1944-06-01

VACANCY


Mr. SPEAKER:: I have the honour to
inform the house that I have received the resignation of Thomas Clement Douglas, as member for the electoral district of Weyfoum. I have accordingly issued my warrant to the chief electoral officer to make out a new writ of election for the said electoral district.



PRIVILEGE


[Stage Direction]
Mr. JEAN-FRANCOIS POULIOT (Temis-couata): Mr. Speaker, now that your Honour is in the chair I have to rise, in the full house, on a question of privilege which affects every member of parliament. The matter is very serious. We have just heard an honoured guest state that we shall not be slaves of despots and tyrants, and that democracy shall be observed throughout the world.
There are three committees of the whole house. One of them is the committee of the whole, so-called; another is the committee of supply, and the third is the committee of ways and means. The house ignores officially what happens before one of those three committees, and, as I was victimized while one of those committees was sitting, it is my duty, sir, to inform you officially of what occurred 
on Monday while the house was sitting in committee of supply, and when the item for general administration of the senate was before that committee. And I will do so with the feeling that the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Ralston) recalls the well-known grace of my race.
The question that is of the utmost importance to all members of parliament, jointly and severally, as well as individually, is to know how many times a member of parliament has to withdraw a statement made in the house; and also, sir, if a minister can distort with impunity a statement made by a minister, and then call on the Chair for the withdrawal of a statement which comes from the lips of the minister and not from the mouth of the member who is supposed to withdraw the statement.
There is a well-known rule of the house forbidding members of parliament to impute motives to their colleagues. It will be enough to remind Your Honour of standing order 43, paragraph (1):
No member may speak twice to a question except in explanation of a material part of his speech which may have been misquoted or misunderstood, but then he is not to introduce any new matter, and no debate shall be allowed upon such explanation.
Which means, as you know so well, sir, that provided that parliamentary language is used in a statement made by a member, if that statement is not reported correctly a member has the right to mention to the house what he has said. And how many times do members of parliament rise in this house to correct statements which appear in Hansard, in order to remove any doubt about the way they have expressed themselves on any matter which has come before the house? At page 3345 of Hansard we find the chairman stating that I had used the following words in speaking about the senate:
_ They have completely lost any sense of shame in the senate, and with the exception of two or three-
Thomas Vien: The hon. gentleman is rising to a question of privilege in connection with a matter which was dealt with in committee of supply and upon which no report has been made to the house. Therefore the house is not in position to deal with the matter. If the hon. gentleman has any authority to show that he has the right to bring before the house something which was dealt with in committee of supply and there decided, I will listen to it. I know of no authority to permit the hon. gentleman to bring a question of this nature before the

Privilege-Mr. Pouliot
house and ask the house to deal with that which has already been decided in committee of supply.


Mr. POULIOT:: It is a most unusual case-


Thomas Vien: That is the reason why I interrupted the hon. gentleman. I know of no procedure to permit this. If the hon. gentleman can submit to me a rule of the house which would enable him on a question of privilege to deal with something already dealt with in committee of supply, I shall be glad to listen to him.


Jean-François Pouliot: I thank Your Honour for
your question, w'hich I will answer as satisfactorily as possible. The case I refer to is unprecedented in the annals of parliamentary history. There is no case that can be quoted where a minister of the crown has distorted and falsified what has been said by an hon. member.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Thomas Vien: The hon. member knows that such language addressed to any hon. member of the house cannot be maintained.


Jean-François Pouliot: I know that.


Thomas Vien: The hon. member will have to withdraw.


Jean-François Pouliot: I withdraw, but the word "distorted" was not complained of when I used it in committee and when-[DOT]


Thomas Vien: The hon. member is speaking in the house and I rule that the word "distorted" cannot be used with regard to any hon. member. I ask the hon. gentleman to withdraw.


Jean-François Pouliot: I will withdraw anything that is unparliamentary, but I say that the minister put in my mouth things that I .never said. I complain bitterly of this because I have been called to withdraw a statement that I hav'e never made. They were imputed to me. According to the whole parliamentary practice a member of parliament has the right to make a statement and to say exactly what he has to say for the defence of his rights and privileges in the House of Commons.


Thomas Vien: I will admit that the hon. member has the right to rise to any question of privilege, but the hon. member well knows that a question of privilege should be taken up at the time the breach of privilege complained of occurs. The hon. gentleman had the right in committee of supply to make his protest with regard to any statement that was made, but there is no question of privilege when he brings before the house a matter which has not been reported to the house and which, therefore, cannot be dealt with.


Jean-François Pouliot: If you will permit me, no question of privilege can be taken up in the committee. A point of order can be raised and then reported to the Chair. It was impossible for me to do that at the time because the notes had not been transcribed. I did not have the notes and I could not appeal the ruling to Your Honour so that Your Honour could decide upon it. Your Honour will agree that a question of privilege is similar to a point of order, but a question of privilege cannot be decided by the chairman of any one of the three committees already mentioned. That is one reason. The second reason is that the reporter's notes were not transcribed at the time. The third reason is that a member of parliament has the right to bring up a question of privilege before the house at any time in connection with anything that has happened in any committee. I do not want to use any offensive language; I only want to protest against the manner in which I was victimized on Monday last.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Thomas Vien: The hon. member is now making a charge which can only be a reflection upon the Chair when the committee of supply was sitting. He has said that he was victimized. After all, the chairman of the committee of supply would be ruling with regard to order. The hon. gentleman cannot say that he has been victimized.


Jean-François Pouliot: I did not say that I was victimized by the Chair; I say I was victimized by one of my colleagues, who happens to be the Minister of National Defence.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Thomas Vien: The hon. member is now travelling farther afield. I must rule that there is no question of privilege involved. I have already stated that I have no authority to deal with a matter which was dealt with in committee of supply and not reported to the house, nor has the hon. member been able to quote any authority which would justify a question of privilege at the moment. I am therefore ruling that there is no question of privilege.


Jean-François Pouliot: May I ask Your Honour if I may take it up when the house goes into committee of supply or committee of ways and means?


Thomas Vien: I would not wish to give judgment at the moment on a matter which is so unusual. I shall be glad to consider the matter.
Prime Minuter oj Australia
COMiMONS


Mr. McNEVIN:: The hon. member for Temiscouata said that he has been victimized by the Minister of National Defence. He should withdraw that statement.


Jean-François Pouliot: I will ask the-


Thomas Vien: Order. The matter is closed.


Mr. S. H. KNOWLES (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to a question of privilege. We in this group are grateful to the leader of the official opposition for the gracious manner in which he included all opposition groups when he spoke in connection with welcoming-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Stanley Howard Knowles: -the Right Honourable John Curtin.


Thomas Vien: I could not hear the hon. gentleman who has risen to a question of privilege. I have not heard what the question of privilege is.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I wish to refer briefly to three things, if I may. First, I want to express appreciation to the leader of the opposition. Second, I want to express appreciation to Your Honour for the courteous way in which you thanked the distinguished speaker on behalf of all of us. In the third place,
I want to express the feeling of all of us in this group that at this moment it might be proper for us to place some words of our own upon the record in connection with the address which has just been delivered. I ask Your Honour whether that would be in order as a matter of privilege.


Thomas Vien: I think the suggestion made by the hon. member would properly come from the minister who is leading the house.


Mr. REID:: The house was not in session.


Mr. CRERAR:: I think the matter might well be left until we reach the order for motions.


[Stage Direction]
Third report of the standing committee on miscellaneous private bills.-Mr. Picard.
Third and fourth reports of the standing committee on railways, canals and telegraph lines.-Mr. Dupuis.
First report of the joint committee of the Senate and the House of Commons on relations between the federal government and the city of Ottawa.-Mr. Matthews.
Mr. VINCENT DUPUIS (Chambly-Rouville) moved:: That the fourth report of the standing committee on railways, canals and telegraph lines, presented to the 'house this day respecting reduction in quorum be concurred in.


Mr. GRAYDON:: May I ask if this report contains anything more than simply a request to reduce the quorum?


Vincent Dupuis: Nothing else, and that was agreed to unanimously in the committee.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.


Thomas Alexander Crerar: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King)
I beg to move, seconded by the hon. Minister of Justice (Mr. St. Laurent):
That the address of the Right Hon. John Curtin, Prime Minister of Australia, delivered before the members of the Senate and of the House of Commons of Canada in the chamber of the House of Commons on Thursday, June 1, 1944, be included in the House of Commons Debates and form part of the permanent records of this parliament.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, if I may speak to this motion, I should like to say that I am very glad to support it, and we are happy that included among the speeches to be recorded will be the very gracious words of the leader of the opposition (Mr. Graydon) in which he spoke on behalf of all opposition groups in welcoming the Right Hon. John Curtin to the floor of this chamber. I feel, too, that I should like to take this opportunity of saying to you, Mr. Speaker, that no one could have done better than Your Honour in expressing the appreciation of all members of this house to Mr. Curtin for his memorable address.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, whether it is in order or not, I intend to say that you bring honour to this house on all such occasions. However, on an occasion such as this we of this group feel that some words of our own might properly be spoken, so that I should like to say on behalf of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation that we join with particular pleasure in the wholehearted welcome which has been extended to the Prime Minister of Australia. He comes to us as the representative of a great people, for whom the

Fisheries
citizens of Canada have the highest regard. We join in asking Mr. Curtin, as has already been suggested to him, that he take back to his fellow-citizens of Australia the good wishes of the Canadian people.
Mr. Curtin comes to us as the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia-


Mr. MACDONALD (Kingston City):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to a point of order. The greetings to the Prime Minister of Australia were expressed by the Prime Minister of this country and by the leader of the official opposition, and I do not think it is in order for the member for Winnipeg North Centre to endeavour to get in on this welcome in the way that he is attempting to do at this moment.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I am afraid I shall have
to raise a point of order. The hon. minister is imputing motives.


Angus Lewis Macdonald: I
am not imputing motives, but if this is to be allowed, the result will be that any member of the house can get up and have a part in welcoming the Prime Minister of Australia or any other distinguished visitor. The welcome to Mr. Curtin did not take place in the house; Mr. Speaker was not in the chair, nor was the chairman of committees in the chair. It is a matter entirely outside the house. A welcome was expressed to Mr. Curtin by the leader of the official opposition (Mr. Graydon) on behalf, I understood, of all opposition groups, and if my hon. friend is to be allowed the privilege of having his welcome go on Hansard I see no reason why every other hon. member of the house cannot get up and do the same thing.


Thomas Vien: I do not wish to deprive
the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre of the opportunity of making his statement, but it is most unusual in my experience and in the experience, I think, of this parliament to have such statements made by private members. Nor do I think the motion is debatable.


Mr. HOMUTH:: And it is a most unusual
party.


Thomas Vien: Therefore I must ask the hon. member to desist from any further remarks along the line he is making. The motion is now before the house and it is not debatable. I do not find that it comes within any standing order which would enable it to be debated, and I must therefore put the motion to the house.


Vincent Dupuis: Might I be allowed one
word, Mr. Speaker? I do not wish to move an amendment but I would ask this house
that the remarks of Your Honour as Speaker of the House of Commons be included in the record.


Thomas Vien: The practice has hitherto been when we have had a meeting such as we have had to-day to include all -the speeches within the motion.


Stanley Howard Knowles: May I express the same hope, Mr. Speaker?


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
(For text of address of Prime Minister Curtin, with speeches of welcome and thanks,
see page 3453.)


Hon. ERNEST BERTRAND (Minister of Fisheries):: Mr. Speaker, for the information
of the house I would like to say that, with a view to assisting further to increase the productive capacity of the Atlantic fishing industry, the government has decided to extend its plan for subsidizing the construction of fishing vessels so as to make subsidy available to draggers and long-line vessels from fifty-five feet upwards in length when built for groups of four or more Atlantic fishermen. Up to the present the subsidy has been payable only on draggers of seventy-two feet or more.
The subsidy on construction of the smaller vessels will be at the same rate as in the case of the larger craft-$165 per gross ton.
The order in council which has been passed extending the application of -the plan also provides that, in computing taxation on income or excess profits, the owners of the vessels may take a special accelerated depreciation allowance up to the whole cost of the depreciable assets in any one year or any group of years within a five-year period from the date of the vessels' registration. This accelerated depreciation will be in lieu of the annual rates of depreciation ordinarily granted under the relevant statutes.
Under another order in council which has been passed the same accelerated depreciation as I have just mentioned will likewise be permitted in the case of all fishing vessels -of the schooner class on the Atlantic coast, no matter what their particular type or types, built subsequent to January 1, 1943, and used entirely for fishing purposes for not less than five years after registration.
During the five-year period the owner of each schooner wishing to claim accelerated depreciation allowance .'.nder this latter order
Fisheries

wall be required to submit to the Minister of Fisheries, not later than the last day of February in each year, a statement showing, to the satisfaction of the minister, that the conditions of the order have been fulfilled. The minister, in turn, will submit the statement to the taxation division of the Department of National Revenue. Failure to submit such a statement, or to comply with other conditions of the order in council, will render a vessel ineligible for special depreciation allowance.


Thomas Reid: May I be permitted to ask the minister a question? With regard to the first part of his statement, will the deep-sea owners of these boats be granted not only the subsidy but the accelerated depreciation as well?


Ernest Bertrand: Yes


Thomas Reid: Both a subsidy and accelerated depreciation?


Ernest Bertrand: There is a subsidy for the draggers and for the long-liners, and accelerated depreciation. There is accelerated depreciation only for schooners.


Mr. KINLEY:: I could not hear the minister plainly. Is the effect of the two orders in council that there is no discrimination as between dory fishermen and dragger fishermen in the matter of depreciation and subsidy?


Karl Kenneth Homuth: Or between Liberals and
Conservatives.


Ernest Bertrand: That is a question of policy. We thought that in the case of the schooners we could grant depreciation, and in the case of draggers which have not yet been built of fifty-five feet and over we thought we could grant a subsidy and depreciation.



QUESTIONS

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

Mr. KNOWLES:: 1.	Does the R.C.A.F. plan to operate an air transport service in Canada? If so, for what purposes?
2.	Will such a service duplicate the services provided by T.C.A.? Will it operate over the same routes,^ use the same facilities, and call at the same points, or is it intended to install new facilities on new routes?
3.	If such .a service is being planned, what will be the cost of, (a) its initial outlay; (b) its annual operation?
4.	Is it intended to continue the operation of such a service, in whole or in part, after the war?


Mr. MACMILLAN:: 1.	The R.C.A.F. operates 3 air transport services all for its own use:
(a)	West coast and north west staging route.
(b)	To outlying stations of the east coast such as Gander and Goose Bay.
(c)	From Ottawa to Moncton and Dartmouth.
From time to time other services have been suggested but have never been authorized.
They are utilized for the transportation of service personnel. They are also used as a training ground for overseas requirements of heavy transport aircrews which are expected to increase when the invasion army moves to Europe.
2.	No. These services are strictly for the
use of the armed services.
3.	The cost of the present services are:
Maintenance Capital (a) West coast and north
west staging route

$343,000	$661,000
(b)	East coast	 357,000	661,000
(c)	Ottawa to Moncton
and Dartmouth		101,000	221,000
4. No present intention.


POST OFFICE-ADVERTISEMENT IN &quot;LIBERAL
[Stage Direction]
advocate"
Mr. BENCE:: 1.	Was an advertisement inserted by the department of the Postmaster General in the April, 1944, number of the periodical known as the Liberal Advocate?
2.	If so. what was the cost to the department of the Postmaster General, and/or any other department of the government for such .advertisement?


Mr. MULOCK:: 1.	Yes. Included in national publicity campaign re overseas mail to armed forces.
2.	$90.


TRUCK CONTROL-ONTARIO
Mr. GAUTHIER:: Is the federal truck controller for the province of Ontario bilingual? If not, has he any bilingual assistants, and what are their names?


Mr. ABBOTT:: There is no official designated as "federal truck controller" but it is assumed that reference is made to the administrator of services of the W.P.T.B.
The latter is not bilingual nor has he any bilingual assistants in the province of Ontario. In those sections of Ontario where French is spoken, the services of French speaking representatives of the board are available to him.

Questions
SOLDIER SETTLEMENT	[DOT]


Mr. QUELCH:: 1.	What was the cost to the dominion government of the following lands that were sold to soldier settlers in 1920: sections 6, 13, 14, 15, EJ16, 22, 23, 24, of range 18, township 33, west of 4 and sections 32, 30, X F, 26, 23, 22, WJ 19, 18, 17, 16, 15 and NE J 13, of range 18, township 32, west of 4?
2.	What was the total initial price charged the settlers for above lands?
3.	What was the average price per acre?
4.	What is total debt of soldier settlers or members of veterans guard still resident on these lands?
5.	How many soldiers originally settled on these lands?
6.	How many have paid for their land in full?
7.	How many have abandoned their land?
8.	How many are still resident?
9.	How many are in the veterans guard but still hold their land?


Thomas Alexander Crerar: 
WAR REFUGEES
Mr. JAQUES:: 1.	How many refugees have been brought from Europe to Canada, to date, during each month of the present year?
2.	How many of each nationality?
3.	How many of each religion?
4. How many have been settled in each *province ?
5. How many of these will engage in agriculture?


Thomas Alexander Crerar: 1,	2 and 3. Information not available; the classification "refugee" is not included in immigration statistics.
A special group of refugees who arrived from Europe in April last were allowed in for the duration of the war but were -not given permanent status. This group comprised 273 persons, divided by nationality as follows: Austrian, 19; Belgian, 7; Czechoslovak, 4; Dutch, 1; French, 14; German, 63; Hungarian, 17; Jugo-Slav, 12; Latvian, 1; Luxembourg, 2; Polish, 101; Portuguese, 4; Roumanian, 12; Russian, 7; Spanish, 7; Ukrainian, 1; Venezuelan, 1.
The religions of the group are shown as follows: Evangelist, 1; Lutheran, 10; Protestant, 3; Jewish, 223; Roman Catholic, 32; Nil, 4.
4 and 5. No information.


JAPANESE NATIONALS-PROPERTIES AND REHABILITATION
Thomas Reid: Up to the present time, what is the total of all sums collected by the security commission and standing to the credit of those of the Japanese race within Canada, giving, (a) sums of money owing or paid from all property, including farms under the Veterans' Land Act; (b) from fishing vessels; (c) for rehabilitation purposes?


Mr. MITCHELL:: No moneys have been collected by the Department of Labour or the British Columbia security commission during its existence to the credit of the Japanese in Canada. The handling, disposition and accounting of the proceeds of real and personal properties situate in the protected areas of British Columbia of persons of the Japanese race evacuated from such areas is vested in the custodian of enemy property, Department of Secretary of State.


CANADIAN LEAF PIPE TOBACCO
Mr. FERLAND:: 1.	Have the licensed dealers or packers of Canadian leaf tobacco of the district of Joliette, Quebec, asked the wartime prices and trade board to raise their wholesale prices, because the prices paid to the tobacco producers are *higher than the maximum prices authorized by *the board?
2.	Has the tobacco administrator recommended to the chairman of the wartime prices and trade board an increase in the wholesale price of Canadian leaf pipe tobacco, grown in the province of Quebec?
3.	Has the special adviser to' the chairman of the wartime prices and trade board, for the province of Quebec, made a similar recommendation?
4.	Has the wartime prices and trade board arrived at a decision in connection with this matter; (a) if so, what is such decision; (b) if not, will such matter be examined and decided upon by the government?


Mr. ABBOTT:: 1.	No maximum price has been, fixed by the board for this particular type of tobacco when sold by growers, but the licensed packers have asked for an increase in selling price because of increased cost.
2 and 3. Reports made by officers of the board are regarded as privileged.
4. The whole question is being considered by the board, and it is expected that a decision will be announced in a few days.
Questions


AIRCRAFT REPAIR LIMITED, EDMONTON
Mr. FAIR:: 1.	To whom was Aircraft Repair Ltd., Edmonton, leased at January 1, 1944?
2.	To whom is it leased at the present time?
3.	Was .the former lessee refused renewal of lease?
4.	If so, why?


Mr. CIIEVRIER:: The government-owned aircraft repair plant at Edmonton has never been leased to any contractor. As of January 1, 1944, this plant was operated by Aircraft Repair Limited on a standard aircraft overhaul and repair contract basis for the government and it is still so operated.


NATIONAL REGISTRATION
Mr. ROSS (Calgary East):: What procedure is followed to keep the records of the national registration of 1940 up to date in respect to each of the following: (a) changes in address of registrants; (b) marriages of registrants; (c) deaths of registrants; (d) registrations of persons who have attained the age of sixteen or have entered Canada since the general registration of August, 1940, and what were- the respective totals of said address changes, marriages, deaths and new registrations received at the central registry in the year 1943?


Humphrey Mitchell: National registration
records are kept up to date as far as possible in respect to subjects (a), (b), (c>
and (d) through the following arrangements: *
(a)	Changes of address in most instances are reported to the chief registrar for Canada on printed "Change of Address" one-cent post cards obtainable at any post office in Canada, as provided in the national registration regulations. A considerable number of changes, however, are reported in letters from registrants. As changes are received they are recorded on the master registration cards of the registrants concerned. In the year 1943 the total number of address changes reported was 803,243.
(b)	In accordance with the national registration regulations declaration of marriage forms are available at any post office in Canada. On completion of these forms the postmaster (all postmasters are designated as deputy registrars in the national registration regulations) supplies the wife with a new registration certificate in her married name and forwards the completed form to the chief registrar for Canada. On receipt of the forms at the central registry the name is changed on the master card and the date of her marriage is recorded. The change of conjugal condition and the date thereof is recorded on the husband's master card. The form provides for the reporting of the old and new address of both the husband

and wife, and the master cards are revised accordingly. In the year 1943 the total number of marriages reported was 100,523.
(c>
Through the cooperation of provincial vital statistics officials the central registry is advised of the deaths of registrants. Arrangements have been made whereby the national registration certificates of deceased persons are collected and forwarded to the central registry by funeral directors. In the year 1943 the total number of deaths reported was 64,585.
(d)	Postmasters in their capacity of deputy registrars, register young persons as they attain the age of sixteen, issuing to them national registration certificates. The completed master cards are forwarded by the postmasters to the central registry, where they are incorporated into the records. The registration of persons who have entered Canada since the general registration of August, 1940, and of persons discharged or retired from the armed forces, who were not previously registered, is also performed by the postmasters. In the year 1943 the total number of new registrations received at the central registry was 234,863.



QUESTIONS PASSED AS ORDERS FOR RETURNS


Mr. PURDY:: By provinces, what has been the cost to the federal government (including unpaid balances outstanding) for feed grain, fodder and similar advances during the past twenty years?


BIRCH AND MAPLE VENEER LOGS
Mr. POULIOT:: 1.	What were the quantities of veneer logs exported, (a) to the United Kingdom and, (b) 'to other countries, during each one of the last four years?
2.	What quantities of birch or maple veneer logs of both export and second quality were sold 'to the Guelph Cask Veneer & Plywood Co., Ltd., Scotstown, Que.; Canada Veneers Ltd., Saint John, N.B.; Dominion Shuttle Co., Lachute, Que.; Commonwealth Plywood Ltd., Ste. Therese, Que.; the Singer Mfg. Co., Thurso, Que., for each year from 1940 to 1944?


RELIEF OF WAR DISTRESS IN ALLIED COUNTRIES
Mr. BLACK (Cumberland):: 1.	Has a conference 'been held between the Minister of National War Services and representatives of certain Canadian organizations for the relief of war distress in allied countries, with a view to amalgamating several of such organizations?
2.	If so, what are the organizations w-hich it is proposed to unite; what are the aims of each, and who are the representatives of each, with whom the department has been in communication ?

City of Ottawa-Joint Committee
3.	Is it proposed to hold a joint eompaign for funds in 1944? If so, when?
4.	What arrangements have been made or proposed for administration of such a campaign and of the funds so raised?
5.	If the arrangements have not been completed, what is the reason for the delay?
6.	Does the government propose to have representation on a joint board?
7.	Have representatives been named?
8.	If not why, and when will they be named?


CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOBS
Mr. MACDONALD (Brantford City):: 1.	(a) How many postponed conscientious objectors has the Department of Labour placed in alternative service work camps in British Columbia under the administration of the forestry department of that province; (b) what percentage of these men were engaged in agriculture before entering this service; (c) will this arrangement be maintained during the fiscal year 1944-1945?
2.	What work has (been done by postponed conscientious objectors in alternative service work camps at Kananaskis, forest experimental station, Seebee, Alberta, and in the Banff, Alberta, area?
3.	(a) How many men postponed by mobilization boards as conscientious objectors have subsequently joined any branch of the armed forces; (b) what regulations govern noncombatant service in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps or the Canadian Dental Corps?
4.	(a) How much money did the Red Cross receive up to January 31, 1944, from postponed conscientious objectors; (b) how much was paid to the Canadian Red Cross society during the month of January, 1944?
5.	How many men have been ordered to alternative service work camps for refusal to comply with direction they received?


LABOUR CONDITIONS
Mr. KNOWLES:: 1.	Did the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, Winnipeg local union No. 343, appeal against the action of the national selective service office, in Winnipeg, in directing one or more members of said union to accept employment with Canada Packers, Limited, at St. Boniface, Manitoba?
2.	If so, was the appeal allowed or dismissed?
3.	What was the wage rate paid to any member or members of said union while employed with Canada Packers Limited?
4.	Was this wage rate less than the rate normally received by members of this union in their regular employment?
5.	Did the court of referees recommend to the Minister of Labour that a supplementary allowance be paid to such uuion members, under the provisions of section 212 (4) of the national selective service civilian regulations? If so, has this .recommendation been implemented by the minister?
6.	If the above-noted recommendation has not been implemented, is consideration being given thereto?


PRIME MINISTER CHURCHILL
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. JEAN-FRANCOIS POULIOT (Temis-couata): Mr. Speaker, following the motion which has been put by the Minister of Mines and Resources for the publication of Mr. Curtin's speech in our record, would he be good enough to tell the house what has been decided regarding the publication of the last speech made by Mr. Churchill at Westminster, that speech being the sequel of the work of the dominion prime ministers' conference?
Thomas Alexander Crerar: I am unable to give my hon. friend a definite answer to that question. Hon. members are aware that I was not in the house on Monday or Tuesday. I shall again bring the matter to the attention of the Prime Minister-apparently it has not been brought to his attention-and perhaps my hon. friend can get an answer to-morrow.


Jean-François Pouliot: And I will ask my hon. friend not to forget me this time.


CITY OF OTTAWA
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. T. L. CHURCH (Broadview):: I would like to ask the government a question growing out of the motion reported on page 3327 of Hansard, for a joint committee of the Senate and the House of Commons to report on federal-municipal relations. When the debate was oh a month ago it was stated that a committee was to be appointed to deal with the whole general question of all municipal relations with the federal government in a national as well as in a local way. In view of the statement of the Prime Minister and others in that debate when it was announced that a committee was to be appointed, I would ask the government to look into the text of the resolution to see if it could not be broadened along the lines of the debate a month ago to include a national inquiry into municipal and federal relations, because the principles are just the same.


Thomas Alexander Crerar: I shall bring the matter which my hon. friend has raised to the attention of the Prime Minister. The subject is one with which he has been dealing.


Thomas Langton Church: An inquiry was held in the United States and Australia, and it was national, not local.
War Appropriation-Finance



WAR APPROPRIATION BILL


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from Tuesday, May 30, consideration in committee of a resolution to grant to His Majesty certain sums of money for the carrying out of measures consequent upon the existence of a state of war-Mr. Ilsley-Mr. Bradette in the chair.

[Stage Direction]
Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation, $140,009,000.
Jean-François Pouliot: I do not intend to speak at great length about this matter, but this is something about which members of parliament have no information at all. The Commodity Prices Stabilization corporation is not mentioned in the dominion government telephone directory. If it is, I would like the parliamentary assistant to tell us-


Douglas Charles Abbott: It is under the wartime prices and trade board.


Jean-François Pouliot: They go together? I thank my hon. friend for his information. However, it is all the same thing; it is a branch of the wartime prices and trade board. In the commodity prices stabilization corporation, Mr. H. B. McKinnon is the president and Mr. Noble the vice-president, but I do not see the name of anyone who is bilingual, out of twenty persons. Yesterday in the Ottawa Journal there was a news item that referred to the answer given to the hon. member for York South that 293 dollar-a-year men were serving with the prices board. I have made a check in the telephone book of the names of those who appear here and I find only sixteen French names of persons who presumably are bilingual.
The question of the number of Frenchspeaking or bilingual persons who are employed now in major positions in the war departments has been raised in the legislature of Quebec, and I have waited for a long time to take it up here. I will ask the parliamentary assistant to see to it that members of parliament are given some information about the exact number of high officials, bilingual, in these branches as well as in the Bank of Canada and on the foreign exchange control board, and also a description of the positions they hold. There may be a certain number of stenographers, grades 1 and 2, and perhaps 3, who are bilingual, but they occupy minor positions. When it comes to higher positions it is all a closed territory: Bilingual shall not apply.

I have waited a long time to say this. I had occasion to discuss the matter with some of my colleagues and several English-speaking people outside the House of Commons, and they all agree that the treatment accorded to the bilingual people in this country is something unbelievable, something that has to be remedied. That was said to me in Toronto as well as in Montreal and in London by broadminded people who understand that the bilingual element in the country cannot be put in a reserve and cannot be treated in the way it has been by all the war departments. If the bilingual people in this country, and especially French Canadians in the province of Quebec, do not have fair treatment, it is not due to the majority of the English-speaking people; it is due to the stubbornness of some Englishspeaking ministers who do not act with fairness when the question comes up of employing somebody. The one who gets in has to be a close friend of the one who is in already. They are chums, they are pets, and they practice the same favouritism that was twice bitterly condemned unanimously by a civil service parliamentary committee.
My friend, I would say my young friend, the parliamentary assistant (Mr. Abbott), lives in the province of Quebec. He has friends in that province, he is admired in that province, and I am sure he reciprocates those feelings; but I cannot see why some people in the department are showing such stubbornness-I am glad the minister has come in because I would say this to him-in refusing to employ bilingual people in major positions. It is the same in the department of munitions; it is the same in many branches of the Department of National Defence. This is a war appropriation, and I may say that those who speak French are at times ill-treated by some of these fellows.
I have no charge to make against anyone individually; I wish to defend the rights of those who are bilingual, and who should not be ostracized on that account. It is enough to read the list of the high officials-and by that I mean those who have the right to put their name opposite a telephone number under the wartime prices and trade board. Out of approximately 293 there are only sixteen who are bilingual. Is that reasonable?
The province of Quebec is doing very well when it comes to subscriptions to war loans. It is at the top. The first place to reach its quota was a place in my county. Montreal

War Appropriation-Finance
is doing exceedingly well, and even the small centres do very well, much better than other parts of the country. But when it comes to practical matters, when it comes to being given a chance, the bilingual men, especially from the province of Quebec, find the door closed. I protest most energetically against it and appeal to the good sense of the Minister of Finance. I will tell him that if no correction is made the people will remain of the opinion that it is due to the ministers themselves if the good people of my province have no better chance in the public service.


Thomas Langton Church: When this corporation was first appointed I brought to the attention of the house certain principles and facts about this policy which started its infancy in 1941. At that time early in the war things needed more control than they do now, and some stabilization. This vote has gone from $2,000,000 to S120,000,000 last, year, and now it is proposed to make it $140,000,000, although we are near the end of the fifth year of the war. I contended, at that time, and I called it to the attention of the Prime Minister, that the two houses of parliament could broaden out their work and give a branch in another place some real war work such as this which they could consider and report on as is done by the senate at Washington.
The control system has done a good deal of good. There is no doubt about that, particularly at a certain stage of the war. But this stabilization corporation cannot do all the controlling and it is going to defeat the very objects and principles for which it was appointed. I remember Mr. Donald Gordon made a speech in Montreal at the start of this proposal. He said that during the fiscal year they would spend about $2,500,000. I think the Minister of Finance said he did not know exactly what it would be. No doubt he was correct at the time. He did not know what it would be because' it was a problematical proposal. Mr. Gordon then made another speech a month later, in Winnipeg, at Easter I think. This second speech was made at Winnipeg. He said it would spend about $2,500,000. It has gone a long way beyond that. Can any business man tell me that he approves the expenditure of $140,000,000 at a time like this on a proposal such as this?
In the first place they applied the proposal to marmalades, jams, and all that kind of product. They waited so long that there was none of it on the shelves of the large and
small stores to control. They waited so long that it became just a gamble in subsidies and their distribution, a gamble with unforeseen events. They are gambling with production and distribution. ' There are many other instances that I could mention. In the mother country they are getting away from that kind of thing and coming back to the old way of doing business and giving the retail man a chance. I know that some good has come out of this corporation. I admit that, but it has not been applied at the right time and it has not been applied to the commodities to which it should have been applied. You can go along the streets of the cities and see certain small retailers closing up. They have gone into the meat and butter business and a great many other articles of food and vegetables and many other things like this.
I fail to see where we have been given value for our money.
We now have a consumers' league. From what I have seen and what I have learned about it and from what I know about the articles covered by the consumers' league- some of the gentlemen who compose it are teachers from universities, teachers trying to apply business principles and all that kind of thing to many articles with subsidy hand-outs -all they know about it is what they consume themselves.
I believe that protection is necessary at a certain time in the war, but the situation has all changed; and this is out of all proportion. We propose to spend $140,000,000 when we are told we have no money to build houses or practically no money to supply housing or for the care of soldiers, and when the small retailer and the working classes are asking for fuel and housing and all that kind of thing. While all this is going on we are going to take a big gamble in the manner indicated. I admit that there are some good men in this corporation, but some of them have never had any business training. They have never had any training in competitive business. I raised this question when the minister's estimates were up last year and the year before. A return was brought down on Monday and I notice that the control boards have 156 press agents and liaison officers boosting this proposal. Some of them write editorials and some of them prepare just ordinary write-ups in the newspapers. There is a staff of 156 in the department. I have seen pictures in some of the society papers of the gentlemen who compose some of these controls and the value of their work. While
War Appropriation-Finance

I have supported the principle I believe it is catering to the big business man who buys in bulk and to some of the trusts along certain lines. It is not carrying out the functions for which it was set up, to prevent spreads and ensure stabilization, and to try to get the necessities of life to the consumer at reasonable prices. It is administered by a few gentlemen. Some of them doubtless have a great deal of capacity and ability. I believe some of the women's branch of the consumers' league do nothing but travel around the country making speeches at community clubs about the fine men and women in the department.
With regard to the consumers' league I fail to see where we are getting value for the money. I believe the time has come when this matter of this corporation should be dealt with by some committee. At Washington a committee of the Senate considers these things. There they have a duplicate house with ours. They have appointed a committee to inquire into these things. There was a complaint here on Monday about this very thing. I voiced that complaint many times about another branch in another place and the Prime Minister told me in 1941 and 1942 and 1943 that we were going to have a meeting with the other place and try to draft out some way by which those controls could be reviewed by a joint committee and other matters like that.


Mr. FRASER (Peterborough West):: Would the parliamentary assistant-


Thomas Langton Church: I should like to have some explanation from the parliamentary assistant as to the increase of $20,000,000.


Douglas Charles Abbott: I might give the breakdown. Perhaps it will serve my hon. friend's purpose if I give him a break-down of the 8140,000,000. The break-down is as follows:
Subsidies-Domestic Fruits and vegetables-canned
dried, etc	 $ 4,500,000
Footwear-discount on leather.. 1,000,000
Furniture	 500,000
Groceries	 2,000,000
Glove and garment leather		'	750,000
Jams and jellies	 1,000,000
Lumber	 3,000,000
Meat products	 1,000,000
Milk-consumers	 25,000,000
Oils and fats	 5,000,000
Transportation of foodstuffs....	500,000
Wood fuel	 3,000,000
Woodenware and wooden containers	 3.000,000
Miscellaneous	 3,250,000

Subsidies-Imports	 62,000.000
Total subsidies	 $115,500,000
The committee will understand, if they have read the report of the wartime prices and

trade board, that the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation Limited imports certain commodities in bulk, and in some cases takes trading losses on those in order that they may be sold to the consumer at ceiling prices. The estimated trading losses total, whether realized or not, amounts to $20,000,000. The details are as follows:
Trading losses
Alcohol-industrial	 $ 2,500,000
Citrus juices	 700,000
Cocoa .beans	 500,000
Coffee	 1,000,000
Cotton yarns and fabrics	 3.000,000
Dried fruits	 5.000,000
Oils and fats	 4,000,000
Miscellaneous	 3,300,000

Then, too, we have an estimate of $1,500,000 for administrative expenses, and $3,000,000 for the Wartime Food Corporation Limited, making up the grand total of $140,000,000 as covered by the estimate.


Mr. NOSEWORTHY:: On Tuesday I asked the parliamentary assistant for a statement with respect to potatoes. Could we have it to-day?


Douglas Charles Abbott: Perhaps I might first give a brief background in connection with the potato subsidy. As the committee will recall, about this time last year the supply situation respecting potatoes in Canada was rather difficult. I recall very vividly that almost every day I was being questioned in the house as to what was being done in connection with the supply of potatoes. As a result of that short supply condition it was decided first to pay a subsidy on imported potatoes. Then, since Canadian new potatoes were beginning to come on the market it was felt it would be unfair to Canadian producers to subsidize imported potatoes, without offering a similar subsidy to the producers of Canadian potatoes. In normal times new potatoes are a luxury product, and when they first come on the market they sell at prices higher than those of old potatoes.
The situation last year was such that it was felt that as new potatoes came on the market they would have to be used, in order to fill current requirements. Consequently the ceiling price of new potatoes established in May, 1943 was fixed at the same rate as for old potatoes. At that time it was announced that a subsidy would be paid on domestically grown potatoes. I shall not go into details with respect to that subsidy. Generally speaking however it was to be at the rate of $3.75 per 100 pounds. Perhaps it would be well to give a little more detail than I had intended.

War Appropriation-Finance
Subsidy was authorized to be paid to persons [DOT]who purchased new potatoes direct from a primary producer or his agent for resale, provided that no subsidy would be paid on new potatoes purchased at prices f.o.b. original shipping point in excess of the following:
(a)	$3.75 per 100 pounds when shipped on or before July 31, 1943;
(b) $3.50 per 100 pounds when shipped between August 1 and 15, 1943, both inclusive.
(c) $3.00 per 100 pounds when shipped between August 16 and 31, 1943, both inclusive.
There was in addition provision for the payment of necessary transportation charges and the allowance for shrinkage equal to five per cent of the maximum wholesale cost as fixed by order 236, which related to the selling price of potatoes. Transportation prices were not recognized in the case of potatoes grown within a radius of fifteen miles of consuming centres. The minimum quantity of new potatoes on which subsidy would be paid is seventy-five pounds.
To ensure that producers would have full opportunity to avail themselves of subsidy arrangements, wide publicity was given through the press, regional offices, wholesale and retail trade and the horticultural council, as respecting the growers and shippers.
The subsidy, as was the case with all these consumer subsidies, was administered by the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation. It was an exceedingly difficult subsidy to administer. With hindsight, which is always easier than foresight-


Gordon Graydon: And much more prevalent.


Douglas Charles Abbott: Yes, and much more prevalent-it is possible that another method would have been decided upon to take care of this situation. The chief difficulty, I believe, arose because in August, a period which hon. members will recall, when the subsidy was at the $3.50 rate and the $3 rate-and I know the hon. member for Victoria-Carleton knows a great deal more about this than I do -the price of potatoes dropped very materially. It is evident now that no subsidy would have been necessary in order to get potatoes. But I think the committee should remember this, that at the time the subsidy was decided upon, and at the time the public, the producers and the dealers were told that such subsidy would be paid, the condition which developed was, of course, not known.


Mr. HATFIELD:: The subsidy was payable only under certain conditions.


Douglas Charles Abbott: The conditions were fairly well known, and they were the same for everyone. Briefly they were these, that in order to qualify for a subsidy a purchaser must have paid a price not in excess of the figures I have mentioned, namely, $3.75 during one period, $3.50 during another and $3 during a third. The subsidy would cover only the difference between the price he paid, and the wholesale ceiling in the market in which he was selling the potatoes.
In other words, to illustrate, if the wholesale ceiling in the Montreal market was $2.73 -and I think that is what it was in August- and the dealer paid $3 per 100 pounds for his potatoes, the subsidy he would be entitled to receive, leaving aside any question of transportation costs, would be 27 cents. If the market price of potatoes on the Montreal market at about that time should fall to $2.40 he obviously would take a loss on his purchase, because he was entitled only to receive a subsidy down to the ceiling price for that market.
That, briefly, outlines the conditions under which the subsidy was payable. The hon. member referred to some claims which he said were made, and which he understood were improper. Complaints have been received by the corporation with respect to claims made by a certain dealer. Those complaints have been investigated, and the corporation has come to the conclusion that those claims concerning which the complaint has been made were imroperly filed, and subsidies improperly paid. A claim has been made for refunding of the subsidy. I do not know that it is necessary to indicate the name of the claimant.


Gordon Graydon: Is there only one involved?


Douglas Charles Abbott: More than one, I think. I believe there are some producers involved, too. I am not suggesting that there were any improper claims, in the sense that they were fraudulent. The suggestion is that the claim made was not proper within the regulations governing this subsidy, and that consequently the subsidy was not properly paid.
Mr. HATFiELD: Would the investigators' report be available to the committee?


Douglas Charles Abbott: I do not think I should
make the investigators' report avaliable to the committee. I believe the stand has always been taken, in connection with these government boards, that the report of investigators to their superior officers are privileged documents. I believe that is sound ground.


Heber Harold Hatfield: Is it not correct that
claims made by other shippers from New Brunswick in August were refused?
War Appropriation-Finance


Douglas Charles Abbott: I am advised that no claims made in proper form and coming within the conditions set out were refused.


Heber Harold Hatfield: The board claimed they were not made in proper form. There were ofher claims made, though.


Douglas Charles Abbott: A certain number of claims were made which the corporation came to the conclusion were not- withjn the regulations laid down and they Were rejected for that reason. The claims which- the corporation decided had not been properly filed and were not payable were not for large amounts. They had not been made within the time limits or under the regulations laid down for the payment of this subsidy.


Heber Harold Hatfield: What is the board going to do with regard to refund?


Douglas Charles Abbott: I indicated a moment ago that they have notified the person to whom the subsidy was paid that it must be refunded.


Heber Harold Hatfield: If it was improperly made, I agree with the parliamentary assistant in that regard. For the information of the committee I may say that there were about twenty shippers in my constituency. There were some in the county of York and some in other counties. Only one shipper out of the twenty put in a claim for the subsidy. He stated that he had paid the producers $3.50 a hundred during the first part of August and $3 a hundred during the latter part. That claim was paid, but the claims put in by other shippers who had shipped the same grade at the same time during August, who had paid the same price, were refused. It seemed that one shipper in the province had a monopoly on the subsidy. We heard about a monopoly on bottles in Nova Scotia, but this seems to be a monopoly on the subsidy. Then the report goes out in the newspapers implying that the other eighteen or nineteen shippers had made a claim for subsidy and had held back the money. They did not do this, and in order to clear the names of the other shippers in the minds of the producers, in order to show that they had not received subsidies by presenting improper invoices, the whole thing should be clarified. I should like the parliamentary assistant to explain how it is going to be clarified.


Douglas Charles Abbott: I have indicated that as a result of these complaints and investigations which were made the corporation concluded that the subsidy which had been claimed in the case of one or possibly two shippers had been claimed improperly and that consequently the subsidy had been improperly paid and the return of the amounts paid would be demanded from the particular shipper or

shippers. I think two were involved. Presumably if refunds are not made voluntarily the proper legal proceedings will be taken to enforce the claim.


Heber Harold Hatfield: There were two shippers involved. One shipper shipped only his own production, and I do not know how you will get a refund. He got in -through a loophole -in the regulations and I do not know how you will get that back. He could pay himself what he liked for the potatoes. The other shipper bought potatoes and falsified the invoices, which is another matter.


Gordon Graydon: After it became known
that a subsidy had been paid to one large firm in New Brunswick I understand that the special investigator in the province, Mr. Daniels, who was working under the jurisdiction -of the wartime prices and trade board, was sent in to investigate the charges that had been made with respect to the illegal collection of subsidies on the sale of potatoes. This report has caused a good deal of concern in New Brunswick and not a little bit of interest. The local press in New Brunswick have been intensely keen in their requests for a clarification of the situation.
If my memory is not faulty, one local newspaper indicated that one of these firms had been so solicitous for the producers with whom they were dealing that they were able to get a rather substantial subsidy, while other bona fide dealers were placed in the ridiculous light of either not having known that a subsidy was being paid or not knowing how to operate the machinery so that the subsidy could be collected. It seems to me -that the parliamentary assistant must do something more with respect to the airing which this matter has been given in the press of New Brunswick -than simply say that the report of the special investigator, Mr. Daniels, must not come to light.
I raise this as a matter of principle with respect -to the wartime prices and trade -board. It is not holy ground that the wartime prices and trade board are treading so far as the public of Canada are concerned. We are not going to allow in parliament an extension of the bureaucratic principle in connection with irregularities-I am not making any charge with respect to that because I have not seen the investigator's report. Parliament -is the last line of defence for the taxpayers of Canada, and we have not only the privilege, it is our duty to inquire into what happened to this money and why it was paid illegally. It is not enough for the parliamentary -assistant to attempt to hide behind-I do not say that offensively-


Douglas Charles Abbott: We are net hiding behind
anything.

IFor Appropriation-Finance


Gordon Graydon: I am not going to take
back the words. If the parliamentary assistant wants to object, he may do so. I was trying to be inoffensive, but perhaps I had better use the term, because I think it is more proper than I thought in the first instance. Here is the position in which the parliamentary assistant finds himself. He has the report in his hand-


Douglas Charles Abbott: I have not the report in my hand.


Gordon Graydon: Perhaps I had better ask a question. If the parliamentary assistant has not the report of Mr. Daniels, I would like
him to say so.


Douglas Charles Abbott: I have not received the report from Mr. Daniels, if that is his name. I believe he is the chief investigator of the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation and has made a report to Mr. Hector McKinnon, president of the corporation.


Gordon Graydon: Does that mean that the only way we are going to get information-


Douglas Charles Abbott: I have no doubt I can see it if I ask for it as a representative of the minister.


Gordon Graydon: We have got into a worse position than I thought we were in in the first instance. The governmental representative, let alone parliamentary representative, has not seen the report. I would not have raised this question quite so prominently at this time if it were not for the fact that I was greatly impressed by the local press having raised this question. The people of New Brunswick are intensely wrought up about the whole situation. In order to protect his own department and the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation I think the parliamentary assistant must give to this committee the details of the report made by the special investigator. I hope the parliamentary assistant is not going to take the position that these things are going to be done behind closed doors. We have had plenty of that; I do not think we want an extension of it. I speak this way only because I believe there is a definite principle involved so far as the taxpayers of Canada are concerned.


Joseph William Noseworthy: Will the parliamentary assistant tell us in what respect the returns of all the shippers were not correctly filled out? In the second place, when was it discovered that the report made by the shipper who received the subsidy was not properly filed? I would add that press reports indicate that one shipper, a former defeated Liberal candidate, received the subsidy, which has been paid out to the producers in sums ranging from ninety
to one thousand dollars each, and further that the books and records of the shipper had been examined by a government inspector before the returns were filed. I think we should know in just what details the returns were incorrect, and when was it discovered?


Douglas Charles Abbott: I do not remember the
exact date, but complaints were received some months ago, perhaps partly as a result of representations made by the hon. member for Victoria-Carleton, that this particular claimant for subsidy was not entitled to receive it.


Heber Harold Hatfield: I never made any such complaint. I wanted to know why, if one shipper received the subsidy other shippers did not?


Douglas Charles Abbott: In any event an investigator was sent, either from the Saint John office or from Ottawa, some months ago.


Heber Harold Hatfield: Mr. Hereon was sent from here.


Douglas Charles Abbott: That would be about a
couple of months ago. The investigator's report made at that time was that the claimant's books and records showed that his claim was in order. That report was sent to Mr. McKinnon, chairman of the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation. The matter was afterwards pressed further by some others, and Mr. McKinnon decided that further investigation should be made. He sent Mr. Daniels, chief inspector of the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation, to New Brunswick, and Mr. Daniels made a further investigation. This investigator went farther than the original investigator had done. Hs went around and saw a lot of farmers from whom these potatoes had been purchased. As a result of the investigation which he made he reported that the claims for subsidy which had been made were not in accordance with the regulations, that some of the statements in the claim were inaccurate, and that in his opinion the subsidy had been improperly paid. That report was received I think within the last week, and it is as a result of that second report by the chief inspector that the claim for refund has been made.
With reference to the request of the leader of the opposition that the report of the chief investigator should be tabled, I am the last man to keep anything back that should be produced. But I suggest that it is not proper to produce to parliament the report of an investigator which is presented to a government department or to the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation, which is substantially the same as a government department.
The Royal Assent

I am no expert in deciding on privileged documents, but while any member is entitled to ask any specific question about any specific detail, I suggest that this is not the type of document which should be producible. I suggest that to produce it would create a dangerous precedent.
The hon. member for York South said to-day, and also the other day, that this particular claimant is a defeated Liberal, candidate. He may or may not be; I do not know. My hon. friend has not been here very long and may not know Mr. Hector McKinnon, who is head of the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation, as well as many other members know him, but I think every member who does know him knows that Mr. McKinnon who is responsible for passing on the validity of the claims for subsidies, is not influenced by any political considerations. He is not concerned at all with whether a man is a Liberal or a Conservative. I know the payment of these subsidies has nothing whatever to do with a man's political opinions. I do not think the hon. member for Victoria-Carleton would make this suggestion otherwise, but the hon. member for York South has twice by innuendo suggested that the payment may have been influenced by political considerations.


Thomas Langton Church: We are spending money like water on subsidies. This house is divesting itself of all control of the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation. When the corporation was created I asked the minister what control parliament had over it, and the reply that was brought down in a return was that the minister leaves the-payment of subsidies to the officials of the board. I have seen them making speeches to boards of trade and retail merchants' associations. Then they come along and announce a subsidy.
Item stands.
Progress reported.



THE ROYAL ASSENT

[Stage Direction]
A message was delivered by Major A. R. Thompson, Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, as follows:
Mr. Speaker, His Honour, the deputy of His Excellency the Governor General, desires the immediate attendance of this honourable house in the chamber of the honourable the Senate.
Accordingly, the house went up to the Senate.
And having returned.
Mr. SPEAKER informed the house that the deputy of His Excellency the Governor Gen-

eral has been pleased to give in His Majesty's name royal assent to the following bills:
An Act to amend the Judges Act.
An Act respecting the appointment of Auditors for National Railways.
An Act to repeal the Water Meters Inspection Act.
An Act respecting the Canadian National Railways and to provide for the refunding of matured, maturing and callable financial obligations.
An Act to authorize an Agreement between His Majesty the King and the Corporation of the City of Ottawa.
An Act for carrying into effect the Agreement for United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration between Canada and cerain other Nations and Authorities.
An Act respecting Vancouver, Victoria and Eastern Railway and Navigation Company, The Nelson and Fort Sheppard Railway Company and Great Northern Railway Company.
An Act respecting The Kettle Valley Railway Company.
An Act for granting to His Majesty certain sums of money for the public service of the financial year ending the 31st March, 1945.


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed consideration in committee of a resolution to grant to His Majesty certain sums of money for the carrying out of measures consequent upon the existence of a state of war-Mr. Ilsley-Mr. Bradette in the chair.
At six o'clock the committee took recess.
After Recess
The committee resumed at eight o'clock.

Thomas Langton Church: I wish to call the attention of the minister to some features of these stabilization bonuses, subventions and so on, which now amount to $140,000,000. The minister gave a break-down of the figures and it includes for fruits and vegetables, $4,500,000; for discount on footwear, $1,000,000; for furniture, $500,000; groceries, $2,000,000; gloves-leather, $750,000; lumber, $3,000,000, and so on. The trouble with this policy, as I see it, is that it is sectional.
I have confidence in Mr. Hector McKinnon, whom I have known all my life, and I believe that he is a faithful public servant. But politics in this country being what it is, I suggest that the whole principle of bonuses and subventions is bound to be mixed up in politics. I have seen some of the effects produced by premature announcements made by some ladies and gentlemen of the control and consumer

War Appropriation-Finance
league who go around the district from which I come, predicting subsidies. They discuss many of the articles that are covered in the very break-down that the minister gave. Some of these people appear at some dinner, or some other meeting, perhaps, and they make an announcement which I would regard as being tantamount to a tip-off on what is going to be done. Take jams and jellies, in connection with which an amount of $1,000,000 is mentioned. That bonus, and the distribution of it, had been proposed for some weeks, and afterwards it was found that there were no supplies on the shelves of the retail stores or big stores. It may not be so intended, but in my opinion the whole policy operates indirectly against the small businessman, the retail man, while the larger industries, the departmental stores, are well able to take care of themselves. No doubt they do much good work, but the policy may be of advantage to them.
I cannot understand why, when the proposal was first made, when the policy was first started, it did not take into account one of the most important items so far as the house' holder is concerned. I refer to coal and wood fuel:	I cannot see why this item was not included from the first day of the policy. People have to have a fire in their homes for seven or eight months of the year, and there should be a ceiling and subsidy to aid it. They can do -without some articles of food for a while but they must always have fuel.
There is another matter I would urge upon the minister. I suggest that some part of the fund should have been utilized for building small houses and for materials in connection therewith, for the benefit of the working classes. The government did go into this policy in 1928, and again in 1936, 1937 and 1938, and some $85,000,000 was spent in bonuses through the banks. The government guaranteed repayment of the -money to the banks.
These are two of the main items that should be covered by a stabilization policy of this kind. The growers and shippers also may have a tip-off, I do not know; at any rate I suggest that there is much room for improvement in this matter. This policy should cover necessaries of life for the benefit of the poor people of the country.
Another question I would ask the parliamentary assistant is this. Who audits the business of this corporation? Where is this famous war expenditures committee? Have they control over this $140,000,000? This is a war measure. Has that committee no control over it at all? In a letter he wrote to me some time ago, and which I read in the house, the
auditor general said that he had no control over funds which are in the four corners of the war appropriation bill.
I do not wish to throw cold water on this stabilization scheme, because it has done much good for the consumer, but -they are spending money like water, and I would- point out that on seasonal products the consumer does not get the benefit. I read the market returns for the St. Lawrence market and the markets in the Toronto district and I know there is an increase. Never mind what the index shows; the index is not always correct, at any rate from the point of view of the small people. Take fuel, fuel wood and such things. I believe the proposal was last season that in the larger cities this fund could be used to give seventy-five cents in connection with the hauling of -coal, to provide for expenses to the small retail man who has to go to the waterfront and get coal, put it on a cart and take it through the town when the thermofneter is low and the roads are bad. This is one matter to which attention might very well be given. A deputation came from the municipalities last winter and made representations in connection with this matter, but the seventy-five cents was not allowed. In my opinion, if ever a case was made out it was made out on that occasion by these people who come from -the larger centres of population.
There is a good deal of room for improvement in the administration of the fund and its distribution, because in my opinion it does sometimes savour of politics. It seems -to be sectional. I do not know how people can buy strawberries with the prices charged for them. Take the $3,000,000 in connection with lumber. There is scarcity of material, and boards of education are finding it difficult to get lumber and light steel for the construction of buildings.
I suggest that the corporation should hearken to the handwriting on the wall and do something to help the coal industry, especially the small coal dealers, who should be given a small subsidy for delivery. Something should also be done to help the housing situation by the subsidy principle.


Heber Harold Hatfield: I am sorry that a mix-up occurred in my constituency, and in all fairness to the board I will say that I do not think a certain shipper, because he was a Liberal candidate in the last provincial election, was given a subsidy on that account. I do not think the board knew what side of politics he was on. I do not know that the shipper and the growers who received the subsidy were all to blame. I understand that this particular shipper came to Ottawa in the month of August and was misled by a Mr. REVISED EDITION
War Appropriation-Finance

McEwen of the stabilization, board. He went to Mr. McEwen for instructions in the making out of a claim and that gentleman gave him absolutely a wrong idea. He went home and from that wrong idea induced the growers to give him an invoice that was much higher than the price they received for their potatoes. I do not believe that the shipper was all to blame, but I submit that, in order to clarify the situation, the money should be returned; otherwise the other shippers are being left in an invidious position.
I do not think there is any politics in it here, but when it got to New Brunswick politics came into it. They tried to make out that I did not know anything about these regulations, and they also tried to make out that the other shippers received the subsidy, put it in their pockets and did not pay it to the grower, so that it put the other shippers in a very bad light among the growers. I would like to have the whole situation clarified, because I do not think it will put the board in a very good light if the money is not returned. We want some guarantee that the money will be refunded.
I do not believe that the board can justify prosecutions against these people, but, I repeat, the money should be returned. In the first place the subsidy was wrong. When the pricg of potatoes went down the grower received no subsidy, and when it was up he received the subsidy. That was wrong. With new potatoes that are produced and harvested in July and August the growers get only half a crop and they should have received a bonus or subsidy.
I think the domestic bonus or subsidy should be a floor. I think it is a good idea to encourage the digging of potatoes before they get mature and particularly last year when we had a short supply in June and the first part of July when there were $812,000 paid out in subsidies on imported potatoes from the United States. In my opinion this subsidy was only wasted. There was no justification for any subsidy on imported potatoes from the United States last spring except the first part of June. There were about $100,000 paid out the first part of June. There may have been justification for that up to June 10 last year, but after that you could have bought all the potatoes that came from the United States away below our ceiling price. This subsidy developed into a racket. There were imported into Canada No. 2 potatoes upon which a subsidy was paid. Those potatoes were put into cold storage in Montreal and afterwards exported to the West Indies. At least fifty per cent of the $812,000 was paid out without any justification whatsoever. I think the claims were fraudulent. I want the parliamentary assistant to have the board look into

it. If that is done I think he will find, if he goes to the cities of Montreal and Toronto with a proper investigator, that he will dig out more fraudulent claims than come from New Brunswick.


Gordon Graydon: May I continue with another matter in connection with-


Douglas Charles Abbott: Would the leader of the opposition mind if I answered one question?


Mr. BLACK (Cumberland):: Before that is done I should like to ask a question or two. I have had complaints from Nova Scotia-


Douglas Charles Abbott: I wanted to deal with one point. I understand the hon. member for Victoria-Carleton raised a question about some of the potatoes on which a subsidy was paid and which were subsequently exported. I am advised that the subsidy was recovered on any potatoes that were exported.


Heber Harold Hatfield: It may have been
recovered on some but on others it was never recovered.


Percy Chapman Black: I do not wish to interfere with the discussion between the hon. member for Victoria-Carleton and the parliamentary assistant having to do with clearing up certain phases of the potato subsidies. There is no one in this house, no one in all Canada, who understands the potato trade as does the hon. member for Victoria-Carleton.
There has been considerable discussion with respect to this subsidy on potatoes. I do not fully understand it yet. I do not know why the subsidy was paid at the time it was paid and in such large sums, totalling, as the hon. member has just said, $812,000. This creates confusion all over the country and dissatisfaction in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. I have had a large number of requests for information from Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island with respect to this question. I have not been able to answer all the inquiries made of me. I do not know why a subsidy should be paid on new potatoes when there are hundreds of thousands of bushels of old potatoes still in the country ready to go on the market. I am advised that was the situation in June and July, and even in August when these large bonuses were being paid.
In response to inquiries made of me I put questions on the order paper on May 26. I asked the following questions:
1. What sums were paid as subsidy for the production or marketing of new potaties in the fiscal year 1943-44 in (a) Canada; (b) Nova Scotia; (c) New Brunswick; (d) Prince Edward Island?
The answer is:
1. Subsidies amounting to $722,411.96 were paid.

War Appropriation-Finance
The reply says that the records are not broken down by provinces. I cannot give my people information if I am not able to get it through the house from the officials.
Question No. 2 was:
What sums were paid in the last fiscal year by the government for freight on potatoes within or into each province?
The answer is:
The following amounts were paid by the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation Limited during the fiscal year 1943-44 to cover extra transportation costs on potatoes diverted from their normal markets to areas of shortage:
Old potatoes (1942 crop)	 $15,012 38
New potatoes (1943 crop)		5,368 85
I am not able to give the people making inquiries of me justification or the basis upon which these moneys were paid out. The reply again goes on to say:
The corporation's records are not broken down by provinces.
Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island received practically nil.
Question No. 3 was:
What was the basis upon which payment was made of (a) subsidies; (b) freight; (c) purchases ?
The answer to that question does not give the information.
My fourth question was:
What quantity of potatoes was imported into Canada from the United States of America in the last fiscal year, stating on what permit or authority ?
That appears to be a reasonable question. Producers of potatoes are entitled to that information. The answer I received to the question is:
No information.
I think hon. members of this committee should have that information in connection with these very large expenditures.
My fifth question was:
What subsidies, freight allowances or reduction of import charges and exchange were allowed ?
The answer is:
The sum of $817,623.79 was paid by the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation during the fiscal year 1943-44 by way of subsidy on potatoes imported into Canada from the United States of America.
I think the producers in the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island are entitled to more detailed information as a justification for that and how it has been expended than I have been able to procure.
The answer to my question continues:
Effective May 1, 1943, the war exchange tax on imports of potatoes was removed by P.C. 3757, dated May 6, 1943. The removal of the
100-2X64
war exchange tax was extended indefinitely, and the special excise tax was removed, effective June 22, 1943, by P.C. 4894, June 15, 1943, as amended by P.C. 7078, September 9, 1943.
The members of this committee, the dealers and the producers of potatoes, are not able to follow these many orders in council, and I am not able to get the information in justification of these expenditures. There should be clear information as to the moneys expended on these subsidies on potatoes and many other commodities.
When the Minister of Agriculture had his estimates on the war appropriation before the committee he reported that there had been subsidy appropriations of more than $70,000,-
000.	Farmers and potato growers who are producing necessary food are surely entitled to full information with respect to expenditures for subsidies to which they are entitled or that are paid out to others in other parts of Canada. I am not satisfied with the return placed in my hand. I am not able to forward to those who communicated with me the information which I feel they are entitled to have.


Joseph William Noseworthy: There is one matter I have been unable to understand, from the statement of the parliamentary assistant. I understand that if a shipper of potatoes had paid a producer, let us say $3, for the potatoes, he could then have collected a subsidy from the government.


Douglas Charles Abbott: Down to the ceiling price.


Joseph William Noseworthy: Which, if he chose- and some did choose-he could pass back to the producers.


Douglas Charles Abbott: If he had paid it to the producer he would have paid it before he claimed and received subsidy, of course, and he would not have been able to sell it for more than the ceiling price.


Joseph William Noseworthy: In the event of his having paid $3 to the producer, he could claim a subsidy. But in the instance where the producer received only $1.80, he was entitled to no subsidy at all?


Douglas Charles Abbott: That is right. He was not entitled to a subsidy, if $1.80 was less than the ceiling price. That is correct.


Joseph William Noseworthy: In other words, the subsidy was to bonus the producer when he got a good price for his article.


Douglas Charles Abbott: No; the subsidy was to enable the consumer 'to purchase potatoes at the ceiling price. It happened that in May of last year, when this subsidy was decided upon, Canada was practically out of potatoes. The hon. member for Yictoria-Carleton nods

War Appropriation-Finance
his head. He knows the potato situation, as someone has said, probably better than anyone else in the house. The fact is, however, that we were practically out of potatoes in Canada. The price of potatoes in the United States, the only place at that time where we could get them, was high. It was decided that we would have to pay an import subsidy, and it was also necessary, as I said this afternoon, to require the use of new potatoes as soon as they could be secured. I pointed out, too, that under ordinary circumstances new potatoes are a luxury product, and in the early season command a higher price than do the old ones. Under normal circumstances the public always have available the choice between purchasing new and old potatoes. They may purchase old potatoes at the old potato price, or if they wish to have the pleasure of eating new potatoes, they may buy the new ones at a higher price. But because of the short supply conditions last year it was necessary to use all the old potatoes available-and there were practically none -and to accept new potatoes. So that the ceiling price on all potatoes was fixed at the same figure. In order to induce growers to dig their potatoes as early as possible it is my understanding that the subsidy was provided, so that if a dealer purchased at $3.75 in the early part of the season he was obliged to sell those potatoes at the ceiling. And the difference between the ceiling price and what was paid was the amount of the subsidy.


Heber Harold Hatfield: In other words, the consumer was the only concern of the wartime prices and trade board. They were not concerned about the producer at all. It was a consumer subsidy, not a producer subsidy. While these potatoes were being imported from the United States, and a subsidy paid on them, the United States market at that time was away below the ceiling in Canada. Growers adjoining the city of Montreal, and others in Ontario, were advised to hold their potatoes in the ground, while potatoes were being imported from the United States. Then, when the growers near Montreal were ready to dig their potatoes, after holding them two or three weeks in the ground, they found that the city was filled with United States potatoes, and the market had gone down below the ceiling price. So that the growers around the markets of Montreal and Toronto lost money.


Gordon Graydon: Following the point I
raised this afternoon in connection with the New Brunswick potato situation, there are one or two matters which do not seem clear to me, and which I think the parliamentary assistant might be able to clear up quickly. He

admitted there had been an investigation of the situation in New Brunswick in connection with one shipper.


Douglas Charles Abbott: Two investigations.


Gordon Graydon: Well, I am not much interested in the first one, because the parliamentary assistant said it was not much good, anyway. He implied that the second one is the important one, and that the investigation made by Daniels, who was sent from-


Mr. MICHAUD:: Mr. Chairman-


Gordon Graydon: The Minister of Transport seems to be interested in this, too. I do not know just how he is connected with it. In any event, the parliamentary assistant took a firm and, I thought, a most arbitrary stand this afternoon with respect to the production and tabling of the report from Daniels. I believe the principle involved is one which should not be permitted to pass without strong protest and argument. I say that we have to be very careful in adopting a principle of that kind-and I say it without the slightest desire of doing more than establishing a proper principle. I should like the parliamentary assistant to understand that. I do not raise the point only for the sake of criticism of his department. It may seem at times to the parliamentary assistant, from his position inside the workings of the department, that the suggestions, urgings and pleas made by hon. members in this group to have the workings of the government brought into the open, go farther than the interests of the public might demand. I say to him, however, that if an error has been made during this parliament, then <it is that we have not often enough forced the government to disclose what is going on behind the doors of the various bureaucratic organizations and institutions in Canada. In that regard we, as members of parliament, have a duty to the electorate. Debates in the house of recent date would indicate that many things are being done without even members of parliament having an opportunity of being consulted.
Therefore I ask the parliamentary assistant to give the details in this instance, and to table the report of this Mr. Daniels, who made the investigation; because, if even a small part of the eharges or allegations made by>
the hon. member for Victoria-Carleton is true, then it seems to me the parliamentary assistant is placing a very mild interpretation upon the disclosures made in the report, and in respect of the whole problem concerning this one shipper.


Douglas Charles Abbott: That is not what the hon. member for Victoria-Carleton suggested.

War Appropriation-Finance


Gordon Graydon: Perhaps the parliamentary assistant may be putting a wrong interpretation upon what was said. I was not in the chamber when the hon. member began his speech to-night, but it is my understanding-one which I believe will be borne out-that there were more than just ordinary irregularities.


Douglas Charles Abbott: The hon. member for Victoria-Carleton placed the blame upon an official of the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation.


Heber Harold Hatfield: Not all of the blame.


Douglas Charles Abbott: Hansard will show. The
hon. member gave the name-a Mr. McEwen 

and said that he had given misleading information. I am paraphrasing what was said by the hon. member. He pointed out that the shipper in question had come to Ottawa and received misleading information from a Mr. McEwen in the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation which had induced him to put in claims in this way. That I think is a fair statement of what occurred.


Gordon Graydon: So far as the situation as now described by the parliamentary assistant is concerned, talcing it even in that position, I think the whole matter now becomes less clarified than ever. The parliamentary assistant has not gone very far in giving us the exact particulars of what actually did occur. I take it that he is still continuing to refuse to table the report. He nods his head, so that I take that to mean that we are not intended to have it at the moment. I am going to ask the parliamentary assistant for some information to which I think we are entitled. If the report is not to be tabled I would ask him to give us the main features of that report.
I want to know and I think the committee is entitled to know, first, what the fundings of Mr. Daniels were with respect to the shipper. Second, I want to know what findings Mr. Daniels made with respect to his interviews with the producers. Third, I want to know what recommendations Mr. Daniels made as to what should be done with the shipper involved, whether he should, be prosecuted or whether there should be an ordinary claim made and how long a time should elapse before the money is paid back to the government. I am anxious to know what recommendations were contained in the report with respect to avoiding a repetition and assuring that there will be no repetition of the situation which now exists and which has been uncovered.
Those are matters which I think are very important. It has been rumoured that the attorney general, who is also the Premier of New Brunswick, came to Ottawa either last
week or this week on this particular mission, to deal with this one particular problem among others. I should like the parliamentary assistant to indicate to the committee whether during the interviews which took place between the attorney general of New Brunswick and his department any question of the prosecution of the parties involved was considered and what decision was arrived at with respect thereto. These questions are important in view of the fact that the report is not being laid on the table. Against that principle I am urging very keenly to-night. I think it is a wrong principle. There should not be such a line of demarcation drawn by the government, and sometimes by boards such as this which in many cases seem to be supra-government authorities. I do not very often become vehement in my protests against what I think are injustices.


Douglas Charles Abbott: Fairly often.


Gordon Graydon: My hon. friend says,
" fairly often," but the parliamentary assistant must expect some severe criticism because, after all, we on the outside looking in have not the opportunities of those on the inside looking out. The result is that we can only inquire, we can only ask and we can only demand. But we have certain rights as members of this house to ask a disclosure by the government of particulars when public funds are involved. If we have not the right to inquire into a matter such as this then we may as well extend this principle right across the whole government expending board.
I am going to ask the parliamentary assistant to reconsider the question of letting us know what happened in this instance. Let us know what the government investigator found. These investigators are paid by the people who send us here as members of parliament, and there should be every opportunity of having an account of this stewardship. That principle should prevail in a democratic country. So that I ask the parliamentary assistant for answers to the questions I have asked. In addition I want to protest vehemently against what I consider to be an abuse of our democratic and parliamentary institutions. I do not like to see this parliament placed in the position where "not in the public interest" is flaunted like a brilliant flag in order to threaten and scare those who would inquire or those who would criticize from time to time. We want the truth. We want a disclosure made in the public interest, and I am asking the parliamentary assistant with as much emphasis as I can summon to my command to see that this principle of democracy shall not be entirely overlooked.
War Appropriation-Finance


Douglas Charles Abbott: First on this question of principle, I have not had the experience of my hon. friends in parliamentary matters, but I have always understood, and I believe I am correct, that confidential inter-departmental communications, which of course is what this report is, have always 'been considered as privileged. I am quite sure that that was exactly the stand taken by my hon. friend and the leaders of his party when they were sitting on the right of Mr. Speaker.


Gordon Graydon: I have not sat on the right of Mr. Speaker.


Douglas Charles Abbott: As I say, my own experience is quite limited, but I am convinced, and it has always been my understanding, that that was a well accepted principle of parliamentary practice, governmental practice, or whatever you want to call it. I would suggest that to produce this confidential interdepartmental report would be creating a very dangerous precedent.


Gordon Graydon: Why would it be creating a dangerous precedent? It will be creating a dangerous precedent not to produce it.


Douglas Charles Abbott: If these investigators feel that they cannot make a report in confidence to their superiors, that they cannot make a report which is not liable to be tabled, then the public interest will suffer. My understanding is that that principle has been recognized in government practice for years. I do not think it is even open to argument, and I say that with all diffidence because I am a neophyte in parliamentary procedure. But that is my understanding and it is for that reason that I am not prepared to produce this report. Not that there is anything in it to conceal.
In replying to my hon. friend's requests I shall try to summarize the report along broad lines. Mr. Daniels, who made this investigation, came to the conclusion that the prices which it was understood were paid or contracted to be paid to the growers were not the prices which were actually received and that, consequently, on an analysis of the transactions it was clear that under the regulations the subsidy was not payable. He recommended that under those circumstances, as he was bound to recommend, as any investigator would recommend, that the subsidy had been improperly claimed and paid and should be recovered. A demand has been made on the recipient of the subsidy to pay it back. I indicated this afternoon that if that demand is not complied with I assume the corporation will take the appropriate legal proceedings against the recipient of the subsidy to see that it is paid back. My understanding

is that the recipient of the subsidy is perfectly solvent and able to pay. That is the story as far as the particfular subsidy question is concerned.
My hon. friend referred to the attorney general and premier of New Brunswick being here and looking into this matter. So far as I know he had no interviews with the Department of Finance. I believe he did go to see Mr. McKinnon of the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation, but I have no personal knowledge as to that. That is about all I can say on this particular subsidy claim.


Heber Harold Hatfield: What I said was that some fault might be attached to Mr. McEwen of the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation for giving the shipper a wrong steer. But I do not think for one minute that the officials of the board would advise a man to go out and get false statements from the growers in order to get a subsidy.


Mr. PICARD:: I think this might be the appropriate item, Mr. Chairman, on which to speak of subsidies in general, and I should like to say a word or two about the Canadian raw leaf tobacco industry. According to the regulations of the Department of National Revenuefa) "Canadian raw leaf tobacco" means tobacco grown in Canada, in its natural state, not further processed than cured and put up in hands, but does not include Common Canada Twist or scraps, waste, clippings, broken portions of leaf which cannot be tied in hands, stems, or deposits resulting from any process of handling tobacco.
(b) "Raw leaf dealer" means every person who packages Canadian raw leaf tobacco by putting it up in hands and stamping same, or who only stamps such hands, for the purpose of sale for consumption.
This trade affects more particularly, not my own district, but the district of Joliette. The traders and dealers are scattered all over the province of Quebec and in certain sections of New Brunswick and Ontario.
The situation is this. The prices board or the stabilization corporation has allowed the growers to charge ten cents a pound more for their tobacco. I do not argue against that because I think every farmer should get as much as he can in order that he may make a decent living. But when it comes to passing on that price increase from the farmer to the consumer, the raw leaf tobacco dealers were prevented from doing that by the rule that no price ceiling can be broken. The dealers have appealed to the tobacco controller and have established from their books to his satisfaction, admitted in letters from the administrator, that their average profit

War Appropriation-Finance
per pound in years past was not more than two and a half to three cents. Yet this year they will be forced to pay ten cents a pound more to the grower, which will mean that they are bound to stand a loss of seven and a half cents a pound if they carry on in business. As soon as this became evident, the association of tobacco dealers got in touch with the department and interviews were had, at which I was present, where the situation was recognized as being one of hardship for the dealers, but the general principle was invoked and it was stated that nothing could be done. At that time I. inquired of the assistant to the chairman of the prices board if I could, with two or three members of the association, secure an interview with Mr. Donald Gordon, and here is the wire that was sent by Mr. Gordon.
Reference your wire regarding tobacco packers regret it is impossible for me to meet personally all groups who are clamouring for interviews. Our tobacco administrator is David Sim, deputy minister customs and excise. He is fully qualified to deal with problems of tobacco industry and will be glad to arrange for interview upon request.
We arranged for an interview with Mr. Sim. I thought that as a member of parliament I might have received a different answer, but I suppose it is quite in order that members of parliament should be answered in this way by the administrators.


Thomas Reid: Being a member of parliament does not count.


Louis-Philippe Picard: No, even though we are defending democracy. We got the interview and we established the prices at which the merchandise had been sold in the past. When I say "we", I mean all the people connected with the industiy on whose behalf I was appearing as well as on behalf of many of m3' constituents. Another member of parliament, the hon. member for Joliette, appeared with me. We established to the satisfaction of the officers that our profit on the average was not more than two and a half to three cents a pound and that if we had to pay ten cents more a pound to the growers we would have to stand a loss of seven and a half cents or go out of business. This is the letter sent by the tobacco administrator under date of November 12. The letter is not marked personal or confidential, so that I feel I am at liberty to use it:
This refers to your letter of November 8 and the interview had on November 5 by yourself and delegation on behalf of the independent Canadian raw leaf tobacco dealers. Demand was made for an increase of ten cents per pound in the retail price.
The basis for this demand as set forth in your letter and as enlarged upon on the occasion of your interview has been carefully reviewed
by the writer with the officers mentioned and we have concluded that the considerations involved

The fact that we lose seven and a half cents a pound or go out of business entirely.
-are not such as to warrant a departure from the established policy of this administration, which in effect requires that basic period prices plus new or increased taxes must be maintained.
It is realized that, for the reasons you have outlined, it may be difficult for some of these dealers to continue operating, but this, for the time being, should be regarded as a war emergency measure which must be observed in the interests of the public at large.
As a matter of fact it is difficult for every one of the dealers to continue operating, because none of them can make a profit. It simply means, Mr. Chairman, that they must close down their business and deprive their customers who have been used to taking this merchandise of the opportunity of getting it, or else they must enter the black market. I was convinced, knowing the diplomacy and great intelligence of Mr. Sim, that he had signed this letter, as so many of us do, without being sure of what was in it. A man of his diplomacy would never have written that last sentence. The letter must have been drafted for him to sign. It simply means, as I said before, that the dealers must operate at a loss, close their doors or enter the black market. There was a market for hundreds of thousands of pounds of this raw leaf tobacco in the section of the country that I mentioned a moment ago. I got in touch further with the administrator, trying to convince him that a number of the dealers would have to close their doors or enter the black market. The department has some prosecutions pending now of people who have done just that. Dealers found clients willing to pay ten cents a pound more, which they could not pay legally, so that people have been doing it illegally. They have infringed the law, and a number of prosecutions are pending. Those dealers who want to stay within the law did not purchase their stock of tobacco this year because they would have had to pay more for it than their selling price, and many others are in the black market and are ready to plead guilty. Later on I spoke to the administrator over the telephone and we had a long discussion. He wrote me in a letter, which is also not marked private or confidential, as follows:
As I understand the problem, these people find themselves squeezed between the higher price being demanded by the farmer for his tobacco, and the price ceiling which does not permit them to increase their selling price to the public.
T'he proposition put to us was either subsidy or an increase in the consumer selling price. Subsidies have been paid in the case of certain necessary food products such as milk, butter, canned vegetables, also wood fuel, etc., but I

War Appropriation-Finance
am not aware of subsidies being paid to Canadian producers of commodities which were not regarded as absolutely essential.
When I in effect told, you this on the telephone you immediately suggested that in that event if they were to be regarded as luxuries a price increase should be permitted. This immediately raises the question as to whether or not the price ceiling is to be over all in character or selective.
He goes on to say that a further interview will be arranged. Some time in December I wrote the administrator again, stating:
I wish to impress further upon you the importance of the question we discussed over the telephone and I doubt very much that sending one officer of the prices section of the wartime prices and trade board and basing the conclusions of the board merely on that investigation would give justice to the seriousness of this situation. I think that, before putting these people out of business entirely, it would be only just and fair to allow them to put a formal brief before the board and allow them to be heard before responsible parties sitting on the board.
I thought that before you closed down or clamped down on people and forced them out of business, the least you could do would be to have them heard directly by the people responsible for the decision, the board itself. Finally, in February, I received a letter from the administrator:
I have not forgotten your representations in connection with the tobacco packers of Canadian raw leaf, who are squeezed-[DOT]
Those are not only my words, but the words of the administrator.

between the increased price paid to the primary producer and the price ceiling.
He admits the difference in price and the fact that they would have to close their doors. The letter continues:
This week I had some conversations with senior executive officers of the wartime prices and trade board . . . with a view to arranging some solution.
That was in February. We are now in May. No decision has yet been handed down, and all these prosecutions are awaiting the final decision. Many of these people are guilty; others have closed their doors, and there is a "black market", if we can consider as a black market a violation of ceiling price. I think it might be well for the wartime prices and trade board to ponder the advisability of closing a trade entirely just for the sake of maintaining a ceiling, or of recognizing the fact that by doing so they are depriving an element of the population of goods which they are entitled to buy as much as any other people. They do not like cigarettes; they do not like cigars. I do not myself smoke their tobacco, but we are living in a democracy, and they want that kind of tobacco, so why

cannot, we supply it to them when there is plenty of it and it is only a question of adjustment of price? I am not complaining about farmers increasing their prices. Having waited so long before getting proper remuneration, if they can get more now, good and well. The price should be raised in view of the fact that the public would be willing to pay it, and there is the demand. Therefore I think this is quite an opportune moment to ask the parliamentary assistant if he would not consider that question. If he knows about it, would he be ready to tell us to-night if a decision is about to be rendered? If so, I should like to impress upon him the advisability of giving that rise in the ceiling price; otherwise he is closing the doors of one of the important industries in the province of Quebec and he is depriving a number of people of goods to which they are entitled.


Mr. LACOMBE (Translation):: Mr. Chairman, in many cases the wartime prices and trade board is far from giving a fair deal to the people in this country. For instance, unaccountable delays occur in the announcement of certain decisions taken in connection with articles that are essential to agriculture. Permits for the purchase of farm machinery, such as tractors, are only issued after weeks and months have elapsed. Once the farmer has obtained his permit, he has to wait even longer for the delivery of farm implements. The restrictions placed by the government on the manufacture of farm- machinery should be lifted at once. They should never have been imposed. Agriculture is essential from the standpoint of food supplies for the army and the civilian population. All those restrictions interfere with production. At a time when more than 400,000 men and women have left farms to take up work in war plants or join the army, is it fair that agriculture should thus be deprived of indispensable implements? Let us be more sensible and practical. I know farmers who, on account of ill health and through the lack of help, will have to leave their farms untilled, because all kinds of restrictions have been placed on agricultural implements and their replacement parts. I urge the government to remedy once for all such a dire situation. Let them take action at once, with a view to amending the legislation whereby the wartime prices and trade board was established.
I shall make one more remark before concluding. The companies which manufacture farm implements should not take the place of farmers in the matter of filing applications with the Board. The government should pre-

War Appropriation-Finance
vent delays in the delivery of farm machinery, such delays often being caused by the companies themselves. In fact, it often happens that the companies file the farmers' applications with the board only after several weeks. Some may ask what their purpose is. I do not know. But I am sure of one thing and it is that discrimination has something to do with that hide-and-seek game. Let the farmers be empowered to deal directly with the Wartime Prices and Trade Board, without having to go to the companies or their agents. If such an infringement of the law and regulations is to be perpetuated, the government had better abolish all those boards and that irresponsible bureaucracy. Finally, it was certainly not worth while to establish those bodies, which become a public nuisance as soon as they interfere with agricultural production in these troublous times.
As far as I am concerned, I can well afford to make these few remarks. Some may voice complaints about that baneful bureaucracy in the creation of which they have had a part. I, for one, have condemned it from the beginning and I voted against its establishment. I believe that was the best course to follow.
(Text):


Douglas Charles Abbott: I should like to reply at once to my hon. friend, who will forgive me if I speak in English, but I can do a little better in that language than in his. He has complained about the conditions of the issue of permits for tractors and farm implements and has urged that the restrictions on the manufacture of this particular type of machinery should be completely removed.
In that connection I can give the committee a short summary of what the position is with respect to farm machinery. By agreement with the United States authorities and ourselves, the supply of farm machinery and equipment available in each country is on an equal basis and similar rationing plans are in effect in both countries. Because of a shortage of steel and other components, the supplies available during the 1942-43 production year, which ended the 30th June, 1943, were very much restricted; only thirty-five per cent of the corresponding 1940 period taking into account finished machines only, or fifty-six per cent including repairs. That position improved in the 1943-44 period, and it has been possible to increase production substantially, to something over eighty per cent of the 1940 period in terms of finished machines plus 156 per cent of the 1940-41 average of repair parts. The 1944^5 programme, which will end on June 30, 1945, calls for a still further in-
100-217 .
crease, to approximately 100 per cent of the 1940-41 average of completed machines and attachments, with no limit on the production and importation of repair parts. Incidentally, a special production allocation has been programmed for veterans' rehabilitation. The supply situation has eased so far as some materials are concerned, but shortage of manpower has led to difficulty in obtaining adequate supplies of steel sheets, malleable castings, ball and roller bearings and motors. Despite increased production, rationing still continues to be necessary since supplies of many types of farm machinery and equipment are not adequate to meet the demand. Rationing does not apply to attachments and repair parts or to certain lines of farm machinery such as pulpers, hay forks, watering equipment, et cetera. Under the rationing programme each area is assigned quotas of the various types of farm machinery and equipment on the basis of sales in past periods.


Stanley Howard Knowles: A few moments ago members were discussing alleged wrong payments by the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation in connection with potatoes. In that regard I should like to ask the parliamentary assistant some questions relating to another phase of the corporation's work. The subject is the manufacture of bedding, mattresses and general products that are turned out by upholsterers and bedding manufacturers. I understand that one of the functions of the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation is to provide subsidies to some of these manufacturers, where necessary, to enable them to purchase first-class material to make the necessary supplies along this line. I would ask the parliamentary assistant to give us any figures he can as to the number of companies which have been receiving these subsidies and to inform us whether any of these companies have returned either voluntarily or involuntarily any portion of the subsidies. In other words, has there been any recovery by the corporation of subsidies paid to bedding manufacturers on the ground that they were wrongly paid? Perhaps the parliamentary assistant would care to answer this question now? I have some others to ask.


Douglas Charles Abbott: It might be easier to answer them one by one. First of all, we would not have information as to the number of firms to which subsidies for this particular purpose had been paid. We would have information as to the amount of subsidies paid on particular raw material going into bedding. The record would be on a financial basis and would relate to tariff items, and I should think probably it would be raw cotton or some textile fabric which would be the

War Appropriation-Finance

type of raw material going into the articles to which my hon. friend has referred. I could give the gross amount paid in subsidy on that particular type of raw material, but that would include similar material for other purposes. I do not think we could segregate it into material going into bedding, for example.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Can the parliamentary assistant tell me whether any firms have been called upon to pay back to the corporation funds received by way of subsidy to enable them to purchase material for bedding? If so, I should like to know what the reason was that the money was recovered?


Douglas Charles Abbott: In the first place, claims are carefully scrutinized before the subsidy is paid; but claims for subsidies, and subsidies, are constantly under review. They are investigated, and a claim for refund made if it is found, for instance, that a subsidy is unnecessary and that the recipient can absorb the cost and does not need the subsidy. But I am not in a position to say, and the officials tell me that they cannot say now, whether, for instance, a bedding manufacturer who had received a subsidy on raw cotton or something of that sort used in bedding had to pay back a subsidy paid because he did not need it. The records would not give a break-down in that detail.


Stanley Howard Knowles: If the parliamentary assistant has not the specific information with the figures before him, can he tell me whether in general any of this recoveiy of money paid in subsidies was owing to discoveries by inspectors that firms had not used the material specified in their contracts or in the claims or in the agreements between the company and the corporation? Is there anything here similar to the situation in connection with potatoes?


Douglas Charles Abbott: It is pointed out that if we discover that the recipient of a subsidy has violated ceiling prices demand for refund is *made. The subsidies are paid not to guarantee profits but to enable ceiling prices to be maintained, and if it is found, as has been found in some cases, that recipients have violated ceiling prices with respect to goods on which subsidies are paid and the material has been used, a demand is made for a return of subsidies and the cases are reported to the enforcement division of the board.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Have demands been
made for recovery on the ground that the bedding manufacturer has not used the specified proportion of new material? In other words, have there been discoveries that manufacturers have been using second-hand or

used material in the making of mattresses, contrary to the specifications on which they were supposed to be working? Is there any prosecution of such a nature pending at the present time?


Douglas Charles Abbott: I shall have to get that
information. If my hon. friend will allow the question to stand I will get the information later.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Later this evening?


Douglas Charles Abbott: Yes.


Stanley Howard Knowles: So long as the item
does not pass before the parliamentary assistant deals further with the matter.


Thomas Reid: No one has been more critical than I of certain aspects of the wartime prices and trade board, but I rise now to express my praise of the great number of citizens who are operating under the board and who have not been mentioned in this entire debate. I speak of the great work done by the hundreds of men and women who haVe taken in charge the distribution of the ration cards. Throughout the country, municipal councils have provided for this work, and I know that in the city from which I come-and other cities have a similar system-the people there and in the district surrounding are looked after in the matter of ration cards at a cost of only $60 a month. On this occasion I wish to give this word of praise to those men and women who have volunteered to do this work. They have gone to these offices day and night without hope of reward, merely from a sense of service to the country, and have given their services free in turning over these books to the general public. While criticism *may be coming to members higher up in the board, this is one group of individuals working under the board, who, as I think every hon. member will gladly agree, deserve every praise that can be given them.


Mr. ROY:: This credit of $140,000,000 to
the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation, which is closely connected with the wartime prices and trade board, is to provide, if my understanding is correct, a subsidy to those who, where the ceiling is too low, suffer losses. It is to take care of losses to producers.
Before the opening of the lobster fishing season in 1942 a ceiling price was placed upon lobsters which was quite low. The fishermen and cooperatives were obliged to sell all their lobster production to the wholesale dealers in Halifax at the price ceiling. After the fishing season was over, the ceiling was removed, and those wholesale dealers who had bought the

War Appropriation-Finance
lobsters from the fishermen at a very low price were allowed to sell them at the highest price they could get for them. Last year we had no ceiling price on lobsters. This spring before the season commenced the ceiling price was again placed on lobsters, which means that the fishermen will suffer a loss of practically S8 a case on their fish. There will be that much difference in the price they will get this year as compared with what they got last year. I should like to know from the parliamentary assistant what can be done to correct that injustice to the lobster fishermen. I believe that the ceiling price should be removed immediately so that the fishermen will not suffer and that the wholesalers will not benefit as they did in 1942. If that is not done the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation should pay a subsidy to the lobster fishermen to compensate them for their losses.


Douglas Charles Abbott: Before I reply to the hon. member for Gaspe I should like to deal with the inquiry of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, but before I do that I wish to join with the hon. member for New Westminster in the tribute he paid to those people who volunteered their services in the distribution of ration books. I concur-and I know the minister does-in the views which my hon. friend expressed as to the splendid work that has been done by those volunteer workers. It was a difficult task and they did it splendidly. I join with him in an endorsation of that work.
As to the inquiry of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, I am advised that there is no record of any case in which a subsidy has been reclaimed because of the use of second-hand material. Subsidies have been reclaimed where ceilings were broken and where there has been a degradation of goods by using second-hand material and in some cases where goods had been manufactured for munitions and supply which, of course, are not subject to subsidy payments. In one case in which a subsidy was reclaimed on one of these grounds-I am not sure which-the investigation by the corporation also disclosed certain other irregularities which had nothing to do with the subsidy payments. I am advised that those irregularities were reported to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for appropriate action, but they had nothing to do with the question of subsidy payments made to that particular firm.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I take it that the parliamentary assistant was not familiar with the situation before he consulted his officials. In the statement he made he first of all stated categorically that no recoveries of subsidies
were claimed on the grounds I mentioned. In his subsequent remarks he did admit that there was a degradation of quality.


Douglas Charles Abbott: Not in the case of a particular firm. I was speaking generally when I said that subsidies were recovered in two or three instances, first, where there had been a breach of the ceiling price; second, where there had been a degradation of quality below the quality the goods were supposed to be for which the subsidy was given, due, among other things, to the use of second-hand goods; third, where a subsidy had been claimed with respect to merchandise supplied to a government department, war materials to munitions and supply.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Just that much of an admission confirms my suspicion and prompts me to question the parliamentary assistant further. He realizes that this is a pretty serious situation, not only with respect to the money involved but with respect to the injurious results to the health of people that could come from the manufacture of bedding which is supposedly brand new and which turns out to be made from used mattress material. There is a double offence involved in anything of this kind. I feel that the matter should be looked into more thoroughly. I happen to be a member of the war expenditures committee and a member of the subcommittee over which the hon. member for Bellechasse is chairman. One of the things that we have authority to go into is boards such as this one. It does seem to me in the light of the allegations that have been made to-night and the questions that have been asked that this whole matter should be gone into more thoroughly. I am a layman as far as legal matters are concerned. But I find it difficult to understand how these errors and wrongs can be made which seem to be awfully close to being fraudulent, and when the mistake is discovered all that results is that the recipient is told that he must pay back the subsidy.


Douglas Charles Abbott: I said a moment ago that some cases were referred to the enforcement section and that prosecutions have been taken. My hon. friend has not cited any case. If he will give me the name of any particular concern which he has in mind I shall have something to go on; I can get specific information, but when we are talking in general terms-he is talking in general terms and therefore I can only reply in general terms.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I am forced to talk in general terms by the very nature of the case. I think the parliamentary assistant should realize this. He and his minister sit
War Appropriation-Finance

there with officials in front of them and through those officials he has access to all the records. We have nothing. We are just the opposition with our bare hands, and yet it is our job to try and scrutinize every item of expenditure that is proposed in a bill such as the war appropriation bill, and try to find out if any of the public money has been wasted. I understand that a prosecution has been launched against one of the firms receiving subsidies from this corporation. I understand that that firm was manufacturing bedding. I understand that the prosecution was launched not by the corporation but by the Department of Munitions and Supply because that department found that this company was not making its bedding up to the specifications required by the department. The fact is that supposedly brand new bedding was being made out of stuff that may have been slept on for forty or fifty years. Although this may lead to a discussion that perhaps is not in order here to-night, I urge the desirability of legislation to prevent the manufacture of bedding on that basis. If the corporation is aware that a prosecution has been launched against that company because of that situation, then it seems to me that the matter has to be gone into a great deal more thoroughly, not just by inspectors of the corporation but by the Department of Finance which is responsible to parliament for these payments.
There is another aspect of the matter about which I should like to question the parliamentary assistant. I understand that the bedding administrator is an official, if not a very high one, of one of the bedding companies which receives subsidies from this corporation. What I had in mind in making that reference was this. On several occasions the Minister of Finance who I see is now in his seat, has said to the hon. member for Peterborough West, if not to others, that he did not feel it desirable to make public figures as to amounts of subsidies paid to individual corporations. He was not opposed to making public the total amount paid, but he did not wish to give the firms knowledge of the business of their competitors.
I may be wrong in this, but it does seem to me that if we have an official of one of these firms acting as the administrator, and having something to do with deciding the subsidies paid to the others, in such event we do have an unfair situation, on the basis stated by the Minister of Finance himself, namely, that of having one manufacturer knowing the conditions of his competitors, but without their knowing his. The parlia-

mentary assistant will correct me if I am wrong in drawing such an assumption from this set-up.
I should like also to know whether there have been any recoveries of subsidies from the firm from which the bedding administrator came. It does not necessarily attach anything to him personally, but I am asking if from the firm of which he was head in peace time there have been recovered any subsidies because of its being found, after investigation, that they had been wrongly paid.


Douglas Charles Abbott: WTith respect to the payment of subsidies, and the secrecy the minister has indicated he feels should be preserved with respect to amounts paid to individual recipients, I would point out to the hon. member that the subsidies are paid by the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation, and that the administrator of the industry to which he has referred is not a member of that organization, and presumably has no information as to the amount of subsidy paid to individual manufacturers.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Is the parliamentary
assistant sure of that? I notice he used the word "presumably".


Douglas Charles Abbott: I am informed that that is correct, that the administrator would have no list of subsidies paid to individual recipients. If an individual were manufacturing a certain type of material he would know the subsidy payable with respect to that particular commodity; but he would not know how much that individual manufacturer received by way of subsidy. In other words, he would not know his volume of business.


Stanley Howard Knowles: As bedding administrator, would he not be in a position to have fairly complete information about all firms producing bedding, under his direction?


Karl Kenneth Homuth: The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, if he has not done it in a definite way, has by innuendo said that the bedding administrator who comes from a bedding firm has had to pay back from his firm-


Stanley Howard Knowles: No. The firm, not the
administrator.


Karl Kenneth Homuth: -money that he collected on unfair subsidies.


Stanley Howard Knowles: On a point of order-


Karl Kenneth Homuth: The hon. member has said that by innuendo. I am sick and tired of sitting here and having talk like that in the house,


Stanley Howard Knowles: On a point of order-

War Appropriation-Finance


Karl Kenneth Homuth: No; you are out of order coming into this house and trying to impute that everybody who does business in this country is dishonest.


Stanley Howard Knowles: On a point of order-


Karl Kenneth Homuth: And that is the story we have here. The hon. member has made that statement, by innuendo, and I say that the parliamentary assistant should tell us now: was any subsidy paid back to the government from the firm from which the bedding administrator came?


Douglas Charles Abbott: The answer is no.


Karl Kenneth Homuth: That ought to keep him quiet.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The hon. member for
Waterloo South, in the very last few words of his statement, referred correctly to what I said. And if he had used those words in the opening part of his remarks I would not have had to rise on a point of order. He made it clear at the finish-as he did not at the beginning- that I was referring to the company, and not the individual.


Douglas Charles Abbott: I am advised that the
bedding administrator refused to accept a subsidy, and consequently he could not pay it back.


Heber Harold Hatfield: Coming back to the
potato subsidy, we all know what was claimed to have been paid the producer. Since the investigation we know what was actually paid. Would the parliamentary assistant tell us what was actually paid- the producers? The investigation showed the amount that was paid.


Douglas Charles Abbott: The subsidy was paid to the dealer.


Heber Harold Hatfield: But he had to pay a certain price to the producer. It is claimed that he paid $3.50 for the first part of August and $3 for the latter part. What did he actually pay?


Douglas Charles Abbott: I am afraid I have not that information here.


Heber Harold Hatfield: The investigation brought out what was actually paid. And your Mr. Van Buskirk should know.


Douglas Charles Abbott: Mr. Van Buskirk says he has not the information here. I repeat what I said before, that whatever the amount is, claim has been made on the recipient for the return of the subsidy paid.


Gordon Graydon: Just before you leave
that-


Douglas Charles Abbott: I thought I had finished this potato question, but I see I was mistaken.


Gordon Graydon: Just to go back, may I say to the parliamentary assistant-


Douglas Charles Abbott: Perhaps the war will be won in the meantime.


Gordon Graydon: What was that statement?


Douglas Charles Abbott: It was just an aside; I said that perhaps the war would be won in the meantime.


Gordon Graydon: Well, as long as my hon. friend is joking, I shall not take him seriously. I realize he would not say that, if he were serious about it. I must say to him, however, that he has not answered the hon. member for Victoria-Carleton with respect to what was paid the producers. That is an important point, and we should not allow it to slip by. The question has been asked, and the hon. member is entitled to an answer. The Daniels report would, of course, contain that information. If that was the kind of investigation Daniels made, then I do not wonder that the parliamentary assistant does not want to table the report, or to have anything to do with it; because if he was not able to produce -that information, then I think a shadow is thrown upon the whole report. It seems to me that would be one of the salient features with which an investigator would deal.
Some time before the debate ends I would ask the parliamentary assistant to give the information to the hon. member for Victoria-Carleton, because if it is not readily available now it should be available before the debate ends. This is a vital part of the whole situation, as I see it.


Douglas Charles Abbott: I shall see what information I can get. I have not had an opportunity to answer the hon. member for Gaspe in connection with the ceiling on lobsters. I understand that a ceiling on canned lobster was announced recently, but that exports, which run to seventy-five or eighty per cent of the -total production, are free from the ceiling. In other words, they can foe sold for any price the producer can get. Of course the ceiling varies. Perhaps my hon. friend is familiar with what the ceiling prices are and I do not need to quote them. I think I have answered his question by saying that seventy-five per cent to eighty per cent of the -pack is not subject to ceiling prices.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: Is there any subsidy on canned blueberries and canned cranberries, and also salmon?
War Appropriation-Finance


Douglas Charles Abbott: I am advised that there is nothing on canned blueberries and canned cranberries.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: Recently blueberries were released for sale without any coupons, and my belief is that they were released because the tins were ready to rust through. I have had complaints, not only from my own city of Peterborough, but from Toronto, Hamilton and other places that they would keep only a relatively short time, for perhaps a week or two weeks and then rust through. Would the minister check *on that?
A year and a half ago we used to get a pound tin of salmon for forty-eight cents, but now we have to pay thirty cents for a half-pound tin. Is there any subsidy paid on salmon and is there any ceiling on the prices? I am speaking of the red sockeye, or what is supposed to be red because it is sometimes pink. Many of the men and women working in our industrial plants have to have salmon sandwiches for their lunches and the price is out of all proportion.


Douglas Charles Abbott: I am informed that blueberries do not keep particularly well in cans and therefore it was decided to release stocks on hand without any ration requirements. There is no subsidy.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: They were released about four or five months too late.


Douglas Charles Abbott: That may be another case of what the hon. member for Yale referred to as decisions being taken a little too late. We are learning by experience and perhaps next time we shall not make a mistake, if a mistake has been made. There is no subsidy paid on canned salmon. As the hon. gentleman knows, for about two years there was no canned salmon available in this country; it was all going to fill the British contract. Two hundred thousand cases were released recently, and the price at which the salmon is sold is based on the price received under the United Kingdom contract. That is, it is being sold in Canada at the same price.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: Is there any subsidy on brooms?


Douglas Charles Abbott: I understand there is a subsidy on broom com, the material used to make brooms.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: I was wondering if something could not be done to release more brooms. At the present time it is almost impossible to get one in a grocery store.


An hon. MEMBER:: How about a hardware store?


Gordon Knapman Fraser: They do not have them, and those they have do not have the five or six binders.


Douglas Charles Abbott: There is such a shortage of broom corn, which comes largely from the United States, that we are on quota. The quantity of brooms available is determined by the amount of broom corn we can get to make into brooms. They are all being released.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: Is the government doing anything to get them into the country?


Douglas Charles Abbott: It is doing everything possible to get them into the country. We were able to purchase some broom corn from the Argentine last year because we could not get our full quota from the United States.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: A subsidy of $5,000,000 was paid on oils and fats. Was that paid on oils and fats for soap manufacturers or for domestic needs?


Douglas Charles Abbott: Soap and shortening largely.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: I
understand that there was an agreement with the different cities and towns that got fuel-wood for the use of their residents whereby they could apply to the government to have that wood purchased if they did not need it. Has any been bought by the government?


Douglas Charles Abbott: I understand that the
answer is no. The fuelwood subsidy is administered by munitions and supply, although the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation pays the actual subsidy.


Heber Harold Hatfield: Is there any subsidy on corn syrup?


Douglas Charles Abbott: Yes. I am advised that the subsidy on corn syrup and corn oil is covered by order 116.


Heber Harold Hatfield: Any subsidy on glucose?


Douglas Charles Abbott: No.


Heber Harold Hatfield: Or on corn starch?


Douglas Charles Abbott: Yes.


Heber Harold Hatfield: What is the subsidy on corn starch?


Douglas Charles Abbott: It comes under order 116 and it is the roll-back from September 15 to October 11 to June, 1941, prices.

War Appropriation-Finance


Mr. ROSS (Souris):: I think the statement the parliamentary assistant gave a few minutes ago regarding the output of farm implements is too optimistic. He is not to blame, but the fact is that these quotas are not working out as he has given them to us. There is a bottleneck somewhere. I think it is in connection with the permits. The regional controllers did not take any action on the allotments for this year until November 1 of last year. The implement distributors made their allocations on the basis of the figures they were given last November for spring operation this year. Many of the people who were entitled to and obtained permits have not been able to procure the tractors which they needed for spring seeding. Just last week I saw letters which had been received from the manufacturers stating that certain cultivators and other implements of that kind would not be manufactured until this fall.
There is a definite bottleneck somewhere and I wonder if some improvement could not be made in the method of issuing permits so that an applicant may not be misled into thinking that he will get something when in fact he cannot get it. People are complaining that when they counted on getting a tractor or some other labour saving implement for spring operations they now find that they cannot obtain it. I know many agents who had orders for drills and had obtained permits but who found that they could not obtain them until this summer, when the seeding season would be past. This has created a good deal of unnecessary confusion among the producers. I am wondering if it would not be better not to issue the permits until the machines were actually available, although the people will want to know as soon as they can if they are to be able to obtain them. If they cannot obtain them when the season comes round, it is most difficult for them. We have discussed this matter with the Minister of Munitions and Supply and he says that the steel is available. I understand that man-power is a big difficulty with respect to certain portions of the machines. I wonder if the controllers could not do something to improve the situation particularly toward supplying labour saving implements?


Douglas Charles Abbott: I will bring my hon. friend's suggestions to the attention of the minister.


Mr. WOOD:: Referring to the subsidy on bedding, I must say that I was shocked at the attitude of the hon. member for Winnipeg
North Centre who suspected that fraudulent charges might be laid against certain manufacturers.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Some have already been laid by the enforcement officers.


George Ernest Wood: We will take your word on that.


Stanley Howard Knowles: That is the word of the parliamentary assistant.


George Ernest Wood: It comes with poor grace from the hon. member who happens to be one who has deserted the pulpit to come here and supply the material needs of humanity instead of the spiritual needs. I was taught that a man with a certain weakness generally suspects other people of having the same weakness.


Stanley Howard Knowles: May I ask the hon. member a question?


George Ernest Wood: You talked for quite a while.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Does he not regard this calling as an honourable one?


George Ernest Wood: Yes, but I did not have to desert a more honourable one to come here. I was also shocked to think that this government sees fit to subsidize bedding, especially in war time. I have spent more time sleeping on straw ticks and mattresses than I ever spent on Beauty Rest mattresses.
I commend to the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre the beautiful aroma of well threshed oat straw in a good tick. That would put him to sleep and then he would not have so many crackpot ideas to bring before the house; possibly in these times of war it would be a good thing for most of us, instead of subsidizing the manufacture of some of these things that are wasteful of labour and materials.
I am inclined to take the view in spite of all handicaps the wartime prices and trade board have done a fairly good job. Had they not come into the field and guided man's labours, we would not have accomplished as much as we have done to-day. It is a new organization and we did not have men trained in the work of distributing goods and services. They had to take in men of no great experience. But in the main the board has done a good job. I feel that we spend too much time in pointing out little irregularities here and there to this thing and that, when we could be utilizing our energies to much better advantage.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Agreed.
War Appropriation-Finance


George Ernest Wood: Take the group represented by my hon. friend, and you will see that they have filled up more columns of Hansard this session than any other group in the house. I do not say that to be unkind, but I was just wondering why they feel it necessary to spend so much time in giving us the benefit of the work of their analytical minds. They seem to know how to go about it. I must say that I have not as suspicious a mind as the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre has. I believe that the great majority of the people of the country want to play the game and want to play it fair. There is the odd man who is unpatriotic and who will bootleg a little gasoline or something like that, but society frowns down upon ihat sort of thing and the wrongdoer knows it. I am just trying to state things as I see them in my own quiet way, as I sit here wondering why we spend so much time in discussing some very small things, thereby delaying the business of the house.


Mr. MacNICOL:: There is one side to this vote that, so far as I know, has not been mentioned by any one. The purpose of the vote has been to control prices and perhaps to increase production in certain lines in the interests of the prosecution of the war and the welfare of the people at large. There are about two hundred items in these war appropriation estimates, and this vote of $140,000,000 is about the sixth or seventh largest of the votes. Has any tabulation been made showing how much money has been saved to the country by a vote of this kind? That is what interests me more than anything else. The vote was originated for the very real purpose of controlling prices, preventing inflation, and perhaps increasing business in some lines. But nothing has been said as yet by the parliamentary assistant to show just what the country has been saving through the operation of the wartime prices and trade board. We might be able to find fault with scores of individual things that are done, but what interests me is the large results that have been obtained by the operations of the board. I would like the parliamentary assistant to rise in his place and say that this vote of $140,000,000, the vote of $120,000,000 last year and similar votes in other years have saved this country, let us say, one billion dollars through preventing inflation, and let him give a break-down showing just how the money has been saved.


Douglas Charles Abbott: It is a little difficult to give any concrete estimate of what has been saved. As the hon. member for Davenport has pointed out, the purpose of consumer subsidies is to

enable essential goods to be sold at ceiling prices instead of allowing prices to rise, because obviously if prices of some essential goods rise, prices of others will go up and you will have a more or less general price rise. It is considered that by the use of selective subsidies on essential consumer goods, which in effect means that the increased cost of these things is spread over the people as a whole by taxation, you avoid a general rise in the cost of living. It is estimated-these figures have been given either by the minister or by Mr. Donald Gordon-that a one point rise in the cost of living means an additional expenditure by the Canadian people of some $35,000,000 a year. Therefore the expenditure of $140,000,000, which is the estimate for this year-it was less than that last year-in consumer subsidies is the equivalent of approximately a four point general rise in the cost of living. Those competent to judge consider that without the payment of these subsidies the rise in the cost of living would have been greatly in excess of four points. We are always comparing this war with the last war, when we did not have a system of price control and did not use subsidies, as has been the case here. At the period of the last war which corresponds with the end of 1943 the cost of living had risen fifty-six points, as against a rise at the end of 1943 of 18-2 or 18-3.


John Ritchie MacNicol: And each point, you
said, amounts to about $35 millions?


Douglas Charles Abbott: Each point rise in the cost of living, it is estimated, means an increased cost to the people of Canada of $35 million a year.


John Ritchie MacNicol: On that basis there has
been a very great saving?


Douglas Charles Abbott: Yes. I am not suggesting
that the subsidies account for that entire saving, but they are part of the over-all programme of price, wage and salary control, together with the fiscal programme of heavy taxation and periodical victory loans; they are all part of the picture, and it is felt that they play an essential part in maintaining a stable level of prices. It is pointed out to me that the government is spending nearly $5,000 million a year, and that if prices went up, let us say tea per cent, the government costs would go up perhaps $250 million, which would have to be raised by taxation, or borrowing, or both.


John Ritchie MacNicol: I believe I can give the parliamentary assistant one commodity on which definite figures could be obtained. I remember clearly a period in the last war

War Appropriation-Finance
when the price of anthracite coal advanced from about $14.50 to $21, a difference of $6.50. During this war the price has risen to some extent, but nowhere near the height it reached during the last war. I imagine that if the department is able to obtain the approximate number of tons of anthracite coal burned in Canada throughout the year, and multiplies it by the difference of $6.50 a ton, it would have some figure to show what has been saved. The Canadian people want to believe that, through the expenditure of $140 million on this vote to control prices, bonuses and so forth, the country saves infinitely more. The parliamentary assistant has given some figures in proof of that.


Douglas Charles Abbott: I think that can be safely
asserted.


John Ritchie MacNicol: Perhaps before he finishes he may have other definite figures, which would dispose the public to accept this expenditure. Here are we, the opposition, letting through-not that we could stop it if we wanted, to, but without too much opposition, or indeed without any opposition, and not much inquiry-a vote of $140 million. The public look to us to bring out the reasons for so large a vote. If it can be shown, as the parliamentary assistant has done in part, that an expenditure of $140 million will save $1,500 million or $2,000 million, there would be no opposition to it in the country, and of course His Majesty's loyal opposition would not be blamed too much for having let the vote go through so easily.


Mr. MARSHALL:: When the house rose
on Tuesday night I asked the parliamentary assistant if he would give us a more detailed statement with respect to the operations of the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation. Since that time I have had an opportunity of reading through the report of the wartime prices and trade board, and I wish to compliment that body on being, I believe, the only one which has given us information of an authentic character right up to December 31, 1943. Most of the questions which I intended to ask the parliamentary assistant have been quite satisfactorily answered in this report. The parliamentary assistant has broken down to some extent the $140 million item. He told us that domestic and other subsidies would amount to about $115,500,000. I should like to have had the specific amounts paid for imports, particularly general imports. He gave us a break-down of the domestic subsidies. I thought the expression which he used, namely, "losses," was unfortunate, because it conveys a peculiar idea to the general
public. In reality it is not a loss; it is a subsidy paid by that particular branch of the corporation on that particular item.
For a moment I turn to page 25 of the report, which deals with potatoes. It is stated, "To encourage the movement of potatoes from Saskatchewan and Manitoba to northern Ontario and the northwestern part of Quebec a subsidy was paid covering the extra transportation costs involved." I wonder why mention there is made of only two of the western provinces, namely Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Although there was a tremendous crop of potatoes in Alberta, there is no reference to the fact that any potatoes have been shipped east from Alberta or any subsidy paid. The amount of transportation subsidy was a little more than $15,000 on the old crop of potatoes and a little more on the 1943 crop.
I had a number of other questions, but I shall not delay the committee. The only other question I desire to ask has to do with a subsidy paid on horsehair. I received a letter from one of my constituents, and when I read it I must confess that I laughed because I thought it was rather a ridiculous request to ask me to explain something on the subject which appeared in one of the western newspapers. The report in the west was to the effect that the prices board were anxious to get a large quantity of horsehair, and that if the domestic supply did not come forward in sufficient volume to take care of the needs of the armed forces and the war plants it would be necessary to import horsehair from South America. Upon looking up the auditor general's report, in which the figures given are no later than March 31, 1943 -perhaps the parliamentary assistant could bring them up to the end of March, 1944- I find that the amount of horsehair purchased for use in Canada cost $653,370. That astonished me. It was sold to the trade, I assume, for $677,315, or a profit on the deal of $23,945. The part of the article that I do not understand is this. The price of good quality horsehair ranges from thirty cents to fifty cents a pound, and any wool and hide dealer will buy it. There must be a reasonable answer for that statement as to why in the domestic market the producer should receive only from thirty to fifty cents a pound, whereas the material imported from South America was able to command a price of $2 a pound. These are the two items.
I might also ask the parliamentary assistant to give me some idea as to the deal which was made between the corporation and the banks with respect to the charges made by them connected with milk subsidies. I un-
War Appropriation^-Finance

derstand that a substantial sum of money was paid to the banking institutions for work in connection with subsidies covering milk, and I should like to have an explanation of that particular item. I would ask the parliamentary assistant also to bring up to date the statement which is to be found at the bottom of page 64, appendix 1, where it gives the actual expenditures from April 1, 1943, to December 31, 1943. Will he bring that up to the end of March, 1944, and give a breakdown of the two items, including local ration board? Will he separate the amount paid the local ration board from the amount paid ration coupon banking costs? These are my questions.


Douglas Charles Abbott: First I wish to thank my
hon. friend for his complimentary reference to the report of the wartime prices and trade board. I agree that it is a good report. It was made for the nine-month period in order that we might table it reasonably early in the session. Hon. members will recall that it was tabled early in February. Last year the report was for the full period up to March 31, but unfortunately we could not get it in until the latter part of May or early in June. We felt this year that it would be useful if it were tabled earlier. Now the figures are available for the first twelvemonth period, and I shall be glad, as my hon. friend has suggested, to bring the figures up to date. I do not know if the statements here should be printed in Hansard. We do not want to make a fresh report. The figures with respect to subsidy payments cover the nine-month period up to December 31. We have now the figures for the subsequent three months, so that it will be possible for us to place on Hansard a statement showing the payments for the full twelve-month period, and similarly a statement can be given of the actual expenditures of the wartime prices and trade board for the full period, although, as my hon. friend will appreciate, that does not relate to the item we are now considering. It is the item of $15,600,000, passed on Tuesday. Perhaps it would serve the purpose af the committee if I were to table a statement of the actual expenditures of the prices board for the twelve-month period. It would be available to any member who wanted it.


James Alexander Marshall: Can the parliamentary assistant give the reason-


Douglas Charles Abbott: The hon. member asked
about the subsidy on potatoes. I am informed that at the time of the great scarcity last May, the only place in Canada where there were surplus potatoes was in Saskatchewan. There may have been a car or two in Mani-

toba, but not many. What was done in effect was to pay a transportation subsidy on these potatoes, which were the only surplus potatoes available, to bring them to eastern Canada.
On the question of horsehair, I understand that is an essential material. Formerly the bristles used in brushes came to us from China, but that source has been cut off, and consequently we have had to rely on domestic horsehair and such hair as could be obtained from abroad. We are not now importing any. We are able to get it from domestic supplies, but it is bulk-purchased by the corporation and made available to brush manufacturers. Brushes are required for paint work in connection with various war industries.


James Alexander Marshall: When was the importation of horsehair discontinued?


Douglas Charles Abbott: I am not sure that we have that information. It is subject to import permit and is ineligible for subsidy. No subsidy has ever been paid on imported horsehair.


James Alexander Marshall: I understand that the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation was set up as a company under the Companies Act. The corporation was empowered to carry on the duties and responsibilities through incorporation and organization of subsidiary companies, and one at least has been set up under the terms of that order in council, one known as the Wartime Food Corporation Limited. Is that the only one, or are there others?


Douglas Charles Abbott: That is the only subsidiary of Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation.


James Alexander Marshall: Can the parliamentary assistant give a short resume of the operations of that corporation?


Douglas Charles Abbott: Wartime Food Corporation is a subsidiary of Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation and it operated in the live cattle market for a time during 1942. It was inactive during 1943 and began renewed operations on a reorganized basis, including representation on its board of directors for both primary producers and organized labour in January of this year, 1944. It was reorganized for the purpose of ensuring that supplies of fresh fruits and vegetables were available in Canada and equitably distributed -empowered to bulk purchase or otherwise deal in fresh fruits and vegetables, both domestic and imported if necessary.
One of the first responsibilities of the Wartime Food Corporation was to assume

War Appropriation-Finance
control of distribution of potatoes in eastern Canada-I hope we do not start the potato argument again-in order to ensure supplies for deficiency areas and to meet the requirements of the armed forces and other preferred users. In addition to controlling distribution, Wartime Food Corporation bulk purchased potatoes both from British Columbia and later from Maine.
Under authorization from wartime prices and trade board Wartime Food Corporation has also paid a root vegetable freight subsidy covering potatoes, cabbages, carrots and parsnips. Wartime Foods now pays subsidies on potato freight eastern and on oranges imported from the United States of America, both formerly paid by Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation; but that is purely for reasons of internal economy.


James Alexander Marshall: Who is at the head of Wartime Foods Corporation, the same individuals?


Douglas Charles Abbott: The directors are set out in the report which my hon. friend has in front of him. The president is R. T. Mohan; vicepresident K. W. Taylor who is sitting in front of me; general manager, J. B. Lander; secretary-treasurer, H. N. H. James. The directors are: A. R. Johnstone, S. R. Noble, E. W. Smart, Raoul Godbout and Carl Sanders.
The break-down of the estimates for 194445 is as follows: There is provision for potential subsidy on potatoes of $750,000, a similar payment with respect to oranges of $2,000,000; cost of administration, $75,000, and miscellaneous, $175,000, making up the total estimate of $3,000,000.


Mr. ILSLEY:: The Wartime Food Corporation has been mentioned. I wish to refer to the Wartime Food Corporation in the earlier phase of its activity, when it was not dealing with fruits and vegetables at all but was responsible for the market support of cattle prices. I wish to deal with one phase and one phase only. In a debate which took place under another item on May 23, 1944, Mr. Donald Gordon's name was mentionel several times by the hon. member for Lethbridge. The references to Mr. Donald Gordon were such as these. On page 3175 of Hansard at the bottom of column 1, Mr. Gordon's name is used and a press release which was issued on October 7, 1942, was quoted. In the first column on page 3176 reference is made to an undertaking contained in a press release by Donald Gordon to purchase any surpluses of beef to meet shifts in the price. In the first column of page 3177 reference is made to a promise in Donald Gordon's press release.
In a sense I am speaking on behalf of Mr. Gordon now. He is extremely jealous of his reputation for honour in carrying out his commitments, and I want to make clear that so long as the wartime prices and trade board was responsible for the operations referred to in the press release of October 7, 1942, those commitments were scrupulously carried out. During the period from June 28 to August 17, 1942, 49,727 head of cattle were purchased and 1,524 were exported to the United States. In this operation a loss of $832,281.69 was incurred. The board stood ready throughout to continue the support if surplus supply had threatened to depress cattle prices unduly. On May 21, 1943, however, an announcement was made and widely publicized in the form of a joint statement issued by the Department of Agriculture and the wartime prices and trade board, with the approval of the government, in which it was made clear that the support of the market from then on would not be the responsibility of the wartime prices and trade board. My colleague, the Minister of Agriculture, made it clear in the house that the responsibility as from that date, namely, the spring of 1943, was assumed by the meat board. That reference is found near the bottom of the second column of page 3177 of Hansard.
' It may be that a complete reading of the debate found in the columns to which I have referred makes it perfectly clear that there was no violation of commitments on the part of Mr. Gordon or the wartime prices and trade board or the Wartime Food Corporation. It may be that is perfectly clear already, but since there were several references to a promise made by Donald Gordon personally and a violation of that promise I thought I owed it to Mr. Gordon-and I know he would like me to make this clear to the committee-to say that there was no violation or breach of any commitment whatever on their part, and I have no reason to think there was any on the part of the meat board either, I may say.


Thomas Bruce McNevin: There is an item or two on which I should like to make some representations to the senior officials of the Department of Finance and the officials of the wartime prices and trade board respecting subsidies. But before doing so I wish to add a word of appreciation to those already spoken by the hon. member for New Westminster and the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Finance respecting the work which has been so well done by those who have volunteered to distribute ration books. This group of un-
War Appropriation-Finance

selfish and untiring citizens is deserving of the highest commendation by the government and the people of Canada.
Something has been said in this discussion this evening with regard to the value to the Canadian people of the work which has been done by the wartime prices and trade board. It would be a long story to cover all the items in which I think the people of Canada generally have been well served by this board, but I wish to point out two items. I refer to sugar and automobile tires. Those are items in which the supply is not sufficient to meet the demand, and if it were not for the control and the rationing of those commodities I am quite satisfied that the extra cost of those two items would run into many millions of dollars which would have to be paid by the general public. Therefore I think we should give credit where credit is due and highly commend the minister and those associated with him in this most essential and worth-while part of the war effort of the Canadian people.
If I had any criticism of the administration of these matters by the wartime prices and trade board it would be this. I am not sure that the officials throughout the Dominion of Canada who are in charge of these regional offices are always as considerate and as courteous to the public as they should be. I do not think it would be at all amiss if these officials were brought in at least once a year to some central point, so that the higher officials in the department could give them some instructions. They might be told that while we have to enforce restrictions, they should be enforced in a manner which would not be offensive to the general public.
I now come to one or two items concerning which I wish to make some representations. The first has to do with clover seed. I believe there are some lines of clover seed for which the grower is not receiving sufficient remuneration, so as to encourage production. To my mind this production is essential not only during the war, but in the post-war period. We have enjoyed for many years a substantial share of the import markets in Europe for clover seed. I believe that, particularly with respect to alsike seed, the present price is not sufficient to give that impetus which is so necessary to the maintenance of production on a large scale.
I believe members of the committee generally will agree with me when I say that very large quantities of seed will be required in Europe when the war is over. Therefore, if we are to be in a position to supply and to retain that substantial market, I think some consideration should be given to the possibility of

paying a subsidy on at least some of these lines. The prices, as I recall them, are these: For alsike seed, twenty-nine cents a pound; for red clover, thirty-four cents a pound and for alfalfa seed, thirty-seven cents a pound. That is the price at which the dealer is permitted to sell to the retail trade in Canada. Perhaps those are reasonable prices for the consumer in Canada to pay.
Of course, so far as exports are concerned, the seed business of Canada is controlled by the export seed office, which is located in the town of Lindsay, in my riding. The official in charge of the export seed office, under the direction of the seed branch, is Mr. F. G. Perrin, general manager of the Hogg and Lytle Seed Company, a man who has had a wide trading experience in both domestic and export seed markets. I state that only to illustrate that the area I represent is a large clover seed producing district, particularly so far as alsike and red clover seeds are concerned.
I think the official returns will show this year that the alfalfa seed growers have received a fair price. I am not sure, however, that that is the case with respect to alsike. Of course the seed is turned over to the export office by the seed dealers at a price which is substantially lower than the retail domestic price to which I have referred. Then the grower is entitled, through participation certificates, to receive whatever additional sum may represent the profit on the export trade. I believe that is a sound set-up, because under other circumstances the dealers would profit to a greater extent.
We now come back to the price of alsike seed. A good deal of the seed was brought in at $10 a bushel. Some seed dealers at a later time paid an additional $2.50 a bushel. But even at that the returns to the grower are not sufficient to give that encouragement which is so necessary if we are to produce substantial quantities of seed. If we had enjoyed a heavy export for the 1943 crop of alsike the situation would have been more satisfactory from the point of view of the grower, because there would have been returned to him by the export seed office a substantial payment by way of participation certificates. That, however, was not the case. Our exports of alsike seed from the 1943 crop were practically negligible, so that there cannot be any substantial sum returned to the growers.
It is true that if the price at which the dealers must turn the seed over to the export office were increased, it would mean that the seed trade could go out and buy the seed from the growers at a higher price. The final result might not be very much different

War Appropriation

Finance
from what it is under the present set-up, but the grower would receive a larger down payment, and to that extent would be that much better satisfied. It is a long time to look ahead to what may come from a participation certificate. That applies particularly to the class of producers who have not been accustomed to receiving returns from those certificates.
It is my considered opinion with respect to alsike that a subsidy of 7 or 7i cents a pound would give that encouragement so essential to maintain production on a scale which will provide ample seed, so that we may retain our share of that important European market during the war, and in the post-war period. I would ask the responsible officials to give most serious consideration to the possibility of putting into effect a subsidy of about those proportions in respect of alsike seed.
Then, some little additional encouragement would not be out of line in respect of red clover seed. Where red clover seed is produced we always find a good crop of hay. At least I can say it is usual to find that where you have a good crop of seed you have at least a fair crop of hay. In that way the grower has the advantage of two crops in one year. That does not pertain to alsike seed. After the threshing the feed is of very little value, and alsike clover seed is produced entirely from the first crop.
Alfalfa seed is not produced in large quantities in my community. However, substantial quantities of that seed are produced from a second crop. So that in that instance, too, the grower in many instances has a crop of hay, and then he can produce his seed from his second crop. It is also true that large quantities of alfalfa seed are produced in western Canada, and in some portions of Ontario, from the first cutting.
There is one further item to which I should like to make a brief reference, namely, Ontario fall wheat. There is a ceiling price on Ontario fall wheat of approximately $1.26 a bushel at Montreal, which nets the On'ario grower anywhere from $1.10 to $1.12 a bushel. My understanding is, although I may be mistaken, that there is no ceiling on western wheat. At the present time the price of Ontario wheat is below that of western wheat. That may not pertain right back to the grower, but in ordinary times Ontario fall wheat is sold at from ten to twenty cents above No. 1 northern. The result has been and will continue to be that a large portion of the Ontario fall wheat crop will go into the feed bin. Over a long period of years
we have built up and developed a profitable and substantial business in pastry flour which is produced from Ontario fall wheat.


Douglas Charles Abbott: Will my hon. friend allow me to interrupt? I do not want to stop him, but this question of Ontario wheat really comes under a later item in these estimates. I do not know whether he would prefer to discuss it now or later on.


Thomas Bruce McNevin: I was going to suggest that if the price ceiling cannot be altered consideration be given to the payment of a subsidy.


Mr. CARDIFF:: The first question I should like to ask the Minister of Finance is whether I should call his assistant the parliamentary assistant or secretary?


Douglas Charles Abbott: I believe the official title is parliamentary assistant.


Lewis Elston Cardiff: I should like to revert to the broom corn industry and ask the parliamentary assistant if the government had anything to do with financing or promoting certain companies which bargained with quite a number of farmers in some sections of the country to grow broom corn? In many cases the broom corn was never harvested because the contracts were misleading and it was found that the remuneration to be received was not sufficient to pay the labour involved in the harvesting.


Douglas Charles Abbott: I am advised that the government had nothing to do with organizing or promoting the companies to which my hon. friend has referred. Perhaps I had better restrict my statement to the wartime prices and trade board or the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation, whose estimates we are now discussing. They had nothing to do with the promotion of any such companies. I have no information about other departments of the government, but I am inclined to doubt that they had anything to do with it.


Mr. BLACKMORE:: I appreciate the great care the Minister of Finance took in framing his statement in defence of Mr. Gordon. I was involved in the attack on the government which involved Mr. Gordon, but I think a careful perusal of the remarks I made will show that I did not directly attach blame to Mr. Gordon. I think I made it quite clear that I did not know who was to blame, that the object of my remarks was to find out where the blame should be placed. Since it has been made clear by the statement of the minister that Mr. Gordon had control until the spring of 1943-what month was it?


James Lorimer Ilsley: May 21.
War Appropriation -Finance


John Horne Blackmore: That statement certainly exonerates Mr. Gordon and will raise him to a high regard of esteem in my constituency because there were no complaints before that date. What I said was based on what happened in 1044, and I think the minister recognizes that.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I am not saying that there may be any blame.


John Horne Blackmore: I am not saying that there should be any blame attached to Mr. Gordon, but certainly there is plenty attached to whoever took over from that time. However, we are not discussing this matter at the present time, so that I shall not go into it in any detail. I just wanted to make it clear that I did not wisih to make an unjustified attack on Mr. Gordon. As a matter of fact, I was just trying to find out who was to blame so that I would know whom to shoot at. I am glad one of them is eliminated. All through the months of February and March the impression was abroad in my constituency that somehow or another the wartime prices and trade board was responsible, or at least partly responsible. It will be remembered from what I said that one of our great difficulties has been that we do not know upon whom to place the blame. It would now appear that the blame is entirely on the Minister of Agriculture. I am afraid I gave the minister the benefit of the doubt, but in my next speech I will not.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I am very sorry if my remarks were taken as an attempt to shift the blame, because really I did not say any more than the Minister of Agriculture said himself.
He is reported on page 3177 of Hansard as follows:
Mr. Gardiner: My hon. friend has read the statement and I now say to him that that particular arrangement was changed.
Mr. Blackmore: When was it changed?
Mr. Gardiner: It wyas changed in the spring >f 1943.	*	K
Mr. Blackmore: From that time thereafter-[DOT] Mr. Gardiner: From the time the meat board was set up it became responsible for purchasing meat.


John Horne Blackmore: That was a good thing for the Minister of Agriculture to say. The trouble was that whoever tried to probe into the matter to determine wherein the responsibility lay always found that the wartime prices and trade board turned up. That has been where the difficulty lay. I believe that my attack was justified, but I am happy to know that Mr. Gordon is out of it.


Douglas Charles Abbott: A matter was raised earlier ihis evening by the hon. member for Belle-
[Mr. Ilsley.J
chasse who is not in his seat at the moment. I did not have the information at the time he inquired about tobacco prices. I am advised that the matter has been under consideration for some little time and that a decision will probably be given within the course of the next few days.


Mr. SHAW:: Last week I referred to the subsidy which was paid by the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation to the producers of pit props and mine ties in western Canada. It was pointed out to me at the time that this matter did not properly come under the estimates of the Minister of Mines and Resources. It will be recalled that in 1943 a serious shortage of these items developed, and it was decided by the wartime prices and trade board that the mine operators could not stand an increase in price. It was also understood that a drop in the production of pit props and mine ties resulted because the producers were unable to procure help or to pay the wages demanded. Therefore the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation was authorized to pay a subsidy of $3.50 per thousand lineal feet on pit props and something like one-half cent per foot for mine ties. This continued until February, 1944, and I am not complaining because it was paid.
What I complain about is this, that without notice the subsidy was terminated. Our producers had in their yards thousands of lineal feet of pit props and mine ties. They had paid wages on the understanding that the subsidy would be continued. When it was suddenly discontinued they found themselves in a most unfortunate predicament. It was true they were told that they might increase the price of their product by $3.50 a thousand, and in the case of mine ties by the amount of the subsidy. But for two reasons they discovered that there was no market for their pit props and mine ties, one reason being that we now have a surplus. The second reason I am not going to press because some of the ministers take exception to this. The operator said, "He can buy the government produced commodity more cheaply than we can buy yours." But I am not going to press that.
I should like to know why the subsidy was discontinued. Was it because the mine operators were not in a position to pay the additional price? Could it be that the subsidy was discontinued because of there now being a surplus? I should like to get to the bottom of this. I am much opposed to this idea of getting operators to cooperate through a subsidy and then penalizing them for their cooperation., and that is exactly what this

War Appropriation-Finance
amounted to. They met your shortage; they had a surplus; you discontinued the subsidy; they were caught.
The situation is this. The labour shortage is undoubtedly going to get worse. Another winter might be very severe. Then it is reasonable to expect that another shortage of these very necessary commodities will develop. Can you expect the operators to cooperate as they did before? I think an important principle is involved. I would ask the parliamentary assistant to give me the reason for the discontinuation of the payment of that subsidy, at least on the materials which were in the yards and had been purchased with the idea that the subsidy would be paid.


Douglas Charles Abbott: The reason is that the subsidy was superseded by price increases which were equal to the amounts to be allowed to producers of pit props and mine ties, effective from January 19, 1944.


Frederick Davis Shaw: I referred to that. But the point is this, that a surplus had been created. Then, of course, we know that prisoners of war and conscientious objectors had also been engaged in the production of these commodities. When the operators increased their prices by $3.50 there was no market for them. The assumption was, and it is based on the statement of the operators: "We can buy them from' the government more cheaply." But I am not going to press that. The Minister of Labour denied that although I could have produced enough evidence to convince him that I had a case, but my object was not to try to make a case. There is an important principle involved, and we may desire the cooperation of these people later on.


Mr. WARREN:: Has consideration been given to avoiding in some way or another the difficulties that some producers get themselves into as a result of the fixing of a ceiling price which gradually rises to a higher point? We have a situation in our community with respect to potatoes. We produce potatoes quite extensively, but our potatoes are not graded. We can grow good potatoes, but there has never been set up in the community the machinery necessary for the grading of potatoes. That makes it difficult to market our potatoes outside the local neighbourhood or the local towns.
What happened this year was that numbers of farmers who have potatoes, some hundreds of bags, stored them, believing that they would get the spring ceiling price. They probably could have sold them last fall or found a market for them during the winter months,
but they wanted to hold for the spring ceiling price. Then a shortage of potatoes developed, and potatoes were brought in from British Columbia and some from the United States to supply the market. The result is that numbers of farmers in my community have hundreds of bags of potatoes on their hands for which they cannot find a market. It looks to me as though something ought to be done to prevent the encouragement of that sort of thing. It is quite easy to say that the farmer has himself to blame, that he should have sold when he could have got a reasonable price. But most people like to get the top price. It is difficult to market potatoes in our climate in the winter months, and it is not easy to ship potatoes out of our community in carload lots for the reason that they are not graded. It is not easy to sell a carload of potatoes in the city of Ottawa, unless they are graded. The markets we used to have for potatoes was with the truckers who would run up from Ottawa, perhaps with a load, and take back a load of potatoes. But now these trucks cannot go beyond the thirty-five mile limit, and our neighbourhood trucks are not allowed to truck potatoes into the city of Ottawa, 100 miles away. The way it looks now, these potatoes are going to be a total loss. A repetition of that sort of situation should be guarded against. I would ask the parliamentary assistant if the officials could somehow get their heads together and find a market for the potatoes of these grievously disappointed farmers in my community.


Douglas Charles Abbott: I have listened with interest to the hon. member for Renfrew North and I am getting quite a liberal education in potatoes. I will bring his remarks to the attention of the officials and ask them whether anything can be done.


Heber Harold Hatfield: I called the board's attention to the question mentioned by the previous speaker in February and March before they started to import potatoes. The War Foods Corporation said: We will import potatoes from the United States. They failed to take my advice. They imported some two hundred and fifty carloads. I will say that the War Foods Corporation did a much better job than the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation, because they bought the potatoes from the war food distributing board in the United States, and they bought them away below our ceiling and saved the payment of any subsidy.
I see by this report that $1,300,000 was paid in subsidies on corn. Was that domestic or imported com? Was the corn used for feeding purposes or for processing into com starch, glucose and corn syrup?
War Appropriation-Finance


Douglas Charles Abbott: It was all imported com, and I understand that it was largely used for corn starch and corn meal.


Mr. HAZEN:: In spite of the efforts which have been made to control prices, I am informed that manufacturers of lumber are receiving more for their lumber than they did in the last war. I notice that a subsidy in the form of a ten per cent discount is paid the final consumer in certain cases. Final consumers who are eligible for the discount are " farmers, fishermen, growers of fruit and vegetables, trappers and other civilian users who purchase lumber from time to time for use in the pursuit of their personal trade or occupation, for maintenance and repair purposes, or for use in assisting the primary production of essential foods." We hear a great deal about the necessity for new dwellings; and the people who own and occupy houses have to make necessary repairs to them from time to time. In view of the increased cost of lumber these' repairs add to their cost of living; and I ask the parliamentary assistant if any consideration has ever been given to the question of including owners of houses to provide that they obtain this discount.


Douglas Charles Abbott: Repairs are eligible, not new construction.


Douglas King Hazen: Repairs to houses are eligible?


Douglas Charles Abbott: So I am advised, yes.


Douglas King Hazen: As I read page 34 of the report of the wartime prices and trade board, it does not say that.


Douglas Charles Abbott: That may have been an oversight.


Douglas King Hazen: In fact it says, " The subsidy is not paid on sales to industrial users and contractors and on lumber for the building or improvement of dwellings."


Douglas Charles Abbott: That is right-on new building and improvements, but that does not cover repairs. Repairs and maintenance are included, not new building or improvements to existing buildings; and not, of course, for industrial uses.


Mr. TUSTIN:: In regard to lumber, the parliamentary assistant told us there was a certain amount in this item for subsidy. Could he tell us how much the price ceiling on lumber has been lifted since the basic period of 1940?


Douglas Charles Abbott: I may not have that information. Some price advances have been authorized, and they have varied in different regions of the country. I am afraid I have not the information here, nor have I any average figure here.


George James Tustin: Possibly the parliamentary assistant could get that. I believe that the ceiling on lumber has been raised several times in some sections of the country, and I should like to know, if it is possible to get the information, by what percentage it has been raised since the basic period.


Douglas Charles Abbott: I will try to get that
information.


Lewis Elston Cardiff: Does that subsidy on lumber include all grades, or is there any specified grade?


Douglas Charles Abbott: It is payable on all classes of lumber, but not on sashes, doors, millwork and so on; and only on soft wood lumber, not on hardwoods.


Heber Harold Hatfield: Is there a subsidy on raw and refined sugar?


Douglas Charles Abbott: No.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Wartime Salvage Limited, administration and losses, $500,000.
Mr. STIRLING:: In the next few days
there is going to be a determined attempt all across Canada to collect waste paper for war purposes. Can the parliamentary assistant assure us that the tons of paper which go out of this building will reach that beneficial end?


Douglas Charles Abbott: I would hesitate to give that assurance.


Grote Stirling: What does happen to it?


Douglas Charles Abbott: All these items, of course,
were prepared some months ago, and I think were in Hansard in February. Wartime Salvage Limited is now in process of liquidation, and it is anticipated that it will cease all operations within the next month or so. Of the total amount of $500,000 provided by -the estimates to cover the company's administrative expenses and losses for the fiscal year 1944-45 it is now anticipated that $30,000 at the very most will be required. The remainder of the amount required will revert to the war appropriation; and the activities which were formerly carried on by Wartime Salvage Limited under the wartime prices and trade board will, I understand, be carried on by the Department of National War Services, and the costs probably paid by the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation.


Grote Stirling: Can the parliamentary
assistant tell us what does happen to the wastepaper from this building?

Address oj Right Hon. John Curtin


James Lorimer Ilsley: The hon. member for Ottawa West tells me there is keen contest as between contractors or bidders for the paper which leaves this building, and it all goes into use in that way.


Grote Stirling: Into, war uses?


James Lorimer Ilsley: War and peace uses. I do
not think you can trace through a particular lot of wastepaper into war use; but there is a great need for wastepaper now. What the hon. gentleman is interested in is whether this is being used. It is being tendered for and bought and used.


Grote Stirling: And the money goes into consolidated revenue?


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes.


Lewis Elston Cardiff: Who is Wartime Salvage
Limited?


Douglas Charles Abbott: The officers are set out in the report which was tabled two or three months ago: President, Mr. W. A. Bark; vicepresident, Mr. R. Geddes; treasurer, Mr. C. F. Butler; Mr. C. W. Younger; and the director is Mr. Charles LaFerle.


Heber Harold Hatfield: Do they handle reclaimed rubber?


Douglas Charles Abbott: No.
Item stands.
Progress reported.


[Stage Direction]
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
'	-	ADDRESS

[Stage Direction]
Prime Minister oj Australia

[Stage Direction]
Thursday, June 1, 1944
(Mr. Curtin was welcomed by Right lion. W. L. Mackenzie King, Prime Minister oj Canada, and Mr. Gordon Gray don, Leader oj the Opposition, and thanked by Hon. Thomas V%en, Speaker oj the Senate, and Hon. James Allison Glen, Speaker oj the House oj C ommons)
Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING (Prime Minister of Canada):: Members of the Senate and of the House of Commons: We are greatly privileged to have as a guest of our two houses to-day the Right Honourable John Curtin, the Prime Minister of Australia. Mr. Curtin has kindly consented to address us this afternoon. Before he does so I should like, on behalf of the parliament and people of Canada, to say just a word or two to him, and, through him, to the parliament and people of Australia.
It is difficult to believe that more than three years have elapsed since members here assembled had the honour of being addressed by Mr. Curtin's distinguished predecessor, the Right Honourable R. G. Menzies. At that time the war was far into its second year. Nazi Germany had subjugated most of Europe. There was desperate fighting in Egypt, in Libya, in Greece and in Crete, and on the waters of the Mediterranean. In all these theatres of war, and over Europe from Britain, Australian soldiers, sailors and airmen had been heroically withstanding the onslaughts of the enemy, often at great sacrifice.
But not in Africa and Europe only were the armed forces of Australia on active service.
3454	COMMONS
Address oj Right Hon. John Curtin
They were serving at that time in Australia itself, in Asia, at Singapore and in Malaya, some, we are proud to say, were training as brothers in arms with our own airmen here in Canada. On no less than five continents and on many seas, Australia had distributed her fighting forces to help preserve the world's liberties. All this was even before Russia had come into the war. I mention these things, that you, Mr. Curtin, may know that the recollection of the service rendered the world by Australia in those early and perilous years is as vivid in our minds to-day as it was at the time. These memories will never be effaced.
Appalling as the prospect appeared to your countrymen, as, indeed, it did to all the other peoples of the British commonwealth in those first two years of war, that prospect, to you and to the people of Australia, must have seemed almost unreal by comparison with the situation which confronted Australia within two months of the time you became leader of the government.
For years the Japanese had been waiting for the day they might proclaim themselves masters of the Pacific.. While you were denuding your own continent of its bravest men, and even of its own defences to help save freedom in Europe, Japan was extending her conquest of China. She was stealthily encroaching on other territories which brought her, in full strength, ever closer to your own shores. After Pearl Harbor, after the fall of Singapore, before aid could come to you from any quarter of the globe, you and the people of Australia must have experienced terrible anxiety. What Britain had to endure, when she stood alone facing the might of Germany, Australia for many months must have felt in facing the might of Japan. As Britain kept open the gates of freedom in the north Atlantic, so Australia and New Zealand kept open the gates of freedom in the south Pacific.
The free world will probably never realize what it owes to Australia, what it owes, Mr. Curtin, to your own sagacious and resolute leadership. We are anxious, however, at this moment to express what acknowledgment we can of so great a debt. With this acknowledgment we wish to give you the assurance that just as your forces and ours have been exerting their strength wherever the call was most imperative in this global war; just as today we await with confidence the outcome of the colossal conflict which will crush forever the menace of nazi tyranny; so on the morrow our forces will be found closer than ever at the side of yours, sharing with our allies in the total destruction of the tyranny of Japan.

Before calling upon the Prime Minister of Australia to address us, I shall ask Mr. Graydon, as leader of the opposition, to join with me in extending to Mr. Curtin a unanimous welcome, and our best of wishes for the safe return of Mrs. Curtin and himself, and the members of their party, to their homeland. We ask them to take with them to the people of Australia the profound admiration and heartfelt good wishes of all the people of Canada.
Mr. GORDON GRAYDON (Leader of the Opposition)': Mr. Speaker, I desire to associate His Majesty's Loyal Opposition and, if I may be permitted, other opposition groups in the house as well, with the eloquent and gracious words of welcome which the Prime Minister has extended to-day to our honoured and distinguished visitor. We warmly welcome the Right Honourable John Curtin as a statesman with a long, honourable and successful parliamentary career, and as a prominent member of Australia's "fourth estate". His keen concern for the welfare of the common people and his deep attachment to the cause of labour, which has made such a notable effort in this wartime period, gives to his visit a special significance to this parliament and the Canadian people.
May I express at this point, too, with what great pleasure the Canadian people extend their hospitality to Mrs. Curtin, who has through the years been such a tower of strength to her husband.
Australia's Prime Minister is just returning from an important meeting of the commonwealth Prime Ministers. This conference has given new encouragement and added determination to the British commonwealth and empire statesmen, and to the people they represent, to see this war through to a speedy and successful conclusion. Our fervent hope is that this conference marks only the beginning of even greater things ahead for a strengthened and more closely collaborating commonwealth and empire in the closing days of war and in that better world of permanent peace and plenty which must follow.
We greatly admire and honour the record of achievement in two wars of the powerful and heroic Australian forces on the sea, on the land and in the air. Their gigantic contribution to the fight for freedom, which came at one critical stage to Australia's very shores, constitutes an illustrious page in the history of this war, as in the last.
On the civilian front Australia has a magnificent record to her credit as well, and we ask Australia's Prime Minister to-day to carry back to his nation's armed forces and to his people in general the admiration and praise

Address oj Right Hon. John Curtin
of Canadians for all that Australia has meant to this dominion, the British commonwealth and the united nations in these stem days of test and trial.
So I say to you, Mr. Curtin, that it gives me great pleasure and no small satisfaction to make the words of the Prime Minister, who so eloquently welcomed you to-day, unanimous in the Dominion of Canada.


Right Hon. JOHN  CURTIN@Prime Minister of Australia: Mr. Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Speaker of the Senate, Mr. Speaker of the House of Commons, members of the Parliament of Canada:
I do not propose in any way to fill out in detail the broad picture of what has been done by the people of Australia in the war. Indeed, sir, if I were to speak at very great length, with far greater power and energy than are mine, I could not pay a tribute to the Australian people more handsomely than have the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in the addresses which they have delivered here to-day. It will be my great pleasure, as indeed it is my duty, to attempt in some way to convey to the parliament and people of the Commonwealth of Australia an indication of the spirit that has marked the speeches which have been delivered, and to express to them how highly they are regarded in this great sister dominion of Canada. I know it will give them great pleasure, but it will not lessen in any way their energies. They will not feel, "Well, now that other countries know what we have done, there is not much more for us to do." On the contrary they will derive inspiration and encouragement, from the assurance we all must experience to-day, to see to it that what has now been done so magnificently by the people of the united nations will be carried through to completion, so that those forces of evil which commenced this struggle against liberty and freedom in the world will be so decisively defeated that in the future it will be impossible either for them or for those like unto them to regenerate conditions or to nourish ambitions which would lead to a fateful calamity such as that which has now overtaken the world as a whole.
You, here, come to this place, the lawmaking authority of a free people, as the result of the decisions of your citizens. They have their rights and they express them. They register their decision as to who, among those who offer themselves, shall become their representatives, along with other representatives of the people of Canada, in this great hall of legislation and as their trustees decide for them the kind of laws that they will be
expected to observe. Nowhere in the world outside the Dominion of Canada can anything be said or done which can in any way lessen the complete authority of this parliament, as the law-making authority of the people of Canada, to decide for the people of Canada what it is that the people of Canada shall be expected to do.
This principle of the sovereignty of a free people is integral to the cause for which all of us went to war. For it will be remembered that among the very first things the nazis did was to bum the Reichstag, to destroy the representative assembly, to prohibit the association together of the citizens of Germany for those purposes for which association generally is considered desirable. Before they could attempt to destroy the freedom of the world they had to restrict it at home. And the writing was on the wall for the world at large when despotism in so great a country, with so large a population, began to plant its heel, internally, on the civic rights of the people, on the dignity of the individual man or woman of Germany. From that day onward totalitarianism not only marked the internal policy which Germany was pursuing, but was being constantly extended across the frontiers, infecting the states adjoining German}1'. And where that could not be done easily, then the armed forces of Germany were projected beyond the territorial boundaries of Germany itself.
The decisions that had been reached at the peace conference were decisions no longer respected, and, as a consequence, force became the instrument with which Germany at home and abroad proceeded to translate its expectations into what it hoped would be fruition.
I need not do more than summarize what occurred. The rest of the world hoped that war had for ever been abandoned as a means of determining international disputes. It was believed that reason could be used in discussion-could be used, indeed, to decide differences of opinion between states as to their rights and their duties. Within the lives almost of the present generation the civilized world had had a bitter experience of the cost of war and of all that war means, apart from its material cost. Therefore they believed that by associating together it would be practicable to devise machinery to prevent a repetition of occurrences which in previous ages and, indeed, in quite recent times, had permitted the peace of the world to be disturbed, threatened and destroyed. They believed there could be this alternative whereby, without resort to force, the rights and claims of
3456	COMMONS
Address of Right Hon. John Curtin
those who had rights and claims could be fairly and impartially considered and justly decided upon.
As I have said, force rules the world and has ruled it. That being so, notwithstanding the great exertions of those who had hoped for a different state of affairs, the fact became clear when Germany marched into Poland. That march came almost as soon as arrangements could be made, notwithstanding the fact that almost within a recent day or days, so quickly does time move now, an agreement had been made at Munich. The most recent agreement was merely the instrument whereby Germany had provided an anaesthetic for the rest of the world, lulling it into a sense of false security and using the time factor in order to have greater striking power when it felt the moment had come to make the initial onslaught.
No post mortem is necessary to adjudicate upon war guilt. The facts are themselves there for all to see. It is true that not only Australia but Canada and the whole British commonwealth were at war when Germany marched into Poland, because Great Britain had given a solemn undertaking to protect Poland against the intruder and aggressor. The pledged word of governments is the moral conscience of the world. There cannot be agreements between nations, there cannot be covenants between states; there cannot be any hope for the future of the world, unless high contracting parties keep their undertakings. It is not an easy matter to arrive at such agreements, covenants and treaties. A wide diversity of interests has to be commingled in some general unity before that can be reached. When it is reached, it means so much to the world, because after all is said and done, the social state of dignity and of decency, and the relationships of the common man within his own order or beyond it, rest finally upon the sanctity of contracts. Thus had Great Britain given this undertaking- given it in order to ensure that there should not be resort to force.
The very fact that Poland was wantonly invaded was not only a violation of the word that Germany had given through its government; it also violated the purposes and the whole spirit which had marked Great Britain's acceptance of the treaty of Munich. Peace was destroyed by that act. Who is there anywhere in the world now who sees the aggressor on the move, who is able to put a terminus to his movement? Is there immunity for you, but not for me? Ah, no; it is not within the wit of man to circumscribe brutality

and to limit violence so long as brutality and violence are permitted without restraint to extend their boundaries.
Therefore the invasion of Poland, while involving immediately the people and the territories of that country, was in fact an indication to the whole world that there was no place which the nazis could reach and desired to reach that they would not seek to reach unless their strength could be taken from them. And war came, as we all know.
But the list of belligerents had not been made clear. Opportunism is one of the arts of war-to take advantage of the chance that comes to you, to be ready to seize whatever be the effects of general military dispositions and the ebb and flow of battle. As it turned out, Germany, having prepared for so long against the powers that had made little or no preparation, not only had the initial advantage, but because of the sheer momentum of the offensive that had been exerted was able to move to the east, then to the west and then to the south. In a little while, as it were, practically the whole of Europe, territorially and from the point of view of the economic structure of Europe that was most vital, was under either direct or indirect German domination.
You saw amid the wreck and misery of nations the flag of Hitler superseding the flags of countries that for many years had been proudly practising not only the principles of liberty, bub, in so far as their capacity would admit, the arts of progress. Norway, France, Greece-why add to the list? This gave to Germany so tremendous a command of resources that the battle flowed even into the Atlantic. It would be absurd for me to occupy time in describing the strategy of it, but you can see at once that having taken control of practically the whole of Europe, all that was necessary then to secure control and complete the conquest for Germany was to isolate Great Britain. So the battle flowed with the U-boats and air power to cut off from Great Britain the supplies which would enable her to withstand onslaught. By day and by night the air power of Germany rained blows devastatingly upon the capital city of the motherland of the British commonwealth. By day and by night from the depths of the ocean seeped up the rawagers that sought the destruction of ships so that food and equipment which Britain needed would not arrive, and that which was a partial deficiency because of lack of preparation would become a complete deficiency because of inability to provide reinforcements and fresh supplies.
You have paid a tribute, sir, to Australia. May we not here, reviewing the world aspect

Address of Right Hon. John Curtin
of this terrible struggle, jointly ipay a tribute to the people and to the government of Great Britain, which, standing alone against the fury and strength of Germany, withstood the shock? Not only did they withstand it, but more; they proved that there was in the people of Great Britain -the resource and virility and determination and devotion -and gallantry which, at that stage at any rate would not permit the forces which swept through France, which reduced Norway, which completely decimated the Low Countries; the forces which drove, as it were, Greece from its seat of ancient authority and apparently had so largely succeeded that the second belligerent said, "I am in with you,"-it would not permit -these forces to go any farther. And Italy having come in, Great Britain still stood.
It is true -that Britain had friends. There was the whole British commonwealth. You have spoken, sir, of what the Australian fighting man did. But here in this place may I now pay a tribute to what the Canadian fighting man did, to what the Canadian airman did, to your having, although -unprepared, developed great naval strength; to the experiences you have had in the war, and to your determination t-o do all that you humanly can to see it through.
Britain was the bastion, but to that bastion as opportunity allowed there came the airmen and the military strength-yes, and the naval forces of the whole British commonwealth; for if the heart should be mortally attacked, how could the nether limbs survive? Australia sent her men-Australian men went over long distances; the truth is that they went because they knew that in fighting for the freedom of the world and for the defence of Britain they were in fact fighting for the defence of their own country. Not that they would not have gone had they believed that Australia was not menaced; for being kith and kin, of a common ancestry and all that goes to make up that vast heritage of freedom which has come down to us through the ages from our forebears who struggled for it where they lived in past ages-all that would have counted with us as it would have counted with you. But Britain stood firm; the forces of Hitler were dispersed as the waves of the sea are broken upon a rock. Hitler, however, felt there were still things he could do to complete his purpose of world domination, which was the central core of the totalitarian concept that Germany entertained. He turned east for a breathing space, so that, not knowing what might happen when he got too far involved in the west, there would not come upon him from behind the strength of Russia. For although there may be ideological differences
between political systems, just as there are economic distinctions between dominions of the British commonwealth-those in the north, those in- the south, those in the east, and so on-yet despite these political and economic distinctions there are fundamental principles which are common to all and which most certainly have to be defended if the realization of the freedom of the state ini the future, and of its hopes for the future, is ever to be made possible.
Hitler feared Russia. Fear was an unwise monitor; none the less he drove to the east and brought Russia into the war. We can here pay tribute to Russia for all that she has done ; but we can do more. We can express admiration for the colossal way in which that mighty country has rallied herself and energized herself and organized herself and fought in order that the legions of Hitler could -not push so far into her territory- as to destroy her.
Why go on as a kind of incompetent historian? Yet one is tempted to do so. In time Germany and Italy, because they had brought themselves to face the walls of Britain and the walls of Russia, decided it was desirable that something more should be done. Like a bolt from the blue, the third partner in the axis struck-struck like an assassin in the night. The President of the United States was having discussions with a special envoy of the Japanese government. He sent a direct appeal to the Emperor of Japan, and the Emperor replied with bombing raids on Pearl Harbor and with attacks on Singapore; replied with the instruments of his armed power to hit simultaneously at two bastions of freedom in the Pacific, believing that if he could neutralize those bastions there would then devolve upon the United States, as upon Great Britain, so very long a period for the rehabilitation of those bases and those resources that, in the meantime, he could consolidate his co-prosperity sphere and, without very much opposition, possibly be able to go as far as his ambitions led him. If you will look at it shortly you will perceive how nearly successful that campaign was. Malaya, -then down through the Netherlands East Indies, then across into New Guinea, -into the Solomons, Pearl Harbor and Hawaii, and the whole Pacific open to Japan's naval power with the bases they had established-improperly according to any standards of decency between nations, because in spite of their mandate they fortified these bases contrary to treaty stipulations. Thus they had given to them a capacity with which to cut the supply line between the United States and Australia, just as Hitler believed that he could cut the supply line -between this con-
3458	COMMONS
Address oj Right Hon. John Curtin
tinent and Great Britain, and isolate in the south the one land available as a base from which to mount great strength in order ultimately to defeat the Japanese.
It was a very close call that Great Britain hjid. It was a very close call that Australia had. Just a little more here, a little less there, and the result might have been different. The margin was not sufficiently large for comfort for either the government of Great Britain or the government of Australia. But the margin was on the right side. The strength came. The massing of resources in Great Britain has gone on steadily. The battle of the Atlantic has now turned from the U-boat hunting to the U-boat being hunted. And so in the Pacific, where'Japanese air and naval power was continuously expanding, Japanese air and naval power is now on the defensive. The orientation of the war is different now from what it was. There are varying periods in the lives of men, and all of us have episodes; and so it is in war. War is not a static thing. If at the commencement of this colossal struggle the united nations were on the defensive and the initiative and the power to exert the offensive rested wi'th the axis, imposing upon the united nations a holding strategy, that holding strategy has been completed. Behind it the requisite strength has been marshalled, and the time came, not simultaneously everywhere, when it could be employed in limited offensives to weaken the offensive of the enemy.
So the skill and genius of commanders in all theatres was directed to that purpose, to the point where the enemy was driven out of North Africa-but not without cost, not without a great deal of time being taken in the campaign, and not without a stupendous burden upon the productive resources of this and every other continent that is on the side of the allied nations in the effort to provide the material with which the fighting men in North Africa could at last carry through the task of making some return for all that had happened previously in North Africa, in Crete, in Greece and thereabouts.
Then you saw the entry into Italy; and now you see the battle in Italy raging, and you know that the battle which has been started is one which we confidently believe will represent the terminal point of German-Italian collaboration in any part of Italy. However, let me do no more than generalize; for hours, days or weeks are not for me to measure. The cardinal fact is that where the enemy held all the strategical locations from which to exert attacks upon the forces of the allied nations, to-day he is going backwards, towards Berlin in Europe, towards Tokyo in

the Pacific. This could not have been done without imposing upon the civil populations of all the united nations the burdens of war. You cannot escape the inevitable price which will have to be paid for what has to be done. Soldiers have to be fed; supplies for them have to be transported vast distances; they have to have equipment for war vastly different from the equipment man uses in peace time. Therefore, in factories which were producing goods useful to us as citizens to nourish our bodies, to warm ourselves, to house us, only a portion of the materials and the skill and the labour which had been devoted to that end can now be devoted to it, and this would be inadequate to provide more than the minimum scale which would ensure to the civil population the measure of health and strength necessary to the production of instruments of	war.	Here that	is broadlytrue; in Australia it	is broadly	true.	Thepeople have agreed that the greater claim upon industry shall be to produce the essen-titals for the	waging of war,	that	to aminimum the	civil	population	shall	have
satisfaction of its needs; that there must be a drastic curtailment of its wants.
Taxation has been mounting. I am sure that the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the treasurers of Canada and Australia are quite delighted in discovering how infinite are the resources of their various populations. This burden has had to fall upon the people at home. They have had to work long hours. They have had all kinds of exhausting tasks to carry out. It has been done cheerfully. Yet no burden that is borne by those who work in the factories, the fields, or the industries of the country is comparable to that which has been imposed upon the fighting men, wherever they are-in the deserts of North Africa or in the frightful places of the east; in disease-infected jungles, with no roads, with fearful humidity, with conditions under which white men have not been accustomed to live in any great numbers, let alone to fight.
So that as the obligation which comes first to all the governments is that of satisfying and maintaining the strength requisite to keep the fighting men fit wherever they may be-and the civil populations must provide that substance, because there is no other physical way in which it can be done-when the war is over, the obligations to the fighting men will not have ceased. The burdens which governments will carry wall be dual burdens- to rebuild the resources of the country so that the arts of peace may flourish, and at the same time to satisfy that solemn debt of honour which all governments owe to the

Address of Right Hon. John Curtin
fighting men, and to their dependents, for having stood between the enemy and those at home and enabled those at home to sleep comfortably at nights and to be assured that their institutions and their way of life would not be molested by an invader.
As I look at this stage of the war I cannot do other than express heart-felt gratitude to the fighting men of the united nations as a whole and to their commanders, who have done the most to keep the world from becoming the slaves of despots and of tyrants. Then I would pay tribute to that quality for concert which nations of different political systems have developed, and which I hope and pray-and will strive to see accomplished-will be maintained when the war has ended.
You have said, sir, that I have been in parliament for some years. We know our parliamentary system. Leaders of the opposition, prime ministers, ministers of state, leading representatives of the opposition, are all engaged in What may appear to an outsider as vain disputation and constant controversy. The government can never do anything right, say the opposition; and, the opposition has no resource or capacity to be entrusted with the government, say the ministers. Well, that goes on time and time again. But in all the great matters of national duty, the maintenance of the social order and the promotion of the true welfare of the people, the best counsellor the prime minister has is invariably the leader of His Majesty's opposition. That has been my experience with these political parties. They bring out the truth as to what is the right way to solve a problem. We do not in our parliamentary system ignore discussion. We do not trample down minorities. We are not overawed by numbers. As a matter of fact the opposition is always able to speak eloquently and effectively-it does not know quite so much about the problem as the government! That has always been so. Yet you see in times of crisis the unity of the people in Australia, in Canada, in Great Britain, with all our diversities of political parties and practices and the like; none the less out of that discussion and that distinctiveness and that variation in the point of view a unity emerges.
It is the more permanent and effective because that is the way it comes, rather than as a result of the ukase of a dictator and the fears of those who must yield to his demands. It is a unity born of the supremacy of persuasion. It is a unity that emerges to give triumph to
conviction rather than to cowardice or weak ness. It is the strength born of the triumph of reason.
This being true of each of our dominions in respect of the national unity of our own people, then you have the representatives of those dominions going to a conference. They are composed in their own countries of leaders of parties, but they are also the heads of governments. They meet in London. No longer do they meet as leaders of parties; they meet as heads of governments, responsible in all they do for the presentation of what is the considered view and consensus of their dominions as dominions. They, feel certain that the view they put has to stand not only the test of immediate criticism but the test of time; for by their agreements they may commit their country to a point of view-not to any surrender of the sovereignty of the parliament and the government, but to the promotion of a generic idea which will lead to concerted action and cooperative endeavour.
Need I do more than just illustrate to you how significant to students of history is the fact that you could get at one table Mr. Roosevelt, the President of the United States and leader of the Democratic party in that country; Mr. Churchill, the leader of the Conservative party in the United Kingdom, and the leader of the United Kingdom, and Mr. Stalin, the Premier of the socialist republics of Russia. There they met. They did not meet to discuss whether conservatism is good or bad, or whether this particular type of political idea is better than another. They met to concert measures to serve the world. The British commonwealth prime ministers met, certainly with lesser problems and with lesser status, but none the less as a microcosm, as it were, a smaller association to promote accord, to help each other to devise formulas and to make arrangements, so that in a world where none of us is strong enough to stand alone we shall discover how and by what means we can best stand with and for each other.
This brings me then to my final thought; for there you have the problem of statesmanship in the years to come for all governments that are anxious, as all should be, and I believe are, to have regard for the welfare of mankind. What is the worst evil that can come to us? It is to be taken away from the promotion of the social and economic progress of our country in order that so many thousands, indeed millions, of useful persons in the fields, workshops, mines and the like shall no longer be available to produce the things that will minister to man's comfort, but be set apart in a vast army to engage solely in resistance to another vast army, imposing upon all those who have

Address oj Right Hon. John Curtin
been left behind the double burden of feeding them and feeding with inadequate resources the whole population of the globe.
We see man's history interrupted repeatedly by wars, by bitter strife, by this ghastly loss to civilization. Upon the great nations, then, surely there falls the responsibility of making it clear that that association which war has meant for us-for Russia, for the United States, for the British commonwealth, these three great powers, together with China, that great land mass and teeming population in the far east-these four who have subscribed themselves to the Charter-means that their great' resources involve also high responsibilities. What is their major responsibility? Just as they could agree and find ways and means to pool their strength to resist a brutal foe who threatened their homes, their liberties and the sovereignty of their peoples in their own affairs, so surely this strength, so prodigious in the present service of freedom, is a strength which can be maintained and made use of in order to prevent a recurrence of calamities such as Hitler and his axis collaborators have forced upon an unwilling, indeed a victimized world.
I make a plea here in this free parliament for the average citizen; for the shopkeeper; for the mother of forty years of age with sons and daughters who may be eighteen, sixteen or twelve; for the next generation; for those who are unborn; for my grandchildren, if there be any. Let us, since we have found fraternity and association and collaboration so indispensable to get the strength with which to meet the attack, preserve that association and use it, nourished by the genius of statesmanship, to ensure that the world shall not have a recurrence of this dreadful and indeed abysmal conduct whereby the sword has become the instrument of government, instead of the light of reason, which, despite all that may be said by the critics of democracy, can give to a free people not only as clear a vision of the future, but a capacity for decision, for right decision, -which the totalitarians can never attain.
May I thank you very deeply for the great honour you have done me this afternoon in inviting me to speak to you. I come from a country small in point of numbers, a country of seven million people. We have an area of approximately three million square miles. We are in the south Pacific. Think for one moment about the map of the world and have a look at the lands that are south of the equator- South America, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the number of smaller islands scattered about, mainly in the Pacific. Consider the characteristics of the people that

live in those parts, and you will understand when I say that the struggle to preserve Australia was a struggle to be of service to the world.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I would ask the
Speaker of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Commons to express our thanks to Mr. Curtin for the very eloquent address which he has just delivered to us.
Hon. Senator THOMAS VIEN, K.C., (Speaker of the Senate) (Translation): Mr. Prime Minister of Australia, the Canadian people are, as yiou know, largely of British and French extraction. I am very happy to be given the opportunity of expressing to you in my mother tongue, one of the two official languages of this country, the deep gratitude of the Senators, of the Members of the House of Commons, and, indeed, of the whole people of Canada, whom you have honoured by this visit at the conclusion of the historic London Conference and by the gracious and very moving words you have just spoken.
Your great reputation, Mr. Prime Minister, has preceded you in this country. You come to us in the radiance of the glory with which your fellow countrymen covered themselves on every battlefield during the first Great War-and of the even greater glory which they have achieved during the present conflict. Australia has earned the eternal gratitude of mankind for having heroically withstood the Japanese onrush which swept in like a tidal wave from the Far East. Thanks to the wise and courageous leadership that you have given her, your country has brought her war effort to the highest pitch, and made a tremendous contribution to the United Nations.
Canada has been in the West the link joining the Old World and the New. Your country has played an identical role in Southern Seas, where you have created friendly relations with the great American people, while remaining united by sacred and unbreakable ties to the heart of the Empire.
It gives me great satisfaction to express' to you the unbounded affection and admiration of Canadians for you personally and for all our Australian brothers, and to convey to you our warmest thanks for the encouragement that we have received from your presence among us and from your very comforting words.
God bless Australia and the Australians and their distinguished Prime Minister! God bless our soldiers, sailors and airmen! God give us a glorious, speedy and decisive victory, and a lasting Peace to the World.

Address of Right Hon. John Curtin


Hon. JAMES ALLISON GLEN (Speaker of the House of Commons):: Mr. Prime Minister, it is with singular pleasure that we welcome and thank you for your presence with us.
We have had many notable and distinguished visitors during the last four years, and to-day we behold two of the Prime Ministers of the great dominions speaking from the floor of the House of Commons in Canada, our own Prime Minister, the Right Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King, and the Prime Minister of Australia, the Right Hon. John Curtin.
To add to the importance of this gathering, these very distinguished gentlemen have arrived in Canada fresh from a meeting of the Prime Ministers of the commonwealth of British nations in London, during which, it is no exaggeration to say, issues affecting the whole world and countless millions of people for countless years have been subjects of deliberation. This is not the occasion to refer to those issues, but I think it is permissible to say that at no time in our history were the bases of our democracy, and in particular free and untrammelled speech, better exemplified than in the recent meeting. It is eminently proper that the central purpose-to win the war-did not preclude that equally momentous purpose-the vision of a new world order based upon the policies of cooperation and good neighbourliness.
Sir, all will agree you made a notable contribution to that meeting and you are entitled to say that in the essentials, in the broad scheme of affairs, having regard to the geographical, political and social problems, there was agreement-a lesson for all the world to note.
We shall never forget those tragic days when your country was in serious and imminent danger of invasion in force by the Japanese. Those days were fraught with great peril, and it must be a matter of justifiable pride to you to reflect that under your leadership Australia rose superior to the threat, withstood and ultimately safeguarded her shores from a cruel and remorseless foe. Now your country and the other united nations are destroying that Japanese menace.
You, sir, are not a stranger to the floor of a House of Commons, and, while the report has it that the vocabulary of your assembly is vivid as its southern sun, I think this gathering to-day of both our houses demonstrates that the coldness of our northern words serves but to conceal the warmth of our welcome to you.
I am glad to say that four of our colleagues of this house will soon have an opportunity to convey to your assembly in sincere and adequate terms our friendliest regards and greetings to Australia, reciprocating those which some of your colleagues brought to us here last year.
Sir, Canada thanks you for your fine speech and your presence among us. We wish you a safe return to your native land, and we hope that the time is not far distant when we shall meet again in the happier days when this war shall cease. Towards that end your country has made an enormous contribution, and, when you speak to your own people, tell them that all Canada fervently declares: Well done, Australia!
The proceedings were concluded by the singing of God Save the King.
Friday, June 2, 1944