1946-08-21

[Stage Direction]
A message from His Excellency the Governor General transmitting supplementary estimates for the financial year ending March 31, 1947, was presented by Hon. Douglas Abbott (Acting Minister of Finance) and read by Mr. Speaker to the house.
Mr. ABBOTT moved that the estimates be referred to the committee of supply.
Mr. GRAYDON:: I have forgotten at the moment whether it is usual to bring down so much so late. This looks almost like our estimates for the next session. I have no objection to having them considered, but I do not wish to allow this stage to go by without at least pointing out to the house exactly what it faces in such a volume as this, called "supplementary estimates." I suggest they should be called regular estimates number two.


Mr. ABBOTT:: Perhaps I might reply to my hon. friend by saying that the major portion of the estimates relate to demobilization and reconversion. As he will see on examining them, a very large portion is taken up by Department of Veterans Affairs, as to which it was impossible to forecast, at the time the regular estimates were prepared, what would be required.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

Mr. MACKENZIE:: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if I might have the consent of the house to have questions and orders of the day disposed of first and then revert to the debate which was in progress yesterday.
(Unanimous consent having been given[DOT]!



QUESTIONS

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

Mr. NICHOLSON:: What is the total value of construction permits which have been issued to breweries and distilleries in Canada since V-tE day?


Mr. McILRAITH:: Stand.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: May I ask if this question can be answered before the end of the session ?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: You moan by Christmas?


George James McIlraith: It will depend on when the session ends; we must have time to get the information and give the answer.


QUERO DEEP-SEA FISHING BANKS
Mr. WINTERS:: 1.	How many craft does the Department of Fisheries have in service for patrolling deep-sea fishing banks, such as Quero, and what are their names?
2.	How many craft are being prepared for the above type of service; when will they be ready for service and what are their names?
3.	Will additional craft be procured for this service?
4.	Are the Arleaux and Arras which did patrol work prior to world war II to be returned to service for the Department of Fisheries?


Mr. BRIDGES:: 1.	None at present.
2.	One vessel, the C.G.S. Cygnus, a former bangor type minesweeper, is being prepared for commissioning as a fisheries protection vessel. The ship is undergoing final trials this week prior to being placed in commission.
3.	Not at present contemplated.
4.	No.
TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION-CONTRACT WITH OTTAWA "journal"


Mr. KNOWLES:: 1.	Has a new contract between the Ottawa Journal and the International Typographical Union been entered into this year? If so, when was the contract signed, and what period does it cover?
2.	Does this contract provide for wage adjustments? Holidays with pay; pay for any statutory holidays?
3.	Does this contract contain any clause with reference to any exemption of laws of the union from arbitration? If so, what is the wording of such clause?

Questions


Mr. MITCHELL:: 1.	Yes, between the Journal Publishing Company of Ottawa, Limited and the international typographical union, local 102, on July 12, 1946, covering the period January 1, 1946 for a term of two years and three months ending March 31, 1948.
2.	Yes. Contract provides for wage adjustments, holidays with pay, and pay for statutory holidays, subject to the approval of the war labour board.
3.	Yes. Clause 6, disputes and arbitration, reads as follows:
A standing committee of two representatives of the publisher and two representatives of the union shall be appointed. To this committee shall be referred all disputes which may arise as to the construction to be placed upon any clause or clauses of this agreement, or alleged violation thereof which cannot be settled otherwise. Such committee shall meet within five days when any question of difference shall have been referred to it for decision by either party to this agreement. Should the standing committee be unable to agree unanimously within ten days, then it shall refer the disputed clause or clauses to a board of arbitration. The representatives of each party to this agreement shall select two arbiters, the four to agree upon a fifth who shall be a disinterested party, a resident of Ottawa. If the two representatives of each of the two parties to this agreement fail to agree upon the fifth member to complete the board of arbitration, the Ontario Minister of Labour shall be asked to name a fifth member who shall act as chairman. The majority decision of this board shall be final and binding upon both parties and the cost of such arbitration to be borne equally by the union and the publisher. Provided that the local and international laws of the union, which are a part of this agreement, shall not be subject to arbitration, except insofar as such arbitration and the results thereof are compulsory under Canadian laws, or except where said laws specifically permit their submission to arbitration.
Either party to this agreement may notify the other party thirty (30) days prior to the termination date that it desires to negotiate a revision of the terms of this agreement. If such notice is given, it shall signify that the terms of such revision shall become effective immediately upon the termination date herein set forth and, if not agreed upon by that time, shall be retroactive to the said termination date. Failure of either party to notify the other party, as above stated, shall signify that the terms of the present agreement are to remain in full force and effect until thirty (30) days after the date of termination. If negotiations fail to result in a mutual satisfactory settlement, the matter shall be referred to arbitration as specified in the foregoing paragraph. (It is agreed that section 5, article 2, I.T.U. general laws shall not apply to a joint standing committee dispute except as the union laws may be involved, but said section shall apply to arbitration of a succeeding agreement.)


JAPANESE NATIONALS-FISHING LICENCES IN B.C. WATERS
Mr. REID:: 1.	Have any requests or applications been made by Japanese nationals or other persons on their behalf, for fishing licences to operate in British Columbia waters?
2.	If so, how many such requests or applications have been made?
3.	Is consideration being given by the government to granting of these?


Mr. BRIDGES:: 1.	Yes.
2.	Two to Department of Fisheries at Ottawa.
3.	No.


MOTION FOR PAPERS
Mr. CHURCH:: For a copy of all correspondence, agreements, letters, cables and other documents exchanged between the government of Great Britain or any officers thereof, the governments of the other dominions, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa or any officials thereof, the government of the United States of America and the government of Canada, regarding preferential trade within the empire and on the British preference to Canada, and any changes proposed herein during the war and after.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: It is apparent that the documents called for by this motion could not be produced withput the consent of the other governments mentioned, and it would not be possible-at least I hope that the session will not last long enough for it to be possible-to have the proper communications exchanged before prorogation. I would suggest to the hon. member that he drop his motion and I will undertake to have the requests made so that if he chooses to renew the motion at the opening of the next session we shall be in a position to say whether or not the other governments agree to have the correspondence tabled.
Motion dropped.


IMMIGRATION
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. HUMPHREY MITCHELL (Minister of Labour):: The hon. member for
Kootenay West (Mr. Herridge) was good
Business oj the House

enough to give me notice of the following question with reference to the bringing of Polish soldiers into the country:
Will the minister give the names of the Canadian officials and other persons who are proceeding overseas to screen former members of the Polish army seeking admission to Canada under the terms of the regulations recently announced?
The names of the officials who have proceeded overseas to select the soldiers to be admitted are as follows: H. R. Hare, who is on loan from the Department of Agriculture to national employment service as employment adviser on farm labour; J. A. Meindl and F. A. Dubenski, both from the staff of the national employment service at Winnipeg; Dr. Fred S. Parney, of the Department of National Health and Welfare at Ottawa; Staff-Sergeant Kenneth Shakespeare and Sergeant J. A. Stevenson, of Montreal, both of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In Europe this group will be joined by Doctor George Audet, representative of the Canadian Department of National Health and Welfare in London. The three officials of the Department of Labour will check on the suitability of the soldiers for farm work. The two officials of the Department of National Health and Welfare will conduct the medical examinations. The two officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police will assist in making the necessary inquiries.
It is expected that these soldiers will arrive in Canada in October.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Gordon Graydon: I have been looking at some of the reports of special committees set up by the house to deal with special problems during the session. One which I desire to bring to the attention of the leader of the house rather than yourself, Your Honour, although you are the chairman of it, is the special committee dealing with the revision of standing orders of the House of Commons. While it is late in the session, yet I think attention should be directed to the fact that the first report of the committee was made on April 10 of this year. So far as I know, no proceedings have been taken to ask for concurrence in the report, which dealt with two major matters; first, a revision of the rules with respect to protracted debates, which I fancy would at once engage the
[Mr. Mitchell.)
enthusiastic attention of the country and of parliament, and second, the proposed reference of estimates to standing, select or special committees. I should like to ask the leader of the government, first, if there is any intention to have concurrence moved in the first report; second, what has happened to the committee since its first	report,-because I	have	noiheard of it since; and third, if somehow or other before the next session of parliament agreement may be made in the house to	the end that what has	happenedin	so many	previous sessions	will	notbe	repeated.	I refer particularly to	the
fact that although we have a large volume of work, there is a lack of organization in the House of 'Commons. I do not say that in any critical way, but rather with the idea of trying to see if we cannot organize our business in such a manner as to have it in keeping with conditions in the twentieth century rather than conditions of the nineteenth century.
Right Hon. L. S. ST. LAURENT (Minister of Justice): The hon. member knows how jealous each hon. member is, and properly so, of the traditional privileges he enjoys as a member of parliament. Among those who sit on this side of the house, and I am sure it must be the same with respect to hon. gentlemen sitting on the other side, many discussions have taken place as to what would be a proper method of arranging to expedite, in perhaps what would appear to make a more businesslike way, the affairs of the house without unduly impinging on the traditional rights of individual members. It is a serious problem, because hon. members are not only concerned with their present rights and privileges but feel a responsibility towards future parliaments. In conversation I found a great reluctance to take the responsibility of cutting down any of the traditional privileges of individual members. That is a responsibility which each one of us feels. It is for that reason that there has been no proposal of concurrence in the first report of the committee. It has appeared to me that it would be extremely difficult to get agreement about which everyone would feel comfortable on any general modification of the rules of the house.
I have discussed with others the possibility of having partial measures provided for by a resolution which would be effective only for the duration of a session. I think certain procedures could be arranged by way of resolution adopted at the beginning of a session which would be binding only for the duration

Labour Conditions
of the session and would not make members feel that they were definitely abandoning any of their traditional rights and privileges. The experience which would be gained under that kind of resolution might point the way to something more permanent which could be done later.
One suggestion which has been made is that at the opening of parliament, instead of having a resolution to give precedence to the debate on the address over all other matters until the address is ultimately adopted, it might be decided that following the speeches of the leaders on the address the debate would have precedence only from eight o'clock in the evening, so that from three o'clock until six ordinary business could be proceeded with, the committees could be set up, bills could be introduced and considered and much of the ordinary work done during the afternoon sitting without depriving any hon. member of the opportunity of speaking on the address, but merely asking him to do so between eight o'clock and eleven o'clock until the address should be disposed of. That is one suggestion that has been made, which could be brought about by a resolution effective for only one session. The experiment might indicate whether or not something of the kind would enable a great deal of the work to get under way before the expiry of the three and sometimes four weeks it takes to dispose of the debate on the address. I would hope that at the opening of the next session an attempt might be made by way of resolutions, of which this could be just an illustration or example, to make provision for that session, without any hon. member feeling that he was giving up, not only for himself only but for future parliamentarians, any of the traditional rights we have enjoyed up to the present time.


Gordon Graydon: May I say to the acting leader of the government that the suggestion he makes is one that has not been made, as far as I know, in the report of the committee on the revision of standing orders, and it really gives more point to what I was trying to say. The matters mentioned by the Minister of Justice,* and other suggestions designed to expedite the work of the house, could have been dealt with in some detail by that committee, but it seemed that after it brought in its first report everything stopped. Why everything stopped I do not know, but certainly I believe we should get a great deal further by having the members of the house discuss the very point raised by the minister rather than by simply having isolated suggestions from various members or cabinet
ministers in connection with the work of the house. I should like to ask the minister why the committee has not been sitting, and what the difficulty has been in this connection.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: So far as I have been able to ascertain, the real difficulty has been the fact that the reference dealt with a permanent modification of the rules of the house, and that appeared to be something very difficult because of its far-reaching consequences. For that reason the method of doing something which would be effective for only one session, as an experiment, has been mentioned.



LABOUR CONDITIONS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. ANGUS MacINNIS (Vancouver East):: Has the Minister of Labour been informed of a statement purported to have been made by the vice president of the Steel Company of Canada yesterday, that on instructions from the government controller, transport vehicles were to go in and out of the plant without regard to injuries that might be caused in the process? Does the minister know whether such instructions were given by the controller, and has the controller the consent of the government in giving such instructions?
Hon, HUMPHREY MITCHELL (Minister of Labour): Well, Mr. Speaker, I have no knowledge whatsoever of any direction that might have been given by the controller. But I want to say that an Englishman's home is his castle, and I think a person has a perfect right to go in and out of his place of business, or into and out of his own home, without being molested by anybody.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Humphrey Mitchell: Let me say that without equivocation or mental reservation.



MOTOR VEHICLES


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. SOLON E. LOW (Peace River): I should like to ask the acting Minister of Finance whether the Ford Motor Company was authorized to increase the price of Ford tractor repair parts by twenty per cent on or about August 3. I sent the minister notice of the question yesterday.
[Stage Direction]


External Affairs-Diplomatic Service
Douglas Charles Abbott: I have not received notice of the question. I shall take this as notice and give my hon. friend an answer to-morrow.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Gordon Graydon: I should like to direct a question to the Acting Secretary of State for External Affairs based upon a Canadian Press dispatch which appeared in several newspapers this morning predicting what might almost be described as a wholesale shuffle in the External Affairs department, concerning some five or six of the most prominent men in that department. I should like to ask the Minister of Justice, who is handling this department, if he has any comment to make in this connection, because the dispatch deals with some of the vacant diplomatic posts both in Canada and abroad. May I point out to the minister that five of the major posts in our diplomatic service have been vacant for periods up to six months, and I believe we should have some comment from the government as to what is to be done to fill them.
Right Hon. L. S. ST. LAURENT (Acting Secretary of State for External Affairs): I thank the hon. member for raising this question; I had intended to refer to the dispatch in any event. My attention had been called to this Canadian Press dispatch in the morning papers of to-day concerning possible changes in the headship of Canadian missions abroad. This story is a mixture of speculation and inaccuracies. No decisions have been taken by the government on the filling of posts abroad which are now vacant. The final paragraph of the story reads as follows:
Vacancies include the high commissioner offices in Canberra. Wellington. St. John's, Dublin and New Delhi and missions in several European countries.
I may comment that there are no vacancies m the high commissioner posts in Wellington and St. John's, which are filled by Mr. A. V. Rive and Mr. J. S. Macdonald respectively. There is no high commissioner's office in New Delhi. There are no vacancies in any of the Canadian diplomatic missions on the continent of Europe. I might also take this occasion to deny a report which appeared a few days ago to the effect that the Canadian ambassador
[Mr. Lmv.l
to Belgium was about to be appointed to the post of ambassador in Paris. There is no foundation for that report.
With respect to the suggestions that there have been some delays in making appointments, I may say to the hon. member and to the house that this is a matter of definite policy. It is the purpose of the Department of External Affairs to have as many as possible of these posts filled by career men. Of course our expansion has been such that it has not been possible in every instance to promote career men to these posts; but a career man who has a secondary post in a mission is given valuable experience by being called upon to act as charge d'affaires for a period, and he is deliberately allowed to continue to carry on as such in order to give him an opportunity of demonstrating his fitness for promotion to higher office. As the hon. member knows, our requirements in connection with representation abroad have grown very rapidly, and it has not been always possible to provide enough career men, but the policy being pursued by the department is to train career men as rapidly as that can be done. I am happy to be able to say that a large number of brilliant young men from the armed forces have, since the beginning of demobilization, been absorbed into the Department of External Affairs, and are proving to be very good material for the responsibilities which have to be discharged in representing Canada abroad.


Gordon Graydon: It would seem that the present period of training has been delaying the filling of these posts. Can the minister say when the training period will come to an end?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Before the Tory party is elected.


Gordon Graydon: It will have to come fast, then.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: It will never come to an end, as a policy-or at least I hope it will not. I hope the Department of External Affairs will continue its policy of making the diplomatic service an attractive career, w'here young men will feel that there is room for promotion. I hope that policy will be continued as long-and that looks as if it might be quite long-as this government is in power; and that it will be found such a good' policy that it will be followed afterwards by whatever government might succeed this one.

Soldier Settlers


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. RONALD MOORE (Churchill):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask a question of the Acting Minister of Finance, notice of which has been given. In view of the recent increase in the cost of living will the minister give consideration to continuing the subsidy of 55 cents per hundred pounds on the production of milk? I understand the subsidy is to be withdrawn shortly.


Douglas Charles Abbott: I received notice of the question just before coming to the house. I shall have to accept the question as a notice, and give an answer to-morrow.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: By consent of the house I would ask that we revert to the order for motions.



WAR ASSETS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. G. K. FRASER (Peterborough West):: Mr. Speaker, the war expenditures committee final report was tabled on Saturday. About a month ago, if you will remember-and I believe you do-I tried to put on the order paper eight questions with regard to War Assets Corporation. Those questions were turned over to the war expenditures committee for answers. I have not yet received those answers. I should like to know when I may expect them, or if I may expect them before parliament prorogues.


Hon. PAUL MARTIN (Secretary of State):: I shall look into the matter right away.


George James McIlraith: Mr. Speaker, with respect to any of the questions asked in the war expenditures committee concerning War Assets Corporation and still outstanding, if those answers have not been prepared and sent forward they are being prepared. Some of them may take a considerable time, while others are more easily answered.


Gordon Graydon: May I ask the parliamentary assistant a question respecting the procedure? The hon. member had his questions before the house, and the rules were interpreted in such a way that he was not permitted to have them answered here. Then
they were sent to the war expenditures committee to be answered. The war expenditures committee having risen, in what position are other members of the house who have an interest in the answers to those questions? I realize that as between the parliamentary assistant and the hon. member that may be satisfactory; but so far as other hon. members in the house are concerned, I should like to know where we stand.


George James McIlraith: I might explain to the house that several of the answers have been given already, and that they will be found in the last number of the proceedings of the committee on war expenditures and economies, which has not yet been printed. I cannot say whether the questions asked by the hon. member for Peterborough West are in that category.
As to the other point raised, I should think it is really a. matter of law and parliamentary procedure. I should not want to give an opinion, but it would strike me that once the report of a committee has been tabled in the House of Commons there would be no further objection to the raising of questions when the orders of the day are called, in the ordinary way.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: That is right. I would ask that the house now revert to motions.



SOLDIER SETTLERS


[Stage Direction]
The order having been called for resuming the adjourned debate on the motion of Mr. Lalonde:
Mr. W. A. TUCKER (Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Veterans Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I table regulations extending to December 31, 1946, the period in which certain settlers under the Soldier Settlement Act may apply for debt reductions. This comes under order in council P.C. 166/3368 of August 8, 1946.


Mr. WRIGHT:: A point has been raised by the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Veterans Affairs. Are the soldier settlers being notified of the extension of this date?


Mr. SPEAKER:: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member, but the item to resume the adjourned debate has been called and read. Then the parliamentary assistant presented his report. I do not think we can go back.


Mr. COLDWELL:: May I suggest that the order was called prior to the question raised
5144

Industrial Relations
by the bon. member for Peel (Mr. Graydon). I heard the Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. Mackenzie) call the order for motions at that time. If latitude was given in one instance, I suggest it should be given in the other.


Walter Adam Tucker: The answer is yes-those
affected will be.



INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from Tuesday, August 20, consideration of the motion of Mr. Lalonde for concurrence in the second report of the standing committee on industrial relations.
Mr. PAUL EMILE COTE (Verdun):: Mr. Speaker, both parties to a dispute may make use of the privilege contained in this report, and request the Minister of Labour to proceed to the taking of a vote, either before or after the strike is in progress. I made some brief comments before the adjournment last night with regard to the interest which the worker and his union will find in the implementation of this recommendation. Inasmuch as he is affected by this section of the report, the employer will feel more protected against what he may term, at times, the autocracy of union officers.


James Horace King: Order. There is so much noise in the chamber that it is extremely difficult to hear the hon. member.


Paul-Émile Côté: A measure such as this will give him the privilege of asking the Minister of Labour to proceed to the taking of a vote. No doubt the expression of opinion thus obtained from the men at a time when the dispute is in progress will go a long way toward bringing the parties together.
I am inclined to the belief that such a procedure would have avoided several strikes in the past, and in all probability had it been adopted in due time we would not have known any dislocation in the steel industry. This recommendation in the report will prove beneficial as to the consumer's rights in matters of industrial relations. The consumer is vitally interested in the production of this country. No one more than a minister of the crown responsible to parliament has the authority to represent him and safeguard his interests.
If a dislocation of production is threatened the Minister of Labour is empowered to proceed to a vote among the men affected, to determine what their views are on any particular phase of the conflict.
[Mr. Coldwell.J
Another important feature is this recommendation :
(a) That the proposed dominion-provincial labour conference be called at the earliest possible moment to draft a labour code within the limits of the Canadian constitution and with a view to establishing machinery for the prevention of dislocations in industry.


Mr. GILLIS:: The hon. member who is speaking is making so much noise that we cannot hear those who are holding meetings down here. You might call order, Mr. Speaker.


James Horace King: I have done so twice since the opening of this sitting. I would ask hon. members who have problems to discuss more important than that which is being discussed in the house to use the lobby.


Paul-Émile Côté: I submit, Mr. Speaker, that this is a very reasonable approach to the problem of peacetime industrial relations, if one recalls the experience which we have had during the war yeaTS, and on the other hand the exigencies of the days that lie ahead.
Among others we had, during the war, order in council P.C. 1003, better known as the national labour code, which came into effect March 20, 1944. It had arisen from a consultation with the provinces, and with the national presidents of the Canadian Congress of Labour, the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada, the national syndicates and the railway brotherhoods. Its purpose and effect *was to clarify the rights of the workers and of the employers, to make collective bargaining obligatory, to impose penalties against interference with employees' union activities, and to eliminate the necessity of striking for union recognition. It may be that this code did not bring all the good results which were expected at first, but it remains that it has contributed to a great extent to improvement of the relations between management and labour, to better substantially the lot of the workers, and to increase our war production to the high level which it has known.
The committee must be supported in its recommendation that a dominion-provincial labour conference be called at the earliest possible moment. It is suggested, and properly so, that the federal government take the initiative of calling this conference together. Who else could do so with as much authority? I do not see any serious reason why any province should not accept such an invitation spontaneously, and should not come here with an open mind to discuss the problem of industrial relations in each province and put together the experiences whioh they have had in their respective sections of the country within the past few years.

Industrial Relations
Why put the emphasis on the diversity of the conditions which prevails across the country? I agree that they must be taken into serious account in the study of any problem of national significance. Why not rather put together all that the provinces have in common, either as to doctrine or as to experience, and set up a common basis for the enactment of labour legislation which will take care of the minimum requirements for the promotion of industrial peace in this country?
Similar conferences should thereafter be held regularly with a view to keeping these preliminary agreements on the level of actual exigencies.
When I recall the founding of the international labour organization after the first great war and the priceless services it has rendered since in the promotion of social justice in all the countries of the world, I do not see why a closer association of our provincial governments could not achieve the same end within this country. The international labour organization held until 1939 twenty-five sessions and adopted sixty-seven conventions and sixty-six recommendations. The conventions have secured nearly nine hundred formal ratifications by governments, and dealt with hours of work; holidays with pay; regulation of conditions of work of women; protection of child workers; prevention of and compensation for industrial accidents; insurance against unemployment, sickness, old age and death; apprenticeship and training for employment; colonial labour problems; living and working conditions of seamen at sea and ashore. What the international labour office has done and still can do by mutual agreement between the nations of the world for the promotion of social justice and the establishment of a better understanding, it seems obvious to me, Mr. Speaker, that our country can do, within its boundaries, by closer consultation with the provinces.
The report before the house contains recommendations which, if they are translated into legislation, will constitute an important milestone in the improvement of our labour legislation. Our country has already done much in this field, under the leadership of the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King), who has devoted his whole career to that great cause. We can do more, and I hope that we shall succeed, with the cooperation of all parties concerned.


Mr. L. E. BAKER (Shelburne-Yarmouth-C'lare):: Mr. Speaker, it was my privilege to be a member of the industrial relations committee, and I cherish that privilege, because I have come out much wiser and greatly benefited as a result of what I learned there. I
did not go there as a labour expert; I regarded myself as one of the representatives of the general public. I may say that it was very encouraging and it increased my faith in human nature when we came to our conclusions and found men of all parties in this house getting together and working out the final basis for our report without any partisan bias whatever. I say that without equivocation.
Various comments have been made on our findings and conclusions; some of them are flattering, some not. As a matter of fact the greatest value, I believe, which came out of this committee was the general publicity which was given throughout the length and breadth of the land to labour-management affairs.
I have no particular brief for either labour or management. I think that there are good union leaders; as a matter of fact, the majority are; but on the other hand, in all fairness- and we must be fair in these matters-we must admit that there are also good employers. Throughout the industrial history of Canada and the United States, employers have done much, in many cases, to help the conditions of the employees. So that we must not put all the blame on one side. In some of the present disputes, I believe, blame is unquestionably to be put on both sides. This was proven by evidence which we heard in the committee.
We are going through what I would call the struggle for Canada's destiny. It started in 1939, and it is not over yet. I divide it into phases. There was the war; there is the transitional period; and there is the time to come. I will liken it to an attack. We have reached our first objective; we have won the war. There is no question that it is harder to win a permanent and lasting peace than it is to win a war. The fact is that such a thing as a permanent and lasting peace has never yet been won. Our second objective is winning the peace, which will mean prosperity, freedom and happiness throughout Canada. At the moment we have reached an intermediate objective, the transitional period through which we are now passing; and in order to win a final peace-I mean an industrial peace as well as a cessation of gunfire- we must be strong to go ahead.
At the present time we are beset with enemies, the enemy of inflation, the enemy of distrust, the enemy of impatience. What have we done? We cannot allow inflation to develop, and so for this intermediate objective we have formed what we call the Gordon line. The Gordon line may bend here and there; a salient may be driven into it here and there, but we cannot allow that Gordon line to break. If we do, the enemy inflation will break through the gap and
Industrial Relations

swallow up the farmer, the fisherman, the pensioner and all people living on small earned incomes. We cannot allow that to happen, and so we in this House of Commons have to be the cohorts of Mr. Gordon to help him hold the line. As I say, the line may have to bend a little here and there. All right; how are we going to advance from there?
In modern warfare you put down a heavy artillery fire preparatory to your ground forces moving ahead to the next objective. What is our plan to be? Press relations, informing the public as to what is going on, are very important. Our artillery in holding the Gordon line consists of the press. The large city newspapers lay down the heavy artillery, and the small town dailies and the country newspapers, weeklies and magazines are the medium and field artillery. What do you do in an attack? You direct all your artillery to the main target area. That is just what we must do. We must direct our artillery fire in a definite direction; the fire must be properly directed and be accurate. Therefore I say to the press: direct your fire properly to the right target and be sure you direct it accurately.
So far as the committee is concerned the press, generally speaking, particularly those members of it who sat in from day to day at our meetings, was accurate and fair, but there have been many editorials that have been unfair and I have seen unfair criticisms. We must remember that the rounds that fall short are the dangerous ones. One or two rounds did fall short and pretty nearly hit the Minister of (Labour (Mr. Mitchell) but did him no harm because he looks hale and hearty still. But it was most unfair of the press to let those rounds fall short, and I hope that they will be more accurate in their fire in future. The Minister of Labour has done and is doing a good job, and we want him to stay on and to receive all the encouragement he can get. I feel reasonably optimistic about the future, because Canada is a great country. Canadians are wonderful people individually, and all we have to do is to learn to be that way collectively. The press, properly directed, can help to bring that about. I have great faith in the future of Canada because of the press, but only by the press directing their fire accurately can we come to a happy understanding and have peace and prosperity throughout the length and breadth of Canada.
I am not going to compliment the members of the committee individually. I think they all worked hard and that they were very sincere in what they did. I could pick out
(Mr. Baker.]
certain stars of the team, but I shall not do that because the sounds they want to hear are not sweet words about themselves but the music of the humming wheels of industry turning again and friendly and civil talk between the leaders in management and labour. I maintain that the press can also help there.
I shall not take up any more time, because a good deal of the ground has already been covered and one or two able speakers are to follow me. But I did want to make that point about the press. The members of the press who were in the committee room with us working long and tedious hours were gallant gunners, and so in conclusion, with respect to labour-management relations and in their relations to the dominion government I would say: Praise the press and pass the information.


Clarence Gillis: Mr. Speaker, I am not going to start in by paying any compliments to the chairman or the members of the committee. My impression of the committee was that it did the best it could with the latitude it was allowed and the equipment it had to work with. I am going to try to focus the attention of the house this morning on the fact that all the hard work of that committee means nothing if the present attitude on the part of employers and the controller is to continue.
On July 16 industrial relations in this country had come to such a pass that the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) on the eve of leaving for the peace conference in Paris accepted a suggestion from the opposition that the subject of labour relations and industrial .unrest should be placed in the hands of the industrial relations committee to see if that committee could not arrive at some formula whereby industrial disputes in this country might be resolved. When the Prime Minister accepted that invitation from this side of the house my reaction was that the machinery provided in this country by the Department of Labour was in a bad way and was being superseded because it was inadequate to handle the disputes that existed at that time. In passing that task over to the committee the Prime Minister in my opinion passed it over to all parties in this house to accept the joint responsibility of trying to resolve those difficulties and recommend some measure or formula that might prevent such disputes from taking place in the future. The committee did not do that and my opinion is that its work is not completed. It

Industrial Relations
merely skimmed the surface. It made some recommendations to this house which would be helpful if they are implemented.
It was on July 16 that this task was entrusted to the committee with the sanction of the Prime Minister. One month later, after this committee had taken all the evidence and probed behind the scenes for the reasons for the present industrial disputes, industrial unrest and the strike situation in Canada is worse to-day than it was then. To say that the committee performed any miracles when it did not change the situation in industry is not correct. In addition to the strikes that existed at the time, and they still exist, a new strike threat looms on the horizon, a strike by the packing house workers, who if their difficulties are not resolved by a certain date are going to strike on a national scale. So the committee did not accomplish very much.
I am not going to read the record but the fact is that every strike that existed on July 16 when the committee was set up is still in existence, including the steelworkers' strike.
The first night that the committee met for organization purposes a motion was made that we would set as our first objective the settling of the steel dispute. That objective was not accomplished. The first day on which the committee actually sat in formal session I moved that the controller appointed by the [DOT] government under order in council P.C. 2901 be instructed to exercise his duties under that order in council by beginning negotiations with the union, apart from the employers, and endeavouring to resolve their difficulties here in Ottawa while the committee was taking evidence.
That motion was not accepted, but lay on the table three days, and the committee finally decided that the employers should get together despite the fact that they had no longer any authority in the management of the steel industry, since the government had superseded their executive authority by the appointment of a controller; and1 despite that legal technicality the employers and employees had been together month after month and had not successfully resolved the difficulty. They precipitated the strike, and in my opinion it was bad technique and unsound judgment to expect them, because they were in the atmosphere of Ottawa, to get together and resolve the difficulty. In my opinion valuable time was wasted and the legality or validity of that order in council, or any order in council in the future, can be challenged if the attitude taken by the government with regard to its enforcement in that particular instance was valid.
I say we wasted a lot of time and the committee did not attain the first objective they
set themselves in the settlement of the steel dispute. That is very important, because the steel industry in Canada has now a basic strike on hand. Steel ramifies all through our economy, and if a determined and reasonable attempt had been made to resolve the steel difficulty, in my opinion the formula arrived at there would automatically be applied to the other difficulties that exist in industry, and we would have been straightening out the whole picture at one time. But we are back in the house with no recommendation on the basic issue in dispute.
The steelworkers before the committee made a sound and reasonable case. They showed that they were not adamant in their attitude. They modified their position on two occasions. I felt that when the controller finally came into the picture the committee should have recommended to him the last proposal made by the steelworkers' union to the committee and to the employers and to Mr. Brockington, who was acting then as mediator in the dispute. That should have gone forward to the controller as a reasonable basis for negotiations, but that was not done, so that the controller was in the same position that Mr. Brockington was in. He goes back in there with the ten cent formula over his head and with very little latitude and very little possibility of settling the difficulty unless someone is prepared to do some plain talking on the part of the government.


Mr. BLACKMORE:: He is bound hand and foot.


Clarence Gillis: The general impression is that the industrial workers are demanding wage increases. That is not the case. The industrial workers to-day, because of the failure to hold the price line, are asking for increases in their basic rates in order that they may maintain the income they had during the war. That is all they are doing. I am going to put the last proposal of the steelworkers' union on the record. It is very simple. The first is the removal of the five-cent Sydney differential. That is a case that has been before the national war labour board and the regional boards for the last three years. It is still before the national board. It was turned down three times. In my opinion it should not be included in this dispute. I suggest that the Minister of Labour, who has some authority over the national war labour board, in order to get that particular problem out of the way, and separated from the basic problem in the Sydney plant, might suggest that they make a decision in that case and remove one of the sore spots as far as the Sydney plant is concerned.
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The second of their proposals was a general wage increase of ten cents an hour retroactive to April 1, 19415, in the primary steel plants and the fabricating plants of all three operating companies. That is a very reasonable proposal. The national director of the steelworkers' union, in presenting his case to the committee, recognized the fact that while the plants and production are tied up, the danger of inflation is increased fifty per cent. He was not asking for his total demands at that time. He was prepared to take it in stages and to accept and recommend at once the ten cents to his membership, so that the plants might get back into production and lessen the dangers of inflation.
The next proposal with regard to wages was adjustments totalling 5-J cents an hour to compensate for increases in the cost of living from April 1 to July 1, such adjustments to be payable this calendar year. I consider that one of the most important recommendations made by the steelworkers' union. I am of that opinion for this reason, that it is a weapon in the hands of the wartime prices and trade board if they want to maintain prices.


An hon. MEMBER:: They do not.


Clarence Gillis: They do not is right, because when the employers, the manufacturers or those who have something to put on the market for sale begin to put pressure on the wartime prices and trade board for increases in basic commodities the board1 are in a position to say, "Yes, we will give you an increase but you will pay it yourself. You will increase the cost of living and you are going to adjust the wages of your workers in proportion to the increased cost of living." It is the only weapon that has been suggested to date which would assist in maintaining prices in this country, but the committee did not see it that way.
Number four on the agenda was that all the other issues in dispute to be completed by October, 1946, should go to arbitration. The date to which the removal of the Sydney differential should be made retroactive was backed up on, and they proposed that it be put where it was suggested it should be in the first place; and second, the dates upon which the adjustments totalling 5| cents should be made payable were to remain in abeyance and be made the subject of arbitration. With respect to the further increases on the basis of the cost of living, one cent per point, they were also prepared to send that to arbitration. Hours of work, overtime pay for statutory holidays, vacations with pay, a union security formula applicable to all plants-these were all to go to arbitration, and in effect the

immediate proposal made, the one that would start the plants in operation if accepted, was the removal of the Sydney differential, and the general increase of ten cents an hour retroactive to April 1, 1946 in the primary steel plants and the fabricating plants of the three operating companies.
That would settle the steel strike, and the other matters would go to arbitration. I believe Mr. Millard, the national director of the steelworkers' union, was much fairer than many others I know of in a similar position in trying to get that industry into operation. Nevertheless, so far as the committee was concerned I do not think he succeeded. If hon. members will read the evidence presented and the document to which I have referred I do not think that they will say that the case presented by the steelworkers' union with respect to the adjustment of wages is unreasonable. It is not an increase in wages; it is an endeavour to maintain the take-home pay of those in these industries who have lost that percentage of their take-home pay because of the increase in prices.
When I hear hon. members say that the price ceilings must be maintained, I agree. I said that from the start; we have all said it. But the fact of the matter is that they have not been maintained. The Minister of Labour (Mr. Mitchell) recognizes why the cost of living bonus was established in the first place. It was established to hold the price line; it was one of the most important parts of the whole mechanism. The cost of living bonus was worked into the basic rates. It was taken off, and in my opinion that was the initial mistake. Immediately that took place there was pressure largely from the manufacturers in Canada for increases in the prices of basic commodities, and that started the drive on the price ceiling. The wartime prices and1 trade board, reacting to that pressure, in my opinion, removed the ceilings literally from hundreds of commodities. Before the last election the start was made when the twenty-five per cent luxury tax was taken off vacuum cleaners, washing machines and all of these things which are essentials to the average householder.


Humphrey Mitchell: Is the hon. member sure about that twenty-five per cent tax being on household articles?


Clarence Gillis: Yes, I am positive.


Humphrey Mitchell: I thought it was on jewellery.


Clarence Gillis: No, it was not; it came off vacuum cleaners, washing machines and anything that was designated as luxury goods.

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Mr.	MITCHELL:	I	would not	call a
vacuum cleaner a luxury.


Clarence Gillis: It was a twenty-five per cent tax. When the luxury tax was removed, instead of passing it on to the consumer it was made mandatory that the manufacturer retain the price to the consumer. In effect it was a gift-	.
Mr.	MITCHELL:	I	can hardly	believe
that.


Clarence Gillis: Check it up and find out, because I did. It w'as a gift to the man-facturers of Canada; it was one of the initial wedges in breaking the ceiling, and it was not passed on to the consumer.


Humphrey Mitchell: The luxury tax is still on jewellery.


Clarence Gillis: Yes.
Mr.	MITCHELL:	I	do not see	why it
should not; I see no objection to it.


Clarence Gillis: A vacuum cleaner is used in every household.


Humphrey Mitchell: I would rather see it on jewellery than on food.


Major James William Coldwell: It was removed, but the manufacturers kept the tax.


Humphrey Mitchell: My hon. friend is just kidding himself.
Mr.	ARCHIBALD:	What about	the tax
on building materials-


Clarence Gillis: You fellows can make your speeches after I am through. The cost of living in the country was added to and fhe trend to inflation speeded up by the removal of the subsidies on the essentials of life. For example, subsidies were taken off such items as fruit, milk, butter, and so forth-all things which take up a large percentage of the average workingman's income. Then came the pay-off when the basic steel operators came to the wartime prices and trade board and asked-for an increase. I said in committee, and I repeat, that the man largely responsible for the present difficulties in steel is the chairman of the wartime prices and trade board. The increase of $5 a ton in basic steel, which meant $9 a ton in fabricated steel, was the increase which upset his ceiling and created difficulties throughout the economic life of the country. Further then that it was borne out by evidence before the committee that according to the balance sheets presented, the So a ton increase was not necessary. According to the total operations every one of the operating companies could have absorbed the wage
increases asked for. Dosco in its over-all picture could have done it; Stelco could have done it, and the same is true of Algoma, without any increase of $5 a ton. Therefore I say the wartime prices and trade board fell down on the job.


Humphrey Mitchell: That did not come out in the evidence.


Clarence Gillis: Yes, it was clear from the evidence.


Humphrey Mitchell: I am not holding any brief for the steel companies, but I would say that-


Clarence Gillis: I know, -but any member of the committee who listened to the evidence will substantiate what I am saying now, that that increase of $5 a ton was not necessary. It was an increase which set off the demands for increased wages. I believe in telling the truth and facing the facts, because we are not going to get out of our difficulties by putting our heads in the sand like ostriches and excusing a man because he has an exalted position. If the line had been held, if price ceilings had not been removed along the line, you would not have the demands for wages that you have to-day. If to-morrow you paid an additional 15J cents an hour to every industry which is looking for it the men would be in exactly the same position so far as take-home pay is concerned as they were in during the war years. This being so, those who did not hold the line but began to grant increases in farm machinery and basic steel are the people who are responsible for the industrial difficulties which confront us to-day. If we are to cure that situation we have to tackle the problem at its source. The figures presented to the committee by Stelco showed substantial profits and reserves and an excellent balance sheet. When Mr. Robinette was asked if he thought that these companies were in difficulties he said, no; he thought they were in a very good financial position. The Stelco figures are being challenged to-day by an accountant who works in their own cost department.
The wartime prices and trade board did not examine the balance sheets of these companies to determine whether or not an increase of $5 a ton was necessary. While the government policy may be, and the policy of the wartime prices and trade board is, that wages must be controlled to a certain extent, and I agree with that, and that prices must be controlled, the chairman of the wartime prices and trade board told the committee that so far as profits are concerned the companies were permitted1 - to determine on that basis what they considered a reasonable and fair profit. Profits will
Industrial Relations

also have to be controlled. If Donald Gordon is to be permitted to tell the workers of Canada what is a fair wage, then he should be instructed to tell the companies what should be a fair profit.


Humphrey Mitchell: Be fair with Donald Gordon. He disclaimed any responsibility for the establishment of wage rates. He said it was the function of the war labour board1 to do that.


Clarence Gillis: He may say that; theoretically it is true, but practically it is not, because if Donald Gordon suggests a ceiling on wages beyond which you cannot go without endangering the economy of the country, then Donald Gordon is supreme in the matter of fixing wages, because everyone else has to work under that ceiling. While theoretically he says that another board sets the wages, nevertheless he is placing a ceiling under which this board must work; therefore Gordon is supreme. He may say that he does not sit in and make decisions, but he tells you the point beyond which you are not allowed to go. I want to emphasize that. Wages to-day are not chasing prices and endangering the economy of the country by inflation. The reverse is true. Prices have gone up and wages are trying to chase them in order to maintain the standards established during the war. The responsibility is not on the industrial workers; it is on those who did not maintain the price ceiling. I emphasize that, because according to the evidence given before the committee it is absolutely correct.
On this matter of inflation I would like to say this, while we are at it. Sometimes it amazes me how glibly some people can talk about it when it affects someone else. I wonder how many hon. members ever stop to think of this. The wage increases in steel would create perhaps about $15,000,000 of additional purchasing power in this country, or something like that. Did we cry inflation when the government proposed, and rightly so, to spend $250,000,000 a year for family allowances? They placed $250,000,000 a year of extra purchasing power in the hands of a class of our society who do not produce anything, a class who are going to school. The proposition was absolutely right, but Donald Gordon did not cry inflation at that time; it was quite all right. On the other hand when we lent hundreds of millions of dollars to Britain and other countries, of which a large proportion was to be spent in Canada-and rightly so; I supported those loans-there was no cry of inflation, though these millions of dollars of extra purchasing power were to be spent in this country to take goods out of this 
country. Now the government propose to increase the salaries of judges to $15,000 or $20,000 a year, which is extra purchasing power to a class of our society who do not produce consumer goods, but that is quite all right; there is no cry of inflation.


Humphrey Mitchell: I am not defending the judges, and I do not want to interrupt my hon. friend, but the increases were not that great.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: That is the ceiling; the top salary is now $20,000.


Clarence Gillis: It ranges down from that, of course. I used the top figure, but what is a few million among friends. The point I am making is that there was no cry of inflation there; that was fine. But when the fellows who sweat in the basic industries of this country and who produce all the wealth of the country come in and ask for something which will give them an addition $15,000,000 in purchasing power, that is inflation and it cannot be done.


Mr. GRANT:: Absurd.


Clarence Gillis: It is absolutely correct, and if my hon. friend does not understand it, that is not my responsibility. I want something done about this; I want to try and put the matter in proper focus, because this business of inflation has been used1 as a slogan to scare people, many of whom do not understand it. Quite a few times I have heard the Minister of Labour refer to inflation in Germany after the last war. I was there, too; but remember this. I did not know at that time, but inflation was "fit to eat". Most of the people of this country are in the same position to-day.


Humphrey Mitchell: I can tell you what they got with their inflation-Hitler.


Clarence Gillis: That is not the point I am making. The point is that these things can be used as slogans to scare people, to keep them submissive and subservient on low standards, until these theories and ideas are exploded and some common sense applied.
Now, with regard to getting something done about this, very late in the day, as I thought, we decided to pass the matter back to where it should have been dealt with in the first place, to the controller. When I started to talk I said I thought the work of our committee had been completely nullified in the last couple of days. Two other hon. members have read into the record the statement of the controller. He is going to start in to take a secret questionnaire from each individual

Industrial Relations
in the steel plants. That is the end of Kil-bourn as far as I am concerned. His work is finished, and you had better get a new controller. Then the hon. member for Vancouver East (Mr. Maclnnis) asked a question this morning based upon a telegram; this also has to do with the controller. The telegram reads:
Following wire sent Mitchell and Kilbourn this afternoon by Larry Sefton. "At meeting before Hamilton police commissioners this afternoon Elwin. vice-president Steel Company of Canada stated that government controller had instructed management to run transport trucks, trains and other vehicles into plant in spite of any danger that might be created to life and limb of Hamilton citizens. Are these your instructions to the Steel Company of Canada? '
That wire was supposed to have been sent to the minister.


Mr. HOMUTH:: By whom is it signed?


Clarence Gillis: It is signed by Eamon Park, international representative' of the United Steel Workers of America, and it emanates from Hamilton.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: Did the minister send those instructions?


Humphrey Mitchell: I did not send them.


Clarence Gillis: I hope the minister will take part in this debate later on. He says he did not send them. Then the vice-president of the steel company in Hamilton-


Humphrey Mitchell: As my hon. friend
knows, there are thousands of businesses in this country. There are a few strikes, and we have put in some commissioners. I am accused of instructing war labour boards; I am accused of instructing this person and that person. I think when you appoint a man to do a job, you appoint a grown man who should have enough sense to run his own end of it. If the person you appoint is not satisfactory to some people I am told he should be kicked out. That goes for commissioners, for controllers, for war labour boards and I suppose for the Minister of Labour as well. However, I did not intend to say all that. I only wanted to tell the hon. member he was right about the washing
machines and vacuum cleaners.


Clarence Gillis: Thank you very much. I said the work of the committee was nullified. If the statement made in this telegram is true; if the controller took that line of action m Hamilton, that controller should be replaced, because this committee definitely condemned, in no uncertain terms, the use of physical force by either employer or employee in any dispute. If this man issued these orders, that trucks were to be driven
through those picket lines, endangering the lives of those men at this particular stage in this dispute, he should be replaced. If he is not replaced you will find no solution to the difficulty in Hamilton or in basic steel. If he made the statement that he was going to take an inventory of everyone in these plants, then the man is not competent to act in the dispute he has authority to handle, and should be replaced. I do not know whether or not these things are true. The vice-president of the Hamilton works may not be telling the truth; it. may be just a technique to try and smash the picket line, but the minister should check, and if the controller has taken that line of action he should be removed.
Let us look at the other side of the picture, with regard to violations of law and order. When a strike takes place the press, the heavy artillery which was mentioned a moment ago by the hon. member for Shelburne-Yarmouth-Clare (Mr. Baker)-he depends upon the press to pull us out of our difficulties-are always on the other side. With all due respect to those who work for the press, I have found that in their opinion the worker is always wrong, that he is always in an illegal position. If you want the workers of this country to obey the law, then employers also must be made to obey the law and set the example. See what you have there in Hamilton in the way of law violations by the employers. In the first place they were permitted-and Donald Gordon should be checked on this- to inveigle men and women into that plant by paying them three times the wages they received previously, under normal operations. In that plant they are paid for twenty-four hours a day. That is an incentive to bring them in. It is a violation of the labour laws of this country, if that company did not get permission from the war labour board. When the minister replies I should like him to say whether the Steel Company of Canada did get permission to increase by three times the wages of those who are now in the plant in Hamilton, whether that was done with the permission of the war labour board.


Humphrey Mitchell: I can give an answer to that now. It is simply this: the steel company is capable of taking care of itself. We have all got to live together.


Clarence Gillis: I hope, Mr. Speaker, that you will watch my time, and check on these interruptions.


Humphrey Mitchell: I agree with my hon. friend, that he should have a couple of minutes more.


Clarence Gillis: Thank you very much.
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Humphrey Mitchell: Those people cannot get in and out; I think that is fundamental. I say a person has a perfect right to go in and out of a plant if he so desires. You and I, as old trade unionists, know that; but there are some who do not carry trade union cards. Any man has the right to go in and out of his own house, or in and out of his place of business without being molested. That is elementary and fundamental.


Clarence Gillis: But the question I asked the minister to check and to let us know about when he speaks is whether the steel company in Hamilton are paying three times the wages to the employees now in the plant as compared with what they were paying under normal operations. I would ask if these wages are being paid with the sanction of the national war labour board, because if they are not, the company should be prosecuted for a serious violation of the laws of this country.
The second point is this: There is an airstrip in that plant where aircraft are landing in violation of an important law in this country. It is not recognized as a legal air field. This was drawn to the attention of the Minister of Reconstruction (Mr. Howe) but evidently that violation is still going on, and it is a serious one.


Angus MacInnis: The steel company is able to look after itself.


Clarence Gillis: This should be checked. In the third place-and this is a provincial matter-men and women are sleeping in that plant, and that is contrary to provincial statute. The}' are breaking every law in the country.


Angus MacInnis: That is not contrary to provincial statute, is it?


Mr. LALONDE:: Will that go into the record?


Clarence Gillis: It is a contravention of a provincial statute respecting hours of work, labour, and absenteeism. Then, the accusation was made by Mr. Conroy, of the Canadian Congress of Labour, that a priority was issued to build a hotel, and that rations are going in there indiscriminately, contrary to regulations. Mr. Gordon should be asked whether rationing is being enforced in connection with supplying the people in that plant. Do you see?-when you align yourself on the side of those who are engaged in a war, you are on that side. And if Donald Gordon and the war labour board permit flagrant violations of statutes and orders in council of this country, they are providing ammunition.


Humphrey Mitchell: If you will go down the middle of the road with me and tell both sides to comply with the law-


Clarence Gillis: I have no hesitation in doing that, but I would want to see both sides treated the same. But when a man is picketing a plant, and they place their finger on him for illegal action because he is standing out there and fighting for bread and butter for himself and his family and to maintain a home-because he is doing that he is an outlaw; but more serious violations are taking place on the other side and nobody sees them.
The committee has made recommendations which, if followed, would be helpful. I shall comment briefly on one of those recommendations which was controversial. I realize that if the union security clause, and that kind of stuff, is put through, it will be helpful. But there was one clause which created discussion. I wish to say first that in my opinion the committee was poorly equipped to do the job it had to do. I think the chairman should have had a secretariat. He should have had available to hjm two or three people with ability in drafting, who could record discussions as they occurred, as the ideas were thrown out. It would be a small but efficient committee who could throw those ideas around and put them into proper language to be presented later on in the report.


Angus MacInnis: They had two lawyers.


Clarence Gillis: But they do not draft.


An hon. MEMBER:: They are all draft.


Maurice Lalonde: May I interject that so far as the report is concerned, the suggestions brought up in committee were worked out in the steering committee. If the work has not been done properly, then -the whole committee should bear the responsibility.


Clarence Gillis: Definitely, yes. I said we did the best job we could with the latitude and equipment we had to work with. The steering committee was the drafting committee. But the steering committee which drafted this report did not have time to consider these things properly.


Maurice Lalonde: If it is just a question of time, then I agree with my hon. friend.


Clarence Gillis: That is exactly what I am getting at. If you had had a couple of people who were familiar with the drafting of reports and throwing ideas around, who could have taken these things as they arrived and done-some work on them on the side so as to have presented them later to the steering committee,
I believe it would have facilitated things and

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brought about more harmony in respect of some of these clauses than has been indicated in the debate.
Clause 6 makes the proposal that the Minister of Labour should intervene in a strike where any strike vote has not been taken. That came originally from the steering committee in this form:
Your committee recommends that it shall be illegal to take strike action before the taking of a vote, supervised by the government, in which all the employees of the particular industry shall have the right to participate.
That was not suitable to the main committee.


Mr. MacNICOL:: Why not?


Clarence Gillis: It just was not suitable
There is no use in wasting time asking why it was not. It was deleted.


James Horace King: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member, but he has spoken forty minutes.
Some. hon. MEMBERS: Go ahead.


Clarence Gillis: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and through you, hon. members. This very important recommendation was being debated within only a few minutes before the committee adjourned. The provision I have read was deleted, but part of the clause which appears in the report was written by the Minister of Reconstruction and part was written by myself, during the discussion around that table. I threw one piece of paper up, and the Minister of Reconstruction threw another piece of paper; and the original language of what I considered was a suggestion was embodied in the report. I made it clear when I threw my piece of paper up that this was just an idea, that the steering committee could work on it and put it into better language to be presented to the house in the report.


Maurice Lalonde: And we came back with it the morning after.


Clarence Gillis: With the original draft; it was poorly drafted.


Paul Joseph James Martin: The hon. member is talking about clause 6?


Clarence Gillis: Yes. The intention behind clause 6, according to my interpretation and my understanding of it in committee, and also as I remember it-the Minister of Reconstruction placed himself on record last night as to his understanding of it-was that we were trying to adopt a provision under which the working men in this country when they are asked to place their wives and families up against a picket line-because they are the ones who will do the suffering-should have a
right to vote on it. If an industry is to go on a strike in this country, the merits or demerits of the dispute or strike action should be balloted on by those affected in the industry -the man who, in the final analysis, pays the bill. Secondly, as to the latter part of it, my conception of it was this, that if a vote is taken, as it has been taken in this steel dispute, that legalizes that strike as far as the vote is concerned. If an industry is tied up without a vote having been taken, it is not only the prerogative of the Minister of Labour but it is his duty as a responsible member of the government to see that a vote is taken to determine the wishes of the people affected in that particular dispute. Many constructions were put upon this in the house, and every hon. member is entitled to exercise his judgment as to what this section means. I know what I meant when I supported it. I had the word of the Minister of Labour that he would make a statement in the house and put that interpretation on the record.


Humphrey Mitchell: Just a question for the purpose of clarification. I believe I am thinking along the same line as my hon. friend. Take such a case as I pointed out in the committee; that I receive a report from either side and after investigation I am of the opinion that the vote was not taken properly -my hon. friend knows what I am driving at-[DOT] we would not put that outside the discretion of the minister?


Clarence Gillis: Not at all. If I were minister of labour and I was told that an industry with 14,000 workers had taken a vote in a telephone booth by a show of hands, I would certainly see that a proper vote was taken- definitely. But the particular angle of the thing which I am concerned about is this, that the right to say whether you are going to strike should rest with the rank and file affected. That is where it should rest. That is democracy'. On the other hand, if men are pulled out on wild-cat strikes the minister of labour in this country cannot be a rubber stamp. Suppose I wxere the responsible minister; I could not see myself accepting a position whereby someone pulls the pin from under an industry and walks in and says to me, "We are on strike, whether you like it or not, and we are running the show without any consultation with the rank and file of the people of this country." The basis of the movement which I belong to is control on the part of the people. That is why we hold conventions and write policies. The leadership of this C.C.F. movement carries out the instructions given by the rank and file.


An hon. MEMBER:: Oh, oh.
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Major James William Coldwell: Surely, we do.


Mr. GIBSON (Comox-Alberni):: Except in West Kootenay.


Clarence Gillis: I would like to say that the mechanism of the particular matter we are talking about is not for the benefit of us in Nova Scotia. We take that vote; there is no trade union leader in the province who, on any of the basic issues which affect the membership of the union, would dare take any step without a referendum vote-a levy on membership, a strike, agreements when they are finalized. That is democracy, and that is what we fight to retain. I was called from Sydney a few nights ago when this was phoned to them. Some one interpreted this proposal as meaning that the Minister of Labour could order a vote in the Hamilton plant on the wage question. It cannot be done. After a vote is taken it legalizes the strike; if there is not a vote there should not be a strike.
The hon, member for Spadina (Mr. Croll) spoke of the Rand formula. I am all for the Rand formula. I would have written it in the report; and I may add that if I had. written that report it wTould have been different from what it is. There would have been about four clauses in it, strong and specific. But no one member wrote it; it was a compromise, based on different opinions. But when the hon. member for Spadina said the other evening that the Rand formula would apply to this situation and would cure it, I must tell him that it has nothing to do with it. The Rand formula is union security; this is a strike vote. If the Rand formula is applied to industry in this country it eliminates picketing. There is proof of that in the steel strike. In Sydney there is no picketing, because they are organized one hundred per cent and they have union security by agreement.


Humphrey Mitchell: Is that not the best kind of security?


Clarence Gillis: Definitely. And there is no picketing at Algoma. There is no union security in Stelco, but there is a civil war on. I would say that the Minister of Labour should have a national code enacted as soon as possible and write into it the Rand formula or something like it. On the other hand, the hon. member for Spadina based his construction of this particular section on the use of the' word "affected". I do not know what he has in mind. I had no intention of including the superintendents, clerical staff, stenographers and so on. They are not affected. In any strike I have ever been in, the office staffs and superintendents and clerical staffs and
fMr. Gillis]
confidential staffs were paid their salaries, and they are not eligible for membership in the union. But I think that every man who is eligible for membership in the organization should have the right to vote, because he is affected and should be consulted,


Humphrey Mitchell: Would you go this far; would you use the constitution of the organization-?


Clarence Gillis: Definitely. These things are written into the constitution and the agreements of the old established unions. But in this province you have not old established unions except in the crafts, and in your mass industries, particularly, until such time as they have grown to maturity and write these laws for themselves in their own agreements and constitutions, legislative action is necessary now, in order to guide them and see that the rank and file-and, indeed, the leadership-are protected. Because pressure groups in an organization can throw a strike against the wishes of the executive board; they wake up in the morning and find their industry is tied up and they have had nothing to say about it; then they are "behind the eight ball" in disentangling it.
This is not legislation; this is merely a suggestion by way of a report from this committee. I assume that officers of the crown will sit in and draft legislation on the basis of these recommendations. All legislation which goes through this house is prepared in that manner; regulations are written, interpretation clauses provided, and so on. All this is merely a suggestion. We did not try to write legislation. I had no conception or thought of doing so. Under present circumstances in this country I am merely supporting number 6 on the assumption that the construction placed on it by the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply and the Minister of Labour in the committee, and the ideas I have about it, are correct. It is to provide for a strike vote; before an industry goes on strike, balloting the men affected, and then there is the "after" business, after a strike takes place, after an industry has pulled a strike without consultation by ballot of the men affected the minister has a duty to perform to take a ballot there and see that it is taken properly; and that is the end of it.


Humphrey Mitchell: If the minister has any doubt as to how the ballot was taken?


Clarence Gillis: Yes. If you are notified by the membership that no proper ballot was taken, certainly you have a duty to perform. Then, I think, either side should be in a position to demand it. There may be cases in which you will get as many requests from

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the employees of an industry as you will from the industrialists, that they are on strike without a ballot. I could tell you of many of these things which I have been through, but I do not want to waste time. That is why we have written these provisions into our constitutions and our agreements. When the minister speaks I want him to clarify that particular point. I am supporting the proposal on that basis: it is a strike vote and a strike vote only. I use the word "affected" because I believe it is important. It would place trade union leadership in this position, that before a strike took place in any industry which they were organizing they would be absolutely sure that they had a reasonable number of people in the organization to make that strike successful. Striking a split plant Is bad tactics, and I believe that the people should be guided with legislation of this kind to make sure that a proper organizational job is done before a strike. I think some of us who have had experience here should have the courage to put that into legislative form as a guide to those who, if we do so, will not have to learn the hard way, the way that some of us had to learn it.
In conclusion, and I apologize for taking so much time, there are three things that must be done. First, if this man Kilbourn has made the statements attributable to him here with regard to Hamilton and the way he intends to take an inventory of every person in the plant, he should be removed. Otherwise he has scrapped our committee's work. Second, I think that someone who is fair and who has not got something like that on him should be appointed and that the steelworkers' last proposal should be used as a basis of negotiations for settlement. Their three proposals if accepted would settle the strike and the rest could be left to arbitration. But the important thing is to get the industry back into production as quickly as possible. Many of the committee's recommendations could be worked out later, but it is essential that the industry be got back into production as soon as possible. I think the Minister of Labour should give serious consideration to the recommendation of the union that industrial councils be set up to deal directly with management, employees and the government. They should replace the present war labour boards, which were set up as a war measure and were designed for a different period. They are not measuring up to the requirements of this period. I hope the minister will give serious consideration to that.
I wanted to place my opinions on the record. I respect the opinions of others who may have disagreed with me on clause 6; for I
know that they all want to do the best they can for those affected. I hope that the interpretations as I understand them and as the Minister of Labour understands them and as the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply understands them will be written into legislation to be presented to the house for the guidance of union people and industrialists in this country.
At one o'clock the house took recess.
The house resumed at three o'clock.
Mr. C. E. JOHNSTON (Bow River)': Mr. Speaker, the question that we were discussing before the house rose is one in which every hon. member is deeply interested, and I do not think it can be said that any one member is more concerned about it than another. It is a question that affects the whole economy of Canada, and certainly I believe that everyone else is just as anxious as I am to have the strike settled. As I was a member of the committee and also of the steering committee, I believe that the members of both sides, the main committee and the subcommittee as well, were sincere in the work they performed. It was a difficult task, and it was made difficult because of the fact that the strike was already in progress. It was made difficult too because of the limitations of the order of reference to the committee. I do not believe, and I am sure many other members of the committee feel as I do, that the order was wide enough to cover the field as efficiently and as thoroughly as it should have been. Moreover the time factor was an important part in our proceedings, because the house was due to close, or at least we hoped it would close, within a very short time, and we were compelled under the order of reference to report back to the house. That was an important factor in accounting for the short report which the committee made to the house.
Some people may think, looking over the committee's report, that there is not much substance in it. On the contrary I believe that if the recommendations are followed by the government a great deal of good can come from the report, and I wish to pay tribute to the members of the main committee and the steering committee-I was one of them-for their sincerity in desiring to bring the committee's deliberations to a satisfactory conclusion.
I have looked at the papers this morning and it seems to be the opinion of some at least that the members who speak from this
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I say that is not according to the facts. We should put the record straight in one instance. I do not wish to tire the house at this late hour by reading long extracts from the evidence. But this is an important matter. Had it been cleared up in the first place I do not think the strike would ever have taken place. Let me read from the evidence exactly what Mr. Gordon had to say in regard to the increase in wages which was supposed to have been allowed in the $5 increase in the price of steel. There is no mistaking this evidence; Mr. Gordon was most clear and explicit. I asked him a question, and I am going to read that question together with the answer so that the committee may be in a position to judge whether or not the statement by the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply is in accordance with the evidence. At page 329 of the proceedings of that committee I asked:
The point I wanted to make is this, Mr. Gordon, that you were in a better position to decide whether or not this company could make a ten cent offer. The company was in a more favourable position than you were to know they could make the ten cent offer, and what was the position of the union in demanding the increase. Now, it wras quite evident

Notice this.
-that there was a certain amount in that $5 which had been allocated for wages.
The answer Mr. Gordon gave was this:
No. not necessarily: that is the point I have been labouring to put forward. That was dependent entirely on the decision of the management of the steel company as to what profit level they were willing to operate on; and they could quite easily and quite reasonably have taken the attitude that they could not afford to pay anything for wages because they were not earning a profit amount anywhere near the amount which they ought to be earning by pre-war standards in relation to the volume of production that they are now undertaking. I have already told you that the steel company had reached a production of two and a half times their pre-war volume.
A little further down, in explaining the same question, Mr. Gordon went on to say that if the company had taken the view they could not give anything

That would have been a reasonable argument. But if they had taken that stand I do not think they could have paid anything.
Then to make doubly sure, at that point the hon. member for Spadina (Mr. Croll) interjected:
-you allowed yourself to he in a position where there might have been nothing, and you say it is reasonable for them to take that position.
I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that the remarks of the minister are not in accordance with the evidence given by Mr. Gordon.


Humphrey Mitchell: What minister are you referring to?


Mr. JOHNSTON:: The Minister of Reconstruction.


Humphrey Mitchell: For once I am out of it.


Charles Edward Johnston: Yes. If the wartime prices and trade board had done as I believe they should; if they had thoroughly investigated the financial position of the company before making any suggestion of an increase in the price of steel; if they had waited until they knew exactly what increases were to be made in wages, they would have avoided a great deal of difficulty. But the wartime prices and trade board never knew for sure whether there was anything at all, whether there was one cent or whether there was twenty-five cents for wages in the $5 rise in steel. Had the wartime prices and trade board been in a position to say to the unions, "We are allowing a S5 increase, in which there is a ten cent increase in wages," and had this offer of the ten cent wage increase been made at the time the $5 increase in price was permitted, I believe our difficulties would have been avoided. But there was absolutely no relation between the price increases granted the steel company and the wages offered the steel workers. In my view there should be a more definite and thorough investigation into that problem, and certainly into the relationship between the wartime prices and trade board and the national war labour board.
In my opinion the wartime prices and trade board started from the wrong point in this matter. When they made the offer of $5 they were developing their negotiations with Stelco, which is financially better off than any of the other companies. It seems to me they should have begun their negotiations with the company in the poorest financial position, to ascertain whether or not they needed an increase in price and what increase would be required in order to give the workers in that plant a decent standard of living. I believe they would have saved themselves a great deal of difficulty if they had begun in that way.
If I might refer back to the quotation I read from the evidence of Mr. Gordon, that was given when Mr. Gordon was before the committee in person. Later he submitted a statement which was merely placed on the record, from which I should like to read one or two lines in order to show a contradiction in his statements. At page 4 of the statement which was placed on record he said:
As I said before, that was a departure from our usual practice. In considering every other application for a price increase, we have not taken into account the possibility of future wage increases. This steel case was an exception and

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the decision was made, as I have stated in previous evidence, in the expectation that settlement of the price application would enable pending wage negotiations to be completed quickly. Furthermore, it certainly increased labour's chances of getting a reasonable and prompt increase in wages.
I say that is in absolute contradiction with the evidence he gave in person. Further down this statement says:
We authorized this increase in good faith and for good reasons and in the belief that an increase in wage rates was a certainty. .
I am quite sure that if this question had been properly dealt with in the beginning of negotiations, a great many of our difficulties never would have arisen. Then when the committee in its wisdom-properly or otherwise-decided to appoint Mr. L. W. Brock-ington as negotiator between, the companies and the union, a motion was made that the committee rise while those negotiations were taking place. That motion was supported by two or three or four of us on the committee, but was not carried. I thought it a shame that the committee should continue to take evidence during the very time the negotiating parties were endeavouring to reach a settlement. Our stand was vindicated later. The Minister of Labour, the Minister of Reconstruction and the Acting Minister of Finance gave it as their view, in public statements, that a ten cent increase was about as much as the ceiling would stand.


Humphrey Mitchell: I did not say that.
What I said was this, and I want to repeat it; that I felt even that increase would find its way into the price structure. That was the import of what I said. You are not going to get me in the position,-not yet, while I can stand on my feet-of admitting that any increase, whether it be to the farmers or to anybody else, does not find its way into the price structure. A child understands that.


Charles Edward Johnston: Well, the minister is
getting unduly riled, because I never even suggested that; I never attempted to put the minister in any compromising position.


Angus MacInnis: He did that himself.


Charles Edward Johnston: Yes, he did. it himself.


Humphrey Mitchell: I want to say to the hon. member for Vancouver East, "No prompting".


Charles Edward Johnston: This is the point I am trying to bring out, that when the committee appointed Mr. Brockington to negotiate, the government, in effect-and the minister may take exception to this-stated government policy when it agreed with Mr. Gordon that
ten cents was about the highest that the price structure would stand. I am trying to put it fairly so that the minister will not take objec-ion to it. And that is the very thing that tied the hands of Mr. Brockington. He went into those negotiations bound by a ten-cent ceiling. The result was that when Mr. Brockington brought in his report it was evident throughout that he made a stand at ten cents. Of course the members of the union would not accept that, because they had already made public statements that they would not accept anything less than fifteen cents. The companies on the other hand had said they would not accept anything higher than ten cents. That was bound to destroy the negotiations between the company and the unions under Mr. Brockington's leadership. That procedure, which was directed by the committee itself, was doomed to failure before it ever got a chance.
Now, regardless of the fact that some may say the union is all to blame in this, I do not think that the union is all to blame. They did things which I think most hon. members think would have been better left undone. They have broken the law, as has been pointed out by other hon. members-and I am not going to repeat it. But so has the company broken the law. That will not settle our difficulties. The way to settle them is to get the two together and have a settlement made so that production will again begin to roll off the lines.
It was pointed out in committee that the companies themselves have gone into a production sit-down strike. That is something I think should be looked into, because the unions are not the only ones who are holding up production. I believe that from the point of view of inflation there is a greater danger right now of inflation coming about because of no production than there would have been if we had given the fifteen cents asked by labour. I repeat that there is a greater danger of inflation by no production than there would have been if we had granted the fifteen cents, and set up some other means of meeting the cost.
Of course some hon. members have strong objections to the government paying subsidies. I wish to point out that even in the United States the government saw fit-probably it was compelled to do so-to withdraw some of its subsidies and to withdraw price controls. But in its wisdom it has reverted to its first process. And it might be well for us in this country to revert to the giving of subsidies, now cancelled, in order to keep the wheels of production gcing. It has been drawn
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to my attention, too, that tariffs are one of the greatest sources of subsidies enjoyed by industry. We allow them to be paid.
Only this afternoon I saw in to-day's issue of the Ottawa Citizen of August 21 a dispatch from Washington, dated August 20, stating:
The United States price decontrol board tonight ordered ceilings restored on all meat, and Paul Porter, head of the office of price administration, said they will be "at or close to June 30 levels."
The board ruled that dairy products and nearly all grains should remain free of ceilings but it restored price controls on soy beans and cottonseed products.
O.P.A. and the agriculture department will determine the ceilings on the recontrolled items and put them into effect Friday.
The board also authorized revival of June 29 subsidy payments on meats and live stock.
But when we suggest it might be better for the government to restore some of the subsidies in order to make it possible to meet the wage demands that labour is asking, some hon. members say, "Oh, you are crazy." But is it more dangerous to allow industry to cease producing than it would be for us to spend a few million dollars in subsidies to make up this deficiency, if the companies cannot do it? And, mind you. I do not agree that they all cannot do it, by an.y manner of means. I think it would be good business for the government and the country at least to study thfe possibility of giving subsidies in cases where they are needed. I am not going to discuss where the government will get the money to pay subsidies. It will be said that it will be raised by taxation and that it will increase the cost of living for everybody. That may be true, but at least it will be spreading it over the whole' of Canada. I should like an answer to that.
I am not going to deal with the report at length, but I would refer to one other recommendation which has been mentioned in this debate, namely section 6. I am not speaking as an experienced union man, because I am not a union man, and I want that clearly understood. But we had men on the com-mitte who were union men. We listened most carefully to union pleas in this connection, and we also listened to the side of industry too. Those of us who were impartial could at least form some logical conclusions respecting this section. So that there may be no misunderstanding for anyone who reads Hansard, I shall put the section on record. It states:
6.	Your committee recommends that the Minister of Labour may, at the request of either party to an industrial dispute, and if he deems fit, either before or after a strike is in progress, direct that a strike vote be taken under govern-
ment supervision to determine the wishes of the men affected as to whether a strike will take place or otherwise.
I was one who supported that; there were others who did not. Srime say that you can interpret it in one way, others that you can interpret it in another. I shall tell the house how I interpret it, and I believe if the government follows the recommendation as it is worded there will be no danger in it; in fact I believe it will be beneficial both to labour and to industry. My view is that in respect of what are generally called wild-cat strikes, where there has been no proper strike vote taken, even though a strike may be in progress-and that is where the words "before or after" come in-some authority may come in and take a vote to establish whether or not the negotiating party has the right to call a strike. That is my view of it. I do not think the wording of the recommendation would permit the Minister of Labour or anybody else to go in after an official strike vote has been taken, and then put on a series of votes to see whether or not the men should go back to work, when a company might desire to increase the wages by one cent or two cents or three cents or whatever they might think they could get across. That is not my view.
I am firmly of the opinion that in this instance the Minister of Labour will accept the recommendation as it is worded, and that he will go into a plant where he is satisfied a proper vote has not been taken by those affected. He will take that vote, in the manner in which any other democratic election is carried on-by secret ballot. In this way he will determine whether or not there should be a. strike. Once that strike vote has been taken, that is the end of it. The strike is in progress or it is not in progress, as the case may be.
I certainly would not agree with the view that the government should go in and interfere with the union once a strike has been properly called, and I do not believe the Minister of Labour would take that view. Certainly it would not be my view. But I do believe if the government sees fit to put the recommendations made into effect-and there are seven of them

they will be of considerable assistance in the state of industrial unrest which prevails in Canada.	.


Mr. L. W. SKEY (Trinity):: Mr. Speaker,
I shall not take up more than a few minutes of the time of the house. There is one and only one section of the work of the committee with which I should like to deal.
Before proceeding to do that, however, may I say that a few weeks ago, speaking on the budget debate, I took the liberty of recommending to the government that Mr. Donald

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Gordon, the chairman of the wartime prices and trade board, should be invited into the federal cabinet. I would again suggest that, because, as we saw in committee, it was the action of the wartime prices and trade board in setting the price on. steel and the increment in wages that was at the root of the strike. We also heard yesterday the able hon. member for Calgary West (Mr. Smith), who showed the lack of liaison between the wartime prices and trade board and the Department of Labour.


Humphrey Mitchell: The war labour board; it is not the Department of Labour.


Lawrence Wilton Skey: The war labour board; I am
sorry.
When we were in committee, with a number of others I took the view that the government should make a public declaration of its wage policy. I am still of that opinion. I think that the absence of it is at the root of this strike. Union members lack any knowledge of how far the government will permit increases in wages to go.


Humphrey Mitchell: Does my hon. friend, when he speaks of "wage policy", mean that we should set a sum?


Lawrence Wilton Skey: Well, the government has said that there must be a measure of wage stabilization. I think it is only fair that if wages are to be stabilized to a certain degree, the government should tell the people of Canada to what level wages can be permitted to rise in this country. It does not mean necessarily that' every plant in Canada will pay 15i cents per hour more to its workers. The unions know that some plants cannot afford to pay that much. But I think you have to set a ceiling.


Humphrey Mitchell: My hon. friend knows that the ceiling is always the floor.


Lawrence Wilton Skey: Yes; well, it is not the minimum. wage we are talking about now. We are in favour of a minimum wage as well.
The wartime prices and trade board, have placed a ceiling on consumer goods in this country, and every housewife and every citizen knows what that ceiling is. How the government say that we require a measure of wage stabilization in Canada, and they have to nut a ceiling on that wage stabilization if they want to get some stability into the situation.
The hon. member for Cape Breton South (Mr. Gillis) has said that he feels that the basic issues are unchanged. His remark when we came out of the committee was that the basic issues were unchanged and the thing was just where it was when we went into it.
I agree with him in that. I do not think that a thing has been changed; I think it has been aggravated to a certain extent. But that was not the committee's fault. I believe he will agree with me that we tried in every way we knew how to get the facts and to have the government make a statement on this subject, but every time we were stopped. We were stopped by Mr. Gordon's "ten cent" speech; we were stopped by a statement from the Acting Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott), we were stopped by a statement from Mr. Murchison, of the Department of Labour, when he brought in a document purporting to prove that a ten cent rise in wages in Canada is equal to a 18J cent rise of wages in the United States. So in the end1 we all became, I think, a little bit discouraged.
What is the basic issue at the present time? Isn't it that? These men in Hamilton struck against their company for an increase in wages-something which organized labour all over the world can do if they so wish, They struck against their plant, whether rightly or wrongly I would not wish to argue now. But what did the government do? The government so manoeuvred the situation as to place themselves in the position of the company, so that the men are almost literally striking against the government when they meant to strike against their employers. The government is behind all these negotiations; the government has said that a measure of wage stabilization is necessary; and I have risen this afternoon only to say that it is my firm view that the government must make known the ceiling on wages.
Mr. JEAN-FRANQOIS POULIOT (Te-miscouata): Mr. Speaker, I was appointed to this committee, but I could not attend the sittings very regularly, for obvious reasons. I wish to congratulate the chairman for the able manner in which he presided over the proceedings of the committee. He has done exceptionally well. His task was difficult, because the committee was very large and the matters with which it dealt were most contentious; no one could have done better than he did. My praise goes also to my fellow members of the committee, all of whom were men of good will, who showed that they considered the situation a very serious one, and each of whom, in his own way, did his best to come to some agreement and offer worthwhile proposals to settle our difficulties.
This is the time-at the end of the session- to discuss the reports of all committees, but I regret very much that the estimates have not yet been passed, because there are many things which I would have said on the esti-
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mates but which I shall have to say to-day. I have noticed that at the beginning of the session, when members are about to talk on a certain departmental matter they are often told they should wait until the estimates come and then they will be given a full opportunity to discuss the matter in which they are interested. But we have to wait until the end of the session; this is the 21st day of August and the session started in March, yet the estimates of the Department of Labour have not yet 'been before us.
I do not wish to praise only the work which has been done in the committee. I must eulogize hon. members who have already spoken for the tone of their speeches. Yesterday I listened to the hon. member for Calgary West (Mr. Smith) and some others, and to-day I have listened to the hon. member for Cape Breton South (Mr. Gillis) and my two hon. friends who have just spoken. I congratulate them very heartily. It is impossible for all of us to have the same views about everything, and it is from discussion that we get light. The Minister of -Labour (Mr. Mitchell) should take advantage of all the suggestions which have -been offered to him to try to improve conditions of labour in this country.
In labour matters there are three parties; there is the employer, the employee, and the consumer; and, as a sagacious economist has just pointed out to me, until now the consumer has been quite a forgotten man. But I have been taught from my youth that one must respect the workers, and that they are entitled to all the comforts of life. Therefore since I have been elected a member of parliament I have done my best to try to improve the conditions of labour in this country. My first step in that regard dates back to the sessions of 1928, 1929 and 1930, when I pointed out to the House of Commons and to the government that salaries and wages in the province of Quebec were much lower than in the other provinces. During that period I never ceased to advocate fair wages and make representations to that effect to the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) and to the then minister of labour, who was Mr. Peter Heenan. I prepared tabulations showing that wages were lower in the province of Quebec than in any other province; and finally, with the support of the Prime Minister, the minister of labour sponsored a bill which is now chapter 20 of the statutes of 1930, an act respecting fair wages and an eight hour day for labour employed on public works. Parliament did not exceed its jurisdiction, as determined by a judgment of the supreme court which was given a short time before. At [Mr. Pouliot.J
that time parliament believed in civil rights. Last year I made the suggestion during the Windsor strike that representatives of the union should be invited to attend, the committee on industrial relations, and I spoke to deaf ears. The government did not pay any attention to my suggestion; and it was only when a Conservative member repeated the same suggestion a year later, in connection with another strike, that the government jumped at it and at once accepted it. When it is offered by a Liberal it is no good; when it is offered by Conservatives it is good. I do not complain of that, because I offer my suggestions with a big heart. When they are accepted I am delighted. But what surprises me is that what comes from the party opposite is considered better than what comes from within.
In the second place I attended a sitting of the committee, and I had a chair not far from the witnesses. But then I was asked by one of the learned counsel to give him my chair. This is the first time that a member of parliament has had to give his chair up to a learned committee counsel. I am told that he was more important because his salary exceeded that paid to the counsel for the Rowell-Sirois commission by $50 a day. Therefore he was more important than a member of parliament and I had to make way for him. But I did not begrudge that. I had some business to attend to in the house. Not having the gift of ubiquity, the only thing I could do was to glance over the reports of the committee at night, and this I did not fail to do to keep myself informed of what was going on.
I want to put on record what has been done for labour by a member of parliament, and it was not done as a mission because no one had asked for it. It was a self-imposed task, undertaken to improve the conditions of labour in this country. In the first place there was the act referred to, and in the second place there was a report on unemployment. For many years I tried to bring order in the Department of Labour. During the Bennett regime the minister of labour was a big -giant, and when I suggested that classifications should be made of the unemployed he referred me to the bureau of statistics. The unemployment was prevalent in 1935, and I was referred back to statistics of the census of 1931, four years before, which was an absurdity. The Department of Labour at that time had no definite information at all about unemployment ; all the information they got was scanty.
I was told by the government of the day to go to the bureau of statistics to get the information that was not up to date but related to conditions of four years before.

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But in spite of everybody and everything 1 decided to get the information I was seeking. I attended a meeting of the mayors in the Chateau Laurier and asked if the municipalities had that information. I was told by the mayor of one of the cities in western Ontario that they had, which in most cases was not true. The mayor who told me that was all wrong; it was not true. But a census of unemployment had been made by the province of Ontario at the instigation of the hon. member for Spadina (Mr. Croll), who was the minister of labour and welfare in Ontario. The data I got at that time from the province of Ontario were very useful to me in the preparation of my report. What was considered an impossible thing to do by the Department of Labour at Ottawa and by the government of that day was done by the member for Temiscouata, with the aid of his secretary, in about a month and a half. It took me three weeks to collect the data from the municipalities, and another three weeks to compile it. I have the report here. When I presented it to the house I was turned down by Mr. Speaker, who said that under the rules of procedure of parliament he could not accept the report. The report had been prepared and drafted giving information as to the number of unemployed and their different trades or professions so that order might be reestablished in society and an opportunity given to the government and to municipalities and employers to put to work men who had special training or special experience. That work was done, as I said, by the member for Temiscouata, in a month and a half. It was done before the election of 1935, and I sent a copy of the report to every member of parliament, including the members supporting the government. I received a very fine letter from a Liberal candidate in northern Ontario who is now the Minister of Reconstruction (Mr. Howe). His letter is dated June 19, 1935, ana reads:
Dear Mr. Pouliot:
Please accept my best thanks for copy of your memorandum dated June 8, 1935, on unemployment. I have read this with a great deal of interest, and am going through it again to make notes for use in my election campaign. It is the most complete analysis of the situation that I have. seen and will be exceedingly useful to me.
Yours sincerely,
C. D. Howe.
My report was not made -for political purposes. That was a secondary consideration. My main purpose was to bring order out of the chaotic conditions of labour in this country at that time. And I had my reward. Very seldom do I have praise in the house except
from my hon. friend the member for Davenport (Mr. MacNicol) and my hon. friend the member for Broadview (Mr. Church), who are too generous to me.


John Ritchie MacNicol: You deserve much more praise than you get.


Mr. POULIOT:: Thank you, sir. On
March 9, 1936, the Hon. Norman McL. Rogers, then minister of labour, an hon. gentleman who was so kind to me, said this, at page 994 of Hansard'.
May I say this, too: the hon. member for Temiscouata, by his industry and persistence a year ago. laid the foundation for the work we are seeking to carry on now in that direction.
He was speaking of collecting information on unemployment, and went on:
No one can question the desirability of securing this information at as early a date as possible; certainly no one who has any acquaintance with the problems confronting social service agencies in Canada can doubt the wisdom of obtaining and analysing this data. Already some of the returns have come in from the provinces. As soon as it is possible to summarize that information I propose to lay it before this house.
The Department of Labour had my report mimeographed so that it was available to all members of the house, to whom it was sent so that they would be familiar with that angle of the labour situation. That report was prepared by the member for Temiscouata with the aid of a stenographer, work which it was said it was impossible for the Department of Labour to do. There must have been something wrong with the department. But afterwards an unemployment commission was appointed, of which Mr. A. B. Purvis was chairman. He was a great friend of Mr. Dunning. The commission studied unemployment conditions in this country, but the only man who gained anything from all the work of that commission, which cost half a million dollars, was precisely Mr. Purvis himself. It served no other purpose. When the report was tabled I threw it on the floor to indicate that it was absolutely useless. It was a gesture of indignation at incompetency. Then I wrote a letter to the Minister of Labour. I had been working very hard to improve the conditions of labour and had done a work which had been praised, rightly or wrongly, by the minister of labour of that day. He told me that my work was the cornerstone of the unemployment policy of the government, Then everything was sabotaged by that commission. My letter was as follows:
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Riviere du Loup, Que.,
August 13, 1939.
The Honourable Norman McL. Rogers,
Minister of Labour,
Ottawa, Ont.
Hear Mr. Rogers,-[DOT]
Because the figures prepared by the Purvis commission both on employment and unemployment were wholly unsatisfactory and useless, I offered you, two months before the prorogation of last session, to make within a month a classification of the unemployed according to their previous occupation.
You answered me that a new classification could be made by your departmental staff from the figures gathered by the Purvis commission and that it could be completed up to date by recent information supplementing that received by the Purvis commission.
On July 22 your private secretary forwarded me two shapeless compilations referring only to part of those who were unemployed eleven months before, in September 1937.
My first objection is that, in spite of what you told me, that compilation is out of date and therefore useless.


James Horace King: Order. I would be obliged to the hon. member if he would be kind enough to address himself to the Chair. It is impossible for me to follow him.


Jean-François Pouliot: Very well, sir; but my speech is .perfectly in line with others made with reference to the report of the committee. It is our wish to improve the conditions of labour, and my contention is that the work of the committee will be useless unless there is a check on the professional ability of all workers and tradesmen. Moreover, what I am coming at is that it was a wrong policy to abolish the registration cards. I would remind you, however, Mr. Speaker, that the Minister of Justice (Mr. St. Laurent), when he announced that we would discuss the report of the committee and the labour estimates, stated that all the estimates of labour could be discussed at the same time as the report, and he made that statement in broad terms. If I cannot say now what I have to say about this matter I shall have to say it later, but it would take much less time if I could conclude now the remarks I wish to make.


James Horace King: I did not suggest that the hon. member should not continue to read the letter which he has been quoting. I merely asked him if he would be kind enough to address himself to the Chair, because, if he did so, it would be easier for the Speaker to follow him.


Jean-François Pouliot: I beg Your Honour's
pardon. I did not understand what Your Honour was saying, and I regret very much the remarks I have just made. I shall be pleased to face the Chair.


Humphrey Mitchell: May I say to my hon. and good friend that, if he will stay with it,

this is the last speech on labour, and when my estimates come up, if he will give me a clear field, I will give three cheers for the red, white and>
blue.


Jean-François Pouliot: I wonder if it is the new flag we are to have. If I may go on now with the letter, I shall not have much to say about labour afterwards, because like everyone else I am very anxious to go home. To continue:
Even if those figures were up to date and referring to a month or two previous to the date of the issuance of the classification, they are equally useless for many reasons:
4.	Their disposition is absurd;
2.	There is no index with indication of pages;
3.	The occupations are too much detailed;
4.	The positions of similar trades are not put together;
5.	They are not summarized in general trades (a) by provinces and (b) by cities of the same province;
6.	There is no comparison between the total population and the total number of unemployed in provinces and cities;
7.	It is incomplete because it refers only to unemployed on relief in cities of over ten thousand population; etc., etc.
As the work done by your departmental staff is shapeless and useless, there is no room for it in my office and I return it to you by the same mail.
Let me add that it is a matter of -regret that very few of your departmental staff know how to work intelligently. I have understood at first that it was your intention to have that work(?) prepared by your departmental staff because they did not like someone outside your department to do that work properly or at least sensibly, in order that any one could understand something in the unemployment problem of to-day in this country.
With half a dozen worthy exceptions which I could name to you, the whole staff of your department^ from your deputy minister down, should be fired at once for the public good. It would be the first step for the relief of unemployment in Canada, and it should be so.
I have told you personally what I think of them and it is the truth. So long as you keep them in office instead of getting rid of them, there shall be no improvement in the unemployment relief policy.
I regret also not to have listened to my first thought and not to have done the work this year in spite of you as I did it successfully, some years ago, in spite of your predecessor in office, the Honourable Wesley Gordon.
Sincerely yours,
Jean-Frangois Pouliot.
May I now read the answer I received, and I may say that Mr. Rogers was a most tolerant man. He did not object to that criticism because he understood that it was offered in good will with a view to improving the conditions, which were very bad. I quote:
Ottawa, August 17, 1938.
Bear Mr. Pouliot:
I have received your letter of August 13, 1938, in which you refer particularly to the classification of the unemployed by the Regis-

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tYation Branch of the Department of Labour. Your objections to the present method of classification will be brought to the attention of those charged with the work of registration.
From such information as I have before me, I cannot agree that your criticism is well founded. This however, is a matter of opinion.
I appreciated that at the time, andi told him so.
I have never objected to criticism from any source whatever and have always welcomed any suggestions which might improve the efficiency of the Department of Labour. I doubt, however, if any useful purpose is served by the general condemnation of officers of the department. It is your privilege to make this criticism and it is mine to disagree with it when it assumes the form of a general indictment. Nevertheless, I am ready at all times to discuss these matters with you as we have done in the past.
Yours sincerely,
(Sgd.) Norman McL. Rogers.
This letter is to the honour of the late minister, and I have read it because I do not want to be interfered with in what I have to say regarding the Department of Labour. I will tel'l the minister-and hon. members know my views in this legard-that it is most unfortunate that the Department of Labour is controlled by the intelligentsia we have in the east block. The minister may deny that if he wishes, but the departments at the present time are not all under the supervision of the Prime Minister. They are under the supervision of the intellectuals of the east block, men from Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and other places. They are intellectuals who are never in contact with the people, who have never been in contact with labour men, and it is they who make and dictate the policy of the Department of Labour and of other departments. These men, a partial list of whose names I had on December 10 last, are a curse to the country, and it is time to dispense with that intelligentsia, the same kind of intelligentsia that has caused the downfall of Russia.


An hon. MEMBER:: You need a broom.


Jean-François Pouliot: Yes, a good strong broom. And now, sir to show you the stupidity of some people, just at the beginning of the war, before the minister got in, an investigation was made by the departments of Agriculture, Fisheries, Mines, Transport and by the timber controller, MacMillan of British Columbia, and they decided what was the period of peak employment. I quote this, sir, to show the stupidity of these so-called experts. I cannot give it for all the provinces because I have not the time. I will give it for Ontario. It is divided into three heads-primary industry, secondary industry, period of peak employment, for Ontario alone, as I say. I have the 6.3260-325
other provinces, but time will not permit me to read them. Logging, December to March. That is false, because in the summer time pulpwood is cut and the bark is taken from it, but logging is done the year round. Sawmills May to September. That is untrue. Boatbuilding, from May to July. That is untrue. Refrigerators, April to June; mining, nonmetallic, July to November; transportation, shipping, May to November. Saw mills, boatbuilding and refrigerators are classed as secondary industries. Let us look at the secondary industries:	building construction
from June to November; that is untrue. Shipbuilding and repairs from May to June only; service, hotels and restaurants, July to September-no one eats in a hotel from September to July, apparently. Ice manufacturing, from June to September. Toys, September and October; toys are put in the same class as building construction and classified as a secondary industry. It is typical of the stupidity of these fellows. I shall not read all the material that I have at hand but would the house have any objection to my putting on Hansard an article entitled "Elliott Little was Right" which was written by myself and published in Le Saint Laurent on February 4, 1943?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Agreed.
The article follows:
On Selective Service
Elliott Little was Right By Jean-Frangois Pouliot ("Le Saint-Laurent," February 4, 1943)
"In or out of parliament, darkness, neglect, hallucination must contrive to cease in regard to it; true insight into it must be had."-Thomas Carlyle.
Laws reflect people. I realized this fact, finding in history the clearest and most faithful exemplification of law. The contrary is also true, because in order to have a just notion of present-day politics, one must stop to consider the deeds of legislators rather than their speeches, the arid phraseology of orders in council rather than the ambiguous sentences and the bombastic periods of parliamentary debates.
It is enough to glance over the statutes of war sessions to realize that parliament is called above all for the purpose of levying taxes destined to cover huge expenditures over which it has no longer any control. The pretext of war gave the government an opportunity to substitute itself for parliament in settling any question through orders in council passed by virtue of the War Measures Act and by stretching to a great extent the scope of this act. Therefore, it is not so much in parliamentary legislation as in orders in council that we can see the rolling and pitching of the federal ship in the storm through which we are struggling. According to the British parliamentary tradition which is still followed at Westminster, the government is a committee of the House of Commons. Here, the situation is reversed. It seems that

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parliament, which is called only as a matter of form, is now merely, for the government a cumbersome constitutional institution.
Of the thirty thousand orders in council passed since the outset of the war, published in the Canada Gazette and piling up over six feet high-the height of a tall man-we will mention only a few, just enough to throw light on the capital and so much discussed issue of national selective service, in other words, of the conscription of labour.
When selective service, created by order in council in March, 1942, was announced in parliament, it had already taken effect three days before. Its purpose was to compel each person to contribute to the utmost to the war effort and, with this end in view, to maintain the balance required between the army on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the war industries as well as those which are essential for the upkeep of the army and the civilian population.
After the Mobilization Act of >1940 took effect, the conscripts were called to their military training by the registrar of the National War Service Commission, established under the jurisdiction of the Minister of National War Services, the first incumbent being, to our great surprise, the Minister of Agriculture. One can enlist only as a volunteer in the navy and the air force. That commission, which acted as a manning pool for the militia, was sending most of the conscripts to training camps. This was done with so little discrimination in Quebec that the members of the commission were successively replaced. They are responsible in a great measure for the shortage in man power which our region is now suffering in agriculture and forestry. Even before the adoption of selective service, we had to fight many battles for the recognition of its principle, and also to have agriculture, forestry and railroad industries considered as essential to the war effort.
It was under such circumstances that the Minister of Labour started with the adoption of order No. 5038, in June, 1942, enacting that it was essential to prescribe a greater use, by employers and employees, of public employment offices with a view to using our manpower most efficaciously in the war effort and reducing excessive shifting from one plhce to another.
Was the government feeling the ground ? After a six-week test period, the conclusion was reached that a drastic change was necessary in the method of calling conscripts. It was then decided to withdraw this task from the Department of National War Services and to transfer it to selective service under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Labour. After providing for the establishment of secret priorities and for the stabilization of employment in the agricultural field, order No. 7595, dated August 28, 1942, prescribed a very simple procedure. In the case of employment in other fields, it was necessary to obtain permission from the selective service representative, with right of appeal, to the National War Service Commission. In other words, that commission was being turned into an appeal court, not against its own decisions, as was and still is the case, but against decisions rendered on first hearing by the local representative of selective service, in cases where the latter would have illegally refused, or unjustly revoked, an employment permit. The local representative of selective service would have .been kept constantly posted as to requisitions coming, not only from militia headquarters, but also from the essential industries, and he would have been in a position to assign {Mr. Pouliot.]
conscripts judiciously to the militia or industry, according to their aptitudes and experience, and taking into account requests on hand deemed reasonable, in order to maintain the necessary balance between militia and industry and preventing any shortage of essential manpower. That order in council, which was so sensible, was to take effect on September 1. It remained a dead letter, for the sole reason-or a sentimental order-that personnels of registrars' offices should not be reduced. This unbelievable explanation was publicly given in Quebec by an authorized person. Newspapers attest it.
So it was only to maintain, in spite of everything, some 300 employees, most of them useless-especially unmarried people without any military' record and some very young girls-in the registrars' offices of Quebec and Montreal that the government did not dare apply the very principle of selective service, which is of urgent necessity, and that the calling of conscripts -was not decentralized by being entrusted, as it should have been, to the numerous selective service offices. This is even less understandable as we hear nothing else but complaints about shortage of manpo-wer in the large war industries of Quebec and Montreal.

We do not know what happened behind the scenes, but by order in council No. 8343, dated September, 1942-748 others had been adopted in such a short interval-the regulations of 1940 applying to national war services were revised for the third time. Those who are mobilized and who do not answer their call may now be taken by force to camp instead of to prison-not to an essential industry-by order of a magistrate or of a justice of the peace. The National War Service Commission kept its initial functions and its first designation^ and remained for ten days only under the jurisdiction of the Minister of National War Services.
On September 26. 1942, the administration of regulations covering national war services was transferred by order in council No. 8800 to the Minister of Labour. The Department of National War Services had. therefore, lost all reasons for its existence: it had been laid bare and vacated just a few- days before the appointment of a new minister.
The fair distribution of our human capital between the militia and industry can be obtained only through a central organization having perfect freedom of action. Up to then, the national war service commissions had served only to fill the ranks of the militia. According to the provisions of the orders in council creating it, selective service was to insure not only the normal functioning, but also the gradual increase of industrial production. Mr. Little, its director, knew that very well. He keenly wanted the organization of which he was the head to serve industry as w'ell as the militia. Hence the indignation of jingoes and the campaign of the press accusing him of posing as a dictator and of trying to encroach upon the authority of his minister. There is an explanation for everything.
About that time. I heard out of sheer coincidence of the arrival incognito in Canada of a so-called expert, one Alexander Gunn, an official of the British government, whose services were supposedly to have been requested by the Canadian government to carry out the transfer of what he. Gunn, believed to be non-essential industries, to what he, Gunn, believed to be essential industries. No newspaper had mentioned the

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comings and goings-over the whole country- of this newcomer. I gave the scoop of this news to the Ottawa Journal.
Here is a resume of this interview:	"In
Canada, as far as the government is concerned, the first qualification of an expert is not to be a Canadian. It is unbelievable that an outsider who does not know anything about Canada, about Canadians nor about their affairs, should be called to decide who, among our business men, will survive the storm. Is it impossible to find in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver, to mention only our greatest centres, Canadians who are, not only as qualified but much more so, to initiate and carry out to a successful completion such a difficult and delicate task? Why such obstination in shrouding in silence his doings and even his name?" Seeing the intention to sabotage his work, Little, the Canadian, left. Gunn, the non-Canadian, remained.
By order No. 10,924, dated December 1, 1942, the regulations of national war services were revised for the fourth time under the designation of "regulations governing mobilization of national selective service." The old national war service commission survived all those amendments. Its duties are exactly the same to-day, with the same personnel intact, but under another minister. It is called now "The commission of mobilization." In order to give a just idea of the part it plays at present, we have learned from the best source that "selectitve service conforms to requests made by the Department of National Defence and that the registrars act accordingly." What is the result of so much zeal?
The newspapers reported, on January 27 last, that at the end of December, 1942, Canada counted 732,000 men under arms, that is, 33 per cent of the male population of Canada between 19 and 45 years old. It was said that
150,000	men would have been needed between March 20, 1941, and December 26, 1942, but that conscription brought up only 107,677. In a period of 21 months, conscription was responsible for only 1/7 of the men under arms. After such a poor result, why let the jingoes and junkers make so much noise with impunity and disorganize our industrial life?
We clearly demonstrated that the task of selective service should not be restricted to satisfying the demands of militia headquarters. We have the soldiers. They must be well armed, well equipped, well clothed, well fed and well cared for. The subsistence of our civilian population must be also assured. Besides, we imposed upon ourselves the obligation to provide our allies with arms, munitions and food supplies. If we want to keep up our speed, it is elementary and essential that our manpower be well distributed.

It is high time for action. All the provincial ministers of agriculture view the future with alarm. Did not the minister for Ontario declare in London, on January 13, that we are not far from food shortage, and did not the minister for British Columbia, on the same day, go as far as proposing to the Minister of Labour, at Victoria, to organize, for the defence if our territory, an army composed of women, in order to leave farmers and their sons on their farms where they accomplish essential work for our war effort?
Since the situation is so serious, we persist in maintaining that the policy set forth by the government in order No. 7595, dated August
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28, 1942, was imposed by the needs of the moment, that no reason whatever existed not to apply it, and that this policy is the only rational means to offset the shortage of manpower.
That is why we beg the government to abolish immediately all the commissions called "mobilization commissions" and to assign the calling and distribution of conscripts to selective service offices, not only in Quebec and Montreal, but in all regional centres of the country.
Now that the government has deemed it opportune to publish the total set for, and reached by military conscription, have we not the right to ask for the same information in respect to manpower needed by and available for war industries and other industries essential to the war effort, for example, in the agriculture, forestry and railroad industries, to name only three of that category? We shall see, then whether Mr. Little was right in asking that the calling of conscripts be decentralized and that the care and responsibility of directing them to the kind of activities in which they can be most useful to the country, be left to local representatives of selective service.
Then I received a tip that a man by the name of Gunn had been lent by the British government to come here as an expert to organize the classifications of labour. I gave that tip to the Ottawa Journal. It was a scoop, and I expected other newspapers to publish it. I did not care to have my name attached to the news, but I wanted it spread from ocean to ocean to show the kind of secret work which was being done to sabotage labour. This expert by the name of Gunn came from London. He was the son of a-


Humphrey Mitchell: I have no objection to what my hon. friend says about Mr. Gunn, but I just wish to say that he is not here. Mr. Gunn was an expert on unemployment insurance and selective service in the labour ministry of Great Britain. I asked Mr. Bevin if he would lend the services of Mr. Gunn. I wish to say that in that difficult period Mr. Gunn rendered magnificent service to this government and in my judgment to the people of Canada. I wish to say that before this discussion goes too far.


Jean-François Pouliot: That is all right, but his coming was kept secret. The only papers which mentioned it were the Ottawa Journal and the Globe and Mail. The Globe and Mail said: "Pouliot off on wrong foot in criticism of Gunn's work." I am surprised that the minister speaks in the same vein as the Globe and Mail. What happened to Gunn was that his coming here and his work was secret. I saw him at the Chateau, but no one could find out anything about him. I telephoned here and there but I could not get anything. I gave an interview to the Journal so that the country could be informed, but it stopped there. The blanket was put over
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the news so that nobody could find out. I hold the interview in my hand. I wonder whether it would interest the house if I put it on Hansard, because I have not time to read it. It is a short interview.


James Horace King: Has the hon. gentleman leave of the house to put the interview on
Hansard'!


Humphrey Mitchell: If there is no reflection on Mr. Gunn.


James Horace King: If the hon. gentleman has not unanimous consent it cannot go on
Hansard.


Jean-François Pouliot: Is there any objection?


Mr. FULTON:: Yes.


Jean-François Pouliot: Then I will read it. Is the objection maintained?


Edmund Davie Fulton: No.


Jean-François Pouliot: Thank you.


James Horace King: Has the hon. gentleman
unanimous consent?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Yes.


Jean-François Pouliot: The interview is as follows:
Ottawa Journal, October 21, 1942:
Would limit big jobs here to Canadians Pouliot objects seeking executives outside
An appeal to the government is being made this week by Jean Francois Pouliot, M.P. for Temiseouata, to appoint experienced Canadians to important administrative war posts, instead of seeking executives outside the country.
"Here in Canada," Mr. Pouliot told the Journal to-day, "the first qualification for an expert in the eyes of the dominion government is that he shall not be a Canadian. As long as a man is an outsider, whether he has accomplished anything in his own country or not, he is at once rated as an encyclopedi a of general knowledge.
"A recent example of imported executives is the appointment of an Alexander Gunn, of London, England, who has been loaned by the British government to ours, to act as a special adviser to the director of national selective service.
"Mr. Gunn, I am informed, is here to supervise the transfer of what he finds non-essential Canadian industry to what he finds essential Canadian industry. I have nothing to say against Mr. Gunn-far from it.
"But it is incredible that an outsider without first-hand knowledge of Canada, Canadians and Canadian business, should be called in and asked to decide who amongst Canadians engaged in trade and commerce shall survive. Is it impossible to find in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto. Winnipeg and Vancouver, Canadians who are not only as well, but much better qualified to undertake such a complicated and delicate task?"
Mr. Pouliot stated that anyone who has studied the question of essential industry is well aware of differences between Canadian and British industry. In Britain, he said, many
[Mr. Pouliot.1
industries which Canada might regard as nonessential to the war effort are retained in production to maintain foreign trade and obtain necessary funds through foreign trade. The contrary might very well be true.
He felt strongly that Canadian executives who had built up powerful war industries from the ground and accomplished great things were those best qualified to analyse essential and non-essential industries.
"This question of ruling on essential and nonessential industries is one of vital importance", Mr. Pouliot said. "I cannot see how anyone but a Canadian could possibly be qualified to handle it. The British system could well be used as a guide to refer to, but problems arising are Canadian problems and must be handled by Canadian methods.
"I have made inquiries about the matter, and I am puzzled as to why Mr. Gunn's name has been hidden from the press and the public.
"There is a vast difference between the Canadian and the United States governments in this respect. When the United States required a man to do the same type of selection, it appointed Mr. Justice James Byrnes, a selfmade man thoroughly familiar with American business and American economic life, who resigned his seat on the United States Supreme Court to become stabilizer No. 1, and direct the greatest experiment in planned economy ever dreamed of in that country.
"I feel strongly that we in Canada should follow the example set by the United States in choice of an executive to reorient Canadian industry, and I implore our government to give this question their closest attention.
"I wish it to be understood that I am offering no criticism of our selective service officials in Canada. My dealings with Mr. Elliott Little, director, and Paul Goulet, associate-director, have always been most cordial and pleasant."
I shall tell you why I object so strongly to Gunn. It is because in the United States there was a revision of essential jobs by the wartime man-power commission. In Canada it was entirely different. There was no list of essential jobs. There was a numerous list of unessential occupations, and it was only with the approval of the minister that a man could be considered as fulfilling an important job.
When I come to it I must remind the house that General Tremblay, a gallant soldier who was one of the two or three inspectors general of the army in Canada during the war, became a minor clerk in the Department of Labour. He was lent by the Department of National Defence precisely to drag into the army as much as possible men who were engaged in essential occupations outside of the army. He was at selective service. I praised very highly Mr. Paul Goulet, the first time I mentioned him. With regard to selective service he is the right arm of the minister. He has done exceptionally well and deserves special praise. I admire General Tremblay personally, but one cannot approve his appointment as a minor clerk in the

Industrial Relations
Department of Labour, particularly when he was an inspector general in the army for quite a while.


Mr. PROBE:: A brass hat.


Jean-François Pouliot: He was not a brass hat there; he had no hat at all. He had a bare head. Soldiers suffered because of that. There were serious grievances and injustices to the soldiers, and wrongs which could have been redressed by the general if he had occupied his important office in the eastern command. He could not be found; he was under the wing of the Minister of Labour. I have special praise for the Minister of Labour because he was in favour of amnesty for farmers from the end of 1942 until the beginning of 1943. He was ready to grant amnesty to farmers and give them the opportunity to report without having any charge laid against them. The only man who objected to it was General LaFleche, because he thought it would be a handicap to him in being appointed to the cabinet afterwards. I know whereof I speak; I know my onions. I give credit to the Minister of Labour for what he intended to do in that connection. If that had been done there would have been no complaint in the country.
Another thing that I have done for the working classes is to prevent the imposition of conscription on women. I have a letter which I notice comes from the information services. It is dated 4/9/42. In this letter it states that Mrs. Rex Eaton, assistant director of selective service, is announcing a scheme of registration for women. It was for everybody. When we look at it we find that it states the inscription will permit the making of a complete inventory of all women who are ready to second men in the pursuit of war. It says that eventually all women will be inscribed in each category, but that they wish to proceed with care and method. If hon. members look at the Votes and Proceedings of March 18, 1946, they will find information about the inscription of women. There was only one inscription. All women of Canada were not registered. It was stopped because the policy was changed. Then I asked the following question:
On what date was it decided to discontinue such registration and for what reason?
The answer was as follows:
This was designed as a "spot" registration only. It was not planned on a current basis nor was any subsequent one or any in other age groups necessary.
Something occurred after the first registration. It was suspended for a time, and then the election in Charlevoix-Saguenay came
along and my hon. friend the sitting member (Mr. Dorion) ran as an independent. There were three other candidates. Had any one of the three other candidates been elected we would have had conscription of women, and I considered it my duty at the time to support the sitting member so that we would not have the conscription of women in this country. It was precisely the election of that hon. gentleman that cut short the idea of the government to establish the conscription of women in this country.
Moreover, sir, I can talk to labour men in any part of this country, because I have always fought for respect for the dignity of men in overalls. Throughout the war I considered that those who were working in all trades and occupations in essential industries were not slackers, that they were deserving of credit and that they ought to be respected. Labour does not forget that. But there is something else also. I was complaining about the intelligentsia that adorns the Department of Labour, and even the outside intelligentsia to which the department often has recourse. At the time of the tramways strike in Montreal I asked the Minister of Labour for some information, on March 31, 1943. I asked what was the news. The men engaged by that company were communicating with members of parliament asking for their assistance in settling the strike; and on March 31, 1943, the hon. member for Davenport (Mr. MacNicol) was informed by the Minister of Labour that the strike was settled. On April 2, 1943, I read in the house a telegram I had received from Mr. Elphege Beaudoin, president of local 790 and president of the provincial federation of labour, asking us to offer our assistance to the strikers, and here in the house I asked the Minister of Labour if he would permit me to go to Montreal in a conciliatory mood to try and do something for those men. His answer was no, that Mr. Goldenberg was going there; and Mr. Goldenberg, who a few days before had settled the strike which was not settled, was sent there again and made a mess of it. It is always the same story. I see by the report that Mr. Brockington was named as conciliator. Mr. Brockington is a very fine man, but he is no better than any member of the committee who might have gone there to discuss the matter with the men. I have respect for my colleagues, and I prove it now. My contention is that the members of parliament should get rid of all the boards and all the intelligentsia and all the big brains, and should come together to settle the business of parliament and settle the business of this country without regard to party considerations. I appreciate the fact that all members of par-
Industrial Relations

liament do not put the political touch in their speeches, that even if they disagree, partisan political considerations are not to be found in what they have said,


Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER:: Order. I must inform the hon. member that his time has expired,


Jean-François Pouliot: May I go on? I have just a little more to say, with the consent of the house.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Go on.
Mr. 'POULIOT: Thank you.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


William Ross Macdonald: Has the hon. member the unanimous consent of the house to continue?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Yes.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


William Ross Macdonald: Has the hon. member unanimous consent to continue for two minutes?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Yes, for two
minutes.


Jean-François Pouliot: I thank hon. members very warmly, and I thank you, Mr. Speaker; and I take this opportunity to express the affection I have for my colleagues. I am not perfect; nobody is, but I try to do my best, and they know that in my work here I am sincere. I shall remember their kindness of this moment together with the kind words which have been said to me by my colleagues from Broadview (Mr. Church) and Davenport (Mr. MacNicol).
To conclude, Mr. Speaker, with the background a member of parliament has in his fight to promote the interests of labour, there are things in this report with which I cannot agree, though naturally in the main I am for it because it is full of good will. However, I cannot agree to this reference to Mr. Brockington as mediator. I repeat that once it becomes necessary to designate a mediator, it seems to me there are enough members of the house who are competent and who are familiar with labour problems, who could meet those who have difficulties, so they may understand that parliament is the home of the people and that the spirit of parliament with regard to all individuals in this country is a fatherly spirit, a benevolent spirit; that the idea of parliament is not to exploit the credulity of the electorate at the time of an election. As soon as the election is over it is 
the duty of parliament to bring help to those throughout this country who are in distress, as far as that can be done.
With regard to the proposed provincial code, -I believe the settlement of labour difficulties should not be passed' over to the provinces. Even though the provinces have certain rights in regard to labour, the parliament of Canada should be supreme to assist workers in their endeavours to agree with their employers.
Finally there are the wartime prices and trade board and the regional and national war labour boards. We have a board here and a board there; they are the causes of difficulty. Mr. Gordon may be right, Mr. Gordon may be wrong, but he is not a member of parliament. My contention is that the decision should be made by the minister, over his signature. At the present time Mr. Gordon is under the Minister of Finance, and what he has decided affects the Department of Labour. All departments are entangled together; it is impossible to know with whom we have to deal. We go to this one, we go on to that one, we are sent from pillar to post, and all these men are irresponsible in the constitutional sense. We have difficulties with them; and if they are not erratic I cannot understand their ways of expressing their views and making their orders.


William Ross Macdonald: Order. The
hon. member's extended period of time has also expired.


Major James William Coldwell: So far, Mr. Speaker, I think this discussion has been confined almost entirely to members of the house who were members of the committee. Not having been a member of the committee, perhaps I might discuss the matter from the point of view of a member of parliament who tried as best he could to follow the proceedings without actual attendance in the committee.
When this report was brought down I turned to it to see if what the house intended on July 16 had been carried out. Hon. members will remember that on July 16 the steel strike had occurred', and there was general alarm in this house lest production should be interfered with and serious results follow, with the further result that the house decided virtually unanimously, though at the time I said I thought the decision came too late, that the industrial relations committee should meet and go into the matter of industrial unrest throughout the country, particularly the matter of the steel strike. That seems, from the reading of the record, to have been the intention of the committee when it met;

Industrial Relations
for I find that, following the resolution to appoint a temporary chairman in the absence of the chairman, the first motion made was by the hon. member for Vancouver East (Mr. Maclnnis), and read as follows:
Resolved, that consideration of the steel strike be the first order of business.
Apparently that was carried. Then, looking at the proceedings for the first full day's sitting of the committee, we find at page 45, on July 19, that the hon. member who first made the suggestion in the house that the industrial relations committee should be called together, namely the hon. member for Calgary West (Mr. Smith), said this:
I am making this motion-
That was to call the various parties to the steel strike in.
-in order that we may get some speed in this task of ours towards the desired end of restoring that industry to production.
In reading this report I can find nowhere in it any direct reference to the dispute which occasioned the calling of the committee together, namely the steel strike.
In my opinion the report presented to the house by the committee represents a complete failure to do what the House of Commons hoped it might do. And because I think the committee failed so conclusively, apart from all other reasons, to do what the house expected it to do, I am going to oppose concurrence in the committee's report, in order to make my protest effective. After all, the only way in which one can make an effective protest in parliament, no matter if he may agree with some portions of a report, is, when the time comes, to register that protest by way of his vote in* the house. I intend to register my vote because of the failure of the committee to do the thing the house really intended it to do. I wish to say as well that I am opposing the report because of certain obscurities in it.
In some portions of the report one can find implications of something which can be construed as being against the interests of organized labour. It is true that various interpretations may be placed upon the sections of the report. But during the discussion in the house we have had no real clarification of what those sections mean. Consequently I feel that on every score-the failure of the committee, the obscurity in its report and so on-the house is not justified in giving its approval. Of course I have no doubt that this kind of report-


Humphrey Mitchell: It was a unanimous report, with the exception of one section.


Mr. COLD  WELL@: It may have been the unanimous report of the committee; but no committee of the house, presenting its report to the house, can expect hon. members to accept it if they feel they are in disagreement with it, or if they feel the committee did not carry out what it was expected to carry out. And on those grounds I say I am going to oppose the report.


Humphrey Mitchell: It is a reflection upon the members of your own party who were on the committee.


Major James William Coldwell: That makes no difference, at all. I am simply saying, as I have a right to say, that because this committee did not do what the house expected it to do, I am going to vote against the adoption of the report, in spite of anything the Minister of Labour (Mr. Mitchell) may say to the contrary.
Perhaps it is the kind of report some people might have wished for. It is a report which is so indeterminate that it means very little either to the house or to the country. Certainly it is not the kind of report we had expected; nor do I believe it is the kind the country expected, in view of the situation across Canada at the present time. I believe the country expected the committee to produce a responsible formula or a set of proposals which would make possible the resumption of urgently needed production-not two months or three months hence, but immediately.
In this respect the report shows no sense of urgency, nor the slightest willingness to grapple with the real problem at stake. It may be said in retrospect-and I think it is true-that the appointment of the committee may actually have delayed settlement, and may have been detrimental to the resumption of production; for what it actually did was to buoy up hope on both sides that there would be a settlement, and to shelve the actual negotiations for four weeks or so, during the time the committee held its sittings. If that is the result, then I say that at this critical time it is something which at least we should deplore.
I followed the proceedings of the committee as carefully as I could-perhaps not as carefully as I might have done, had the business of the house not been as heavy as it was. It is unfortunate that the business of the house has been so heavy for the past few weeks, and that hon. members have perhaps not been able to read all the transcripts of evidence sent to their desks. But the major point, it seems to me, which emerged from the committee was that the government and its agencies had
Industrial Relations

become responsible for the situation that had occurred. It is their arbitrary and obstinate insistence upon placing a ten-cent maximum on the amount that may be permitted in a wage increase which has brought this about.
To me, this is a most deplorable situation, and for this reason, that the struggle becomes not a struggle between a union and a corporation but one between a union and the government. That, in itself, is a bad thing for any country in which it occurs.
I read the evidence regarding the ten-cent limit, and I could find in the record no scientific justification whatsoever for that limit. The most striking part of Mr. Gordon's evidence, and that of the Minister of Labour himself, was that they could not give a single scientific reason why ten cents had been chosen as a limit, and not fifteen cents.


Humphrey Mitchell: What do you mean by "scientific"? Are you going to call in the scientists?


Major James William Coldwell: No, I am not going to call in the scientists. But the minister has been in public life long enough to know that economics is called the dismal science. And the science of economics, I may tell the minister, is recognized as a science. When I speak of a scientific reason I mean a reason which would be valid in the science of economics.


Humphrey Mitchell: And you would substitute that for the common sense of a reasonable board?	.


Major James William Coldwell: As a matter of fact I think everyone will agree that it is impossible to accept a limit of ten cents, or any other number of cents, that would apply to all industries fairly and justly. I will tell the minister what I think to be the only scientific way of arriving at a proper wage level. It is to take each industry, and sometimes each corporation separately, and to consider the relationship of wage costs to total costs-and, in addition to that, particularly in these days, the productivity per man. That has gone up considerably during the war, let us remember, on account of the improved machinery we now find in industry and, incidentally, particularly in the steel industry, where the furnace3 which have been installed and paid for are more efiicient than those used in Canada before the war.


Karl Kenneth Homuth: Would the hon. member pay a man according to his personal productivity?


Major James William Coldwell: I would say that, taking an industry on the whole, the average pro-

ductivity of the individual in that industry should bear some relationship to the amount he receives in wages; in addition to the productivity per man, the profits of the industry, the reserves which have been built up by the industry, the working capital and other financial factors, and the relation of the particular industry to the economy as a whole, the standard of living and wages of the workers concerned, and all the factors- not one, but all the factors-which go into the making of price on the market. I readily admit that all these factors will vary from industry to industry and sometimes from plant to plant in the same industry. Therefore the attempt of the government to set an arbitrary over-all figure of ten cents for the entire industry or the entire wage level of all industries is, I think, unscientific, quite wrong, and provocative of unrest in the ranks of labour.
In to-day's newspapers is a Canadian Press dispatch which indicates the position that another labour minister in Canada is taking. I have in my hand a press dispatch appearing in to-day's Montreal Gazette, which states:
L^our Minister Pearson announced to-day the British Columbia regional war labour board \viJI approve applications now under consideration tor wage increases in excess of ten cents hourly and leave it up to the federal government to accept or reject the findings.
Many such applications on filfe now have been made jointly by managements and unions and cover about 7,000 men in 75 firms.
In a prepared statement, Mr. Pearson said his board is considering the wage boosts "despite the warning of federal labour department officials of the embarrassment that our action may cause the national boards."
The action we are taking is done believing that many, if not all of the requested increases, are justifiable in all the circumstances and also because we believe that the wage situation must be clarified if we are going to maintain maximum production," he said.
Following what Mr. Pearson has said, a little thought will, I think, prove to this house that the most serious interference with production which we can have is because of labour unrest and strikes, and that the most serious danger of inflation is not a five-cent increase for the workers in one industry, but an interference with production. Indeed, interference with production may inflict upon our country a greater measure of inflation than almost anything else can do. The danger of inflation at the moment is due to a shortage of supplies, not only of steel, building materials and so on, but of many other articles. The great need both to avoid inflation and to serve the people of this country is to produce more and more. People now have money in their hands, the accumulated

Industrial Relations
savings of the war; those savings represent a demand, and the only answer to the demand is to supply goods and services so that we have plenty, and thus to interfere with the rise and avert the danger of inflation.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Does my hon. friend not think control of prices is more important?


Mr. COLD  WELL@: I did not say that I did not think control of prices was important. I notice in this report, for example, that the cart is before the horse in one section of this report, and that is one of my objections to it. Recommendation No. 2 reads:
Your committee is convinced that continued price control is only possible with a reasonable measure of wage control.
I would say this: "Your committee should be convinced that continued wage control is only possible with a reasonable measure of price control."


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Both are right.


Major James William Coldwell: Therefore I would agree with the Minister of Veterans Affairs.
Mr. MACKENZIE1:	Both are correct,
though.


Humphrey Mitchell: They are both correct.


Major James William Coldwell: I think the first puts the cart before the horse.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: We want both the horse and the cart.


Humphrey Mitchell: What the hon. member wants is the chicken before the egg.


Major James William Coldwell: Put the horse first. However, we will leave that for the moment. What I am saying is that an additional increase of five cents an hour in wages would be more than offset within a few months by increased production, and the real danger we face to-day is the interference with increased production.
This, it seems to me, is clear from the evidence before the committee; also it seems to me, from the evidence which I have been able to read, that it is something which escaped to a very large extent the government and its agencies. In fact, I noted that Mr. Millard proposed that the fifteen-cent increase for which his union has been ready to settle- and it has never been disputed that the steel union is ready to settle for a fifteen-cent increase-should be staggered over a period of some months, during which production would begin to rise and the danger of inflation would diminish. I say this to the minister; I believe that suggestion of Mr. Millard was reasonable 63260-326
and that it offered a statesmanlike solution of the problems before the committee and before the government.


Humphrey Mitchell: I would say this to the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar: He is veiy close to Mr. Millard; why did he not suggest to him that he should do what the people have done in British Columbia; I mean, go through the legal or normal machinery?


Major James William Coldwell: May I take that point up first of all? The minister says I am very close to Mr. Millard.


Humphrey Mitchell: So am I. I did not mean the remark in the. sense in which my hon. friend seems to think I meant it.


Major James William Coldwell: Believe it or not, I did not see Mr. Millard during the whole course of the committee meetings.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: You were lucky.


Major James William Coldwell: As a matter of fact there is a remark made by the Minister of Veterans Affairs which should be challenged. I spoke to members of the committee of all shades of opinion in this house after Mr. Millard had appeared, and I have never heard more complimentary remarks regarding a witness than I heard regarding Mr. Millard's appearance. I heard them, may I say in fairness to Mr. Millard, from hon. members to my right and hon. members on the opposite side of the house as well as from those who sit behind me.


Mr. MAYBANK:: I should like to say "amen" to that. That is just my opinion with regard to Millard, since he has been maligned in some quarters.


Major James William Coldwell: Thank you. That is precisely the opinion that was given to me.
With regard to the other matters, let the minister not forget this, that right in the middle of these negotiations one day very bluntly the Minister of Labour rose in this house and said he had been advised-not by his experts but by his advisers-that the amount which could be permitted of increase in wages was a limit of ten cents. I think the minister will remember that. And that, I may say, after having-


Humphrey Mitchell: Will the hon. member permit me to say what I said?


Major James William Coldwell: I shall be. glad if the minister will say what he said, because I do not think it will be very much different from what I have said.


Humphrey Mitchell: I said I had been advised, by those best able to know, that anything in addition to ten cents would endanger price control. I think that is the gist of it.

Industrial Relations


Major James William Coldwell: I think that is quite right; that is what the hon. gentleman said; and I think my interpretation of it was not very far out. But this statement was made after the minister or the authorities had allowed increases of fifteen cents an hour to oth/er unions. Right in the middle of the negotiations with this most important union, in this most important industry, suddenly the minister came down and said, "We are not going to allow you to get the wage increase that we allowed to other unions under threat of a strike".


Humphrey Mitchell: I did not say that.


Major James William Coldwell: Well, that was the
interpretation which was put upon it, and it is unfortunate, if the minister had something else in mind, that he did not interpret his own remarks so that other people could understand them.


Humphrey Mitchell: This is what I was
endeavouring to do. There was a desperate situation, as there is in all strikes. If I remember rightly, the wage committee was meeting in Hamilton and Toronto. It is always touch and go in the case of a strike. It had been in my mind to put in a controller at that time. I was playing for time, I am frank to admit. In every case where I had put a controller in, the result had been- to the satisfaction of both sides, and I thought it would be the same in the steel industry. But I missed the boat.


Major James William Coldwell: It had been granted a few weeks before to powerful unions which were not inclined to be as patient as this union was. Then all at once we had this statement made to the house, and if it was misconstrued by the union I must say it was also misconstrued by the house, including myself.
Apart from the steel strike, we have some
50,000	workers on strike in Canada at the present time. That is- a serious situation. But that is not all. According to the press, negotiations between the packing-house workers and their employers have broken down, and I heard on the early morning broadcast over CBO to-day-


Humphrey Mitchell: You never get good
news from the C.B.C.	.


Major James William Coldwell: It depends on what the minister calls good news. I call accurate news good news. The minister may like the news coloured a little.


Humphrey Mitchell: Y'ou always hear of that step in industrial negotiations. Only this morning I signed, at the request of the

organization, a commission appointing Mr. Justice Richards to inquire into the packinghouse workers' dispute.


Major James William Coldwell: We hope that there will be no stoppage of work in the meat-packing industry because it is basic to the welfare of this country and, indeed, of the world, at the present time. But there are reports of the likelihood of other labour troubles; the railway unions, for example, and in every case it is the arbitrary limit of ten cents applicable to all industries that is causing a great deal of this unrest in industry at the present time.


Humphrey Mitchell: I would say this about the railway unions-


Major James William Coldwell: I have no objection to the minister asking a question, but I think I should be allowed to conclude my speech without more interruptions.


Humphrey Mitchell: I am sorry.


Major James William Coldwell: I think that the
Minister of Labour, who seems so anxious to speak, should make a speech. He has proved his anxiety to say something and he owes it to this house and to the country to make a speech and explain the situation as he sees it.


Humphrey Mitchell: May I say this to my hon. friend-
Mr. COLDW7ELL: There you are doing it again, but I am going to sit down and let the minister say something.


Humphrey Mitchell: The hon. member threw out a challenge. It was reported in some of the newspapers at the beginning of this trouble that I had tendered my resignation.


Major James William Coldwell: Who said that?


Humphrey Mitchell: One of the newspapers.


Major James William Coldwell: I certainly did not.


Humphrey Mitchell: No. My hon. friend challenged me to make a speech. Let me say to him that he and I come from a race that does not run away from trouble. Make ho mistake about that. W7e are made of the stuff they build empires out of.


Major James William Coldwell: I am very glad to know that the minister admits he is in trouble and that he is not going to run away from it. Of course I knew he would not run away from it, but I did want him to rise and say what he thought of his troubles.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: The best labour
minister Canada ever had.

Industrial Relations


Major James William Coldwell: I say that we are faced with a serious situation because tens of thousands of workers may soon be on strike in this country, and if that happens it will be outrageous. It will be due, in my opinion, to a lack of statesmanship on the part of this administration. It is contrary to the interests of the workers concerned, contrary to the interests of the people of Canada and certainly contrary to the interests of the people of the whole world if there are interruptions of work in these basic industries.
I want to ask the Minister of Labour a question, and perhaps he will answer it when he makes the speech that he is now going to make. He says we come from the same race, and I know that sometimes there is that little bit of pride which may interfere with one's doing things that ought to be done. Is it pride on the minister's part or on the part of his colleagues that prevents them from abandoning the untenable position which they now occupy, or is it because of another characteristic sometimes attributed to the race from which we come? Is it obstinacy? I think it is one or the other. If it is neither, then, more seriously, I ask, is this a deliberate attempt on the part of the government to weaken or break organized labour in Canada.


Humphrey Mitchell: I say no to that without equivocation.


Major James William Coldwell: We know there are certain powerful interests in this country which dislike the progress that labour made during the war and were determined, when the war ended, that these new unions and even the older ones had to be broken, if possible. If it is none of these things it does appear to the working people of this country that this is an attempt on the part of powerful interests which the government is at least condoning to break the labour unions during this critical period.
Before I close, I am going to make an appeal to the government that they remove Canada from the strait-jacket of ten cents in which she has been placed. There is no scientific justification for it. No one has advanced any scientific reason for it, and certainly there is no sense in it. It would appear that a fifteen-cent formula might bring the parties together and prevent any further strikes. Monopolies in Canada, most of our big corporations and certainly some of these steel corporations can afford to pay a fifteen-cent increase without being entitled to ask for a price increase in their product, and this group has recently-received an increase of $5 a ton. They can afford some reduction in the huge profits they have made during the years, but on the other 63260-3261
hand the small increase which the unions are asking is not to raise the standard of living of the workers but to maintain it at the level to which they have been able to bring it during the ivar and previously over a long period of struggle. If this is not admitted by the government we may face a period of increasing industrial strife and economic difficulties throughout the whole country, and if that should happen, I say to the Minister of Labour and his colleagues that, in my opinion, the responsibility will lie squarely on the shoul-ers of the government, which will stand condemned in the eyes of the people of Canada as being more concerned with safeguarding the interests of powerful monopolies and powerful corporations than they are with safeguarding the interests of the common people of the country. I appeal to the minister, therefore, to review again the last proposal made by the representatives of the steel workers' union, that the increase be permitted and spread over a period of months, that union security be guaranteed, and that, as we have often suggested, industrial councils be set up, in which labour, management and the community would be represented, so that we might avoid these struggles, which are more inflationary than any increases of pay that could possibly be considered.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I do not wish to intervene in the debate, but if I might have the unanimous consent of the house I would move that standing order 6, subsection 2, be suspended this day and the house continue to sit at six o'clock p.m. until seven o'clock p.m.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Lalonde for concurrence in the second report of the standing committee od 'industrial relations.
Mr. RODNEY ADAMSON (York West):: I had intended to make a few remarks concerning the committee's report and particularly with regard to section 6 thereof. However, the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell) has just made a statement, in which there are certain things I feel I should like to reply to very briefly. He suggests that wage costs should be tied to total costs of productivity, and he makes the suggestion, a very plausible one, that wages and profits should be related to each other.
Industrial Relations

On the broad humanitarian ground there is much reason to believe that that is a proper suggestion and one on which we can nearly all agree. But I would point out to the hon. gentleman the great difficulty in doing that in a scientific way. Let us assume -that these steel corporations, or some of them, have made large profits and could pay fifteen cents. Let us assume that for this year. Remember, however, that during the war these corporations have been operating at 100 per cent capacity and operating for immediate destruction. In many cases extra plant was built which is unlikely to be capable of use in the post-war era because of the simple fact that now we are producing not for destruction but for construction, and the goods that we shall produce, particularly in steel, will not be immediately destroyed, but will last a very considerable time. Therefore the absorptive capacity of the market, while it is great now, may not and probably will not be as great in the years to come. We must remember that this is not a business cycle and it is not the fault of capitalism. It is merely a phenomenon that happens after all wars. You manufacture for destruction and the entire product you manufacture is destroyed within a few hours, so that you have to manufacture again. Tanks and everything else made out of steel, shells, guns, are produced for destruction and naturally you need a tremendous capacity. But once the war is over, you begin to produce such things as motor cars and other manufactures of steel, which we hope will last for years instead of merely for a matter of hours. That is one of the fundamental economic transitions we have to put up with after emerging from a period of war.
It is easy to say, and it is an interesting and sympathetic thing to say, that wages should be tied to profits. I agree with it, but in a period of transition I doubt whether there is any firm that can tell what will be their profits during the next few years.
I wish to say something more in this regard. In the automobile strike in the United States, the fact-finding committees that were set up by President Truman worked very well and assiduously for upwards of a year, and from the last report I have had they were unable to determine upon a formula which would tie wages to profits. This was one of the things the industrial relations committee discussed, and we discussed it quite seriously, -both in open and in closed meetings. We found-and the evidence is there-that it was difficult or almost impossible to arrive at any formula which would, in the present transitional period,

tie in wages to profits, no matter how desirable that was. I merely want to show the difficulty of arriving at these wage rates and differentials, and I would quote one paragraph from an article by Professor Lloyd G. Reynolds, who is director of the labour-management centre at Yale university. He has this to say on the subject as quoted in the American Economic Review.
The individual firm is caught between the area and the industry. Conditions within the area, particularly the wage levels of other firms, determine the minimum which it must pay. The wage rates of other firms in the industry, ceteris paribus, will determine the maximum which it can afford to pay. If the latter figure is less than the former, the firm will in time be forced out of operation; but if it is greater the firm can be guided by the wage level either of the industry or the area. Developments in the industry may lead the firm to make wage changes independently of any developments in the local labour market. Indeed, for firms in competitive industries which are geographically dispersed, it appears that the industry is normally the dynamic influence in bringing about wage changes, while the influence of the local labour market is merely passive or permissive.
I put that on record to show how extremely complicated this business of tieing wages to profit really is. While we have every sympathy with doing that, it is something on which one cannot put a yardstick and easily evolve a formula. There is one thing with which I should like to agree and quite forcefully, namely, the remarks of the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar, that at the present time inflation is caused more from the almost complete paralysis which is going on in the country, caused more by the lack of productivity than by anything else. To-day we are really in serious danger of inflation, not because of any wage scale or any differential, but for the simple reason that we are not producing. Something has been said about the pressure of money. Despite the fact that money is decreasing in the hands of the workers and that their security is decreasing, which is a tragic thing, the volume of money to-day i3 creating tremendous pressure on the whole price structure. The lack of production is . becoming more serious every day that the strike continues.
I wish to say a few words about the recommendations in the committee's report. I should like to touch briefly on the labour code. It has been obvious for years that a labour code is necessary in Canada for two reasons. The first is the fact that our manufacturers are young and have expanded more quickly than the industries and the manufacturers of any other land in the world. Our tremendous increase in manufacturing potential has been the marvel of the rest of the world; but with this tremendously rapid increase there have

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been certain growing pains. With old-established industries management was able to grow up with labour. In Canada we have had such a rapid increase that in many cases management has not had time or has not been able to understand the problems of labour. Over and over again that was brought out in the evidence of the committee. Management has been primarily interested in the production, selling and dispersal of the goods it produced. Consequently in many industries labour relations have been almost nonexistent. We did not have time; we grew so rapidly. The same can be said of many unions. The industrial union in Canada has been a growth of the last few years. Consequently in many cases it did not have the seasoned counsel of unions elsewhere. With these two problems, one from the management point of view and the other from the union's point of view, it was inevitable that there would be a clash and we are having it now in one of the most critical periods of our history.
During the war I spent some time in the coal mines in Great Britain and I was privileged to sit in at a labour-management committee of one of these mines. I have never seen more genuine interest expressed by anybody than I saw in the problem of production at that mine. I came back and I saw conditions in one of our coal mines.-Instead of cooperation, instead of ability to see each other's point of view, I saw nothing but bitterness and the petty meannesses that two sides in any dispute can wreak on each other. Therefore, when we talk of labour-management we have a great distance to go along that line. Unless we can arrive at some way in which, labour and1 management can and will sit down together, we are sure to have continued trouble throughout Canada. Therefore, when the suggestion of a labour code is made by this committee-and it is their first recommendation-I look upon it as probably the most important single piece of projected legislation that this country has to create.
I wish to deal now with the machinery that is already in existence. We have seen a great number of strikes and industrial disputes, many of them caused and brought about unnecessarily, brought about because the two parties to the disputes were unable or unwilling to ge.t together. There were innumerable meetings and conferences; hours and hours were spent by the two sides in endeavouring to come to some sort of compromise; in some cases months were spent. After you spend hours and hours and even, months in talking, the human being becomes a little bit desperate. Many times action, and perhaps unwarranted
action, has been taken because of the despair or I might even say the frustration felt by the two parties in their endeavour to get together. So that there must be, and the committee recommended, an acceleration and simplification of the processes of settling labour-management disputes. We cannot afford to take months and months for any plant to come to an agreement with its workers.
The next point I want to make is this. We have seen in this committee, and it has been admitted by the chairman of the wartime prices and trade board, that there has been virtually no liaison between his board and the war labour board. That is an intolerable position. The chairman of the price control board says it is his opinion that an increase in basic wages above a certain limit will put very strong pressure on the whole price structure of this country and that he will not be responsible for continuing price control if greater increases are permitted1; yet his representatives have not been sitting in with the people who are trying to evolve a formula for the settlement of these difficulties, either on a single plant basis or on a multiple plant basis. In view of that situation I say to you, Mr. Speaker, and to the house that there is a very great lack in our whole wage and price structure, and in my opinion this has done a great deal to cause the tragedy of industrial strikes we see across Canada to-day.
I come now to a problem which is somewhat sinister. It was apparent that in 1944 there was an organized agreement between certain unions to make a concentrated drive. Those plans were furthered at the conference in Quebec, I think, in 1945; and the result is now apparent in the industrial paralysis we see about us. It would be easy, yet it would be wrong, to say this was organized by the communist party. To say that certainly would be untrue. But it would be equally untrue to say that the communist party has not had a hand in causing a great deal of the present unrest. I say that to-day Russia is like an African snake called the Ringhals Cobra. This peculiar snake, has the power to spray and spit venom great distances, and wherever this venom lands it produces a festering sore. If it lands in your eye it blinds you. Well, Mr. Speaker, there are certainly places in Canada to-day where there are festering sores, and there are certainly places where parts of the population are blinded. That cannot be overlooked in any discussion of industrial unrest in Canada to-day. I want to quote just one sentence from a speech delivered quite recently by Mr. Churchill. He was speaking of England, but it is equally true of Canada. He said:
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Even here in our patient community soviet propaganda has been steadily making headway backwards. I would have not believed it possible that in a single year the soviets would have been able to do themselves so much harm and to chill so many friendships in the Englishspeaking world.
I say that with a certain amount of sorrow, because I was the first member of this house to advocate the recognition of Soviet Russia by Canada.
I now come to discuss, in a little detail section 6 of the report. I have been interested to notice where the objection to this section comes from. If I may say so, it comes from the extreme right and the extreme left. Basically this section was inserted in the report for the simple and democratic purpose of giving those who were going to be affected by a strike an opportunity to say whether or not they wanted to strike. It is as simple as that. We have a number of strikes in Canada, very serious strikes, too, by unions which have not been certified in the industry. We have plants which have been strike-bound literally for months, the strike being called by a union where no certification vote of any kind has been taken. I have evidence that at a number of these plants the strike action was not popular and was not wanted by the employees. Surely the men who are going to be affected by a strike should have an opportunity of saying whether or not they want to strike. Surely that is the basis of our whole democratic system. Surely that is the basis of everything that we have believed in connection with the rights of man. Surely, then, the individual must have the right to say whether or not he wishes to take strike action. And he must have that right safeguarded, not by an organization that is prejudiced one way or another, but by an unprejudiced organization such as the Department of Labour. I say that is one of the fundamental things in labour relations in Canada to-day.
I have information given me concerning the General Electric strike in Toronto. I have not verified this information, but it has been given to me by sources which I consider reliable. There were three strike votes taken at three different plants. One strike vote was taken in the union hall, and the vote was ninety-two per cent in favour of striking. The second strike vote was taken by union management, and the vote was eighty-six per cent to strike. In the third vote I understand the ballots were counted by the parish priest, or somebody else equally trusted by the employees, and the result was sixty per cent against taking strike action.
Those plants were all similarly situated, and were all doing more or less the same type of

work. These figures which I have given clearly signify that in one plant, where an independent vote was taken, a considerable majority voted to maintain production, whereas in the other two plants under union auspices the votes were overwhelmingly to take strike action.
That, Mr. Speaker, is more than coincidence. I have letters and affidavits in great numbers from people in my riding who are employees of the Anaconda American Brass Company, stating that the decision to strike was certainly not a majority decision of the employees in that plant. The plant has been out since April and has caused untold harm not only to the men who have been forced to take strike action but to the entire building industry in Canada. It is the only brass plant in Canada producing certain types of tubing. Every house being built needs the product of that one company, and, as I say, it has been out since April. If that strike action was taken without a majority of the employees in the plant wanting to take that action, I say it is undemocratic, wholly wrong, and wholly against those principles which we try to live up to, and which we profess.
I would say one thing more concerning the vexed question of law and order, and in this I speak only for my own riding. That law was flagrantly broken is beyond any peradven-ture of doubt. Prosecutions have been taken, and convictions have been registered as a result of the breaking of not only the criminal code, the common law, but also the laws controlling picketing and the use of force. That cannot be tolerated by any government in Canada-and when I refer to any government I refer to any municipal, provincial or federal government.
We cannot allow the law to be broken, and say, "Well, it is de facto; why worry about de jure?" Let the thing continue like that, and we shall have business going from bad to worse. And, if I may say so, that is the policy publicly advocated by the communist party in Canada. I do not say the people who took this action were communists, but I do say that is the policy laid down publicly on platforms when members of the Labour Progressive or communist party speak in Canada.
I wish to reiterate once more why I believe that clause 6 may be the turning point against strikes which might be described, as wildi-cat strikes, even though in many instances the unions have been recognized. I am in entire agreement with the hon. member for Cape Breton South (Mr. Gillis) when he says that it is fundamental that before one takes action or before action is taken in his name as a member of a union and an employee of a plant, before action is taken

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which will affect his entire economic life and security, he must have an opportunity to say whether or not he agrees with that action.
But I say I believe that the insertion of clause 6, imperfectly worded as it may be, may offer the individual employee the freedom to express his views and wishes secretly and fearlessly, and on his decision strike action will be taken. If the committee has done that, if we have brought that measure of freedom to the individual worker, it may be that this will have been the corner-stone of a labour charter for Canada, for which we all devoutly hope.


Mr. T. J. BENTLEY (Swift Current):: Mr. Speaker, like the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell), I am one who almost did not sit on the committee. However, I happened to be named as substitute for some one else, and so sat during the last seven committee meetings. Consequently I missed some of the most important witnesses, and had to depend for my information on the record as it appeared, which, of course, it is difficult to keep up with, like all the other business before this house after it is recorded.
Like the hon. member for Cape Breton South (Mr. Gillis) I am extremely disappointed with the results of the committee's work. At the time it was appointed I had great hopes that here, at least, parliament was going to take an active part in trying to bring about some order, peace and good government in labour relations. It did not happen, and the report is, in my opinion, in most respect a wishy-washy affair and, I am afraid, more wishy than washy.


Humphrey Mitchell: You are partly responsible for it.


Thomas John Bentley: Right. I was there on the last seven days, as the minister ha9 said, but I did not agree with very much that was going on.


Humphrey Mitchell: Why disown your own child?


Thomas John Bentley: I did, on several occasions.
Section 1 is a pious hope for a future sinless industry. It will not do any harm. It proposes that, we have a dominion-provincial conference. If that conference is like the last one we can hope for no results a year from now, the same as happened with the other one a year from the time it started. It is suggested that the wartime prices and trade board and the regional and national war labour boards start getting together. A splendid idea; it should have been followed when they were both set up. It will probably take a
long time to integrate their ideas to the point where they will get together. No harm in it, but no immediate good.
It is also suggested "that matters coming before the regional and national war labour boards be handled expeditiously." Well, who does not want every important matter handled expeditiously? Nobody could vote against a sentiment of that kind, so obviously I supported it. There is no harm in it, but certainly no immediate good is likely to come from it.
In section 3 the committee recommends "that a measure of union security should follow certification." What measure? I was hoping when this debate started that the first thing which would happen would be a statement by the Minister of Labour giving the department's and the government's interpretation of these various things. So far the committee's report has not been interpreted in detail by any responsible member of the government, so I am wondering what, and how big, the measure is. If it is the same kind of measure I have in view I agree with it. It is ambiguous. If, however, it means what I have in view it means quite a lot. I would say that "a measure of union security" should be as large a measure as company security.
We come to section 4: "Law being the basis of our society, your committee condemns" so and so. Mr. Speaker, that is a platitude which has been reiterated, I suppose, as many times as there are people old enough to know what law and order mean.


Humphrey Mitchell: Would my hon. friend say that the observance of law and order is a platitude?


Thomas John Bentley: I said, constantly reiterating that we believe in the observance of law is a platitude. We all believe in law. Everybody in a civilized country believes in law and order. Everybody who comes to this parliament, I assume, believes in law and order. Burglars and thieves and murderers believe in law and order if they are going to be subject to summary lynching by the gang who catches them and if law and order will give them some protection for the time being. Everybody believes in law and order; so that is not a helpful or concrete or very wise decision for a committee to hold over forty meetings to arrive at. However, I agree with it; there is no quarrel so far as that is concerned.
Section 5 is a recommendation "that the law of picketing be studied with a view to its modernization and clarification" and so on. I think there is no disagreement there at all; I believe that is a very proper recommendation. I suppose that practices grow up around
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any organization as it is building, which require revision from time to time to bring them into conformity with our conceptions of law and order. Therefore I can support it.
As to section 7, I am not so sure what it means, but it says:
Your committee recommends that the controllers appointed by order in council P.C. 2901 be instructed to implement the terms of such order with such modifications as the government may determine.
That in itself is one of the reasons I would have liked the minister to make a statement, to interpret some of these things.
Some people in reading P.C. 2901 may concentrate on paragraph 9. That paragraph states:
It shall be the duty of every person in the employ of any of the said companies at or in any authorized establishments of the companies to perform the duties of his employment until the authority of the controller is revoked; and every person who fails to perform his duties as aforesaid as herein required without lawful excuse, the onus of proof of which is upon him, is guilty of an offence and liable upon summary conviction to a fine of $20 for each day or part of a day on which he fails so to perform his duties.
I am sure that some people in this country when they read that will wonder whether, without a statement from the minister, without an interpretation of section 7 of the committee's report, every striker in Stelco and in other plants, under controller Kilbourn, who is to-day on strike is to be subject to a fine of S20 a day or whatever other penalty may be involved in the section.
I come now to section 6, about which there has been so much debate and controversy. I do not know that I need deal with it for any length of time. I know that if it means what it says it does not mean what some hon. members here interpret it to mean, and if there is any statement in or section of this report which should have been clarified by a competent official of the government as soon as the report was tabled, this is the one. The minister was there when the controversy took place. Only three of us on the committee voted against that. Their names were mentioned the other day: the hon. member for Spadina (Mr. Croll), the hon. member for Vancouver East (Mr. Maclnnis), and myself. I voted against it particularly on the grounds that it did not mean what those who were promoting it said it meant, and that it should have been clarified and put into the kind of words which would show exactly what it meant, if it does not mean what it said.


Humphrey Mitchell: Why did you not suggest the kind of words?
Mr. BENTI.EY: I did suggest it and spoke about it, and the minister himself spoke to

me in committee in camera in reply to my question and stated that he would make a statement on the floor of the house if I wanted him to.


Humphrey Mitchell: What is my hon. friend objecting to? He is just sticking up straw men and knocking them down for political purposes; that is all.


Thomas John Bentley: The minister is perfectly entitled to be funny if he wants to be.


Humphrey Mitchell: My hon. friend, out of his vast experience of trade unions, is talking about something he does not know anything about.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: Why don't you make a speech on your own account?


Thomas John Bentley: The minister has been invited on several occasions to make his speech.


Humphrey Mitchell: I will make a speech.


Thomas John Bentley: I am glad. When that time comes I will listen to him if he says anything worth while. So far as his great experience with labour unions is concerned, I have had as much experience with human beings as the minister has, and know as much about their actions; and I say about this recommendation that, if it means what it says, it means that the minister is to have the right to interfere with the organizational work and the policy work of the labour unions. I tell him that if anyone here proposed that kind of performance or tried to exercise the kind of power which is to be given to the minister, to govern the actions and policy of a farm organization, there would be a farmers' rebellion right away.


Humphrey Mitchell: My hon. friend is the most modest man that ever scuttled a ship.


Thomas John Bentley: The minister of course thinks he is witty, and I will admit he is half right. I shall not embarrass him by another statement he made in camera, but I suggest that he avoid not only physical encounters with certain household equipment-


Humphrey Mitchell: Does my hon. friend think this is fair? We had meetings in camera where everybody spoke his mind, and I am frank to admit that there appears to be some difference between what some members say in the house and what was said in the committee. I have no objection to my hon. friend telling what I said in camera, but does he think it is playing the game? Why do we have sittings in camera? I think my hon. friend will realize when he has had more experience that it is not playing the game.

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Thomas John Bentley: A moment ago I was dealing with section 6 of the committee's report and the minister said: Why didn't I say these things in the committee, meaning in the camera sittings where the matter came up? To answer the minister I had to refer to what happened in camera. The minister said on the floor of the committee that he would make a statement in the house and he has not made it. Other members have referred in the house to what was said during the camera sittings of the committee; so why does the minister single me out as one who should not break that apparently very breakable rule when it does not embarrass anybody to have it done? However, I will leave the minister out unless he insists on interfering.
Let me read section 6 of the committee's recommendations:
Your committee recommends that the Minister of Labour may, at the request of either party to an industrial dispute, and if he deems fit, either before or after a strike is in progress, direct that a strike vote be taken under government supervision, to determine the wishes of the men affected as to whether a strike will take place or otherwise.
If it is good to have that in there, and assuming that it means what it says or means what some have said it means, why not have another section reading: Your committee recommends that the Minister of Labour may, at the request of either party to an industrial dispute, and if he deems fit, either before or after a strike is in progress, direct that a vote of the shareholders of the company, without proxy, be taken to determine the wishes of the shareholders regarding the requests of the union for increases or improvement of working conditions.
One is just as fair as the other. I do not think one would be any more acceptable to labour than the other one will be. It would not be acceptable to the kind of organizations I know something about. But it would not be an illogical corollary to section 6 as it stands at the present time. I remember that when Mr. Hilton was on the stand he questioned the right of the union leaders to call a strike and demanded that the question be referred back to the workers. When the hon. member for Cape Breton South asked him if he would agree to have the company's position referred back to the shareholders Mr. Hilton was astounded and would not even consider that that was a reasonable proposition. He was engaged by the shareholders to do the job and his word was law. But when a couple of thousand workers engage a man like Charlie Millard to do.their job, Mr. Hilton expects him, every time he runs into a place where he must use his own judgment and
make his own decisions, to run back to the workers to find out if they support Charlie Millard or Mr. Hilton. Why it should be right in the one case and wrong in the other, I cannot understand. I see no difference between the two positions.
I now come to a section that I am possibly even more concerned about in some respects. I refer to section 2, to which my leader the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar referred. I am going to refer to it in more detail. Section 2 reads:
Your committee is convinced that continued price control is only possible with a reasonable measure of wage control.
There again is ambiguity, because "reasonable" can me.an so much or so little to anybody. If you are arguing with your wife and appear to be getting the best of the argument, what happens? She says: Now, be reasonable. On the other hand, if she is getting the best of it, you say: Be reasonable. What is "reasonable" except somebody's point of view of what will suit them best? So that when you put into a recommendation a statement like that it does not carry a great deal of weight.
But section 2 as it stands carries more weight I think than the actual wording would suggest to the casual reader. I say that for this reason. To me, section 2 is a clear acceptance by the committee of the government's rigid determination that while wages for workers and prices for farm products must be controlled in the interests of price control, interference with the profit position, now or potentially, of companies is an interference that will not be tolerated. The Minister of Reconstruction and Supply (Mr. Howe), in addressing the house last night, spent a good deal of time in telling of the efforts of Mr. Donald Gordon to convince the committee that ten cents was the over-all limit. As has been said before, and I agree, Mr. Gordon offered no concrete factual evidence that ten cents was the correct figure. It may be nine and a half cents; it may be three cents; it may be thirty-three cents. But he simply said ten cents and made a long statement in support of it, supported by no facts whatsoever. The Minister of Reconstruction and Supply tried to tell us in his speech last night that Mr, Gordon probably did not prove his point; but nevertheless, because of the position he holds, his advice should be heeded. We have had too many cases in this country, Mr. Speaker, of ordinary everyday people who have been placed by fortuitous circumstances in positions of great responsibility before whom we were supposed to bow the knee with adulation for every single utterance they make. We
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certainly have had a liberal education in the last four years designed to make us worship Donald Gordon and accept every single statement he makes. But it is a matter of opinion whether he is right. Mr. Donald Gordon's statements may be correct. I do not believe they are correct. I differ with Donald Gordon as to the increase and1 I will give my reasons. When price fixing first came into effect the idea of price control was to maintain the existing relationship between costs and prices and profits. It was the base from which he worked. This position was maintained pretty generally during the war, even though government subsidies were extensively used to maintain it. The maintenance of margins of profit, together with the vastly increased war business, netted great profit positions for many industries, and now they are loath to relinquish that wonderfully favourable and privileged position they occupy. I absolutely believe, from the statement placed before the committee, which is on record, and from my own experience, that the steel companies are quite able to pay the full amount of the union demands. It is indicated in the statements themselves.
I know there is controversy. I know people will say it cannot be done. They will pick little figures out of big books and prove this and that by them, because there is an old saying with regard to figures and' people of certain classes, and we are none of us free from it. We like to prove our point. But I will draw on my experience in considering the reasons why I do not believe that Donald Gordon is right, no matter whether he believes it or not.
First, he based his position on the belief that you can maintain the spread of profit over and above all costs, including wages, that the industries are used to having, and more if they can get it, and they will be the sole judges as to how much profit must be made, having no responsibility whatsoever to the public in the operation of the business of making that profit. I am going to go into something I know as much about as anyone in this house, from which to draw my experience. I have spoken about these matters before for different reasons, and, therefore, when I mention cooperative associations I am not going to go back to a debate that we have closed. I am going to debate this question from the point of view of the experience of cooperative organizations I know about, and compare them with other industries of a similar nature which are not cooperative and which I also know something about, because I worked for them.

I am going to take, first, the matter of cooperative elevators, or pool elevators if you want that name. That is their actual name- Saskatchewan pool elevators. Twenty-four years ago, twenty-three years ago, and up until twenty-one years ago, you could not have a bushel of grain handled on the street in a country elevator for less than seven cents a bushel for commercial grades and six cents a bushel for contract grades. In that year, we, a bunch of farmers, got together and put our own money into the building of an elevator system. Why? Because we knew that seven cents and six cents was too high a handling charge and that the profits to the company were too great.
We had no factual information. No private company would give us their statement, but a few men like myself who had worked for some of these companies were able to give a general idea and to create the belief, which was a conviction, that profits were too great. So we took the only way we could to prove it. We built a system of our own, and to-day we have reduced handling charges in years of big volume to as low as one.cent a bushel, and for the last four years, for not more than three cents a bushel on the street, in the car, rolling, or any way you like to have it, right down to spot position at the head of the lakes.
I am not saying that in order to show how brilliant we were, because we knew we were only ordinary mortal human beings, and if we were able to engage management to operate our elevator system and clear us of all costs of operation at those reduced handling charges, then other men in the grain trade could do the same. It has been proven that these other companies, because of the competition we afforded, have had to reduce their handling charges to the same figure as our own; and they are still in business.
Does the house expect me to want any greater proof that companies can do their business at less profit, or, on the other hand, can pay more of their earnings in wages, without affecting the price of the goods or the services created by those industries? As a matter of fact, while reducing those handling charges we improved the actual service given in the country elevator. When we were paying the high handling charges we also lost all dockage that was in our grain, because the company who bought our grain owned it and frequently there is a good market for the dockage in wheat or in any other commercial grains when they go to the terminals and are cleaned, because many times there is good wild oats, buckwheat seed and other foreign

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matter which is good for feed or feed mixtures, and whoever sells that, when there is a market for it, makes good money.
So that not only did we reduce these handling charges but we paid back to ourselves the value of the dockage in the grain after cleaning it out, with the result that the farmer who happened to have more dockage, in consequence of ' a bad year for weeds, received some recompense for the dockage in his grain. Other companies have to do the same thing when there is anything in it, and they are still in business.
At one time the spread between what is called straight grade grain and damp grain was as high as thirty cents a bushel, nearly always as high as twenty cents, and in those days if a farmer shipped a carload of No. 1 northern wheat which graded damp and went through the drj'er at the head of the lakes, it came out of the dryer automatically numbered 3, two grades down, because the private companies would not spend money on research or put in a proper drying equipment so that the grain could be dried without bringing about that chemical process which caused it to lose its grade. When we went into business we put in proper dryers. To-day the spread between straight and damp is seven cents a bushel, and other companies are in business. You can put No. 1 northern damp grain in a dryer, and it will come out No. 1 northern and cost only seven cents a bushel because of drying it. The companies are in business now, and therefore they could have done this before and made profits.
I have tried to prove in that statement, not what we are doing in the west to reduce the cost of handling grain, but that companies can do with less profit and should do with less profit, and their income should be spread out more in one or both of two directions, or a combination of them; that is to say, higher wages to the people working for them or a lower price to the people who buy their commodity, or a position half way between these two, but not in more profit to the organization that does the job.
I can give another example. It is not so long ago-far less time than the grain business I have been talking about-back in 1933 and 1934 when we were establishing our cooperative refinery in Regina, that we were told by competent and highly placed officials in the major private oil companies that it cost up to S+ cents a gallon to manufacture a gallon of gasoline out of crude oil. We did not believe it. We could not prove it but we had the conviction that it was not true. So we set up our own refinery and have cut in two
the cost of manufacturing gasoline, and other companies have done the same and are still in business.
If they could not afford to do this, how are they still in business when they have to do it? Of course they can; and Stelco, Dosco, Algoma, Westinghouse and the rest of them, I fully and earnestly believe, can do the same. I am inclined to believe, as was suggested this afternoon, that on the part of somebody in the scheme of things there is a stubborn determination that bossdom is going to maintain its role, no matter who gets hurt, the public or the country. I am afraid that Donald Gordon, wittingly or otherwise and possibly this government unwittingly, or both together, are helping to maintain that uneconomic and unfair position. The returns for industrial production are to be set by the owners of industry; the workers will get what the boss wants to pay them; the consumers will pay what the boss wants to charge them, and the remainder will be profit for the companies. Again that is important to our people in the west.
In this debate we have not heard very much from the west, and that is why I had the temerity to take part in it. We are getting squeezed in this process. We have gone through the war years doing our little patriotic best with worn-out machinery to produce whatever was required in the largest volume possible. We have bought victory bonds to the best of our ability. I started with the first victory loan campaign and finished up with the ninth. I have a beautifully engraved and decorated memento from Mr. Magee, chairman of the provincial war finance committee, showing my part in the campaigns. It was not greater than anybody else's. I am giving it only to show that we have done our little bit; it was not great; it was not outstanding; it was just our little best. We were always ready to obey Donald Gordon and the Minister of Munitions and Supply (Mr. Howe); to obey the request of the government to do everything we could to help our position in war production; to play our part in the hope that, when the war was over, we would get some relief in the form of machinery which we required and the other things that were needed; along with price adjustments for our products. Over a year after the end of the war we are still waiting. I am continually getting letters from men out in my section of the country. This morning I received one from a man with 800 acres of wheat. He lost his crop last year. He has no combine to harvest his crop this year and will lose it if we happen to run into bad weather. That is an indication of the hard-
Industrial Relations

ships through which these people are going and which they hoped they would not have to experience at this time, particularly when the war is over.
If the government continues to pursue its policy of maintaining the private system, the private position of Stelco at Hamilton and others, regardless of whether the workers are being properly treated or not, and if production is to be curtailed in a basic industry we of the west will face another year and possibly two, when we shall not have the proper machines to prepare our land, put in our crop for the coming year and take off the crop in the fall, if we are fortunate enough to get one, a crop which hon. members and everyone else in the country together with peoples all over the world need so badly. It is important to us; but do not think for one moment, if hon. members should have that idea, that you are ever going to sell the farmers of the west the old idea, which used to prevail that labour is all to blame. Some hon. members said that the press always puts the blame on labour. I agree with that. Since I have been in the House of Commons and the disputes started, I have not yet read a headline in one of the Ottawa papers or in one of those so-called capitalist or private enterprise papers which ever gave a fair break to labour in a dispute. No; we do not find them giving the labour side of the picture. No matter how they try in radio talks or in speeches made in the house, they are not going to make the farmers of the west believe that their enemies are labouring people. The farmer knows who made a profit when he was getting low prices for his products. He knows who makes the profit when he buys his binder, his combine or his plough. Compared with the profit to the one who sells it, it is a good many to one. It is the worker who makes the plough, the reaper and the other farm machinery, and who has the family who is buying the farmer's butter, eggs and oatmeal. We believe that the farmer's market is much more important than profits to a few industrial owners who can only eat so much, wear so much wool and live in so many houses at a time. The farmer wants labour to get a fair share of the national income at the present time.
If the recommendations which came out of this committee, and if what appears to be the government programme, is to be the continuing programme of the government, then I am afraid-no, I am not afraid, I am sure there will be tremendous repercussions not only around the plant where the difficulty is taking place but all across the country, because the farmers believe the workers, the producers and the consumers should have a prior claim over (Mr. Bentley.]
the productive power of industry in Canada before anyone is paid a profit over and above what is commensurate with the responsibilities of the job he has to do.
I would make this suggestion, and I shall be chastized for this, Mr. Speaker, so, as other people sometimes do, I shall admit my error before I say it. I should have thought of this in the committee but I did not think fast enough. On one occasion the Acting Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) told me that I did not have a legal training. I frankly admit that. I do not know whether I am sorry for it or not. I have had some other kinds of training which have stood me in good stead in times of trouble. I have depended largely on fast footwork and other things to get me out of trouble, and have not had to learn much about legal matters. Had I had a legal training, I might have suggested this, but other members of the committee have legal training and either they did not think along the same lines as I did or they forgot it. Had I thought of it, I would have made this recommendation. Section 2 of the report reads as follows:
Your committee is convinced that continued price control is only possible with a reasonable measure of wage control.
What is a reasonable measure of wage control? It really does not mean anything to a legal man or anyone else. It means "reasonable" to the people who are using the phrase at the time. I say the section should read in this way, and had I thought of it, I would have so recommended. I am sorry I did not think of it in the committee. The section should be reworded to read this way:
Your committee is convinced that continued wage control is only possible with positive price control.
We have not had positive price control in Canada. I remember quite well-


James Horace King: I am sorry to interrupt the hon, member but he has spoken for forty minutes. The hon. member for Kootenay West.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Finish your
remarks.


Thomas John Bentley: Have I the consent of the house to continue?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Continue.


James Horace King: Unless the hon. member has the unanimous consent of the house he may not continue. Has the hon. member unanimous consent?


An hon. MEMBER:: Yes.


An hon. MEMBER:: No.

Industrial Relations


James Horace King: The hon. member has not unanimous consent.


Mr. H. W. HERRIDGE (Kootenay West):: I have listened with a great deal of interest to the debate, this afternoon. Many things have been said with which I can agree. Some things have been said which I had intended to say, but I shall not take up the time of the house to repeat what has already been mentioned in the debate. I think I can safely say that the country as a whole, and labour, will be disappointed with this report. The country as a whole was expecting that the report would deal with some definite solution, particularly of the steel strike. I am sure that labour in the country will be dissatisfied with the ambiguous language and general terms of the report. In that connection I wish to read a section of the statement of the wage coordinating committee of the Canadian Congress of Labour on this matter. Referring to the report of the committee on industrial relations, the Canadian Congress of Labour wage committee said:
Not only has the house committee failed to do anything to settle current strikes but it has for a period of four weeks created the illusion and the impression in the minds of the public, management and workers that the members of the house committee were going to settle the strikes.
I think that is a correct statement, Mr. Speaker, and I believe you will find it to be the general attitude of labour throughout the country.
Before proceeding very briefly to deal with some sections of this report, I wish to say that some hon. members have expressed the opinion that strikes in Canada are largely due to communist activity. Several hon. members of the Progressive Conservative party have made that statement. I believe these hon. gentlemen completely misunderstand the fundamental reasons for the discontent which exists among the great masses of the Canadian people. In the first place, I would say the reason for this discontent is that we have fought a bitter and difficult war, during which the people were told they should look forward to a period of peace which would inaugurate a new social order. The people of this country are expecting that new social order. Then I would say the second reason for the mass discontent which exists to-day is the desire for economic security, the desire to maintain and improve the standard of living. When hon. members blame communist activity for the discontent that is in the country I think they entirely misjudge the situation. I am a farmer. It may seem strange that two farmers in succession should speak on a labour question. I have had experience with labour
organizations only during the last five or six years, but in my experience I have found that the great mass of the people are reasonable, willing to compromise, ready in many cases to accept less than they should. But I am quite sure that at the present time there are large numbers of Canadian workers who are thoroughly dissatisfied and who have solid reasons for being dissatisfied.
Before dealing with one or two sections of the report, I wish to say that I was disappointed because the report did not contain some concrete recommendation in regard to settling this steel strike. In this respect I agree with the hon. member for Cape Breton South (Mr. Gillis), the hon. member for Rose-town-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell) and others who have spoken to the effect that the committee should have recommended the last proposals of the steel workers, which I think were very fair and realistic proposals, which were advanced with full knowledge of the situation, and which were modifications of the original proposals. I believe the committee should have recommended those proposals first to the controller, then to Mr. Brockington as the person who was to negotiate between the employers and the union, and, if that failed, I believe the committee should have recommended those proposals in its report to this house.
I am not going to go through the report, but I do want to deal with one or two sections. First, I should like to refer to section 3, which reads:
Your committee recommends that a measure of union security should follow certification.
I think that is an unsatisfactory and ambiguous statement. As a matter of fact it means little. I think-and in this respect I agree with the hon. member for Spadina (Mr. Croll)-that following the experience of the last few months with the Rand formula as it is operating in the Ford plant, the committee would have been well advised to recommend the Rand formula in this report. If only that concrete proposal had been contained in the report this committee would have recommended to parliament something worth while.
The other section with which I wish to deal briefly is section 6, which reads:
Your committee recommends that the Minister of Labour may, at the request of either party to an industrial dispute, and if he deems fit, either before or after a strike is in progress, direct that a strike vote be taken under government supervision, to determine the wishes of the men affected as to whether a strike will take place or otherwise.
I want to express my hearty disapproval of that section. On casual reading it does not sound very serious or dangerous, but it con-
51S6
Industrial Relations


Humphrey Mitchell: I do not understand what my hon. friend means.


Mr. LOCKHART:: I shall make myself
clearer in a moment, and shall explain more fully what I have in mind. It may be said in fairness that the minister has certainly a tough assignment on his hands. I have known him a long time and I am convinced of his sincerity. But through him the government has reaped and is reaping severe criticism. The statement is often made on the street that the whole situation has got out of hand. Perhaps we may better judge the truth of that statement after the minister has reviewed what he has attempted to do; perhaps he can vindicate his position. I shall be interested to hear what he has to say in that connection.
I do not intend to deal with the several sections of the report, because that would be repetitious. It has been referred to by other hon. members who have spoken. Not only because I sat on the committee, but because of my contacts for a long time, I am convinced that the formation of labour groups, with collective bargaining, is the right of labour, so long as they do not attempt to take the law into their own hands. I believe that is conceded.
It is also apparent to all that price and wage coordination is a necessity. This is recognized by most people who are interested in the present difficulties. I believe, too, it is
an established fact that practically all labour groups attempt to be fair in their demands. At least that has been my experience respecting those with which I have come in contact. I think that was borne out largely in the deliberations of the industrial relations committee. Likewise I must say from experience that I believe it is becoming more generally conceded week after week that most employers have the interests of their employees at heart and are learning to get closer to them. That is gratifying to me. I believe many others hold the same opinion. There are those of extreme views on both sides who may not agree with what I have said, but by and large that will be found to be the general opinion.
If the industrial relations committee has done nothing else it has focused attention on the methods which have been employed recently, largely by certain individuals, to stifle production. That may be a strong statement but I fear it is true. An early meeting of federal and provincial labour heads is urgently needed. The minister has indicated to the committee that he proposes at an early day to try to bring that into effect.
I am convinced that a national labour code in Canada is essential. If there be objections to it, I think it is about time that those objections should be aired, and let us find out what they are, and if there is some remedy which can be applied. The public must be informed on this issue also, so that we may try to coordinate the interests of labour and management across this country in an endeavour to find a pattern to avoid disputes of this kind.
I now turn more particularly to the present situation at Hamilton. I am in agreement with the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar that there is a situation obtaining there which must be rectified. Either the controller is being what is commonly called "hamstrung" by somebody to whom he is answerable, or he is certainly not rising to the occasion and meeting his responsibilities. As the hon. member has said, if that is the case, and no satisfactory explanation is forthcoming, it is about time that a change was made there. The minister should make the position in that respect very clear. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why certain labour heads, in appearing before the committee, impressed upon us that they have a lost faith in the present government and the policies it has followed, more particularly in recent months.
Much has been said about the secret ballot. I have taken the trouble to discuss this with, not one or two, but dozens of men whom I consider to be the most sane and capable
Industrial Relations

members of unions, men who have worked for industrial institutions as long as twenty years and more. I have gained much knowledge from those men; they have often discussed this matter with me. Let me say here to some of the labour heads that there is much criticism among their own ranks of the way the so-called secret ballot is conducted. Some of the best union men go so far as to charge that there has been manipulation in many cases when a strike vote is called or about to be called. That is an important point, and it has a considerable bearing on the conclusions which I have reached in the present issue. I suggest that, if labour heads desire to retain public confidence, coercion of their members will never promote their cause.
Much has been said about the influence of communism in certain labour groups. Let me say to all right-thinking members of any labour union or any other group that the type of individual whom they entrust with their leadership will in large measure gain or destroy public confidence. Of that I am convinced. If public confidence is once destroyed the cause of labour can never regain proper recognition. There is an old adage that anyone can lead a horse to water but nobody can make him drink. That adage applies in the present situation to both management and labour.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Would my hon. friend permit me, with great regret, to interrupt him? Is he going to finish before five minutes to seven, or would he like to adjourn the debate, because there is some other business which is important.


Norman James Macdonald Lockhart: I can hardly finish in that time.
As I said, the influence of communism is being felt in many places. Where there is attempted coercion there is an apparent danger; to try to force either management or labour to do something which they feel they cannot do is merely provocative. I was deeply impressed by some of the remarks of the labour heads who appeared before the committee. In most of their presentations I found a great deal with which I could agree. I want, however, to refer particularly to a few things that I find I cannot agree with and with respect to which I still await answers to questions which I asked in committee. I am still at a loss to understand why there is so much insistence that the three steel plants now on strike must be considered as one unit. I am unable to find any explanation of that. I think the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply (Mr. Howe) covered the point and I shall not repeat what he said in that connection, but I am largely in agreement with

what he said on that subject. I am still convinced that much confusion and, I think, some damage have been caused by the insistence of labour that the three steel companies be considered as one unit because the interests of these companies are so diversified, their sources of raw material are so different and their costs of operation vary widely. I think those charged with the responsibility of calling the strike should reconsider that point.
I am also at a loss to understand why so many labour groups contend that every time there is a rise of one or two points in the cost of living there must be a corresponding increase in wages. It is my opinion-and I think this is borne out by what many others have said-that production will be the controlling factor or at least have very much to do with the cost of living in this country. I am optimistic enough to believe that if our production can be brought to the highest possible peak our worries about the cost of living will not be so apparent. So I ask the labour groups why it is that they are so insistent upon wage increases when, if production is only allowed to reach its peak in Canada, it will have a great deal to do with the cost of living in this country. If labour gets a five-cent increase every time there is a five-point rise in the cost of living, will labour be ready to take a corresponding decrease in wages in a business recession?
Talk to the man on the street, men earning their living in many different vocations, and you will find that they are puzzled over the insistence of labour on this point-for-point increase, an increase in wages always to accompany an increase in the cost of living, because the clerk in a store and the average wage-earner receives no such consideration. I think there should be a little more give and take amongst labour in that respect. I pointed that out in the committee and I still believe I am right.
I am also at a loss to understand why the 40-hour week was ever injected into this dispute at this time. In my opinion that demand was ill conceived. It was only last January that an attempt was made by law in the province of Ontario to regulate the hours of labour and bring about more uniformity by adopting the 48-hour wreek. But the ink was hardly dry on that law before certain labour groups across this country were demanding a 40-hour week. That is not reasonable. We must try out these changes. I say to labour groups that I think their demand for the 40-hour week was ill conceived. I may be wrong and I am open to be convinced, but that is my opinion.

Questions
Let me say to employers that they must observe the 48-hour week which is now the law in Ontario. They must give it a trial so that labour may get the benefit of it.
On motion of Mr. Lockhart, the debate was adjourned.



RADIO BROADCASTING ACT


[Stage Direction]
Hon. IAN A. MACKENZIE (for the Minister of National Revenue) moved that the house go into committee to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to present a bill to amend the Canadian Broadcasting Act, 1936, to provide
(a)	that the chairman shall be eligible to become a contributor and entitled to benefits under any established pension fund of the corporation;
(b)	for the tenure of office and reappointment of the general manager; (c) for deposit to the credit of the corporation all fees received from private receiving licences and private station broadcasting licences, without deduction of costs of collection and administration, and (d) authority to advance to the corporation sums up to two million dollars during the present fiscal year and such sums in subsequent years as may be authorized by parliament from time to time on account of capital expenditures.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Macdonald (Brantford City) in the chair.
Resolution reported, read the second time and concurred in. Mr. Mackenzie thereupon moved for leave to introduce bill No. 391, to amend the Canadian Broadcasting Act, 1936.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.
On motion of Mr. Mackenzie the house adjourned at seven p.m.
Thursday, August 22, 1946