by the civil service commission.
4.	328 men; 487 women.
5.	None.
6.	Between the ages of twenty and twenty-one, 55; between the ages of twenty-one and forty, 159.
7.	(a) Yes, if available and otherwise qualified; (b) Yes, if available and otherwise qualified.


WAR-TIME PRICES AND TRADE BOARD
Mr. BOUCHER:: 1.	Have any prosecutions been laid by or on behalf of the war-time prices and trade board pursuant to its powers under the act to amend the Special War Revenue Act, 1940, or the War Exchange Conservation Act, 1940?
2.	If so, what was the result of each such prosecution?
3.	What other actions have been taken by the war-time prices and trade board under the aforementioned statutes to prevent unjustified increases in price?
4.	Has any increase in price been discovered which is greater than the amount of the tax paid?
5.	If so, in what commodities?


Mr. McLARTY:: 1.	No.
2.	Answered by No. 1.
3.	4 and 5. A notice to all manufacturers, importers and distributors in Canada was sent out by the war-time prices and trade board on August 12, 1940, and a second notice on December 27, 1940, calling attention to the requirement of the board that no profit or "mark-up" may be taken on the tax, and that no person may take advantage of the import prohibitions or restrictions to increase prices in Canada.
Investigations by auditors of the board have revealed that some wholesalers when calculating their resale prices treated the war exchange tax as an addition to their laid-down cost and took their usual gross profit or "mark-up" on that amount. Some of the commodities affected were dental supplies, artificial teeth, automobile accessories, patent medicines, hospital supplies, workmen's tools, stationery, and builders' hardware. When this incorrect method of establishing selling prices was brought to their attention, the distributors concerned immediately changed their selling prices to comply with the requirements of the board.
Questions


COMBINES INVESTIGATIONS
Mr. STOKES:: 1.	How many reports have been made since October 23, 1935, by the commissioner under the Combines Investigation Act?
2.	What action has been taken with respect to each such report?
3.	How many prosecutions have been instituted since October 23, 1935, under the Combines Investigation Act?
4.	What was the result of each such prosecution?
5.	Were counsel engaged to conduct such prosecutions?
6.	If so, what were their names and what amount by way of retainer fee, living allowances or travelling expenses has been paid or agreed to be paid to each such person?


Mr. McLARTY:: 1.	Seven, since his appointment April 15, 1937, in addition to making more or less extensive inquiries into approximately one hundred other cases.
2.	In four of the principal cases, after extensive preliminary inquiries, no combine was found to exist, and no report was published. In the other three cases the reports and the evidence taken in the investigations were remitted to the attorneys general of the provinces concerned.
3.	Two prosecutions under the Combines Investigation Act and three under section 498 of the criminal code.
4.	One prosecution under the Combines Investigation Act is not concluded, one resulted in an acquittal. One prosecution under section 498 of the criminal code resulted in conviction of all accused, and fines of $161,500 were imposed. This judgment is now under appeal. One prosecution under section 498 of the criminal code was stayed at the instance of the provincial attorney general, and one has not been brought to trial.
5.	Yes, counsel engaged by dominion in respect of three prosecutions.
6.	Fees Disbursements
J. C. McRuer, K.C.-
1939- 40	
S 3.375 00	$ 97 231940-	41	
11,681	25	1,210	69
R. M. Fowler-
1939- 40	 1,787 50		
1940-	41	 3,187	50	48	83
J. L. McLennan-
1939-	40	
3,625	00	10	621940-	41	
3,677	00	17	25


RENT CONTROL
Mr. BENCE:: 1.	In what communities is rent control effective?
2.	What principles govern the decision to introduce rent control in any particular community?
Questions


Mr. McLARTY:: 1.	The provisions of P.C. 3998 of December 15, 1939, making it an offence to charge prices that are higher than are reasonable and just for any necessary of life were extended to cover the rentals of all housing accommodation in Canada by P.C. 4616 of September 11, 1940. Orders of the war-time prices and trade board have been issued fixing maximum rents for housing accommodation in the following municipalities:
Nova Scotia: Halifax, Armdale, Buckingham Station, Dutch Settlement, Fairview Station, Falkland, Jollimore, Melville; Dartmouth and Woodside; New Glasgow, Trenton, Stellarton and Westville; Sydney.
Quebec:	Brownsburg; Thetford Mines;
Valleyfield, Bellerive, Nouveau-Salaberry, Ste. Cecile, St. Timothee and the parishes of Grande lie, Ste. Cecile and St. Timothee.
Ontario: Allandale and Barrie; Kingston and Portsmouth; Ottawa, Eastview, New Edinburgh, Overbrook, Rockcliffe, Westboro and Woodroffe; Parry Sound, Nobel, and the townships of McDougall and Foley; Trenton, Windsor; Pembroke and the townships of Pembroke, Stafford, Alice and Petawawa.
Manitoba: Brandon.
Saskatchewan: Swift Current.
Alberta: Calgary.
British Columbia: Vancouver and North Vancouver; Victoria, Esquimalt, Saanich, Oak Bay and View Roya; Nanaimo, Nanaimo District, Mountain District and Wellington District; Prince Rupert; New Westminster.
Under the authority of the board, the rentals administrator has fixed maximum rentals in individual cases elsewhere.
2.	The decision to fix maximum rentals in a particular community is based upon a consideration of such factors as the following: representations by the municipal council and by other representative local organizations; the volume and nature of complaints received by the rentals administrator; information
secured by the board relating to present and impending movements of population related to the expansion of war industries and the location of military establishments; statistical information received from both federal and municipal sources relating to the supply of housing accommodation, the trend in vacancies, etc.; the opinion of the rentals administrator resulting from personal visits to the area under consideration and consultation with representative bodies and organizations.


CANADIAN WHEAT IN STORAGE IN UNITED STATES
Mr. NICHOLSON:: 1.	How many bushels of Canadian wheat are in storage in the United States?
2.	How much was paid for storage on grain in the United States during the year 1940?
3.	How much was paid in freight on grain shipped over American railways during the year 1940?


Mr. MacKINNON (Edmonton West):: 1.	The total number of bushels of Canadian wheat in storage and in-transit in the United States at March 28, 1941: 44,040,711 bushels, as reported by the board of grain commissioners for Canada.
2.	The amount paid for storage on grain in the United States during the year 1940 would have to be obtained from all exporters and shippers of grain in Canada, and assembled, and therefore is not available.
3.	Freight paid on grain shipped over American railways during the year 1940 would have to be obtained from all exporters and shippers of grain in Canada, and assembled, and therefore is not available.


RAW SUGAR-SHIPMENTS FROM REFINERIES
Karl Kenneth Homuth: What amount of sugar was shipped from refineries for the months of November and December, 1940, January, February and March, 1941?


Mr. MacKINNON (Edmonton West):: Sugar Shipped from Refineries for the Months of November and December 1940 and January, February and March 1 to 22, 1941 (pounds)
November December January February Mar. 1 to 22
1940	1940	1941	1941	1941Granulated	
78,753,595	61,181,043	61,222,493	82,387,458	67,028,337Yellow and	brown	
14,260,178	9,491,821	8,593,229	10,183,803	8,610,693Totals	
93,013,773 70,672,864 69,815,722 92,571,261 75,639,030

Questions


PRICES OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES
Mr. SENN:: 1.	Has the war-time prices and trade board made any investigation into the retail prices of Canadian grown canned vegetables and fruits?
2.	If so, to what extent, if at all, have any increases which have been discovered, enured to the benefit of the primary producer?


Mr. McLARTY:: 1.	The War-time Prices and Trade Board maintains a continuous surveillance of the retail prices of the principal kinds of canned vegetables and fruits in more than 200 communities in Canada but no special study of Canadian grown canned vegetables and fruits has been made.
2.	Answered by No. 1.


IMPORTS OF CANNED BEEF
Mr. ROSS (Souris):: What was the dollar value by countries of origin of Canadian imports of canned beef during each of the fiscal years, 1939, 1940, 1941?


James Angus MacKinnon: Before submitting the answer to this question, and also to the questions relating to imports of com and imports of raw sugar, I wish to make a brief statement.
It has been decided as a matter of policy that the bureau of statistics will give no detailed information as to the countries of origin of imports for the duration of the war. It is felt that this information might be of value to the enemy in acquainting them with the sources of supply of certain materials. This decision is wholly in accord with the present practice of the United Kingdom.
If any individual hon. member wishes this information for his own private and confidential use we shall be glad to furnish it to him.
The answer to the question is as follows:
Imports, by countries, of canned beef entered for consumption in Canada during the calendar years 1938 and 1939 and 1940 (fiscal years not available).
Country	1938	1939	1940*
United Kingdom S ______ S 2,074
Australia	
14,431	62,232Argentina	
332,927	617,2S4Brazil	
100,189	70,366Japan	
1,196	....Paraguay	
23,003	6,954Uruguay	
112,391	183,309United States	
63Totals	$584,137 $942,282 $816,266*
Countries of origin not available.


IMPORTS OF CORN
Mr. HATFIELD:: 1.	What quantity of corn was imported into Canada for manufacturing purposes in the year 1940?
2.	What quantity of corn was imported into Canada for other than manufacturing purposes in the same year?
3.	From what countries was this corn imported?
4.	What was the value of these imports?


James Angus MacKinnon: 1, 2 and 4. Imports of corn entered for
consumption in Canada during the year 1940:		calendar
Item Indian com for purposes	Bush.	Valueof distillation	
Indian corn for manufacture of starch or	683,026	S 290,268cereal products	1,796,532	820,343Indian corn, n.o.p	5,399,297	2,753,112
3. Countries not available.


IMPORTS OF RAW SUGAR
Karl Kenneth Homuth: What amount of sugar was imported into Canada during the months of October, November, December, 1940, and January, February, March, 1941, from, (a) British countries; (b) foreign countries?


James Angus MacKinnon: Imports of sugar entered for consumption:
	From	From
	British	foreign
	countries	countries
Month	Cwt.	Cwt.October, 1940 	... 841.018	428,409November, 1940 ..	... 871,558	232,533December, 1940 ...	... 740.977	154,080January, 1941 	... 563,281	47,705February, 1941	... 141,155	41,247March, 1941	
not available


Mr. HATFIELD:: 1.	What quantity of raw sugar was imported into Canada during the year 1940?
2.	From what countries was this sugar imported?
3.	What was the value of these imports?


James Angus MacKinnon: 1 and 3. Imports of raw sugar entered for consumption in Canada during the calendar year 1940: Cwt., 10,728,450; Value, $25,757,951.
2.	Countries not available.



Questions as Orders for Returns


PUBLIC DEBT
Mr. AYLESWORTH:: What was the net debt of the dominion on each of the following dates:	(a) March 31,
1868: (b) March 31, 1896; (c) March 31, 1911; (d) March 31, 1921; (e) March 31, 1941?


Mr. ILSLEY:: (a)	$75,757,134.74*
(b)	$258,497,432.77*
(c)	S340,042,052.03.
(d)	$2,340,878,983.69.
(e)	Not available; the accounts of the Dominion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1941, have not yet been closed. The net debt of the Dominion on March 31, 1940, was 83,271,259,647.34.
* Figures are for June 30. From 1867 to 1906 the fiscal year of the Dominion of Canada ended June 30, and from 1907 on, ended March 31.


CRIMINAL CODE-HIT-AND-RUN DRIVERS
Mr. CHURCH:: 1.	Are any statutory amendments to the criminal code to be made this session?
2.	If so, when are they likely to be brought down ?
3.	Will further legislation, regarding protection of citizens on the highways from reckless and hit-and-run drivers, and damage to life and property from air rifles, be introduced during the present session?


Ernest Lapointe: The intention of the government with regard to this matter will be announced in due time.



QUESTIONS PASSED AS ORDERS FOR RETURNS


Mr TUCKER:: 1.	Has the British treasury, since Britain entered the war, relied on short term borrowing to finance its war effort to such an extent, that the treasury short term financing has increased by the equivalent of over four billion dollars, which is more than the amount raised in the same period through bond offerings?
2.	Does the British treasury, in addition to the sale of short term treasury notes, invite deposits each week from all banks, such deposits remaining with the treasury for a period of at least six months?
3.	Will consideration be given to having the chartered banks of Canada assist in the war effort by inviting them to similarly make substantial deposits in the Bank of Canada; any consequent reduction in chartered bank reserves to be compensated for by issue of Bank of Canada notes by the Bank of Canada?
4.	What are the profits of each of the chartered banks of Canada in 1940?

5.	What percentage of paid up capital are such profits in each case and what w-ere the average annual profits of each bank during the ten years immediately preceding, and what percentage of the paid up capital was such average annual profit of each bank?


James Lorimer Ilsley: Return tabled.


PRAIRIE FARM ASSISTANCE-PROCESSING LEVY ON WHEAT
Mr. FAIR:: 1.	What amount has been collected to date from the one per cent levy on grain sold from the 1940 crop under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act?
2.	What is the head office cost of administration to date?
3.	What are the names and addresses of inspectors employed, and the amount paid to each for, (a) salary; (b) travelling expenses?
4.	At what rate per day are inspectors paid?


CANADIAN FARM LOAN BOARD-EMPLOYMENT OF SOLICITORS
Mr. WINKLER:: 1.	By calendar years from 1936, how many mortgages have been placed in Manitoba with the Canadian farm loan board?
2.	In the same period by calendar years, how many solicitors were employed in Manitoba in connection with the placing of said mortgages and what are the names of such solicitors?
3.	How many mortgages did each of the said solicitors handle, and what was the total amount of money paid to each of them for such work, (a) for fees; (b) for disbursements?
4.	In how many cases over the said period was it necessary for the Canadian farm loan board to take legal action against the mortgagor, and what are the names of the solicitors to whom such cases were given, and what were the total amounts paid to each solicitor for such actions, (a) for fees; (b) for disbursements?


James Lorimer Ilsley: Return tabled.


GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES FREE TRAVEL BY AIR
Mr. PERLEY:: 1.	How many civil servants and/or employees of the government have travelled by airways at government expense during, (a) the year 1940, and (b) 1941 to date?
2.	What was the expenditure incurred thereby in each of the said periods, by departments?


CABINET MINISTERS AND SECRETARIES-TRAVELLING EXPENSES
Mr. STOKES:: 1.	What amount of money was paid to each minister of the crown during the fiscal years ending March 31, 1940, and March 31, 1941, for travelling expenses?
2.	What amount of money was paid to each private secretary, associate private secretary and/or assistant private secretary of each minister of the crown during the fiscal years ending March 31, 1940, and March 31, 1941, for travelling expenses?

Unemployment Relief-Glace Bay


UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF EXPENDITURES
Mr. CARDIFF:: 1.	What is the total amount expended by the federal government for relief of unemployment under all acts, since 1930?
2.	What is the estimated total amount expended by all governments, federal, provincial and municipal, for relief of unemployment since 1930?


CUSTOMS SEIZURES
Mr. STOKES:: 1.	How many, (a) motor vehicles; (b) vessels; (c) other conveyances, were seized pursuant to section 169 of the Excise Act, 1934, during each of the fiscal years ending March 31, 1939, 1940 and 1941?
2.	In how many such seizures during the aforementioned periods was application made for a declaration of interest pursuant to section 169A of the Excise Act, 1934?
3.	How many of such applications were made by, (a) individuals or partnerships; (b) loan or finance companies; (c) other corporations?
4.	In how many of such applications divided as aforementioned was an order made, (a) declaring the claimants interest, (b) dismissing the claim?
5.	During the fiscal years aforementioned, in how many instances, if at all, was relief from forfeiture granted by order in council or otherwise ?



LAWYERS IN GOVERNMENT SERVICE

[Stage Direction]
Mr. AYLE8WORTH:
1.	How many barristers and/or solicitors have been appointed to the government service to perform legal duties, since October 23, 1935?
2.	What, are their names?
3.	By what means wrere they appointed?
4.	What salary, allowance or other remuneration is paid to each?

Mr. CHURCH:: 1.	What is the total cost of, (a) Malton air port, (b) Toronto island port, for both capital and maintenance?
2.	What part of it was paid for by, (a) the government, (b) the city of Toronto?
3.	What use have these two plants been put to so far?
4.	What is the agreement between the government and the city as to the same?
5.	What other cities or municipalities contributed to the cost of their air ports?
6.	What cities or municipalities have had air ports built at federal expense, without any local contribution?


Mr. HOWE:: Return tabled.
14873-140}



MOTIONS FOR PAPERS


Mr. DOUGLAS (Weyburn):: For a copy of all letters, telegrams and other correspondence exchanged between the dominion government and any of the provincial governments in respect to the federal government's decision to discontinue its contribution to relief on and after March 31, 1941;
Also a copy of all letters, telegrams and other correspondence exchanged between the federal government and any of the provincial governments during the fiscal year commencing April 1, 1940, in respect of moneys mved by the provincial governments to the federal government.



DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE-CORRESPONDENCE RESPECTING CERTAIN ACREAGE BONUS

Mr. FAIR:: For a copy of all correspondence, reports, letters, telegrams and other documents from July 1, 1940, to date, in the possession of the department, with, respect to acreage bonus on N. 4-52-1-W. 4 and E 4-52-2-W. 4.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE


William Lyon Mackenzie King: That the resolution adopted on Monday the 24th of March, 1941, respecting the Easter adjournment, be rescinded, and that when the house adjourns on Tuesday next it stand adjourned until Monday, the 28th of April instant.
He said: On Friday last I had a word with my hon. friend the leader of the opposition (Mr. Hanson) and with the leaders of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and Social Credit groups, and we were all of the opinion that as on Wednesday the house would sit for only half the day, it would perhaps suit the convenience of all hon. members if when we conclude proceedings on Tuesday we were then to adjourn for the Easter vacation instead of adjourning on Wednesday.


Karl Kenneth Homuth: Will that be at six o'clock?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Well, we will hope so, but I cannot say.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. CLARENCE GILLIS (Cape Breton South):: I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Labour arising out of a

Unemployment Relie!-Glace Bay
telegram which I received this morning from the town of Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, reading as follows:
The town has summarily suspended all relief work on Friday throwing 140 men completely idle and consequently 600 men, women and children have no prospect of food for next week. Town officials claim they have no responsibility in the matter as dominion and provincial governments have discontinued their contribution to relief. The street department have decided to hire 15 selected workmen from those dismissed to carry on the work performed by the unemployed. So little consideration was given that the town did not complete the weekly work schedule. Can anything be done by you to help us?
Is there any understanding between the municipal, provincial and federal authorities on the question of caring for those in need of relief who at present are on the relief rolls? If so, what is the understanding; if not, will the government relieve the situation described in this telegram?


Hon. N. A. McLARTY (Minister of Labour):: The hon. member for Cape Breton South was kind enough to give me notice of his intention to ask this question. Unfortunately I received that notice only as I was coming into the house, and consequently have not had an opportunity to verify any of the facts beyond the information contained in the telegram. I would say, however, that it is my impression-and I should like an opportunity of verifying this-that the federal government did not at any time make a contribution to the municipal works mentioned in the telegram. In the next place I would say that the federal government, as the hon. member well knows, has withdrawn from the field of direct relief and has left that matter where it originally belonged-with the provinces and municipalities.
I can, however, communicate to the provincial government the fact that the attention of this house was directed to this matter. That is all I can do, and that I shall be glad to do.



CANADIAN FORCES


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. H. A. BRUCE (Parkdale):: May I ask the Prime Minister if the government will lay on the table of the house the memorandum submitted on or about September 11, 1939, by General McNaughton, concerning the supply of skilled men and tradesmen to the armed forces and to industry.
'Mr. Gillis.]


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I have no doubt there is such a memorandum, Mr. Speaker, but first I will have to inquire into that, and then ascertain whether it is appropriate that it should be laid on the table. If it is appropriate to do so it will be brought down.

On the order:
Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion of the Minister of Finance that Mr. Speaker do now leave the chair for the house to resolve itself again into committee of supply, and on the proposed amendment of Mr. Senn.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: May I say just a word
about an understanding which I believe has been arrived at between the whips of the different parties, and which I am informed would mean that while we are going into committee of supply nominally to debate the motion of the hon. member for Haldimand (Mr .Senn), . which relates to agriculture, it is understood that the house will discuss agriculture estimates as they concern wheat payments, without prejudice to the amendment moved by the hon. member, this in order to enable the Minister of Agriculture to discuss, before we adjourn, that phase of the agricultural situation, which is regarded as a very important one.


Thomas Miller Bell: This will not in any way interfere with the amendment of the hon. member for Haldimand?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Not at all.


Mr. A. H. BENCE (Saskatoon City):: I have desired an opportunity to discuss the wheat policy, either during this debate or in supply, and I must confess that I prefer to do so in connection with the debate on the motion of the hon. member for Haldimand-


Hon. J. G. GARDINER (Minister of Agriculture) :: I think we are a little out of order, Mr. Speaker. I understood we were to go into committee to consider the wheat question.


Georges Parent: The motion before the house is that I leave the chair for the house to resolve itself again into committee of supply, to which motion an amendment has been moved.


James Garfield Gardiner: My understanding of the arrangement reached on Friday evening was that at this stage we would be permitted to go into committee without prejudice to the amendment moved by the hon. member for Haldimand, in order to continue with the discussion of the wheat question which was in

Supply-Procedure
progress at the time of the adjournment on Friday. If we take a vote on this we will be prejudicing the motion of the hon. member for Haldimand.


Georges Parent: The position is this. A motion has been made that I leave the chair for the house to again resolve itself into committee of supply. I am now faced with an amendment to the effect that I do not leave the chair. If there is unanimous consent of the house that we go into supply, it automatically vacates the amendment.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Would it not be possible to obtain unanimous agreement to go into committee of supply, without in any way prejudicing a full consideration of the amendment? Surely the house on a matter of procedure can do what it wishes, as long as there is unanimity concerning what is desired.


Georges Parent: The house can do what it wishes, but the difficulty is that if I leave the chair for the house to resolve itself into committee of supply, I vacate that amendment and we revert to the original motion that I leave the chair.


Richard Burpee Hanson: And under those circumstances the amendment falls to the ground.


Georges Parent: Quite so.


Richard Burpee Hanson: We cannot allow that.


James Garfield Gardiner: Could we not have
unanimous agreement to postpone this debate?


Richard Burpee Hanson: May I
recall what took place when we adjourned on April 4. The Minister of Justice (Mr. Lapointe), was leading the house at the time. I quote:
Mr. Hanson (York-Sunbury):	What is the
business on Monday?
Mr. Lapointe (Quebec East):	I understand
there is an agreement that this debate will proceed on Monday.
Mr. Hanson (York-Sunbury): I do not know of any agreement; the right hon. gentleman had better state his programme.
Mr. Lapointe (Quebec East): If not, we shall go into supply, and of course the motion of the hon. member for Haldimand (Mr. Senn) will be taken up. There seems, however, to be a feeling that this debate should continue, and we are absolutely in agreement with that.
Mr. Hanson (York-Sunbury):	That suggestion was made.
I know of no agreement, nor does my colleague.


Hon. GROTE STIRLING (Yale):: I think perhaps this all started with my going across to the Minister of Agriculture, shortly before
we adjourned on Friday, and asking him whether this was not an occasion when, by unanimous consent of the house-the house being all-powerful in regard to its procedure- it might be well to go on with the wheat discussion in committee. When I made that suggestion I thought the minister was rather acquiescent; and certainly in neither of our minds did it supplant the motion to go into supply, to which an amendment has been moved. My understanding was that by unanimous consent this house could go into committee of supply, without prejudice to the main motion which stands in the name of the Minister of Finance, to which the hon. member for Halidmand has moved an amendment.


Ernest Lapointe: There is no doubt that the leader of the opposition is right as to the rule. If you, Mr. Speaker, were to leave the chair and the house resolved itself into committee of supply and proceeded to discuss the wheat estimate, the amendment would disappear. But I submit that if the house agrees unanimously that the amendment should remain, or that it should be reinstated, it can be done. We are certainly masters of our own proceedings.


Richard Burpee Hanson: If an
arrangement can be arrived at to have the motion and the amendment remain on the order paper, I am quite agreeable to going on to-day with a discussion of the wheat estimate. But I would not like to have the motion disappear upon an undertaking that it would be reinstated. There are many hon. members who want to talk about wheat. I am quite agreeable to this being done, but we do not want to lose our place. As a matter of fact we have been jockeyed out of position for about four weeks. We do not feel that we owe the government very much, having regard to their lack of consideration for this motion.


Ernest Lapointe: Reciprocity.


Richard Burpee Hanson: There is not enough reciprocity, and I say that in all good-will.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: If I were not trying to obtain a favour from my hon. friend the leader of the opposition, I might say something to him about the position into which we have been drawn as a consequence of this motion. I understand that if the hon. member for Haldimand will agree to withdraw his amendment on the understanding-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Just a moment, please-that it would be understood that the motion would be restored immediately this
Supply-Procedure

discussion, in committee has concluded. If that will meet the situation, I would undertake to say that the government will see that the hon. member is secured in this right.


Mr. M. C. SENN (Haldimand):: Mr. Speaker, I have no desire to interfere with any plans which the government may have in regard to the discussion of wheat. I have no doubt that the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) wants to get this particular estimate through before the Easter adjournment. However, I am afraid of one thing. If this motion is withdrawn it will require unanimous consent to have it reinstated, and that consent may not be forthcoming. I do not believe the government can assure us of that because there are other sections of the house which may not be agreeable. Apart from that, I have no wish to hold up the proceedings in any way. If it can be reinstated and we have positive assurance from all sides of the house to that effect, I would not want to delay the discussion any further.


Richard Burpee Hanson: Could not the house go into supply by unanimous consent, and could not the motion and the amendment thereto stand on the order paper by unanimous consent? In that way all positions will be preserved.


Georges Parent: Mr. Ilsley moves, seconded by Mr. Lapointe (Quebec East), that I do now leave the chair for the house to resolve itself into committee of supply, on the understanding that by unanimous consent of the house the amendment moved by the hon. member for Haldimand will be restored to the order paper.


Richard Burpee Hanson: That is not what we understood.


Georges Parent: I take it I am instructed oy the house to give the direction to place it upon the order paper immediately after this debate is concluded.


Richard Burpee Hanson: That is not what we understood. Is it not possible by unanimous consent to allow this motion and amendment to stand, and then by unanimous consent have the house go into committee of supply? The amendment should be left upon the order paper; I do not care how it is done as long as we accomplish the end we have in mind. I am afraid that if your suggestion is carried out, Mr. Speaker, some hon. member may get up and object to this being done.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Mr. Speaker has said that he has now been instructed by the house to restore the motion.


Richard Burpee Hanson: As long as we accomplish the end we have in view.

Motion agreed to and the house went into committee of supply, Mr Fournier (Hull) in the chair.


[Stage Direction]
422. Special. To provide for payments on reduction in wheat acreages, under conditions prescribed by the governor in council, for administration expenses in connection therewith, and for temporary appointments that may be required notwithstanding anything contained in the Civil Service Act, $35,000,000.
Alfred Henry Bence: Mr. Chairman, I had intended to speak in connection with wheat on the amendment of the hon. member for Haldimand (Mr. Senn), in which case I would have prefaced my remarks by stating that the wheat policy of this government is being condemned by all the people in the prairie provinces as being totally inadequate to meet the problems of the prairie farmers. The wheat policy of the government, which was announced by the two heads of wheat, the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) and the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. MacKinnon), a few weeks ago, and which was elaborated upon a few days ago by the Minister of Agriculture is a most disappointing and disheartening blow to the prairie farmer in particular and to the western provinces in general. In all our conjectures and speculations as to what the policy would be, none of us thought that the farmer would get quite as poor a deal as he is getting under this policy. I want to protest as emphatically as I can against the inadequacy of the proposals which do not provide our farmers with even a decent standard of living.
Before I go into the few remarks which I want to present to the committee this afternoon, I should like to make a suggestion with respect to the two heads of wheat, which has been made before in this house and also in the press. Last fall the Minister of Agriculture stated that the wheat policy of the government was in the hands of two ministers, the Minister of Trade and Commerce and himself; the government going on the basis that two heads were better than one. I believe, and many others from the prairie provinces believe, that we would get better and more concerted action, and that we would remove a lot of confusion which exists in the minds of so many people, if the wheat policy of this country was under the jurisdiction of one minister of the crown.
I suggest that the Minister of Agriculture should assume the whole burden in connection with production, sales, financing, the construction of storage facilities on the farm and so on. He has stated that this is a tremendous problem, but if he feels it is too great a

Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
problem to handle in addition to his other duties, then I suggest that he consider turning over the portfolio of national war services to some other minister. After all, the farmers of this country look to the Minister of Agriculture, they do not point their fingers at the Minister of Trade and Commerce and expect him to find a solution to their problems. The Minister of Agriculture is the man who will receive blame, if there is blame, and he might as well assume all responsibility.
As far as the wheat policy is concerned, I suggest that the government has been derelict in its duty to this country in not placing its policy before the House of Commons long before the time it did, and in not bringing down the regulations long prior to the time it did.
We were told when we came here last fall that the government's wheat policy would be announced in February. I think it was the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. MacKinnon) who made that statement. We came here on the 17th of February, and there was no wheat policy. Day after day the question was asked in the house as to when the government's wheat policy might be expected, but the policy was not announced to the house until the twelfth of March, and not until the second of April did we get the regulations. I do not think that is being fair to this house or to the farmers of this country. It did not give the members of the house ample opportunity to discuss the government's proposals, and it did not give an adequate opportunity to the farmers, both tenant farmers and those who own their lands, to arrange just exactly how they would operate in the coming season. I know as a matter of fact that many farmers who own their land and many who rent were greatly embarrassed by the fact that the government's policy was not announced a long time before. They had contracts and leases to enter into, but they were not able to take any steps until they knew what the regulations would be.
During the last few weeks we have been given an analysis by various members of the house of just what the government's wheat policy will mean to the western farmer, and they all came to the conclusion that unquestionably the income of the wheat farmer will be cut drastically this year as compared with his returns from the 1940 crop. As I have stated to the house before, I am not a farmer, although I come from the heart of the wheatgrowing country, and I would not presume to debate technical questions of farming with experts in these matters such as the hon. member for Qu'Appelle (Mr. Perley), the hon. member for Moose Jaw (Mr. Ross), the hon. member for Portage la Prairie (Mr. Leader), the hon. member for Melfort (Mr. Wright) and others. But all of us in western Canada are familiar with the wheat economy to a considerable extent because, speaking both figuratively and literally, it is our bread, and naturally we understand figures which affect our livelihood.
I believe that the Minister of Agriculture, in making the comparison he did the other day in this house, did not make it as clear as he might have done as to just what sacrifice the wheat farmers will be making under the policy. He was comparing the income of the wheat farmer from the 1940 crop with his income from the 1941 crop in order to show how much less the farmer would receive in 1941. I am not suggesting that the minister was intentionally unfair in his comparison because he was endeavouring to show what a great sacrifice the western farmer, the wheat farmer in particular, would be making under this policy. He told us that the maximum of wheat that could be sold by the farmers this year would be 230,000,000 bushels, and that the farmer would obtain approximately 50 cents a bushel, so that the maximum amount the farmers would obtain from the sale of their wheat from the 1941 crop would be 8115,000,000. To that he added the compensation provided under the bonus scheme, a maximum of $36,000,000, and thus arrived at the total figure of $151,000,000 as the amount the farmers would receive from the sale of their wheat and from the bonus proposals.
It would seem to me that in order to make a fair and proper comparison he should have taken the same basis in determining the income from the 1940 crop. The Minister of Trade of Commerce stated in this house on March 12 that by the end of the present crop year, July 31, the farmers would have sold 472,000,000 bushels of wheat, which at 50 cents a bushel-taking the same basis- would amount to $236,000,000. That shows a cut in income of $85,000,000 in the 1941 crop year as compared with 1940. That, according to my calculation, is the sacrifice which the wheat farmer is being asked to make. I am sure the Minister of Agriculture did not mean to confuse the house, but certainly he confused me. The minister admitted the tremendous sacrifices which the farmer will be asked to make as a result of this policy when he said in the house on Friday last:
The farmers of western Canada know that this policy is not putting money into their pockets, whether the money comes from the treasury of Canada or from any other source. They know that this policy is taking money out of their pockets and making it possible for this dominion to finance the war to the extent of at least $100,000,000 more than would be
2210	COMMONS
Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
the ease if the government did for the rvheat growers of the west what they are doing for most of the other people of Canada.
That gives some idea of the sacrifices which the wheat farmer is being asked to make under the policy of the government of the day. And I say that this reduction in his income is entirely too much to ask the farmer to take, particularly in view of the conditions which have prevailed in western Canada during the last ten years. It has been hard enough for the western farmer to get along on 70-cent wheat, let alone placing him in a position where deliberately he must make a sacrifice of between $85,000,000 and $100,000,000 in his income. From what I have seen in the press; from communications I have received from the prairie provinces, so far as my constituency and the great farm organizations and the wheat farmers of those provinces are concerned, the government's wheat policy is totally inadequate. We believe that the provisions of the bonus scheme and of the regulations that have been made in connection with it are most unsatisfactory and impractical having regard to the cultural practices which the farmers of the west would ordinarily follow during the present year. Bitter complaints have come to the government from all over Canada. The wheat pool is protesting. The Saskatchewan and Alberta governments are protesting, and so, I believe, is the Manitoba government. The federation of agriculture is protesting. I understand, too, that the former minister of agriculture in this government, Hon. W. R. Motherwell, has written to the Secretary of the United Farmers of Canada (Saskatchewan section) at Saskatoon suggesting that there should be a march on Ottawa by the wheat farmers of western Canada.
I am convinced, Mr. Chairman, so far as the general wheat policy of the government is concerned, that the acreage reduction and bonus scheme is far too drastic to be carried out in one year. Under the policy proposed by the Minister of Agriculture the wheat acreage will be reduced by 9,000,000 acres, which is approximately one-third of the total that was in production last year. If a reduction in acreage is required, and I am not by any means suggesting that it is not, it seems to me that this is far too drastic a reduction to bring about in the course of one year, because I believe it will completely disrupt and disorganize well-established farming practices. It would appear to me that the bonus scheme operating in connection with it will be open to the gravest of abuses, and that in any event it will give rise to inequities and injustices as between individual farmers. It will favour the large farmer as against the

small. It will pay a premium to the poor farmer and discriminate against the good farmer. It will pay a premium to the man who has been mining his farm year after year, putting everything he possibly can into wheat, whereas the farmer who has been following proper cultural practices by putting in wheat, coarse grains, and summer-fallowing will not be able to take advantage of the government's proposals as the wheat miner will be able to do.
I suggest that a far better plan is the one which has been suggested to the government and to this committee, namely to advance materially the initial payment, to remove completely the bonus scheme and the regulations under it, and to permit the farmer to build up a certain reserve on his farm as a buffer or, if you like, a type of crop insurance against the day of scarcity which is as bound to return as the days of plenty are here to-day. The farmer realizes that he cannot sell all the wheat which is being produced on the present acreage. Tell him-I think it is quite fair to do so-that you can take only a certain amount of the wheat which he will grow, but allow him to work out his own salvation so far as the cultural practices of his farm are concerned. Because each farmer farms a little differently from the other farmer, but under this plan he is pretty well bound in advance to a definite proposition or he cannot take advantage of the bonus scheme.


Richard Burpee Hanson: He is
regimented.


Alfred Henry Bence: He is regimented, yes. Good farmers know exactly the manner in which they want to till their land in order to obtain the best out of it. It seems to me they should be given scope and permission to do this, subject of course to the proviso that they can sell only so much wheat out of this crop.
The policy suggested by the federation of agriculture appealed to me very strongly. Their proposal, that the farmer should be permitted to build up a reserve on his farm as a type of crop insurance, seems to me sound and sensible and well worthy of adoption.
The Minister of Agriculture stated in this chamber, as I recollect, that the government was considering the matter of assisting the farmer in building storage facilities on his farm. But he stated also at another time that nothing could be done about this until next July. Well, the farmer is putting his wheat in now. He has to know now what plans to make with respect to taking care of his wheat when he harvests it. I realize, of course, that the Minister of Agriculture would feel happier if he had some definite idea of what the crop yield will be, but the farmer has to

Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
make his plans now. If he knows that he is not going to be given any sort of assistance wherewith to build storage facilities on his farm, he has to put in just that much less wheat, and he cannot provide crop insurance of the type I have suggested.
Figures supplied by the bureau of statistics indicate clearly that the cost of living in Canada is rising and has been rising since the beginning of the war, without even one setback. I must confess that I was amazed to see the Minister of Agriculture and other hon. members occupying the Liberal benches rise to defend the amount of money which is being spent for the wheat farmers. The defence which is required is, not against the amount of money which is being spent-and which, as I have informed the committee, is much less than it was last year-but against the indignant wheat farmer who wants to know why his income is being cut by at least 185,000,000 at a time when the national income is going up, when the costs of living are rising, when -in particular-the province of Saskatchewan is receiving less for its agricultural products, proportionately, than any other province of Canada. The table which the Minister of Agriculture placed on Hansard on March 27 indicates that very clearly indeed.
What we are asking for is not a matter of charity as was suggested the other day by, I believe, the hon. member for Wellington North when he made some reference to a person coming to his door for a meal. In view of the fact that the government is purchasing all this wheat, that the farmer cannot sell his wheat on the open market, that the amount is limited to 230,000,000 bushels whether he sells it on the open market or to the wheat board, and that the government has indicated a desire that people should continue to grow wheat-in a limited quantity, I admit-not only for purposes of domestic consumption, but in order to provide a storehouse for Britain in the great struggle in which she is engaged, and to sell to Europe when this great conflict is over, I submit there should be a fair price for what is sold.
Furthermore-as also was suggested the other day by the Minister of Agriculture-we are less able to sell our wheat because the British empire is at war. We are blockaded, but -we are asked to continue to produce a certain amount of wheat so that when the blockade ends we can sell wheat to Europe. I say that this is not a matter of charity. We are producing a product, a source of wealth, the government wants production of this article, and it should be prepared to pay a reasonable price for it.
It seems to me that the government should adopt with respect to wheat the same policy
which it pursues towards industry, namely, that the labourer is worthy of his hire and should be paid accordingly, and, even if it is constrained to reduce acreage as drastically as is being done, it should provide a reasonable price per bushel for the amount to be purchased-based, as has been suggested many times in this chamber, upon a parity with respect to the things which the farmer has to buy. Industry is not asked to take a loss; why, then, should the wheat farmer be asked to do so?
Time and time again it has been admitted in this house that the production of foodstuffs is a war industry. On this point I should like to quote from the statement which was made by the Minister of Agriculture in this chamber on November 14, 1940, as reported at page 96 of Hansard:
Perhaps one of the greatest war services provided in Canada has been performed by the farmers. I think the remarks of the different oppositions agree with that. We are inclined to _ look upon munitions, arms and armies as being indispensable in war time, and they are; but sometimes we forget that the necessities of peace time are the fundamental requirements of war time. Food and clothing are as indispensable in time of war as man-power itself, because without food and clothing there could be no man-power.
The farmers of Canada and the enlisted soldiers from all classes in Canada have been required to make greater economic sacrifices than any others. First it was the apple growers, next the tobacco growers, next the vegetable and small fruit growers; and now the wheat growers have been compelled, because of the turn of the war, to accept much less for their products than they had every right and reason to expect. Farmers suffered as great, if not greater, losses because of war fear before war was declared.
That was last fall, before this policy was enunciated.
Industry and business related to wheat appear to be very well looked after. It is admitted by the Minister of Trade and Commerce that at least $50,000,000 will be required to carry for the year 1941-42 the wheat owned by the Canadian government. This outlay represents storage charges of the elevators, and is in respect of an estimated obligation of $400,000,000. In other words, in order to carry $400,000,000 of an obligation we have to pay in one year $50,000,000, or one-eighth of the total obligation and this is entirely exclusive of interest, or" outstanding bank balances, or handling charges.
So far as I know it has never been suggested by the government that the elevator companies should not receive a fair return for their services and for the capital they have invested. It has been suggested, however, by hon. members on both sides that they are paid to-day more than a reasonable return for these

Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
services and for that investment. The hon. member for Last Mountain was particularly condemnatory of these charges when he spoke in the house last July, and both the hon. member for Souris and the hon. member for Portage la Prairie have complained that the elevator companies are receiving too high a return in comparison with what the farmer is asked to take. -Surely, if the elevator companies are entitled to a tremendous return on their investment, the man who makes the wealth which they are storing is entitled to at least a reasonable return on his labour.
With respect to this question of storage charges generally I want to add my protest to that which has been already voiced in this house against the exceptional consideration that has been given to elevator companies under the order in council dated February 19, which is referred to in Hansard of March 12 of this year by the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. MacKinnon) in the following words:
To meet this situation the government entered into an arrangement with western elevator companies for the construction of approximately 50 million bushels of temporary terminal storage space at Fort William-Port Arthur. The arrangements made were approved by order in council of February 19, 1941. I am assured a large part of this new space will be ready by July 31 of this year and the remainder in August and September. These facilities are being constructed by the elevator companies. The government has agreed to maintain all elevator tariff charges now prevailing without reduction until July 31, 1943, and to allow the companies to write off as depreciation for income tax purposes 50 per cent of the actual cost of construction in each of two successive years.
With the elevators full, with the storage charges guaranteed until 1943, with the right to write off this additional construction in the space of two years, I suggest that the elevator companies are indeed sitting in a very comfortable position and I only wish that the farmers were in a position in any way comparable. I am sure that many members of this house were astounded by the figures given the other day by the hon. member for Qu'Appelle (Mr. Perley) when he showed the sort of profit the elevator companies were making, and specifically pointed out that this additional storage space, which would take care of 50,000,000 bushels of wheat, would cost approximately $5,000,000 and that in one year the elevator companies would get $4,000,000 from it and in less than a year and a half would have paid for the entire additional elevator space. Added to that they will have the right to write off the whole thing for income tax purposes in the course of two years.

If the government of the country can be so generous to the elevator companies, it can be at least reasonable to the farmers. Industrial workers, I suggest, are being fairly treated and rightly so; but there is no reason why the farmer, who works just as hard and as diligently and who is producing a commodity that is required, should not be treated as well.


Mr. WOOD:: Is it not true-I asked the hon. member for Souris the same question the other day but did not get a satisfactory answer-that the handling companies are largely companies whose stock is held by the farmers? I want to be correct on that. I understand that there is a provincial obligation, but is not the common Stock held by the farmers, so that a lot of the money goes back to the same people who grow the grain?


Alfred Henry Bence: I was wondering whether the hon. member who asked the question of the hon. member for Souris and also of the hon. member for Portage la Prairie, suggesting that it was pertinent to the debate, had taken the opportunity to look into the matter for himself over the week-end, in order to determine whether it was so or not. He seemed to be so much interested in the debate, and he said it was so pertinent, I wondered if he had obtained information on the subject.


George Ernest Wood: The hon. member claims to be an authority.


Alfred Henry Bence: I do not claim to be an authority but I have obtained a book which I have been looking into during the weekend and I was wondering whether the hon. member also had obtained the information. This is an exhaustive book of 227 pages. It contains a list of the grain elevators in the western and eastern divisions. It was impossible for me to calculate the exact amount of elevator space owned by the United Grain Growers as opposed to the amount held by private interests, but contrary to what the hon. member stated the other day, the majority of the space is not owned by the wheat pool and the grain growers. I cannot tell him exactly. It was indicated to me that it would take three or four days to figure it out. I can tell him however that according to 'the Canada Year Book of 1941 there are 5,672 country elevators, and of that number 2,096 are owned by the United Grain Growers and the pool elevators of the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, considerably less than half. I was not able to calculate exactly what the proportion would be in connection with the terminal elevators, but I do say that well over half are owned by private concerns. Furthermore, those owned by the United Grain Growers and by the pool return dividends to the owners and not

Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
to all the farmers of western Canada, and it is not fair that one group should be discriminated against, even if they owned them all, in favour of another group. There should be a fair and reasonable return for the storage of the grain so that the farmers and all the people of Canada would not be unduly shorn of the money for which they are so hardly pressed.


George Ernest Wood: But is it not true that one of the qualifications for membership in the pool was that a man should be a land owner?


Alfred Henry Bence: But all the farmers of the west are not pool owners. Furthermore, less than half of the country elevators are owned by the pool and the United Grain Growers. The book to which I have referred can be procured from the board of grain commissioners. The hon. member can get a copy from the statistical branch of the Department of Agriculture.
It has been conclusively shown in this house that a price of 70 cents is not sufficient to cover the farmer's cost of production and keep him on the land as a contented producer. That statement, in effect, was made by the Minister of Agriculture last fall, and agricultural statistics men have been quoted in this house from time to time to show that it takes considerably more than that to cover the actual cost of production.
The argument has been used in the past that to increase the price would encourage the production of wheat. The Minister of Agriculture, speaking in this house on March 12 when the policy was enunciated, said:
It is considered by the government that only 230 million bushels of wheat can be delivered to the board on the open market or otherwise. In view of all the uncertain circumstances, the government is of the opinion that the advance upon the amount delivered should not be increased. The outstanding reason for that conclusion is the opinion that production of wheat should be decreased.
Well, I examined that statement and puzzled over it, but I cannot understand it, because with a limit on the amount that can be sold I do not see how the price can possibly affect production. If there is only a certain amount that can be sold, what difference will the price make so far as encouraging production is concerned?
The question is also asked, when most people speak of wheat, what should the price be. The Minister of Agriculture asked that question of some hon. member-the leader of the opposition, I believe, although I am not certain. I am not prepared to say what the price should be. I would leave it to men far better versed than I am in agricultural matters, but my own opinion is that the net
result should not be one fraction of a cent less than the net amount obtainable under the proposal placed before the government by the Saskatchewan government. In the words of the hon. member for Weyburn, that should be the absolute minimum.
The inevitable question is, where is the money to be obtained. The only thing I can say is, it will come from exactly the same place that all the other money comes from. If there is a limit on the procurable money- and of course I agree that there is-then there should be equality of sacrifice among all classes and all individuals. No one class should be asked to make a greater sacrifice than another, but under this policy the farmers are being asked to make far greater sacrifices than any other class. The Minister of Agriculture put it most realistically when on November 14 last, speaking of the returns to the wheat farmer, he stated, as reported at page 102 of Hansard:
If he is to receive more money, it must come from the sale price of wheat, or from the taxpayers of Canada, or from both.
That is quite true. But in determining what the price should be for wheat, or anything else, the policy of equality of sacrifice should be kept uppermost in the mind of the government.
I am curious to know into what fields the government wants the farmer to go if he is to stop growing wheat. Does the government want him to produce more pork? The eastern farmer is suspicious that it does. If that is so, I would remind the Minister of Agriculture that in his statement of February 27 he said, "We are producing in Canada all the hogs we require, both for domestic and for export consumption."


James Garfield Gardiner: If I might be permitted to interrupt: as soon as the hon. member is through-and I congratulate him on the manner in which he is dealing with this question; he is sticking to the question itself- I should like to have permission of the committee to put on Hansard a statement with regard to the question he is now raising, which I was not in a position to do before to-day. It might have an important bearing on some aspects of the discussion of this question.


Alfred Henry Bence: I should be very glad to have a statement from the minister. At the same time, speaking on February 27, the minister indicated that cheese production should be confined to those places that are best suited to it, and of course Saskatchewan was not included amongst those. The minister did indicate that we were receiving a very good
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Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
price for beef, and that there was a sufficient market in the United States to take all the beef we have without going to the English market at all. He might tell us just how far the government thinks the farmer should go in the matter of production of beef cattle.
Many questions such as these could be asked, and I must confess that I was a little disappointed that the two ministers when making their joint announcement did not go with a little more particularity into the various factors which influenced the decision at which they arrived, and did not give us a more detailed statement with respect to those proposals made by the great agricultural organizations, which were turned down by the government. For example, I should like to have heard an analysis with respect to an increase in the processing tax which the hon. member for Qu'Appelle suggested should not raise the price of bread at all. I should like to have heard reasons why the initial payment for wheat should not be raised, other than the suggestion that it might encourage the production of wheat. I should like to have had a more detailed analysis of the position with respect to advancing payments in connection with wheat stored on the farms which the farmer can eventually sell. It is obvious that he is not going to be able to sell anything like all the wheat he produces, in fact only a small portion, and it will take months before he can obtain his money from that maximum of 230,000,000 bushels that he is going to be permitted to sell. These are matters which I think are pertinent. The western people are asking this government why they are not given some explanation with respect to these various matters suggested by the organizations which represent them.
Just a word in connection with the argument that seems to have arisen between east and west. I was disheartened and disappointed to find many farmers in this house from eastern Canada protesting against the policy of the government with respect to the wheat farmer, the effect of which protest, so far as I can ascertain, was that the grain farmer was obtaining too much. If the actual root of their disagreement is the matter of the bonus and the extra money paid for summer-fallow I could see some purpose in the argument-


Mr. McNEVIN:: I should like to make it abundantly clear to the committee that in my remarks I suggested raising the price of wheat from 70 cents to 75 cents, which would more than compensate the bonus on coarse grain. The objection is not to giving sufficient consideration and assistance to the wheat grower, but to the method adopted for so doing.	[DOT]


Alfred Henry Bence: I am very glad to hear that statement. Then as a matter of fact there seems to be not much difference between eastern and western farmers, and if, having a good case, they will stick together, whether with respect to pork, cheese, butter or wheat, they will all be far better off than they will be if they continue the division which seemed to me to be apparent in this house the other day.
With respect to a general solution of this problem, whatever way we look at it, whether we consider the policy that has been proposed by the Federation of Agriculture, by the wheat pools, by the Saskatchewan or Alberta governments or any other of the agricultural organizations and governments of the west- The ACTING CHAIRMAN (Mr. Fournier, Hull):	Order. I am sorry to have to tell
the hon. member that his time has expired. Some hon. MEMBERS'. Go on.


James Garfield Gardiner: If at this point I make a statement which I had it in mind to make, I suppose my hon. friend can then go on and finish his remarks.
I appreciate the manner in which the hon. member for Saskatoon City (Mr. Bence) has dealt with this question. I was a little disappointed on Friday evening, when we were hopeful that we would be able to get as much information out to the farmers of the west as possible with regard to this matter, that we spent so much time discussing the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act, prairie farm assistance, and other things. I hope to be able to reply with regard to these matters at the proper time, but I trust it will not be necessary for me to do so while the present, debate is in progress. I rather feel that if we are to have this policy put into effect at. all, the farmers should have all the information possible before the house adjourns tomorrow evening. For this reason, some time between now and the Easter adjournment I should like to see thp regulations put in the-hands of the chairman of the committee and read and discussed section by section, I want the assistance of all members of this committee, whether they agree with the policy or not, in bringing out the different points dealt with by the regulations. Hon. members who are familiar with western agriculture can, I am sure, be helpful in that regard.


Grote Stirling: Will the passage of the regulations through this committee effect their adoption?


James Garfield Gardiner: The regulations as they are now drawn have been adopted by the government; that is, they have been passed. But as hon. members know, regulations can be changed as well as made by order in council.

Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
I am hopeful that out of the discussion in this committee will come suggestions which I can take to the government the following day as recommendations for amendments to the regulations. If that is at all possible I should like to get it done by to-morrow evening.


Richard Burpee Hanson: It is not like the laws of the Medes and Persians; the minister can change the regulations.


James Garfield Gardiner: The regulations-apart from the principle involved, which is the making of acreage payments for doing certain things-may be changed as a result of experience in putting them into effect.


Mr. COLDWELL:: Would it be possible, with the consent of the committee, to have these regulations read clause by clause, without our having to listen to a good many speeches before the regulations are considered? I agree with the minister that it is the regulations we wish to understand. Could we agree that at eight o'clock to-night, when we reassemble, these regulations will be tabled?


James Garfield Gardiner: I shall be prepared to place the regulations before the committee at any time that might be agreed.


Major James William Coldwell: I am making that
suggestion, that the regulations be taken up clause by clause.


James Garfield Gardiner: If some agreement could be reached, I should be glad to have that done.


Thomas Bruce McNevin: Is there any possibility of the bonus on coarse grains being removed?


James Garfield Gardiner: I am just going to try to tell my hon. friend that there is a reason why it should not be.
When the Minister of Trade and Commerce and I spoke on this matter some days ago, I can understand why some hon. members might have thought that certain details should have been dealt with at greater length than actually was the case. On a number of occasions, however, I have endeavoured to emphasize the fact that at times negotiations are going on between ourselves and Britain, or between ourselves and the United States, or among all three, which make it absolutely impossible for us to say anything with regard to what we may have in mind in respect of a certain matter. It just happened that this was one of those occasions. It was impossible to discuss freely two weeks ago what we can discuss freely to-day, and it is information in that regard that I wish to place on Hansard at the moment.
Earlier in the proceedings of this committee there was some discussion with regard to the necessity, or otherwise, for the production of
more coarse grains. So far as barley is concerned, in 1940 we produced 104,256,000 bushels, our highest production since 1930, when it amounted to 135,160,000 bushels. Since 1930 the figure has varied from 63,000,000 bushels to 103,000,000 bushels in 1939, so that last year our production was one million bushels greater than that of the year previous. The relative change in bushelage has been maintained fairly well in all provinces. With regard to oats, our production in 1940 was
380.526.000	bushels, and in 1939 it was
384.407.000	bushels, the highest since 1935. Prior to 1935, there was no higher production as far back as 1929. Therefore it was not a low production of coarse grains last year that created the situation which existed in either eastern or western Canada. The difficulty arose rather as a result of the increased production of hogs, which in 1940 amounted to
5,881,000.	The production for the three previous years was as follows:
1939	 4,294,000
1938	 3,886,000
1937	 3,963,000
In no year since 1931 have we had within a million of the number of hogs we had on June 1, 1940. I make that statement in order to point out that when the number of hogs produced in one year increases by almost two-fifths as compared with the previous year, it requires two-fifths more grain to feed them. When you have more cattle-and we have more cattle-and more of every other kind of live stock, it takes more grain to feed them. So it is not a question of getting along with the amount of grain that was grown in preceding years; it is a question of having more coarse grains produced if we are going to be able to feed more hogs. Last year we had not enough coarse grains to feed our hogs. As a matter of fact, we brought into Canada from the Argentine alone over two million bushels of corn, for other than commercial purposes; that is, more than 2,000,000 more than we brought in from the Argentine during the preceding year. In other words, it is a question of producing the grain necessary in order to feed the live stock that we require to feed, more particularly hogs.
I now come to the announcement I wish to make in connection with hogs. Last fall and prior to that, we were in the difficult position of having been told by Great Britain that she did not wish us to produce more hogs in Canada because of any belief we might have that at some time during the war she would require more bacon and ham from Canada. We were told at that time that this would have to be a matter for our own judgment, that they could not say what changes might take place which might call for the production
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of more or fewer hogs in this country. That was the position also when we were in Britain last fall. One of the questions involved then, and since, was the relationship, economic and otherwise, that was likely to exist during the coming twelve months between Great Britain and the United States. That question was largely decided when the lease-lend bill was put through the United States congress. Since that time we have been able to discuss more freely with Britain and the United States the question of what will be required of Canada in the way of hog production. Before this policy was announced to the house those negotiations had reached the point where we knew that Britain was likely to ask us for the production of a greater quantity of pork products, particularly ham and bacon, during the remainder of this year and next year than had been the case up to that time. Over the week-end, as the result of a visit by some of our officials to places where these matters could be discussed, we have received word that Great Britain is prepared to take from Canada during the present year 28,000,000 pounds more of bacon and ham than she had previously contracted to take. In addition, she is hopeful of being able to have that contract filled earlier than had been anticipated previously. This may result in our supplying more than the additional 28,000,000 pounds, or we may supply only the extra 28,000.000 pounds in addition to the amount already contracted for.
Great Britain has, however, gone further than that. She has intimated to us that she believes, in her interests as well as ours, we should give consideration to, and try to encourage, the even greater production of hogs in Canada next year. These intimations have come as a result of three-cornered discussions which brought out the fact that the United States have not been in the habit of shipping or even producing Wiltshire sides under their methods of operation. It is not something which they cannot do; it is something which they have not been in the habit of doing because their trade does not require it. They would probably prefer to ship to Great Britain some pork products which we do not put up in the same form. We could produce Wiltshire sides in increased quantity to advantage.
It has been intimated to us that all parties will be much better pleased if Canada would go on and produce all the Wiltshire sides she can to the amount which Great Britain requires, and our United States friends go on and deliver to Great Britain other pork products which they are accustomed to provide for their own trade and which would not interfere with our trade.

With that position before us, I should like to suggest that as we have been going on with this discussion it has become more and more apparent that we should produce coarse grains in Canada in greater quantities than we have been producing them during recent years. I quite understand the criticisms which were made earlier in the debate by hon. members coming from Ontario constituencies. I sympathize with them; but if people in other parts of Canada are going to be able to feed hogs for the market in Great Britain at price levels which are now being discussed in three-cornered discussions which affect not only this country but the United States, if the farmers of Canada both east and west are going to be able to feed hogs at the prices being discussed and in the volume-required, it will be necessary for us to produce more coarse grains in Canada than we have produced in any recent year.
I believe that will be in the interest, not only of the western farmer but of the eastern farmer. After all, there is a price to which coarse grains can rise, because of a scarcity for feeding purposes, and at which farmers both east and west could not afford to feed to hogs if the price of hogs is definitely set at a certain level at the time. If we are going to feed hogs this ye,ar in the numbers which Great Britain has said she would like us to feed, we can afford to have in Canada much more in the way of coarse grains than we had last year. I wished to make this announcement before there was further discussion in the committee.


Mr. CASTLEDEN:: I should like to ask a question in order to clear up some misunderstanding which has occurred in parts of the west. Many people out there seem to be under the impression that they are going to be paid S4 an acre for all the summer-fallow they put in this year. Could the minister state quite clearly that this will be paid only on the summer-fallow which a man has over and above what he had last year?


James Garfield Gardiner: That is covered by the regulations, and this information has gone out in press reports. As soon as regulations are drawn up in final form as a result of the discussion here, it is our intention to have them broadcast over the radio. It is our further intention to issue pamphlets, probably in different languages, containing full information.


George Hugh Castleden: I have a question to put to the Minister of Trade and Commerce in connection with a further misunderstanding. He has stated that the government will be able to take only 230,000,000 bushels of wheat this year. With the 27 million acreage

Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
in wheat last year, the present year under the reduction will be about 11,000,000 acres; this will mean an average production of about thirteen bushels to the acre. It will be impossible for the government to accept anything over and above an average of thirteen bushels to the acre.


James Angus MacKinnon: The acceptances will be on a quota basis. The intention is to make the first quota the same all over western Canada. The second quota will depend upon the yield of the district.


Mr. PERLEY:: Based upon last year.


James Angus MacKinnon: Sixty-five per cent of last year's acreage.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Will the regulations with reference to deliveries be available before we adjourn?


James Angus MacKinnon: I do not think there are any additional regulations with regard to the quota system that has been announced. At the present time the wheat board are drafting information or regulations having to do with this method of acceptance, and these will be distributed.


Mr. ROSS (Moose Jaw):: The hon. member referred to a yield of thirteen bushels to the acre from 11,000,000 acres. Surely he did not mean that.


George Hugh Castleden: Eighteen million acres is what I meant for 1941.	.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: An explanation should be given to hon. members of the regulations to be drafted so that they will be in a position to give information to any one who may question them when they go home. It might not always be 65 per cent based on the crop of last year because there will be districts where there was no crop.


James Angus MacKinnon: The wheat board will take care of special instances of that kind. It might be that everything was in summer-fallow last year, and this would have to be covered by regulation. The regulations regarding bonuses will be submitted to-morrow by the Minister of Agriculture.


James Garfield Gardiner: I should like to answer the point raised by the hon. member for Weyburn. The quota of five bushels per acre will be based upon 65 per cent of last year's acreage in wheat. It does not make any difference what acreage a man has this year, his quota will be based upon 65 per cent of last year's acreage. If he has a larger acreage this year, that will not give him a greater quota; if he has a smaller acreage this year, he will still have the same quota. The quota will
be 65 per cent of last year's wheat acreage, no matter what the acreage is this year. This is the first inducement to a man to reduce his acreage this year.


Thomas Miller Bell: The amount to be delivered is given as 230,000,000 bushels, but I understand that this is from all Canada, not just western Canada.


James Angus MacKinnon: Correct.


Thomas Miller Bell: Could the minister place on record the division between the east and the west? Is it 222,000,000 and 8,000,000?


James Garfield Gardiner: Approximately that.


Mr. NICHOLSON:: How many bushels per acre will that be, based on last year's yield?


James Garfield Gardiner: A little under twelve.


Mr. DIEFENBAKER:: What actuates the minister in bringing this matter before the committee by way of regulation? The argument was advanced the other day that the passage of this vote for $35,000,000 would expedite matters and would make unnecessary the placing of regulations before the house, but the minister stated to-day that he wished to secure the opinion of the committee as to regulations which have been drafted.


James Garfield Gardiner: I am afraid the second part of the hon. member's statement is not in accordance with my statement to the committee, although the first part is. I was hopeful that we would get along more quickly than we have by following this method rather than by bringing down legislation. I am, however, not so sure now that that is the quickest course. The hon. member referred to the fact that regulations would not be brought before the house. My statement was that if we brought down legislation, regulations were less likely to be brought before the house. The legislation would be discussed and passed section by section, and then I, as minister, under the powers given by the legislation, would make regulations.
I stated at that time that I preferred the suggestion which had come first, I think, from the hon. member for Qu'Appelle (Mr. Perley), that any regulations should be submitted either to the committee of the whole or to a special committee or to the house itself. I am proposing now that the regulations are ready to be submitted to the committee of the whole, to be discussed section by section either to-night or at some time before tomorrow evening, and if, as a result of the discussion, changes were considered advisable, I can take them back, recommend them to council and have them passed.
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John George Diefenbaker: That is just the point I am trying to make. The people of Canada have a right to know how this money is going to be expended. The minister says: "We have one set of regulations now which we thought were all right, but we believe that further alterations will have to be made in them, and after securing the opinion of the committee, any changes thought advisable will be recommended to the governor in council." That, Mr. Chairman, is my objection to this whole procedure. It is a departure from democratic principles, the adoption of a new system whereby the minister will be the one man who will have the right to determine, by order in council, following recommendations to the governor in council, how expenditures shall be made.
The minister has brought forward the instance he gave the other day of expenditures in connection with coal bounties. But this is quite different. Here we are as a parliament placing in the hands of a minister of the crown the right to expend $35,000,000, and he is bound by no statute, by no control whatsoever, except by regulations which have already been found unworkable in detail and requiring amendment. We come back to the point which we on this side of the house have raised on several occasions. We protest against the principle of placing in the hands of the governor in council the right to pass regulations uncontrolled by statute. Take the regulations which have been placed before us. What is there to protect any individual in western Canada who is not paid the amount provided herein for summer-fallow? Has he any recourse? Can he go to the courts when the minister says: You shall not receive any payment, and that is the end of it so far as I am concerned? In other words, if parliament approves the expenditure of these millions of dollars by regulation, it is in effect saying to the minister that he can do just as he pleases.
Under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, a statute, regulations were passed which deprived many people in western Canada of their just rights under this statute, and allowed an equal number, if not more, the right to share in the benefits under a statute to which they were not entitled. That was done by regulations passed in contravention of the statute that parliament had passed.
I am asking the minister now to place a statute before this committee. Why these regulations? That is not only my view. It is the viewpoint of constitutional authorities in the United Kingdom that the principle of a minister of the crown disbursing large sums of money under regulations, and not under a statute, is the most dangerous principle that

can be adopted. I am going to read to the committee what Lord Hewart, former Chief Justice of England, has said in dealing with this very matter. I quote from pages 12 and 13 of his book The New Despotism. He said:
It is one thing to confer power, subject to proper restrictions, to make regulations. It is another thing to give those regulations the force of a statute. It is one thing to make regulations which are to have no effect unless and until they are approved by parliament. It is another thing to make regulations, behind the back of parliament, which come into force without the assent or even the knowledge of parliament. Again, it is another thing to place the decision of a minister, in a matter affecting the rights of individuals, beyond the possibility of review by the courts of law.
That is exactly what this will do. The minister-and I am not sure that he would not use the power-would become an absolute dictator over the rights of every farmer in western Canada. He and those appointed by him will have the right to determine whether any person shall or shall not share in this sum which is being voted by parliament. There is no control whatsoever. The minister or those under his control or appointed by him may say to any qualified person: "You shall not receive any portion of the vote of parliament." There is no appeal, no recourse to the courts. It is entirely a discretionary matter with the minister. He says: "I have found it necessary to change the regulations already, and I will change them again if any recommendations to that effect come from this committee".
Why not adopt the ordinary democratic principle? Why not draft a statute embodying the ideas of the minister as enunciated by him when he first introduced these proposals and let us know, by statute, what the rights of farmers are all over Canada and what they must do to qualify and share in this scheme. I protest against a system being approved by parliament placing any minister of the crown and those under his control above the law, supreme over the individual, and with no right to appeal to the courts of the land.


James Garfield Gardiner: I must apologize to the hon. member for Saskatoon City (Mr. Bence) for having promised him that he would be able to rise as soon as I sat down. He has not yet had that privilege. I happen to have on my desk, not for the purpose of answering w*hat has just been said, but in order to answer some other points, the act which was drafted in 1935 by the then government, dealing with prairie farm rehabilitation. It states:
The governor in council may make such regulations as may be necessary or expedient for the effectual execution and working of this act and the attainment of the intention and objects thereof.

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That kind of provision is in many statutes. As a matter of fact, I was hurriedly looking through the list of them I have here, and I think I could quote almost any statute relating to the Department of Agriculture, setting up ways and means of controlling the expenditure of money by different branches of the government and enabling regulations to be made by order in council and those regulations to be put into effect-all for the spending of money. I mention that to suggest that there is not quite so much after all to the argument which has been presented by the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefenbaker), but I quite agree with him that under ordinary circumstances the principle he has laid down should be followed so far as it is possible to do so.


John George Diefenbaker: But there is not a statute here. That is just my point.


James Garfield Gardiner: There is not a statute; but there is provision, as I pointed out the other day, not only in connection with one item but many items, for similar things being done. Again I am not advocating that that should be the general practice, but there are special conditions under which it has been considered over a long period of time the proper way of dealing with certain matters.
As I stated when I brought down these proposals, there are two or three ways in which we might have dealt with them. We might have dealt with them by statute; we might have dealt with them as we are proposing to do now; or we might have dealt with them directly under the powers given to us by the War Measures Act and simply made another item, just as apples were-


Richard Burpee Hanson: Does not the minister think that would have been the wrong way? This could have been considered only indirectly a war measure.


James Garfield Gardiner: I came to the conclusion that it was preferable to deal with it this way, or we would have attempted to deal with it the other way. We have selected this method instead of proceeding altogether under the War Measures Act. As compared with half a dozen other matters, particularly the one having to do with apples, and others dealing with food products with which the Department of Agriculture is concerned, I could enumerate certain things which were required to be done in practically every department of government because of the fact that we are at war. To realize this, one has only to listen to those who have taken part in this discussion from all sides of the chamber. This is something which no party and no government which we have had in Canada in
the past, or are likely to have in the future, would bring in as a matter of policy, and say, "We are going to establish it on the statute books of this country, to remain there for a considerable period of time". It is an unusual thing, and we hope it will be necessary only for this year, although we may find it is necessary to extend it longer than this year.
The matter which I rose to place on Hansard a few moments ago is a case illustrating the point that changes are taking place every day. Before we return to this house, there may be many other changes in relation to the present war and the undertakings being entered into between Britain and the United States, between Britain and some other countries with which she is associated in this war, and between Britain and Canada, which may necessitate changes in regulations. For that reason we think it advisable to have the matter submitted to the house in the manner in which this has been presented.
As to the question whether changes were necessary so soon after we had drafted the regulations, I believe it is in the memory of hon. members that when I brought in the regulations the other day, I stated to the committee that of necessity those regulations were not complete, that there were certain things required to be done by the wheat board which would affect the nature of some of the regulations which would be required, and we were desirous of having the opinion of the committee before they went home for the recess, rather than of placing the regulations in final form before the country after hon. members had gone. That is the only reason why changes may be decided upon as a result of the discussions which take place here. We have brought forward these regulations earlier than they would otherwise have been placed before council, in order that they might have the consideration of this house as well as of those outside the house.


James Arthur Ross: I did not get clearly
the answer to the question of the hon. member for Weyburn as to this quota and the basis of delivery. If the amount per acre to be delivered this year is the same as the amount last year, it may be 350 millions. How do you arrive at the quota delivered on 65 per cent of the acreage? How do you arrive at the quota which the individual has to deliver, and what will become of the remainder?


James Garfield Gardiner: My understanding is
this, although, as the wheat board are working on the quota, I should not like anything which is said now to be taken as final. After all, it is the wheat board which deals with this matter. My understanding is, however,

Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
that the wheat board is empowered under the policy to take 65 per cent of a man's wheat acreage for 1940-it does not make any difference what he produced on it then, or what he will produce on it this year-and then state that the first quota is to be five bushels to the acre on 65 per cent of his last year's acreage, and they say, "You can deliver so much wheat." Take, for example, the case of a man who had 100 acres of wheat last 3rear. They say to him, "This year your quota is to be based on 65 acres"; they multiply that 65 by 5, and they get his first quota, which is 325 bushels. Then, according to my understanding of it, before allotting a further quota they learn what is the production in different areas this year, and the quota which is to be given over and above the five bushels will be based upon the productions of the different areas. In other words, there will be a larger delivery in the high production areas than in the low production areas. But that quota, again, is figured out on the basis of 65 per cent of last year's acreage. That principle obtains all the way through.


Richard Burpee Hanson: Not on
production?


James Garfield Gardiner: Not on production. Let us carry the illustration one step further, and take round figures, as being easier to work out at the moment. Suppose a farmer's quota in the area in which he lives is, finally, 10 bushels; he thinks he can grow 20 bushels to the acre; he puts in his wheat on 40 acres, instead of 100 or 65, and he grows 800 bushels of wheat. His quota at 10 bushels to the acre is 650 bushels, so that he has off 40 acres his quota plus his seed for the next year. The other provision applies to the reductions which are being made on the acreage, from 100 to 65.


James Arthur Ross: The quota would not be based on anything less than the marketing area? It would not be based on an individual's production?


James Garfield Gardiner: I understand it is the
marketing area.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: What would
be the marketing area? Would it be the shipping point?


James Angus MacKinnon: The shipping station, yes.


Thomas Bruce McNevin: I wish to make a brief remark or two with regard to the importation of 2,000.000 bushels of com. In Ontario the poultry business is a large enterprise; manufacturers of prepared poultry foods import almost every year, and I believe will continue so to do, substantial quantities of corn in order to mix in with their prepared chicken feed and poultry feed. I believe that unless

some system is devised whereby western Ontario corn can be dried satisfactorily for poultry food, no matter how much oats or millet or barley we produce in Canada, we shall still bring in from the United States or the Argentine a fairly substantial quantity of corn for that specific purpose.
Another point I desire to emphasize is this. On Monday of this week the Secretary of Agriculture for Great Britain announced to British farmers that within the next six months they will have substantially to deplete their herds and not keep them in the condition in which they have kept them in days gone by. That is an indication of what is ahead. We have been supplying large quantities of feeds of various kinds to Great Britain, and that market is curtailed, just the same as is our market for wheat. In times past, Denmark has consumed large quantities of Canadian barley. That market is also shut off. Much the same condition applies with regard to the coarse grains markets outside Canada as applies with regard to wheat.
With respect to the Ontario farmer benefiting by getting this cheaper feed, I want to point out this. Large quantities of western oats and other grains come into this province for other purposes. Lumbering institutions in some parts of the province still use a good many horses, so that a fairly substantial quantity of western grain comes in for other than stock feeding purposes. I had in mind the importation of a million bushels of this barley and oats, but let us put it at two million bushels. Do not forget that Ontario itself pays one-half of that subvention. If you take 100,000,000 bushels and bonus barley and oats in the west and bring it out to a percentage so as to see how it applies in Ontario and in the west respectively, you will have this result. At one end of the scale you will have one pound for the Ontario farmer, and at the other end of the scale you will have 100 pounds of bonused feed grain for the western farmer. We maintain that this is not a fair division. I believe we produce
527,000,000 bushels of coarse grain in the dominion from thirteen to fifteen million acres. To bonus that at $2 an acre would require approximately $30,000,000. If we are going to adopt that policy, let us treat all farmers equitably.


James Garfield Gardiner: I do not wish to argue the question with the hon. member for Victoria, Ontario. I only wish to place the facts before him and I think I have done that.


Thomas Bruce McNevin: Does the minister intimate that I have not placed the facts before the committee?

Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages


James Garfield Gardiner: No, I am not suggesting that at all. I simply say I do not wish to argue the question as between the set of facts which the hon. member has produced and the set of facts which I have submitted to the committee. I only point out that there were one-fifth more hogs produced last year than the year before, and any member will agree that it will take one-fifth more feed to feed them. If we complied with Britain's wish and produced another one-fifth more for next year, it would take two-fifths more feed, whether grown in Ontario or in western Canada or in the Argentine. The fact is that we did bring in 4,600,000 bushels of corn from all sources including the Argentine in 1939. We brought in 5,399,000 bushels, or 743,000 bushels more last year, whether to feed chickens or whatever it was for. In other words, we were doing one of the things we have been asked by the members of the committee in all parts of the house to try to avoid doing now that *our own farmers are finding it difficult to dispose of their products. We are bringing in feed products from long distances in order to make it possible to feed hogs, and I suggest that we should get that grain inside Canada if we can under these conditions.
If we are not able to sell wheat-and we all agree that we are not-it might be better to turn some of that land into the production of more of this coarse grain and allow the farmers of Ontario or of any other part of Canada to get this coarse grain. As to whether Ontario needs more or not, I had a telephone call from the department of agriculture in Toronto two or three days ago suggesting to me that there was a possibility that within a little more than a month from the time Ontario undertook to take a certain quantity of grain from western Canada or from elevators at Fort William to help to feed live stock in Ontario, practically the whole quota which had been set up to take care of the period *down to July 15 had already been used up. That does not indicate that the farmers of Ontario do not need more feed,, and I am told that they were so anxious to get it that they used up about one-quarter of the freight *quota in paying a higher price for the feed than the feed was at the beginning of the period. In other words, instead of having the advantage of the whole four-quarters as compared with the beginning of the period, they were getting the advantage of about three-quarters.


An hon. MEMBER:: What was the quota?


James Garfield Gardiner: The quota was 3,200,000 bushels for Ontario. That indicates that even now there is a strong demand for feed grain
in Ontario, and I have no doubt there is a strong demand all the way down to the Atlantic.


Thomas Bruce McNevin: No doubt the minister is aware that large quantities of grain in western Ontario were destroyed last year, unfit for feed. That has a direct bearing on the question.


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, I have been in their granaries and have seen the grain. That created this situation. They had to feed that grain on the farm; they could not ship it anywhere. That had something to do with the reduction in the consumption of greater quantities of grain from elsewhere, because the grain referred to by the hon. member could not be consumed anywhere else than on the farm. I will not argue with any one in the committee, but the demands are now for larger quantities of bacon and ham from Canada, and the very point raised by the hon. member for Victoria, Ontario, a moment ago is one of the reasons for it. Britain is saying to her people, not "Do not produce more meat because we do not want it," but, "We cannot afford to put more of our grain into meat." Britain says that one pound of certain kinds of grain is as valuable as food as four pounds of certain kinds of meat, and it takes four pounds of grain to make one pound of meat; so she says, "We will feed them grain whether they like it or not." We have a shortage of grain with which to feed live stock and, as a result of the shortage of live stock itself, Britain says to us, "We want you to feed more live stock." My suggestion is that we should be prepared to do it, and in preparing ourselves to do it we should get more coarse grains for the purpose.


Richard Burpee Hanson: The hon. member for Victoria, Ontario, is not objecting to the principle the minister is laying down, but he says that if we are to do this we should do it on a more equitable basis. That is what he is saying, if I understand him correctly, and there is something in that argument.


James Garfield Gardiner: I do not wish to discuss that point further than to say that at present we are doing it on an equitable basis. Under this proposal we suggest four cents a bushel on a crop of 50 bushels to the acre. Under the plan now being followed in shipping feed grain into Ontario, we-not ourselves and the Ontario government combined, but this government alone-are paying a little more than four cents a bushel on every bushel shipped from the west to feed live stock in eastern Canada. I contend, therefore, that we are already doing this on a fifty-fifty basis as
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between east and west. It is possible that my hon. friend's contention may be correct; that is, he is afraid that we may put in an extra large crop of coarse grains this spring and may have ideal conditions and so produce a big crop. Those are the "ifs" of agriculture every year; we are all optimistic enough to think we shall get a good crop, and we may have a sufficient quantity of barley or of oats this year to force the price down to the other man who has oats and barley to sell. That man, however, forms a larger percentage of the farmers in the western provinces than in the eastern provinces, particularly Ontario.
I can understand the argument of my hon. friend the member for Portage la Prairie. His people have gone out of the production of wheat largely and into the production of barley, and they argue that by producing more barley in the west, the price of their barley will be lowered. There is something in that. It is argued, however, that we need more barley and more oats for feed grain of some kind to feed live stock in Ontario than can be grown there. Then they complain about growing it out west in large volume, though that only lowers the price to the men who want to feed it. The farmers I know in Ontario-and I know quite a few- do not grow feed grain to sell; they grow it to feed, except my friends in the corn belt who do both. The price of that grain is not based upon the price of oats or barley; it is based upon the price of hogs or dairy products; the cheaper they can get their feed requirements, the more profit they will make out of their hogs and dairy products. In other words, I cannot follow the argument of the hon. member for Victoria, Ontario. It is quite all right to have it put up, but it is difficult to follow. We want more grain here, we have to get it somewhere; if we get it from western Canada, the greater the volume grown there, the cheaper it will be for the Ontario farmer. That seems to me logical and sound; if not, I should like to know why.


Thomas Bruce McNevin: If you try paying a $2 bonus in Ontario for coarse grains you will certainly get more.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is just the point; we are not paying a $2 bonus in western Canada on all coarse grain grown, we are paying $2 an acre only on the amount of coarse grain they sow this year in addition to what went in last year. If I remember rightly, that was somewhere in the neighbourhood of thirteen to fourteen million acres last j'ear, and we are hoping to be able to add 
one and a half million or, at the outside, two million to that if it is taken out of wheat. It must be taken out of wheat before the bonus can be paid, and it is only a proportion of what he takes out of wheat that will go into barley or oats. I think one is optimistic in hoping that it will be even one and a half million acres, and if you compare one and a half million with the thirteen or fourteen million acres that we already have, the proportion of the payment that goes into a bushel of oats is extremely small; I think it is less than one-tenth of a cent a bushel.


Ernest Edward Perley: From what we have learned this afternoon the minister evidently intends changing these regulations that were distributed on April 2. What has happened during three or four days makes it apparent that something may happen at any time, because the minister has the power to make further changes. Since there is the possibility of a considerable increase in coarse grains, I do not think we can afford to have these regulations passed until we have an announcement from the Minister of Trade and Commerce with respect to the handling of these coarse grains. The minister stated this afternoon that these regulations are being drawn now, so this is a double barrelled proposition and we should have from the Minister of Trade and Commerce a statement of the regulations that may govern the marketing of coarse grains. If we have a very large increase in coarse grains, it may come through the trade or through the board, and the minister has stated that the board might force the price of coarse grains dowm. The wheat board has power, under an order in council, to bring coarse grains under its operations.


James Angus MacKinnon: I certainly did not knowingly make any statement that the wheat board were drafting regulations regarding the delivery of coarse grain.


Ernest Edward Perley: But the minister said they were now preparing regulations with respect to this year's marketing of wheat.


James Angus MacKinnon: Yes, marketing of wheat.


James Garfield Gardiner: I did not intentionally make the statement that the board would force down the price of coarse grains. I indicated that the fact that you have more coarse grain than you can feed might force the price down. That is a matter of supply and demand.
I am quite prepared to give an undertaking to the committee that any changes which are made in these regulations during the time this house is in session will be brought before

Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
the house before being recommended to council. The only power that we desire to have in connection with this matter is to be in a position to deal with circumstances that arise at times when the house is not in session. Any time the house is in session I am quite prepared to say that all regulations will be placed before the house.


Mr. GRAHAM:: I should like to remind the western members of this committee particularly, that this house proposes to adjourn to-morrow night, that spring operations on western farms are commencing, and that the greatest contribution we can make to the interests of our constituents would be to get down to an examination of these all-important regulations, and I would suggest that we spend very little of the short time left in the consideration of the merits of this scheme, but that we serve our constituents by considering these regulations and attempting to make them the most useful they can be made under the scheme announced by the government.


James Arthur Ross: Following the suggestion of the hon. member for Swift Current, would it be possible to go over these regulations to-night clause by clause? Certainly, when we go home to western Canada, we are going to be asked many questions, and even after discussion in much detail there will still be many questions which we shall not be able to answer.


James Garfield Gardiner: It is quite acceptable to me if the committee is agreeable, that at eight o'clock we start to discuss the regulations clause by clause.


Major James William Coldwell: That is an excellent suggestion, which I think should be adopted.


Mr. GRAYDON:: The western members are not the only ones who are going to be asked some questions when this house adjourns for the Easter recess. I do not always find it necessary to come to the defence of the hon. member for Victoria, Ontario, but I think there is one thing the minister may have overlooked in his argument, and I should not like him to have an argument that is not foolproof. That one thing is this: as far as greater production of coarse grains for feeding purposes is concerned I think the minister took it for granted that the grain would be all taken from western Canada to eastern Canada and fed here. The fear of eastern Canadian agriculture is not the movement of cheaper feed to eastern Canada but that there will be more competition in mixed farming by virtue of all these changes in western Canada. I realize that there are two sides to all questions, and I do not wish to be dogmatic, but eastern Canadian agriculture
does view with some alarm the changes likely to result from these regulations; because, if mixed farming increases in western Canada, it will affect eastern agriculture.
I do not think that, in years gone by, eastern agriculture has had too good a break as far as governments are concerned, and in saying that I am not making a charge against any particular government. You can readily see the position we have been up against in eastern Canada for a long time. Take the present government; among the eighteen cabinet ministers we have not one eastern Canadian farmer. I make only that comment. In addition, we have hardly any representatives of eastern Canadian agriculture on any of the boards, either war-time or peace-time, of the government. It may be that, in some instances, this is perfectly all right; it might be argued by some that there would be no justification for placing such representatives on these boards, but the people of eastern Canada cannot see it that way. They have the feeling that these regulations indicate a movement towards mixed farming in the west which will be to their detriment. They are not anxious, and never have been anxious, to see the agriculturist of the west discriminated against. There is a great bond of feeling between agriculture in eastern and western Canada; but on the other hand they have to protect their own interests in these matters as well. What has been said by the hon. member for Victoria, Ontario, with regard to one class of farming getting a bonus while another class gets nothing, perhaps would not mean so much but for the fact that to-day eastern Canadian agriculture is passing through one of the worst periods it has experienced since I have had anything to do with agriculture in this part of the country, and because of that fact the people are aroused.
The minister should be very careful, in dealing with this set-up, that he does not assist western agriculture at the expense of eastern agriculture. I would prefer to see western agriculture assisted by the whole of Canada, rather than at the expense of another part of the agricultural industry. I have no doubt that in framing these regulations and placing them in some workable form, he will keep that point in mind. It is not a question of creating a fight between east and west; a fight of that kind is the last thing we want at any time. I would be one of the first to say that western agriculture should be helped, but we should not forget that there is an east as well as a west. I point this out to the minister and ask him to consider these points thoroughly before making any change that may bring about, in time to come, severe farming competition as between the east and the west.

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Richard Burpee Hanson: I do not wish to get into the intricacies of these regulations; I would not be competent to deal with them, but I have had a haunting fear all the way through that this estimate of $35,000,000 is not going to be the measure in dollars and cents of the amount the treasury will have to expend by way of this assistance. The other day the minister himself indicated that in connection with this matter there would be governor general's warrants and what-not. What does the minister visualize, in dollars and cents, as the extent of this aid to western Canada, no matter what the incidence may be? I am not concerned with that at the moment. Could this run to $100,000,000, or some comparable sum, or is it to be fixed at $35,000,000? That is the question I am asking, and I think the public should know the answer.


James Garfield Gardiner: I hesitate to make
prophecies, although I have made one or two with regard to western Canada. For example, when we were discussing the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, the then leader of the opposition asked the same question. I stated at that time that the cost would be somewhere between $10,000,000 and $15,000,000, and the actual cost was just a little under $10,000,000.


Richard Burpee Hanson: That was a good margin.


James Garfield Gardiner: Well, that was pretty fair; it came out just about as it was stated. In connection with the matter, I do not see any possibility, by any legislation that you could place on the statute books or any resolution that you could pass through this house, of persuading the farmers of western Canada to cut their wheat acreage by more than 9,000,000 acres.


Richard Burpee Hanson: You think it would be too abrupt?


James Garfield Gardiner: I do not think it is a possibility at all. The outside amount that could be paid under this policy, on 9,000,000 acres, is $36,000,000, at the rate of $4 an acre. If the farmers of the west put half that acreage into coarse grains and grass, then that amount would be reduced by a quarter. If they put three-quarters of that acreage into summer-fallow, as I said the other day, this would mean $24,000,000 for summer-fallow and about $6,000,000 for the remainder, or a total of $30,000,000. I do not see that there is any possibility of the figure going up to even S36.000,000; but in order to provide an opportunity for the farmers of the west to increase their returns this year by $36,000,000, if they are inclined to do so, this amount is being provided. We lay before the

fanner the method by which they may SO' increase their returns; we say, "If you want to cut down your wheat acreage, you can get this money this year. If you do not want to, you will have to wait until somebody wants to buy your wheat before you can get that money."


Richard Burpee Hanson: All right; so far so good. We remember what the minister has said. What will be the cost of administration, having regard to the very high percentage of cost under these other assistance acts to which the minister has made reference? I understand that the cost under some of those measures has been as high as 30 per cent, which is, of course, an extraordinary cost.


James Garfield Gardiner: The other evening we put through an item of $384,000, speaking from memory, which was the administration cost in connection with an expenditure of close to $7,000,000. That is scarcely 30 per cent. It is too high, I think, and I have maintained that it is too high; but again I submit it was the action of this house that was responsible for at least half that expenditure last year. I tried to argue the house out of it but failed, and we must follow the legislation in making our expenditures. The Prairie Farm Assistance Act and this measure will be administered partly under the same organization, and I would say that the cost of administering the two measures should not greatly exceed half a million dollars.


Richard Burpee Hanson: That is why you are combining them?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes.
At six o'clock the committee took recess.
After Recess
The committee resumed at eight o'clock.


Mr. WRIGHT:: Mr. Chairman, in the particular section of the country from which I come there are large numbers of farmers who have moved in from the south to reestablish themselves on quarter-sections. This movement has occurred in the last year or two, and they have very little land under cultivation, most of them having only from twenty to forty acres. This legislation will work a great hardship upon them if they cannot deliver more grain than the regulations permit. If the government cannot see fit to increase the amount of grain which these people on these small acreages will be able to deliver, I suggest that they give some consideration to changing the regulations in connection with the delivery of malting barley..

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Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
These people are going to have to change from wheat production to barley production. At the present time if a man has not a carload of barley to ship, he does not get the malting premium. He must send in a sample to the maltster, and have it accepted, and then he can sell the carload. It seems to me that the government should consider establishing this fall a fixed price for malting barley and make it possible for these people to deliver quantities smaller than carload lots and still receive the malting premium.
There is another class of farmer in our district, those who are breaking up large acreages of new land. I have in mind one man who has a half-section farm which he bought some three years ago. His agreement calls for the delivery of 1,000 bushels of wheat each year for twenty years. Last year he had 100 acres in wheat. Last summer he got another quarter-section of land alongside his own on which he broke 100 acres. In connection with that particular quarter, his agreement is to deliver 500 bushels of wheat each year. He now finds that he will be able to sow only sixty-five acres of wheat this year and yet his contracts call for the delivery of 1,500 bushels of wheat. How is this man to fulfil his contract, and what protection will he have? There should be something in the regulations whereby the man with new land should be able to deliver some of the wheat grown on the land which he is breaking.


James Garfield Gardiner: The first question was
as to whether a man would be permitted to reduce his acreage in wheat in the first year he is on the farm, his first year's breaking. As I understand it, this man was breaking the land for the first time. The natural thing for such a man to do is to put the land he breaks into wheat, with the exception of the small amount of oats and barley he would need for feeding purposes. When the regulations were brought in the other day, I stated that this is one of the questions with which it was a little difficult to deal at this stage.
First, I think we should know what the wheat board intend to do in the matter of deliveries and base our action upon that. I would assume that the regulation which will have to be added to take care of a, case of that kind is one which would provide for a certain percentage of the land broken last year for the first time, it being assumed to have been in wheat last year, and would start from there to reduce the wheat acreage and make payments accordingly.
The other question had to do with leases which require the summer-fallowing of a certain amount of land or the sowing of a certain number of acres to wheat or the delivery of
a certain amount of wheat. I think it will be necessary to add to the "notwithstanding" regulations a provision, under the War Measures Act, that the terms of the agreement in so far as the reduction of wheat acreage is concerned, do not apply. The present intention is to say that a man may reduce his wheat acreage irrespective of what a contract may state, but that he must carry out the other part of his contract which states that he should continue to summer-fallow a certain amount of land. If there is in the contract a section which requires him to summer-fallow so much and no more, that particular section would not apply. There is a wording which can be put into the form of a regulation to take care of that case.
The amount of wheat which would be delivered would hardly be affected by the suggestion which was made by the hon. member. The suggestion is that a man's quota is based upon 65 per cent of his acreage, and therefore he cannot grow more. As a matter of fact, there is nothing in the regulations to compel a man to grow either less or more or the same amount of wheat as he grew last year. He can grow any amount he likes, but de does not get a quota of more than 65 per cent of his 1940 acreage for delivery. To that extent he may be affected as regards being able to deliver and sell the 1,000 bushels, but he could deliver the 1,000 bushels to some other party.


Percy Ellis Wright: According to these contracts the man must deliver the grain at the local elevator point, and under these regulations he will not be able to do that. Which is going to have a greater force in law, the contracts which he has entered into or the regulations issued by the board? Can the man be dispossessed from his farm because he cannot carry out his contracts on account of the regulations?


James Garfield Gardiner: These regulations would not affect the amount of wheat which he can deliver to the elevator.


Percy Ellis Wright: I mean the wheat board regulations.


James Garfield Gardiner: This would not be affected by that. The intent in connection with these regulations is to declare, under the War Measures Act, that contracts of a nature which would interfere with the carrying out of this policy are not to be effective.


Roy Theodore Graham: There is one suggestion I should like to make to the Minister of Trade and Commerce with regard to the proposed system of quota deliveries. As I understand the method, there will be a minimum quota of five bushels an acre allowed to each
2226	COMMONS
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farmer marketing wheat, and thereafter an ascending quota dependent upon the crop and the yield in the district adjacent to the shipping point. I think it is admitted that in areas where the crop yield is light, the farmers will be under the necessity of marketing more grain than the initial quota would provide. Roughly speaking, a five-bushel quota would provide in the gross $2.50, and I would suggest to the Minister of Trade and Commerce that he consider that until the quotas reach fifteen bushels an acre, it be maintained equally throughout the whole wheat-growing area. That would give to each farmer, as storage space permitted, the right to deliver on a basis of equality, regardless of yield per acre, a number of bushels amounting to fifteen an acre. That might mean seeking the cooperation of the railways to move grain more quickly out of the low yield districts than out of the high yield districts, but I suggest to the minister that the $7.50 which fifteen bushels would provide is a sum absolutely necessary for every farmer to have in order to take care of the costs incurred by his being in the business of farming, and to take care of his immediate necessities. I do not think that would work any hardship. Thereafter the gradation of quotas could be applied. We must keep in mind that by the very fact that a farmer has a generous yield per acre, he is in a better position to finance his requirements and take care of his immediate household needs than a farmer with a very low yield in the drought-stricken area. I suggest that the minister give this matter due consideration in considering the system of quotas.


James Angus MacKinnon: It is impossible to draft regulations or introduce legislation on the subject of wheat which will fit the particular circumstances of each of the three hundred thousand farmers in western Canada. There will be suggestions made in this discussion similar to the ones made by the hon. member for Swift Current, and all I can say at the moment is that they will be taken under advisement and discussed with the wheat board.


George Hugh Castleden: Is it not true that under the 230,000,000 bushels limitation it would be impossible to accept fifteen bushels an acre from three-quarters of the wheat acreage?


James Angus MacKinnon: Quite impossible.


Roy Theodore Graham: I know that, but as the quotas are lifted and as storage space permits, an extra number over and above the five bushels could be allowed until a quota of fifteen bushels was reached.
TMr. Graham.]


George Hugh Castleden: The small farmer with fifty acres in wheat and twenty bushels to the acre has a cash crop of about $500. He may have twenty-five acres of summer-fallow and twenty-five acres of coarse grains, but he depends on wheat for his cash crop. This is what he must have to pay his taxes, his costs of growing grain so far as he can, his machinery costs, his payments on the land, necessary clothing and medical attention. Out in the west the municipalities often resort to seizure to get their taxes in, and if the fifty acres of wheat is cut down to thirty-four acres, and the farmer is allowed to deliver, as he will be under the quota, only about twelve bushels an acre, he will have a cash income of about $300. A cash income of $300 means that he cannot carry on. I would therefore urge that serious consideration be given to the suggestion that no compulsory action be taken against the man who has less than 800 or 1,000 bushels to deliver, because, if he cannot deliver that much, he is in tragic circumstances.
The minister said the other night that the best place to store the wheat was in the land in form of summer-fallow, but I want to tell him this, that if the farmer stores wheat in the form of summer-fallow, then under existing circumstances he is likely storing it for someone else. Those farmers have had no proper protection for years. There is nothing to stop the mortgage holders from seizing the land. I urge the government to use the War Measures Act to institute at least a moratorium against foreclosures for the duration of the war. Otherwise their homes are going to be taken away from the farmers and the people left on them will be share-croppers. That will be the ruination of a large portion of western Canada.
The Minister of Trade and Commerce told us last November that the government was taking steps to see that the farmers did not bear an unfair share of the burden of this war. But these farmers are going to be compelled to yield their land and their homes and everything they have worked for if this legislation goes through. I appeal, therefore, to the administration seriously to consider the consequences of this legislation. It means the ruination of these people. I can see no other way out. Somebody has referred to the farmers as the first casualties in this war. The administration should do something to restore their morale instead of driving them deeper into despair. Many of these people have given their sons, and many of them have gone themselves to fight to save Canada. When the boys return and find their

Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
homes in western Canada gone, this government will have to take the consequences, and I do not know what they will be.


Mr. CLARK:: Mr. Chairman, I should like to direct a few remarks to the Minister of Trade and Commerce regarding the operation of the Ontario division of the Canadian wheat board. In correspondence with the minister I believe the board made the statement that they had plenty of storage available to handle the Ontario wheat crops. I have a letter to that effect which came to me, I believe, fvom the minister's office. It is dated Toronto, Ontario, July 24, 1940, and reads:
To all agents:
Owing to congested conditions that are hound to develop in the terminal elevators, and also to the fact that railway cars are very likely to be scarce, thus causing the railway companies to demand fast unload of their ears, the board feels that it is only fair to warn you in advance that it will not accept any shipments until instructions have been issued to you giving the destination of such shipments. You are, therefore, advised not to load any wheat in the hope of getting subsequent shipping instructions, but to secure such shipping instructions before loading.
Storage and railway conditions at the present time are of such a nature that careful allotment of shipments will be necessary and it will not always be possible to give the shippers the shipping instructions that they request. These conditions are something beyond the control of the board, and it is suggested that in order to handle this unprecedented situation, with as little inconvenience as possible to all concerned, you ask the producers in your district to retain as much wheat as possible on their farms.
Continuing:
It is more than a possibility that all shipments will have to be under a permit system, and at times an embargo on shipments will have to be put into effect.
Please remember, do not load any cars until you have had instructions from the board to do so.
Those instructions were sent out when apparently the board had ample storage facilities to handle the Ontario crop, and when they did not know that we would have a rainy harvest, with perhaps a small portion of the crop being marketed as milling wheat.
The marketing of wheat in Ontario to the board generally starts on August 1. A certain condition immediately developed. The board did not issue shipping instructions, and I know of different cooperatives, one in particular, which sold twenty of the first cars taken in at that elevator direct to the millers, because no shipping instructions were issued. The Western Ontario Elevator Association, all of them agents of the board, 14873-141
naturally were very much worried over this situation. The secretary sent out a letter on August 12, as follows:
Gentlemen,
Are you satisfied with the way the wheat board is handling things so far this year? We hear many complaints and in order to learn the true situation, that is to get a picture that covers not just two or three elevators but the majority of those loading for the board in southwestern Ontario, I ask you to fill in the following questionnaire.
Any figures you may give me will not be made public but totals compiled from these and others may be made public or used to try and improve the situation.
If we are to do anything to help in time to be of use this year we must act quickly so I ask you to get this away by return mail.
1.	Up to and including Friday, August 9, how many bushels of wheat had you reported to the board, on form T-2?
2.	How many bushels of storage capacity had you reported to the board?
3.	Up to and including Monday, August 12, how many bushels had the board given you loading instructions for?
4.	Up to and including Monday, August 12, how many bushels of open or non-board wheat have you shipped?
5.	If the board had given you instructions to load so that you could have taken in wheat from the farmer for the board how much or what percentage would have gone on the open market ?
The letter is signed by the secretary of the Ontario Elevators Association.
That was the condition which existed when, the board declares, they had ample storage facilities available. By not giving shipping instructions they caused the dealers to sell direct to the millers. But the board was set up to handle this wheat in a cooperative way, market it in an orderly manner, and get as much money for the producers as it was possible to get.
We might take a look at the figures. In t'he first two months the inspections were 1,184,295 bushels, of which 455,211 bushels went into the storage. Therefore the board must have sold direct to the mills 729,084 bushels of wheat. Now, along with selling to the millers approximately 61 per cent of the wheat which they took in during the two months, they drove, by not giving shipping instructions, a great deal more wheat to the millers. What really happened after that was this. When the wheat was in the hands of the millers, the price rose 24 cents a bushel in thirty-two days. The Minister of Agriculture mentioned, I believe a week ago on Friday, that perhaps there was some dissatisfaction with the operations of the eastern division of the Canadian wheat board. I think he is absolutely correct, and I feel that there should be an eastern division controlled by eastern

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Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
men who understand the marketing of eastern wheat. There is not a question in my mind but that the Ontario farmer lost a lot of money in the marketing of his wheat by this particular board, although I will say that if there had been no board, he would, I believe, have got ten cents a bushel less.


Karl Kenneth Homuth: Who created the board?


Stuart Murray Clark: The government, of course, and I supported it. If the board had handled and marketed the wheat in an orderly maimer, it would have been a real asset.


Karl Kenneth Homuth: Very bad!


Stuart Murray Clark: That is right. Therefore I am in favour of a board controlled by this government, and, if you like, in affiliation with the wheat board, but I would urge that those who constitute it should be thoroughly familiar with the marketing of Ontario wheat.
I have had a chat on this matter with the minister since six o'clock. If we are going to take up some of these regulations, I may have something to say about the corn situation.


Major James William Coldwell: I have a question to ask about the first regulation, dealing with definitions:
"Summer-fallow" means the cultivation of fallow land before August 1, 1941, in such a way as to conserve soil moisture and prevent soil drifting.
I wondered about that word "and" in the regulation. A number of our farmers still cling to the idea that a fine mulch on land is the best way of preserving moisture, and yet we know perfectly well that a fine mulch encourages soil drifting. I wondered whether the intent was to compel farmers to leave the surface of the soil rough, as they are doing in many places, or to let the grass remain on the surface of the land to prevent drifting. I noticed that word "and", and I thought 1 should like to get the minister to express an opinion as to whether it had any particular significance in this definition.


James Garfield Gardiner: Mr. Chairman, it would probably be more correct to say, "and/or"; that is, to put both words in, because it is intended to deal with either the one case or the other.
Mr. PERiLEY: How will this affect stripfarming? In many instances farmers had last year half their land in wheat and the other half summer-fallow, under that system.


James Garfield Gardiner: That, of course, would be the reason for using the term, "and/or". It may be done through strip-farming. For the
[Mr. Cl ark.1
purpose of preventing drifting, one year one strip may be summer-fallowed and the other cropped, and the succeeding year the reverse practice will be followed.


Ernest Edward Perley: Would this system, then, not upset that whole arrangement; that is, when they have to reduce by 35 per cent the seeded acreage of last year?


James Garfield Gardiner: I do not think so, only to this extent, that they would have to put in coarse grains instead of wheat in some of their strips. They might have difficulty in increasing summer-fallow materially, but they could substitute coarse grains.


John George Diefenbaker: With regard to these regulations, may I call attention to the wording of section 2. It reads in part:
With respect to the number of acres in any farm by which the wheat acreage on such farm in 1941 is less than that of 1940, hereinafter called "wheat acreage reduction", the minister may, after requisite proof has been established, pay-
Certain amounts. I notice that in that particular paragraph the word "may" is used -which, after all, is permissive and not mandatory. A little later, in the proviso of paragraph 2, it reads as follows:
. . . provided that in the case of any farm on which
(a) there was no wheat acreage in 1940 but which had wheat acreage in 1939, the wheat acreage of 1939 or 60 per centum of the cultivated acreage in 1940, whichever is the lesser, may be accepted by the minister as the basis for wheat acreage reduction in 1941.
It may be argued that, as is often the case, "may" is mandatory and not permissive. But regulation No. 3 reads as follows:
A farmer to be eligible for any payment with respect to wheat acreage reduction shall make application not later than May 31, 1941-
And so on. In other words, having interchangeably used "may" and "shall", the only conclusion one can come to is this, that "shall" is mandatory and "may" is permissive. Would the minister give consideration to the alteration of paragraph 2 (a) and also fa) of the proviso, so that it would become obligatory for him, upon conformity on the part of any farmer with the provisions of these regulations, to make the payment as therein stated?


James Garfield Gardiner: I raised exactly the
same question when the draft of the regulations was brought to my attention, and what J am told is this, that in drafting regulations, in the places where they apply to the minister or to the government, "may" is the term used, and that "may" under these cir-

Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
cumstances means "shall"; but that where we are applying a regulation to a farmer who is not a member of the government, we must say "shall". That is merely a matter of drafting, and the draftsmen in the Department of Justice tell me that is the meaning, and I find that all the way through the different regulations.


Richard Burpee Hanson: The minister had better take that with a little bit of reserve. "Shall" is binding on the farmer. With respect to the permissive word "may", the interpretation which the minister states has been given him is just so much eye-wash. The intention of this section is to leave to the minister absolutely absolute discretion and nothing else.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is not the intention of the minister, because I brought the matter up myself.


Richard Burpee Hanson: I think it should be obligatory. The interpretation the minister has given me is all wrong, when he says that the word "may", applied to the crown or to a minister, is interpreted as obligatory. That is wrong. It is the intention of the draftsman, and the interpretation that will be given in any court of law, if it gets to a court of law-and I do not know how it will ever get there-that there is discretion in the minister. That is what ought to be avoided at all cost.


James Garfield Gardiner: There would be discretion in the next phraseology, where it says that the minister "may", after requisite proof has been established. The proof has to be there.


Richard Burpee Hanson: That is a condition precedent, and I agree with that. I understand that when the two go together, this is the proper way of drafting it.


James Garfield Gardiner: I have no objection to "shall" being there.


Richard Burpee Hanson: I think the minister had better review the position. I could refer him to works on the interpretation of statutes if I had time, to give him the rule laid down, but he has men who are paid to do that. At any rate, I should like to have the section reviewed. Where it refers to the farmer applying, he must apply; that is obligatory upon him. He must apply; otherwise he is out of luck. I ask the minister to review the permissive power in the proviso under section 2.


James Garfield Gardiner: I have already done so twice, but I will do it again.
14873-141*


Roy Theodore Graham: While I agree with the legal interpretation of "may" given by the leader of the opposition, yet I think the minister will find that his legal advice is sound-that is, not the advice on legal interpretation but the advice on the application of such words as "may" and "shall". In dealing with an emergency like this, where there should be and will have to be considerable discretion on the part of the minister, whose duty it will be to administer the regulations,
think it is a wise provision, remembering tnat he is a minister of the crown and has all the responsibilities which attach to that office. The phraseology with reference to him should be "may" rather than "shall".


Richard Burpee Hanson: In other words, the hon. member wishes to leave the discretion with the minister.


Roy Theodore Graham: That, I submit, will likely be the advice tendered the minister, because it is the wiser provision to make in. these particular regulations. The minister will find that the word "may" will permit him on occasion much more wisely to apply these regulations.


Richard Burpee Hanson: The minister is not contenting himself with the principle which the hon. member is laying down. The minister wishes to have it obligatory upon him, and he has said that "may" means "shall". It should be "shall"; it should not be left to the discretion of the minister. If the farmer performs all the conditions precedent, it must be obligatory upon the minister to pay him, and I think the minister agrees with me.


James Garfield Gardiner: There is no doubt in my mind that that is intended, and I think it is obligatory upon the minister, once proof is provided, to pay the farmer.


John George Diefenbaker: That is the point I am making. If the interpretation given by the hon. member for Swift Current (Mr. Graham) is to be placed on these regulations, then there is no reason whatever for having the regulations, because what the minister says amounts to this: that, regardless of the regulations. or of conformity on the part of any applicant with the regulations, discretion shall be left in the minister. That is the objection I am making and made this afternoon to the regulations.


Roy Theodore Graham: In actual practice would it make any difference whatever whether the word was "may" or "shall" in the practical carrying out of the regulations in this year of emergency? I suggest that we get on with* the task of considering the essentials of the regulations.
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Richard Burpee Hanson: It is an important matter.


John George Diefenbaker: After all, the question as to what are the essentials and what are not the essentials is one for each individual member to decide for himself. When the hon. member says that "may" is obligatory or mandatory, when in regulations the words "may" and "shall" are used, that, of course, is a matter for the courts. But in this case I repeat the argument I advanced this afternoon. By setting up these regulations and having them passed through parliament, it means in effect that members of the house have an opportunity of making suggestions as to what any regulation should be. If, however, any person is discriminated against, that person has no recourse to the courts. Suppose the minister says that he will not make an award-and that happened on occasion under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, because regulations were made that were contrary to the purport of the act.


James Garfield Gardiner: No such regulations were made.


John George Diefenbaker: I will mention just one.


James Garfield Gardiner: May I be permitted to make this explanation, and I think the hon. member will agree. Two members-I am not sure whether it was the hon. member for Lake Centre and the leader of the opposition-have already brought to the attention of the committee certain matters in connection with the auditor's report which they do not consider satisfactory. They have said it is not a satisfactory report. All I wish to say at this stage is that at least half of the statements quoted the other day from the auditor's report are not in accordance with the legislation itself, and on some future occasion when we are discussing that matter on the estimates, with regard to the Prairie Farm Assistance Act and the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act, I shall be pleased to deal with the question. I hope, however, I shall not have to discuss it to-night in connection with these regulations. There is nothing in the regulations under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act that is not in absolute accordance with the act itself, and I can substantiate that statement at the proper time. This, however, is not the time.


John George Diefenbaker: I am using that as an argument. If the minister says that the regulations that were passed were in accordance with the statute, I wish to bring to his attention the fact that the legislature of Saskatchewan within the last ten days has passed a

resolution to the effect that the regulations passed under that act were not in accordance with the statute.


James Garfield Gardiner: That does not make
it so.


John George Diefenbaker: No; but, after all,
that is a capable body. The point I am making has nothing to do with the auditor general's report, and when the minister suggests that I have ever referred to the auditor general's report in connection with the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, he is entirely in error.


James Garfield Gardiner: I am sorry; it was the
hon. member for Souris.


Richard Burpee Hanson: And the
hon. member for Dufferin-Simcoe.


John George Diefenbaker: In Saskatchewan,
tenant farmers were denied the right to secure any allowance under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act under verbal leases made prior to May 1, under which leases the farmers were in actual occupation, the written lease being dated after May 1. This was quite contrary to the terms of the statute which provides that tenancies commencing on May 1 rendered the tenant a tenant within the ambit of the act.
What I am coming at is this: the regulations to-day before this committee are subject to change without notice. They are too elastic. The argument was advanced by the hon. member for Sw'ift Current that they should be elastic. In this particular case they cannot be elastic, as I see it, because, if so, no statute would enable any person able to read it to know whether or not he is qualified. These regulations are subject to change without notice. The whole matter cannot be submitted to the courts. A person who is discriminated against has no rights. Would the minister be willing to add to these regulations a further regulation that any person feeling that he has been discriminated against shall have the right of recourse to the courts, in order to preserve to the individual the right to produce evidence before the court as to his qualification?
As the matter stands at present, all the minister has to do, all those who are under his control have to do, is to say that a person is not entitled to qualify, and that ends it, because under the law no person has any recourse to the courts; the minister is in a position to determine that person's qualification under any particular regulation. Will the minister consider adding a further clause whereby the right to apply for a writ of mandamus will be guaranteed to the subject, so that the people who are discriminated against, either intentionally or innocently, may

Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
have the right, which they to-day do not have under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, to go to the courts in order to secure their rights?


James Garfield Gardiner: I am not a lawyer, and am not familiar with many of the statutes; but I do recall in all my experience in connection with government, either provincial or federal, that anyone who wants to sue the government has to get the permission of the government. I think they would have to do that in this connection. I do not think, however, there is anything in these regulations or anywhere else that prevents any person from applying for the right to sue the government.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: I do not wish to get into any legal argument; I should like to get the minister over where "we farmers" can talk to him. I think the discussion that has gone on is a good argument for the point we took in the beginning that this matter should have been dealt with by a bill which would go on the statute books.
By regulation No. 2 provision is made that a man's wheat acreage reduction bonus shall be on the basis of the difference between the number of acres he has in wheat this year as compared with last year. I imagine most western members are in the same position as I am, getting letters almost every day pointing out that this will penalize those, usually the better farmers, who started in, immediately after war broke out, to curtail their wheat acreage. I know many farmers, especially in the heavy wheat belt, who last year summer-fallowed half their land. There were others who were not as far-sighted, and who put a great deal of land into wheat. The good farmer is going to suffer most. Last year is going to be taken as the basis; the difference between what he had last year and what he has this year will be much smaller in his case than that of the farmer who put almost all his acreage into wheat; this year 65 per cent of that will be what he would normally put into wheat, and what he would summer-fallow would be what he would normally summer-fallow.
There are two or three ways by which that could be got around. One is that an average be taken for the last few years instead of merely last year. I know there is a provision later to deal with 40 and 60 per cent; but I mean the average over the last three or four or five years.
Another suggestion which came to me from a number of farmers is the possibility of assuming a percentage. Assuming the average farmer has put certain percentages, say 40 per
cent into wheat and other percentages into summer-fallow; let us set that as a basis and then say: We now expect the farmer to put 30 per cent into wheat, and the difference between the 30 and the 40 would be the amount on which he would be paid the bonus. That would establish some principle that could be worked upon. Otherwise the minister is going to have almost endless trouble; people complaining, saying: "I am a good farmer; I have summer-fallowed 50 per cent; I am going to be summer-fallowing my land twice over if this continues"; and pointing to other farmers who simply disked the land and put in a big crop last year and who are not going to suffer under this regulation.
This afternoon someone said that this whole scheme should be under one minister. I am not going to argue the merits of that suggestion now, but certainly something should be done to have the two aspects of this plan coordinated. Actually they are not coordinated at the present time; for, while we talk about 65 per cent of the normal wheat acreage, actually, according to the statement of the Minister of Trade and Commerce this afternoon, we are going to take only about 45 per cent or, in a normal year, 50 per cent of the wheat crop. The hon. member for Swift Current spoke about taking 15 bushels. I think that is the minimum. The chances are that the quota will never reach 15 bushels. If 230,000,000 bushels is to be the maximum accepted for delivery and we reduce by 33i per cent the 27,000,000 acres of last year, this will bring us to 18,000,000 acres; the most we can talk of as an average is about twelve bushels to the acre, the average last year being eighteen and. for the last ten years, sixteen to the acre, so that even if the farmer cuts his wheat acreage to 65 per cent of normal, he is still going to be allowed to sell only about 65 per cent of that.


James Garfield Gardiner: But he can grow it on less acreage.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Yes, but then we ought to be frank and say that what we are really doing is cutting the farmer's wheat acreage to about 45 to 50 per cent. Instead of that we talk about 65 per cent. Under the intimation given by the Minister of Trade and Commerce we are going to take only 45 to 50 per cent. I can see no reason why, if there is to be a reduction, that reduction should not be actually 65 per cent. If the average crop this year were to be sixteen bushels to the acre, the quota would have to be raised so that the wheat board would take 288,000,000 bushels. Certainly something ought to be done so that we are not talking about 65 per
2232	COMMONS
Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
cent in one scheme and about 45 to 50 per cent in another; but that is what we are doing at the present time. That is why I want to return to this idea. How does the minister propose to deal with this question of wheat acreage reduction as between this year and last year? Is there any way by which we can be fair to those farmers who have summer-fallowed 50 per cent of their land and who now find that under the 65 per cent arrangement they actually will sow only about one-third of their land to wheat; and the other farmers who have not been equally far-sighted and for whom it will be very little sacrifice? Has the minister given any consideration to working out any general principle rather than this arrangement, which I am afraid will work in a rather haphazard and unsatisfactory manner?


James Garfield Gardiner: The principle of the
policy is that which was presented to us by practically every official organization that made representations. They either used the definite figure of 230,000,000 bushels of wheat or made the general representation that the government should set some number of bushels that would be accepted. In none of the recommendations, from the federation of agriculture, the advisory committee of the wheat board, the pools or any of the other organizations, was it ever suggested that we should compel people to get down to a certain acreage. As a matter of fact, whenever there was a definite representation, it was to the opposite effect, that it would be impossible to compel people by law to get down to a certain acreage. Where they did not say it was impossible, they said it was not advisable. Finally we accepted the representation of all these organizations that we should attempt to work out the amount of wheat which there was a possibility of the wheat board being able to dispose of during the coming year; and the highest amount that could be agreed upon by any considerable number of organizations was 230,000,000 bushels. As a matter of fact, most organizations figured it out at around 200,000,000 bushels. In the end we took the highest figure recommended by any particular organization as the amount we probably could sell, and that was 230,000,000 bushels.


Mr. HANSON (York-Subury):: That was
the maximum.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is the maximum. It is the amount that has been set by the wheat board through the Department of Trade and Commerce, as I understand it, as the maximum amount to be accepted; that is,

180,000,000 bushels sold to markets outside Canada plus 50,000,000 bushels consumed in Canada. That, of course, is in addition to the 77,000,000 bushels used in Canada for seed and similar purposes. The 230,000,000 bushels is the amount which was finally established on recommendations which came to ua in connection with these regulations.
The next step was to determine some method of getting farmers to reduce the acreage of wheat to a point where production would bear some relationship to probable sales; otherwise, if we were to pile up still greater reserves, it would be necessary to build more and more storage across the country, storage of which we already have too much for normal times. Therefore it was determined to try to persuade the farmers to go below their present acreage. The first effort in that direction was the fixing of 65 per cent of their last year's acreage. That is, it makes no difference what a man sows this year. If he wishes, he can sow twice as much as he sowed last year; there is nothing to prevent him. On the other hand he can sow half as much as last year; there is nothing to prevent that. But no matter what he sows, his quota for this year is based on 65 per cent of what he sowed last year.
Having started with that we do not say to him, "You must sow the 65 per cent." We say, "If you can get your quota by sowing half of what you sowed last year, go ahead and sow half. If you can get your quota by sowing 40 per cent, do so." Having said that to him, that is an inducement to the farmer to grow his quota. Last year we said, "We will give you a quota of five bushels." A little later the quota was increased by three bushels, and a little later by two bushels more, and as a result many farmers sowed more and more wheat, on the theory that the greater the acreage, the greater would be the quota they could deliver. Now we say it does not matter what acreage is sowed; the quota will be the same. Then the farmer starts out to do one of two things. Either he gets rid of his wheat altogether and draws whatever he is going to draw as a result of this policy, or he tries to work it out so that he can be reasonably sure of producing the quota he is allowed, and he sows only that acreage. Then he proceeds to collect from the government for having done these things. Under that plan we estimate that if two-thirds of the acreage sowed last year is sowed this year, it will require a quota of only twelve bushels to the acre to provide the wheat which the farmers will be allowed to deliver, namely 230,000,000 bushels. But

Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
if they can grow that many bushels of wheat on 40 per cent of last year's acreage, they can deliver all they grow if they go down to that 40 per cent level. The two inducements are there. In the first place the farmer does not have to sow 65 per cent of his acreage, and in the second place for every acre that he takes out of wheat he gets either $2 or $4, depending upon what he does with it.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: I understand the minister's reasoning so far, but does that meet the objections of the people to whom I referred? Does it meet the problem of the farmer who last year summer-fallowed 50 per cent of his land, who started to curtail production because he saw something of this sort coming; and does it meet the objection of the man who did not curtail his production? Take two men, each with 400 acres of land. Last year one of them sowed 300 acres. This year he will sow 200 acres and receive a bonus on the other 100. The other farmer, who put half his land in summer-fallow last year, sows 200 acres this year and does not get anything. In other words, the first farmer, who had not been taking care of his land so far as summer-fallow went, will now be paid for the 100 acres that he must summer-fallow this year. The neighbour, who summer-fallowed just as much land, does not get paid for it, because he also summer-fallowed last year. Has the minister in mind any general principle that might be applied instead of taking 1940 as a basis?
It seems to me he will be letting himself in for endless complaints and a great deal of grief under the present arrangement. Letters come in every day from farmers who say that for years they have summer-fallowed 40 or 50 per cent of their land. But they mention the cases of other men, perhaps on farms owned by mortgage companies or tenant farmers, who have thrown in their crop right up to the side of the road. These men now will reduce their acreage and be paid for it. The other farmers say, "We have reduced our acreage all along, but we are not going to be paid for it now." The general feeling among a great many farmers, particularly on the heavy land, is that using 1940 as a basis is going to work out very unfairly to them, and I wondered whether the minister had thought out any other basis, either an average over a period of years or assuming, as I suggested before, the percentage that normally should be in wheat and applying that percentage to the total acreage of the farm.


James Garfield Gardiner: I quite understand the point that the hon. member for Weyburn has brought before the committee. As a matter
of fact, most letters which I have received with regard to this proposal bear on that very point.


Richard Burpee Hanson: That is
the big complaint.


James Garfield Gardiner: The criticism is that
last year we asked them to reduce acreage. The persons who write in now say that they reduced, but their neighbours did not. They contend that some farmers put all their land into wheat last year and that this year we will estimate the reduction on their full acreage, whereas in other cases it will be based on only 35 per cent of the full acreage. That is a type of criticism we received and it is what we had in mind when we drafted the regulations. The regulations provide:
Provided that in the case of any farm on which
(a)	there was no wheat acreage in 1940 but which had wheat acreage in 1939, the wheat acreage of 1939 or 60 per centum of the cultivated acreage in 1940, whichever is the lesser, may be accepted by the minister as the basis for wheat acreage reduction in 1941,
(b)	there was wheat in 1940 on more than 60 per centum of the cultivated acreage and in 1939 on less than 40 per centum of the cultivated acreage, or vice versa, the average of the wheat acreage for 1939 and 1940 may be accepted by the minister.
I have read that over a score of times since it was first written and have satisfied myself that it does not mean exactly what we were trying to make it mean. In the first place, there is a gap between the 40 and 60 per centum, the result being that the regulation would be of no particular good to many who are complaining. The idea in drafting the regulation was to pull down the man who had put his crop up in 1940 as compared with 1939, and pull up the man who had put his crop down in 1940 as compared with 1939. I am quite prepared to admit that this drafting is not as clear as it might be, and I was hoping to get some suggestions from members of the committee as to ways and means to cover the different cases. I think there are one or two other cases which would have to be covered.


Richard Burpee Hanson: Would not each case have to be dealt with individually?


Mr. WEIR:: There is one case which I do not think is met by these regulations. I know of cases where men have seeded in the neighbourhood of 90 per cent of their farms to wheat. That may be a little extreme, but these people never seeded less than 50 per cent. They would be outside either one of these classifications. You will never get them below 50 per cent, so I do not think these regulations would apply. These same people
2234	COMMONS
Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
have the added advantage under the wheat board act in that they will be delivering their wheat on the 'basis of last year's acreage. Therefore they have two advantages, and I do not think we want that situation. A man may have shot up his wheat acreage to 85 or 90 per cent of his cultivated area; then this year he proceeds to reduce it to any figure that you like, probably 50 per cent, and the remainder is put in summer-fallow. This man has an added advantage so far as quota deliveries are concerned under the wheat board act. I think the committee would be justified in supporting a regulation which would specify a definite figure; whether this figure should be 60 per cent, or 65 per cent, I do not know. It seems to me that some figure must be arrived at which will provide that the acreage allowance will not start until a man has been reduced to a position where his wheat acreage is equal to 65 per cent of his total cultivated land. I do not know whether you can draft it in any other way.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: There is the danger that we shall take some of our best land out of cultivation. The other night the hon. member for Melfort was referred to as being one of the best farmers in the west, a compliment which is well deserved. Suppose he has 100 acres read}'- for seeding and his average production for the last twenty years has been thirty bushels to the acre. From the 100 acre plot he would be permitted to sell 780 bushels of wheat, which he would produce on twenty-six acres, a very small percentage of the land he has suitable for producing wheat. The best farmers in the west have been summerfallowing a fairly large percentage of their total land. As the regulations now stand, a real hardship will be worked on these men. I think the regulations should be changed to provide for a percentage of every farm to be in summer-fallow, and the arrangements worked out on that basis.


Richard Burpee Hanson: I should like to give three illustrations which have come to my attention from a farmer in western Canada. He writes:
I have a section (640 acres) of land with 490 acres under cultivation. I made this farm myself from the pioneer days, and now have a tenant who rents it from me on a half crop basis. I supply all the seed, pay all the taxes and hailf the threshing bill, and half the twine account. The tenant does the work and pays his half share of the threshing and twine bills. Of this 490 acres 40 is seeded to barley. 150 acres are summer-fallowed every year, and 300 is seeded to wheat. If we were to reduce wheat acreage 35 per cent and summer-fallow another 100 acres that would give us each $200, and work and fuel and wear and tear of machinery would have to be taken out of this. This would leave only 200 acres to share between owner and tenant from a section of land, and from
TMr. Weir.]
the proceeds of what we are supposed to sell viz: twelve bushels per acre at 51 cents per bushel No. 1 northern at this point, we are to pay taxes, threshing and store accounts, machine bills, repairs and other expenses-and smile. I do not suppose that there is another industry at the present time in Canada that is so poorly treated and so poorly paid.
That was his own personal case. He then goes on to tell about a second farmer:
In the second instance the farmer has about 600 acres under cultivation, and each year summer-fallows 300 acres and crops 300 acres, so he cannot reduce acreage, the result being that he will be summer-fallowing, as usual, 300 acres without being eligible for the $4 per acre bonus, and will be selling his wheat at exactly 51 cents per bushel at this point, providing he is lucky enough to have the top grade of w'heat.
The third case is the contra case, a type of case which I think the minister must deal with more adequately under the regulations. I quote:
In the third instance the farmer has a section of land with well over 500 acres under cultivation, and usually summer-fallows from 150 to 200 acres every year. Last year he did not summer-fallow any land, but cropped every acre with wheat. Now, on last year's acreage, he can reduce 35 per cent and summer-fallow 150 or 200 acres which he would no doubt have done in any case, and so will be eligible for the bonus of $4 per acre for summer-fallow, and yet in reality he is not reducing acreage at all, because he increased his acreage so much last year.
He then goes on to make this observation:
So, as I understand this policy, the man who in recent years has cropped ail] his land, and probably has dirty land, will be able to easily reduce wheat acreage and get paid for all the summer-fallow that he does, and the man who has kept up a yearly sequence of summer-fallow will not be paid the bonus for doing his usual amount of summer-fallow, but only on summer-fallow that reduces his wheat acreage from his 1940 total.
I suggest to the minister that this is putting a premium on bad farming and imposing a penalty on good. It ought to be equalized a bit more than it is. I do not know how the minister is going to do it, but he will get my point.


Roy Theodore Graham: This is something to which every western member has given a great deal of thought, and the conclusion I have reached is that it is impossible to help the good farmer. He will, of course, by the very nature of the summer-fallowing grow his quota in 1941 on a less number of acres than will the poor farmer. I agree, however, that this measure will be judged perhaps as much by its inequalities as by any other feature. I think we are all in agreement that some attempt should be made to remove the inequalities which the leader of the opposition has indicated. The average of summer-fallow-

Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
ing in Saskatchewan is roughly 30 per cent of the cultivated land. I would ask the minister whether the suggestion of the hon. member for Macdonald would be acceptable, that in the application of the regulations the compensation of $4 an acre for the summer-fallow increase [DOT] in 1941 commence only at the average for 1939 and 1940, or commence only after at least one-third of the cultivated land has been summer-fallowed. Has the minister given any consideration to that suggestion?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, but in giving consideration to it we were compelled to go back to what we had in mind when we started out to get down to 230,000,000 bushels of wheat. That is, we had to say to the persons who have been growing wheat fairly continuously on large acreages: "We will at least start somewhere near the acreage that you were growing." If we did not do that, the margin between what they were growing and where we started to pay would be so great that it would not induce them to cut down their acreage, and they may be the very people who have perhaps been creating the most trouble for us by producing large bushelages from large acreages. It wa3 felt that we could not say: "We will not recognize that amount you have, but get down to say one-third," which in some areas is considered the recognized proportion which should be summer-fallowed. In other areas 50 per cent is thought to be the proper proportion, summer-fallowing 50 per cent this year and then putting it in crop next year, as in the second case which the leader of the opposition cited.
While I am on my feet I may say as regards the first case cited by the leader of the opposition, the one in which a man has a section of land, with 300 acres in wheat, a certain acreage in summer-fallow and a certain acreage in coarse grains, if he desired to increase his summer-fallow by fifty acres-


An hon. MEMBER:: Reduce his acreage.


James Garfield Gardiner: -he starts at the wrong end. That man reduces his wheat acreage to start with by one-third, let us suppose, as we have suggested that all of them should do in order to meet the conditions of the policy- at least that much. If he takes off one-third of his cultivated acreage and puts it in summer-fallow, that is 100 acres, he gets $400. If my figuring is correct, when a man does that, whether it is 100 or 300 acres, and gets his quota on the basis of 65 per cent, then in so far as the quota is concerned he gets the advance plus about sixteen cents a bushel, which gives him eighty-six cents a bushel on 14873-142
the quota that he is allowed. I state that to indicate that it is one cent more than most people have been saying that a man should get on his quota. If he takes $4 an acre on one-third of his acreage; then takes the quota he is going to be allowed anyway, and adds the money he gets at seventy cents a bushel Fort William to the S4 an acre, he will receive eighty-six cents a bushel Fort William. If, however, he was allowed only his quota of the 230,000,000 bushels, he would get eighty-five cents. But he will get eighty-six cents a bushel if he puts in his summerfallowing, and if he puts in coarse grains, he will get 8 cents plus whatever he gets out of his coarse grains.
The second case is one which is half and half. There are two ways of doing the half-and-half job. The ordinary farmer who lives on the farm always does it by farming half of his farm this year. He puts in a crop on half of the farm and summer-fallows the other half. But many of the mortgage companies which have taken possession of large areas of land work it with hired labour, and they summer-fallow the whole of the land this year and crop the whole of the land next year, thus keeping one operation going on all the time. It is the person who does that that we are trying to get at when we say we shall average 1939 and 1940 and make it not more than 60 per cent. We give the persons who do that a little advantage by saying: "We will allow up to 60 per cent, but not more than that."


Mr. TUCKER:: I should like to say a
word or two about this clause as it is drafted. I can think of companies such as those to which the minister refers who in 1939 had perhaps 60 per cent of the land sowed to wheat and did not get a very good return on that wheat crop because of drought or something like that. Or they might have had 50 per cent sowed to wheat. Then last year, on account of the fact that they figured the land was clean enough to sow to wheat, they might have put it all in wheat, and they could collect on the entire reduction in wheat acreage in 1941 from 1940 because their 1939 crop was more than 50 per cent wheat. There must be many cases like that where people sowed more than 50 per cent to wheat in 1939. Because it was a dry year in some districts in 1939, they sowed more than 60 per cent to wheat in 1940. Under this clause they would not be affected at all, even if they sowed 100 per cent in 1940. For the clause to affect them, they must have sowed less than 40 per cent in 1939. I submit that the way the clause is worded, it is ineffective. I suggest that you put it that if there is in wheat
2236	COMMONS
Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
in 1940, 70 per cent and in 1939 under 60 per cent, then it be averaged-I think it should be fairly high, because if there is going to be a reduction, they should get the full benefit-then you will affect practically everybody who had put most of their acreage in wheat in 1940 effecting a tremendous increase over what they had done in 1939. But you would not affect a lot of people as you wish to do under the clause as it is worded.
As to the argument which the leader of the opposition has made with regard to the effect of "may" and "shall," I can easily see that he was not here during the last parliament and did not have the benefit of the learned dissertations which the former leader of the opposition gave on the effects of "may" and "shall" as affecting a minister of the crown. Mr. Bennett pointed out in an admirably lucid way that the word "may" is almost invariably used when you refer to the crown or a minister of the crown, because in referring to the crown you are always very polite or respectful, and "may," referring to the crown or a minister of the crown who is an agent of the crown in conferring rights on a subject as against the crown, had the effect of conferring a right and it was, in effect, mandatory. But the reason you use the word "may" in such cases is that, in dealing with the crown, you continue to observe those niceties of English constitutional law. I believe the leader of the opposition will find that is correct.


Richard Burpee Hanson: I wish to say in answer to the hon. member that when I got through, I was not too sure of it myself, so I got Craie's "Statute Law." I refer hon. gentlemen to the learned judgment of Lord Cairns in Julius v. the Bishop of Oxford, reported in the fourth edition, pages 254 and 255, and it makes out a case for the minister, not for me. That is all I am going to say. Therefore I am not going to be so cocksure about my law.


Ernest Edward Perley: After listening to all these learned discussions by the minister and by hon. members representing other professions in this chamber, I think we are becoming confused, and, indeed, the whole thing may be described as confusion worse confounded. I fear that we are going to have the minister himself so confused that before we reach eleven o'clock he will not know what it is all about.
He referred to the fact that an attempt is being made to get a reduction in acreage which will bring about a condition whereby there will be about 230,000,000 bushels to be delivered to the market, that being the total amount required for export and for domestic requirements. The minister also said a few

minutes ago that the compensation would bring the price to about 86 cents a bushel on the quantity of wheat which they propose to take under quota. I just wish to say that, had they told the farmers that 230,000,000 bushels, due to export restrictions and domestic requirements, was all they could take this year, and had set the price at 85 cents, it would not have cost the government or the treasury any more, and the confused situation which has arisen here and in western Canada would have been avoided.


James Garfield Gardiner: May I ask the hon. member what he would do with the 575,000,000 bushels which we have already? Would he raise the price of that to 85 cents too?


Ernest Edward Perley: No; what you have in store is already taken care of. It would not require twenty minutes for me to tell the committee what they ought to do with respect to that, and what they will be remiss in their duty if they do not do.


Richard Burpee Hanson: Go ahead.


Ernest Edward Perley: I wish, however, to come back to these regulations. If the minister has received proportionately as many protests as have come to me, a private member, certainly he must be flooded. I had one to-day from the rural council of Indian Head, who state that they have sent copies to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Agriculture. I have others from Qu'Appelle, from several rural municipalities, and from many individuals. One, residing at Sintaluta, is well known to the minister. He is a good farmer, and has been farming on a sound basis for years. There are those who have already adopted the principle of the fifty-fifty basis of which the minister spoke a few minutes ago. The regulations will, I believe, upset the whole plans of these men for the first year or so, and in my opinion an injustice is being done them.
I have heard discussed at great length this evening proviso (a) of the second regulation. I have in mind a farmer who is one of my neighbours, who happened to have summer-fallowed last year all the cultivated acreage on his farm. Consider now the effect of this clause which deals with the 1939 crop. In 1939 he had a very small percentage of his cultivated acreage in wheat-at the very most, not more than 25 per cent; practically all the rest of his cultivated land was in coarse grains, barley and oats; and last year he summer-fallowed it all. What are you going .to do for that man under this regulation? He had not more than 25 per cent in wheat in 1939, and if he has to reduce again, he will certainly be "up against it".

Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
Apparently these regulations have been pretty well advertised in the few days since they were tabled, and I should like the minister frankly to tell us how many protests he has received from western Canada from provincial governments, farm organizations, and the like, and what has been the general reaction to these regulations. I suggest that even yet it is not too late for this thing to be dropped, and let us set a fair price. It would relieve the Minister of Trade and Commerce of a lot of trouble; I know he is going to have grief. Certainly it would relieve the Minister of Agriculture, and it would be well received in western Canada. Drop the whole thing, and come back to a fair and reasonable price. It would not cost any more. Set a ratio with respect to the amount you will take, and leave it at that. The farmers will adjust themselves and will be only too glad, now that they are starting to seed, to get down to their ordinary routine and follow out the system which they have adopted.
The Sintaluta farmer whom I have mentioned summer-fallowed last year 500 acres; he had 300 acres in wheat, and only 40 acres in oats and barley. In what position is that man going to be this year? He will have to reduce to 200 acres his acreage seeded to wheat, and it will leave him another 100 acres to summer-fallow, with the result that he has 660 acres to summer-fallow this year again. It seems to me that, in view of the injustices which will be done under the proposed system, the minister will be well advised to reconsider it, even thus late in the session.


John Gordon Ross: Regarding this point which is being discussed, about the farmer who happened to have a large amount of land in wheat in 1939 and a small amount in 1940, or a large amount of wheat in 1940 and a small amount in 1939, provided that he has one-third more, say, in one year than another, why would it not be possible to take the average of the two years? If the man, because of statements which were made last year, decreased his wheat acreage one-third, he should not be penalized for that; he was carrying out what we wanted carried out. Therefore he should be given the average between what 'he sowed to wheat in 1939 and what he sowed to wheat in 1940. On the other hand, the man whose acreage went up should be cut down a similar amount.


Mr. QUELCH:: What about the man who had half the area in wheat in 1939 and the whole area in wheat in 1940?


John Gordon Ross: No man should be paid on the basis of 100 per cent of his land sown. I believe that good practice in western Canada for many years has been
14873- 142$
one-third summer-fallow, and any reduction should Start from 66 per cent and not above that point.
In the case where some man increased his acreage considerably in the last year, it should be averaged between what he had in 1939 and what he had in 1940; and vice versa.


Ernest Edward Perley: Would the hon. member deal with the case I cited? Where a man had only 20 per cent in 1939 and summer-fallowed it all in 1940, what would happen?


John Gordon Ross: It would be utterly impossible to make regulations here to fit every farmer. My hon. friend is giving a case which would not represent one-tenth of one per cent of the farmers of the country. In these regulations we are trying to deal with the average case. We cannot make a regulation that will fit every one. I know of farmers who will find it impossible to summer-fallow this year owing to certain conditions, and therefore they cannot come under the scheme at all. But we cannot expect to make regulations that will cover all cases.


Ernest Edward Perley: Will these regulations follow the land or the land owner? Land companies have been mentioned.


James Garfield Gardiner: They will follow the
land.


Ernest Edward Perley: I am thinking of regulation No. 6.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is, that no payment shall be made under the regulations in respect of any farm which was operated by a tenant in 1940 and is operated by hired labour in 1941. That is to deal with cases where tenants have been operating the land, and the owner of the land undertakes this year, because of the fact that this legislation is brought into effect, to cut his hired help down, put in no crop, and get summer-fallow on all, which in some cases might give a higher return than he might get from his proportion of the rent. It is not intended to make payments in these cases.


Ernest Edward Perley: That case fits me to a
knock-down. I am not accusing the minister of putting it in there, because perhaps I told his advisers beforehand, even before the regulations came down, what I had arranged to do this year, and I am going to carry out those arrangements irrespective of this. I suggest, however, that we should have an understanding on one question. Can members of this House of Commons who are farmers expect any part of this bonus under these regulations? I am thinking of the Independence of Parliament Act. This comes out of the dominion treasury and it is not a statute. Can
2238	COMMONS
Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
members of parliament expect this bonus? I think we should have it understood. I do not care about clause 6. I will try to farm in a constructive and sound way, and I had all my arrangements made and contracted for on February 12, before this was thought of, but this matter is something which should be definitely settled.


James Garfield Gardiner: I myself have sought
legal advice on the question and I have had opinions both ways. I will try to get an opinion of the Department of Justice some time to-morrow if I can, and give whatever advice I receive.


Mr. LEADER:: I wish to get settled in my own mind the basis of payment on either the 1940 or 1939 crop. I agree with the hon. member for Moose Jaw that we cannot expect to draft legislation that will fit the case of every farmer in the west or even in Manitoba. It is impossible. What we shall have to do is to take the average, what we think will really fit the majority of cases. The hon. member for Moose Jaw expressed the idea that was running through my own mind. What we want is a basis of paying the bonus on 65 per cent of the 1940 wheat acreage or, as the case may be, 1939 wheat acreage. The fairest way would be to take the average of the wheat acreage for the two years, 1939 and 1940, and settle at 65 per cent of this average. Never mind the 30 per cent, or 40 per cent, or 60 per cent, but take the two years together and settle on the basis of the average.


William Gilbert Weir: Does the hon. member know how much he had in 1939?


Harry Leader: Most people do.


James Garfield Gardiner: We have the forms, but they are not yet printed because they have not yet been finally approved. I spent a part of Saturday going over the rough drafts which were made for me. We are going over the return with regard to the 1939 crop and also similar answers with regard to the 1940 crop, so that on every application made before May 31 we shall have the farmer's statement of what he grew in 1939 and what he grew in 1940, or what he seeded to wheat, and so on, and what he intends to do in 1941. We shall have all on one form so that we shall have a statement of what the farmer says he did; and then we have 75 per cent-to be safe I will say 65 per cent, but I think I may say 75 per cent-of all the farms now listed for the two years under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act. For two years the farmers have given statements. We have checked on many of the farms to find what the acreage

was in different crops, and these statements can be compared with the statement made this year, so that we do not expect any difficulty in getting information with regard to 1939 and 1940. The matter of averaging, therefore, will not be difficult.
I take it from the discussion that there are at least five classes about whom members are concerned. First, there is the man who had all his acreage in wheat in 1940. It is not thought that he should be permitted to collect on his total acreage. Something should be done to reduce that acreage. If it were averaged between 1939 and 1940, if he put all in one year and had none the next year, the average would be 50 per cent. Then there is the man who had no wheat in 1940. Third, there is the man who raised his average acreage in 1940; that is, he raised the acreage over 1939. Then there is the man who lowered his acreage in 1940 under 1939, and there is the man who has broken up new land. This is the first year he will grow a crop, and there will probably have to be some regulation with regard to his case.


Mr. HOWDEN:: What about the man whose first year was last year?


James Garfield Gardiner: The general practice
in the west has been to grow all of the breaking you can into wheat, with a small acreage for feed grain, and then the second year to back-set that land and sow it all to wheat again. Summer-fallowing is not started until at least the third year of farming. There may be cases in 1939 and 1940. But where a man has grown one crop, it is not so difficult; that is, his 1940 crop. If, however, he has not grown a crop at all; if last year was his first year and he broke the land up, we shall have to assume that he had 65 or 70 per cent or some such figure last year to make it apply. I do not know whether there is any other case.


Harry Leader: There is the case where farmers have a volunteer crop of sweet clover -and quite a number have. It is seed that had been sown two or three years before, but owing to the dry weather it had not germinated. It might start next spring and the man might see it coming up and decide not to put in wheat but to let the land grow sweet clover. He should be allowed the clover bonus on that sort of crop. He is taking his land out of production and leaving it for fodder. It would be allowed him anyway if he seeded it that spring with his seeder, but because he was fortunate enough to have a volunteer crop and did not have to sow, he should not be penalized. This may be an isolated case, but it might happen.

Supply-A griculture-TV heat Acreages


James Garfield Gardiner: There is not much difficulty in that man qualifying if he desires to do so. He could qualify for two years instead of for one, the provision of the legislation is that if he seeds to grass this year and it is still in grass or clover until July 1, 1942, he gets another $2. I presume, if he is intending to leave it as a volunteer crop this year, it will probably not be a particularly good crop. I do not think it would do any harm if he would sow a little more clover seed on it; he will draw his S2 this year and still have it in grass next year, and he can get another $2 next year.


Harry Leader: I have seen a volunteer crop come up thicker than one could possibly sow it. It would mean, if he did not get a crop on that this year, that you are extending this bonus until 1943.


James Garfield Gardiner: If he gets that, he is lucky to have such a crop.


Harry Leader: If we got an increase in payment and this bonus were left out, we would be happier.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: Is the minister going to explain how these various groups will be dealt with? Take the case of a farmer who had 130 acres of wheat last year and 400 acres summer-fallow; he does not give the amount he had in 1939. He has 400 acres, summer-fallowed last year, ready for seeding wheat at this moment. Would the minister assume an amount for 1939 and explain what this man would do?


James Garfield Gardiner: I have a man sitting in the gallery listening to this discussion, who is a much better draftsman than I am, and we shall probably spend part of the night trying to work out a regulation which will assist in overcoming the difficulties which have been raised here. I should not like to state definitely at the moment what will be in the regulation; but when the committee meets to-morrow, we hope to have a draft which will cover the different points raised.


Robert Fair: I hope the minister has some members of the Department of Justice in the gallery also, because it would be a fine thing if they could get the meaning of the legislation passed here when they draw some of their conclusions or hand down decisions. By clause 1, the word "farmer" means an owner operator or tenant operator of a farm. That could be made much more explicit. Under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act we find-although I do not want to discuss that act now-that a farmer may cover two or three or four distinct units if they use the
same outfit of machinery. I know several cases where two or three farmers are using the same outfit of machinery, but at the same time they are separate farming units; these men are all responsible for their own bills; they are using one outfit of machinery because they cannot each afford their own. That was my case when I started farming.
The case of the residence of a farmer is not stated; I should like to see that put in the regulations. Also in the Prairie Farm Assistance Act we find that, in order to qualify, the farmer must be a resident from May i until November 1. But when it comes down to actual residence we find that to be a resident from 1907 until November 7, 1939, is not sufficient in order to qualify for bonus. Last year I drew to the attention of the minister the case of some men in my neighbourhood who had been on a farm since 1907 and left there on November 7, 1939. These men put in their crops, paid their one per cent levy to have the acreage bonus; but because they left there before the bonus was actually distributed they were refused the right to participate. I feel that the minister is not satisfied with this judgment; I personally am not satisfied, and I do not think the committee would be satisfied. These men were refused bonus, I believe the only ones in that township. In November, 1940, they asked me to take the question up with the department for them, which I did. I did not get any satisfaction there, so I took the matter up with the minister and he referred the question back to the Department of Justice. This is the reply that was given:
You ask for further advice in connection with cases where persons who would have been entitled to assistance under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act have, before an award has been made to them in the crop year in question, removed from the crop failure area or the township in which they were carrying on farming. You ask to be advised whether such a person may, nevertheless, be awarded assistance.
If, before an award is made, the claimant ceased to be a farmer or to operate the farm as owner or tenant, then, in my view, he is clearly not entitled to receive assistance.
This, in spite of the fact that the regulations say that the man must be on the land from May 1 to November 1 in that particular year.
Where the farmer removes from the township or crop failure area but continues farming elsewhere in the spring wheat area you suggest that he should be encouraged in making this move because, presumably, he will remove to a better farming district. It may be argued in support of granting him the assistance, notwithstanding his removal, that the expressions "in a township" or "in a (crop failure) area" are there merely as a test of the farmer's need. Their removal from the township or area does not relieve their need.
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On the other hand, the power of the minister is definitely limited by the act to grant awards to persons who are farmers in certain low yield or crop failure townships, and in my opinion, if a farmer removes from the township or area in question before the award is made, he is no longer entitled.


James Garfield Gardiner: Mr. Chairman, I wish to raise a point of order. The hon. member was reading correspondence with regard to the Prairie Farm Assistance Act. I do not think we should be discussing that act at present. We shall have time to discuss that, but the definition of a "farmer" in these regulations does not compare with that in the Prairie Farm Assistance Act. In these regulations, "farmer" means an owner operator or tenant operator of a farm. And "farm" means the total land being farmed by any one farmer. There is no reason for determining residence or anything of that kind in connection with these regulations. There might be some difficulty about the definition of "farm", but I do not see that there can be much about the definition of "farmer" as we have it in these regulations.


Robert Fair: As the same body will administer both, I think one would look for exactly the same judgment, unless something is clearly laid down.


The CHAIRMAN:: The point of order is well taken. The rule is clear: speeches in committee of the whole must be strictly relevant to the item or clause under consideration. The item or clause under consideration here is to provide for payments on reduction in wheat acreage. Therefore the question of the Prairie Farm Assistance Act is irrelevant.


Robert Fair: I said I was using that simply as an illustration.


Thomas Vien: It is not permitted to read correspondence except briefly to support an argument along certain lines provided for in the rules. Furthermore, the subject-matter that the hon. gentleman is now discussing is totally foreign to the item before the committee.


Robert Fair: It was simply used as an illustration. The minister has now got the point I wished to bring before the committee, and I hope it will be taken into consideration.
Another point is in section 8 which says:
The minister may withhold payment from any farmer who submits a false report of his acreage or a false claim for payment.
Under that section as it is drafted, perhaps ninety per cent of the fanners who would be entitled to a bonus might not get it, because if a farmer goes by his drill measurement, as

some do, in many cases he will be ten per cent below the actual measurement. In other cases the farmer may go by the actual measurement; and if they give drill measurement in one case and actual measurement in another, they will be disqualified. I should like to see this clause amended by inserting the word "knowingly" after the word "who" at the end of the first line of this clause, to take care of that situation.


John Gordon Ross: A moment ago
the minister mentioned different cases which have been brought up, and among them he mentioned new land broken this year. While the regulation ir. that regard is being considered, the department might also consider the case of a farm that was not under cultivation in 1939. We will say it was part of an estate. By 1940 some other farmer had arranged to take over that land, and in that year summer-fallowed a considerable portion of it, although there was no wheat on it in either 1939 or 1940. A situation of that kind should be provided for under the regulations.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: The minister was dealing with exceptional cases for which provision will have to be made under the regulations. I should like to suggest another such case. In a large part of the southeastern section of Saskatchewan, as the minister knows, there has been no crop at all for the last eight or nine years. For the last few years it has been so dry that it has not been worth while putting in seed; it would have been a matter of throwing good money after bad. In many of these districts the farmers have not put in crops for a long time. If a farmer had a dug-out, he probably had a little garden near it or grew some feed, but serious farming was not attempted in the sense that it was carried on in years gone by. This year in many of those districts they had good fall rains and a fair amount of snow, and as a result probably many of those farmers will sow wheat again. Some provision will have to be made for them, because in many cases they have not had an average of ten acres in wheat in the last few years.
While I am on my feet I should like to mention one other point along the line of the remarks of the hon. member for Battle River. In the case of the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, as an illustration, the minister brought down regulations, and then the Department of Justice brought down an interpretation of those regulations. In my humble opinion, in many respects that interpretation nullified the whole spirit of the act.

Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
As a matter of fact, last fall they went so far as to say that a man who had joined the army, despite the fact that he had lived on the farm during the whole crop year, should be denied the bonus if his family had moved away from the farm, as they did in most instances. I use that simply as an illustration. The definition of the word "farmer" is very loose and general. I think it is the same definition that is used in the Prairie Farm Assistance Act:
"Farmer" means an owner operator, or tenant operator of a farm.
It seems to me it might be wise to be more specific in the regulations if we are not to have another interpretation that will deprive a man of the benefits to which he is entitled if in the fall he should move away, join the army or go into some other business. He will have done the summer-fallowing or put in the coarse grain, and certainly he ought to be eligible to receive this bonus. But if the same sort of interpretation is given as in the case of the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, he will not be eligible if he does not continue to reside on the farm. I should like to see some more precise definition of the word "farmer" as well as of the word "farm".
There is one other point. I have had a number of letters from people suggesting that they are growing durum wheat for coarse grain for feed. I am not a farmer; I know nothing about the practical value of durum wheat used as feed, but the suggestion has been made to me that it should be included among the coarse grains, since many farmers have to use it for feed purposes.


James Garfield Gardiner: I am afraid it would be rather difficult to accept the last suggestion. A great many people are growing all sorts of wheat for feed, or at least they are feeding all kinds of wheat, so I am afraid there would be some difficulty in that regard. The other suggestions advanced by the hon. gentleman probably should receive some attention. In any event I am quite prepared to have the definitions of "farm" and "farmer" resubmitted to the draftsman to make sure there can be no misunderstanding in the matter. I should like to point out, however, that under this act the claim for payment may be made at any time after July 1. Under the other act referred to, the claim does not become payable until after December 1. In this case the bonus becomes payable while the man is still operating the farm, so I do not think there would be the same difficulty in this case as in the other.


Walter Adam Tucker: With a great deal of what was said by the hon. member for Moose Jaw I am in agreement. I should like to suggest
to the minister very strongly, however, that in drafting these regulations he should not forget the peculiar position that prevails in the northern part of Saskatchewan, where the wheat acreage is not very large and where they are bringing a small -additional amount under cultivation each year. It is new and rich land, so they are able to sow practically all of it to wheat for several years after it is brought into cultivation. They have had a great deal of that new country practically all in wheat year after year. I submit that in these cases they should be paid the full amount by which they reduce their wheat acreage, no matter if it is 90 per cent, 95 per cent or 100 per cent. After all, the purpose of this proposal is to encourage some reduction in wheat acreage, and to provide compensation for that reduction. The situation I have mentioned must prevail in many of the newer parts of the west.
I have an idea that this clause was intended to meet the case of a great change in 1941 as compared with 1940. That is, where the man had nothing in wheat in 1939 and everything in wheat in 1940, of course he would be able to collect on the full reduction from 100 per cent. Obviously that would be unfair where there was such a variation from year to year, so I think the purpose of the regulation is sound. As I see it, this section is intended to meet the case of a tremendous variation; but as far as possible we should pay for any reduction from the average acreage sown to wheat on that farm; and if the average acreage is 95 per cent or 100 per cent, because it is new land, then I think we should pay compensation for the full reduction. I suggest to the minister that the amounts should be more than 70 per cent and less than 60 per cent; and in that case only should there be an averaging up. That is, where they had more than 70 per cent in 1940 and less than 60 per cent in 1939, or vice versa, that would show a greater swing than usual because of peculiar conditions. Then it would be fair to strike an average; but with the exception of those cases, I do not see any need of bringing in 1939.


Victor Quelch: I should like to refer for a moment to the definition of "summer-fallow", which reads:
"Summer-fallow" means the cultivation of fallow land before August 1, 1941, in such a way as to conserve soil moisture and prevent soil drifting.
That is a very wide definition, and could mean almost anything. I take it that the interpretation of this definition will be left with the local municipality, which should be the body to interpret the meaning of that clause. In certain districts certain methods

Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
are found to be more adaptable. I have in mind the drought area east of Hanna. In a large part of that area the practice of summerfallowing land has been discontinued as being unsafe. If you cultivate land and allow it to lie fallow during the year, it drifts too badly, and many farmers have found it to be safer just to allow the land to lie fallow all year without cultivating and then to use a combine tiller to sow the wheat into the Russian thistle. By that means they stop the soil drifting.
Will it be considered summer-fallowing under the legislation if no cultivating is done? If the interpretation of this clause is to rest with the special areas board, I feel sure they will rule that it should be considered as summer-fallowing. If, on the other hand, the government is going to take the stand that it is not summer-fallowing, the result will be that tremendous areas in the drought area will be cultivated in order to get this $4 an acre. The whole area will be turned into a dust-bowl. It has taken years and years to get this area back into grass and weeds in order to stop the soil drifting. In many districts the average yield is only six bushels to the acre, and the farmers will be able to make money by just cultivating the land and not sowing wheat in order to get the $4 an acre. There will be a real danger if these farmers have to cultivate the land in any shape or form. I hope the interpretation of this clause will rest with the municipal officers or with the special areas board. I am satisfied that in that event they will consider land lying fallow without being cultivated as summer-fallow.


James Garfield Gardiner: In Alberta some areas
are organized into municipalities, and others have been disorganized and put under the special areas board. There is other land, referred to as L.I.D., which has never been organized into municipalities. The plan we intend to follow is to ask the municipal council, in the case of an organized municipality, to act in connection with applications and the passing on of information to the Department of Agriculture and the deciding as to whether or not the matter is being carried out all right. In so far as the special areas are concerned, this work will be carried out by the special areas board. In the case of the L.I.D. in Alberta, the work will be carried out by the department of municipal affairs. I think the same thing is true of Saskatchewan and, if I am correctly informed, of Manitoba. That is, we shall work through the department which has been entrusted with the administration of the particular areas in the province or the municipality, as the case may be.
[Mr. Quelch.l
As to determining whether or not work being done can properly be termed summer-fallowing, we shall have a double check on this. In the first place, we shall have the special areas board in the particular district and, second, we shall have the results of the activities of the illustration station or experimental farm in the vicinity. They will have been giving advice which will have been followed by those who are operating this land, particularly where they are operating under the direction of the special areas board. What is considered to be the proper practice there will be admitted as the proper practice. For example, in the southern section we have the farm at Scott, which is just across the boundary line out of Alberta in Saskatchewan. The officials of that farm will have given instructions as to the proper method to be followed in that particular area.
Any practice which is adopted by the experimental farm officials as being the proper practice in farming will in all probability be acceptable to those who are administering this legislation. It is not the intention to drive this matter to the limit of insisting that people should farm in an expert manner. The main intention at the moment is to reduce wheat acreage and at the same time have the farmer so operate his land that it will be in position to produce a crop when we require it, which may be next year or the year following.


James Arthur Ross: I know of some farms in southwestern Manitoba which have been entirely idle during the drought years. For instance, in 1939 and 1940 they produced no crops and were not cultivated. If an operator moved on to one of those farms and decided to sow some acreage in wheat, I suppose he would not be allowed to deliver any wheat if he did not have a permit for last year and it had not been cultivated in the last two years.


James Garfield Gardiner: In so far as the delivery of wheat is concerned, these regulations would not affect that at all; that would come under the wheat board act. I doubt very much if the wheat board would accept delivery from that type of land. I doubt also if we would pay anything to any one to encourage him to start to operate the land. Our whole objective under these regulations is to get wheat land out of cultivation, not to put land back into cultivation.


William Gilbert Weir: As I understand it, the minister plans, after the discussion on these regulations this afternoon and this evening, to bring them back to the committee in a revised form. At this time I should like to inquire of the

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minister as to what is proposed in the administration set-up. I understand that the provincial ministers of agriculture were called into conference in connection with this legislation, and I was wondering whether the provincial governments of the three western provinces were going to be asked to assume any responsibility in connection with the administration of this legislation. Mention has been made already of the municipalities, and we should have a statement as to what the municipal councils or the municipal secretaries are going to be required to do. We should be told of the control or otherwise that will be exercised over them. I do not know whether the minister is in position to bring down to-night the forms which will be used in determining the seeded acreage for an area. If they are available, I think the committee would like to have them.
There is one other class of summer-fallowing to which I should like to refer, especially in view of the fact that the minister is going to have these regulations revamped. I refer to a practice which has developed largely in southern Manitoba. I am rather in a dilemma to know how to define "summer-fallow." A number of farmers in this area are using corn or sunflowers in order to prevent drifting. They seed these about a rod apart and then cultivate between the rows. I do not know whether the minister would be disposed to consider this as summer-fallowing or corn or sunflowers, whatever the case may be. There should be some attempt to determine just what it will be considered.
There is one other comment I should like to make. So far the discussion on these regulations has constantly emphasized wheat and the reduction in wheat acreage. We have overlooked the growing of coarse grains. A compensation is to be paid for increasing coarse grain acreage, that is, for taking land out of wheat and seeding it to coarse grain. This is something which we should not overlook at this time. My information is _ that it is doubtful whether we have at this time enough coarse grains in Canada to carry our present live stock population. If we continue ;o increase our live stock population to any-filing like the extent we have this last year, ;t will be absolutely essential that we guarantee ourselves an adequate supply of foodstuffs. These regulations are going to assist in that regard. If we do not have that adequate food supply, not only for one year but for two or more years, we shall not be guaranteeing our position with respect to the continued production of live stock.


An hon. MEMBER:: Feed wheat.


William Gilbert Weir: Yes, but it takes time to educate people to that point of view. I would point out something else which I think we have overlooked. It is only a few years since this country was obliged to supply a large amount of feed grains, both fodder and coarse grains, to certain areas of western Canada. The total value of these supplies was in the neighbourhood of $10,000,000. If, through this policy, we can encourage the establishment of reserves of feed grains it is going to be to the advantage of all concerned, and particularly to the area in maintaining the live stock population there. At the same time it guarantees to the rest of Canada that there will be an adequate supply of feed for the live stock so kept.


James Garfield Gardiner: I would hesitate at this moment to give expert advice as to whether land that is sown in strips to corn and has strips of summer-fallow is all summer-fallowed area, or corn land, or a combination in the nature of strip-farming. A question regarding strip-farming was asked earlier in the evening by the hon. member for Qu'Appelle. I do not think I fully answered it. The question was, how would you change from a fifty-fifty farming operation where half the land was summer-fallowed and the other half sown to wheat? It did not occur to me at the time, but while the last speaker was speaking it occurred to me that the simplest manner of changing from wheat on a fifty-fifty basis with summerfallowing strips would be to reduce the width of the wheat strips and increase the width of the summer-fallow strips by one-third or one-half or whatever was required. There would be some limitation on summer-fallowing perhaps a second time, but the strip-farming would prevent blowing. When you sow corn for two or three widths and then have two or three widths of cultivated land, that would be strip-farming. Corn, of course, as a coarse grain, is covered by these regulations.


Ernest Edward Perley: Following up what the hon. member for Macdonald has said, I think it is important that the minister should announce to what extent he proposes to use the municipal organizations. I have always been in favour, even in connection with the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, of using the municipalities much more than they have been used. In connection with the administration of this policy, what will be the number of employees required, the number of field men, inspectors, and so forth?
I have a sessional paper here which was tabled the other day with respect to the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, and I find that last year there were 365 field men and inspectors employed, with a number of
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supervisors, and ninety-five employees in the office at Regina. I understand that the minister proposes to use as far as possible this prairie farm assistance set-up. Does he expect to have to increase the number of field men and inspectors? I would hope that if this organization is used, the minister would revise the system of paying the inspectors, because the present system of remunerating travelling allowances and so forth is an outrage, when one considers the time these 365 men were employed and the amount they drew in remuneration and expenses. I hope that nothing like that will be allowed under this policy. Would the minister state to what extent he expects to increase this staff and the extent to which he expects to use the municipalities?


James Garfield Gardiner: I neglected to answer that question when the hon. member for Macdonald asked it a moment ago. We did have here representatives of the three departments of agriculture in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and since then we have had a further representative of the government of Alberta in the person of the minister of mines and resources, who happened to be here and discussed the matter with us. We have an undertaking from all three provincial governments that they will cooperate in every possible way in carrying out the administration of this policy. We also had here representatives of the three provincial municipal organizations. I had a letter to-day from the secretary of the Manitoba association stating that he had already communicated with all the municipal secretaries in Manitoba, and he gave me a complete list of those who had replied. All of them had replied favourably indicating that they were quite prepared to undertake the task. Only a few-he did not give the number -had not yet replied, but he did not expect there would be any objection on their part; he thought they would all take charge of the activities within their municipalities. The same is true of Saskatchewan, and, I understand, of Alberta.
The extent to which we intend to use them is the extent to which they themselves suggested they ought to be used. When they were here they made recommendations to us. They sat here for three or four days and drafted recommendations as to the use they thought we ought to make of them. Their suggestions were acceptable to us. Their proposal was that they should do everything that we suggested they might do, particularly the taking of all applications from persons who were in the municipality, and that if we required any preliminary investigations to be made in order that they might be in a position to certify to certain statements, they
TMr. Perley.]
were quite prepared to do that. As regards taking responsibility for the statements of individuals being absolutely correct, particularly the sworn statements we intend to take when they make application for payment, they preferred that we do that through our own inspectors under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, or with any other set-up that we might decide upon for the time being. I do not think there will be any change, but we will use the inspection staff of the prairie farm assistance administration, and we will establish a number of offices in each of the provinces with a person in charge of the office. We shall use the same inspectors, some of them at least, if not all, who were used in administering the Prairie Farm Assistance Act. I would not expect that the number required would be any greater than the number required for the prairie farm assistance work. The work is not carried on altogther in the same period of the year. It might require a longer period of time for the same inspectors. Many inspectors did not begin their work until the harvest time. Some began in June and some in July.


Ernest Edward Perley: If the municipalities are used as the minister suggests, would it not be possible to cut down the number of field men? I see by this return that in connection with the Prairie Farm Assistance Act there were 188 field men and 177 inspectors. Does the minister propose to continue these inspectors, or will the municipalities supply field men?


James Garfield Gardiner: The municipalities have not undertaken or suggested that they should undertake what is called the field work in connection with the Prairie Farm Assistance Act. Some of 'the work in connection with that act, making an estimate of the crop yield, for instance, will not be required at all under this policy. The men who are estimating the crop under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act are field men, and while they are doing that work they can make the other check. Two trips should not be necessary to see if the farmer made a proper return, because much of the information required under this policy could be got through the municipalities.


Ernest Edward Perley: 
James Garfield Gardiner: I think the hon. member for Qu'Appelle will agree that the first trip around can only be an estimate; that is, if that trip is made in the early part of July. The heat wave which usually dries up our crops, if they are dried up, comes as a rule about the middle of July. While an estimate might be made fairly early in the month of July, it would be necessary, of course, to make another trip later and check that crop.
I do not know of any other way of doing it. If it is not made at all, you may run into much more serious difficulties. You might have to make several inspections at a time when the crop is cut and has disappeared, and you would not have any idea, other than by seeing the stubble, what crop -there was on the land. Of course we could check threshing returns, but sometimes that is difficult in that period of the year.


James Arthur Ross: Following the hon. member for Qu'Appelle, I am pleased that municipal organizations are going to be used to the extent proposed. I assumed that they would be used in the past in connection with the Prairie Farm Assistance Act. The minister says they will not be used for inspections. Does he intend to have the acreages all through the territory inspected, in order to check up the amoun-t in summer-fallow, coarse grains, and so on? If so, it will certainly add considerably to the number of inspectors.


James Garfield Gardiner: I do not anticipate that it will be necessary to do that in all cases. I believe that the hon. member for Souris, who himself has been president of that organization, will agree with me when I say that there are many secretaries all over Manitoba-and in Saskatchewan a similar condition exists-who know pretty well the persons who are making those returns; they have had experiences with them over a long term of years. I do not believe there will be much difficulty in getting information with regard to probably ninety per cent of the people who can be absolutely relied upon, and the statement of the secretary-treasurer will be sufficient to indicate that it can be relied on. Where that is the case, I do not believe that it will be necessary to make very many inspections; it may be advisable to make some checks in order to take in a certain number, without making any selection of people, and going through them to find how closely correct they are. In some instances, where it is indicated to us that a check should be made, a thorough check will probably have to be made.


Victor Quelch: One rather important point is this. I believe the minister will agree that very few of the acreages which have been
put in last year or the year before are really accurate. I do not suggest that wrong estimates are intentionally given, but on many farms the fields are of an irregular shape, or contain sloughs, and the acreage is merely roughly guessed. The point is this: if in the future farmers are required to give the acreage accurately, they will have to measure those fields, tape them, and it will be found that on a 100-acre field they will be 10 acres out one way or the other. Are you going to agree that the acreage measure shall be recognized as correct even if it gives them a larger amount than in the past? If you say in one case that the acreage has been too large, that they must cut it down, you will have to give the farmer the benefit where the case is reversed. Is it intended, therefore, to accept the acreage given in the past, or the acreage as shown by tape measure put over the wheat stubble at the present time?


James Garfield Gardiner: I would not expect that very many farmers would go to the trouble of taking a tape line and measuring the land. We know that the practice most of us follow is to take a seed drill which has a tally on it-


Victor Quelch: Probably inaccurate.


James Garfield Gardiner: -and we keep our
records very well from our tally on the seed drill. It is true that all of them do not tally correctly, but they are about as correct as the figures one would get if he were to measure these zigzag fields with a tape line. I have gone over a great number of these prairie farm assistance returns, have taken some of them to schoolhouses in the west and discussed them with the farmers themselves. Some have been astonished to find how far they have varied their returns, not with any wrong intent, for often they vary them to their own disadvantage. I can quite understand that it is easy for farmers who do not keep books or records of what goes on from year to year to forget to the extent of five acres how much wheat they had last year. But I have found that probably ninety-nine per cent of them, under our experience with the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, have demonstrated to us that they tried to be right, and when they are trying to be right they are not going to beat us very much; they usually beat themselves. They are really trying in earnest to be right. I think that will be found to be the situation under this plan. If they do vary the figures at all, it will be to make it absolutely certain that, when they have sworn to the statement, they have sworn to something which is correct. I do not think we shall have much difficulty with them.
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George Hugh Castleden: The Minister of Agriculture remarked that he hoped that later on, when wheat is needed, these people will be able to produce it. Does he suppose that the farmer on a quarter-section of land can possibly carry on under the reduced income which is going to be forced upon him under this legislation?


James Garfield Gardiner: I do not know very
many quarter-section farmers in western Canada; there are a few of them. But all those I do know are carrying on mixed farming. I do not know of any farmer who farms a quarter-section of land who is depending largely for his living upon his wheat. He is depending upon wheat for the kind of thing which was mentioned earlier in the debate by the hon. member for Yorkton; that is, he sometimes has to depend upon it to pay his past debts; if he does not get the wheat, he just is not able to pay. I agree, however, that there is some danger in these cases, if someone does not protect the interest of the individual farmer, of actions being taken in cases, where perhaps, they should not be. But, again, I would suppose that these cases are limited in number. The experience I have had with mortgage companies, particularly- and they get about as much criticism as anybody-is that in times like these they are not looking for more land. I believe that so long as a person is able to get along without running further into debt, he will not find much difficulty in getting whatever is available under this legislation, to help him carry on.
To answer this question in another way, I would say this, that if we once accept the condition that we are going to take only
230,000,000 bushels, and the further fact that we are going to allow the farmer only a quota in order to make up his part of that 230,000,000 bushels, I believe if he operates the matter properly, he can get better returns under this arrangement than he could under the other. In many instances it will depend upon the farmer himself whether he does or not. If, for example, he were putting in sixty acres of wheat, or anything over sixty acres, of a quarter-section of 160 acres, I think he could work out a plan under this scheme whereby he would get more cash this year than he would under the other system that is proposed.


George Hugh Castleden: On what does the
minister base that estimate of an increased income?
Mr. GARDINER; On the figures I gave a few minutes ago, that he could get under this, if he is farming on a quarter-section
fMr. Gardiner.]
proportionately to what he would be farming on a half-section, about 86 cents a bushel, on the wheat that he cannot deliver-


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Only on a
few acres.


James Garfield Gardiner: It would be only a few
acres in the other case, too.


Roy Theodore Graham: I believe the regulations
provide for this, but I should like to be certain, because of the difference in the wording of the first subparagraphs (b) and (c). It will be noted that it provides in (c) that rye can be seeded in the fall of 1941 on summer-fallow, and one can get the compensation for summer-fallow, and also in 1942, $2 per acre of rye. Does that apply to crested wheat grass in a district where it is good wisdom to sow it in the fall rather than in the summer?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes. It applies to rye and any kind of grass. It is the custom in some areas to sow grass seed in the fall of the year, and in those areas it will be sown in the fall. There will be certain farmers who can take advantage of that under conditions such as were described by the hon. member for Acadia, where men allow land to lie fallow throughout the year. Under this plan they can allow it to lie fallow throughout the year, sowing nothing on it at all, not even summer-fallowing it. They can sow rye on it in the fall or grass and get $2 for having sown grass or rye in the fall and another $2 the following year if it is still there.


Mr. GERSHAW:: Suppose it is a cover crop of wheat sown in the fall. How will that work out?


James Garfield Gardiner: There is no provision for paying any one for sowing wheat. It is for not sowing wheat.


Frederick William Gershaw: Suppose it were after the first of July, would he qualify for his summer-fallow bonus? Suppose it is black at that time, and later on he sows a cover crop to use it for winter feed.


James Garfield Gardiner: I suggest that he had better get rye this year if he wants to collect.


Victor Quelch: If the land is summer-fallowed by the first of July and he applies for a bonus and is paid, then I take it that so long as he signs the agreement that he will not thresh any crop off the land that year, he could, if he wished to do so, on July 15 sow wheat as a cover crop. He could do so so long as he agreed not to thresh it, or he might pasture it. If he has summer-fallowed the land, he will not be penalized for having sown that cover crop.

Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages


James Garfield Gardiner: Where that is the practice, in all probability payments will not be made until around, the first of August or later; and if he sows nothing after that, it is just pasture. That is a matter of his own judgment.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: I wish to join with those who suggest that, if it is at all possible, there be some fairly clear definition of the words "summer-fallow". Like the hon. member for Macdonald (Mr. Weir), I have received a number of letters from people. On land subject to soil drifting they have been summer-fallowing in the way the hon. member suggests, sowing corn and cultivating in between. Will this be considered summer-fallow or coarse grain? One of the difficulties about a bonus like this, or any other bonus system, is that so much discretion must be left to the field man or the inspector. One of the difficulties about administering it will be that in some instances the inspector, either because he thinks he is right or because he does not like the fellow with whom he is dealing, will decide that it is not proper summer-fallowing. The minister and members will receive letters and correspondence; they will have interviews with boards and all that sort of thing to settle border-line cases. The closer the definition can come to what will actually constitute summer-fallow, the less grief we shall have next year in the course of administration.
With reference to regulation 5 I would draw this to the attention of the minister:
In the case of a farm in which the landlord has an interest in the crop returns on the whole of the farm, the landlord may be entitled to receive not more than one-third of the amount to be paid for wheat acreage reduction on the farm.
It does not say "shall be entitled"; it says he "may be entitled". Does this mean that the landlord will have the power to seize one-third of the bonus? A large percentage of the leases out west are one-third crop share leases.


James Garfield Gardiner: This is intended to deal with the case where a man has a three-quarter section of land and the mortgage is on one quarter. He may have had all his wheat last year on the half-section that has no mortgage on it. What this intends is that the man in that position pays to the mortgage company only one-third of one-third. The wheat spreads over the whole thing and the collection spreads over it all. It is proportionate.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: That is what paragraph (b) says. What about (a)?


James Garfield Gardiner: That is, in the case of a farm in which the landlord has an interest in the crop returns on the whole of the farm. He may be entitled to receive not more than one-third of the amount to be paid for wheat acreage reduction on the farm. The amount he is to be allowed is only one-third. The government itself is not assumed to have taken any obligation upon itself. If it pays $10 too much or S5 too little, we shall not have a lot of litigation. The decision is with the government and not with the mortgage company.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: In the case of a crop share lease, a one-third crop share lease, the landlord pays the taxes out of his third and that is all the obligation he has. In the case of summer-fallow, the farmer will do all the summer-fallow, putting up all the expenses, and he gets a bonus of $4 an acre. Has the landlord or the mortgagee any claim on that under regulation 5(a)? Can he claim one-third of that bonus?


James Garfield Gardiner: Under the regulations as they are drafted, a mortgage company or any one who is interested, whether it be the vendor or the mortgage company or anyone of that kind, if there is a crop agreement with the person who is on the farm, is permitted to collect up to one-third but not more than one-third. Even if they have a half crop agreement they can collect only one-third; they must put in their claim before May 1 just as the farmer puts in his claim before May 1, and that will have to be proved as a legitimate contract between the two individuals.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Why should he in the case of summer-fallow be entitled to one-third? In the case of coarse grain I can understand it. The sum of $2 paid in the case of coarse grain has reference to a process in production, but in the case of summer-fallow he has no investment.


James Garfield Gardiner: Under most of these
contracts the farmer has to do certain things and one of them is that he must summer-fallow so much land. Another may be to grow so many acres of wheat, oats and so on, and then the vendor or the mortgagee has a claim of one-third of that crop. We come along and say to the individual, "We are taking away the terms of that contract and giving you the right to reduce that acreage, and because you are reducing it you will get certain payments". The vendor in many instances is some old person who has sold the land to another member of the family or to some one else, and it is his only means of support. We say to
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Supply-A griculture-Wheat Acreages
the mortgage companies, "You get whatever percentage is provided for in the contract so long as it is not over a third".


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: So far as
older people are concerned, there will be a hardship, although I think there will be a hardship in any event for everyone, old or young. The mortgagee in a great many instances, particularly in Saskatchewan, is either a mortgage company or a loan company or an insurance company. This is what will happen. A man summer-fallows land, and in the heavy land around the Regina plains where he is using tractors and buying oil it is a fairly expensive process. The hon. member for Portage la Prairie (Mr. Leader) suggested $5; but even if we allow $4 to cover the cost of summer-fallow, if one-third can be collected by the mortgagee or vendor all the farmer will get out of the 84 bonus is $2.66. And the mortgagor bears the entire expense. I can understand in the case of coarse grain there is an argument, when the $2 is part of the proceeds of the crop, and it may be that the mortgagee is supplying the seed. But in the case of summer-fallow he is supplying nothing, except that he pays the taxes out of his share of the crop, if there is any.


James Garfield Gardiner: The owner is supplying the land.	.


Roy Theodore Graham: The point raised by the hon. member for Weyburn is interesting, although I do not think I go quite as far as he does; I do not think it necessary. There should, however, be a distinction between the true landlord, that is the owner of the land who rents it and receives an annual rental for the use of the land, and the other types who come within the meaning of the term "landord" under this regulation, including the vendor of land and the mortgagee. We have to keep in mind that, in the case of vendors or mortgagees, if they do not receive a payment in any given year their debt is only postponed. Their position is entirely different from that of the true landlord who receives an annual rental for the use of land which he owns. While I would not have the government discriminate against the mortgagee or vendor, I suggest that we have in mind the situation, particularly in my own province but to a greater or less extent in parts of Alberta and Manitoba, where we realize that the question of debt adjustment is a most important one, so much so that recently the provincial legislature saw fit to amend the Crop Payments Act to permit of a mortgagor or purchaser under a mortgage or agreement for sale retaining out of the creditor's share sufficient at least to main-
{Mr. Gardiner.]
tain himself and family. If there is any dispute, the matter goes before the debt adjustment board and the machinery provides for a hearing of the points involved, the decision of the board being binding on the debtor and creditor, as far as a decision can be binding. If either is dissatisfied there is an appeal to a district court judge.
I suggest that the government would be wise to consider leaving the relationship of the mortgagee with the mortgagor and the vendor with the purchaser in the same position as that of any other debtor and creditor, in the province of Saskatchewan particularly. It seems to me inviting trouble for the minister and the government if we attempt to pay money direct to them out of this. If the money is paid to the farmer direct, no right that the mortgagee or vendor ever had is disturbed by that payment. If the amount he receives under this, combined with the amount of crop which he harvests or the amount of live stock which he sells, is more than sufficient to perform that fundamental task of maintaining himself and his family, then, of course, the mortgagee or vendor will get a reasonable share of that surplus. Therefore, I suggest that the minister consider whether he had not better confine the meaning of the word "landlord" to the true landlord, the owner of land who is entitled to an annual rent and who cannot postpone that rent in the same manner as a vendor or mortgagee. It would save the dominion government considerable trouble to leave the task of settling the relationship between debtor and creditor to the proper governmental authority, that is the provincial government.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: Following what the hon. member for Weyburn said, I point out that if something is not done to give the farmer some further return in addition to the two-thirds proposed, I fear that large areas will not be seeded. Take the case of a farmer who was prepared to seed 100 acres, a return of twenty bushels to the acre would give the landlord 8333 and the farmer $666. I realize that the landlord, by not having his land seeded, will suffer loss of income. But suppose this 100 acres should be summer-fallowed this year, according to the proposal the farmer would receive only $266 and the landlord or mortgage company $133. In most parts of Saskatchewan the farmers would find it impossible to summer-fallow 100 acres in a satisfactory manner on a return of $266. In view of the fact that the farmer's living must come from this 100 acres to a certain extent, a great hardship will be worked on the farmers if we expect them to summer-fallow, pay the

Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
costs of oil and repairs and so on and see $133 go, it may be, to the absentee landlord, even though the $133 would be a good deal less than the rental he would normally receive with twenty bushels to the acre at fifty cents a bushel. While a hardship would be worked on some people, it is more important that the farmer actually working the land should have enough to keep himself and family for this temporary period. I support the suggestion of the hon. member for Weybum, that the farmer who does the work should be entitled to keep the $400.


Mr. DOUGLAS (Weybum):: Under regulation 5, paragraph (b), there is going to be an even more complicated proposition. The vendor or mortgagee is to get one-third of whatever interest he has in the farm. If he has a one-third interest in the farm, he gets one-third of one-third. Solomon trying to divide the child between two women had an easy task compared with what the Minister of Agriculture will have. He will have almost innumerable cases as between two contracting parties each trying to establish his share of the bonus. The Minister of Agriculture will have to become a referee in thousands of cases.


James Garfield Gardiner: No; it is settled in accordance with these regulations.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: It will be a matter of deciding what interest each has. If a mortgagee has an interest in a quarter-section and the question arises how much of the land taken out of wheat production is actually in the quarter-section in which the vendor has an interest-


James Garfield Gardiner: If he is farming three quarter-sections and the mortgage is on one quarter, no mortgage on the half-section, and there was 300 acres of wheat last year and it is reduced this year by 150, then the amount there would be fifty acres per quarter-section; or the reduction of 150 acres is on the basis of one-third of one-third going to the mortgagee and the remainder to the man farming the land.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: The regulations do not say that. Suppose the farmer were to claim that the 150 acres were all on his half-section


James Garfield Gardiner: He cannot.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: -and the bonus was on the land in which he is interested, then the minister would have to be referee. The hon. member for Swift Current hit the nail on the head; the task of the minister under these regulations is to pay the bonus. The relation between the contracting
parties is something for the provincial government, and the minister would be wise to wipe his hands of the grief in which he will be involved if he tries to carry out the implications of these two paragraphs.


James Arthur Ross: There is a good deal of merit in the suggestions offered by the hon. member for Weyburn and the hon. member for Swift Current. In some localities most of the tenant's share will be taken up in connection with the labour required, and he will not get his just portion. That will not be so in every instance, but it will be so in many. It seems to me that if this payment were made direct to the operator, the division could then be made under contract between the landlord and the tenant, which I think would avoid a great deal of trouble for everyone concerned.
To come now to the question of what constitutes summer-fallow, a question which has been asked by many hon. gentlemen this evening, in many districts of the west we have had innovations or new systems introduced in the last few years in connection with what we now call summer-fallowing. I am wondering whether the superintendents of the experimental farms in the various areas might not more or less decide what constitutes proper summer-fallowing, because it varies in many districts.


James Garfield Gardiner: I have already stated
that under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act the superintendents of the experimental farms in the different areas are consulted; and of course the method of summer-fallowing adopted is very often that which has been advocated by the superintendent of the farm. Of course these gentlemen will be consulted with regard to these matters.


Mr. CHURCH:: This appropriation of
$35,000,000 for supplementary estimates, should not be passed until it is considered by the agriculture committee. The Toronto Globe and Mail has some things to say this morning about the Canadian council of agriculture, whose representatives have been around here for the last week urging these and other measures for the protection of this industry. These gentlemen are now advocating the most advanced form of protection for agriculture. Ir. this house I have always supported a proper national policy for the grain growers of Canada; that is, the men who actually grow the grain. The premiers of the three prairie provinces, and the ministers of agriculture in this house in the past since I have been here, were consistent free traders before the war, as far as this great industry is concerned. I have taken a
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Supply-Agriculture-Wheat Acreages
strong stand here with regard to agriculture, because I regard it as a barometer of the progress, success and prosperity of Canada; and it should have all the help this house can give it, if it is a long-range policy and not a half-baked one like this.
First of all, however, we should look into the policies of hon. gentlemen opposite. They have never had a grain policy. They have been everything by fits and starts, and nothing long. In the words of the Prime Minister the other day, "you paj' your money and take your choice," though that should be changed to: "You pay anyway, and you have no choice." The poor man on the prairies who grows the grain, the dirt farmer, has been done out of millions and millions of dollars by the middlemen on the prairies, the elevator ring, all the other rings, and the Winnipeg grain exchange, the greatest enemy the grain growers of the west ever had, centred in the city of Winnipeg, dealing in futures and all that sort of thing. No one in this house will complain about giving proper help to the grain growers of the prairies, I am sure, if it is a cure, or help.
The first session I was in this house, in 1922, the Canadian council of agriculture came here and opposed protection for this industry when those on this side were contending that it was not a north and south industry, as hon. gentlemen opposite said; that it was not a free trade industry with the United States, but an east and west industry. an overseas industry to Britain, France, Italy, and the markets of the world. But these gentlemen came here and opposed any protection. They are here again to-day, but they have turned a complete about-face. From 1920 on, the Canadian council of agriculture came here and said that protection was an unmitigated evil and a robber system, in the brief they then presented; that it had been the root of all the trouble that existed on the prairies. Now they have been proved wrong, and they are here to get S35.000.000 this year, or any advanced form of protection they can secure. This bill is an advanced form of protection; it provides bonuses, subventions and subsidies all along the line, with the other aids added of other years. It pays people for doing nothing.
We have never had a proper grain policy, and we never shall have a proper national policy as long as hon. gentlemen opposite are in office. Some three or four years ago not being one of those who were Geneva-minded, and seeing this war coming, I urged that we should get our carryover out of the country. I suggested the establishment of food and grain reservoirs in Great Britain.

Five years ago it was stated by the British medical association, meeting in the city of London, that our Canadian hard wheat was the finest grain in the world, and that with up-to-date methods it could be stored and kept in good condition for ten years. My suggestion was endorsed by the hon. member for Qu'Appelle who has impressed me as knowing more than any man I ever heard about the grain growing industry in all its phases. If my suggestion had been adopted and these reservoirs had been established, we would have cleaned out the elevators and the various carryovers, and the grain would have been over in the old country. To-day, however, because of lack of shipping, elevator and storage space and the glut in the war market, we do not know where we are, and do not know what it will cost or whither it is to lead us, and it is not a national but a local policy.
We are now going into this policy of protection all along the line, with bonuses, subventions and subsidies, and new ones added every session. That policy has been expanded in the last few years. We have now many forms of protection, and this year we have an item in the supplementary estimates for $35,000,000. This is not a long-range policy. I think it was last year that I urged the minister to have a conference with the Hon. H. A. Wallace, then secretary of agriculture in the United States, as to the orderly marketing of wheat in war time and a united action.
Progress reported.


[Stage Direction]
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
Tuesday, April 8, 1941.