1946-05-30

[Stage Direction]
Second report of standing committee on standing orders.-Mr. MacLean.
First report of joint committee on the library of parliament.-Mr, Speaker.

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

Mr. KIDD:: 1.	What has been the total amount of expenditure up to September, 1939, on the new C.N.R. station in Montreal?
2.	What has been the total amount of expenditure from September, 1939, up to the present time on the new C.N.R. station in Montreal?
3.	What has been the total expenditure on the new C.N.R. station in Montreal to date?


Mr. CHEVRIER:: 1,	2 and 3.
The Canadian National Railways advise as follows: Main terminal-including land, cost of excavation, cost of the station building and sub-track areas, together with viaduct and trackage from north side of St. James street to the tunnel portal: To Sept. 30, 1939, 87,278,297; since Sept. 30, 1939, $5,751,342; total, $13,029,639.


NATIONAL DEFENCE (.AIR)-CAPE SCOTT-FISHERMEN'S BAY ROAD CONSTRUCTION
Mr. PEARKES:: 1.	Was a road constructed for the Department of National Defence for Air between Cape Scott and Fisherman's bay, Vancouver island?
2.	If so, to whom was the contract awarded?
3.	What moneys were paid to the contractor for any work done between 1942 and 1945?
4.	What length of roadway was constructed?


Mr. GIBSON (Hamilton West):: 1.	Yes.
2.	Marwell Construction Company.
3.	$20,780.40.
4.	Approximately four miles.


CANADIAN NAVY-PRIZES
Mr. THATCHER:: 1.	Will the officers and ratings of the Royal Canadian Navy share in prizes taken by the navy during the war?
2.	If so, when will the first distribution be made?
3.	What approximately will be the value of the first distribution?


Mr. ABBOTT:: 1.	From information made available by the government of the United Kingdom, it is considered that officers and men of the Canadian naval forces will share in the distribution of prize money resultant from the capture and sale of enemy merchant ships and cargoes during the war 1939-45.
2 and 3. The date and amount of the first distribution are not yet known in the Department of National Defence for Naval Services.


CANADIAN REPRESENTATION IN YUGOSLAVIA
Mr. HERRIDGE:: 1.	Has Canada any ambassador, consul or trade commissioner in Yugoslavia?
2.	If not, why are we not so represented?
Mr. ST. LAURENT:
1.	No.
2.	The Canadian government agreed to receive a Yugoslav minister in Ottawa in 1942 on the understanding that the question of reciprocation would stand over until the end of the war. A statement to this effect was made by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons on February 9, 1942. Somewhat later Major General Vanier, now Canadian Ambassador to France, was accredited as minister to the Yugoslav government then temporarily established in London; he was also accredited to the five other allied governments then in London. Since the end of the war it has not yet been found possible to establish Canadian missions in the capitals of all these countries, including Belgrade, because of the difficulty of finding the requisite number of experienced personnel to meet the rapidly growing needs of the Canadian foreign service. The establishment of diplomatic missions in Yugoslavia, and in the other countries which maintain missions in Ottawa without reciprocity on the part of Canada, is under consideration.


ALLOTMENT OF SUG.AR TO PRESERVING AND CANNING INDUSTRIES
Mr. BARRETT:: 1.	Has the government taken any action toward increasing the quota of sugar allotted to preserving and canning industries during the months of June, July and August?
2.	If so, what action?

Questions as Orders jor Returns


Mr. MAYHEW:: 1.	No action has been taken to increase these sugar allocations. The policy of the board for 1946 provides- sugar for the manufacture of preserves on exactly the same basis as that granted during 1945, i.e.: 100 per cent of the quantity used during the first six months of 1944; 70 per cent of the quantity used during the last six months of 1944.
For commercial canners the amount of sugar allocated is related by formula to the quantity of fruit purchased and processed.
2.	Answered by No. 1.


NATIONAL HARBOURS-FLOUR MILL, PIER 23, HALIFAX
Mr. GILLIS:: 1.	Did the provincial government of Nova Scotia apply to the National Harbours Board for permission .to erect a flour mill at or on pier 23, Halifax, Nova Scotia?
2.	If so, was permission to lease or use this property granted? If not, why not?
3.	Did the provincial government of Nova Scotia appeal to the federal government at Ottawa against any decision arrived at by the National Harbours Board on the proposal to erect a flour mill at or on pier 23, Halifax, Nova Scotia?
4.	If so, what was the answer of the federal government to the provincial government with regards to the proposal to erect the above mentioned mill?


Lionel Chevrier: Answers (furnished by the national harbours board). The answers to the above questions are contained in an order of the House of Commons tabled on December 15, 1945, and recorded as sessional paper No. 248.



QUESTIONS PASSED AS ORDERS FOR RETURNS


Mr. MURPHY:: 1.	Was any type of rubber used as a medium of exchange for material supplied or services rendered by any individual, company or corporation to the Polymer Corporation Limited?
2.	If so, when and how much and at what price ?
3.	Was any rubber sold or shipped outside of
Canada?	.
4.	If so, when, to whom, what quantity and at what price?


Mr. McILRAITH:: Return tabled.


POSTAL SERVICE-LETTER-BOX COLLECTIONS
Mr. RAYMOND (Beauliarnois-Laprairie):: 1.	What requirements are necessary for the establishment of letter-box collections in cities or towns?
2.	What cities and towns have letter-box collection and what is the population of each?
3.	Are there any cities or municipalities where a letter-box collection has been established and where there is no home mail delivery ?



GOVERNMENT PRINTING


Mr. THATCHER:: 1.	What is the total dollar value of government printing, given by the King's Printer to outside companies since Janauary 1, 1946?
2.	What are the names of all companies which have received government printing since the above date?
3.	Since January 1, 1946, what is the value of the work done by each of these companies, and what is the value of contracts outstanding with each?
4.	How much government printing -was done (a) in each maritime province; (b) in each of the four western provinces, during this period?
5.	Howr are outside printing contracts let by the King's Printer, by tender or by some other method?



JAPANESE IN CANADA


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr.  M. J. COLD WELL@Rosetown-Biggar: May I ask a question of the Minister of Labour? According to a report from Vancouver, persons of Japanese origin who have requested transportation to Japan or who are being deported otherwise are being held incommunicado and their friends are not able to gain access to them before they leave the country. Of course no charges have been laid against these people. Is this action taken by reason of a local ruling, or a ruling of the Department of Labour?


Hon. HUMPHREY MITCHELL (Minister of Labour):: I know nothing about it, except that there has been a delay in the departure of the ship that was to have taken these people back to Japan. I shall be glad to look into the matter.


Mr.  M. J. COLD WELL@Rosetown-Biggar: Will the minister check it up?


Humphrey Mitchell: Yes.



HOUSING


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. GROTE STIRLING (Yale):: I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply based upon a release by his department which reached us to-day, announcing the appointment of Mr. T. F. Flahiff as coordinator of housing. Are we to understand that he has begun this work, or will he begin it shortly?


Hon. C. D. HOWE (Minister of Reconstruction and Supply):: Mr. Flahiff has been an officer of the department carrying on other

Housing Coordinator

duties for some' time. He was transferred to this work some two months ago, and his appointment as coordinator was made recently. Formerly he was in the deputy minister's branch.


Grote Stirling: He is now operating?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes.


Grote Stirling: I should like to ask the Minister of Veterans Affairs how this will affect the housing operations, especially in connection with small loans under the Veterans Land Act. I notice this gentleman is to be coordinator and I should like to know if that means that the director of the Veterans Land Act will no longer act in that capacity.
Hon. IAN A. MACKENZIE (Minister of Veterans Affairs): There will be complete cooperation between the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply and the director of the Veterans Land Act in the Department of Veterans Affairs. Generally speaking, we shall not embark upon small holdings operations close to urban areas; that will be left entirely to the direction of my colleague, the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply.


Grote Stirling: We shall continue to keep in touch with the director of the Veterans Land Act?


Mr. MACKENZIE:: Yes.



VICTORY CELEBRATION


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. E. G. McCUKLOUGH (Assiniboia):: I should like to direct a question to the Minister of National Defence. Is it the intention of the minister to send or authorize to be sent any high ranking officers to the V-E day celebration to be held in London?


Hon. DOUGLAS ABBOTT (Minister of National Defence):: It was announced some time ago that General Crerar would represent Canada at this celebration.


Mr. CRUICKSHANK:: Will any members of parliament be going?


Mr. PROBE:: I understood'the minister to say that General Crerar was the only delegate who would represent Canada at the V-E day celebrations in Britain. Are there any other officers in Canada whose expenses in attending that celebration are being paid?


Douglas Charles Abbott: No. So far as expenses
are concerned, General Crerar is still on retirement leave, and the only expenses
[Air. Howe.l
involved are his transportation expenses there and back. No other Canadian officers are going. The remainder of the Canadian representation in the parade will be made up of members of the armed forces already there. I understand that the Prime Minister, who is in Great Britain, will also take part in the ceremonies.



LABOUR CONDITIONS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. F. S. ZAPLITNY (Dauphin):: I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Mines and Resources, or the Minister of Labour, or both. Is it the intention of the government to bring to Canada several thousand Polish servicemen, who served with allied forces, as a means of overcoming the labour shortage in the sugar beet industry?


Humphrey Mitchell: The government has no announcement to make at the present time, although the matter is being considered.
seamen's STRIKE-STATEMENT AS TO PROGRESS OF NEGOTIATIONS
On the orders of the day:


Humphrey Mitchell: Yesterday the hon. member for Calgary West (Mr. Smith) asked me a question with reference to the present strike on the great lakes. Hon. members will no doubt be interested in receiving a report from me with respect to the efforts which have been made to deal with the strike of seamen on the great lakes and inland waters.
The Canadian Seamen's Union and the various steamship operators represented by the Dominion Marine Association entered into a collective agreement effective August 1, 1945, for a period of one year. The agreement covered wages, rates of pay for overtime, working hours and other matters. The termination clause of the agreement provided that it would remain in effect until July 31, 1946, with a reservation that changes in the agreement could be made during the currency of the agreement by mutual consent of the parties thereto. It was under this latter provision that the union had been carrying on negotiations with the employers for a reduction in the working hours from twelve to eight per day, or from a total of 84 per week to a total of 56 per week. These negotiations having terminated unsuccessfully, the Department of Labour was brought into the situation some two months ago and, after holding separate con-

Labour Conditions
ferences with the parties, has since been endeavouring to get them into agreement on this issue.
At my first conference with the operators I took the position that I could not defend the 84-hour week, and I urged the employers, and later on the union, to settle this issue by the process of collective bargaining. Representatives of the operators and the union conferred early last week in Toronto and this conference was attended by one of the senior conciliation officers of my department.
At this conference, while the operators accepted the principle of the eight-hour day, disagreement ensued as to the detailed application of the principle, and the negotiations broke off. I then arranged that a meeting between representatives of the Dominion Marine Association, which speaks for a considerable number of the operators, and the union, would be held at my office in Ottawa on Tuesday, May 28, and both parties had indicated their intention of being present. At that meeting I was hopeful that the negotiations broken off in Toronto would be resumed and that a settlement would be reached. However, on the morning of May 24, the department was informed that two union delegates, who had boarded a vessel owned by one of the operating companies, were ordered off by the master, who said that they could not discuss their business with the crew except during the lunch period. It was claimed by the union that this was a violation of their collective agreement, and ten members of the crew, of whom eight were off duty, followed the union delegates to the wharf and were then refused readmittance to the vessel.
The union alleges that this constituted a lockout and a violation of the contract. The company on the other hand takes the position that provisions existed in the collective agreement for the settlement of grievances and that these provisions should have been invoked by the union instead of the men walking off the ship. The union thereupon called a strike on the vessels of that particular company, and this action was followed on Monday of this week by orders for a general strike.
On Tuesday of this week representatives of the union and of the companies came to Ottawa as previously arranged, and since then I and officers of my department have been meeting them in. separate conferences. Matters have been developed to the point where there was willingness on the part of the representatives of the companies and the union to meet in joint conference, and late this morning I brought them together.
So far as the movement of the ships is concerned, hon. members will I am sure have 63260-1271
read various reports in the newspapers and probably would desire me to say a word in connection with the arrests that have taken place and the reports that some disturbances have occurred.
Reports of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would indicate that such disturbances as have occurred have, in the main, been centred in Cornwall and along the forty-five miles of canal which hon. members will recall is paralleled by a highway. This creates a difficult situation for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to control. On the other hand the disturbances have not been as bad as some press statements would indicate. Such arrests as have been made were made as a result of charges laid by the individual steamship companies.
Resulting from the joint conference between the representatives of the parties this morning it was agreed:
1.	That the Minister of Labour shall hold a meeting with the larger operators and lay before them the definite proposals which have been discussed for the settlement of the dispute. This meeting is tentatively scheduled for Monday next.
2.	That to provide for a suspension of activity it was further agreed that as Minister of Labour I should issue a statement as follows:
The union agrees to allow members who are still on ships to operate them until the meeting of operators called by the minister is over, provided the operators will suspend attempts to man ships which are now tied' up because of shortage of crews until meeting tentatively called tor Monday or any continuation thereof is concluded.
I am sure all Canada will join with me in urging upon both parties acceptance of the plan of suspending action in connection with the strike in the interest of the dominion.

The house in committee of supply, Mr. Macdonald (Brantford City) in the chair.



DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

The CHAIRMAN:: Item 31.


Hon. J. G. GARDINER (Minister of Agriculture) :: Mr. Chairman, last night when we adjourned we had passed item 30, conditional upon a request made by the hon. member for Haldimand that there were some questions to be asked on grading by some members not present at the time who desired information, and some questions were also to be put by those present.
Supply-Agriculture


Mr. SENN:: I did not say anything about
those who were not present. There were members present who wanted to ask questions.


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, that is correct, on grading particularly, and those questions were to be asked to-day before we proceeded with this item.


Mr. PEARKES:: I desire to ask a question of the Minister of Agriculture regarding the grading of turkeys. Some years ago a special type of turkey known as the broad-breasted turkey was introduced to Vancouver island. By selective breeding and careful feeding a superior bird has been produced, and it is now recognized that this particular type of turkey has a definite advantage in the market. The majority of turkeys are, as the minister well knows, raised on the prairies, and are the standard type of turkey, including such birds as the bronze, reds and white hollands. This is an athletic bird which spends a good deal of its mature life in roaming the range, and, by chasing grasshoppers, develops muscular legs and wings. On Vancouver island we have no range, and our turkeys do not live such an exciting or interesting life, because as soon as they have passed from childhood-or chick-hood, if one might use the expression-they are enclosed in narrow confinement; many of them are placed upon wire and spend the rest of their lives in crates. Now the range-fed turkey or standard type is brought in a few weeks before Christmas or Thanksgiving and fattened, but the Vancouver island turkey has been fed a balanced diet all through its life, and the meat grown on it is more uniform than the meat grown on the standard type of turkey. The contention of the Vancouver island turkey growers is that the meat from their turkeys is superior to that of the prairie turkeys; in fact I am told restaurant keepers claim that sixty pounds of the meat type turkey compares with one hundred pounds of the standard type turkey; and the breeders and poultrymen of Vancouver island wish to know whether they could be given a special grading, or if the existing grades, that is, special, A, B and C, could be reviewed so far as dimensions and conditions are concerned so as to give this superior type of turkey a fairer deal in the markets and so that the breeders of these turkeys might have the benefit, rather than the hotel and restaurant keepers, of having a special grading, or the condition of the existing grades, reviewed. Can the minister give me any information on that matter, and can he have the case reviewed and see that before next Thanksgiving we get a better service?


James Garfield Gardiner: Unfortunately I have never seen the double-breasted turkey in British Columbia.


George Randolph Pearkes: "Broad-breasted".


James Garfield Gardiner: I have seen the doublebreasted turkey exhibited in Ottawa, at the Chateau Laurier. I am not suggesting that any of them are in the house! At the annual meeting of the poultry people, I think it was two years ago, there was a very fine exhibit of this type of turkey at the Chateau. They were there to be seen by those attending the meeting, and on that occasion I did see them. They are a very fine type of bird, and produce, of course, much more in the way of breast meat, which is the important part of the turkey, than does the ordinary turkey.
The other matter, feeding birds without allowing them to use their muscles, does not apply only to turkeys; it has been applied in a very big way in connection with ducks. Ducks are not allowed to swim if you want them to produce just what people like to eat. If turkeys are not allowed to run, that helps too; as far as the legs are concerned.
On the matter of grading, I see no reason whatever why a special grade should not be allowed for birds of that type, whether ducks or turkeys or whatever they may be, just as we have red and blue beef in cattle. I will look into the matter and see if we cannot devise something to give proper recognition to this condition.


Mr. ROSS (Souris):: With reference to what my colleague has just said, you do not have to go to British Columbia to get these broad-breasted turkeys. My young lad is always at me to get some of these doublebreasted turkeys. Right in Manitoba, in the Portage la Prairie district, we have one of the largest ranches, producing from eight to twelve thousand birds a year, but they are never out roaming the prairies and becoming the athletic type that the hon. member spoke of. I should like to support .his request that the minister do something in the way of providing a special * grade. These people have developed a fine specimen of bird.
Special-
SI. Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act and water storage. (This does not include the costs of survey and engineering work on the Medicine Hat irrigation and Red Deer diversion projects in Alberta and the South Saskatchewan river project in Saskatchewan, which costs are to be made available from the item of $10,000,000, No. 606, Department of Reconstruction and Supply), $3,000,000.


Mr. BLACK (Cumberland):: Under this heading the discussion of the marshlands at the head of the bay of Fundy has always

Supply-Agriculture
taken place. On May 17 the minister made this statement, as reported in Hansard, page 1641:
Of course the main problem in that area is the dikeland problem, which in a sense is somewhat similar to this. I can discuss the present position in relation to that problem more effectively under the prairie farm rehabilitation vote. 1 had hopes up until very recently of being able to report to the house that we were hoping to have something done in connection with this problem but I am not so hopeful now. I shall be glad to discuss that when we come to the prairie farm rehabilitation vote.
With your permission and that of the committee I think we should deal with this subject all at one time. I do not think it will take very long. In previous years the discussion has been mixed up with discussions on the very important subject of prairie farm rehabilitation as it applies to the prairies. I feel it would be in the interest of all concerned if we could exhaust at one time what has to be said rather than have members interested in the direct vote make their remarks. I believe my colleague the hon. member for Colehester-Hants has something to say now in connection with this item.


Mr. STANFIELD:: I would like to ask the minister's kind consideration to having the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act enlarged so that it will take in eastern Canada, and include our marsh lands in Nova Scotia.- Our problem of course is not putting water on the land; it is to keep it off the land and carry it away.
I think we have said on a good many occasions in this chamber that these lands are the most fertile and productive in Nova Scotia. They are protected from the high tides by dikes which were built a long time ago, some of them as many as a hundred and fifty years ago. In the last few years we have had very high tides in the bay of Fundy, and as a result of the wear and tear of many years these dikes have gradually given way. You may ask me why they cannot be repaired just as they were built many years ago. The answer is simple. In those days there were many men in the rural communities and on the farms who were glad to work on the dikes, digging ditches to drain these parched lands, and the cost was low. To-day however you cannot get anyone in the rural communities, or at any rate very few, to go and work in the muck and mud digging ditches all day and building dikes.
There are a few places where the dikes have been kept in very good repair, but there are a great many more that had to be abandoned. The minister knows that we have not too many areas in Nova Scotia that
are good for farming, and he knows also that the resources of the province are not as great as those of many other provinces, while our farming population is decreasing to some extent. We hear a great deal about the western farmers and what a terrible time they have had, but we hear little about the hard time that our farmers have had to face. A great deal of the sustenance obtained in Nova Scotia has come from lands that were not very fertile. For many years people made a living on those farms; in fact, they did not make a living but simply existed. Very capable people grew up on those farms and went to different parts of the world and made a name for themselves, but gradually those communities had to be abandoned. There is no one living there to-day, and I assure the committee that the great shift in the population of Nova Scotia in the years has meant a considerable hardship to the province and to farming and the rural communities.
If our marsh lands have to be abandoned, where shall we stand in Noya Scotia in regard to our farms? Some people say it will take a great deal of money to reclaim many of these lands. I dare say there are some areas which it woidd not pay to reclaim, but I contend that if even half a million were appropriated each, year for a few years, together with what Nova Scotia would do in cooperation with the marsh owners themselves, such areas would soon be restored to a proper productive condition.
We are told that it is difficult to find the money for it, but it seems to be very easy to find two or three hundred millions for this or that. Sometimes I think charity begins at home, and I would ask the minister to give his serious consideration to this question so that as many as possible of our people in Nova Scotia may be kept at home and we may have a larger production, from the marsh lands and good areas where our people may make as respectable a living as possible.
We do not want our farmers to leave the province any more than the people in any other part of the country would like to see their farmers leave. We therefore ask that the minister give the matter his earnest attention. This is a mechanized age, and modern methods are required to keep these dike lands and marsh lands in good productive condition. As I have said, you cannot get men to go and dig ditches nowadays and work the way they used to on these dikes. They simply will not do it. But modern machinery and modern methods would keep these lands in good repair. Once more I urge upon the
Supply-Agriculture

minister that he consider tlhis question very seriously so that our marsh lands may be made productive.


Percy Chapman Black: I wish to supplement what the hon. member for Colchester-Hants has said. What we want in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick is a definite declaration of policy from the minister and the federal government as to what they intend to do with respect to providing assistance for the reclamation and drainage of these marsh lands at the head of the Bay of Fundy. It is not suggested by anyone that the federal government should do it all, but they should take the lead in conjunction with the provincial government and with the marsh owners.
The vote for western Canada, for the prairies, I am not going to oppose. I have supported it every session, and it has amounted to $20 million-two million every year during the war years, and it is being increased this year by fifty per cent. Three millions is the vote this session, and in addition there are other items purely for the benefit of western agriculture. There is item 12, $451,340, item 25, $245,520; and in the vote we are now considering it is stated that there are special appropriations out of the sum of $10 million under this vote 31, that "this does not include the cost of survey and engineering work on the Medicine Hat irrigation and Red Deer diversion projects in Alberta, and the South Saskatchewan river project in Saskatchewan, which costs are to be made available from an item of $10 million, No. 606, Department of Reconstruction and Supply."
I would point out that these expenditures are all for the west, while nothing is being done specially for agriculture on the marsh lands in the east. This subject has been before parliament on many occasions. It was before the committee dealing with rehabilitation and reestablishment. That committee heard evidence from the premiers of the maritime provinces and the ministers of agriculture, and brought in a definite report back in 1943. This is 1946. The reports were favourable. The report was submitted to the previous parliament and passed unanimously. The provincial legislatures have passed special resolutions, and nothing is done. What the people at the head of the Bay of Fundy want to know is what the minister and his department and the government propose to do with respect to this matter. If nothing is to be done, if there is no hope, we want a declaration from them in order that the provincial legislatures and the marsh owners may know what they have to do and what they

have to face. For the time being they are waiting for a lead from the federal government.
I am going to read a recommendation of the reconstruction and reestablishment committee which sat in 1943. That committee made a report on January 26, 1944, which had special reference to the maritime provinces. The report read as follows:
Your committee has given a great deal of thought to the economic situation in the maritime provinces.
I shall not read the whole ten recommendations. The second one read as follows:
Through assistance to the farming community, by the application of the provisions of the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act.
What our people want to know is what is proposed to be done in connection with our marsh lands.
I have a resolution which was passed unanimously by the legislature of Nova Scotia. There is also one I believe from the New Brunswick legislature. The Minister of Agriculture of New Brunswick came up and gave evidence before this committee. The premiers of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick came up and they gave evidence.
I shall quote a few sentences from the evidence of Doctor E. S. Archibald, director of experimental farms, Ottawa, who gave evidence before the reconstruction and reestablishment committee. At page 1026 of the evidence of that committee of December 2, 1943, he said:
There are seventy thousand acres of improved marsh land, and as stated the farmers are really not in a position to rehabilitate this themselves.
I shall skip some of his evidence and go down to the bottom of the page where the following appears:
As Mr. Black knows, surrounding all the marsh lands in the upper reaches of the Bay of Fundy there are good uplands which have gone back to scrub and woods, probably in acreage twice that of the marsh lands themselves. I cannot think of a rehabilitation job that is more potent as a basis for land settlement than a broad scale approach to this question of marsh land improvement.
Doctor Archibald has given a great deal of time to this subject, and has made many investigations at the Nappan experimental farm. He said further:
When one looks at the problems of post-war settlement in the clay belt of northern Ontario of a few million acres, the grey bush soils in the three prairie provinces, the Peace River district, central British Columbia, the area adjacent to the Alaska highway, getting further and further away from the centre of population, further away from existing social services, to think of neglecting the possibility of rehabilitat-

Supply-Agriculture
ing good lands on the seashores and in the valleys of Nova Scotia appears to me to be ridiculous.
I turn to page 1027, where Doctor Archibald said:
Then I think it is up to the government to establish a real sound live stock policy. This matter of selling hay has been the ruination of marsh land, and a good sound live stock policy which ties together both the upland and the marsh land to me is the real salvation of the situation.
Doctor Archibald is a man of wide experience, and commands the confidence of agriculturists all over Canada.
I now turn to the evidence of the Hon. A. S. MacMillan, premier of Nova Scotia. He said, at page 1020:
If our marsh land is abandoned and not reclaimed and made useful to agriculture in the maritimes, you may as well wipe out any prospect of raising stock and dairy products in Nova Scotia; and if it is going to be done, it should be done now.
You could not have a stronger statement than that. A little later on he said:
It costs considerable, even if the main arteries [DOT]were open-and you know something about the" cost of opening these arteries, the cost of maintaining them, the cost of keeping open the laterals-which are just as important as the main arteries-is quite expensive; and then the cost of keeping up the dikes.
I shall not read any more from this extensive evidence. We have had many resolutions from boards of trade and municipal councils. I hold in my hand a resolution from the Cumberland county municipal association passed on January 28, 1946. It says:
Whereas several thousand acres of dikeland are in danger of being lost to the sea, several hundred acres already lost;	-
and whereas the loss of these fertile tracts cause many farms to become too small to be profitable productive units;
and whereas the main drainage vents are clogged with rushes, and sediment owing to scarcity of labour for regular ditching;
and whereas these conditions are causing a great loss in production and assessment;
Therefore be it resolved that the municipal council of Cumberland, in regular session on this twelfth day of January, A.D. 1946, hereby respectfully petition our provincial and federal governments to render early assistance.
A resolution placed on the order paper in 1946 by the senior member for Halifax (Mr. Isnor) is expressive of the general interest of those in public life in Nova Scotia. I shall not read the preamble. The body of the resolution reads:
Therefore be it resolved,-That, in the opinion of this house, in any programme of reconstruction, rehabilitation and development, the government should take into consideration the advisability of developing that tract of marsh land, consisting of approximately 100,000 acres located
along the head waters of the Bay of Fundy in the counties of Cumberland, Nova Scotia and Westmorland, New Brunswick.
And he might have said, the counties of Colchester, Hants, Kings, Annapolis and Albert in New Brunswick.
I have another resolution from the Colchester county council. I do not wish to delay the committee by reading it all. It is a long resolution. The preamble sets out the general conditions, and this is the substance: ... we endorse the resolution as presented by the committee of the Colchester county marsh owners' association, and also that this municipal governing body put itself on record^ as ^heartily favouring the efforts of this association in every respect.
In my opening remarks I said that the marsh owners and the provincial governments are waiting for action from the minister, the Department of Agriculture and the federal government. I am going to read a letter written by the present Minister of Agriculture in Nova Scotia, the Hon. A. W. Mackenzie, to Mr. E. B. Faulkner, who is secretary of the Colchester County Marsh Owners' Association. This letter is dated April 29, 1946, in answer to a letter from Mr. Faulkner, and states:
I have your letter of recent date with reference to marsh land rehabilitation. _We are at a loss to know just how to move in this connection, due to the fact that for four or five months we have expected that the federal government would establish a new marsh and drainage act which would apply to eastern Canada in very much the same way that the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act applies to western Canada.
The ministers of agriculture of eastern Canada have discussed this with the federal minister, the Hon. J. G. Gardiner on a number of occasions, and in our last discussion in December, Mr. Gardiner stated he felt this would be prepared at the present sitting of the federal house. Recently I have been advised that the bill has been prepared, and that it will be presented soon.
You can readily realize that it would be practically impossible and certainly very impractical for any of the eastern provinces to go ahead on a temporary marshland assistance policy if there was a chance in the very near future of having a policy which would allow for complete rehabilitation by joint financial assistance of federal and provincial governments and the owners.
I trust that now that you know the facts you will agree that our procedure is correct, and I hope we will be able before many months to establish a policy which will meet the requirements of the operators of your association.
As the hon. member for Colchester-Hants pointed out, this is no longer a hand labour job; the farmers cannot do this work alone. It has to be done by machinery, and all agree that it is necessary to have government assistance.
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As I said, anyone who has given any thought to this subject is in favour of some assistance along the lines of the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act, to reclaim, drain and protect these marsh lands. But the condition continues from year to year. The report and the evidence were submitted back in 1943; here it is 1946, and nothing has been done.
The minister of agriculture in Nova Scotia wants to do something; he wants to see something done. He realizes the important of this work, and is waiting for action from the federal government. We should be told by the minister what is going to be done. Let him tell us what the policy of the federal government is going to be. I take it for granted, from statements he has already made, and from what he said the other day, which I have already quoted, that he is sympathetic. But the fact remains that therd is no declaration of policy. The people in the provincial legislature and th.e municipal councils do not know whether anything is to be done or not. Members in the previous parliament were unanimously in favour of federal action in the matter.
A few days ago an hon. gentleman in another place said, on a discussion respecting the expansion of parks in the west, that while we had offered lands in the east, it was not included in the bill; simply because it was in the east it was considered unnecessary. That feeling is growing. It cannot help but be looked upon in that way by those who are interested in these marsh lands.
I should like to hear an expression of opinion from hon. members in other parts of Canada, Do they want the same measure of justice and fairness and equality handed out to the eastern provinces in connection with agriculture? I have already referred to the large special appropriations made for western Canada. In the vote we are now discussing there is an increase from $2 million to S3 million, an increase of 50 per cent. Then, there are several other large votes for the assistance of the western provinces. I am not going to object to that, although I did say last year that if something comparable was not done for the east, I would vote against these expenditures for western Canada. I am not going to do it to-day, because I am still hopeful the minister will make a declaration of policy, and that in the supplementary estimates there will be a vote sufficient to enable work being done in the part of the country about which I have been speaking. I am hopeful that a policy will be agreed upon by the federal government, the provincial government and the marsh owners, whereby the

marshlands at the head of the Bay of Fundy can be protected, reclaimed and brought into a high state of cultivation.
This affects not only marshlands. As Doctor Archibald and everyone else familiar with agriculture realizes, it means the well-being and the future success of agriculture in the uplands adjacent to these marshlands. They require the products from this fertile marsh country, where three to four tons to the acre of the very best timothy and clover can be grown.


Mr. IRVINE:: How much land is involved?


Percy Chapman Black: Roughly speaking, 100,000 acres. The whole area which might be described as the marshlands might total 150,000 acres. Doctor Archibald has said that 70,000 acres are now growing crops.


Mr. BLACKMORE:: What is the estimated cost of doing the work the hon. member wants to have done?


Percy Chapman Black: As the hon. member for Colchester-Hants has said, it would require an appropriation of a few hundred thousand	dollars-perhaps	$400,000 or
$500,000-for a few years. These dikes and aboideaux which protect the marshlands from the sea have not been kept up.


James Garfield Gardiner: It would be $4 million or $5 million.


Percy Chapman Black: The dikes should be recapped and strengthened, and the aboideaux should be strengthened. Drainage channels should be cleaned out. They are filling with sediment and vegetable growth. The large lateral ditches should be cleaned out. This is a machine job; the farmers cannot do it. Then, smaller ditches will have to be made; and that, too, would now be a machine job, although it used to be done entirely by men working with a small marsh , spade, who made a specialty of that type of work. Then the land should be ploughed and seeded. Although this is fertile land, it would be benefited by the addition of lime and a small amount of nitrogen fertilizer.
The experimental farm at Nappan, which is under the direction of the minister, and more particularly under the supervision of Doctor Archibald, has made experiments and obtained satisfactory results through the addition of Time and fertilizer. The result has been that they get an average of 3 to 4 tons of the best feed hay for stock purposes from these lands.
There is much more I could say, but I make this appeal to the minister and to hon. members from all parts of Canada, to use their influence to see that some action is taken.

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If nothing is going to be done, if there is no hope, if it is against the government's policy, if there is something holding it back or preventing its making a contribution or a declaration of policy, then let the minister make a statement so that the marsh owners, the provincial legislatures and the ministers of agriculture will know what the situation is. We want some declaration of policy.


James Garfield Gardiner: Let me go on and I will give it to you. This question of the marsh lands has been a live issue for many years. I do not know how long it was a live issue before I came to Ottawa, but it certainly has been ever since. I understand that the hon. member for Cumberland, who has just spoken, was in the government of Nova Scotia at the time the matter first became a live issue here. This question is one of many that arise across Canada in connection with responsibility of the provinces or where a province finds itself in the position of having to do a job and not being able to find the money with which to do it.
This matter is clearly one of provincial responsibility, and it always has been. The province has legislation governing drainage, just as other provinces have similar legislation, particularly those in the west. The governments of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have found it impossible to repair the dikes, some of which were built many years ago with the assistance of governments even outside of Canada when settlers were first going into these areas. The dikes have deteriorated and it has been found most difficult to obtain funds with which to repair them, through provincial legislation, municipal legislation or otherwise.
I have not the complete history before me, but many years ago these lands fell into disuse, partly owing to the fact that an active live stock industiy which had existed in earlier days had gone backward rather than forward. The people of that area are not raising as much live stock now as they did a long time ago. Whether the fact that there had been a stoppage in the production of live stock was in some degree responsible for their not being interested in the marsh lands, or whether the fact that the marsh lands were not properly handled was responsible for live stock production going down, is a moot question. One could take either side of that question, but the fact is that the lands are not producing live stock as they once did or to the extent that they could produce.
In 1934 or 1935 an amount was placed in the estimates. This may have been done at the suggestion of the government of Nova Scotia when the hon. member was a member of that
government, or it may have been done at the suggestion of Doctor Archibald, who was then and still is the head of the experimental farms. He comes from that section of Canada and, as has been suggested, he knows this problem perhaps better than anyone else in Canada. He has always been a strong advocate of putting these lands back into production to the same extent that they were in an earlier age.
I made my first trip to the maritime provinces in 1936, the year after the vote had been placed in the estimates. The vote was to permit some work being carried on by the experimental farm down there to determine [DOT] whether or not these lands could be brought back into the production they had been capable of in an earlier day. Doctor Archibald was with me, and we went over the land together and decided to go ahead with the experiment. The experiment was conducted, and I think it was three years ago that I went back with Doctor Archibald to look at the results of the experiments. I think I can say without fear of contradiction that there was easily three times as much alfalfa growing on the land that had been properly drained and cultivated by the experimental farm as there was on land immediately across the fence. That proved to my satisfaction that this is a job that ought to be done.
We are looking for land upon which to settle men coming back from overseas, upon which to settle persons who are coming from the over-populated areas in other parts of the world, and upon which to settle the sons and daughters of our farmers in different parts of Canada who still wish to carry on in agriculture. Doctor Archibald was with me on that second visit, and I agreed with him when he said that there was no place in Canada in which a better job could be done, where money could be spent to better advantage than to take care of these marsh lands and make them produce as they are capable of producing. I think everyone who is familiar with the situation will agree with me when I say that that job ought to be done.
The fact is that there is responsibility on at least two authorities, but when we discuss the matter with the provinces they maintain and insist that there must be responsibility placed upon a third group, namely, the people who are on the land. It is all very well to say that the leadership should come from Ottawa; the fact is the leadership, with our constitution as it is, ought to come from the provincial government. There is a reason for the provincial governments coming to Ottawa and saying that we should assist, but the leadership ought to be with the provincial governments.
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I am inclined to believe 'that the leadership has been with the provincial governments. They have been urging the matter and insisting that something ought to be done. I think that hon. members who have discussed the matter up to the moment might have said that something has been done. We have been operating on these lands for the last three years under an arrangement made between the provinces and the federal government. We have been spending some money-not as much .as I would like to see spent-the provinces have been advancing part and the farmers themselves have been made responsible for the payment back of some of it.


Percy Chapman Black: The expenditures that have been made have been only for emergency repairs of breakages in the dikes.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is just what I was .going to say. Those are the only kind of expenditures that can and ever will be made under a three-way arrangement. It is all very well to argue that we should go to the provinces and say, "You give us fifty per cent of the cost." What will happen is that they will go to the municipalities or to the individual farmers and say, "We will spend dollar for dollar with you." It would all be based on what the farmer or the municipality could spend. The amount that the municipality or the farmer can spend, multiplied by three, will not do the job at all. We may go to start to build a dike with $100,000 or $50,000 and be able to do only half the job when the season is over. Then it is all washed out and we might as well not have spent any money at all. That is what has happened on two or three *occasions.
The position the government finally took was that this was one of a number of problems that should be submitted to the dominion-provincial conference, that there should be a decision upon it. This policy did not apply only to this particular job; it Applied to the P.F.R.A., to road building, and do many other things. I believe the hon. member for Cumberland was once minister *of highways of his province, and I was once minister of highways in my province. At the end of the last war I directed the expenditure *of Saskatchewan's part of the $20,000,000 which wTas voted for road work. Long before I got through spending that money I came to the *conclusion that we were wasting the greater part of it because of the necessity of getting undertakings between Ottawa and Saskatchewan. I venture to say we have wasted much *energy and a considerable part of the money voted for this project by the fact that we
.{Mr. Gardiner.]
must sit down and discuss it with the municipalities and provinces before anyone starts to do anything, so that by the time we get started the season has passed, and, this country being so far north, the opportunity is gone to do anything worth while. As a result of that experience I have maintained and still maintain that the job ought to be done by some one government, and that some one government ought to have control of sufficient money to do it and do it properly. If there is to be an understanding arrived at with regard to maintenance, let that be undertaken also.
But so far as doing the job is concerned, what I have been suggesting from the very beginning is that the federal government ought to recondition these dikes and clean out the main ditches-that is if we are to take on any part of the work. We should go ahead and do the main job which is to protect the land, and then someone else can do the rest of it. But my difficulty when I approach the treasury to get sufficient money to do that has been to get someone else who will take the responsibility for making use of the lands after the money has been spent. The treasury will say: What is the use of spending four or five million dollars or even two or three hundred thousand dollars blocking up a few holes and cleaning out a few ditches and taking out some rotten abutments and putting in new ones in certain places and leaving the job undone somewhere else, so that the water gets in behind and undoes all the work you have done and the expenditure you have made? Someone has to take over the job in a big way and do it in a big way and get the main part of the job done.
I had hoped when the dominion provincial conference was called that we should get this question settled this year. As has been stated, an act was drafted, in fact two acts. People who know their own problems perfectly but do not know the problems in other parts of Canada are continually making statements in this house with regard to those other parts which are unjustified. I had occasion a few days ago to say something with regard to freight rates, as related to the shipment of grain from western to eastern Canada, in defence of those who live in eastern Canada, and those who were discussing the question and relating it to the western P.F.R.A. did not really understand the position. I know what my hon. friend from northern Manitoba, who has been waiting to get into this discussion, is going to say. He is going to say that the line over which we do not go runs right through his constituency, and that a considerable part of his constituency does not come under the P.F.R.A. Every member from

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northern Manitoba is going to say the same thing, as well as every member from northern *Saskatchewan and northern Alberta, because they are not taken care of by P.F.R.A. There is just the Palliser triangle, which takes in a little of Manitoba, a considerable area of Saskatchewan and about one-third of Alberta and we spend this money within that area. The men who live north of tlhat in western Canada will join with the hon. member for *Cumberland in saying that they ought to be taken in too, and so will every other part of Canada.
But there is a good reason why the government took in the Palliser triangle. It was the Bennett government that did it, and the reason was that people had been put into that area. As a matter of fact they were put in there against the advice of Mr. Bennett who was in. provincial polities in Alberta at the time it was done. He opposed the putting of people in that area. It was also opposed by others in western Canada. Later Mr. Bennett found himself, as leader of the federal government, confronted with, the problem of dealing with the 1,000,000 people who had been put into that area by the federal government against his own advice and against the advice of others. He said that these people ought to be assisted in getting reestablished on that land, and I agreed with him in taking that position. But hon. gentlemen will see that that * problem is entirely different from the problems in most other parts of Canada. The problem in the maritime provinces which we have been discussing existed before there was a Dominion, of Canada. It came to us when the provinces joined confederation. But the Palliser triangle problem was one which we ourselves created, and therefore Mr. Bennett said that the federal government ought to finance the reestablishment of those people who had been put in there by the federal government against the good advice of some people.
What I want to emphasize is that there is just as much opposition to applying this assistance only to the Palliser triangle in western Canada as the opposition we heard only a few moments ago from the hon. member for Cumberland to this assistance not being applied to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. We should all get together and agree. We are not battling one another. We are not criticizing anything being done in any other part of Canada. But here is a job that ought to be done, and it requires a great amount of money which can only be provided by the federal government. This being so, we ought to do something about our constitution. In the conference, instead of talking generalities
that do not solve very much, we should try to get a question like this settled. But people like to go to these conferences, as they go to international conferences, where very often they discuss things that do not solve very much. They talk generalities. We tried to get this question before two conferences. We tried to get permission to sit as a special committee and discuss this question with the conference and make recommendations on it. But other questions were regarded as bigger and more important. I personally do not think they were bigger, but some people thought they were. The governments discussed other matters and went home and left this question entirely unsettled, as well as similar questions on which we probably could have reached agreement in a week if we had got together and discussed them instead of discussing simply theoretical questions.
As I said, I had two acts drafted. One was for the four western provinces. The name would have to be changed; it would not be prairie farm rehabilitation, but simply rehabilitation. If that bill had been passed by the house it would have covered the four western provinces. Another bill was drafted to cover the five eastern provinces. We had intended to have the administration of the act dealing with the western provinces centred where it is now, at Regina, and the administration of the other act centred at Ottawa. They deal with two completely different problems. One deals largely with drought; the other deals with too much water, and in British Columbia there is a combination of both because there are areas in that province which need diking, and other areas which need irrigation; and sometimes these areas are only five or six miles apart, depending upon' where the range of mountain lies.
These problems exist right across the country, and we believe that there ought to be agreement in the first place on certain sources of revenue being open to the federal government which are now tapped by the provincial governments in order that we may have the means to do these things. Then we ought to have a division of authority to make it possible for us to spend the money in these areas. I have been going to provincial conferences ever since 1922, and there have not been very many decisions arrived at in all that time; but I am still hopeful that while I am alive and in .politics we shall reach a decision on some of them, and if we do, I can guarantee to the hon. member for Cumberland that we shall give leadership in the problem, just in the same way as we have given leadership in connection with the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act. But the first thing I had to do in
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connection with P.F.R.A. when I came here, to get anything done, was to refuse to go and discuss everything that came up with some other authority and obtain agreement before we could start. Under that policy we would never have got anywhere in regard to P.F.R.A. We said, "We have a certain ' amount of money and we are coming in to spend it. We would like you to help us in connection with spending it, if you will; if not, we shall come in and spend it without your help; but if you will help us we shall be able to do that much more for you." That explains what some hon. members are going to ask me with regard to different provinces in western Canada. But if we can get into that position in relation to this question I guarantee that, if' I am here, I will bring the legislation down. It is drafted, it is ready to come down, and we will go ahead with that job in a manner which will bring it to a successful conclusion and will achieve results such as are desired.
In the meantime there is no use of my saying that that is the only policy we have. We shall have to proceed with a policy which is not ours at all and cannot be ours. It is a policy in which the leadership has been given by the provinces. The position has been: We have so much money to spend; if you will put dollar for dollar on it then we will go ahead and do the job. The only mistake we have made so far in connection with these expenditures is that we have not determined definitely who has the authority in connection with them, with the result that, instead of spending the amount of money we set out to spend, sometimes we have spent double the amount, and we have not achieved the results we started out to get. So I say we will go along and deal with these matters as we have had to deal with them under the condition which exists. I would have had money in the estimates this year had these estimates not been prepared prior to the dominion-provincial conference. Since the conference did not make decisions, and we are left where we were, I have had to withdraw the legislation for this session, but I did it on the understanding that money would be available to go ahead with undertakings as between ourselves and the maritime provinces, to continue the work in connection with these marsh lands in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and I have had those understandings, as has been suggested by the ministers concerned in those two provinces. We have had a lot of correspondence and much discussion about it, and have reached conclusions we had hoped would materialize in the form of legislation. That has not happened, and I am afraid we shall have to go back to doing this year what we did in two

or three previous years-enter into an arrangement between ourselves and the provincial government under which some responsibility is placed on the farmers themselves. It will not get the results I had hoped for, but it is the best that can be done under a system whereby there must be some agreement reached with the provinces.
I would like to repeat that I think it will take four or five million dollars, spent just as rapidly as it can be spent. The work cannot be done by spending $100,000 or $150,000 year by year; I think, when we do that job, to do it right we shall have to have a considerable amount of money voted, perhaps to be spent in two years but certainly in not more than three. We ought to go right through with the expenditure and reclaim those lands, put the dikes in as they ought to be put in, put in the main ditches, and then have some scheme under which we can get the farmers to cultivate and fertilize the land properly and produce from it as it ought to produce. The only way they will ever do that is under ' such conditions as many hon. members have been emphasizing in the debates on agriculture during this session: if we can create a situation under which they can market their product at a reasonable return, one which will induce them to produce enough live stock to feed themselves in that section of Canada, a thing they have not done up to the present time.


Mr. HAZEN:: Mr. Chairman-


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: Mr. Chairman-
The ACTING CHAIRMAN (Mr. Golding) The hon. member for Dauphin has had his name on the list. I wonder if he would allow the hon. member for St. John-Albert to close the discussion on the marsh lands.


Douglas King Hazen: Mr. Chairman, I do not want to close the discussion, but there are one or two questions I would like to ask the minister about the marsh lands in New Brunswick and the work which has been done there in 1944 and 1945. This afternoon the minister made an interesting and, I think, valuable statement about those marsh lands. Last year, on December 8, I said, when speaking on this matter-Hansard, page 3193.
I understand that last year -
That was, in 1944.
-in New Brunswick about 5,000 feet of dike were constructed under a plan whereby the owners paid one-third of the cost, the provincial government paid one-third and the dominion government paid one-third, and that this year about a similar length of dike has been constructed under the same plan. If I am wrong in that, perhaps the minister will inform me.
Mr. Gardiner:	That is right.

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In connection with that work I would like to ask the minister if he is in a position to inform us whether a written agrement was entered into between the parties in 1944; that is, between the dominion government, the provincial government and the land owners. If there was such an agreement, will he tell us what it was, or put a copy of it on the records of the house? If there was no written agreement, was there a verbal agreement, or on what terms was the work carried on? I have the following further questions:
Was the work which was undertaken in 1944 completed? How many feet of dike were constructed or rebuilt, and how many aboi-deaux were constructed in 1944? In 1944 was all the work which was planned completed, and did it stand up? Who did the work in 1944, and who supervised it? Did the dominion government or the provincial government-that is, the government of New Brunswick-supervise it, or who looked after the construction that was done? What did the dminion government's share of this work cost in 1944? Can the minister tell us what amount was paid by the provincial government-that is, the government of New Brunswick-and what amount was paid by the land owners? Did the dominion government or the provincial government collect the cost of the undertaking and pay it over to the contractor or whoever did the work? Has all the cost been collected; that is, have all the people who agreed to contribute to the work paid their share? If not, how much remains to be paid? I am speaking now of the year 1944.	I would also like answers to these
questions as applied to the year 1945, that is last year. My final question is, where' in these estimates do we find the expenditures on those marsh lands for the year 1944?


James Garfield Gardiner: I must ask the hon. member to have the questions which he has asked remain on Hansard as notice. As a matter of fact, I am not in a position to answTer personally the last question that has been asked. The moneys will not be found in my estimates. They will be found in the estimates prepared for special works during the war period, and I am not certain at the moment whether they come within the estimates of the Minister of Reconstruction or those of the Minister of Finance. They will be under one or the other. The money is provided in that way. They appear as individual items but not as a bulk vote having to do with the war. In any event, the amounts can be obtained and I will see that the questions are answered in detail.
However, to answer in a general way, let us take first the question as to whether there was an agreement. There was correspondence and there were meetings and delegations of representatives of the provinces and of the farmers concerned as well as of the federal government, and a committee was set up of which I believe the superintendent of the experimental farm at Nappan was chairman. He is an employee of this department, though he was not acting as such. He was selected as one who knew the problem and had detailed information regarding it, and he was made chairman of the committee. There were also on the committee representatives of all those concerned-I have not the names before me- and they were instructed by the provincial and federal governments to go ahead and supervise the expenditure of a certain amount of money to do certain things. That money was expended, and when the total had been expended it was found that it did not cover the cost. Some works that had been done *were washed out and had to be redone.


Douglas King Hazen: Was an investigation made into that? It must have been somebody's fault.


James Garfield Gardiner: There was an investigation, but I do not know that one can say it was anybody's fault. As I said a few moments ago, it is impossible to take $100,000 or $150,000 and start to build these dikes if you wish to construct them properly. If you instruct the engineer to take $150,000 or perhaps $100,000 and do the best he can and he does the very best he can, and then it il found that as a result of an extraordinary wave coming in something happens, I do not know that you can blame the engineer or say that somebody is to blame for it. In any event the matter was gone 'into and there were losses in connection with it. The question raised a moment ago is precisely the question that I raised. I do not think that kind of job can be done under dual authority, because there is no one responsible when two or three people are giving orders.


Mr. MacNICOL:: I agree with the minister.


James Garfield Gardiner: If there were on the job an engineer who was not employed by the federal government and we were paying half the cost, or, vice versa, if an engineer was employed, not by the provincial government but by some other authority, and they were paying half the cost, it would be the easiest thing in the world in an argument to slip out from under, and say, "We are not responsible." We did not maintain that position. We said, "All right. The expenditure must be made
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and we will take our share of the extra expenditure, whatever it may be"-and the figures will be indicated in the answers to the questions that have been asked. At any rate, it is because of that kind of experience that I made the statement I did a few moments ago, that if we are to do this job as it ought to be done, and as the hon. member for Cumberland and other hon. members from those areas want it to be done, we should find some way of placing the funds in the hands of a responsible authority, and it would be best if that responsible authority were the federal government. We could then go ahead and do thoroughly the part of the job that must be done before the rest of it can be undertaken. If we start on that basis we shall accomplish something. I am prepared to admit, without answering in detail, that the plan under which we were proceeding, as it was carried out, was not the plan under which we should have operated. We must find a better way of doing it, and it was in the hope 9f finding that way that we were bringing down the legislation and trying to get all the problems properly under control.


Percy Chapman Black: It was repair work.


James Garfield Gardiner: It is difficult to repair a dike without rebuilding it.


Douglas King Hazen: There is one other matter in connection with the dikes in Albert county. I refer to a local situation that exists at Hillsborough, which is the largest community in that county. I will not go into details, but one dike went out and the result of the whole thing was that the Canadian National railway in that section was undermined; the road that leads to the cemetery was washed away; the main road that runs from Hillsborough to Surrey was in danger of being destroyed, and the plant of the Canadian Gypsum company, a very modern plant, was put in jeopardy. As I understand the situation, a meeting of the parties interested was held.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is right.


Douglas King Hazen: I am informed that an agreement was reached about rectifying that situation which affects that one community. Was an agreement reached on the part of the Canadian National or the dominion government-I understand they had already spent between $20,000 and $30,000 on account of the damage they suffered-the provincial government, whose roads were affected, the Canadian Gypsum company, whose plant was also affected, and the marsh owners themselves? Was there an agreement with regard
fMr. Gardiner.]
to repairing that particular section of dike in order to protect the various parties interested?


James Garfield Gardiner: Speaking again from memory, I believe that the province did investigate the damage done and the expenditures that were required and that was submitted to investigation by persons representing all the parties concerned. Finally an understanding was reached as to what ought to be paid by each party to the arrangement. My memory is that our part of it was about-the same amount as we undertook in the first place. It was a three-way arrangement and I would not wish to bind myself to a few thousand dollars. We may have gone farther in one direction than some thought we should have gone, or not as far as others felt, but that was the basis on which we set out.


Douglas King Hazen: Does the minister know who-will supervise the work? It should be done this coming summer. The work should be undertaken as soon as possible, and it should be put through in the summer or it will again be washed out and the moneys put into it will be lost.


James Garfield Gardiner: The definite action that was going to be taken was awaiting this legislation; but I have insisted, and I think the government agrees with it, that either the province or ourselves, one or the other, must take absolute responsibility for carrying on the further work there; that if we undertook the responsibility then the province must turn the money over to us and we will go ahead. If the province undertakes the responsibility then we will turn our money over to them and they will go ahead and take responsibility from that point. Whatever money is advanced is advanced, and that is the end of it. If we do things that we should not have done under arrangements with the province we shall have to pay for it. If they do the job and something happens that was not anticipated or because of the fault of anyone, then they will probably have to do the paying. I think it should be either one or the other and we should get ahead with the job and have the whole difficulty cleared up.


Douglas King Hazen: It is important that the work be done this coming season if it is at all possible.


James Garfield Gardiner: I agree.


Douglas King Hazen: If it is not done you will have to do it all over again.


James Garfield Gardiner: I agree with that. When I spoke a moment ago I should have said that later on in the supplementary estimates there

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will be appropriations brought down either by myself or by someone else to take care of the work which must be done there, and I hope this will be brought down shortly.


Percy Chapman Black: I appreciate the statement of the minister, but this is an appropriation to deal only with emergent repairs. The main policy, if properly put into effect, would bring about conditions which would do away with the necessity of expenditures for repairs; repairs would not be necessary. In the last few years no work has been done until the dike is broken and the aboideau goes out. Practically all the dikes have weakened or the aboideaux have weakened; the canals and drainage ditches have filled up. JYith a general policy for new work and the money properly expended it will not be necessary to make these repairs at all. We want a general policy. I appreciate the statement of (the minister and thank him for the undertakings he has given. But the fact remains that no immediate action is being taken.
I agree with the minister that some body should be set up which would carry the responsibility. That body should have the con- . fidenee of the marsh owners and the provincial governments as well as the federal government. It might be a commission, or, as the minister suggests, it might be carried out entirely by the federal government with the provincial governments and the marsh owners making their contributions.
What we should like to have is an expenditure. of at least half a million dollars, and that it be made available this year. We should also like a policy arrived at which would be satisfactory to all concerned, and which could be carried out in the next five or ten years. That is a long-term policy. The success of agriculture and stock raising in that whole area depends on it, and that policy should be arrived at without any further delay. What is grieving these people who are interested is that this matter has been discussed and no policy has been decided on. Any expenditure that is being made is with respect to emergent repairs after the damage is done.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: As the Minister of Agriculture said a few moments ago, I have been popping up and down regularly since this discussion began.. However, I understood there was some urgency in the matter of the Nova Scotia marsh lands and on this occasion I was happy to give way to the hon. members from that area who wanted to speak on it.
In the past there have been suggestions and complaints that when the estimates of the Department of Agriculture are before the committee, western members monopolize all
the time; therefore on this occasion I thought we should show our good-neighbour policy and give them an opportunity to discuss their matters.
The Minister of Agriculture was kind enough to make half of my speech for me; therefore I shall not have to burden him very long, but there are a few matters in connection with prairie farm rehabilitation with which I wish to deal. I think it is clear to all hon. members of the committee that it is not only a matter of prairie, farm rehabilitation but a. matter of rehabilitation generally across Canada.
Last fall I had a discussion with the Minister of Agriculture and brought up the question of the advisability of extending the boundaries of the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act. I do not know what is in the draft that the minister has prepared, but in the act as passed in 1935, and amended in 1937, 1939 and 1941, these words appear; they are the key words:
The committee shall consider and advise the minister as to the best methods to be adopted to secure the rehabilitation of the drought and soil drifting areas in the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.
Evidently the original purpose behind the act and, as it still stands, was to rehabilitate those areas which were known as the drought areas, and which are sometimes referred to as the Palliser triangle. But as the years went by it was found that there were other matters which entered into the question of drought ; that is, there were certain other areas in western Canada which were not in the drought area, but which were becoming drought areas because no precautions were being taken to conserve the water or to conserve the texture of the soil. Something of that kind is in process of taking place in the constituency I have the honour to represent. That is why I pressed the question last fall and want to do so again.
On numerous occasions several municipalities within the Dauphin electoral district have made representations to the government-I believe years before I came to the house-to be included in the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act. I need only to quote from one of the resolutions to show What I mean. This resolution comes from the rural municipality of Grandview, and is in these words:
Therefore it is resolved that the rural municipality of Grandview make application to the prairie farm assistance branch of the dominion government to have the rural municipality of Grandview included in the area which qualifies for financial assistance to farmers in the making of dugouts on farms.
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The minister said that on the prairies it -was mainly a problem of dealing with drought areas, and getting more moisture there, Within thirty miles of this same municipality which is appealing for assistance to make dugouts in order to obtain a supply of water we have a situation just south of the town of Dauphin where the very opposite is the trouble. There in the spring time we have flood waters which do a great deal of damage to the best farm land in Manitoba. I have already had correspondence with the Minister of Public Works and . the Minister of Mines and Resources as to where the responsibility lies for doing something to control these waters which come down from the. Riding mountain national park, which, in my opinion, and in the opinion of the municipalities concerned, makes the federal government at least- partly responsible for the flood condition. It has a double effect, because in the spring time the water rushes down; the creeks overflow the banks and destroys or damages good farming land. Within a few months, in fact within a few weeks in some years, the water is all gone; the creek beds are dry, and there is not even a supply of water for the live stock in the area. They have evolved a plan whereby a number of controlled dams can be built at a fairly reasonable cost, so that the waters, instead of coming down in the spring and drying up completely in the hot days of the summer, can be so controlled as to provide a steady flow of water all through the year. I believe it is a worthy project.
I shall have more to say about national parks on another occasion. I would point out, however, that the condition has been caused largely by the fact that the timber in the national park has been denuded. When the timber was thick the snow which fell in the winter melted slowly in the spring time, and the water was controlled by nature. Then, beaver dams kept the water in a controlled state.
But since the timber has been removed by certain interests, the water now comes down much faster, with the result that we have flood conditions. I leave this matter for the attention of the minister. In passing, may I - say I have every sympathy for those in Nova Scotia because of the condition which exists there. I know something about marsh lands.
I leave the plea with the minister that Ee ought not to delay the introduction of the measure he has drafted until agreement is reached with all the provinces. As I understand the situation, it is the break-down of the dominion-provincial conference that is delaying the introduction of the bill to incor-

porate the four western provinces under a new rehabilitation measure. I believe it will be admitted that the four western provinces which took part in the conference were willing to sign an agreement with the dominion. That being so, I can see no reason for delay in introducing a bill w'hich would formulate an agreement for those provinces which are now willing to come to an agreement.
If the eastern provinces still have differences of opinion which they think must be resolved, then they may have to wait until such time as that is done. I believe the western provinces indicated their good faith at the conference, and are willing to come to an agreement. The minister has a green light to go ahead with the introduction of the bill.


Grote Stirling: The people of the irrigated section in southern British Columbia will, I know, read with a good deal of regret the minister's statement this afternoon that, consequent upon the adjournment of the dominion-provincial conference he does not believe it will be possible to proceed with rehabilitation work in that part of British Columbia at the present time.
The minister has received a brief submitted by the association of irrigation districts in British Columbia. I certainly shall not read it, but shall point out that its object is to urge the federal government to extend to British Columbia the terms of the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act, so that many veterans now settling in the irrigated areas may not be handicapped by inability to find land.
I shall place only one paragraph on record, because it succinctly states the case:
There are in the Okanagan valley and immediate vicinity some 27,000 additional acres of arable land, mostly within, or adjacent to the present irrigation systems, which could be brought under irrigation at a cost of from $100 to $150 per acre. The increase in production from this acreage would eventually double the present production of the area, expand the towns to almost twice their size, and cause new towns to develop. The resultant production would provide increased employment and augment the available market for goods from the coast cities, from the prairies and from the east, just as the P.F.R.A. projects are improving our markets for fruit by assuring the prairie farmer a full crop, regardless of drought.
That states in a few words what is in the minds of farmers in the irrigated districts. The condition is not identical with the drought conditions of the Palliser triangle. But the land in the dry belt in the southern part of British Columbia is capable of producing very little in the nature of crop until irrigation water is applied to it. Then there is scarcely any limit to the crops which may be grown there.

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Once that land is developed, as a good many tens of thousands of acres have been developed over the years, not only does it carry increased * population, but it produces secondary industries. The increased population must be supplied with the necessities of life, and those requirements in turn cause business for the merchants, and freight for the railways. It is an area in which returned men are most desirous of settling. But the difficulty is that the land, so productive when irrigated, is valued at a high price. There are very few pieces of developed and irrigated land which fall within the terms of the Veterans' Land Act.
The consequence has been that endeavours have been made in the last two years to discover areas which can be irrigated at a cost that would not be too high, and which could then be turned over to veterans for purposes of settlement. There must be ten or fifteen veterans to every parcel of land which a veteran under the land act is capable of obtaining.
I have in mind three areas concerning which consideration has been given to the possibility of putting irrigation water on. The benefit of engineering advice from those connected with the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act has been received in connection with formulating schemes for putting water on the land.
I should like to learn from the minister his hopes and expectations in the -matter, and whether next year we may look to rehabilitation expansion in that part of British Columbia.


George Alexander Cruickshank: Mr. Chairman,
strange to say, I am asking, not that water be brought on, but that it be taken off. Cannot this procedure be extended to give protection to certain areas in the Fraser valley? Our trouble is that of keeping the water off, not on. We are asking only that the act be extended to protect us from flooding conditions in the river. Would the minister state whether, under the measure, we might expect to have our land protected from flood and flood erosion?


William Irvine: As the minister is likely to answer all our questions at the same time, perhaps I might now get in under the wire and ask one or two. I believe it would be a fine policy for some political party-I hope the Progressive Conservative party does not do it -to advocate that we export some of our drought from the west and import the surplus water from the east, thereby bringing about a greater balance.
The problem I would draw to the minister's attention is somewhat different from either the marsh lands problem in the east or the irrigation problem to w'hich reference has just been made. The. problem that arises in the Peace River block is different from either of these. In that district it usually rains sufficiently to provide them with crops and they are not troubled with floods. Their difficulty is to find sufficient water in wells for the use of their families and their stock during the summer. They are anxious to come under the P.F.RA. in order that reservoirs may be built to hold the melting snow in the spring and thus provide sufficient water for their stock during the summer. I expect that the minister's answer, at least in part, will be something similar to that which he gave in connection with the marsh lands of Nova Scotia. Last year, when the matter was under discussion the minister said that he was referring the problem to the dominion-provincial conference. Certainly the question is still under reference and has not yet been settled. I should like to emphasize the point raised by the hon. member for Dauphin, that the minister should proceed with his legislation and then have the provincial governments pass enabling legislation later on in order to carry out the work which he has in mind.


George Alexander Cruickshank: I think this act should be extended to cover those of us who-want to keep water off their land. In the Fraser valley our land is protected by dikes. In 1904 a dike broke and we built a new one which cost several hundred thousand dollars. I have had several questions about this on the order paper but I have not been able to get satisfactory answers. When the Canadian Pacific built their line running into the United States to connect with the Northern Pacific they claimed that they had built above the high-water line. They have never paid any diking tax, and the result has been that their land is protected from freshets at the cost of the farmers of the district, although at the present time their line is eight feet below the highwater mark. This branch line is one of the best paying lines in their whole system. I asked question after question about this but I was told that the government had no information. I presume the Canadian Pacific did not want to give out the information. Can the minister assure me that the farmers in my district will have every assistance in keeping water off their land? I should like to ask also if the minister can get me the information I want as to why
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the Canadian Pacific are able to have full protection from floods at the cost of the farmers of the Fraser valley?


James Garfield Gardiner: I think the questions which have just been asked are the best demonstration we could possibly have as to the idea that is held about what the federal government can do. The diking in British Columbia was undertaken as either a provincial or a municipal responsibility. The taxes just referred to by the hon. member would not be collected by this government. Those who replied that they had no information were making the only posible answer. If we are to start in to try to get information with regard to municipal and provincial taxes in order to answer questions I am afraid we will be very busy and we shall be attempting to keep other people very busy when we have no authority over them. I think the proper place to get that information would be the provincial government, some municipal organization or any other organization that has been set up to handle the collections having to do with diking. It certainly would not be the Department of Agriculture, because that matter would have nothing to do with these estimates. Therefore I am not in position to answer that question.
Dealing with the other matters, we should have nothing to do with diking in British Columbia unless we had special legislation such as I referred to a few minutes ago which imposed that responsibility. That special legislation probably will be forthcoming only if certain financial arrangements are made between the provinces and the federal government making it possible for some of the revenues which now go provincially to go federally. I may say that we are hopeful that some time that may happen.
When it was decided recently that this legislation would not be proceeded with this session I did ask that consideration be given to the possibility of our proceeding with works of a certain kind, under restrictions if necessary, to bring about some of the developments which we hope some day can be carried out under the type of legislation we have been discussing. One of these works is a project similar to the one referred to by the hon. member for Kootenay East.
There is one project in the Pemberton river area which I know quite well. I am not sure just when it was put in there, but a soldier settlement was put in following the last war. I do not know of any more naturally beautiful spot that that one; but unfortunately the river, which is fed from a

glacier, is quite close to the top of its banks at all times. The whole plain is built up from silt which has been carried down by the floods. All that is needed is for a tree to fall some night, as often happens, the silt form behind it to form a dam, and flooding occurs. Engineers have looked over this project and I have more details with regard to it than I have with regard to any other.
We have sent the P.F.R.A. engineers in there, and we have a report which would suggest that by blasting out some of the rock in the stream we can lower the level of the water and allow it to get away with greater readiness, and then by a certain amount of diking keep the river from flooding.


Grote Stirling: That is entirely different from the Okanagan; that is similar to the case mentioned joy the hon. member for Fraser Valley.


James Garfield Gardiner: The Fraser is quite different from the Pemberton; it runs through a different type of country and a different situation is created. The area is much larger. One reason for being interested in this particular situation was that they are all returned soldiers. We could not take exactly the same position with regard to the Fraser river, because that country has been settled for many years and municipal organizations have been built up. We had nothing to do with putting the people there, but we cannot say that about the Pemberton area. We put the returned soldiers in there after the last war and I think we ought to do something about it as a special case.
As to these other irrigation projects, one of them is only seven or eight miles from the Pemberton valley, just over the mountains in the Lillooet district, in the constituency of the hon. member for Kamloops. There is an irrigation project which could give good results. There are similar areas in the valley where fruit is grown. Putting water on a larger area would make it possible for many more people to live and sustain themselves there. These projects could all be considered under legislation such as we had hoped to bring down this session. While a project such as the Pemberton one could be proceeded with this summer, it would be most difficult to proceed with projects in the Fraser valley or in the Kootenay district without legislation.


Mr. QUELCH:: I think all the people of western Canada have a high appreciation of the excellent work done under P.F.R.A., specially in regard to small water projects and in regard to the surveys which have been made by the P.F.R.A. engineers in connection with larger irrigation projects.

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I have a great deal of sympathy for the problems put before the committee by the hon. member for Cumberland. I should like to see the P.F.R.A. extended to every province. I recall that when this question was before the reconstruction committee which sat for two or three sessions, a recommendation was made to that effect. We were investigating a number of worth-while projects for the purpose of developing the resources of the country and thereby increasing the wealth of the country, and I think it was felt by the committee that these projects should be undertaken as national projects and financed by the federal government. Once the project had been constructed and completed, the maintenance would fall on the provinces and municipalities and the farmers concerned on a certain share basis.
We also discussed in the committee the problem of the salt marshes, and some of the witnesses pointed out that these salt marshes originated as a result of the farmers being unable to maintain their dikes because of depressed prices. While the maintenance of dikes may have been a provincial responsibility, to-day we all recognize that the maintenance of prices is a federal responsibility and that unless we maintain prices at a level which will meet the cost of production, it will be impossible for the farmers to carry on the necessary maintenance work. That is a good example of the devastation resulting from a depression or deflationary policy. We hear so much of the dangers of inflation, but we seldom hear of the terrible devastation caused by a deflationary policy. After the deflationary period has gone, we are left with a heavy capital depreciation, which costs many times more'than it would have cost to maintain the capital in the first place.
The main criticism I have heard in the west regarding P.F.R.A. has been that they have not expanded their work rapidly enough. I realize that that is not really a criticism of P.F.R.A., but rather of government policy, because P.F.R.A. is dependent upon government policy for the amount of work they can do. Whilst the people are critical in that Tegard, they realize the impossibility of going ahead with these large-scale projects during the war, but they feel that, now that the war is over, no time should be lost in going ahead with them at the earliest possible day. There was a good deal of disappointment visible when the Minister of Reconstruction stated that these national projects would not be [DOT]gone ahead with for two or three years, because the federal government was building up a shelf of projects to take care of unemployment in the future. However, I understand that
the government's policy has been modified so that some of these projects may be started at an early day or are now being started. It is a very good thing that the government has decided to start the work earlier, because day after day we are told of the tragic plight of people in Europe and Asia as a result of the shortage of food; and while this condition is largely, I believe, the result of the war, nevertheless it has been aggravated considerably by a number of crop failures throughout the world. This condition is not only tragic but an extremely dangerous one, because one of the main essentials of a sound peace is an ample supply of food. If we are to allow shortages of food to continue it will be that much harder to bring about a satisfactory peace in the world to-day.
This spring there was quite a general demand that we should increase wheat acreage in western Canada. The farmers were urged to reduce their summer-fallow in order to expand their sown acreage, but I think the Minister of Agriculture was wise when he advised against such a policy because the reduction of summer-fallow may easily bring about a reduction in production over a two-year period.
The only safe way to overcome drought is by irrigation. You may mitigate it by cultural practices, but in the final analysis the only way to overcome severe drought is by the application of water. In western Canada we have a number of rivers running through the parched lands and practically no use is being made of the water. We have rivers without a dam or a power project. The water of these rivers is urgently needed now to irrigate the lands in the drought areas, and no time should be lost in starting these irrigation projects, because we now have the men and, I believe, the machinery available, so that an early start could be made.
In past years-I am thinking especially of the thirties-when we discussed irrigation in this house we were met with these two main objections: first, the cost would be too great; we could not afford it; second, if we were to carry out large-scale irrigation projects we would increase the amount of farm produce and create surpluses. Dealing with the first objection, the financial cost, to-day we should realize that it is not a question of not being able to afford it but of not being able to afford not to do it. Let us consider the cost of failure to provide irrigation in some parts of the drought areas in western Canada. I shall give an example from my own constituency which no doubt could be duplicated in many other parts of the west.
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In the constituency of Acadia, from 1918 do 1935, over $10,000,000 was paid out in direct relief, and from 1935 on many more millions have been granted in the form of seed and feed relief and under prairie farm assistance. Thousands of homes were abandoned and thousands of acres have become useless for pasture because of the lack of water.
Recently surveys have been completed by P.F.R.A. engineers of the Red Deer diversion project, which would involve an initial expenditure of $6,750,000. It would flood 1,200 miles of waterways and provide a reservoir to irrigate half a million acres and provide water for 8,000,000 acres of pasture. It would take probably another $7,000,000 to get the water from the reservoir on to the land. That cost, I take it, would be the joint responsibility of the ' province, the municipalities and the farmers, but the initial cost of $6,750,000 would be the responsibility of the federal government. The completion of this irrigation project would bring about a complete transformation of that area and bring prosperity where there has been want for many years. It will bring prosperity where there has been want for many years, and put that whole area to a very large extent upon a self-supporting basis.
Let us think what the result of the completion of that project would mean. First, there would be a tremendous expansion of production; second, there would be a great expansion of revenue for the government from that production; then, of course, there would be a great increase in the general well-being of the farmers in that whole area; and it would also mean a great reduction in payments of relief to the farmers. So that I do not think we can say we cannot afford that project; it might very well be said that we cannot afford not to carry it out.
In the thirties we used to hear a good deal about the danger of expanding our production and thereby creating a surplus. The tragic period through which we are going at this time should teach us a lesson that we should never forget. Never again, I hope, shall we be guilty of destroying food and allowing our resources to go to waste. One of the greatest resources we have in western Canada is water, which is going to waste day by day. I believe our aim and the aim of every nation should be to maintain a brimming pool of consumer goods; in the first instance, to maintain the well-being of our own people, exchanging our surplus goods for the surplus goods of other nations, and in the event that we can produce more than we need we would be in the enviable position of being able to assist nations less fortunately situate than ourselves, and in that way be making a great contribution

to peace. If the governments of prosperous nations fail to live up to the principles of the Atlantic charter and the Hot Springs food conference, the outlook for peace in the world will be pretty bleak.
I should also like to issue this warning. If in the future as we expand farm production we allow that expansion of production to be an excuse for reducing prices w'e shall very soon find that production will be reduced. Unfortunately that is what has happened in the past. When farmers produced abundantly it caused a reduction in price, with the result that production was discouraged. So that, whatever policy we have in the future, it must be one which will make it possible to maintain maximum production and at the same time a fair price to the producer.
Since under this item we are discussing irrigation, I would urge upon the minister the desirability of bringing about the immediate construction of the various irrigation projects which have been surveyed in western Canada. If the war were still in operation, and these projects were considered necessary to the carrying on of the war, I do not doubt that they would be carried out, almost overnight. Unfortunately, just as soon as peace comes, we seem to suffer a form of creeping paralysis. I should like to ask the minister whether he can give any assurance that actual construction will be started on a number _ of these projects in western Canada at a very early day. When we were discussing this question on April 8, I think it was, the minister stated that' he did not know whether it would be possible to do any actual construction work so far as the larger irrigation schemes were concerned; $750,000 was to be spent on the St. Mary's project, but he did not know whether any actual construction work would be done on the other ones. Could the minister give us any information on that point?


James Garfield Gardiner: Last year we spent some money on the St, Mary's dam project in the form of making surveys and checking on the engineering which had previously been done. This year we have in these votes $750,000 with which to proceed with construction. Tenders have been called for the construction of part of that work and contracts will be allotted within a few days in connection with it. As far as the Red Deer diversion is concerned, we have already taken from the $10 millions referred to, $115,000 for engineering and surveying during the present season. That has already been asked for and obtained by P.F.R.A. to proceed with that survey work. For the Saskatchewan river project $137,000 has already been obtained, and the survey

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and engineering work in connection with these two projects is proceeding. It is understood, of course, by the hon. member for Acadia that ever since about 1938 we have been doing a certain amount of engineering work on the project. The engineering work which is now being done is the checking of that work by an expert. If he finds any fault with any of the engineering decisions which have been made 'he will indicate that further checks will have to be made in connection with it. If he finds that the engineering is satisfactory and the results which have been recommended are also satisfactory of course we shall proceed from there on the basis of the engineering work which has been done.


Victor Quelch: That is, with the construction?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes. I would hesitate to say that we shall be in a position this summer to call for tenders on the work, but at the moment I would not say that we would not be in a position to do so. That is, I would not say that we shall be, but there is the possibility that we may be able to do so.


Victor Quelch: There is a good chance of going ahead next year, then?


James Garfield Gardiner: I think so.


Mr. ROSS (St. Paul's):: I was very much interested in a remark made by the Minister of Agriculture to the effect that 'he was unable to bring down legislation in connection with doing a lot of this work. He said that he could not bring down these bills and do those things which are supposed to be done, because of the failure of the dominion-provincial conference. As a matter of fact, If I understood him aright, he stated that he has been deprived of certain sources of revenue. I should like to know what sources of revenue the minister has been deprived of. At the present time I do not know of any, and I do not think he should use the failure of the dominion-provincial conference as an excuse for not bringing down bills in respect of this work. He says that some sources of revenue should be taxed. What are the sources which should be taxed? I think he ought to give us a little more information about that and not merely lay the blame on the failure of the dominion-provincial conference. As far as the province from which I come is concerned, we are quite willing to help anybody.


George Alexander Cruickshank: Oh, oh.


Douglas Gooderham Ross: Yes! Yes! Yes! That is right. We have been willing to do so, and the fact is right on the record. We
can stand on our own feet. I should like to know what are the sources of taxation of which the government is deprived at this time.
I repeat that I do not know of any.


James Garfield Gardiner: I do not want to enter a discussion of that question. I am afraid that if we got on to that matter my estimates would never pass. All I can say is, my inference was that at the time of confederation certain responsibilities were placed on the provinces and certain responsibilities were placed on the federal government, and among those placed on the provinces were such things as drainage and diking and all those matters about which we have been talking. I think, when we get to the province of Ontario or any other eastern province, even the provincial government does not assume the responsibility in these matters; by legislation they have placed it on the counties and townships; and the row over the back fence about the ditch across a farm does not become a provincial matter but is a municipal matter.


Douglas Gooderham Ross: That is right.


James Garfield Gardiner: The suggestion is that we should take over some of these works which are now the responsibility of the provinces and conduct the developments from Ottawa. There would, of course, be a limit to the extent to which we could do that. If the provinces do not desire to have certain grants from Ottawa, we might spend that money direct instead of making the grants from Ottawa to the province and having somebody else do, it. Speaking of some of the work we might undertake, such as diking in the maritimes, I can think of projects in Ontario related to black marsh lands-


John Ritchie MacNicol: In Kent county.


James Garfield Gardiner: -where we have been admiring live stock for some years and where we could grow onions and other things to good advantage. The undertaking, however, is too big for the farmer or the municipality, or, in some cases, for the province itself. It would not be too big for Ontario, because my hon. friend says they can stand on their own feet; but if we undertook such obligations in some other provinces, Ontario would expect us to do the same.


Douglas Gooderham Ross: I do not think so.


James Garfield Gardiner: They probably would. We could undertake this under a bill of the kind suggested. I wish to say that I was not making a criticism of any particular province.
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Douglas Gooderham Ross: The minister says that he has been deprived of certain sources of taxation.


James Garfield Gardiner: In order to avoid an argument here in regard to the question, I will put the blame on the federal treasury and say that when I go for money to spend on such activities I have to face what the treasury will say.


Douglas Gooderham Ross: The minister cannot say in this House of Commons that he has been deprived of any source of taxation, because the federal government is taxing in every field at the present time. That is the whole point. It is, not a question of being deprived of any source of taxation. The minister cannot get away with that. There may be other reasons but he cannot lay the blame there.


George Alexander Cruickshank: May I ask the hon. member a question?


Douglas Gooderham Ross: Sit down for a minute, please. The minister cannot blame the failure of the dominion-provincial conference for any lack of diking in New Brunswick or Nova Scotia, or for lack of prairie farm rehabilitation in the west. He has never heard any kick, as far as we are concerned, about money spent on prairie farm rehabilitation or on diking. I have risen in my place in the house and advocated it. The whole point is, however, that the minister cannot hide behind a subterfuge of that kind and suggest that the reason is that he is being deprived of a source of taxation, because he is not deprived of any source of taxation at the present time since he is in every field of taxation in this country.


Mr. McIVOR:: It seems a long time since I last spoke on these estimates. I had a few words to say on item 13 on May 17 and that does seem a long time ago. A good deal has been said since then and it seems necessary to have good sitters and good listeners here. That in itself explodes the idea that we sometimes hear from some corners, that estimates are left to the closing days of the session and then rushed through. If anybody says that in connection with the Department of Agriculture there must be something wrong with his upper storey.
I congratulate the minister on the opportunity that may be presented for changing the policy from prairie farm rehabilitation to rehabilitation, because in our district we would like to have the drainage transferred from the province to the dominion. If that were done we would have a very fine district drained. It may not be the best potato land in Canada

but I do not think it will take second place to any. I have been told by expert lumbermen that there is an extensive district in Savanne where, if the land were drained, trees that are now water-stunted would have an opportunity to grow and in a short time there would be at least 50,000 cords of wood available to be cut. It is encouraging to hear the Minister of Agriculture say that rehabilitation will take in all Canada. Therefore we shall be listening.


Mr. BENTLEY:: I was hoping that the minister would anticipate my question and answer it before I rose, but he has not done so and I suppose it slipped his memory. There are two questions I wish to ask him, but first let mo say that most of those associated with me will, I believe, agree with hon. members who have spoken for an extension of the prairie farm rehabilitation measure to rehabilitation covering other areas. Fortunately or unfortunately, as the case may be, I live in the Palliser triangle where the agreements are already signed and the minister has full responsibility and authority to go ahead. He started some time ago with the Duncaim project, and I am informed that very little work is contemplated this summer. If that is the case I urge him to reconsider the position, because it is important. It was important when it started, and it is not operating as it should at the present time. There are tremendous possibilities for that little area-I realize that it is small-and we would like to see the work completed as soon as possible.
The other point I wish to make is this. In some parts of the area out there, apparently assistance is not given in the digging of dug-outs and the conservation of water for stock. Where such assistance has been given, it has been of great value to the farmers and has removed a great deal of worry from their minds. Without such help, it costs a farmer 8250 and he cannot afford it. I would be glad if the minister would give us some idea as to whether it can be extended to help more farmers.


James Garfield Gardiner: The whole question of extending the district is involved in what we have been discussing ever since we entered upon this item, namely, that the vote is for a specific purpose. That purpose is to take care of the area in which we had drought or drifting soil. When we get outside that area we have no authority, in the votes as they are, to spend money.


Thomas John Bentley: I am speaking of the Palliser triangle.

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James Garfield Gardiner: There is no place in that area where we have not the authority to go and dig. We have about IS,000 applications in advance all the time.


Thomas John Bentley: For dugouts?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes. We have dug some
22,000	and. digging between 3,000 and 4,000 a year, it will take five years to overtake what we have now. While some have made application and we have not gone ahead, it is because we could not get around to them.


Thomas John Bentley: It is not a matter of policy?


James Garfield Gardiner: No. It is not a matter of policy against doing it. As the hon. member knows, there are two dams constructed south of Swift Current. They are now holding what I sometimes call small lakes and the water is not being utilized to the extent it might be. Some people are inclined to say that is because we are not prepared to go ahead. We are prepared to dig ditches to make that water available as soon as there is organization at the other end of the ditch to use the water. But we do not see any point in digging a ditch from a dam fifty or twenty miles long across an area where the soil drifts and have it drifted full before anyone uses the water. The present position is that the provincial law provides for setting up irrigation districts, and we have stated that in that area there is a certain amount of water and a certain amount of land that can be irrigated, and we are prepared to cooperate in setting up districts that will permit a certain amount of the water being used by any irrigation organization which will make use of their proportion of the water that is available, without denying to someone else, two or three years hence, the use of water. We are in a position to give information as to how many acres within a certain area can be irrigated and have that divided among the farmers in that area, and we are prepared to put in a ditch to take the water to that area. But they must also be ditching for individual supply so as to run the water to their own land. We have assisted in many places in levelling land, and we will dig ditches as soon as there is enough organization at the other end to indicate that the water will be used when we take'it there.


John Oliver Probe: I should like to ask a question with respect to the amount of appropriation for water storage for Moose Jaw and Regina. The minister is aware of our problem there. Moose Jaw is definitely short of water. They have not enough for ordinary purposes. In Regina we have reached the
danger point with respect to the continuance of water from our wells out in the Boggy Creek and the Pilot Butte area. Then, of course, we have the problem of maintaining the Wascana lake in front of the parliament buildings which is the beauty spot of the city. Will the minister indicate whether or not a survey of the Many Bones and Wascana creek project which was mentioned in this house last session by the hon. member for Weyburn, and to which he got the reply that a survey was being undertaken there is still going on? Has that been completed, and what expenditures, if any, are being made this year toward water reservoirs for the Regina and Moose Jaw areas?


James Garfield Gardiner: I have not the exact amount that has been spent, but at Moose Jaw something over $600,000 has been spent over a period of years. In the first place, that had to do with pumping water from the Saskatchewan river and running it down an open ditch to the Caron area and pumping water into the sand there. The water is then pumped out and into Moose Jaw by the city itself, a distance of some eighteen miles. On that project we have spent something over $600,000. It is the only place in Canada where the federal government has undertaken to make water available to a city. The only reason that we undertook that was there was a combination of circumstances existing. It was a drought period; it was a period of unemployment prior to the war, and there was the possibility of irrigation along the way, farmers requiring irrigation. Because of that combination of circumstances we said that we would try the experiment of pumping water in an open ditch down to within eighteen miles of Moose Jaw, conditionally upon Moose Jaw pumping the water out of there and into Moose Jaw. The plan of pumping water down there has been a success. The water was put there. A small lake was put there last year; but when Moose Jaw put the pressure on the pipeline that they have, about half of it. was found to be in a condition where it would not stand the pressure. That is the only reason Moose Jaw is not getting water now. It is not because the lyater is not there, but because it could not be put there because of the condition of their pipeline.


John Oliver Probe: Is it entirely a pipeline proposition?


James Garfield Gardiner: So far as we know up to the moment. We think there is all the *water in the sand now that Moose Jaw would want to use at the present time. The only problem in connection with it is that first
*2028
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the intake silts up, and there has been some trouble in getting equipment with which to clear the intake. I might say that I have done everything that I can possibly do as an individual to see that they get that equipment, but somebody in Saskatchewan takes it and utilizes it for some other purpose. It cannot be secured for Moose Jaw. I do not know just what the reason is. I would not want to go into the details of that; but I have been trying. As a matter of fact, I tried the other day to get it myself, to declare that the department wanted to use it, to clear this up, to get first priority on it. So far I have not even got that. We will do everything we can to get the equipment with which to clear that silt out of the river.


John Oliver Probe: May I just interrupt for a moment? Is the minister referring to that War Assets declaration which was mentioned?


James Garfield Gardiner: I am referring to the fact that at the present time most of the equipment goes to certain authorities in Saskatchewan, and they get first priority; but I do not want to get too far into that.


John Oliver Probe: No; I know that. At the. same time I do not think it is strictly correct. That pumping equipment is still in the No. :2 R.E.M.U., near Moose Jaw.


James Garfield Gardiner: We have done everything possible to get it, anyhow, and we have mot got it up to date. Moose Jaw city has been doing everything possible too and we have not been able to get it. That is the position at the moment.
So far as Regina is concerned, the only dam that is being put in at the moment in order to supply water for Regina is the one I referred to a few moments ago, namely, the Saskatchewan river project, on which we are spending $137,000 for survey work. It is anticipated that if that is a success, if the dam is put in eventually, the Saskatchewan river water will be available for Moose Jaw and Regina. That as probably something for the future.
The only dam that I referred to is on the Many Bones creek. We have been making a *survey. We have all the detailed information necessary for carrying that project through. We have not yet determined whether we shall proceed with it this summer or not. There has been some discussion between the provincial government, the city of Regina and the prairie farm rehabilitation act organization. I am sure there is not entire agreement at the moment on the amount that should 'be provided by the different authorities, but all the information is available on which to proceed.


John Oliver Probe: 
James Garfield Gardiner: I would not say there is none contemplated. There is none provided for at the moment, but they are urging strongly that we should go ahead this year. I am not sure whether we shall go ahead or not; it depends somewhat on the urgency of other work.


John Oliver Probe: Does the Minister of Agriculture know whether any expenditure is contemplated in connection with the Moose Jaw end of the project?


James Garfield Gardiner: No; we think we have spent as much money there as we ought to spend.


William Irvine: In one of his replies the minister referred to the Pemberton project. Has the federal government undertaken any work there at all? If so, how much has been done? Is anything further that may be done by the federal government contingent on the dominion-provincial conference agreement.


James Garfield Gardiner: No; so far as the Pemberton project is concerned, we have put engineers there. They have made a report to me and I have made a report to Mr. Pearson of the provincial government. We are in entire agreement as to what ought to be done. I am hopeful that there will be somthing done there this year, but I would not want to be too definite about it anyhow because I must get a supplementary estimate.


George Alexander Cruickshank: Will the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act be extended to cover all of Canada?


James Garfield Gardiner: Not this year. I had bills prepared in order to make it apply to all of Canada, but they were contingent upon agreements being reached at the dominion-provincial conference. Those agreements were not reached, and until the conferences are continued it is not thought advisable to bring the legislation down.
At six o'clock the committee took recess.
After Recess
The committee resumed at eight o'clock.


John Ritchie MacNicol: Mr. Chairman, I was glad to hear what the minister had to say this afternoon, and to note the vision he has of what can be accomplished under this vote. I was pleased particularly to hear his observations respecting the marshes of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. I am not going to discuss that matter myself, because it was well covered this afternoon by the hon. member for Cumberland and the hon. member for Colchester-Hants. Undoubtedly the people

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who live in Nova Scotia will be greatly encouraged to know that the minister has in mind a programme for development in that province as and when agreement can be made to permit the carrying out of such a programme. That is all to the good for Canada, because that is one part of the country it is important the government should assist, if it possibly can. The population in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick has not advanced to anything like the degree we would like to see it advance. I have no doubt that when the works in connection with the reclamation of marshes in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are completed it will have a material effect upon business there. Consequently the population should increase.
The minister referred to the Moose Jaw water supply, and it is in that respect I wish to speak particularly for a few minutes. I hope the minister will not be apologetic for the government's part in providing water for Moose Jaw, even though that part may not have been as great as might have been wished. I take the same stand as is taken by the bureau of reclamation in the United States. We must remember that it could be said that, because of permission being given to the Canadian Pacific railway to have its divisional works at Moose Jaw, without first making certain that there would be an ample water supply for the engines of that railway, which has done so much to open up western Canada, the government is responsible for the fact that a town has grown up where the railway first built its shops in that part of the country. To that extent the country is responsible for the city's development at a point on the prairies where there is insufficient water supply to permit its full growth.
I have said before, and I repeat, that whatever is decided by the government in the matter of spending money to bring a water supply from the Saskatchewan river, the only permanent and abundant available supply for both Moose Jaw and Regina, will have my undivided support. As a businessman I know, from my past experience in big business in Canada, that an increase in the population of those two cities to three or four times their present size would be beneficial to all Canada. And they cannot help all Canada as they would do unless they are amply supplied with water.
I shall not repeat what has been said by others and what I have said on other occasions, but I shall close this part of my remarks by saying that I will support any government programme designed to provide an abundant and permanent water supply for 63260-128
those two cities. I look forward anxiously to learning what is contained in the report the minister will receive from the engineers now engaged in drilling holes up and down the river, north and south of Riverhurst. I am firmly convinced that the Supreme Being, in His wisdom, when permitting those cities to be located there, had made ample provision somewhere in that river, and that the source will eventually be found.
I would point out to the committee briefly that we should not be critical of expenditures in connection with this vote. The engineers engaged by the department, through the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act, are compelled to spend considerable sums of money without showing much, if any return. That is not their fault. I know something about that kind of engineering, and I know they can drill many holes in the river without showing any satisfactory results. But holes have to be drilled to find a safe bottom upon which to build a dam-if, indeed, it is possible to find a safe bottom. If they did not, then they would have to build a dam which would be much more expensive than the one required if a safe bottom were found.
I hold in my hand the core of a diamond drill. This one came from the St. Mary's river, at which point, I understood the minister to say this afternoon, contracts are to be let shortly for the St. Mary's river dam. I should imagine the purpose would be, first, to divert the river, and then to proceed with the building of a dam. It would seem that on that river they have found a safe and sure bottom, of which this is a core. And a dam foundationed on terra firma, if we may call it that, if it is as good as this sample, will support the building of any type of dam. I am happy that the St. Mary's river work is proceeding satisfactorily.
I listened to what the minister had to say about the Red Deer work. There, too, I might say, they have found a safe bottom on the Red Deer river. Although this core is not from the Red Deer bottom, to all intents and purposes it looks the same as a core I have of the Red Deer river bottom. If I were to break this core in two, I am sure hon. members would not know whether one-half was from the Red Deer or from the St. Mary's. I know now that the department has found a safe bottom on the Red Deer river, about which the hon. member for Acadia spoke this afternoon.
I was most happy in February last to meet the hon. member in the really smart town of Hanna, a town which some day will be a city, if the programme the department has

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in view is carried to a successful conclusion. Recent figures show that about 500,000 acres can be reclaimed south of Buffalo Lake to Hanna area. Do not have any hesitancy in asking this house to vote whatever is required to carry through the Buffalo Lake-Hanna or Red Deer river project, because that will be a self-liquidating project. An hon. member, incidentally a very bright and brilliant member, said to me the other day that he could not understand how I could term these projects as being self-liquidating. I told him that after irrigation was provided to an area there was a great increase in the population; I told him that this in turn increased the buying "power of the people, and that employment was created all along the line.
I have here some facts and figures about an area that I intend to visit as soon as the house rises. I expect to cover some 10,000 miles by motor. I have here the details of what has been accomplished by the bureau of reclamation in several of the western states. You, Mr. Chairman, had a lot to do with a fine plant in the town of Seaforth where, you held a responsible position. That was operated by a really fine family, I believe the Bell family. I know you can picture what it would mean to the town of Seaforth if the population were increased by 50,000 round about. I do not think you would have to be convinced that any project which would add 50,000 buyers in the area around the town of Seaforth and the town of Clinton was a self-liquidating project.
The United States bureau of reclamation is spending $160,000,000 this year in carrying on a gigantic programme. By 1951 they will have reclaimed 6,500,000 acres of land just as dry and the same type of land as that which lies between Buffalo Lake and Hanna and in the southern part of Alberta where the hon. member for Lethbridge comes from. Some of that land around Lethbridge now looks like the garden of Eden because of the irrigation projects they have there. The improvement will be much greater when other projects are completed, but I am not going to discuss them at the moment.
I understand that the first irrigation project in America Was carried on by some friends of the hon. member for Lethbridge at Salt Lake City. . When those pioneers went from Illinois to the west and started to build that magnificent temple which is one of the finest buildings in the world they found the ground so dry that they could not pick it. They brought water from the lake in order to make the ground soft enough to work and they conceived the idea of irrigation. Later they brought those

ideas up to Alberta. Those pioneer settlers deserve a lot of credit for what they did in Alberta.
The bureau of reclamation states in its latest report that the average net return from irrigated farms under their jurisdiction is $36.33 per acre. Throughout the whole United States, including those prolific states of Iowa and Kansas, the average is only $14.41 per acre. When irrigation gives such wonderful results how can any one say that it is not self-liquidating.
I hope the minister will not hesitate to bring in whatever programme is required to irrigate these lands which my hon. friend spoke of this afternoon. We should have a programme to irrigate the semi-dry acres of our western prairie land which now grows nothing but sage; wild rose and prairie grass. I presume that if I wanted to buy some of that land to-day I would not have to pay more than $2.50 or $5 per acre. But, once it is irrigated, the land would be worth anything up to $50 per acre. If special crops were grown it could easily be worth $75 to $100 per acre. The difference in land value alone would pay for the cost of irrigating, and that is apart al- ' together from the magnificent crop returns which would be obtained.
I do not care what government brings in a programme to irrigate the Hanna and Acadia and Buffalo Lake areas, it will get my support. I think the minister knows that the land from Buffalo Lake south has a slope which would permit a flow of water. The more I examine our whole western country, the more I am convinced that God Almighty has laid it out in such a way, with the great river behind it, that it is possible to have a flow downhill. Very little pumping, such as they have to do in the United States and which they find it pays them to do, would have to be done in the Buffalo Lake to Hanna area.
I should like to say a word about the Ronelane-Redcliff area. I do not know whether the minister said anything about it this afternoon, but I believe it comes under the other $10,000,000 vote. I wish this was under the minister's department because he is a farmer and knows what increased farm crops mean to our nation. They are a benefit, not only to the farmer, but all along the line right down to the smallest factory in Davenport riding. I would not say that the Ronelane-Redcliff area deserves first place, but I think it would come right with the Lethbridge area project.


James Garfield Gardiner: The engineering is
fairly well completed in that area.

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John Ritchie MacNicol: I understand that all they have to do is to complete the syphon across the Bow river. That area comprises about 70,000 acres immediately west of Medicine Hat. The main canal is completed almost right up to the city. I sincerely hope that project will be carried through as rapidly as possible. With the increased land values that would result, as well as with the additional returns from the land itself, this country could afford to irrigate every dry acre in the west that is capable of being irrigated. It cannot all be irrigated, but three to four million acres can be irrigated. I should like to see the minister take the bit into his teeth and bring a programme into this house for the irrigation of the whole four million acres or thereabouts of dry or semi-dry land that can be irrigated, also a vote for bringing water from a Saskatchewan river dam to supply the two cities of Moose Jaw and Regina with a permanent abundance of water. I will predict that if the government would provide those works-it would take nearly five years, I should think, to build the dams and either a tunnel or conduit across the seventy miles for Moose Jaw and the 110 miles to Regina-within ten years of the completion of the works the city of Regina, which to-day has a population of around
70.000,	would be closer to 150,000 and the city of Moose Jaw, which has from 20,000 to
23.000,	would have closer to 50,000. As it is to-day they cannot get big industries to locate there. I have heard members in the house say what a fine thing it is to decentralize industry. I was in big industry, but if I were going to build a plant in the west 1 would not locate it where I could not get a permanent and abundant supply of water. No business man would. But any business man would be happy to build a branch plant in Regina or Moose Jaw, if he wanted to locate in that part of the west and there was a demand for his goods there, if he could obtain an abundant and permanent water supply.
So that I for one would go the limit in supporting any government or any party which would carry through these western irrigation projects, knowing they are for the good of all Canada. Let no one think they would be for the benefit of the west only. While some of my hon. friends may think that, I was too long in big business not to know what such a development would mean much to the east. You could not benefit the west by building it up in that way without also benefiting every manufacturing town and city in the eastern provinces. They will prosper 63260-128J
just as much. So that the minister has one solid supporter and there are others on this side for a gigantic water conservation and water supply project in the west.


John Horne Blackmore: The people of my constituency are naturally anxious to know what progress is being made in the construction of the St. Mary's river dam. Would the minister answer several questions on this subject which have been sent to me?
How many tenders have been submitted for a contract to build the 1946 portion of the work on the St. Mary's river dam? When did they come in, and why has not one of the tenders yet been accepted? There is some doubt whether a tender has been accepted, but from the minister's remarks this afternoon I gathered that no tender has been accepted.
What items in the construction of the dam are to be disposed of by the contractor in 1946? Is it only the three tunnels mentioned earlier this year in the discussion of this matter?
Has the work actually begun on any one of the tunnels or on any aspect of the dam? If so, what progress has been made?
Has any unforeseen difficulty been encountered? Have there been any difficulties with respect to labour or materials which would be likely to interfere with the consummation of the prescribed portion of the project this year? Are the materials required now iD sight?


James Garfield Gardiner: Nothing has developed which would raise any question about the possibility of going ahead. The work for which tenders have been called is just the tunneling for handling the water while the dam is being built. Tenders were called and received, but there was so much variation in the tenders that it was thought the engineers should check them carefully before making a final decision. There was a difference of some $500,000 between the highest and lowest tenders. The estimated cost was $750,000. To make absolutely certain that no mistake had been made, it was thought better to make a check before actually awarding the contract to the lowest bidder.


John Horne Blackmore: Has the minister any idea when the contract will be awarded?


James Garfield Gardiner: I cannot say exactly when, but I think it should be almost any day.


Mr. McKAY:: Will any work be done on the Souris river and the Long creek project in southern Saskatchewan this year?


James Garfield Gardiner: There is an amount of $18,000 set aside for work on the Souris river.
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Mr. THATCHER:: May I direct a question to the minister. regarding the Moose Jaw water situation? This afternoon he made several remarks which I think were not quite correct. He said that the open ditch there, for pumping water, has been a success. Originally this ditch was built from the South Saskatchewan river to provide Moose Jaw with an adequate water supply. If the plan had been a success it would have provided Moose Jaw with an adequate supply in the past spring. But, as I stated earlier this session, Moose Jaw was shorter of water in the past spring than ever before in its history. The water mains were turned off for about half of each day for several months and the housewives were filling bathtubs to get water to cook with the following day. The Canadian Pacific engines were hauling water from Regina and other points to run their trains across the prairies, and sanitary facilities could not be used on many occasions.


James Garfield Gardiner: That had nothing to do with the ditch.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: I do not think the
water scheme was a success. The minister went on to say that a small lake was put in the saturation area there last year, but that when Moose Jaw put the pressure on the Caron pipeline they have, about half of it was found to be in a condition where it would not stand the [DOT] pressure. According to him, this was the only reason Moose Jaw was not getting water now; not because the water is not available, but because it could not be put there in view of the condition of the pipeline. For the minister's information I will quote from a letter that I received from the city engineer of Moose Jaw:
Our Caron pipeline is used as an excuse for loss of water, but on checking over the loss of water on the river scheme in transit, here are the figures:
Amount of water pumped from the river, 1915 season, 1,119,300,000 gallons.
Amount of water delivered to the saturation area, 1945 season, 300,000,000 gallons.
Amount of water withdrawn from the saturation area up until December 29, 1945, 296,340,260 gallons.
That shows only 26 per cent efficiency; 74 per cent of the water was lost between the Saskatchewan river and the saturation area, while only a very small amount was lost between the saturation area and the city of Moose Jaw.
The engineer goes on to say:
. . . had the pipeline been perfect in every respect, we did not have sufficient water from the river to meet our requirements, and further, the leaks on the Caron pipeline were repaired before the shortage of water in Moose Jaw arose.

Moose Jaw is in very difficult straits as far as water is concerned. This spring, when they began to pump water from the river again, something happened to several of their pumps; they would not work. I am told by the mayor that the pumps they needed were located four miles south, in one of the old airports, and so far the city authorities have not been able to get War Assets or whatever authorities are necessary to release those pumps to the city. If the minister could do something about that-the hon. member for Regina mentioned it this afternoon-I know it would be appreciated, and I think it is very necessary indeed for the city.
Before sitting down, I should like also to ask the minister whether he intends to call for tenders on the South Saskatchewan scheme this year. Some weeks ago a former member of the house made a statement in Saskatchewan along these lines, according to the way he was reported in the Regina Leader Post:
Tenders will be called shortly for the much-discussed South Saskatchewan irrigation scheme. The scheme has been worked out. much of the engineering has been done, and before long some contracts will be let. A start will be made as soon as men and equipment are available.
Would the minister tell the committee whether that is correct, whether we can definitely count on this scheme going ahead this year?


James Garfield Gardiner: If the hon. gentleman had been in the chamber this afternoon when we were discussing this matter by the hour he would not have had to ask some of the questions he has asked this evening; and I do not know that the rest of the committee should sit here and listen to answers the second time. I stated this afternoon that
1137,000	was being spent this year on completing the engineering and surveying of the South Saskatchewan river. That is all the money that has been made available or has been asked for to the present time.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: But the project will not be actually started this year?


James Garfield Gardiner: 
Wilbert Ross Thatcher: May I ask one supplementary question?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Carried.


An hon. MEMBER:: Give him a chance.


An hon. MEMBER:: We want to get home by Christmas.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: Would the minister tell me whether there is anything he can do or I can do to get these pumps from War Assets? Here we have a city without -water, and the pumps, or dragline, as he calls it, sitting in War Assets doing nothing. It seems a strange situation.


James Garfield Gardiner: As far as I know, there are not any pumps required. What is required is a steam shovel, what we call a dragline, to take the silt out of the river. There are some draglines, I understand, held by someone; I am not sure whether they have been declared sqrplus or whether they are still held by the air force for work which they want to do themselves. Efforts have been made to have some of these draglines made available, but to date we have not been able to get them. I said, when the hon. member was not here, that I went so far as to try to utilize the priority which my department has for equipment which we are going to use ourselves; I stretched the point so far as to say that since we had spent almost 1700,000 on the project we considered it sufficiently important to the Department of Agriculture to exercise our first priority to get that equipment, but I have not been able to get it. The next priority, of course, is the provincial government. If they have some equipment of that kind I do not know why they do not turn it over to Moose Jaw as against somebody else. The next priority
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after that is Moose Jaw itself. I think, if we get out of the way and the provincial government gets out of the way and leaves all the equipment alone for a while, probably Moose Jaw will be able to get it themselves.


George Alexander Cruickshank: I would ask that the same consideration be given out in British Columbia to the prevention of flooding of farm lands and the erosion of farm lands on the Fraser river as is given under this act to bringing in water for use elsewhere. I do not think it is necessary to make a speech on this; the minister knows about it.


Mr. GRANT:: Let us pray for rain.


George Alexander Cruickshank: We do not need to pray for rain; we have it.
What I am particularly interested in is that we should be given the same consideration, so far as our difficulties are concerned, as is given the prairie provinces. We are asked as farmers, including the farmers of British Columbia and particularly of Fraser Valley, to provide protection against floods and other dangers, and I am suggesting to the minister now that when the rest of Canada is giving protection to the prairie provinces under this act we, too, are entitled to consideration. I have heard a lot from the prairie provinces about starving to death. Well, we are asking for some protection now to keep water off instead of bringing it on, and when that is done we shall be satisfied. Can we expect from the minister some assurance that the rest of Canada will be treated equally with the prairie provinces under this act?


James Garfield Gardiner: I believe I have twice explained that this act applies only to the Palliser triangle and that therefore nothing can be done under it to take care of conditions either in British Columbia or in any other area outside that which is included in the triangle. The work which is referred to by the hon. member is work for which British Columbia is at present responsible, and until something is done to change that situation there is not much possibility of anything being spent under any legislation here.


George Alexander Cruickshank: I am afraid the minister is not quite familiar with farming practices.


James Garfield Gardiner: I admit there are some things I am not familiar with.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Carried.


George Alexander Cruickshank: It is not carried, Mr. Chairman. I want to make that perfectly clear. I am the last one who would defend the present government in British Columbia, but when the minister tells me or implies that

this is a local responsibility, that is all tommy-rot. We might as well understand that now. The Fraser river is the second biggest in British Columbia. Last week two farms in my riding lost ten acres apiece from river erosion. When the minister tries to suggest that this is a provincial or a municipal matter, that is not in accordance with the facts. I am suggesting to the minister that if we in British Columbia and the rest of Canada are expected to contribute toward protection in the prairie provinces, we in British Columbia should be given consideration and should have river bank protection. I do not think the minister fully appreciates the situation. Perhaps it is my fault; maybe I have not stated the matter as clearly as I should.


James Garfield Gardiner: Give us the Fraser river on the prairies and we shall not ask you in British Columbia for anything.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Carried.


George Alexander Cruickshank: No, it is not carried. I heard the hon. member for Provencher talk about wheat day in and day out, and the rest of Canada carried wheat.


Mr. CASE:: What is the rest of Canada?


George Alexander Cruickshank: Ontario, British
Columbia, and Manitoba.


John Ritchie MacNicol: Do not leave out the maritimes and Quebec.


George Alexander Cruickshank: Will the minister
recommended that the act be extended to cover-


An hon. MEMBER:: Prince Edward Island.


George Alexander Cruickshank: I am asking that it be extended to cover the whole of Canada and not the prairie provinces alone.


James Garfield Gardiner: I have already recommended that.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Special-
32. Prairie Farm Assistance Act Administration, $250,000.
James Garfield Gardiner: It might facilitate discussion if I were to make an explanation at this stage. I am bringing in the Prairie Farm Assistance Act as soon as possible and I intend to refer it to the committee on agriculture for consideration. I was going to suggest that we stick as closely as we can to expenditures unjler the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, and there will be opportunity to discuss fully any amendments that may be suggested, or any changes in the act, when it is brought down.

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Thomas John Bentley: Both in the committee and in the house?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes. I had hoped to have it brought down before the estimates came up, but when it is brought down I will move it to the committee on agriculture so that full opportunity will be afforded for discussion.


William Irvine: There is one question which I should like to ask the minister with reference to a peculiar situation which exists in the Peace River block with regard to the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, and which, I believe, does not pertain elsewhere, and that is that it would be difficult for that district to qualify as a crop failure area. Is there any means whereby localities that are affected in the Peace River block may come under the benefits of this act? I understand that the Peace River block is in Alberta for the purposes of the act, and that means that before a district can be regarded as a crop failure area ninety townships must be affected. I question whether the Peace River block, being comparatively a small area, would ever qualify to receive the benefits. For that reason it seems to me hardly fair that they should pay a proportion of the cost without the possibility of enjoying the benefits of the act.


James Garfield Gardiner: "Spring wheat area" means the province of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Peace river district of British Columbia. It is brought under the act at the present time. It can collect under the act, but I understand that the suggestion is that the situation in the Peace River block is such that they cannot come under the terms of the act.


William Irvine: Yes.


James Garfield Gardiner: Well, I am suggesting, as an amendment to the act, that the provinces be able to determine whether they wish to come under it or not.


Eric Bowness McKay: What I have to say consists largely of suggestions and this, I think, is the time for me to say it. My remarks will not take up much time, but I would be remiss in my duty to my constituency if I did not discuss this matter now. For the benefit of some members of the house who at one time or another have seemed to show a lack of appreciation of the difficulties which face a large part of the farming population of the west, may I be permitted to make a few comments? Almost every year some part of the west has a partial or a complete crop failure because of the vagaries of the weather or because of the ravages of plant disease, as in the case of cereal
rust and too from insect pests, which frequently cause a total loss of crop. This brings about a wide fluctuation in farm income and, in many instances, creates real distress and hardship. I come from that district and I doubt if anyone else here has spent as long a time as I have in the particular area affected. I have witnessed that hardship on many occasions in the more than forty years that I have lived in southern Saskatchewan where the crop has failed because of want of rain, and dire poverty has resulted because the crops have never reached maturity. The Prairie Farm Assistance Act was enacted primarily for the purpose of relieving such distressful conditions in the areas affected, and has, I may say, been a definite improvement over the old system of relief which was in vogue during the thirties.
I wish to commend the government on this move, because I feel it is certainly a step in the right direction; it is progressive. But at this time I desire to draw the minister's attention to certain dissatisfactions which seem to prevail, at least in some quarters of the west, with regard to the administration of the Prairie Farm Assistance Act. I hope that the minister will accept what I have to say in the spirit in which it is given. While there is criticism of the administration, I shall endeavour to be fair and offer constructive suggestions which I hope will be given careful consideration by the government.
In the first place, before the act becomes operative the federal government must declare a crop failure region or an emergency year. This is done at the discretion of the federal authorities, and only when 171 townships are involved in crop failure. Many farmers are of the opinion that the act should apply automatically whenever an applicant, through the loss of his crop, and through no fault of his own, is in need of assistance. Furthermore, ,1 should like to suggest to the minister that, since revision is under consideration, some thought be given to the young veterans and others under twenty-one years of age who are still residing with their parents and operating farms elsewhere because they have been unable as yet to set up homes for themselves. Under the act these young men are not eligible to receive any benefit. I suggest that if at eighteen years of age they are eligible and old enough to fight for the country they should be eligible, even though they are under twenty-one, to receive benefits under Prairie Farm Assistance Act.
Second, there is a growing demand from various groups of farmers that the bonus should be paid on an individual basis. There has been the suggestion that such a plan would involve considerably more administra-
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tive costs, and I appreciate some of the difficulties in this regard. But appraisers and inspectors are now employed to inspect individual farm units in areas where crop failure is most apparent in order to ascertain what the actual situation is. It would appear that there may be sufficient field men now employed to do this job without the addition of large numbers to the staff. I believe that such an alteration in the policy would actually save money to the treasury rather than increase its expenditures. To support this contention, I wish to draw the attention of the minister to the fact that there were farmers living in the bonus area last season who had substantial yields, but because they resided in the government declared area were recipients under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act. On the other hand, farmers living on the very fringe of that stricken area who had little or no crop at all received no benefits whatsoever under the act because the average yield in the area in which they conducted farming operations exceeded the maximum set by the act as a qualification for bonus payment. Not infrequently the farmer who failed to obtain assistance was just across the road from his neighbour who did receive the bonus.
The farmers pay a levy of one per cent on grain marketed to establish a fund from which benefits can be drawn. Unemployment insurance operates in a very similar way but is not dependent in its payments to the unemployed on the discretionary power given a governor in council which must declare an emergency year before those in need can benefit under that act. When the farmer has a complete crop failure, or even a partial one, he is in need of assistance, and he Should be eligible at once to obtain that assitsance from the fund that has been set up to provide it. An unemployed person enters a claim for assistance from the unemployment insurance fund immediately he loses his job, and in the matter of a very few days becomes eligible to receive benefits. I believe the Prairie Farm Assistance Act should operate similarly and should become automatically operative in the same way as the Unemployment Insurance Act,
Third, the amount of bonus under P.F.A.A. is definitely inadequate if the intention of the act is to eliminate the demand for relief, and I believe that is one of its objectives. The maximum of $500 per farm unit is obviously sufficient only to meet very modest farm operating expenses, such as the purchase of fuel and seed. There is not sufficient in this amount to provide adequately for the living expenses of a farmer's family.
TMr. McKay.]
In areas of western Canada where P.FA.A. is operating at the present time the maximum amount which is allowed to farmers is, I believe, $500 per farm unit. There must be a sufficient allocation made in this case to carry the farmer from one crop to another, because he has no means of livelihood in the meantime. At this time may I refer to a resolution which was passed at the convention held in March of this year by the Saskatchewan association of rural municipalities? The resolution reads:
That the crop failure bonus be increased to $5 per acre, and that the maximum be $1,000 and the assessment two per cent, and that payments be made on an individual basis.
It has been suggested that certain areas in Saskatchewan be zoned, leaving northern and north-eastern areas at the present one per cent levy, while areas subjected to repeated drought will be provided with a somewhat higher rate. Areas in Manitoba and Alberta could be similarly zoned, because they have much the same, situation in these provinces as we have in Saskatchewan.
So far as the operating of this act is concerned, I believe that the wider possibilities of a crop insurance plan should be carefully explored by the government. The minister may reply to this suggestion that such a scheme would be feasible only under the jurisdiction of the provinces. But it appears to me there should be no objection by the federal Department of Agriculture to at least exploring the possibilities of a nation-wide crop insurance plan, even though the implementing of the scheme by federal authorities may be ultra vires at the moment.
If the plan is then considered practicable, arrangements could be made to subsidize the provinces, or better still to have an amendment to the British North America Act introduced to take care of the situation, as was necessary for unemploment insurance, to give the federal government jurisdiction in the field.
In order to have stability in farm income some comprehensive system of crop insurance appears vital. It is generally recognized that such a scheme would require substantial contributions from the federal treasury. I submit that even though that may be necessary it would be a wiser policy than to leave the farmers in the unhappy state of having to accept relief when a series of crop failures occur.
The farmers' levy to the fund would still have to be based on production, and of necessity would vary from year to year, as do the contributions of the industrial worker to the unemployment insurance fund. Crops have

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long been insured against hail damage. There seems to be no adequate reason why crops should not be insured against damage from frost, drought, insects or ravages of plant disease in the very same way. The fruit grower who suffers a loss of crop because the fruit blossoms are destroyed by a late spring frost and the truck farmer who suffers because of insects destroying his vegetables need protection quite as much as do the cereal farmers. Any plan of crop insurance therefore should include fruit, tobacco and vegetable crops, as well as cereals. The setting up of such a scheme would tend to create stabilized conditions in agriculture throughout the Dominion of Canada for our farming population, which the present Prairie Farm Assistance Act, because of its inadequacy, does not provide.


Victor Quelch: I was very glad to hear the minister say the other day that far-reaching amendments to the act were to be brought down because, if its efficiency is to be increased, those amendments are urgently needed. I hope that when they are brought down they will be of the right type. I do not wish for one moment to belittle the value of the Prairie Farm Assistance Act. It has performed a great service; had it not been for that act many farmers would have been tossed off their land before this.
I had intended to discuss the act at some length, but in view of the fact that the minister says a bill will be brought down in the near future, I shall defer my remarks until that time. Would the minister intimate whether or not the amendments will cover the procedure in respect of deciding upon the eligibility of land?


James Garfield Gardiner: The amendments to the act, as I have submitted them, have not yet been finally passed by council. But the act itself will provide a different method of determining whether lands shall or shall not come under the act.


Mr. ARGUE:: I do not wish to delay the passage of the item, but I think it will be agreed that I have not taken an undue amount of time in this discussion of the estimates of the Department of Agriculture. As most hon. members know, parts of western Canada are at this time experiencing severe drought.


An hon. MEMBER:: It rained the other day.


Hazen Robert Argue: I hope that is so. We had a long discussion respecting the increase in prices of farm implements. That subject, important as it is, would not be of much importance to the farmer if he suffered a long series of crop failures.
I noticed that the Minister of Agriculture, in replying to a suggestion the other night that a crop insurance scheme rather than a scheme of assistance in time of crop failure should be brought in, stated that all studies as to the feasibility of a strictly crop insurance scheme had shown that such a scheme was not feasible in that part of Canada at least.
The reason it is not feasible is that the area is large, and has a variable yield. Investments farmers have to make are high. More than that, the farmer receives for his products prices which vary widely. Any scheme of crop insurance practised in the past has collected an almost uniform rate from the farmer, based upon the sales he makes. The payments made out are on a fixed basis. For that reason, whenever prices go down, the crop insurance scheme goes bankrupt.
While I should be very glad to see Manitoba given a chance to withdraw from the operation of the act, if they so wish, I would suggest that if in future years we have poor prices for our farm products, a crop insurance scheme will not be able to work, even in Manitoba, and that the people in that province will be wanting to get back under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act very quickly. When we are discussing any crop insurance scheme we should keep in mind the fact that in the past the government has had to come to the assistance of farming communities in a way that is far less desirable than under the present Prairie Farm Assistance Act. Between 1930 and 1939, governments in Canada spent in Saskatchewan alone $156 million on relief. In that province in the last six years the Prairie Farm Assistance Act has cost the federal treasury about $20 million. The act cost the federal government in the year in which Saskatchewan had its poorest crop yield since the act was in operation, the sum of $11 million. But in 1937 the government paid $47 million in relief to take care of the people in that province in the absence of a proper scheme of crop failure assistance.
A number of crop insurance schemes have been tried in various countries of the world, and particularly some extensive operations in the United States. In every case, every crop insurance plan undertaken has failed miserably. In order that a proper insurance scheme may be feasible at all it must operate in an area in which yields vary little. For instance, in the crop insurance scheme used in the United States in a county in Ohio, where the yield was 21-7 bushels per acre on a long-time average, and where the crops were insured for half of that amount, the farmer to insure a crop of at least eleven bushels to the acre had

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to pay only two per cent of his annual sales. In the county of Morton, Kansas, where the average yield was only 7-7 bushels per acre, to get insurance of something less than four bushels per acre the farmer had to pay each year 26-3 per cent of his sales as a premium.
So it is obvious that in any area in which there is a great variation, the premiums which must be collected to cover even a meagre scheme of crop insurance are very high, and the farmers naturally think they cannot afford that type of crop insurance. Consequently they withdraw from the plan; and those farmers who have crops almost every year- and good crops-stay under the scheme because they can probably get an insurance rate of around two per cent.
The Prairie Farm Assistance Act came up in the discussions of the dominion-provincial conference. The brief Saskatchewan presented to the last session of that conference contains a good deal of information and many suggestions with respect to the Prairie Farm Assistance Act. I should say that perhaps about 40 per cent of the material in *the brief dealt with that act. So that, certainly for Saskatchewan, a comprehensive scheme of crop failure assistance is absolutely necessary. In any scheme undertaken I believe a standard levy must be collected, as there is at the present time, on the basis of the sales a farmer makes.	.
I think some consideration should be given to zoning and perhaps Saskatchewan could be divided into three or perhaps only two zones. Certainly any scheme of crop insurance under which the individual farmer must pay a rate depending upon his own long-term average yield is entirely out of the question. It just is not practical.
At the present time the highest average payment to any farmer in a crop failure area under the Prairie Farm Assistance'Act is $400. That will do little more than pay the cost of seed and the seeding of the crop; it allows nothing for the payment of taxes, for summer-fallowing, for interest and for living expenses. Farm management studies conducted by the university of Saskatchewan shows that a farmer needs a minimum of $1,000 to maintain his farming operations and his family for one year.	.


An hon. MEMBER:: What sized farm?


Hazen Robert Argue: For the size of the average farm in my area, 320 acres.
Farmers in a crop failure area should receive $6 per acre on their cultivated acreage, which would provide a man who had 160 acres in crop and 160 acres in summer-fallow with approximately $1,000. He could

then buy his seed, pay his taxes and maintain his family for a year, although that is little enough. Then $3 per acre would be a reasonable payment in a low yield area, possibly based on a yield of from four to eight-bushels per acre. Payments should be made on an individual basis. We all know that there' are farmers who have suffered complete crop failures through no fault of their own but because there are not enough other farmers around them who are in the same predicament they are unable to obtain any benefit under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act.
In order that an area may be declared a crop failure area there must be 171 townships in Saskatchewan, 54 in Manitoba and 90 in Alberta having an average yield of less than five bushels per acre. One can easily see that the Prairie Farm Assistance Act as applied in western Canada does not adequately cover all farmers who suffer crop failures from time to time.
Certain of the regulations under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act should be changed. I have received dozens and dozens of letters from farmers who felt they were entitled to receive the so-called bonus but who, for some reason or another found they were not entitled to it because of the regulations. Prairie farm assistance payments should be p&id to all bona fide farmers. A farmer may see in July that he will have no crop to harvest. He may go to another province or go to town and get a job- If he does that he will not receive a bonus payment.


James Garfield Gardiner: He gets a bonus if he comes back to the farm again; it is only when -he stays away that he does not get it.


Hazen Robert Argue: I am glad the minister has given me the assurance that such a man will get the payment. I have been in the Regina office time and time again and have talked with the officials, but this is the first intimation I have had that if that man returns he will get paid for that year.


James Garfield Gardiner: Anyone who leaves the farm before November 1 and stays away is not paid, but anyone who leaves the farm to go to work because he has no crop and comes back before May 1 of next year and puts in a crop is paid.


Hazen Robert Argue: I thank the minister for making that statement. Regulation No. 2 states that a farmer is not considered a farmer under the act unless he lives on the farm and his primary occupation is farming, or unless he lives not more than twenty miles away from the farm and has no occupation other than-farming. I have in mind one man who is a storekeeper in a small town. He

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tells me that on the average he can make S500 a year from his store. He has a halfsection of land a few miles out of town which he farms. Last year he had a crop failure.


James Arthur Ross: How much does he make on the'average from his farm?


Hazen Robert Argue: I think he is working under the misapprehension that he can make some money on the farm. Anyway, he lost money last year, and he finds he is not entitled to come und,er the Prairie Farm Assistance Act and receive a payment. He is going to find it difficult to buy seed and to farm this year. I can think of another man, a mechanic, who has a small garage, I do not suppose it is any larger than twelve by fourteen feet. He overhauls cars and tractors in the winter time. He has rented a half-section of land which he farms in the summer. Last year there was a crop failure in his area and assistance payments were paid to most of the farmers in the district, but he was not considered to be eligible. Simply because a man has initiative and enough ambition to attempt to make a decent living should not cause him to be discriminated against.


Mr. SINNQTT:: He is not a farmer; he is a speculator; a farmer is a man who stays on the farm.


Hazen Robert Argue: I notice the hon. member
did not stay on the farm. I understand he is an implement dealer.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: Let us get this matter straight.


Hazen Robert Argue: I can think of another man who was a real farmer. Last year he moved to Regina on October 23. He had been n farmer for thirty years; he was a bachelor and he had a crop failure. He saw no reason why he should stay on the farm this year and he moved to Regina. Because he left his farm eight days before the deadline he was refused a bonus payment.


James Garfield Gardiner: Why did he not stay for the eight davs?


Hazen Robert Argue: The minister must realize, as I do. that most of the farmers in Canada do not know of the orders in council that are passed by the government and tacked on to the various acts. I assure the minister that I do not know all the regulations.


James Garfield Gardiner: If he lives in that district he ought to know because he has been dried out often enough.


Mr. GRAYDON:: Some of the ministers forgot about orders in council.
63260-129J


Hazen Robert Argue: Then there is the regulation that a man must be twenty years of age in order to be eligible to obtain a payment under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act. During times of war a man of eighteen years of age is considered to be sufficiently mature to be drafted into the army. As I expressed in a resolution which I placed on the order paper but which we have not as yet got around to discussing, I think young people should be given the franchise when they reach the age of eighteen years. I believe, along with them, that they should be allowed to receive benefits under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act. I do not think I can advance a stronger argument for reducing the eligible age' at which a young man can receive assistance under the act than by quoting a few lines from a letter I received from a young man in my constituency who had not received the bonus. He says:
If I leave the farm now

This letter was written in February of this year.
-it will be for good and I'm sure there are a lot of fellows who feel the same. There's no sense in going out working and then come back and invest in something that I'm not sure is a paying proposition, especially when I did not get the bonus.
I had 60 acres in wheat and 60 acres in summer-fallow. My dad had 90 acres in wheat and oats and 60 acres of summer-fallow, which is a total of 270 acres between the two of us.
If the father had kept the land in his own name and had said to his son, "You drift off into the city; you are old enough to earn your own living," that man would have received an assistance payment on half the total of 270 acres.


James Garfield Gardiner: Not if he had land of his own. There is a limit.


Hazen Robert Argue: If he had 270 acres he would >
have received $2.50 per acre on 135 acres. But, instead, the father said to his son, "I shall turn over to you 120 acres of my land and you can farm on your own." The son stayed home and worked on the farm. He had a crop failure. Then, under the regulations of the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, he was told that he was not entitled to the bonus, and worst of all, the department would not issue a joint cheque to these two men which would still have been a good many dollars less than some individual farmers were able to obtain under the act. The letter goes on:
I am sure it is quite evident that we weren't trying to cheat the government of any money. We were just trying to be honest. If it would have been in my dad's name I would have got the bonus. But by some of the Liberal laws I guess a fellow has to be a crook to make any headway.
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I am afraid that he arrived at that conclusion a little bit too late.
There are many farmers, in my neighbourhood at least, who have only 160 acres under cultivation and, because they are farming a quarter-section of land, they received under this act last year $200. I know families which have only the $200 under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act and a few dollars family allowance to maintain themselves for one year. Surely that is not good enough.
I believe that the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, since it was implemented, has cost the government something like $5,000,000 a year on the average. I believe that the suggestions I have made for changes in the act would mean that the-cost to the government might be in the neighbourhood of $15,000,000 a year; but $15,000,000 is not a sum that the government should shudder away from when one considers that it would be used to help,, as the Minister of Agriculture has told us, at least one million people. It is something less than the cost of a single day's war effort. I would suggest that the government take the money that they spent on one day of the war and spend it now to give the farmers of western Canada adequate protection ' against crop failure. I am sure that in doing so they would receive no serious objections from any part of Canada, because we in the west, too, are also asking that this act be applied to all parts of Canada.
Mr. ROSS (Souris); I was pleased to hear the minister state this evening that he was going to bring in an amending bill which, after discussion on the second reading, would go to the committee on agriculture. But in view of the minister's statement a few days ago about weather conditions on the prairies, that if it did not rain soon they would not have very much of a crop, coupled with the statement made by the hon. member for Provencher not long ago about this act, I am sure there will be, many farmers in his constituency, which is farther east in Manitoba, who will be wanting some assistance under this act if it does not rain and rain quite a few times in the next month on the prairie provinces.


Mr. JUTRAS:: They have ' just had two years of crop failures and never got much assistance.


James Arthur Ross: It is on their behalf that I want to say a few words so that they will become eligible in future for the drought bonus on the prairies.
I agree that considerable changes should be made in details in the amending bill. For instance, many farmers who might be eligible to receive the bonus under an individual basis,

receive no assistance under the township setup at present. I have here a return that was brought down last year. It shows that 8,194 farmers received prairie farm assistance on the basis of eight bushels per acre or less for the 1944-45 crop, and that 2,557 farmers received assistance on the basis of from eight to twelve bushels to the acre. The 8,194 farmers received $1,686,488.92 and the 2,557 farmers received $511,116.29.
The question was raised a while ago of repeated crop failures in certain sections of the prairie provinces. The return from which I have just quoted also shows how many townships or part townships were eligible for assistance from the 1939 crop to the 1944 crop once, twice, three times, four times or five times. The figures are as follows:
Townships year, 1,434.	eligible	in	whole	or	in	partTownships years. 1,141.	eligible	in	whole	or	in	partTownships years, 837.	eligible	in	whole	or	in	partTownships years, 527.	eligible	in	whole	or	in	partTownships years, 135.	eligible	in	whole	or	in	part
in 1 in 2 in 3 in 4 in 5
That is quite a record of consecutive crop failures, 135 townships having crop failures for five successive years. The point I wish to make is this. At one time under the act a man who, in a small comer of a township, had threshed forty bushels to the acre still collected the bonus because the greater part of the township had almost an entire crop failure. That situation has been taken care of in recent years to some extent, but I hope that in the amending legislation the minister will protect the individual farmer. I have cited this one case jftst to show how unfair the act could be on the township basis. A man with a big yield received this assistance, despite the fact that many of his neighbours had crop failures. The reverse might be the case, whereby those having a crop failure would be denied assistance. That is one of the difficulties I point out to the minister in the hope that it will be overcome by the amending legislation. As I pointed out the other evening when the hon. member for Provencher was speaking, the provincial governments of the three prairie provinces have set up committees more than once to study the matter of crop insurance, and their reports show that they found many difficulties. But in this amending legislation, assuming that a very careful and thorough study will be given to the matter, I believe the minister will be able to make some headway in improving the act in the interests of the individual farmer who suffers crop loss through no fault of his own, but owing to drought conditions,

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which, though I hate to say it, I feel convinced many farmers in the prairie provinces are going to suffer during this calendar year.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: I rise to say a few words on the question of prairie farm assistance. A good deal has been said about it by other members of our group, and I need not go over that again. But, coming from Manitoba, and having heard two opposing views of the Prairie Farm Assistance Act from Manitoba members, one view by the hon. member for Provencher and the opposite view by the hon. member for Souris, I am inclined to agree this time with the hon. member for Souris. I do not think the solution of the difficulty we have been having in Manitoba in connection with this act is to withdraw from the act, because in the first place, as far as I have been able to find out, there is no prospect at the present time that the provincial government has a crop insurance plan ready or that it is prepared to put one in operation in the near future. Until such time as there is some legislation to replace this act in Manitoba, I do not think it would be wise to withdraw from it.
That is not the only reason why I am inclined to take the view of the hon. member who has just resumed his seat rather than that of the hon. member opposite. I believe the whole spirit of the act is one of mutual aid, so to speak, that farmers are banding together under this act to do something which each one individually cannot do. It is a form of cooperation, something toward which we should take further steps, and to withdraw from the act because the provinces as a whole do not receive as much in benefits as they pay in by deductions would be, to my way of thinking, a regressive step, an act of selfishness. I admit that the farmers of Manitoba have paid more into the fund than they have received from it, and I would urge upon the minister the necessity of certain amendments to the act in order to make it more equitable for Manitoba, but I do not believe the solution is to withdraw from it and leave ourselves between the two well known alternatives.
I should like to point out one amendment which I think is particularly needed: it is in connection with hail damage. I do not know whether anyone has mentioned it here to-day; but, according to the way the act works now, it is very difficult for the individual farmer to collect compensation for hail damage. I have a case in point in my own constituency- I believe the minister is quite familiar with it because we have had correspondence about
it-where in a certain township a hailstorm came along in a narrow strip and made the damage such that certain people who should have received compensation could not get it because their township did not have the required amount of damage, while perhaps in another township where the damage was not quite so bad but was spread out more thinly, they were able to collect. The letter which I received from the deputy minister has this significant sentence in it:
This department inspected townships 27 and 28 and found the average yield to be, in wheat, 8-3 bushels per acre. Therefore the board of review disqualified this township.
This means that on account of having just a little more than the eight bushels per acre the farmers in that township were not able to get any assistance whatever. I happen to know there are certain townships in the constituency where the extent of damage put them just on the borderline and the individual farmers could not collect. That is, I think, a strong argument for putting the administration of the act on an individual farmer basis.
I should like to add that in the case of Manitoba, if amendments to the act are to be made, it might be possible to provide in that province for compensation for flood as well as for hail and drought. I do not know if any part of Saskatchewan is susceptible to flood damage, but there are certain areas in Manitoba, including the constituency of Provencher, where flood damage is somewhat more serious than drought or hail damage, and if the act could be so amended that compensation could be paid in the case of flood and hail as well as drought in Manitoba I am sure that the farmers of that province would not advocate withdrawing from the act.


James Garfield Gardiner: Before the discussion goes any further I should like to say something which I had intended to say at an earlier stage. I want to express my own appreciation to the hon. member for Wood Mountain for having given to this committee the very careful outline that he has of some of the shortcomings of what we sometimes call crop insurance. I take from his remarks that he has made a very careful study of it, and I judge from what he said that he was much in favour of crop failure assistance rather than crop insurance. While I was listening to what, he had to say, I thought it would be well worth while for hon. members who have been discussing these two ideas, the one of crop failure assistance and the other of crop insurance, to take the trouble to read that part of his speech w'hich deals with that matter. It. bears out fully, I think, what has been contended by myself, as the originator of this-
Supply-Agriculture

idea, from the beginning, that in an area such as Saskatchewan, particularly crop insurance as such is almost impossible, for the reasons which were given; and the illustration mentioned as between a state in the United States wftere they seldom have crop failure and another state where they have it quite regularly is the best indication of what happens to those who rely upon insurance as against crop failure assistance in areas of that kind.
Other matters which were brought up cover most of the objections to the act. One thing I have been urging, and urging rather strongly recently, was given the greatest emphasis by two of the speakers, namely that the situation is probably not quite the same since young men started to come back from overseas as it was before they went overseas. The provision which is in the regulation-it is not in the act -to the effect that a young man under the age of twenty who lived with his parents was not paid, had not much more to do with the claims than simply this, th'at there was an effort, when the act was first brought in, by a very limited number of people to collect more money under the act than they were really entitled to. A man with, let us say, two or three sections of land was entitled to collect only on half of 400 acres, or 200, but by dividing that land among a certain number of members of his family he could get all the land under the compensation provisions. Some of the regulations were inserted in order to avoid that, and one of the methods of simplifying the administration which was strongly recommended for a considerable time before it was brought in was that the age limit be put in. That may have been all right at the time and it did not create much difficulty until this year, but men have been coming back from overseas since last year who could not possibly have been utilizing any method of that kind in order to obtain greater advantages under the act. I have been suggesting for some time that that regulation ought to be changed and perhaps made to apply retroactively, but at the moment I am not able to say that it will be. It has to be given further consideration and brought in for change. I can see, however, that there is some reason for that.
When the act gets before the committee, hon. members who are interested in that area will be able to discuss the question, and there is no member who has greater reason to be interested in the area than the hon. member for Wood Mountain. The area has been under drought for a considerable number of years. I think it will be agreed when we go over the act carefully and make some changes in

the regulations as they now stand, that most of the restrictions which are there must exist for the general reason that restrictions of this kind are put into legislation, namely, to safeguard the treasury, which, after all, represents the money of the people against a few who sometimes take advantage of conditions, and unfortunately there are people who suffer in consequence. It is not easy to overcome some of the difficulties that exist by any method other than the regulations that are here, but these matters can remain for discussion until the act is before the committee.


Mr. DIEFEXBAKER:: I do not wish to take up any time repeating what has already been said, but I desire to bring to the attention of the minister a specific instance that has been brought to his notice previously in the course of correspondence. I have also taken it up a number of times with the officials of his department who have given me a most courteous hearing but who invariably have-advised me of the impossibility of doing anything toward relieving the situation.
The hon. member for Souris, who has given profound study to the matter, both since being in the house and prior to that time in connection with his position as president of the municipalities' association of Manitoba, has pressed for a long time, together with other members, for payment on an individual basis. I realize the difficulties in the way of that being carried into effect, but it does seem unfair that many are denied the payment of the bonus by reason of the regulations or because they do not live in an area sufficiently large to bring them within the regulations. They are required to make a contribution, in return for which they get nothing, unless the area that suffers drought damage is large enough. I refer particularly to an area north of Regina in the rural municipality of Dufferin. That area is bordered on the south by a water course. Across that water course the crops are invariably good, while north of the water course they are invariably bad; but because the area is less than one-quarter of a township, they are unable to secure payment of any bonus whatsoever. They have been in that position for the last several years.


James Garfield Gardiner: They live at the top of the valley.


John George Diefenbaker: The minister knows the area. They live right at the top of the valley; they pay year by year, and they suffer loss year by year. It is all very well to ask, why do they not get out? They cannot get out. The fact remains that each year they sow, and it so happens that for the past

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four or five years, and even prior to that, they have suffered losses and have never had any return.
I fully realize that legislation, however carefully drafted it may be, cannot cover every eventuality. But there is an area that has suffered repeated failures, and there are two other similar areas in other parts of the province. I suggest that, when amendments are brought down, something be done to cover that situation.
With regard to the matter raised by the hon. member for Wood Mountain, in what all must have regarded as a most able and constructive address, he mentioned the case of some man who was not living on the farm and *was denied payment of the bonus. I realize that there, too, there are difficulties in the way; but I feel that section 5, subsection 6, which gives the minister power to make regulations excluding from the operation of this act farmers who do not reside upon farms within the meaning of the regulation, should be reviewed and changes should be made in connection therewith.
Let me mention one example. An elderly couple have lived on the farm until they find it necessary to leave and have someone work the farm. They make the contribution but they are denied payment of the bonus. I might mention also cases such as the hon. member for Wood Mountain pointed out of individuals who go into town to earn a living temporarily. There is no reason that I can see why they should not be considered bona fide farmers and entitled to the application of the act.
I suggest that when an opportunity is given to discuss this matter in the committee on agriculture, and when the amendments are brought down, questions such as have been referred to this evening should receive the consideration of the draftsman to the end that the anomalies which now exist be removed. I do not like repetition, but I again urge the minister to do something with respect to the area I mentioned near Bethune, Saskatchewan, and two or three others, with a view to having these people, who are bona fide farmers and who have struggled against adversity for years, be given consideration such as this act is designed to afford. I suggest that something be done to meet the situation of farmers who, by reason of drought, have not a reasonable crop.


Mr. FAIR:: Another problem has given trouble in the past and I do not know whether provision has been made to meet it. I refer to the farmer who has one, two or more sons working on the farm with him. They may all
have their own separate crops, but because they all use the same set of machinery they have been given only one bonus..


James Garfield Gardiner: That is not the intention. The regulations do not prevent a son from living with his parents and using the same equipment as his parents use. As a matter of fact, the intention was that they should be encouraged to do this rather than discouraged. But there are cases where that is given as the reason-though other reasons develop -why they are not allowed the payment. It may be that the board have decided that the arrangement is not a bona fide one.


Victor Quelch: Can the minister explain the formula used for deciding whether a man is a farmer or a rancher? Two or three years ago the minister himself criticized strongly some of the decisions that have been handed down, and recently I have run into a good deal of trouble regarding a number of men who were termed ranchers but who, in my opinion, were farmers. In the area south of the Goose Lake line it takes an average of forty acres to one head of cattle. So that if a man had seventy-five head of cattle he would have to have 3,000 acres for pasture; and if he farmed 200 acres it would be decided that, having 3,000 acres for pasture and 200 acres for crops, he must be a rancher. In such circumstances a man could be a farmer, although he had 3,000 acres for pasture land.


James Garfield Gardiner: I understand that
shortly after the matter was discussed in the house on a previous occasion-as a matter of fact, I had some discussion with the board -the board was changed and a new chairman put on it. These matters were all discussed fully, and I understand that that interpretation has not been put on the ranchers since.


Victor Quelch: How do you arrive at what is a rancher; what is the formula?


James Garfield Gardiner: As a matter of fact, I insisted that there should be no arriving at it at all; that anybody who did not know what a rancher was in western Canada should not be on that board. I told them that I would try to see that he was not on unless he was able to determine what was a rancher himself, without any definition being put down. Anyone out there knows what a rancher is.


Victor Quelch: I did not have any trouble for about two years and then within the past month or two I have received a number of letters protesting about it. I think I had better hand them over to Mr. Stevenson.


James Garfield Gardiner: Send them over and I shall have a look at them. I might say that I was getting a lot of complaints before I
Sup-ply-Agriculture

took action. I think none have come to me since that time. I hope the board is not getting back to its old practice.


Mr. NICHOLSON:: I have had some correspondence with the department regarding the position of a number of cooperative farms. Would the minister give us some statement as to whether amendments are to be brought in whereby the cooperative farm will be put back in the position-


James Garfield Gardiner: That is one of the amendments proposed. I cannot say it will get here, but I hope it will.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Special-
Si. To provide for assistance to encourage the improvement of cheese anad cheese factories, $2,000,000.
Mr. DANIEL:: I notice that under this item there is an amount of 12,000,000. There has been an additional amount of $200,000 added this year. I understand that this item is for premiums paid on high-scoring cheese; in other words, high-quality cheese. Another portion of it is for subsidies paid for the construction of cheese factories and to bring such factories up to a certain standard. Am I right in my assumption in that regard?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, that is correct; that is what it is for.


Kenneth Roy Daniel: Since I have the honour to represent perhaps one of the largest producers of cheese in the Dominion of Canada I feel that a large percentage of this money will eventually come back to my constituency, because I am quite sure that the cheese-makers there can be favourably compared with those of any other part of Canada.
For the information of the committee, I may say that last year in Oxford county we produced some eight million pounds of cheese. That is a lot of cheese. In addition to that, we produced processed milk by the carload. In fact, hundreds of carloads of condensed, evaporated milk were shipped overseas. I remember that at the last session the hon. member for Lanark mentioned the large cheese they made in Perth. He attributed the success of Lanark in the production of cheese to that large cheese. If it did that for Lanark it also did Oxford county some good, because we have been in the production of cheese ever since that time.
I should also like to bring a matter to the attention of the minister to show him that in Oxford county we treasure the dairy cow. I believe we are the only county in Canada which has erected a statue to the memory of a dairy cow after she has passed to her great

reward. I refer to that wonderful cow Spring-bank Snow Countess, owned, bred and milked by Mr. Tom Dent of the city of Woodstock. Mr. Dent is now a member of the Ontario legislature at Toronto.


Gordon Graydon: A Progressive Conservative?


Kenneth Roy Daniel: Yes, he is a Conservative.


James Garfield Gardiner: Don't blame that on the cow.


Kenneth Roy Daniel: On the outskirts of the city of Woodstock on the very ground where this cow used to graze, eat the grass to produce this wonderful record of 9,300 pounds of but-terfat in her lifetime lactation period, stands a mohument or statue, life-sized, with floodlights on it at night. It was erected by the Holstein Friesian association of Canada. No doubt that cow has had her picture taken more often than any other cow in Canada. I feel safe in saying that her picture is in every state of the United States and in every province of Canada, because whenever you drive past there in the day time you will see tourists out having their pictures taken, with the children on the back of this beautiful Holstein cow.
Things are going along not too badly in the dairy industry in Oxford apart from a little dispute over prices, but there is another matter that I should like to bring to the attention of the minister at this time. Mr. Chairman, I may be entirely out of order, but if I am no doubt you will correct me.- This matter should have really come up under the diseases of animals item, but I was unavoidably absent on that occasion. When that item was under discussion I understand no hon. member mentioned mastitis, a dread disease which is making serious inroads into the production of milk in western Ontario at the present time. I know of a complete herd which has gone to the butcher's block because of it. Mastitis is a very contagious infection. It gets into the udder of the cow, and when the dairy cow loses her udder she has lost everything. Have the federal government taken any steps to combat this disease, or are they making any studies of it? I wish the minister would answer that question. I have been approached by many farmers of my riding and they certainly are concerned over this matter. I have many farmers in my riding with 200 acre farms; it is not uncommon for them to produce up to 2,500 pounds of milk a day, and that requires a lot of milking. When this disease gets in the herd I know for a fact that their production has been halved. There are certain remedies that I know veter-

Supply-Agriculture
inarians have been using, but I believe that further study should be made into this important matter.	[DOT]


James Garfield Gardiner: As the hon. member said, the item was up some days ago, but the disease of mastitis was not mentioned in the discussion that took place. We spent most of our time on Bang's disease. For a number of years studies have been under way that finally resulted in the.discovery of a method which appears to give most promising results. Penicillin used under conditions which ensure an accurate diagnosis has proved capable of curing approximately 90 per cent of the infected quarter. Every effort is being made to encourage the use of this drug under conditions which aim at total elimination of the disease from the herd. It is believed that only when this is put into practice will the economic burden caused by this disease be removed. Therefore the investigations have been made. Penicillin, which is proving beneficial in so many things, is proving beneficial in the treatment of this disease.


Mr. WEBB:: I have been sitting here now for some weeks listening attentively to the interesting discussion in connection with the Department of Agriculture. I have listened to hon. members from the west pleading for assistance for their people, because it is too dry. I have listened to hon. members from the east pleading that it is too wet. I happen to live in between, less than a hundred miles from Ottawa, and I would not want anyone to have the impression that we are either too dry or too wet. But we do, at times, really suffer from drought, and sometimes from too much rain. However, we are fortunate in being able to crawl up on the high spots when it is too wet, and when it is dry we go down to the lower places.
So far as assistance is concerned, in my particular part of the country I think the minister will agree that it must come particularly from this item. I should like some explanation of the subsidy for the construction and reconstruction of cheese factories. Mine is a dairying part of the country, and I was not of the opinion that cheese factory construction received much assistance. I do not know in what way that assistance is given.
In fact, we have lost a number of cheese factories to milk factories. Would the minister be good enough to. break down the item? I am not referring, to equipment, but rather to the reconstruction of cheese factories. The amount is increased this year from $50,000 to $250,000, which would look as though we might expect something further by way of building and maintenance of cheese factories.


James Garfield Gardiner: The vote has been in existence since 1939, and was put into effect for the purpose of improving the quality of cheese. There were two ways taken, as was suggested a few minutes ago, to bring about that improvement; one was to pay for high-quality cheese the amount of one cent on 93 score and two cents on 94 score. In addition to that, provision was made for spending money to improve equipment; that is, to get refrigeration into the curing room, and to . improve curing rooms in order to assist in improving the standard of cheese.
In addition to that, in quite a number of places there were factories which were very much out of date. Then, in some places there were more factories in those districts than were required. They were not able to make things go. Too many of them had been established, and we wanted to encourage them perhaps to do away with one and to improve the other. We agreed. to do certain things to assist along those lines.
Those were summed up in this way: (a) to encourage the consolidation of existing factories in order to secure improvement and greater uniformity of quality of production through increased production per factory;
(b)	to assist in providing improved cheese maturing facilities in cheese factories which will result in improved quality and reduce loss of weight during maturing;
(c)	to assist in a standardization of diameter of cheese pressing equipment, thereby securing improved appearance of the cheese. That is, many of the old presses were of different sizes. Some of them built a high cheese instead of a flat cheese. To get it standardized, we gave assistance to have that equipment changed.
(d)	to provide for the payment of a premium for highest quality cheese. I gave the premiums when I spoke a few minutes ago.
Then, it has been pointed out that the item this year is $250,000 as against $50,000 last year. The point is that last year we were unable to get the materials. During the war, as hon. members know, many of the materials required for doing these things were not available. It was anticipated more of them would be available this year, and we would be able to overtake many of the applications that are in. That is, for subsidies for construction and reconstruction of cheese factories, the improvement of cheese maturing facilities in cheese factories, and for the standardization of cheese pressing equipment. We expect to be able to get five times as much equipment as we got last year. We could have
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spent the amount last year if we had been able to get the equipment. But we were not able to get it.


George Robert Webb: I understand this large item of $1,750,000 for premiums on high quality cheese. But the item which was not quite clear to me was the one for $250,000. Have any subsidies been paid for construction and maintenance of cheese factories in the county of Leeds?


James Garfield Gardiner: I am not sure that we have the information for counties, but we have it for provinces. Under the item of amalgamation, we have amalgamated 47 in Quebec, three in Ontario. In the matter of insulation, there have been 150 in Quebec,
19 in Ontario, two in Manitoba and one in Alberta. For insulation and refrigeration there have been 242 in Quebec, 262 in Ontario, seven in Alberta and one in British Columbia. For pressing equipment there have been eight in New Brunswick, four in Prince Edward Island, two in Quebec, 141 in Ontario, and one in British Columbia.
The totals for all are: New Brunswick, eight; Prince Edward Island, 4; Quebec, 441; Ontario, 425; Manitoba, two; Alberta, eight, and British Columbia, two.
While I have not the information by counties, I am reasonably sure that there has been some reequipment in the county of Leeds, and that they have received payments under the provision for reequipment. Perhaps they have not received anything in respect ' of the rebuilding of factories.


Mr. HACKETT:: In the last month or six weeks the minister has referred frequently to a procedure in Quebec whereby factories have become convertible into cheese factories or butter factories, as opportunity for sale of one or other of these commodities seems to become more attractive. Has any part of this $250,000 been devoted to effecting this convertibility in respect of the butter and cheese factories in Quebec?


James Garfield Gardiner: I would doubt very much if any considerable proportion of it has been used for that purpose. There may have been instances where it has been proposed to add a cheese factory to a building already producing butter, in which event they would probably come under the regulations as applied to equipment. But that is a condition which, as I understand it, has existed in Quebec for many years. They have had duplex plants, I do not know what their origin was, or who originally advocated their operation. But the fact is that they have those duplex plants and, strange to say,

there are very few of them anywhere but Quebec. One may wonder why that should be so, but the fact remains. Someone must have promoted the idea at one time, and succeeded in having a considerable number of them established in that province.


John Thomas Hackett: Has the minister any detailed information on this particular phase of the enterprise? He made several references to it. The fact that I am not thoroughly familiar with the situation is of no great significance, but I must point out that I have not been able to localize many of those factories, nor have I been able to find many instances where a change from cheese making to butter making has taken place.


James Garfield Gardiner: I had the figures here the other night when we were discussing it, but I do not know whether I can locate them at the moment. Would the hon. member mind if I got the information for him and give it to him to-morrow in typewritten form?


John Thomas Hackett: That is quite satisfactory.


Mr. TUSTIN:: Cheese production this year is down considerably as compared with the same period last year. If my figures are correct it is down 35-8 per cent for the four months. The estimates provide for $1,750,000 for quality cheese, which is the same as was voted last year. In many instances the subsidy is not forthcoming to the cheese factories in the late fall and the patrons do not receive it for some time. Some cheese factories borrow the money and pay the subsidies and then wait until it is passed by the government for the ensuing year. Beginning June 1, cheese is being requisitioned for the British market. After that date all cheese manufactured in Ontario and Quebec will have to be sent to the dairy products board for shipment to the United Kingdom.
Does the minister think that, with the prices now prevailing for milk going into cheese, he will be able to supply the 125,000,000 pounds which wre have contracted to ship to the United Kingdom this year? If he does not, then I suggest that some arrangement be made whereby, if all this $250,000 for the improvement of cheese factories and equipment is not required this year, an extra premium for quality be paid to producers. I believe the minister is on the right track in paying a subsidy for quality, because I think the records will show that since this subsidy was put on there has been a great improvement in the quality of cheese manufactured in this country. If the minister does not think he is going to get this 125,000,000 pounds of

Supply-Agriculture
cheese for the United Kingdom, when he brings down his supplementary estimates he should give further consideration to increasing the quality premium.


James Garfield Gardiner: I do not want to discourage anyone, but our officials do not expect to get the 125,000,000 pounds, of cheese for export this year, no matter what we do. Our feed position seems to be such as not to permit of that being accomplished. The only thing that may make it possible is particularly good grass during the summer. We are requisitioning all cheese after June 1 to go to the United Kingdom, but we are not requisitioning cheese in May. Some think that the figure we shall reach will be 115,000,0000 pounds and others think that we shall not reach even that. I took the position that we should not lower our sights, that we should aim at 125,000,000 pounds. This matter has been discussed with the British and they understand the position. They do not anticipate getting 125,000,000 pounds, but if we produce it they want it; they want even more than that if we can produce it.
Then, as to whether we shall make use of the $250,000, if we can get the equipment there will be no difficulty about using that vote, or perhaps even more. There is enough demand to use that up and perhaps we can get the equipment. We have voted $1,750,000 for premium subsidies, but I should not like to say that our estimates at the moment show that we shall reach that point.
The hon. member suggests that we should pay more. It is purely a question of whether we can maintain it, not only this year but at other times. It is most difficult to take off these premiums once you put them on. This premium has done very well up to date, as has been suggested. There is another danger to be faced. If you get it up too high, somebody takes it all off. Up to date we have been able to maintain it. Every time the estimates are under consideration before they come here the question is raised whether we should not take it off. It has been maintained at its present level and we have been able to indicate good results. I would hesitate to add another cent this year and then have somebody take it all off next year or the year after.


George James Tustin: In his remarks the other day on another item the minister suggested that prices paid in Canada were about the same as prevailing prices in the United States. I asked him if it was not a fact that most of the cheese manufactured in the United States was manufactured from skim milk, and I think he more or less agreed -with me. I think the minister
was making a comparison which was not fair to the farmers of this country. If cheese in the United States is manufactured from skim milk the farmer there has a benefit of three or four pounds of butter fat for every 100 pounds of milk he produces. Consequently the return to the farmer in the United States would be considerably aboye the return to the farmer in Canada. Will the minister make it clear whether cheese in the United States is produced mostly from skim milk?


James Garfield Gardiner: Wisconsin cheese, to which I was referring the other night, is a Cheddar cheese similar to our own. If you were to go to the United States and take cheese at different points you would get different results. The prices I gave the other day were the prices that had obtained. I became a little concerned about them myself, and I asked the officials to get me not only the prices but the subsidies that are paid on both sides of the line. Figured out on the basis of the return in Wisconsin on milk that goes into cheese, the return to the farmer is much higher than it is in Canada.
When you consider the subsidies which have been increased1 recently in order to get more cheese on to the market to be shipped to Europe and elsewhere, the total return from milk going into cheese in Wisconsin would be $3.03 per hundred. In Ontario, if you take a similar kind of cheese, it is $2.10, or a difference of 93 cents.


John Thomas Hackett: In Quebec it is much lower.


James Garfield Gardiner: It is lower by the amount of the subsidy.


George Robert Webb: I am fully aware that it is important to produce a high grade of cheese and almost equally important to have good buildings and good equipment. Would the minister briefly outline the procedure in making application for assistance in buildings and equipment and state the percentage of subsidy in both cases?


James Garfield Gardiner: The act provides in the case of cold storage equipment that 50 per cent will be paid by the government and 50 per cent by the individual. The same provision is made with regard to buildings. We pay 50 per cent where it has been agreed that the improvement will be brought about. The procedure followed in making application is that the person or company writes in and we send out an inspector who inspects the plant and determines whether the improvement can be made and whether we would be warranted in spending the money necessary
Supply-Agriculture

to have it made. After the inspection, the application is passed by my office and then goes to council and goes through practically as an order in council.


John Thomas Hackett: Would a butter factory becoming a cheese factory be an improvement within the interpretation of the item?


James Garfield Gardiner: I doubt very much if that happens. It possibly could happen indirectly through a person making application for assistance and putting up a new plant which replaces the creamery.


John Thomas Hackett: I suppose the converse would not apply in any event.


Mrs. STRUM:: Are these outright grants to individual butter plants or cheese factories?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: And are cooperatives
eligible for these grants?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Special
[Stage Direction]
35.	To provide assistance for the replacement of maple production equipment, $200,000.
Mr. BLAIR:: Would the minister explain this item?


James Garfield Gardiner: The item was $300,000 some years ago and now it is $200,000. In 1937 or 1938 the Americans were objecting to our maple syrup being shipped to the United States because it contained lead, and it was condemned as having lead poisoning in it. They would only permit our maple syrup to be used at that time for the purpose of sweetening cigarettes, and that applied to some of the syrup produced across the line. Upon investigation, we found that lead got into the syrup through the lead covering on the cans put out to catch the syrup and through the lead covering on the vats. They are covered with lead to prevent rusting. I am speaking from memory, because it was quite a few years back. The lead got into the sap, in that way and finally into the syrup. We undertook to assist in improving the equipment on a three-way plan, the individual bearing one-third, the provincial government one-third, and the dominion one-third, of the cost of changing that equipment. The plan went along and we spent about $300,000 in one or two years before the war, but when the war started it was difficult to get the equipment, and the amount spent was very much lower. We are getting back now to the point where the equipment can be secured and we are going on with the 
programme. We have an item of $200,000 this year. If we are able to procure more equipment we shall come along with a supplementary, because we want to have this - change made as rapidly as possible. This item is to pay our share of the cost of changing over to the new equipment.


Mr. FRASER:: This is for up-to-date
evaporators too?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes. It is changing over from the old equipment to the new.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Special-..
36.	To provide for administrative expenses, Agricultural Prices Support Act, 1944, $50,000.
Mr. CAMPBELL:: Last session the minister stated that this act had not yet been proclaimed. Recently I understood him to say that the act had been proclaimed and that one member of the board had been appointed. I think it might avoid discussion if the minister would state just what the present position of the board is.


James Garfield Gardiner: It is scarcely correct to say that a member has been appointed. We set up a board under the act. The act did not say that we had to appoint any particular persons, but simply appoint a board of three. We appointed what we intended to be the permanent chairman in the person of Mr. Taggart. Then we appointed Mr. Shaw, who is the director of marketing, and Mr. Booth, who is in charge of the economics branch of the department, as pro tempore members of the committee. We did that for two reasons. In the first place, they would have to direct the staffs that would be gathering the information in any case. In the second place, it did not require the paying of two extra salaries at a time when there was nothing to be done in the matter of administering the act itself. The only work to be done was to gather information with regard to conditions in the last three years of the war and keep comparable figures for the other years as we go along. That is being done by the staff under Mr. Taggart. Some of them are employees in the branches headed by Mr. Shaw and Mr. Booth. Until we require to bring the legislation into effect -we have declared it to be in effect but there has been no necessity up to the moment to operate under the act-it will not be necessary to appoint permanent members to the board. In the meantime, we are keeping it in its present form to save expenses, and the work is being done just as well by the present staff as if we had appointed two permanent members of the board. When we make the appoint-

Supply-Health and Welfare
ments we expect to have one man fro*m the west, one from the east and probably one from the central provinces.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Special-
37.	Agricultural research special projects,
Mr. WRIGHT:: Just what projects are being carried on under this appropriation?


James Garfield Gardiner: The main one is carrying on experiments at Portage la Prairie in connection with flax. There is another research project being carried on at Lethbridge in connection with wool, and one at Morden which is being carried on more particularly in connection with fruits. These are not the type of project which I myself had in mind or. I think, which the committee had in mind when this appropriation was recommended some three years ago. I think that what was in the minds of those who were responsible for the appropriation being brought into being was some central research organization, somewhere in western Canada, which would be utilized for the purpose of carrying on in one place quite a number of these investigations. The equipment was not available with which to equip a plant of that kind, and it was difficult to get building material. This year it has been suggested to me that we take on a half dozen of these special projects again, and I to-day returned the suggestion to the director of experimental farms and asked him to reconsider it. I think the money ought to be spent just as soon as it possibly can be spent to establish a much more effective plant somewhere in western Canada which would do somewhat the same service for the west as much of our research work at the central experimental farm here is doing for the eastern part of Canada. I hope we shall be able to get started on it this year. If not, we shall utilize the money to go on with the investigations at a number of points.


Percy Ellis Wright: The reason I asked was that I wondered 'whether the work was to be carried on at Saskatoon, where, I believe, the national research council are constructing a laboratory.


James Garfield Gardiner: The Minister of Trade and Commerce had a vote for that. It is not covered under this vote.


Percy Ellis Wright: It is the same amount, and I wondered if it was the same vote, or if you people were going to work in conjunction with them. It might not be a bad idea, because probably it could be done more' economically in one place rather than by erecting separate buildings


James Garfield Gardiner: I understand that the other project is likely to be carried out at Saskatoon. I think that is the understanding of all three provinces. That is one reason why we have been waiting; we do not want to proceed with this until we know what will be done in that respect.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
200. Departmental administration, $422,774.
Mr. FLEMING:: It is the custom, I believe, to make some remarks of an introductory nature on the first item of a department's estimates. I promise that these general remarks of mine will be brief and, I trust, to the point.
Of the importance of the work of this department in the two fields of health and welfare there can be no question whatever. Actually there is not much time spent in this chamber in discussing health and welfare, but I take it as a matter of common ground on the part of us all that these are matters of the highest importance to all Canadians.
I should like to indicate in just a word what will be the attitude of the official opposition with respect to the estimates of this important department. We find, in the first place, that there is a substantial increase in the estimates submitted to us for 1946-47 in comparison with those of the previous year. The increase is largely accounted for by the fact that family allowances will this year be paid on the full twelve-months basis instead of the nine-months basis which prevailed in the previous year. But actually we find proposed in these estimates an increase in the expenditure of the Department of Health and Welfare from a total of $242,372,257.27 in the previous year to a figure of $305,064,716. I am including the items which will be found on page 72 of the main estimates. It will be seen that there is an increase totalling $62,692,458.73 this year as compared with the estimates of last year.
The attitude of the official opposition with respect to these estimates is simply this. Appreciating as we do the tremendous importance of health and welfare, we nevertheless will expect justification for each appropriation sought. It will be our duty in scrutinizing these estimates to see that the taxpayer receives value for the money that he is being called upon to pay, a fair dollar's return to the people of this country in health and welfare for each dollar collected in taxes.
It is a matter of regret-and perhaps I am being rather brash in undertaking to criticize the form of the estimates-that we do not
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have before us the actual expenditure in the previous fiscal year. We are given simply two columns: first, the appropriation for the previous year; then, the estimate for the year before us. We are not given the figure of actual expenditure. Compare that with business practice, Mr. Chairman. I do not suppose there is any business which would attempt to set up a budget of estimated expenditure for the current year without having before it the actual expenditure for the previous year, not simply the budget of the previous year, the estimate of expenditure, but the actual expenditure. It is no greater criticism of the form of estimates of this department than of any other that we are not given that information. That is definitely a shortcoming in the form in which estimates are submitted to parliament.
There is another factor which I think hampers the effectiveness of the work of the House of Commons in relation to the estimates. We are not furnished with the report of the department in question for the immediately preceding fiscal year. The last report of the Department of Public Health and Welfare which is issued is the report for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1945. We have no information concerning the detailed operations of the department for the past fourteen months. There will be found in certain of the statutes provision that some of the items which appear in the annual report of the Department of National Health and Welfare must be submitted within three months of the conclusion of the fiscal year. This means that some of these items must be laid before parliament in the form of a report not later than June 30, but, reaching these items as we do on May 30, we are labouring under the handicap of not having that report for the immediately preceding fiscal year.
I make no apology whatever for returning to a theme on which I have spoken once or twice in this house. I dealt with it when we were on the estimates of this department in the fall session. I think we are surely finding day by day the need of a standing committee of this house on health, welfare and social security, and with it I would include housing, because, to my way of thinking, housing must be regarded as inseparably related to the problem of health in this country. We have, of course, an informal committee of the two houses at the present time. It has existed for a number of years; it has no official standing; it is doing good work; but I am satisfied that a standing committee with some official status could do better work. If we had such a committee, I suggest that the study of the estimates would furnish it with an opportunity

of making an effective contribution, both to a careful, systematic scrutiny of the estimates of the department, and to saving this House of Commons valuable time.
A good deal of time spent in consideration of estimates is devoted to obtaining information from the minister as to a multitude of details in relation to the administration of his department, information which, it seems to me, could just as well be obtained in committee. It would then be a matter of record. Those members who wanted information could always find it there and much valuable time would be saved. That is one great service which a standing committee could render in this field.
I think it is patent as well that such a committee would be helpful to parliament in analysing a great many proposals that are put before individual members in the field of social security. I expect that everyone of us receives from time to time ideas. of different individuals as to schemes of social security, and it would be most helpful if there were a standing committee which could review such proposals and make a constructive study of them. I think also of the valuable contributions in the form of proposals put forward from time to time by labour organizations in this country. I take it we are all conscious of the obligation that we owe, both as parliament and as citizens, to labour organizations for the thought and study which organized labour has devoted to problems in the field of national health and welfare. There is no class in the community which has given more constructive thought to problems of national health and welfare than has organized labour in Canada. We do not do justice to these proposals at the present time, nor shall we do justice to them until we have some body which is capable of giving thought and study to the subject in an official way, such as a committee of the house.
It would be helpful also if' a committee of the house had an opportunity of direct contact with the officials of the department, many of whom have no doubt had much to do with framing the estimates now before us. It would be interesting to have the views of some of these officials at first hand and to question them. That would be of great assistance to members of the house in the discharge of their duties.
In concluding my remarks on that theme, I hope that the Minister of National Health and Welfare will be able to persuade his colleagues that the time has come when the rules of the house ought to be revised at least to the extent of providing for the estab-

Supply-Health and Welfare
lishment of a standing committee on health and welfare and social security; and, as I have said, I would include housing in it.
It is difficult to approach a review of the functions of this department without having an eye on the sometimes difficult question of the borderline of jurisdiction as between parliament on the one hand and the legislatures of the provinces on the other, in the field of public health and welfare. It is not my intention to precipitate a debate or discussion on the proposals submitted by the dominion government to the dominion-provincial conference. I believe that last year we did our best to assist those engaged in that conference, and those engaged in the meetings of the economic committee, between the two sessions of parliament, by refraining-as I described it on an earlier occasion

from muddying the waters of the conference. It is a matter of hope on the part of all of us that anything that is attempted in this field will be done in the spirit of cooperation, but I do lay stress on one or two principles in this respect. I am sure the minister has them in mind, but they are principles of leading importance in this field.
Due recognition must be given not only to the constitutional prerogatives of the provinces, as those -which possess jurisdiction in the field of administration of health and welfare services under the constitution, but also to the desirability of keeping our practice close to that constitutional position. I think it is axiomatic that we shall have the best administration of health services and the best administration of welfare services as well if the governments immediately responsible for such administration are those closest to the people. It has always been my view that the closer the administration is to the people concerned in the fields of health and welfare, the better will be our administration, the more efficient, and the closer .it will approach its objective of meeting direct and proven social needs.
With that in mind, I urge that, apart from those specialized fields which the constitution vests in the dominion, such as quarantine and the health of civil servants and so on, we must avoid overlapping as between the dominion and the provincial administrations.
We shall do well, in the second place, to avoid centralization. The fathers of confederation are sometimes not given justice. There is a feeling on the part of some that there is more wisdom in the year 1946 than there was in the year 1867. The fathers of confederation exercised vision and foresight when they devised a constitution which places the administration of health and welfare services under
the jurisdiction of the provincial legislatures. If we avoid overlapping on the one hand and centralization on the other, I think we shall avoid waste and duplication.
Let us at all times seek to keep administration in the fields of health and welfare close to the people. Let us, in approaching these twin fields appropriately linked in one department, ever keep before us the imperative necessity of maintaining close cooperation between the dominion and the provinces. The act under which the minister administers his department recognizes the limited field assigned to the dominion by the constitution in these matters. The principal functions assigned to the department under the act of 1944, establishing this department, are, with the exception' of those specialized fields I mentioned a moment ago, research and assistance to the provinces with information. There is useful work to be done in those fields, but I urge that the dominion will make its best contribution to national health and welfare if it has due regard for the constitution.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: Would the minister care to make a general statement regarding the first item? It might be mentioned that his department has prepared three useful studies in the whole field of health services during the last few years, and I am sure that the people whose interest in health was aroused by these studies expected that some constructive steps would have been under way by this time had the dominion-provincial conference been more successful. I personally would appreciate some statement by the minister regarding future plans, since seven of the nine provinces were prepared to reach some agreement with the federal authority with minor adjustments. It might not be too much to expect that the federal government might be prepared to enter into negotiations with some or all of these seven provinces in the fields in which there has been some general agreement. Would the minister make some statement regarding plans as to where we go from here?


Hon. BROOKE CLAXTON (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: In answer to the hon. member who has just taken his seat, I would refer to the statement of the Prime Minister of May 9, which appears at page 1345 of Hansard. He was asked for a statement on the dominion-provincial conference, and he said that a discussion on that and of the developments that were necessary would be entered on by the Minister of Finance when he came to present his budget. I am afraid that any discussion I entered on now would be in anticipation of that. Unless the hon. member has some matters particularly related
Supply-Health and Welfare

to health and welfare, such as the health pro-prosals that form part of the dominion governments proposals to the provinces, I am afraid I might be anticipating something that more properly might be entered on later. However, if there are any points he would like to have answered as to the attitude of the government, the course of the discussions in the conference and the meaning of the dominion government's proposals on health and welfare as made to the conference, I should be only too glad to go into them just as fully as the committee might wish.
With regard to the remarks of the hon. member for Eglinton, he expressed regret that he did not have a statement of expenditures to compare with the estimates. That, of course, is a comment that might be made about the estimates in any year and of any department. The statements of expenditures are not put in the estimates, but they are put in the public accounts, and the public accounts come out just as soon as they can be prepared.
The hon. member spoke about the desirability of comparing expenses in this department in a previous year with the estimates for this year. I regret that that is not possible because there are no expenditures for a full previous year. The department was not in full operation for a full year before; therefore, there are not any comparable figures even to be found on reference to the public accounts. He also referred to the fact that the last report for the department is for the year ended March 31, 1945. That report is furnished to parliament in accordance with section 11 of the act. It was tabled well in advance of the time that might have been usual, and the report for the year ended March 31, 1946, will be tabled in due course in accordance with the act.
The hon. member referred to his own suggestion made in a motion which he had on the order paper that a special committee should be-


Donald Methuen Fleming: A standing committee.


Brooke Claxton: -a standing committee should be provided for in the rules to deal with matters of health and welfare. That suggestion might very properly be made to the special committee which is advising Mr. Speaker on the rules of the house. I am sure that if the committee reports in favour of the establishment of such a standing committee the government will have to give serious consideration to that report. I must say that my own idea with regard to this some

time ago was that there should be such a standing committee; but on considering the matter and looking into the practice in the United States and in England, I am coming to the view that it probably would be a mistake for us to have a number of standing committees dealing with the functions of different departments, such as they have in the United States. That leads to a totally different parliamentary system, one which is very much more similar to that in force in the United States than that on which we have modeled our own parliamentary system, namely, the parliament at Westminster, where they have no functional committees. They have five standing committees, and matters are referred to one or another of the committees by Mr. Speaker. From such examination as I have made of it, and comments made in England, I believe that the British procedure is the best; that the multiplication of functional committees in the United States leads to an effort by committees to administer departments. I believe that experience has shown that our system is as good as, if not better than, any in the world. Therefore, on that point, on which I have an open mind, I certainly am not convinced that we should change. I think we should consider most cautiously the institution of standing committees which have a definite relationship with the department and to which estimates would regularly be referred.
With regard to the hon. member's comments on the constitutional position, of course we are fully alive to that. Under the provisions of the constitution the primary responsibility for health and welfare generally rests with the provinces. Paragraph 7 of section 92 of the British North America Act gives power to the provincial legislatures to enact laws in relation to:
The establishment, maintenance, and management of hospitals, asylums, charities, and eleemosynary institutions in and for the province, other than marine hospitals.
When the hon. member suggests that there should be no overlapping and that we should each exercise jurisdiction within our appropriate fields, I should like to ask him what functions of the department he would like to see estopped. Would he suggest that the family allowances provision, the old age pension provision-


Donald Methuen Fleming: I say that there should be no overlapping. I am speaking of the policy of the department.

Labour Conditions


Brooke Claxton: We are careful to avoid overlapping, and also in accordance with his suggestion we tried to secure the most effective cooperation with the provinces. I must say that generally, cooperation has been forthcoming.
Item stands.
Progress reported.


[Stage Direction]
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
Friday, May 31, 1946.