1946-04-09

Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING (Prime Minister) moved:: That the name of Mr. A. E. Robinson (Bruce) be substituted for that of Mr. Bruce on the committee on veterans affairs.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.	.


Right Hon. J. L. ILSLEY (Minister of Finance):: I should like to make a brief announcement in which I believe the house will be interested.
An agreement with the government of France was signed early this afternoon, under which Canada will provide to France a credit of $242,500,000 to enable France to make purchases in Canada. The amount and terms of this credit were agreed upon last September by M. Jean Monnet and myself, with the approval of our two governments, and they were made public later in the autumn.
The credit bears interest at three per cent and is repayable in thirty annual instalments, commencing at the end of 1947 and running until the end of 1976. The agreement was signed by the French ambassador on behalf of his government, and myself on behalf of the government of Canada.
This is much the largest of all our credits under the Export Credits Insurance Act. I am sure that members of the house, as well as the government, will welcome this agreement and the effective cooperation of Canadians in assisting in the reconstruction of this great allied nation with whom we have such close ties of friendship and historical association.


Mr. BRACKEN:: I wonder if the minister could inform the house what the total is of all credits already extended to countries other than Britain.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I will make a statement giving that total when I introduce the resolution relating to the United Kingdom loan, which I hope will be on Thursday.



EXPORT ACT AMENDMENT


[Stage Direction]
Hon. J. A. GLEN (Minister of Mines and Resources) moved the first reading of bill No. 14 (from the Senate) to amend the Export Act.

He said: The purpose of the bill is to eliminate certain overlapping with the Game Export Act and to assist the administration of provincial game regulations. Owing to changed conditions the provisions of sections 5 and 6 of the Export Act have become undesirable. They prevent non-resident sportsmen from taking home with them woodcock, partridge or prairie fowl lawfully killed by them in Canada. This bill really is founded upon a resolution which was passed at the ninth conference of provincial and dominion wild life officials held at Ottawa on April 6 and 7, 1942, requesting that sections 5 and 6 of the Export Act be repealed.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.


[Stage Direction]
Hon. J. A. GLEN (Minister of Mines and Resources) moved the first reading of bill No. 16 (from the Senate) respecting the manufacture, testing, sale, storage and importation of explosives.
He said: The Explosives Act, which is chapter 31 of the statutes of 1914, was passed by parliament on June 12, 1914, and has not been changed in any respect since 1920, the year in which it was proclaimed, save for the general revision of Canadian statutes of 1927. It is based on the British explosives act, 1875. The purpose of this bill is to bring the statute into line with present-day requirements and to remedy defects that have been revealed by practical experience in its administration.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: That on and after Wednesday the 10th April next to the end of the session, government notices of motion and government orders shall have precedence on Wednesdays over all business except the introduction of bills, questions by members and notices of motion for the production of papers.
He said: Mr. Speaker, when I asked the Clerk to put this notice of motion on the order paper I had not realized that the house will be adjourning on Wednesday of next week, which is the 17th, over the Easter recess.
I should like to point out to hon. members that on Thursday of this week we shall have been here for four weeks, and that up to the present there has been very little consideration

Precedence jor Government Business
of government measures. The Secretary of State has a bill respecting citizenship which has not yet been given second reading. As the Minister of Finance has indicated, he is ready to proceed on Thursday with the bill respecting the loan to the United Kingdom. Apart from these measures nothing in the way of government business has been accomplished thus far, unless my little bill on the external affairs department could be regarded as such.
If I had thought of the Easter adjournment coming next week I would nave worded the motion to read that on and after Monday, April 15 next to the end of the session, government notices of motion, government orders and so on shall have precedence on Mondays over all business except the introduction of bills, questions by members and notices of motion for the production of papers. If the house would allow me to amend the motion in that way, I would appeal very strongly to hon. members to accept the amendment and allow the motion as so amended to carry. I do this without any desire to deprive hon. members of their opportunities but rather in an attempt to assist the entire house to get through its business. If we continue discussing the resolutions of private members during the next couple of weeks we shall have no government business under way until some time after the Easter recess, and then hon. members will begin to regret that they have taken so long in the discussion of private members' resolutions to the exclusion of government business. For that reason I would ask the house to allow me to amend the motion by striking out the words "Wednesday, the 10th" and substituting therefor the words "Monday, the 15th."


Mr. STIRLING:: And later on the word "Monday" will have to be substituted for "Wednesday."


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Yes.


Mr. SPEAKER:: The amendment is that the words "Wednesday the 10th" be struck out and the words "Monday the 15th" substituted therefor, and that in the third line the word "Wednesdays" be struck out and the word "Mondays" substituted therefor.


John Bracken: The rules of the house provide that certain days of the week be allowed for the business of private members. All the private members hav6 done has been to utilize the time thus placed at their disposal. If now the government wishes to take more of that time for its own business, I am sure we shall all look at the request with an open mind. However, I would offer two suggestions to the government. If Monday, a private members' day with afternoon and evening sittings, is 63260-44i
taken for government business, as I expect it will be, I would respectfully suggest that Wednesday with only an afternoon sitting be continued as a private members' day rather longer in the session than otherwise would be done. My second suggestion is that the government might expedite its own business by allowing us to get to a vote on some of these private measures before eleven o'clock at night.
Mr. M. J. COLDWELL (Rosetown-Biggar); I think the request is reasonable, but I agree with the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bracken) that if Monday is taken away we should continue for a while at least to have Wednesday for private members. I think the matter should be adjusted in that way.


Mr. J. H. BLACKMORE (Lethbridge):: I too believe the request is quite reasonable. After all, the house wants to finish its business some time before August.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I may tell my hon. friend that his suggestion will meet with the approval of the government. I think after a little while the house itself will be only too ready to take Wednesday, so we may well leave the question of Wednesday to be taken up a little later on. I thank hon. members for their cooperation in this matter.


John Bracken: What about my second proposal?	.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The second proposal refers to the capacity of the government to stop anyone from speaking when he gets a chance. I am afraid that is a power which cannot be exercised on any side of the house.


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
Motion, as amended agreed to.


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. M. J. COLD WELL „(Rosetown-Biggar): Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask a question of the Minister of National Defence, notice of which I have given. When can the men in the forces, particularly those in the interim forces, expect to receive an announcement regarding the permanent force establishments? The delay in the announcement is causing difficulties for those who are anxious about future employment.
Hon. DOUGLAS ABBOTT (Minister of National Defence):: As my hon. friend knows, my colleague the Minister of National Defence for Air (Mr. Gibson) and I announced last October the approximate size of the three
o unaaian r utggs

armed forces. Ia January, following a conference with district officers commanding, and .senior officers at national defence headquarters at Ottawa I gave the press a statement in which I indicated that so far as the army is concerned the active force will comprise a field unit, composed of a brigade group, which will be representative of all arms, and the remainder of the force will consist of headquarters staff; personnel to ^ssist in the training and administration of the reserve force, research and development, and the units required for the maintenance of the Alaska highway, and the like.
I had not contemplated making any further detailed announcement as to the establishments in the immediate future. As the house knows, committees have been sitting to consider the question of pay and allowances and pension provision for post-war services, and I expect to make an announcement concerning this within the course of the next few days.
SERVICEMAN HELD UNDER P.C. 6577 On the orders of the day:


Mr. J. G. DIEFENBAKER (Lake Centre):: I should like to ask a question of the Minister of Justice. Have any instructions been given that Mr. McCloy in Winnipeg is to be released from custody under which he is held under P.C. 6577, and has the order in council in question been set aside?
Hon. L. S. ST. LAURENT (Minister of Justice):	I shall have to take the hon.
member's question as a notice, and make inquiries. As soon as I have ascertained the. facts I shall give an answer.



CONDITIONS AFFECTING EXPORTS TO THE UNITED STATES

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. F. E. LENNARD (Wentworth):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask a question of the Minister of Reconstruction. Has the government considered lifting the embargo on timber exports to the United States, as hinted in a recent press dispatch?


Hon. C. D. HOWE (Minister of Reconstruction) :: Mr. Speaker, there is no embargo on timber exports to the United States. A certain proportion of the cut is exported by agreement between the timber authorities of the two countries. From removal of the control two results would follow: there would be an immediate increase in the price of lumber to the Canadian user by from $20 to $30 a thousand, or alternately there would be no 
lumber for Canadian users. The present control will be continued. There is no change contemplated.



LABOUR CONDITIONS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. ALISTAIR STEWART (Winnipeg North):: I should like to ask a question of the Minister of Labour. What additional steps are being taken by the Department of Labour to settle the dispute between the Winnipeg newspapers and members of the typographical union?


Hon. HUMPHREY MITCHELL (Minister of Labour):: I thank the hon. member for having given me notice of the question. I have already appointed a second commissioner in an effort to bring the parties together. I hope to settle the dispute.,



REQUIREMENTS OF MANITOBA SUGAR BEET PRODUCERS

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. WILLIAM BRYCE (Selkirk):: I
should like to ask a question of the Minister of Labour, of which I have given notice. Will the minister give assurance to the beet growers in the Red River valley that the necessary labour will be available for the increased production contemplated this year?


Humphrey Mitchell: I wish to thank my hon. friend for having given notice of his question. The federal department of labour, along with provincial agricultural authorities, sugar beet growers and sugar companies, have been giving special attention to the matter referred to by the hon. member. I cannot give any absolute assurance, in view of the very tight labour situation in agriculture to-day, and the fact since V-J day that we have not had the power of direction. I think, however, the hon. member may rest ^assured that we shall overcome the difficulties this year, as we have done in the past, ever since I have been head of the department.



HOUSING


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. D. G. ROSS (St. Paul's):: I should like to ask a question of the Minister of Reconstruction. Have any arrangements been made

Canadian Citizenship
6S5
with the city of Toronto with regard to utilizing the buildings of the General Engineering company on Dawes road for shelter purposes? If not, if matters are simply being investigated, could the minister, speed up those investigations so that these buildings can be used for shelter? The situation is desperate.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I have no information about the situation, but I shall make inquiries and try to give an. answer.



CANADIAN CITIZENSHIP


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from Friday, April 5, consideration of the motion of Mr. Martin for the second reading of bill No. 7, respecting citizenship, nationality, naturalization and status of aliens.
Mr. DONALD M. FLEMING (Eglinton): Mr. Speaker, at different times during the debate my thoughts have gone back some nineteen years to a scene in a classroom at Osgoode Hall Law School when the class was studying private international law. In the lectures on the subject of the Canadian Naturalization Act I am sure one young man in that class would have been interested indeed if he could have foreseen that some nineteen years later he would be introducing in this House of Commons a citizenship bill. The student of nineteen years ago is the Secretary of State to-day. And had I been able to foresee the future I should have been surprised to know that the student who then sat two seats away from the man who is now Secretary of State would now be rising to support the principle of the bill introduced by the Secretary of State.
Some, things have been said in the debate which I think will be deplored by those who love our country and feel that it can become great only to the extent to which it is united. From time to time during the course of the debate there has been evidence of a bitter spirit. There has been evidence of hairsplitting and narrow legalism. I hope in what I have to say to-day I may be able to contribute something toward better understanding.
There are strong reasons which make it perfectly obvious that we must have in this country to-day a citizenship act. We must have Canadian citizenship. To put it on one ground, if you like: there are important technical reasons why there must be a proper definition of Canadian citizenship. At the present time we have the Naturalization Act, the Canadian Nationals Act, and the Immigration Act. All of them, touch some aspect of the problem of citizenship, some aspect of the status of Canadians living within this country. In some respects they are contradictory. In fact, our present legislation in this respect is something of a hodge-podge. It is high time that it was reexamined with a view to codification of the provisions which relate to citizenship. There are also important reasons, Mr. Speaker, in relation to the status of Canadian citizens in their private capacity. One need mention only one or two-the status of married women, and the status of children born outside Canada to Canadian parents, to point to subjects where there are great weaknesses in existing legislation. There is need for clarification and codification.
But there are greater and broader reasons than these why Canadian citizenship should be the subject of legislative enactment at this time. The first and principal one, in the face of all the facts, is the necessity for contributing something in legislative form that will be effectual in the creation of Canadian unity.
I agree with what has been said by some who preceded me in the debate, that this bill alone will not create Canadian unity. But given sympathetic application and given sympathetic treatment now by the house I think the bill is capable of making some contribution-toward national unity.	"
In the second place, this bill does hold out the hope that, given sympathetic and effective, administration, it' will have the effect of creating in the minds of Canadians a greater appreciation of the value of citizenship and of the rights which flow from it. We have lost much, in this country because we have not put a. sufficient price and value upon citizenship.. We have taken our rights as citizens far too-much for granted. We have only to look at the example of the United States to see what can be accomplished in creating in the minds of citizens, by proper rules and ceremonies and by education, an appreciation of the fundamental value of citizenship. Citizenship in the United States has been a great unifying factor; it can be made so in this country. I support the bill on general principles because I believe that if it is enacted and is given sympathetic administration it will contribute something to the desirable end of national unity.
Before I leave this subject may I say just this word about ceremony. I am glad that provision has been made in section 38 of the bill for appropriate ceremonies to attend the granting of certificates of citizenship in order that applicants may be duly impressed with
Canadian Citizenship
[Stage Direction]
the advantages of Canadian citizenship. This is all to the good. There is a growing need of it at the present time.
I should like to refer now to an article which appeared in the Toronto Evening Telegram of April 1, 1946, describing some proceedings in the naturalization court in that *city. It reads in part:
Queen's husband Mr. King bars German's citizenship
Alfred Alpert, factory worker, was smart enough to get out of Germany in 1939 ahead of the nazis, but he's still a little muddled about world figures.
"Mr. King is king of the British empire," he told Judge Denton in naturalization court when seventy-eight new Canadians took the oath of allegiance to the crown. "Where does the King live?" the judge asked:	"The King is in
'Ottawa," replied Alpert, who arrived in England in June, 1939, was at Kitchener camp and Isle of Man camp and migrated to Canada in July, 1940.
"I admit it's a bit confusing," said Judge Denton. "Where does the queen live, then?"
"She lives in England."
'"What is her name?"-"Queen Elizabeth."
"What is the king's name?" Alpert was stymied. Judge Denton gave him a hint: "The queen's husband," he explained, "what is his name ?"
"His name is Mackenzie King," Alpert replied.
There is a great need of giving to those who come to this country to make it their home an opportunity, which perhaps has not been fully provided for them in the land from which they come, to learn what citizenship means, to learn what the rights and the responsibilities of citizenship mean in a country like ours. I think as a nation we have hitherto failed deplorably in this respect. This is an age of adult education, but we in this country have not realized the great need of affording opportunities for adult education to those who come from other lands to make Canada their home. We have often treated as foreigners those new Canadians, who have come here with the full ' permission of the laws of this country to make it their home. To me that is a denial of the fundamental principle of Canadian citizenship. Once people are admitted to this country, once they become citizens, no lines should be drawn, racial or otherwise, which will have the effect of discriminating between different classes of citizens.
Due regard must be had in the future, far more than has been had in the past, to the duty of providing to those who come to this *country to make it their home the opportunity to learn of all that is involved in Canadian -citizenship, and there should be impressed

upon all applicants for citizenship a due regard not only for the rights but also for the responsibilities of citizenship.
I think it is worthy of the attention of this house that we should consider now the true significance of Canadian citizenship. Canadian citizenship involves an assertion of our rights as equal individuals before the law, -and before the electoral law, to determine as we will the destiny of this country. We owe *much to those who have gone before us and who have provided for us the privileges of this Canadian citizenship. If there was more regard for the sacrifices of those who have gone before us, there would be a higher appreciation of the privileges of citizenship in Canada. Think of the contribution made to the developing concept of Canadian citizenship by Macdonald, Cartier, Laurier and Sir Robert Borden, Think of the contribution made to that expanding significance of Canadian citizenship when in the time of Sir Robert Borden this country, by the hand of a minister of Canada representing His Majesty the King, signed the treaty of peace in 1919. It was a great step in our national development.
We need to have more pride in Canada. We need a greater sense of achievement on the part of our country anil our people-and when I say "our people" I mean all our people. We are not yet adequately conscious of being Canadians. This country is finding its soul, at soul born of sacrifice. I for one am an optimist for Canada. I can see nothing to circumscribe or limit the future of this country except the extent of our faith in it and our faith in ourselves under God's guidance.
It is not all clear sailing in this country to develop a sense of citizenship. Let us be quite frank. We have had a problem created by race and it is a difficult problem. It has led to a hyphenation of Canadianism which I say it is the duty of every citizen of this country to fight. We must put aside this idea of a hyphenated Canadianism which will not fit into a worthy conception of Canadian citizenship or Canadian unity. Those who exalt race above Canadian unity or Canadian citizenship do a great disservice to Canada.
We know perfectly well that so far as the great races of this country are concerned, racial purity is a biological myth. There has been a mingling of the races in Canada, and there will continue to be. A couple of years ago the premier of the province of Ontario, Hon. George Drew, addressing an audience composed largely of new Canadians, said that in the veins of his two children was mingled the blood of seven races. I daresay there are

Canadian Citizenship
many of us in this chamber who can say that we have in our veins the blood of several races at least.
If in approaching this question of the relationship between race and nationality, unity and a common Canadian citizenship, we realize that unity does not demand uniformity, and that we are operating under a * constitution which gives certain rights to our brothers whose maternal language is the French language; if we approach the problem with good-will and understanding and sympathy, there is no reason why there cannot be a true sense of Canadian unity. ^
There is a work of reconciliation to be done in this country. We saw the need of it in thig house in the debates of last Thursday and Friday. It seems to me that that work of reconciliation must begin, here in Ottawa. Whoever seeks to exploit racial differences for political advantage commits a crime against Canada, against Canadian unity and against our proper sense of Canadian citizenship.
If we know each other better there will be far less danger of suspicion and distrust. Canadians must know each other better. That is a duty that rests upon us all. In the light of the necessity of creating in Canada a deep sense of national unity there must be no thought of pitting aggressive minorities and aggresive majorities against one another. We have to put first the interests of Canada as the whole of Canada, as a nation.
As the hon. member for Outremont (Mr. Rinfret) said in his speech in the house last Thursday, historically those who first held the title "Canadiens" were persons born in this country of French descent. It is a title which we are all proud to possess. I ask hon. members to recognize that it is not a contribution to Canadian unity to have a member of this house say: I have a superior claim to this title. It is now the proud possession of all of us and we should all be big enough to admit that our rights to it are now complete and equal.
The two great races in this country owe debts to each other which they do not, it seems to me, adequately realize. Reference was made in some of the earlier speeches in this debate to the articles of capitulation which were signed after the fall of Quebec in 1759, and after the fall of Montreal in 1760, followed by the Quebec Act of 1774, the constitutional act of 1791, the Act of Union of 1840 and finally the British North America Act itself. It is a plain fact of history that had Canada not become British when it did, it would later have become American. Those whose mother tongue is English may equally well
be reminded that but for the loyalty of the Canadiens, and had guarantees not been extended to those whose mother tongue was French, Canada would not have been retained for the British crown at the time of the American revolution but would have become American.
These two races owe a debt to each other which they can never adequately repay. Let us therefore in all common sense and justice recognize it, and let us be conscious of a sense of obligation to each other. I believe that will promote better understanding and a greater appreciation of each other.
We hear talk from time to time of language rights. This question of language was fully settled in the British North America Act, by section 133. It is our duty to refute, wherever and whenever we hear it, the talk of those who say that the national fabric of this country is weakened by there being two official languages. It is not so. Those who follow that line whittle and hack away at the foundation of confederation, because without section 133 confederation would never have been brought about, and without it confederation to-day could not continue.
I want to say a word with respect to one passage on bilingualism in the speech of the hon. member for Outremont-and I approach this as one who has the desire and hope to improve what little facility he possesses in the French language. I think no one will promote bilingualism in this country by scolding those who speak the English language for not having acquired any facility in French. It may be that the hon. member for Outremont did not intend to rail against those who1 have not acquired that facility. I think on sober reflection he will appreciate that that is not the way in which better understanding can be brought about between the two great races in this country. We must concentrate above all else on understanding each other, and with tolerance and good will any problems attendant on the question which the hon. member for Outremont raised are, I think, capable of solution.
Two sections of this bill, which are essential in the light of the principle of the measure have occupied the attention of some who have preceded me in the debate. I refer to section 26 and section 10. Without a careful examination of the provisions of these two sections the principle of the bill cannot be adequately debated. I wish to say a word with regard to section 26, particularly in view of the interpretation put upon it on Friday last by the hon. member for Outremont and the hon. member for Chambly-Rouville (Mr. Pinard).
Canadian Citizenship
[Stage Direction]
Section 26 provides that a Canadian citizen is a British subject. The parliament of Canada could not enact any contrary legislation unless Canada renounced her allegiance to His Majesty the King. Whether that section is in the bill or not we shall continue to be subjects of the king. Let no one be under any illusion in that respect.
When I heard those two hon. members on Friday last speak of section 26 as being ambiguous, I asked myself what could be plainer. The section consists of seven words:
A Canadian citizen is a British subject.
That is simply declaratory of the law. It will be the law, it must be the law, as long as we are subjects of the king. I detected in the remarks of those two hon. members the suggestion that to be a British subject means to be subject to the jurisdiction of the imperial parliament at Westminster. It is not so. Ever since the statute of Westminster in 11)32, the imperial parliament has renounced all legislative power over Canada except so far as this parliament consents, so there can no longer be any justification for talk in this country of any of its citizens being subject to the laws enacted at Westminster. We are completely autonomous; nothing further is needed to achieve autonomy for Canada.
The hon. member for Outremont went on to say that so far as he is concerned His Majesty the King must divest himself of certain titles before Canadian citizens should be content to be his subjects. He said that we must change the provisions of this bill and must say, in effect, that to be a Canadian citizen is to be a Canadian subject of His Majesty the King of Canada. We had statements such as this from the hon. member, as he is reported at page 595 of Hansard:
. . . but my king and the British king are not legally the same; they are not the same entity. And this the statute of Westminster implicitly recognizes.
That statement is false to law, to fact, to sense. The hon. member for Outremont said that that was in accord with the statute of Westminster. He Will not find in the statute of Westminster one word which says that the British king, the king of Great Britain and the king of Canada, are not the same legal entity. What is more, if he will examine the declaration which came from the imperial conference in 1926, which was the foundation upon which the statute of Westminster was built in 1932, he will find these words, referring to the component countries of the commonwealth :
They are autonomous communities within the British empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their internal or domestic affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the crown-
Note that, Mr. Speaker-united by a common allegiance to the crown:
-and fully associated as members of the British commonwealth.
It is inherent in the association that now exists between the component members of the British commonwealth that the crown is one entity, one crown, one and indivisible. That common crown is the one entity which binds all parts of this commonwealth of equal partners. It is not only the greatest binding force amongst the members of the commonwealth: it is in fact the greatest binding force 'in Canada-our common allegiance to His Majesty the King. We should abandon a lot of silly ideas and silly talk about inferiority and subordination. There is no justification in fact or in law or in sense for such arguments. But some members go on fighting battles that were fought and won many, many years ago. They are not helping the cause of Canadian unity. There was no idea of inferiority on the part of Sir John A. Macdonald or on the part of Sir Wilfrid Laurier or on the part of Sir Robert Borden in their relations with the British Colonial Office and the Dominions Office-far from it. Our allegiance to His Majesty the King, which we share with all parts of this commonwealth and empire is the greatest binding force in Canada.
What are we invited to do by those who would reject section 26? Without the fact on which section 26 is built you would not have Canadian unity, you could not build a Canadian citizenship. But the hon. member for Outremont and the hon. member for Chambly-Rouville, as well as some other hon. members, say: Oh, take that section out of the bill; we have to have that changed. Do you think for one minute that you can unite Canadian citizens on the basis of rejecting the idea of a common crown for the commonwealth? You will never do it-never.
Let us examine for a moment what is involved in the ideas put forward by these hon. members. They say: We want to reject the idea of being British subjects-as though there was something servile in the title. The term means only this, those who owe allegiance to the king, to the crown. That, and no other, is the significance of the term "British subject". Those who say: We are grown up, we do not want to be British subjects any longer,, are, in effect, asking Canadians to forfeit a gener-
[Stage Direction]
Canadian Citizenship
ous measure of their own birthright, one of the greatest privileges provided for free men in the world to-day.
If we reject the concept of being British subjects it will mean that we shall renounce privileges such as those I shall now mention. When our citizens go to the United Kingdom to take up residence they go on a footing of equality with all other citizens of the United Kingdom. They qualify for the franchise in the same length of time-I think it is six months-as any other resident of that cduntry. It means that a Canadian going to Australia to take up residence there enjoys, because he is a British subject, all the rights of citizens of that country, and he qualifies for the franchise just as any other citizen of that country does in a period of six months. A British subject going from Canada to New Zealand steps into that land on a footing of equality with all citizens of New Zealand and qualifies for the franchise in one year. A British subject going from Canada to South Africa enjoys all the privileges of citizenship and qualifies for the franchise, in two years if he is a native-born British subject, and in five years if he is a foreign-born naturalized British subject.
We are told, however, that Ireland is the example we should follow. Are we going to accept the course taken by Eire in 1935 as an example for Canada? Reference ,was made to the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act of 1935, and the Aliens Act passed by that country in the same year, by which it is provided that citizens of Eire will no longer be British subjects. But I think it is well that the house should know that the Aliens Exemption Order of 1935 provides for the exemption of Canadians and persons from other parts of the British commonwealth, from that principle, so that British subjects are now dealt with by Eire on a basis of reciprocity.
I have referred to some advantages which Canadians enjoy in going to other parts of the commonwealth. We must not overlook at the same time the advantage of our association with the commonwealth in terms of protection and in terms of the status which it gives us in the world. Could we ever hope to enjoy the position in the world and the respect in which the world holds us to-day if we stood alone, if we sought to proceed as some hon. members who spoke on Friday suggest we should do, and renounce our right and title as British subjects? These hon. members invite Canadians to the renunciation of great rights and privileges. If Canadian citizenship is to be bought at the price of a renunciation of the rights which we as British subjects enjoy in all parts of the world,
we shall be paying too great a price for it. It is a price we do not need to pay, and this bill by section 26 provides that Canadians shall not be called upon to pay that price for Canadian citizenship.
I wish to say a word now about section 10 of the bill. I have said something already about the advantages which accrue to Canadians by reason of the fact that they are British subjects. What about a little reciprocity? What about the lot of British subjects from other parts of the commonwealth who come to Canada, as the land of their choice, to make this country their home? What does section 10 say about them? It says in effect that those who come from other parts of the commonwealth-British subjects, trained in citizenship, in no way inferior to ourselves in their appreciation of the rights and duties of citizenship-are to be treated, with one solitary and inconsequential exception, as though they were aliens. That is the effect of section 10 of this bill as it stands to-day; they are put on a basis of equality with aliens. What does it mean? Examine the provisions of section 10. What are the requirements of applicants for Canadian citizenship?
Mr. MARTIN:: I rise to a point of order. I do not want to interrupt the hon. gentleman, but he will realize that the rules of the house are designed to permit statement or discussion only of the principle of the bill on second reading. The hon. member is now proceeding to a discussion of section 10. I have no doubt that what he says will be of great value, but there is no opportunity of discussion and explanation in reply, and consequently, because of the importance of the bill, wrong impressions may get out because of what one might call unilateral statements. It is contrary to the rules of the house for an hon. member on second reading to discuss a section of the bill. My only reason for rising is that I had to do so the other night in the case of the hon. member for Kindersley (Mr. Jaenicke), and I feel I must, as one who is leading the house at this time, take the same attitude in regard to the hon. member. There will be ample opportunity to discuss the section when we reach it. There is no chance now of the hon. gentleman and myself engaging in explanations of it, and I think he should postpone to the committee stage the discussion of section by section.


John Bracken: Mr, Speaker, before you give your ruling I would like to point out that a very important principle of this bill is contained in section 10, to which the hon. member has been referring, and if this is the
Canadian Citizenship

time to discuss the principles of the bill, I suggest that he be not denied the right to do so. He can do,/it in any event by not referring specifically to the number of the section. And it does contain a principle of this bill.


Mr. BROOKS:: The main principle.


John Bracken: One of. the main principles; and I respectfully suggest that he should not be denied the opportunity to discuss it here.
* Mr. LESAGE: I wonder if the point of order does not go to the principle of the bill. If the hon. member wants to prove to the house that citizens coming from other parts of the commonwealth' are more likely to acquire a Canadian mind than people coming from other parts of the world, I think the house is anxious to have this proven- proven against the historical background.


Mr. GREEN:: Mr. Speaker, may I point out to you, as I have had to do on two other occasions, that the minister himself, in making his speech on the second reading of this bill, dealt with section 10, and said there was not anything in it worth worrying about.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I did not mention the section.


Howard Charles Green: Well, in effect that is what he said, and every time he gets a little worried about remarks made about some part of the bill he gets up and raises this point of order. Every speech made thus far on the second reading has contained some reference to one or other of the sections. For example, the member for Outremont and the member for Chambly-Rouville spoke on section 26, and the minister allowed them to go ahead without raising any point.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I certainly did.


Howard Charles Green: I suggest that he is wide of the mark now when he tries to stop the member for Eglinton.


James Horace King: Last week I took occasion to draw the attention of hon. members to Beauchesne, third edition, page 228, paragraph 656, which states that on the motion for the second reading it is out of order to discuss clauses of the bill. On each occasion on which a member was called to order it was stated that he was discussing a clause that was of particular importance and which it was necessary to consider at the moment. Hon. members, I am sure, will understand that it is the duty of the Speaker to point out to any member who has the floor, when it is necessary to do so, that a particular standing order requires that this or that shall be done.

The Speaker has no alternative; he must draw 'the attention of hon. members to the rules as they stand. On. the second reading of a bill hon. members must confine themselves to the principle. I realize that an hon. member may find it necessary occasionally to refer to particular sections, and he may do so without discussing each clause of the bill. It is extremely difficult to keep the discussion in conformity with the rules of the house, and I have no doubt that hon. members on both sides appreciate the importance of this rule which requires that discussion at this stage be confined to the principle of the bill. I would ask the hon. member to be good enough to observe the rule.


Mr. FLEMING:: I have no intention whatever of discussing the details of section 10, Mr. Speaker. I did discuss section 26 at some length and what I have to say with reference to section 10 has to do with its effect in relation to the principle of the bill. In this connection I should like to refer to what was said by the hon. member for Outremont, at page 596 of Hansard. He was referring to the fact that, as he says, one of the reasons for disunity in Canada is in part this, that British subjects coming to Canada have been able to acquire rights of citizenship here without being subjected to the same requirements as aliens. The hon. member said : .
I cannot help hut think, Mr. Speaker, that the different treatment accorded to these as against the other immigrants has something to do with the lack of complete Canadian itaity.
Obviously the hon. member can in this respect give whole-hearted support to the bill, because the bill does put the British subject, coming from other parts of the commonwealth, in the same position as an alien coming from any section of the globe-except in one respect; he is absolved from the mere detail of filing a declaration of intention. He must do everything else that the alien is required to do. He must prove his lawful entry; he must prove five years' residence in Canada; he must prove good character and an adequate knowledge of either English or French; he must prove that he has an adequate knowledge of the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship, and his intention to take up permanent residence. In other words, he has to go through precisely the same procedure, in all lespects, to supply the same proof and adhere to the same rules as an alien from any foreign land. That shocks me. Surely the purpose of requiring five years' residence is that we may train people in our conception of liberty and freedom so that they may take their place within the democracy of our con-

Canadian Citizenship
eeption. Do we need to put a British subject, with all his background, with all his present possession of everything that we have in the way of citizenship and knowledge of democratic processes, in the humiliating position of having to conform to the same procedure precisely and to observe the same rules as the alien? It is a humiliation which this bill seeks to heap upon British subjects from other parts of the commonwealth. I do not think that is a basis upon which we shall build the national unity which we so much desire. We must work for unity and understanding; it will not be possible for us to do so on that basis. People coming from other parts of the commonwealth, if they are qualified to be good citizens, must not be placed in that invidious position.
We have a great heritage, and we should value it as Canadians. We should value it far more than it has been valued in the past. We must have a sense of indebtedness to the past, to those who have gone before us, if we are to have an adequate appreciation of our privileges to-day and our opportunities in the future of this country. But there must be great vision in Canada, a vision of unity of all citizens from coast to coast, marching shoulder to shoulder and working for Canada. Without vision the people perish. There must be a great national vision which encompasses the high place of Canada in the world and among the self-governing nations of the British commonwealth.
In what I am about to say now, Mr. Speaker, in your mother tongue, I am not attempting to do anything smart or superficial. I am simply attempting to offer, in a spirit of good will, a gesture, a desire for understanding, an indication of my willingness as one member of the house-I am sure this is true of all members-to approach our common Canadian problems with sympathy and understanding. I hope you will bear with me. I may tell you that I have not been too successful in practising conversation in French with the comely young ladies who take such good care of us in the parliamentary dining-room; such is my facility in the language that when one morning recently I ordered porridge-upon which I may say I was raised-I was served scrambled eggs! Maybe what you are about to hear is a scrambled-eggs version of the French language. Nevertheless here it is. (Translation);
The consideration of this bill affords to this house an opportunity to give Canadian citizenship the full importance it deserves and to dispel all doubts as to its meaning. This citizenship is our pride and it constitutes our privilege and our priceless heritage.
We all love our country. Certainly no one among us would exchange his title of Canadian for that of a citizen of any other country in the world.	-
Our Canadian citizenship links us together with bonds of unity and equality, from whatever province we come and whatever be the race or language of our fathers.
Too often, unfortunately, racial considerations and prejudices have been allowed to obscure the meaning of our Canadian citizenship.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Donald Methuen Fleming: As Canadians, wre should constantly endeavour to emphasize those things that are common to all of us and that form our common heritage; It seems to me that we could strengthen our bonds of unity in Canada by avoiding the use of a hyphen when defining our citizenship. We should be proud and happy to call ourselves simply "Canadians".
On June 6, 1943, speaking in Kingston, my leader, Mr. John Bracken, made the following statement:
Sir John Macdonald's first consideration was Canada-not French-speaking Canada, not English-speaking Canada, but Canada, a Canadian Canada. And we tp-day must have no less high an ideal. Let us look upon all our citizens, of whatever racial extractions, as Canadians. Let us have less of hyphenated Cana-dianism. Our new citizens don't want it, and we don't. In the United States they do not speak of President Roosevelt as a Dutch-American, nor Mr. Willkie as a German-American, nor of Mayor LaGuardia as an Italian-American. They are Americans. Let us in Canada be Canadians.
Mr. Speaker, with your permission I should like to make a few personal observations. I am descended from Irish forbears. Am I, for that reason, an Irish-Canadian? I am also of Scottish stock. Does that make me a Scottish-Canadian? Some of my ancestors were Englishmen. Should I therefore be termed an English-Canadian? My lineage can also be traced back to French forbears. My grandfather told me, when I was a boy, that one of my ancestors had fought under the Marquis de Montcalm on the plains of Abraham. Does that make me a French-Canadian? Then, what am I? Am I a French-Canadian, a Scottish-Canadian, an English-Canadian, or an Irish-Canadian? Mr. Speaker, I wish to consider myself simply as a Canadian.
The various races I have just mentioned, as well as others, have made a splendid contribution to the building up of this country and to the enrichment of our national heritage. This heritage can surpass all others in richness owing to the diversity of our origins.
602	COMMONS
Canadian Citizenship	*
Our citizenship will be all the more precious if we are ready to unite and work for Canada in a spirit of cooperation, mutual respect and equality.
The party to which I belong has made the following statement:
We recall, with pride and gratitude, that our party rose to greatness through a fruitful partnership between two great races, English and French. We affirm our belief that the two cultures are part and parcel of our future development and that Canada's true greatness depends on sympathy and understanding between these two original races and all other races that have come to join in the building of our country.
Realizing the inherent greatness of Canada as a nation and recognizing the strength that can come only from unity and purpose, we believe that all the peoples of Canada should unite in fostering a common pride in Canadian achievement and institutions and a common loyalty to our ancestral traditions of equality, justice and toleration, and should seek, with due regard for constitutional rights, to achieve that profound sense of the importance of national interests which will ensure harmony and cooperation and that future for our country which was the aim of the Fathers of Confederation.
(Text):


James Horace King: Order.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Go on.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I am sure the sense of the house is that the }jon. gentleman should be allowed to continue.


James Horace King: I am very sorry to have interrupted the hon. gentleman, but if he has unanimous consent he may continue. (Translation):


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Speaker I shall have concluded within a minute.
Let us then endeavour with more energy than ever to strengthen our dear Canada by linking ourselves with bonds of unity and equality. Let us be proud of our title "Canadian citizen".
(Text):


Mr. D. A. CROLL (Spadina):: Mr. Speaker, may I first congratulate the hon. member for Eglinton (Mr. Fleming) on the splendid speech he made. I am sure we particularly enjoyed the latter part of it. I wish also to join with other hon. members in congratulating the Secretary of State (Mr. Martin), first on having sponsored this bill and second on piloting it through the house, as I am sure he will. I feel certain the house will approve the bill in principle. We may differ as to some of the details, and when the time comes for third reading I shall certainly make myself heard. When the hon. gentleman introduced the bill in the house I believe he concluded his remarks by saying that when this bill finally passes everyone in Canada who is covered by it will be able to

say, "I am a Canadian." May I say to him that for his imagination, his application and his thoroughness there are many of us in Canada who will say of him that he is a great Canadian.
The bill now before the house has been received by the great majority of Canadians with a large measure of indifference. They will now be Canadians and British subjects rather than British subjects and Canadians; so what? That has been the response of the majority of the people who will be affected by this bill, and every man, woman and child in Canada will be affected by it. It is very much like the recurrent debates on the national flag. Maybe we shall have one; maybe we shall not have one. Perhaps it should have the union jack in one comer, perhaps the fleur-de-lis on the fly; perhaps stripes, or perhaps the maple leaf. I understand that already we have had 1,800 submissions of designs. I should have thought we would have 18,000. Again I say that the majority of the people in Canada who are affected by the problem, and whose flag this will be, are consumed with apathy over the whole question. Maybe we shall have the old red ensign; maybe we shall have a crest with the maple leaf. So what? I was impressed by the fact that even newspapers which are attempting to whip up a little enthusiasm for one design or another design or for no design at all, merely the union jack, had to throw in a pretty girl, with shapely legs, her skirts hiked well up above her knees, in order that the picture might be good enough to interest people in the flag.
With all due deference, Mr. Speaker, I would mention one group of citizens in this country to whom the question of citizenship and the question of a national flag are of the deepest concern, who are fascinated by this bill, and whose hearts, from sheer joy, miss a beat at its implications. They are those who are not charter members of this Canadian organization, like my French-speaking friends; they are not those of Anglo-Saxon stock, like so many others of my friends; they are not those whose birthright gave them every freedom and privilege this country of ours can offer. No, sir; when I mention some of those to Whom these questions of citizenship and national flag are so important, I mean those who had to save and struggle and endure hardship to achieve the status which is so casually accepted by our brethren; I mean the new Canadians-and in saying that, I mean 20-2 per cent of the population of Canada. I mean also that one-fifth of our population which can hold1 its head as high as any other when anyone raises the question of loyalty to Canada.

Canadian Citizenship
I am one of them. For forty-one years of my forty-six I have lived in this country, have enjoyed liberties and opportunities it has given me, I have gladly allowed myself to become assimilated into its community. What little service it has allowed me to give, I have proudly given. Yet I remain a new Canadian. I am not a native-born; I am a naturalized citizen. Behind me remains, and occasionally I hear, the reminder of those cold years when, from the wrong side of the tracks, this new Canadian could only look across enviously at the warmly-lighted windows of those who enjoyed Canadian birthright and who so casually accepted the high privileges which were theirs from the cradle on.
That, if I may say so, has been the shocking thing so far as most of us are concerned. We have come, in the main, from lands of oppression, hunger and fear; we, or our fathers, have struggled mightily to assemble the little bit which was needed for that which we sought-the opportunity to be accepted on our abilities, not on the basis of the class or group to which birth has assigned us; freedom of education and opportunity for ourselves and our children; a land and a democracy which would engage our hearts and loyalty as never could those downtrodden acres we were leaving.
We have not come, in the main, from some dark European morass where learning and culture never flowered. It was not ignorance that led us to reject our homes and our friends and the countries of our birth-and out of all lands to which we might have gone, to choose Canada. We, or our fathers, were actuated by those same impulses which, one or two or three centuries earlier, had led the forebears of hon. members, whether they speak English or French, to make this same venturesome, sometimes desperate, move from an old world to a new, to escape from drudgery without hope of security, hunger bom of social injustice, religious faith without the freedom to practise it, democratic idealism ruthlessly suppressed by the despot.
And we did not imagine that we were exchanging this for streets of gold and untold wealth when we asked admission to Canada. We knew only that here was a land where a man could call }iis soul his own, and with hard work could see that his sons and daughters had a better start in life than he, and, with a bit of extra luck, could approach old age in dignity and security. So we made our choice, and gambled our lives and those of our families-and by and large we won. Not without pain were the deep-grown roots of generations wrenched from the familiar soil;
but mercifully soon, we found, new roots were taking hold in new, far more nourishing clay than ever we had known. We settled fairly easily, at least the younger of us did, into the new scene as gradually the old one faded. We became, in our own thinking, Canadians in all but citizenship, and we were eager for the day when that final proof of right and liberty would be added. That day is near at hand.
Canada was giving us a new life-what had we to give Canada? We brought to her our brawn and our skill; new Canadians helped till the unbroken soil and build the factories and dig the ditches. They sought to contribute to the new land the best of the national cultures they brought from the old. Was that enough? No; for there remained loyalty. Those of you who know the new Canadian will know that he has been inclined to attach to his Canadianism, to his loyalty to his adoptive country, that same fanaticism which the proselyte shows toWard his adoptive faith. To him the title of citizen is something to be proudly worn, a recognition of his own love for this new country of his, an earnest of his determination to serve it-to serve it and to die for it if need be. There is no one of us who has returned from this latest war who does not carry with him the remembrance of the young men with non-Anglo-Saxon, non-Gallic names who lie beneath the temporary markers in the shallow, roadside graves of a half-dozen fronts.
That lias been the concrete response of the new Canadian to that inward urge toward an expression of gratitude to his country. That has been the response of most-but I would never suggest it has been the response of all. There have been those whose loyalty has wavered, who have imagined, in their confusion and in their woolly thinking, that there is a higher loyalty than that to Canada; who have not rated their acquired citizenship on so exalted a level as most of us have placed it. Recently we have been shocked to our very roots when we have had to face up to unpleasant realities which upset our comfortable and complacent thoughts and habits. There is no need to be alarmed. There is no point in hysteria, and there is no reason for losing our perspective. We have been tough with our enemies from without. We only need apply the rule of law in order to be tough with our enemies from within. That is what the law is for. But may I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that a degree of blame must be shouldered by ourselves as well as by others.
How dearly does the Canadian born citizen value his birthright? How far have we gone in creating in the mind of the world a knowledge that Canadian citizenship is a distinct
Canadian Citizenship

and valued asset? How far, in brief, Have we gone toward becoming a nation, toward offering to these new Canadians a symbol to which they can attach the loyalty and gratitude which wells up within them? There have been those of us who have been inclined to scoff at the forthright American expressions of . loyalty, at their reverence of the flag, at the idolatry towards their constitution, the salute to Old Glory, and the hand-on-heart recitation of the oath of allegiance. But on the grim testing ground of this latest war did not this schooling in loyalty pay off in the solidarity by which Smith and O'Mallory and McCrea and Cohen and Russo and Schmidt and Svensen mingled as Americans, mind you, without distinction as to grandparents or parents or as to their own native nationality? We Canadians, too, had that same deep democracy overseas, but we have not approached it at home.
We have no flag of our own to salute. We have no citizenship of Canada to proclaim boldly when our nationality is asked. Too often we have heard the assurance given to Americans, "No, you must not mistake us for the British," and the caution delivered to the British, "You must not confuse us with Americans." We have not shouted proudly from the housetops the proclamation that we are Canadians, a nation as distinctive as any that ever came down the pike of history, an up and coming nation, with the unique ability to get along with our neighbours and to pick a fight with none. A proud nation which when its own freedom and that of its friends became imperilled threw into the fight every man and woman it had available and still .had enough left over to become the third greatest producing country in the world.
We have not realized our own greatness. We travel in the strange, conflicting shadow cast by our mother and by our neighbour, and somehow we still refuse to come out into the warm sun of the world's acclaim. Sometimes we actually seem ashamed of being Canadians. So little have we thought indeed of the rights and privileges of our citizenship that we have disfranchised some of those whom we have accepted into our community. You may ask, "Disfranchised them-why?" Because out of the welter of national origins that goes to make the country we dream of there have been some who sprang from countries which currently were our enemies. We did not do it once; we did it twice. Do we treat citizenship so lightly that those who were born to it are apathetic toward it, and that some of those who have acquired it can be stripped of it without inquiry into their loyalties?
[Mr. Crell l
Let me say a further word about loyalties. It is well that we look to the structure of our own nest before we inquire too deeply to see who has fouled it. Loyalty is a coin with two sides. On the obverse is the attachment of the citizen to the state; on the reverse are the service and inspiration- which the state gives to the citizen. I have no use for traitors or for those who accept the protection and benefits of the state and then sell it down the river. I entertain no belief that loyalty can be divided, so much to the state and so much to another organism. To me, as to other members of this house, treachery in all its forms is despicable, and the oath of allegiance is not double talk.
But have we gone sufficiently far in creating or perhaps formalizing that Canadian nation which will have a citizenship and a flag as its symbol? I do not suggest bolting away from the empire-far from it; but I do suggest the creation of an entity in which the Canadian by birth will find pride and the Canadian by choice will find inspiration. I suggest the recognition of a nation newly come of age but already sufficiently mature to accept proudly its high place in the world and to use its newly won prestige in the universal cause of peace. A nation to be proud of, a nation which will hold the loyalty of all whom it accepts within its citizenship.
I suggest also that we call our people Canadians and forget that destructive hyphen, we are so wont to use. Surely after all thesq years we are no longer English or Irish or French or German or Hebrew or Ukrainian Canadians? Surely the people of these national backgrounds need no longer huddle protectively among others of the same descent, keeping alive their immigrant ways and customs only because they have not been accepted into the larger community which apparently is not yet ready to avow itj, Canadianism.
Surely the time has come for us all to eradicate that sense of domestic isolation? Surely the time has dome for us to eradicate the hyphen? Above all, from the date this bill is proclaimed there should be no longer new Canadians or- old Canadians-we all belong. I think the minister should undertake an intense educational programme to deal with languages, history and government so that Canadian citizenship may be appreciated, so that it may be known exactly what it implies; that citizenship means ninety per cent of interests that we have in common comes ahead of the ten per cent of the things that divide us. It should be known that citizenship is not only a challenge, that it is an achieve-

Canadian Citizenship
ment; that not only is it a responsibility, it is a privilege. It should be known that no man can be a citizen of a country without first being a citizen of a community, that no man can be a citizen of the world without first being a citizen of a country. How can we hope to understand the problems of other people and take an intelligent attitude toward them unless we first develop techniques and the willingness to understand one another here in Canada?
It is time we awakened to the greatness of our country and called a holiday on hatreds, both racial and religious, which are attacks on the hopes of a free people, and attach a real and important value to the very fact of Canadian citizenship as created by this bill. Surely the time has come for us to stop our damning of the many for the acts of the infinitesimal few? I say to the house that if we, as other countries, have at times produced Catilines, we have in turn produced many Ciceros.
This Canadian soil is hostile to ersatz Canadians and recognizes no changing styles in loyalty. We must dedicate ourselves anew to creating in this country a Canadian unity which will meet hostile challenges from within without having to abandon basic freedoms in order to meet that challenge. The time has come for us to dispense with the soft, apologetic Canadianism which has been so familiar to. us. The time has come for us to build up a conditioned citizenship that can do a long march, sleep on hard ground, go on short rations and still be ready to go into action with a deep, genuine faith and loyalty.
This twentieth parliament I feel, will not only give life to a Canadian citizen but present him with a flag and set aside a day to celebrate the occasion. I hope he has much -to celebrate.


Mr. ALAN COCICERAM (York South):: Mr. Speaker, I do not intend to take up much time in discussing this bill, but as one born in the British isles I wish to state my reactions to the bill, especially those sections which will affect British subjects in the days to come if this bill passes.
I should like to tell you, Mr. Speaker, and through you, the Secretary of State (Mr. Martin) I came to. this country in 1913 when many immigrants were cording to Canada from the British isles. I was preceded by three of my brothers and other members of my family, and within a few months of coming to Canada I and my brothers and a great many thousands of other young Englishmen who had come Out to Canada found ourselves in the Canadian
army. We were proud to serve in the Canadian army, and if the Secretary of State will take the trouble to look up the figures of the early enlistments in the great war of 1914-18 he will find that the great majority of those who served in the first and second Canadian divisions were men born in the British isles who had immigrated to this country shortly before the war. When I listen to members of this house belittle men such as myself who have come out to this country and have paid the price for being a citizen of Canada I wonder what the score is.
One must remember that when we left this country in 1914 and early in 1915 we were all Canadian soldiers. We wore the Canada badge on our shoulders as did the soldiers of the past war, and I consider that those men together with men of all races and creeds who served by their side in the famous battles of the war of 1914-18 helped to make Canada the great country that it is to-day.
The hon. member for Eglinton (Mr. Fleming) has dealt with those sections of the bill which will be applicable to British subjects who come to Canada from other parts of the empire. I think it is a shocking thing that the Secretary of State should put British subjects from other parts of the empire who come to Canada to the trouble and humiliation to which they will be subject under this bill. The Secretary of State proposes that British-born subjects coming to Canada from other parts of the empire shall go through the naturalization courts, and not only that, but they shall be compelled to take an oath of allegiance to His Majesty the King. May I point out to the Secretary of State that a British-born subject owes his allegiance to His Majesty the King and it is an indignity to compel him to reaffirm his allegiance to the king as this bill provides. I object to that very much. I have no objection to the Secretary of State compelling subjects 'of the British empire to take an oath as a citizen of Canada, but they are already subjects of His Majesty the King and I see no reason to make them reaffirm their allegiance. I would ask the Secretary of State if this matter was dig-cussed with other parts of the British empire?


Paul Joseph James Martin: Yes.


Alan Cockeram: Because it seems to me that the Secretary of State is making fundamental changes in the*status of British subjects the world over. British subjects coming to Canada will have definite restrictions placed upon them by this bill, whereas Canadian subjects going to other parts of the British empire will have privileges which those coming to this country will not have. For instance, a Cana-
6%
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dian subject can go to England and after a year's residence there he is to all intents and purposes looked upon as a citizen of the British isles. The same thing is true of other parts of the British empire. I would ask the minister what he intends to do to clear up this situation. Is he going to leave it in the position that British subjects coming to Canada are treated in one way, whereas Canadian citizens going to other parts of the empire will get preferential treatment over British subjects coming to Canada?


Paul Joseph James Martin: Does my hon. friend want me to answer the question now?


Alan Cockeram: I would prefer to continue at the moment.


An hon. MEMBER:: Putting up a straw man.


Alan Cockeram: I have no objection to having the minister answer now.


Paul Joseph James Martin: This bill in its present form has not only commended itself greatly but so great an impression has it made upon those charged with this matter in the United Kingdom that they propose to use it as a model for future legislation in that country.


Alan Cockeram: Then may I suggest that if it is to be used as a model we should make it a model one hundred per cent perfect.
It is evident, Mr. Speaker, that certain sections of this bill are the thin end of the wedge in loosening the ties of empire of which most of us are so proud. In that regard the hon. member for Outremont (Mr. Rinfret), speaking on Friday last, made the following statement as reported on page 591 of Hansard:
In any event I. do not wish my vote to be interpreted as a reaffirmation of the principles enunciated in article 26, because I believe that this theory is antiquated, and if, I might say so, I am myself progressively conservative.
He was referring to the section which says that a "Canadian citizen is a British subject". I wonder if that little warning thrown out by the hon. member for Outremont does not mean that at some time in the future the Secretary of State and his following will see that that section is eradicated for all time.


Paul Joseph James Martin: It was the present Secretary of State who put it in. T think my hon. friend wishes to be fair.


Alan Cockeram: But there is an opening to take it out. Further on in his speech the hon. member for Outremont said at page 595 of Hansard:

The descendants of these Canadians of 1760 -they total some 3,500,000 to-day-are scattered all over Canada. They have remained truly Canadians and, to this day, they still are and feel Canadians. They could have returned to France had they so desired, but they preferred staying here, because they had no other country, no other home than that of America. These Canadians in 1946 figure that they, or at least their ancestors, have made a positive act of Canadianism, and they fail to see how and when the British subjects of English descent residing in Canada have done the same.
What a ridiculous statement that those of British descent residing in Canada have made no positive act of Canadianism! I would point out to the hon. member that no group in this country have been greater Canadians than those who, in the three wars which have taken place since the turn of the century, have been willing to leave this country to fight its battles and to give their blood, and if necessary their lives, for the cause of Canada. It is a well known fact that these forces have been comprised in the main of Canadians other than French-Canadians. When we are talking about being Canadians, wre should compare those who are willing to fight the battles of their country with those who have displayed reluctance to do so.
I wish to speak for a few moments about the naturalization courts. The minister, as a lawyer in the city of Windsor, has had some experience of these courts. I ask him, if he were a British subject coming from some other part of the empire, would he like to stand in line and await his turn, possibly for months on end, when he knows that the whole time he is a British subject and that becoming a Canadian is a matter of formality only.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Is that the way it is to
be done?


Alan Cockeram: I do not know. I
think so. I am going to make a suggestion. If the purpose of this bill is nationalization and not naturalization of people who are already British subjects, and the minister intends to force this section through, I suggest to him that he make it possible in the bill now before this house for British subjects, after one year's residence in Canada, to apply to the clerk of the naturalization court and thereby take the oath of allegiance to Canada, an allegiance already possessed with the exception of the formality of declaration. This will, I believe, clarify the point that a citizen can be a Canadian and a British subject at one and the same time.
I believe that this can be made a great bill. The strength of Canada is in the unity of its people, and I believe that we should

Canadian Citizenship
be frank with one another, that we should get together and have an act which can be accepted by a majority of the people.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: Mr. Speaker, during the course of
this debate the hon. member for Broadview (Mr. Church) posed the question, who is asking for this bill? That question ran like a refrain through all his speech. He said that he had tried to find out in Toronto who was asking for the bill and had been unsuccessful. He stated that it was a belief of his that the bill had been asked for by only a few people, almost all from one province. Had the hon. gentleman gone beyond the confines of Toronto and of Ontario he would have found that the great majority of the people in this country want this bill. The error contained in that belief of his is matched only by the additional error when he said that most of the people who came from Europe are opposed to thhs bill. Again I say, had lie known Canada he w'ould have known how wrong that statement was.
The hon. member for Broadview proved too little, but I think the hon. member for Outremont (Mr. Rinfret) tried to prove too much. That gentleman has drawn a certain amount of fire to-day from hon. members on my right. I do not join with them. I certainly do not agree that he scolded the house. He spoke objectively and fairly and he presented to us his ideas. With some of them I disagree. He said that there are many more whose tongue is French who can speak English than there are those whose principal tongue is English and who also speak French. The ratio, he pointed out, is about ten to one. Perhaps there is a reason for that, and that reason certainly does not include any slur upon one of the official languages of Canada. But in the western stretches of this country there are many of us who have little opportunity of learning French, practically none to talk with in French, little chance to read or 'write in French, and the people will not, unfortunately, go to the trouble of learning a language if they find no opportunity at all of using it. Furthermore, may I say this; as far as we in the C.C.F. are concerned I think the majority of us, if not all of us, when we were asked that question in the census, "Can you read, write or speak French?", answered in the negative. Perhaps we were unduly modest. Certainly most of the members of this party in the house, while we may not understand and appreciate every word which is spoken in speeches in French, do grasp the gist of the argument; certainly most of us can read French papers
with some comprehension. Perhaps we have not the temerity of the hon. member for Eglinton (Mr. Fleming), and I congratulate him on it, in rising in his place in this house and giving a speech in French, but I think before this session is over some of us may have done the same.
The hon. member for Outremont went on to emphasize the efforts made by the Frenchspeaking population to understand its Englishspeaking compatriots and the lack of cooperation given in the other direction. I am sorry he said that. Had he been acquainted with western Canada he would have realized that there we have a great realization of the problems and aspirations of the people of Quebec. I think we have a greater knowledge of them than perhaps the people of Quebec have of our hopes and fears on the prairies. I express this hope too: I should like to see members of parliament from the eastern parts of Canada travel through to western Canada, and they will find there a Canadianism second to none in this country. Because we come from the west does not mean that we do not have devotion or loyalty or a desire to serve our country; and the impression which was given in the speech of the hon. member for Outremont was precisely that.
Then he went on to say, is not a complete attachment to the soil true Canadianism? I do not think so. I think it is part of Canadianism, certainly, but we cannot divorce Canada and Canadianism from its people. To me true Canadianism must have a profound regard for the conditions under which Canadians live. True- Canadianism cannot exist where there is malnutrition. It is not seen in sickly children. It can no more live in slums than can democracy. True Canadianism is not realized where many of our people are poverty stricken and where the vast majority have no economic security. True Canadianism will find its highest expression when we have eradicated these evils from our country. Then, indeed, we shall not need to talk of lack of patriotism, for never does patriotism burn brighter than in a country whose principal concern is the alleviation of human suffering, the constant improvement in the conditions of the people and the maintenance of equal civil and political rights for all.
It has been argued during this debate that we are a nation; that we are not a nation. I myself think that as yet we are not a natiqn. It is true that we have the right to appoint our own diplomatic representatives abroad. It is true that as Canada we can sign treaties, as Canada we can join inter-
Canadian Citizenship

national organizations such as UNO, as Canada we can declare war or maintain neutrality as we see fit. But we are not a nation so long as we are dependent upon an external power for the right to amend our own constitution; we are not a nation so long as we are dependent upon external courts to have the last say as to what our civil law shall be. I hope to see this government rectify these omissions before the twentieth parliament of Canada is finished. I hope to see, too, a Canadian flag, but I do not want to see a Canadian flag which is reminiscent of those things which have divided us in the past; I want to see a uniquely Canadian flag.
There are certain things in this bill which I approve. Naturally, as a member of the C.C.P. I approve the principle of it. As a Canadian I approve the principle. I am especially glad to see that the minister is going to take power at last to instruct our immigrants in the matter of democratic responsibilities and privileges. I only wish that he would go farther and take the power to instruct Canadians in thes^ same privileges and responsibilities; for he has the tools at his hand. Within his department there is a citizenship branch; it is small just now but one which, I hope, will grow. Within the government, belonging to the people qf Canada, we have the national film board. I should like to see the citizenship branch cooperate with the national film board and use it through audio-visual education, with leaflets and pamphlets and speakers going all through the country telling Canadians just what Can-adianism really is. We have the means; we have the trade unions; we have the farmers' organizations, the cooperatives, the cultural societies in this country, and our people are waiting for that sort of message.
While I approve that I cannot approve another section which makes explicit, discrimination in citizenship. Already the government has decided that there are to be two classes of citizens, those who apparently are genuine citizens and those who, at the same time, for reasons which are not always good, can lose their citizenship. I object to that. I feel that I am as good a Canadian as the Secretary of State (Mr. Martin). I may differ from him politically; I undoubtedly do-


Paul Joseph James Martin: Perhaps you are a better citizen than I am,


Alistair McLeod Stewart: application form of Wartime Housing Limited for soldiers who fought overseas to give us a chance to live. Any soldier who has fought for Canada and who wants one of these wartime houses has to state what his nationality is and what his religion is. How does the government justify that sort of action with its protestations of the past?


Paul Joseph James Martin: Would the hon, gentleman send that form to me? I should like to see it.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: I certainly will; I shall send it now.
These men battled for Canada not on the basis of racial origin or their religion,. They fought as Canadians and it is as Canadians that we should recognize them. That is one pL-the things they fought for.
V When we brought this matter up before the city council in Winnipeg the Winnipeg Tribune in an editorial on July 19, 1945, said this:
How can we reasonably expect wholehearted assimilation into the national life of Canada on the part of peoples of many origins if the official attitude continues "to be one which gives the appearance of being bent on segregation? Canada needs Canadians, not hyphens. Insistence on hyphenation seems to be firmly entrenched in the official mind.
Yet here again we find this newspaper, which took umbrage at these words, including in its own applications [DOT] for employment the same request: "What is your nationality? What is your religious denomination?" If these newspapers are sincere, then I suggest that they strike these words from the application forms. They are used either for discriminatory purposes or they are of no use to them at all. But discrimination goes farther and strikes much deeper than these examples I have given of business practices. I have drawn to the attention of the house before the plight of certain, minorities in this country. I have spoken of the Jewish people, and none has been more cruelly persecuted by the Christian world in the last two thousand years. They are still suffering all over the world. It still appears to me that anti-Semitism is on the increase. Anti-Semitism, racialism of any type is one of the most deadly enemies of .any democratic community. It not only hurts those against whom it is directed but warps and twists the minds of those who .practise it; yet we find it again in the government service, in the department of immigration; we find it in the allegedly cultured places in this country, in universities such as McGill and Toronto. I am glad to say that racial discrimination has ceased in the university of Manitoba, but we must never rest until we have wiped it out from these other universities and given'to the
Jewish people the same rights and the same privileges that every other Canadian citizen has.
Then we have another minority group, those who are of German origin. On September 19, 1939, the Prime Minister said in this house:
I ask, above all, for a broad toleration. I was glad to hear my hon. friend (Mr. Manion) make that plea, not only on behalf of citizens here in our own country who belon" to the two great races, but as well on behalf of those of German descent, who also are citizens of our country.
Yet during the war this government, at the head of which is the man, who made that statement, discriminated wretchedly against those of German origin. Those who came to this country from Germany after 1922 were compelled to report to the mounted police, some every month. Like criminals they were compelled to have their finger-prints taken by the mounted police. I know one man, a German by birth, a Canadian by adoption, who had two boys. One of them received a medal for gallantry overseas as an officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force. His second boy died fighting for Canada; yet every month that man had to report to the mounted police. How does the government justify that conduct in view of its expressions of virtue? I know of other cases. I can think of one young lad who fought for three years for Canada, whose people have been in this country for four generations, but because his name was German he was denied the right to work. Yet last session this house accepted the united nations charter, and to what did we pledge ourselves? We said:
We are determined to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and the equal rights of men and women.
How does the house intend to put those words into operation? That is one thing we should be considering seriously now. Then we have those of Ukrainian and Polish descent who were brought to Canada by the thousands by the railroads and unceremoniously dumped on the most barren and rocky ground in the west. The hon. member for Outremont (Mr. Rinfret) said the majority of the people of Quebec feel that they are the true settlers of this country. I would suggest to him that he go to western Canada, where he will find people who also believe they are the true settlers of this country. We do not say we are better than other Canadians; we merely say that we are as good. These people have made a garden out of what was practically a desert As a memorial to their labour and toil
Canadian Citizenship


Mr. G. R. PEARKES (Nanaimo):: Mr. Speaker, the majority of those who have spoken in this debate have been men born in this country. Forty years ago, in the spring of 1906, I left England to take up residence in Canada. Had the phrase been coined at that time I should have then been called a non-Canadian British subject. It is a phrase used in this measure. Perhaps it is a somewhat cumbersome one, and the minister might wish to follow a procedure frequently followed in the army, and refer to that group of people as N.C.B.S.
When I left the old country I was the product of the ordinary English public school. By present standards I do not suppose my education was considered high. I was well grounded in history. I had a keen interest in games; perhaps to my love of sports can be attributed the root of a desire I have to compromise. Sometimes I think that in your
Canadian Citizenship

position, Mr. Speaker, you must regard sportsmen as those of a high order because, after all, you are a sort of glorified referee whose responsibility is to interpret to the house the rules of parliamentary fair play.	*
I believe that my religious education was a sort of sentimental attachment to the school chapel. I arrived here in Canada, and went at once to the western province of Alberta. There I arrived in a strange world. In that country were groups of people of many nationalities. I remember well in my neighbourhood a group of Icelandic people, and other groups of Welsh, American, English, Swedish, Norwegian, and down-east Canadians.
I lived in Alberta for some considerable time before I realized that there was anything else but a down-east Canadian. It was not mentioned in disrespect, but those Canadians in Alberta forty years ago were regarded as immigrants, in exactly the same w7ay as I was regarded as an immigrant. They were settlers. It was a strange world into which I was inducted-and inducted not as a Canadian but as a westerner.
I wanted to be one of the gang, and therefore went out and bought myself a pair of chaps and a wide-brimmed hat. I became a westerner, and remained such until I went overseas during the first great war. It was on the slopes of Vimy ridge I first became a Canadian. I do not say I should not like to have become a Canadian before that date, Hut it had scarcely occurred to me that there was such an organization.
As I say, I -wore the garb of the people of western Canada, and because of that, with the additional fact that I wore a Stetson hat, I was considered one of them. Had there been a more dignified method of welcoming me into the family of Canada I should have been delighted to follow it, by going before either a mounted police officer, a justice of the peace, or even a bishop. I should have welcomed whatever method might have been laid down.
But until now, so far as I know, no such methods have been laid down. As I have said, it was on the slopes of Vimy ridge, where I had the great honour of serving with a regiment recruited from the province of Quebec, that I first became a Canadian. I have been out west most of the time since the close of that war. No longer does one hear in western Canada the expression, "A down-east Canadian." One hears the expression, "Canadian." World war II has cemented that spirit of unity which, as far as I was concerned, was first sown when we fought on the slopes of Vimy ridge.
I believe that throughout this dominion there is a wide desire for Canadian citizenship to be defined and clarified. To me Canadian citizenship is not incompatible with being a British subject. After all, Canada is a nation in the British commonwealth, of nations and as such I can be a Canadian citizen and still feel that I am a member of the British commonwealth of nations.
As I understand the present bill, a nonCanadian British subject may reside in Canada and remain a British subject if he so desires, or he may express a desire to become a Canadian citizen and by carrying out certain formalities laid down in the bill he can become a Canadian citizen. Provision is made also for the Canadian citizen who is travelling among other nations of the British commonwealth of nations still to retain his British citizenship. Therefore, if a nonCanadian British subject comes here and desires to become a Canadian citizen, to my mind he undergoes an act of renationalization rather than naturalization. I think there is a difference. He still remains a British subject; he gives up his nationality of Englishman, Scotsman or Australian and becomes a Canadian by nationality. That would have met with my early desires as a boy, which I expressed a few minutes ago, to be permitted to become one of the gang.
The average non-Canadian British subject coming here who is born in one of the other nations of the British commonwealth has been steeped in the history of the commonwealth. He is familiar with the system of government and the customs of our institutions, customs and institutions which in the main are uniform in 'every nation of the British commonwealth of nations. He will have learned about magna charta, he will know of habeas corpus and the bill of rights, and he will know something of the statute of Westminster. He is of the breed and, being of the breed, he knows the breed; he is prepared to take the worth of the breed for granted. Those things which are closest to the hearts of many are seldom found readily in their mouths.
I referred to the willingness to. compromise. There is much in this bill that I can accept, but there is one point which I do find it difficult to take readily. I refer to the necessity of a non-Canadian British subject having to serve the same period of apprenticeship when he comes to Canada that must be served by a man who has not been brought up in the traditions, who is not familiar with the customs and the system of government of the British commonwealth..
[Mr. Pearkes.)

Canadian Citizenship


Paul Joseph James Martin: As the hon. gentleman
knows, that is not a new provision; that is twenty-seven years old.


Howard Charles Green: Oh, no.


George Randolph Pearkes: I am referring to the provision that a non-Canadian British subject must remain in Canada for five years. That is the point I am complaining about.


Paul Joseph James Martin: The point I am making is that that is not a new provision. That has been in existence since 1919 in this country and in all dominions.


Howard Charles Green: For one purpose only, the Immigration Act.


George Randolph Pearkes: Whether it is new or not, I still take exception to that clause. I regard this period of apprenticeship as a university course. A young man entering university may have to take the full course, but if he has certain academic qualifications which he has obtained elsewhere the period of the course may be reduced. He has to take the same examination and he has to go through the same procedure of receiving his diploma. I would look upon a non-Canadian British subject as a student entering this university of Canada who, because of the education he has received elsewhere in Canadian principles, will have his time of study in Canada reduced.
Perhaps there has been a certain amount of heat interjected into this debate and it might be well that' there had not been so much. I feel that no group in this house or in this country has a monopoly on loyalty to Canada. I love Canada as intensely as any native-born Canadian. I may not express this in exactly the same way, I may not give vocal ' expression to my thoughts perhaps as readily as some others, but I still love this country.
I rode the range and I have drunk deep of the, beauties of the prairies, of the sunsets, of the foliage of the fields. I have climbed the Rockies and I have been impressed with the grandeur of thbse mountains. I have wandered over the foothills and I have dreamed my proud daydreams. The proud daydreams I have dreamed have been, "What may I do to further the interests of this my country?" Therefore I do ask the minister to reconsider this five-year qualification clause.
I wish to speak of one other matter, the twenty-year provision in connection with those who have come to our country and who during that period have been unable to learn one or other of our languages. If they cannot speak English or French and have lived here for twenty years and are able to meet other requirements, such as knowledge of our customs and so forth, they are to be granted the
right of citizenship. I consider that provision just in so far as elderly people who are here now are concerned. We know that with the system of colonization used in western Canada groups of immigrants have been tempted to live together in certain colonies where they have not had the same opportunities of free intercourse as the people coming to this country now do have. Therefore I would say: Allow men or women who are over fifty years of age and who have lived here for twenty years, whether they have been able to learn English or French or not, to have the privileges of citizenship provided that they meet the other requirements.
But I am not sure that I can go so far as to say that the young man or the young woman who has lived here for twenty years and who in the last twenty years has not taken advantage of the opportunities which now exist for all people to learn our languages should be granted citizenship until he or she has learned one of those languages. I suggest that an age-limit might be considered at which they might be permitted to become citizens of Canada by taking advantage of that clause.
As for the future I would make it quite definite and clear that anybody coming into this country who wants to become a citizen will be expected to learn one or other or both of our languages and I would not allow that twenty-year clause to apply in the future.
Reference has been made by the member for Winnipeg North (Mr. Stewart) to Japanese residents of this country. I represent a constituency in which the Japanese lived in their thousands before the outbreak of this war. When war came with Japan those residents were removed as a protective measure because. there was a danger, of espionage or of hostile action being taken.- The people of my constituency have realized the difference that there is now that the Japanese have gone, and whether the Japanese are made citizens of Canada or not the people of Vancouver island and the people of the gulf islands do not want to see the Japanese moved back into those areas. I have had letters from all kinds of organizations, I have had letters from individuals, from farmers, from fishermen, from employers of labour, from churches and organizations all containing this plea: Do not let the Japanese come back to this territory after the war. They believe thkt the present government has given an undertaking that the Japanese will not come back. They do not want them to come back. They do not want the Japanese to live there for various reasons, the main reason being that they
Canadian Citizenship

are not assimilable. They have been engaged, I know, in all kinds of pusuits, particularly in fishing, and it has been suggested that if the Japanese do not come back we shall not be able to maintain the fishing industry. But that has been proved to be incorrect because the white man has taken over the fishing industry, and moreover it has provided an opportunity for employment for our own nati~e-born Canadian Indians, to step in and show their craft. They have been able to take over the industry of commercial fishing which the Japanese were exploiting before the war.
The people of Vancouver island do not want to see the Japanese come back. They expect the government to live up to the promises that that government made.
There are many high-principled people on Vancouver island and in other parts of British Columbia who wonder what shall be done with the Japanese. It goes somewhat against their grain to think that those Japanese, if they are Canadian citizens, must live in one part of Canada and not in another part or, if they are Canadian citizens, that they must be deported and sent back to Japan. But I do not believe that there is one-tenth of one per cent of the population of Vancouver island who want to see the Japanese come back. When the Japanese left they left in an arrogant manner. I should like to read an extract from a letter I received only to-day describing the manner in which the young Japanese males left just after Pearl Harbor:
They were in uproarious spirits, taking possession of the lounges-[DOT]
That' was in the Canadian Pacific boats.
-flirting heavily with some girls who were with them, gambling until stopped by the ship s officers, and behaving generally in a most unseemly manner. They embarked at every island port. The Japs here were Japs first and Japs to the last.
I do not know what the government's plans are to deal with this situation. I sometimes feel almost more sorry for the government than for the Japanese. It will not be an easy decision for the government to make. As a British Columbian I should feel quite happy if the Japanese were never coming back to the coast of British Columbia. As a Canadian-and I have been talking about Canadian citizenship-I cannot recommend to any group of Canadians that they should accept large numbers of these Japanese. As a British Columbian I must ask what steps are being taken by the government to prevent the Japanese from coming back to my country if they are moved to other places.

As I have already said, I would find it very hard as a Canadian to accept the principle that Canadian citizens must live somewhere and not be allowed to live elsewhere. It is a difficult and perplexing problem.
I could give advice to the Japanese clearly and definitely. To them I would say: Accept every opportunity to go back as quickly as you can to Japan whether you were bom there or not. Go back because in the long run you and your children will be happier back in Japan than you will be here in Canada distributed across this country or living in British Columbia, as the case may be. You will have to live in small minorities where there will be no chance of you or your children or your grandchildren assimilating with the rest of the population. What is going to happen? Small groups intermarrying, and the children and the children's children will deteriorate.
I think from the high Christian point of view now is the opportunity to repatriate the Japanese back to their homeland where perhaps they would be able to introduce to Japan, which has suffered so much, some of the western and Christian ideas that they have learned and in this way raise the standard of the other Japanese. They can do a great missionary work there. If they have not assimilated the ideals of western civilization while they have been here, they never will, and we should send them back.
So that, while I find it difficult to help the government out of its present predicament I must hold the government to its promises, and I feel like offering the suggestion to every Japanese that they should go back 'to' their land and that if they will do that the government will take care of their rehabilitation back in Japan or in some other island.
At six o'clock the house took recess.
After Recess


Mr. W. A. TUCKER (Rosthem):: Mr. Speaker, may I first express commendation of the Secretary of State (Mr. Martin) for the bill which he introduced into the house and which is now before us to establish the status of Canadian citizen. The bill, I think all hon. members will agree, gives every indication of being the result of very careful work, and I am sure the commendation the minister has received from1 all parts of the: house indicates that it is a splendid piece of work. I am sure he must have been pleased to see it reported1 in

Canadian Citizenship
the press to-day that the government of Australia is so much impressed with the principle of this bill that it is inclined to consider introducing a similar measure in the commonwealth of Australia. So again I say that the Secretary of State deserves great commendation for the splendid 'bill he has laid before us.
In the debate which has taken place so far there was some suggestion on the part of some hon. members that the United States had dealt with their problems of establishing citizenship and fostering devotion to their country in a manner which Canada might well emulate. As I listened to various speakers giving expression to that view I thought to myself, can these be representatives of a people who decided at the very outset of the second great war that it was a war in which they should immediately take part in order to protect their freedom and the freedom of the world, and who did1 it unhesitatingly and with the support of all parts of the country? I happened to be in this house 'when that decision was taken, and as I recall, only two members showed the slightest inclination not to agree with that decision. In that war we, the Canadian people, took into our armed forces over 1,100,000 persons, the vast majority of whom enlisted on a voluntary basis. I venture to say there is no other country in the world, the United States included, which could put into its armed forces almost one-tenth of its people on a voluntary basis. I ask myself, can this be a parliament of the Canadian people in which its representatives find fault with the Canadian people and point to the country to the south of us as more deserving of our admiration? Much as I admire that country to the south, the fact remains that they were just as much in danger as we were on that fateful third of September, 1939, but it took over a year for their people to come to a united decision that they should take part in that war. Had it not been for the decision which was taken by the Canadian people just " before our declaration of war on September 10, 1939, and remembering that France collapsed in June, 1940, and Britain stood alone except for the other members of the commonwealth and her empire; had Canada not been at her side, with the help she was able to give in giving an uplift to her morale, with the men she sent into the air force, the troops she had in the British isles to help defend the shores of Britain, I fear we would have lost the war.
I shall not refer to-night to our achievements after entering the war. In view of these exploits of a people which has played such a crucial part at a time of crisis, a people numbering around twelve million who by their free 63260-45
will act saved, perhaps, the very liberties of mankind, it ill behooves any hon. member to compare our achievement unfavourably with that of the people of any other country, even the great republic to the south.
There has been some suggestion that Americans have so solved their problems that the people of the United States are more proud of being members of that great country than Canadians are of being Canadians. People who talk like that must have associated with different kinds of Canadians from those with whom I have associated. I happen to have served for a time in the army in the first great war, and again in the second great war. I saw something of the reactions of my fellow Canadians toward their country; also I saw and heard in my travels something of the reactions of peoples of other countries toward their respective countries; and I came to the conclusion that much of the feeling that we were somehow inferior in the way we dealt with our great problems was not justified by the facts of the situation. I am satisfied that deep down within the soul of every Canadian there is just as much love of country as there is on the part of any American. The Canadian may not be quite so open in his expression of that feeling; but from what I have seen and from what the men of Canada have achieved on the field of battle, in the air and on the sea, will anyone in this house say that the Canadian has not shown just as much devotion to his country as has any man who belongs to any other nation? After all, "by their fruits ye shall know them"; and I submit it ill behooves any member of this parliament, right at the end of a war in which our people have given such proofs of their bravery and their devotion to their country, their ability to organize themselves and strike blow after blow for freedom, to cast aspersions upon the loyalty of the Canadian people to their own country.
I have heard it said that there is a work of reconciliation to be done. A work of reconciliation has been done by the great leaders of the Canadian people ever since confederation. It seems to me there is some disposition in this house to assume that the two great races, which voluntarily went together to create this great country and have lived together in great friendship in spite of the strains which have at times developed since confederation, suddenly need to be reconciled to each other. If they had not been ready to give and take, confederation would never have been brought about. If they had not been ready to live and work with one another

Canadian Citizenship

Something has been. said about the provision that a person may become a Canadian citizen if he has satisfied the other requirements which are set out in section 10 of the bill, such as being of good character, lawfully admitted to Canada for permanent residence therein, has an adequate knowledge of the responsibilities and privileges of Canadian citizenship, with adequate knowledge of the English or French language not an absolute requisite. I hope that the house will not in any way require that provision to be curtailed.
From time to time since I have been privileged to be a member of this house I have drawn to its attention a situation which con-

Canadian Citizenship
fronts many of our western pioneers who came and settled in western Canada, thirty, forty and fifty years ago, and who for one reason or another, some of them because they happened to come from a country which was under the domination of Austria-Hungary, which at the time in question was an enemy country, could not become British citizens when they were getting their homesteads. Therefore they were given a certificate in what is called "form K", which many of them thought did make them British subjects. Later on in life, when some of them wished to apply for old age pension, after going out, breaking up the land, clearing it of bush and stone and hewing out homes for themselves on the western plains and in the wooded areas, they found that they were not British subjects. Then they would come in and apply to be qualified as British subjects, and certain questions were asked of them. One question was: "Do you intend to apply for old age pension?" If one of these men who helped to pioneer this country admitted that he would like to get what the people of this country have provided for people in their old age, in many cases the judge would decline the citizenship even if the man could speak English or French. I hope the minister will see to it that that sort of thing does not continue in the future. Surely no judge should be permitted to deny to a man who has pioneered in this country, who has lived in it for twenty years and who is otherwise qualified to be a British subject, that which this parliament intended every worthy citizen of this country to have, by refusing for no legal reason to grant that man British citizenship. From time to time I have brought cases like that forward, and to-night I wish to thank the minister most sincerely for making it possible for some of my constituents who helped build western Canada and who sent their boys to fight and in some cases to die for Canada, now to become British subjects even though they cannot speak English as well as some hon. members.
A suggestion has been made that there would be no harm in permitting that section to apply to those already settled in Canada, but that it should not apply to future settlers. To-day people who are among the most freedom-loving in the world are looking for homes in Canada, or at any rate somewhere other than Europe. Because they let it be known that they favoured freedom in their own country, many are afraid to return to their homelands, and they wish to come to Canada. I think, for example, of some of the Ukrainian people, some of the Polish people, who when Poland was overrun went into the Polish army in exile or are now refugees in 63260-45i
Germany. I get letters from them and from their relatives saying they do not wish to be returned to the Soviet Union but would like to be permitted to enter Canada. Could we wish to have better citizens. than men who were so devoted to freedom and liberty that they were prepared to remain in exile for five years, fighting against tyranny, and who are now ready to throw in their lot with .the building up of a great peace-time Canada as they were ready to risk their lives in order to establish freedom during the war? I hope the time will soon come when we may be able to admit to our country some of those worthy citizens who can make a great contribution to the building up of this country, even as their relatives have made a great contribution here in Canada in the past fifty years. I well remember when many of these people from central Europe were brought out and settled on our prairies. There were those who said they would never become good citizens. They feared what would be the result; but now that the country has seen what good citizens these people are and how ready they have been to support Canada in peace and defend her in war, those misgivings with regard to allowing some of them into this country should no longer p'revail. Some of these worthy people may be fifty years old or more when they come in the future. If they come here and make good citizens, as their relatives did fifty years ago, then they in turn should be able to look forward to becoming Briitsh subjects and Canadian citizens, even if they have difficulty in mastering the English or the French language. Therefore I urge the minister and the house not to take that section out of this act.
It has been suggested that if a man is a Canadian citizen it should not be provided in the bill that he is also a British subject. On that point I submit that whether or not it is put in the bill, if a" man is given the status of a Canadian citizen and takes the oath of [DOT] allegiance to the king of the British empire and commonwealth set out in the schedule, by that very fact he has a status as a subject of His Majesty, a status common to the citizen of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and certainly Northern Ireland. He has a common status with the people of all those countries. Whether or not it is put in the bill I think the courts would rule that he was a subject of the king. Consequently I believe that section is just a recognition of the legal position. But through you, Mr. Speaker, I wish to say to hon. members that while I want to be a Canadian citizen I am also happy to belong to the British family.
Canadian Citizenship

I happened to attend the monetary conference at Bretton Woods, where there were distinguished representatives from India, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and from other parts of the British empire and commonwealth. While each of these groups recognized that they were as free to speak their minds as any other groups (the most spirited attack upon British policy came from the Indian delegation), there was a common feeling that we belonged to one family. I thought to myself what a splendid thing the British commonwealth and empire was, that within it you could have people of all religions and all races, from all parts of the globe, with the feeling that they belonged to one family, people who would work together as brothers in one family. As far as I am concerned I think of such men as Field Marshal Smuts, General Botha, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Right Hon. Ernest Lapointe and others who were happy to belong to the family of British subjects, realizing that within that family they were just as free as the people of any other nation on the face of the globe, while at the same time they were part of a family that would help to promote the peace of the world, and I am happy and proud to join the company of such men as those I have mentioned, and other outstanding leaders of various commonwealth countries.
I think the tendency of the world at the present time must not be toward an ever-narrowing devotion to one nation. There must be loyalty to your own nation, yes; but there must be an ever-widening loyalty. If one looks to the past, first there was loyalty to the tribe, and the tribes fought each other. Then there was loyalty to larger and larger groups. So that to-day, as I see it, while being loyal to Canada, it seems to me we should do what we can to strengthen the good will and accord which prevail in the family of British nations.
But there is another aspect of the question which points to a part which Canada can play. We have brought into our midst the oppressed of other lands. One-fifth of our people have come to us from countries whose people are of other than British or French origin. As those people from other lands have lived in our midst we have come to realize that there is very little difference between one human being and another. We have overcore some of the racial prejudices we may have had before we came to know the people of other racial origins. While in the past Canada has served as a sort of connecting link between the United Kingdom and the

United States, and to a certain extent by virtue of the fact that one of the great races which people this country is the French race we had a special appeal to the great French people, so now that we have taken into our midst the peoples of almost all countries in Europe, at least we in western Canada feel that if we can get along with them in perfect harmony and accord, we through them have learned that men are brothers and can live as brothers. Perhaps Canada, through that very fact can learn to play a part in the councils of the world in bringing all the nations of the world into greater harmony and accord.
Surely the nation of Canada playing a part in drawing together the various members of the British family, and the various members which make up the human family, to a point where war shall be no more and fraternity and brotherhood shall prevail-surely this is a greater vision than one which says, I will centre all my life and all my consideration in my own country, and have no care whatsoever in the working together of the different members of the human race.
Members find no difficulty' in being loyal at the same time to their families, to their cities, to their provinces and to their country. Many people find no inconsistency at the same time in feeling a loyalty to Canada and to the British family of nations. Others to-day are ready to go farther and say that we must set up a world government where we shall have loyalty to the human family, where we shall recognize the fatherhood of God and the essential brotherhood of man.
There has been some suggestion that in some way British subjects should not have to comply in the same way as others with the requirements in regard to obtaining Canadian citizenship, the idea being that when they wish to become Canadian citizens they should not have, among other things, to take the oath of allegiance. I will admit that at first I thought that when a British subject came to this country we should give to him some extra consideration over a person who is not a British subject, when both applied to be Canadian citizens. But the more I thought about the question the more I realized that the disadvantages far outweighed the advantages.
Speaker after speaker has mentioned that if we are to have real unity we must treat every Canadian on exactly the same basis, no matter where his ancestors came from. If we are to say to an Englishman, a Scotsman or an Irishman who comes to Canada, we will treat you as a preferred person; we are not

Canadian Citizenship
going to require you to go through the same steps as the Americans, the Russians, or any other-


An hon. MEMBER:: Why should he?


Walter Adam Tucker: The reason why we should treat them the same is that if we treat one better than another he will carry that in his mind, and the other man will carry it in his mind after he becomes a Canadian citizen.
Mr. COCIvERAM: Absolute nonsense.


Walter Adam Tucker: My hon. friend says it is absolute nonsense. I would recall to his mind the words of various members on his own side of the house who have said over and over again that if we are to have wholehearted unity in 'Canada, we must treat all applicants for citizenship the same. If you say to a Scotsman, we will say-


Mr. KNOWLES:: Careful, now.


An hon. MEMBER:: Why a Scotsman?


Walter Adam Tucker: If we were to say to a Scotsman that it was less needful that, to become a Canadian citizen, he go through the same steps as would be required from a man coming from the United States, the Scotsman would be inclined to say, well, it must be that I am a better Canadian to start with; I must have been better when I landed in this country than the other man was.


Mr. JACKMAN:: One of them is a British subject.


Walter Adam Tucker: Yes, the Scotsman is a British subject: no one takes that status away from him; and if he does not wish to become a Canadian citizen, he does not have to.
If we want to have everybody coming to this country and applying for Canadian citizenship feel that they are all on the same basis, then the only way to do it is to say to the Frenchman, the Englishman, the Scotsman, or the American, you must all take the same steps, and you will have to take the oath or affirmation.
It is an oath or affirmation I think everyone should have to take before receiving the right to play his part in choosing our government. I do not believe anyone should come here from another country and have a vote in choosing a government without first taking the stand that he will uphold Canada and stand behind her. Surely there is nothing disgraceful about going before a judicial officer to take the kind of oath prescribed in this bill. This is the oath or affirmation.


An hon. MEMBER:: A lot of people in your riding would not take that oath.


Walter Adam Tucker: This is the oath or affirmation:
I swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King George VI, his heirs ancl successors, according to law; and that I will faithfully observe the laws and fulfil my duties as a Canadian citizen.
Is it disgraceful for a man from England to appear alongside a man from the United States, and take that oath or affirmation before a judicial officer? After all, I submit to the government that before any man has a right to vote or to hold office in this country he should be required to take that oath or affirmation of allegiance to our king and our country.
Indeed, it is pointed out to me that members of the privy council have to undergo that "disgrace" before they can assume the duties of their high office-and it is a disgrace which I am sure some hon. members opposite would not mind assuming. Perhaps, in view of the way they are acting, that would not apply to some on the other side.
In her short time as a nation, Canada has had a glorious history, one which has been based upon tolerance between man and man, no matter what his race or religious origin. There has been a feeling of fraternity developed with these peoples from other countries who have come and settled on our lands, and have shown their willingness to be good, faithful, loyal Canadian citizens. We have demonstrated by our past achievements, by our ability to weld into one^ Canadian people the diverse elements of which this great nation is composed, that if we carry on with the programme before us this session, that of laying a broader and firmer foundation for this Canadian nation, Canada will go forward to a future greater than she has yet known.


Mr. D. K. HAZEN (St. John-Albert):: Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the hon. member for Rosthern (Mr. Tucker) upon the contribution he has made to the debate. I followed his remarks closely and while I do not agree with all he said-we have the right to disagree, of course-I may say that I am in wholehearted agreement with many of the things he did say.
The Secretary of State (Mr. Martin) spoke with such eloquence and fervour on his motion for the second reading of this bill that a stranger listening might have been justified in coming to the conclusion that when it was passed we would "change the sorry scheme of things entire" and have a new heaven and a new earth in this country. Unfortunately that result will not follow.
We are all Canadians and we have called ourselves Canadians for many years. When this bill becomes law it will not make us better Canadians or more conscious of our
Canadian Citizenship

Canadian citizenship. We shall take no greater pride in our country after this bill is passed than we did before. We shall be no more loyal to our constitution and we shall be no less critical of or more satisfied with conditions that prevail in this country. We shall be no more united as a nation.
I make these remarks with two reservations. First, I believe that proper ceremonies on the granting of naturalization will be of benefit and, second, I think the provision in the bill that a declaration of Canadian citizenship will be an adequate statement of national status is a step in the right direction. But may I point out to hon. members that if a person applies to-day for a Canadian passport he can have inscribed on it the fact that he is a Canadian national. When the next census is taken I have no doubt that a person will be able to say he is a Canadian citizen, but inquiry will be made as to his national origin. There are good reasons why we should keep a record of national origin.
In dealing with questions of citizenship, nationality, naturalization and the status of aliens we are dealing with technical subjects. They are matters about which I do not profess to have the answers, and they are matters about which I think the members of the house should have a great deal more information. Therefore I am in agreement with the hon. member for Vancouver South (Mr. Green) who suggested' that this bill should be sent to a committee. There could be called before that committee experts from the Department of External Affairs, from the Department of the Secretary of State, from the immigration department and from the Department of Justice who could explain the difficulties they face in connection with the present legislation. There could also be called before that committee men who have made a particular study of this matter and who could express their views, who could criticize the bill and who could furnish information that hon. members do not possess at the present time. I strongly urge that the bill be sent to a committee for further study.
We have on the statute books of this country, and have had for many years, a definition of Canadian citizenship. This is to be found in section 2 (b) of the Immigration Act, which is chapter 93 of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1927. With the permission of hon. members I wish to place this definition on the record because that has not been done during this debate. I should like permission to do that without reading it in order to save time.


James Horace King: The hon. member must have the unanimous consent of the house.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Agreed.


Douglas King Hazen: The definition of Canadian citizenship contained in the Immigration Act reads:
"Canadian citizen" means
(i)	a person born in Canada who has not become an alien;
(ii)	a British subject who has Canadian domicile; or
(iii)	a person naturalized under the laws of Canada who has not subsequently become an alien or lost Canadian domicile;
Provided that for the purpose of this Act a woman who has not been landed in Canada shall not be held to have acquired Canadian citizenship by virtue of her husband being- a Canadian citizen; neither shall a child who has not been landed in Canada be held to have acquired Canadian citizenship through its father or mother being a Canadian citizen;
That definition has much to commend it, although it is not as inclusive as it might be. Its effect is limited by the fact that it is applicable only for the purposes of the Immigration Act.
We have also had on our statute books for many years a definition of "British subject". This is to be found in the Naturalization Act which is chapter 138 of the Revised Statutes of Canada. If I may be permitted, I would ask permission to place it on the record. Section 2 (a) reads:
(d) "British subject" means a person who is a natural-born British subject, or a person to whom a certificate of naturalization has been granted; or a person who has become a subject of His Majesty by reason of any annexation of territory.
Similar definitions of a "British subject," or definitions in practically similar words are to be found in the naturalization acts of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Great Britain.
We have also had on the statute books of this country for many years a definition of "Canadian national". This is to be found in the Canadian Nationals Act, which is chapter 21 of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1927. With your permission, sir, and for the information of the house I should like to place this on the record. It reads:
2. The following persons are Canadian nationals, viz; -
(a)	any British subject who is a Canadian citizen wiithin the meaning of the Immigration Act;
(b)	the wife of any such citizen;
(c)	any person born out of Canada, whose father was a Canadian national at the time of that person's birth, or with regard to persons born before the third day of May, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-one, any person whose father at the time of such birth, possessed all the qualifications of a Canadian national as defined in this act.

Canadian Citizenship
Before I go any farther I wish to say that I am in agreement with the hon. member for Beauharnois-Laprairie (Mr. Raymond) when he said-I am not quoting his words exactly- that this bill gives us no more than we had already as far as the definition of a Canadian citizen is concerned; that a Canadian citizen and a Canadian national means the same thing, that, if there is any difference, Canadian national means more; that the change made by this bill is more superficial than real.
The difficulty about these definitions is that they were unconnected and in consequence they led in some instances to conditions that were not altogether satisfactory. But I would point out that we shall always have some confusion and some difficulty so far as the term "Canadian citizen" is. concerned owing to the fact that other countries have different definitions of "citizen" or "national . We shall at all times have in connection with those terms a conflict of law which will lead to difficulties. I agree with the Secretary of State when he said, in speaking on this bill:
Despite what one often hears to the contrary, there has been a Canadian nationality, but the difficulty has been that the existing definitions were so specialized and so unrelated that they led to a condition of great confusion and misunderstanding.
It is well, I think, that this misunderstanding should be removed and that any difficulties which have been occasioned by the legislation that at present exists be overcome and cleared up if possible. So far as this bill clarifies the definition of a Canadian citizen I support it, but I do not agree with the definition of "Canadian domicile" that is contained in it because it has the effect of requiring a British subject to reside in this country five years before he can apply to become a Canadian citizen. I do not think it is necessary, in order to get a clear definition of Canadian citizenship, for the government to proceed in this way.
What 'this bill proposes to do, as I read it, is this. For better, for worse-time alone will tell-it proposes to turn our present Naturalization Act upside down. Under our present act a person who is naturalized becomes a British subject. Then the other statutes I have mentioned define him in many instances to be a Canadian national or a Canadian citizen. Under this bill the procedure is reversed. We give a man a certificate of Canadian citizenship and say that in consequence he is a Brtish subject.
It would be much better I think, to introduce a bill defining Canadian citizenship and then make the necessary amendments to our
present Naturalization Act. I do not say that dogmatically. I should like to have an opportunity to have the matter further considered and looked into, and it is for that reason I suggest that it foe referred to a committee of this house so that it can foe given further study.
This bill will materially change our Naturalization Act. Not only does it change the Naturalization Act; but, as I read it, it enacts as well a nationalization act. Under this bill foreigners will be naturalized and British subjects will be nationalized. Both an alien and a British subject, with some exceptions, will be required to live in this country for five out of the six years prior to the time they apply and they must comply with the other provisions of section 10. If they do so, the alien or foreigner will not be granted a certificate of naturalization, as he is under the present act. What he will be granted is a certificate of citizenship". It seems to me that perhaps the government is more or less playing with words in changing these terms.
The British subject who applies will receive a similar certificate. But the certificate the foreigner receives will naturalize him. It will make him a British subject and a Canadian citizen. The certificate a man from Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand or South Africa receives cannot make him at British subject for he is a British subject, but it makes him a Canadian citizen. This procedure, it seems to me, leaves very much to be desired. It is, in my humble opinion, objectionable.
Why, I ask, should a British subject, a citizen of Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand or South Africa who comes to Canada for the purpose of making this country his home be obliged to reside here for five years and then go through exactly the same procedure as the foreigner who applies for naturalization in order that he may be nationalized or declared to be a Canadian citizen. 1 should like to repeat the question asked by the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefenbaker);
I ask the minister to explain why at this time when we in all parts of the empire are desirous in the interest of our own security to bind still closer the various parts of the empire together should a British subject coming into Canada and properly entering this country under our immigration laws be required to^ go through the same formalities as persons coming from other parts of the world.
I would call your attention, Mr. Speaker, and the attention of hon. members to the fact that any British subject who has ordinarily resided in Canada for at least twelve months and in the electoral district where he

Canadian Citizenship
seeks to vote for at least two months immediately preceding the issue of a writ for election can vote in a dominion election. I think all of us have read that section with a good deal of interest.
Why is that privilege accorded to a British subject who has been in Canada for only a year? There is a reason for it and that reason is, I believe, that British subjects are familiar with democratic institutions and with British laws and British principles of fair play and justice and they speak our language. That is the reason why a British subject is permitted to vote after he has been twelve months in this country. That is a good reason, I think, why he should, when he applies for Canadian citizenship, be treated differently from a person coming from a country where a different system of government and different laws prevail and who is not familiar with our constitution and cannot speak our language. Surely there is nothing unreasonable in permitting a man -who is familiar with our way of carrying on and who is a British subject to be treated differently from a foreigner who is unacquainted with our ways and who possibly cannot speak our language.
I should like to call as a witness in support of this view Doctor John E. Read, K.C., who until recently was legal adviser to the Department of External Affairs. He gave evidence in 1913 before a committee of this house which had to do with the defence of Canada regulations.^ The committee was also considering questions of naturalization and immigration at that time. He was asked if he would draw any distinction between a person who was a British subject coming to Canada and a foreigner with regard to the time it would require to obtain Canadian citizenship, and he replied:
I think we ought to draw a distinction. I think a foreigner who comes here should have to reside here five years, no matter what happens. before becoming a Canadian citizen, but I should think a person coming here from another part of the British empire should be able to get it m a shorter time.


Paul Joseph James Martin: He helped to draft this bill.


Douglas King Hazen: I am giving the house his views. It does not follow from his having helped to draft this bill that he has changed them. This was in 1943.
That would depend on whether it was possible to work out some arrangement that would be satisfactory to meet the immigration requirements as well as the other requirements. I
I should like now to direct the attention of hon. members to the fact-I think it has already been, stated-that a certificate of naturalization granted in Canada prior to

January 1, 1945, was of a limited nature; it had no effect outside Canada. For many years the question of naturalization had engaged the attention of the statesmen of the empire and had been studied at practically every imperial conference, for the situation had been regarded as far from satisfactory. At the imperial conference of 1907 it was agreed that a naturalization act should be passed creating uniformity within the empire. That decision, it seems to me, was a wise one. It exhibited a breadth of vision and a statesmen-like approach which were most commendable. In that year and at the conference in 1911 Sir Wilfrid Laurier strongly urged the adoption of the principle that there should be uniformity in the effect of naturalization wherever granted, and that a man who was a British subject anywhere should be recognized as a British subject everywhere. Let me quote from the statement he made on June 13, 1911, at the imperial conference. It is found on page 251 of the proceedings as reported to both houses of the British parliament. This is in part what he said:
This is in my estimation one of the important questions that the conference has to deal with. The power of naturalization is one of the incidental powers of sovereignty and one of the most important attributes of sovereignty. The British government, in granting the constitutions of the several dominions, has parted with the Power of sovereignty and delegated it to the dominions. It has given the power to all the dominions of granting letters of naturalization to aliens. That was one of the necessary incidents, I think, of the power of self-government which was given to the dominions, and the one power which it was very important fpr them to have, because being young nations and all inviting immigration, it followed as a measure of practical moment that they should have the power to grant letters of naturalization. They have all availed themselves of that power, and each one has its own law of naturalization, and those laws are all different ... I do not think there are two laws in all the dominions which are here represented which are the same- they all vary.
The practical difficulty which arises at once is. as to what is 'to be the effect of this power of naturalization. The power which is given to Canada, to New Zealand, and to all the selfgoverning dominions, is one which is limited each to its own territory. It does not extend beyond the limits of the territory covered by that legislation.
Then, after giving instances of the difficulties that occurred under the legislation which then existed, Sir Wilfrid continued:
In these days of travel and locomotion it is conceivable that this condition of things-this divided allegiance-may produce serious complications. Therefore I think the first consequence to be deduced from this condition of things, this divided power of legislation between the mother country and the dominions beyond the seas, must be remedied in some way.

Canadian Citizenship
and I think this principle may be laid down as an object to be ultimately reached-a British subject anywhere, a British subject everywhere.
In consequence of these consultations at imperial conferences, Great Britain in 1914, Canada in 1914, Australia in 1920, New Zealand in 1923 and South Africa in 1926 passed naturalization acts identical with respect to their important provisions. These acts ' provided that a certificate granted in one of the dominions or in the United Kingdom would be recognized as conferring on the holder the status of a British subject throughout the w'Orld. The point I wish to make is that these acts were passed after an agreement had been reached between the dominions concerned.
The bill that is now before us makes a material change in the present act. It is not a change merely in procedure but a change in substance, for under our present laws a British subject became a Canadian citizen after five years' residence in Canada, but this bill requires a British subject from Great Britain or any of the other [DOT] dominions coming into this country after five years' residence to make a formal application and go before a court, just as a foreigner is obliged to do. Under our present laws a woman marrying a British subject becomes a British subject, but under the proposed legislation that is not the case. Here again we have a material change.
On June 15, 1943, Doctor E. H. Coleman,
K.C., under-secretary of state, appeared before the committee I have referred to, and with reference to the provisions of the naturalization acts passed by the different dominions and Great Britain, he was asked:
By the way, in each of these British dominions were the important provisions reenacted?
He replied:	-
Yes. They are identical. That is the whole basis of the thing, in order that there might be uniformity and that the certificate granted in one of the dominions or in the United Kingdom might be recognized as conferring on the holder the status of a British subject throughout the world. There was an informal, if not a statutory, understanding between the governments of the United Kingdom and the dominions that no fundamental changes would be made without consultation. I think the subject had been on the agenda at more than one imperial conference held in the interval. There have been some modifications made by common agreement, and there have been some proposed which have not been made because a common agreement could not be reached. But the point I am trying to make, Mr. Chairman, is that we are bound- perhaps not legally, but morally at least-not 63260-46
to make any fundamental changes in the act without consultation with the other dominions, which includes the United Kingdom.
In 1929 a preparatory conference of the members of the commonwealth was held in London for the purpose of considering, among other questions, that of naturalization. The Right Hon. Ernest Lapointe headed the Canadian delegation that attended that conference. It made certain recommendations that are to be found in sections 73 to 78 inclusive of its report. I propose to read two of these recommendations which are found at page 128 of the evidence given by Doctor Read before the committee to which I have referred.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Doctor Coleman or Doctor Read?


Douglas King Hazen: Doctor Read.
Section 76 reads as follows:,
A common status directly recognized throughout the British commonwealth in recent years has been given a statutory basis through the operation of the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act, 1914.
77. Under the new position, if any change is made in the requirements established by the existing legislation, reciprocal action will be necessary to attain this same recognition the importance of which is manifest in view of the desirability of facilitating freedom of intercourse and the mutual granting of privileges among the different parts of the commonwealth.
This report was approved in this house on a resolution introduced by the Right Hon. Ernest Lapointe. It came before the imperial conference in 1930 and was approved by that conference. The conclusions that were reached by the conference are to be found in its proceedings. I believe these proceedings were also approved by this house. The conclusions read as follows:
(1)	That the conference affirms paragraphs 73 to 78 inclusive of the report of the conference on the operation of dominion legislation.
(2)	That, if any changes are desired in the existing requirements for the common status, provision should be made for the maintenance of the common status, and the changes should only be introduced (in accordance with present practice) after consultation and agreement among the several members of the commonwealth.
(3)	That it is for each member of the com-momvealth to define for itself its own nationals, but that, so far as possible, those nationals should be persons possessing the common status, though it is recognized that local conditions or other special circumstances may from time to time necessitate divergences from this general principle.
(4)	That the possession of the common status in virtue of the law for the time being in force in any part of the commonwealth should carry with it the recognition of that status by the law of every other part of the commonwealth.

Canadian Citizenship

There is one other extract from the report that I should like to read. It is to be found on page 124 of the evidence to which I have referred, and reads as follows:
(2)	Although it would seem that no question could arise as between members of the British commonwealth in the ease of those referred to in subparagraph (1) (a) above, it is recognized that in the case of a migrant, referred to in subparagraph (1)	(b) above, the member from
which he might wish to declare an interest in the conditions under which the member to which he went might claim to be entitled to regard him as a member of its community. It is also desirable to avoid laws or rules as to acquisition or loss of such membership which might lead to overlapping. _ As time has not allowed consideration to be given to the different criteria which a member might desire to impose, it is recommended that any member contemplating passing a law on the membership of its community, should submit its proposals to the other members of the commonwealth, so as to enable them to offer observations thereon, if they feel so inclined.
I have quoted these paragraphs for one purpose. When the Secretary of State introduced this bill, and when he spoke on second reading, he did not tell us whether the proposals contained therein had been submitted to the other members of the commonwealth before it was introduced here.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Yes.


Douglas King Hazen: I am going to ask the minister whether it was submitted to them, when it was submitted to them, and what their answers were. When he replies he should give us a full explanation of what took place.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I can do so now if the hon. member desires if;. The answer is yes, but I shall give greater detail later on.


Douglas King Hazen: This practically concludes all'that I have to say. Once or twice in the speeches that have been made-there have been remarks to the effect that this bill might break the bonds or weaken the bonds between the different parts of the empire. I do not hold any such view. The British empire and commonwealth is more closely united to-day than it has ever been before in its history'.
In reading the speech made by the late Right Hon. Ernest Lapointe in May, 1930, when he moved that the recommendations of the preparatory conference to which I have referred be accepted by this house, I was interested in a certain portion of it. I have not time to quote portions of that speech, but I should like to read a quotation he gave from a speech made in the House of Lords by Lord Ba,lfour, which reads as follows:
The British commonwealth is held together far more effectually by broad loyalties and common feelings of interest and devotion to the
IMr. Hazen.]
great world ideals of peace and freedom than by anything else. A common interest in loyalty, in freedom, in ideals, that is the bond. If that is not enough, nothing else is enough.


Mr. THOMAS REID (New Westminster):: In rising to take part in the debate on the new citizenship bill my first remarks are to congratulate the government and also the Secretary of State (Mr. Martin) on introducing such an important bill at this time. I believe that the bill meets the general views of all people in this country. I suppose the only differences will be in regard to the interpretation of many of the sections. I must say, Mr. Speaker, that I was a little disappointed when the minister changed his view this year and did not suggest that the bill be sent to a committee. I believe the importance of the bill warranted having it sent to a committee where every section could be thoroughly discussed and more information obtained than can be the case in the house itself.
My first criticism of the bill is that it is wrongly named. I think it should have been called the "Canadian nationality act" instead of the "Canadian Citizenship Act". I believe the word "nationality" would convey more, not only to the people of Canada but to the people of all countries especially if a person from Canada going abroad could say, "I am a Canadian national". In the United States they use both terms in their naturalization act; they refer to both nationality, naturalization and citizenship. In that country one can be a citizen and not be naturalized, and vice versa.
I wish now to deal with some of the sections, although I realize I must only comment on them because on the motion for second reading only the principle of the bill may be debated. I would find it extremely difficult to debate the bill or the principle of it if precluded, however, from dealing with some of the sections.
Before I begin to mention the sections may I say that I have listened to many speakers during this debate, and I have come to the conclusion that some of them have not studied the bill very carefully. Some of the sections which I believe to be among the most important have not yet been touched upon so far during the debate. I am going to mention one right now. Under section 4 a child becomes a natural-born Canadian citizen if its parent, either father or mother, was born on a Canadian ship. That follows the British act, and I do not think a great deal of objection can be offered to that section. But what do we find in section 5? A child bom outside Canada, perhaps in the middle of China or on some island in the Pacific

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or elsewhere is a natural-born citizen under this measure if its father or mother was born on the Canadian ship. I contend that is carrying our natural citizenship much too far. Especially is that so, in the light of the criticism which has been offered, and I suggest rightly, to the sections of the bill which will compel a British subject coming from Great Britain or the other dominions to take out naturalization papers after a residence of some five years. So that I think when we come to the various sections of the bill we shall have something more to say with regard to this particular matter.
M e have heard some expressions with regard to the word "British", and I have met some people in this country who even actually hate that word. There are some persons in certain provinces who would like to cut all ties of any kind with Great Britain. I have wondered many times if those people have given any thought to the part Great Britain has plaj-ed in the development of this country of ours. Have they ever considered that perhaps we never would have had confederation but for the fact that following the Plains of Abraham, Great Britain took control of this countrj'. In all kindliness I ask my hon. friends from the province of Quebec to consider what kind of treatment might have been meted out to them had some power other than Great Britain taken possession from France at that time. I go farther than that. I say that had France retained control of what was then Canada the treatment given the people of the province of Quebec would not have been as fair or as generous as the treatment given them under British rule. The rights of minorities have been maintained to the letter. Again when one looks over the history of France and reads about the persecution of the church in that country; and when one considers the very fair treatment that has been given by the British, one wonders just the reason for this desire in the minds of some citizens of Canada to cut ourselves entirely free from everything pertaining to Great Britain, even to the extent of hating the very name.
To my mind in this bill far too many powers are given to the minister. I believe in a matter so important as the conferring of citizenship this parliament should say in every particular what is to be done, and it not be left to the minister. That is how it is done in the United States; all the regulations are passed by the legislative body and contained in the United States act. In connection with the conferring of citizenship I would be loathe to give the minister the power either to confer naturalization or the power to' ask for a rehearing after natural-63260- 464
ization has been granted. Section 14 is somewhat singular. After the court approves, under that section, naturalization, the minister may ask for a rehearing. The bill does not direct the court as to what shall be said or argued by the person brought before the court for the second time, other than that he must prove the right to have Canadian citizenship conferred upon him. I am of opinion that once the court, having heard all the facts of the case, decides that naturalization should be granted, that should be the end of it. If the minister is of opinion that a rehearing should be held, then the man should be given some intimation as to what objection has been raised by the minister to the granting of citizenship. Further, I wonder how many hon. members have noticed the provision that if on the second hearing the court decides to revoke citizenship, the person concerned will have to wait a further two years before his case may be heard again. When we reach the committee stage, that is something about which we should, I suggest, ask a number of questions.
I come now to sections 16, 17 and 18, all important sections, dealing with the loss of Canadian citizenship. I listened to the speech of the hon. member for Rosthem (Mr. Tucker) who, in his argument, could not see why a person from Great Britain should not be called upon to take out papers and to take the oath. He spoke of handing out treatment with fairness and equality. Well, if we are to treat all with fairness and equality, then why not do so? So far as I can find in the bill, loss of citizenship can happen only to one who is naturalized, and not to one born in this country.
I know it is only a natural feeling on the part of those born in Canada that they have a natural or prior right over those from other lands. But as I look at members of my own family and as I look at others born here I just wonder if we are viewing things in the bill in the right perspective. After all, remember that those who were born in this country had no say whatsoever as to where they were to be born. On the other hand, when I, like others who came to this land, chose it as one of the best countries to which I could go-and I have found it was the best country. If we are to treat all Canadians with fairness we should also consider those born in this country who might commit certain acts against the state.
No one, I believe, is going to accuse the United States of being inhuman or unChristian because of her naturalization laws. Yet I find that in the United States there are many conditions under which a citizen of
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that country may lose his citizenship. That applies both to those born within the United States and to those obtaining naturalization papers. For instance, deserting military or naval services of the United States in time of war is punished by loss of citizenship, whether a person be born in America or not. Then, again one loses citizenship if he commits an act of treason, or attempts by force to overthrow the state, or bears arms against the United States, provided, of course, that he is convicted thereof by a court martial or some other court of competent jurisdiction.
Time will not permit my reading all those sections dealing with loss of nationality, so that I shall touch upon only one more. Many Americans who have come to this country have lost citizenship in the United States by voting in a municipal, provincial, or federal election. I had a case in my own community last year where a woman who had been thirty-five years in Canada, but whose parents were born in the United States- and she, too, had been born there-wanted to attend her daughter's wedding in that country. But when she came to the border the United States immigration officer said to her, "Just hold on a minute; have you ever voted in a municipal election?" She replied, honestly, that she had. "Well," he said, "you cannot enter this country; you are no longer a citizen of the United States". And that woman living in my own district was debarred from entering what one would term her own native land.
Does anyone call the United States un-Christian or cruel, or does anyone accuse it of doing something wrong? Yet if we proposed anything like that here there would be cries of, "Oh, that is un-Christian; that is cruel; that is wrong." But the United States has been carrying on in that way for many years.
I am suggesting to the minister and to hon. members that we should give careful consideration to this matter of loss of nationality, because even those born in this country may commit some act which, in some of our minds at least, believe should place them in a position where they should not be allowed to retain their Canadian citizenship.
The hon. member for Vancouver South (Mr. Green) and some other hon. members have mentioned minority groups, and have spoken particularly about Japanese. It is not my intention this evening to deal at length with that subject, because I feel certain that another occasion will arise when the entire matter may be dealt with. Let me say at once however that I agree with the hon. member for Vancouver South when he points out that by the passing of this measure we thereby
[Mr. Reid-3
confer citizenship upon the Japanese-every one of them. I am going to leave this thpught with hon. members: There were 1,600 Japanese who left this country prior to the outbreak of war.


Mr. GIBSON (Comox-Alberni):: Was it not 16,000?


Thomas Reid: Well, I am not quite sure of the number. The hon. member for Comox-Alberni says it was 16,000, and that may be so. However, I thought that 1,600 had gone back to Japan just prior to 1939 to perform their military duty and to fight on the side of Japan, against us.
All these young men were born in British Columbia; they were educated there, and had reached, the stage in life where they were able to use their own discretion if they so desired. But, having been registered in Japan, and looking upon Japan as their country they went back to comply with the regulations for military service in that country. I hope when we get into committee the minister will answer this question: If we pass this measure in its present form what will be the status of those 1,600-or 16,000, as the case may be? What will be the status of that great number of Japanese who left voluntarily to fight on the side of Japan, the country to which they owe first allegiance, against this country of ours. Under the act they are designated natural-born Canadians. Are we to open the doors to them again? I was not at all surprised that the hon. member for Vancouver South and the hon. member for Nanaimo (Mr. Pearkes) were greatly perturbed about what is to happen. One of the things worrying those of us from British Columbia particularly is the dispersal of these people.
However, before discussing that point further may I say this. First, however, I have asked two important questions of hon. members in the House of Commons. Those particular questions have been quoted in the Japanese paper, but, as yet, they remain unanswered. My question to hon. members of the House of Commons, and to the people of Canada, is this: Can a man owe allegiance to two countries at one and the same time; can he be a citizen of two countries?
I remember the special committee on elections and franchise which sat in 1934. While I was not a member of that committee, one which sat long before the war, I appeared before it. That was a time when this question was not as acute as it is to-day. True, there were only a few of us trying to point the way in those days. There were four Japanese who came before that committee, and I well remember asking two of them this question: In case

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of war or trouble with Japan, to which country will you owe allegiance? Without hesitation both of them said Japan-and that was long before the war.
Through their newspaper I have asked Japanese, and I have asked many gatherings why is it that, so far, not one Japanese has renounced his citizenship or allegiance to Japan. Why is it that none of them has said, "I was born here; I am a Canadian; this is the country to which I owe allegiance." I have wondered at that great silence. Why? What is holding them back? If a committee is to be set up to investigate the Japanese who signed papers indicating a willingness to go back to Japan but are now asking that they be revoked, I urge the Minister of Labour (Mr. Mitchell) to ask them that very question.
I have spoken on this matter many times and I am not going at this time to deal with it at any great length. However, I am a little worried about the position of this class of people under this bill.
There is another question which I forgot to mention: Can these people be really assimilated into the life of the Canadian people? My answer is, "no, they cannot." I look to the United States and I ask myself if the question of the blacks is any nearer settlement to-day than it was fifty or seventy-five years ago. I have travelled in the United States and spoken to men in authority and to others, and I have come to the conclusion that the question of the blacks in that country is more acute to-day than ever it was. Then I look at the Japs. I am not considering this problem only in the light of to-day; I am looking at it in the light of the time when I shall be gone. I wonder if it is right to encourage a group that is not assimilable, a group whose first allegiance is not to Canada but to Japan. And so I protest.
Strangely enough, there is a provision in the bill that one holding a dual citizenship may renounce his Canadian citizenship if he so desires and hold on to his original or foreign citizenship. But there is nothing in the act to compel anyone to make a decision in favour of retaining Canadian citizenship. I am maintaining, and I will maintain as long as this bill is before the house, that no one in Canada should be allowed to hold Canadian citizenship if he or she at the same time owes allegiance to and is a citizen of another country.
The minister stated in his remarks, and it is provided in the bill, that ceremonies will be held at the time citizenship is granted. Ceremonies are all right in their way, but I should like to have seen us do what they do
in the United States. I think I am on firm ground when I refer to that country because there are something like thirty-six different races who make up the peoples of the United States. If we consider the races who have come to Canada I think we shall find that we also have thirty-six different races who make up the Canadian population. Before a person can become a United States citizen he must attend a school, which is free, and be able to answer certain questions, before being granted naturalization. These questions are not of a harsh nature; they are educational in character. I should like to read the section of the United States act dealing with this matter. It reads:
356. 3. Educational examination of petitioners for naturalization. The examination of each petitioner for naturalization shall include an educational examination. The purpose of the educational examination shall be to determine whether the petitioner has a fair knowledge of the fundamental principles of the constitution and is qualified to assume the duties and responsibilities of a citizen of the United States. To this end the petitioner may be questioned as to
(1)	the principal historical facts concerning the development of the United States as a republic;
(2)	the organization and principal functions of the government of the United States, and of the states and local units of government, and
(3)	the relation of the individual in the United States to government-national, state and local, the rights and privileges growing from that relationship, and the duties and responsibilities which result from it. Every care shall be exercised to avoid abstruse, technical, irrelevant and extreme questions. The language level of the questions shall be suited to the particular petitioner having regard to his educational background and the extent of his knowledge of the English language.
I believe that the effort which an alien must put forth before becoming a United States citizen makes him more conversant with that country and with the affairs of government. Someone, perhaps in a joking way, has said that many aliens know more about the United States after passing this educational test than many children who were born in the United States knew upon leaving school. Be that as it may, I believe that if something like that were done before we grant Canadian citizenship it would be far better than waiting until the citizenship is about to be granted and then making a ceremony of it by having someone put on robes and having a kind of show. Make the applicants do a little work and undertake a little study and that will make them even better citizens. At least it will make them more conversant with the affairs of the country.
As I say, we should take note of what the United States has done. Not only am I in favour of setting up schools for this purpose;
Canadian Citizenship

I would advocate that all the regulations and all powers granted under this act be passed upon by the people's representatives in this parliament. Many of the matters mentioned in the bill should not be left to the minister or to some of his officials.
I believe I have covered most of the salient points I had in mind. I think the immigration department should be linked up with this bill. As is well known the records of those entering either Canada or the United States are kept by the immigration department of that country.
I am rather doubtful about section 29 which confers property rights upon those who become naturalized citizens. It is my opinion that we are infringing upon provincial rights because property rights are entirely within the jurisdiction of the provinces. If by this bill we confer property rights on anyone who becomes a Canadian citizen, then I think we are doing something we should be most careful about.


Grote Stirling: Mr. Speaker, I cannot let this debate conclude without once more appealing to the government, in support of what the hon. member for Vancouver South (Mr. Green) has said, and asking them to make a statement with regard to their present position in connection with the disposition of the Japanese. We have had the policy explained to us, but unfortunately little or no progress appears to have been made as time has gone along.
For twenty-five years in this house members from British Columbia have been endeavouring to explain the situation with regard to the Japanese in that province and to warn the people of Canada that the day would come when the question would become a red-hot and dangerous one. It needed the treacherous action of the Japanese at Pearl Harbor and the ensuing war to bring the situation really home to the Canadian people. I am very much afraid that the opinion of the Canadian people is slipping back to the belief that this is a provincial question and not a dominion one.
At the time that the Japanese were sweeping through the Pacific and moving in a northerly and northeasterly direction in the islands below Alaska there was great anxiety in British Columbia. So great was the anxiety at that time that it spread throughout the rest of Canada, and it seemed to us that Canada at last was getting hold of this problem as one which would have to be recognized as a dominion problem.
In August, 1944, the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) proclaimed the governor. Reid.]
ment's policy in the matter of the Japanese. In November last the Minister of Labour (Mr. Mitchell) summarized that policy and reiterated it and reported at that time as to the numbers and the position which the question then occupied. Unfortunately things have happened since then. With regard to parts of the government's policy representations were made which resulted in an appeal to the supreme court. The supreme court largely upheld the orders in council, which were a portion of the government's policy. But in one way they did not, and there apparently the matter stands. We do not know whether the government is proposing to carry the matter to the privy council or whether the government is facilitating the other party in carrying it to the privy council, or whether in the meantime, if that appeal be long delayed or perhaps never taken, the government's policy will still remain at a standstill. This bill is now before the house, and there is a very close connection between what this bill contains and the Japanese question. I therefore ask the government to make a statement clarifying their position at the present time before this bill passes out of our hands.
The first portion of the policy to which I have referred states that it must no longer be looked upon as a provincial question and that the Japanese must not again be allowed to concentrate in British Columbia. But we have had no information about how that is to be brought about. We have no knowledge as to whether the hint dropped by the Minister of Justice (Mr. St. Laurent) last session that special legislation might be brought in will be acted upon or not. But it is quite clear at the present time that there is no power in the hands of the government to prevent the Japanese from again concentrating in British Columbia, although the government has had plenty of warning that if that should take place the difficulties and the dangers will be great.
The position of the government in that regard is modified also by the answer which the Prime Minister gave to the hon. member for Comox-Albemi (Mr. Gibson) last December. When this matter was being discussed the hon. member asked whether the Prime Minister would undertake to make this statement, that the Japanese would not be allowed to return to the coast. The Prime Minister said that he was unable to' make such a statement. That caused doubt in the minds of us from British Columbia as to whether the government was really sincere in its statement that never again must these people be allowed to concentrate in British Columbia.

Canadian Citizenship
The government's policy also contains the setting up of a commission to measure the loyalty of the Japanese. It has been pointed out in this house more than once that you cannot expect thoughtful people who have considered this problem to believe that it is possible for a commission to measure the loyalty of these Japanese. Can anybody conceive of any way in which the loyalty of a Japanese could be measured so that the commission might be able to say: This man's loyalty is twelve inches long; he is all right. That man's loyalty is only nine inches long; he is all wrong. It is impossible to believe, the Japanese being what.-they are, and from our knowledge of their habits and behaviour, that their loyalty can be measured by a commission.
Whilst the Japanese were sweeping through the Pacific victoriously before Pearl Harbor and at the time of Pearl Harbor there were scores and scores of instances where they told their employers that soon they would be on top and we would be below. Maids told their mistresses; employees told their employers; high school and 'collegiate students boasted of the fact that the day would soon be here when they would be on top and we would be below. Those people were very largely Canadian-born, those who are held up to us as so saintly that we must not tamper with the position in which they find themselves. It is impossible for me to believe that a commission can measure with any certainty where the loyalty of the Japanese stands. Now that their emperor has been deposed, if they are asked questions it is not at all unlikely that they may declare loyalty to this country. They come of,a race which for centuries has worshipped the emperor whom they described as their god and which believed in the domination of the Japanese race in the countries surrounding the Pacific. Is it to be expected that merely because the children of these parents were born in this country that they have given up all belief in the sanctity of their emperor? It is far more probable that had that invasion come, had those Japanese paratroopers landed in Canada, had Japanese operations along the .southern shore of Alaska and down the Pacific coast been successful, the incoming Japanese troops would have benefited greatly by the existence of twenty-three or twenty-four thousand Japanese in this country.
Another plan which the government has in its policy is the distribution of the Japanese through the other provinces. It has not been successful. Not so very many of them have been so distributed. The government has not found the provinces cooperative in endeavouring to carry out that policy, and one province has already asked that the Japanese be removed in accordance with the clause in the contract entered into between the Britisn Columbia security commission and that province. Sixty per cent of these Japanese are still in British Columbia. They are in camps; they are in the settlements in the mining towns in the south; and if we look at the numbers of those who have already been removed and compare them with the numbers of those who will have to be received by the various provinces, if the distribution is in accordance with the population of the provinces we find something like this. Let us say that there are twenty-three or twenty-four thousand Japanese in Canada. If all the ten thousand that the minister mentioned who have asked to be allowed to return to Japan or to be removed from Canada should go, that will reduce the figure we are examining to fourteen thousand. If we distribute that fourteen thousand to the other provinces this is the picture:
Prince Edward Island would have to be asked to receive 140. They have none now.
Nova Scotia would be expected to take 700. They have none now.
New Brunswick would be asked to take 560, and there are none there now.
Quebec would be asked to take just over 4,000, and by the last figures I had, at the last session, there are 394 now in Quebec. Is it considered likely that the province of Quebec will be ready to take 4,000 in order to carry out the government's policy of distribution?
Ontario will be asked to take 4,600. There are 2,500 there now.
Manitoba will be asked to take 840. There are just over 1,000 there now.
Saskatchewan will be asked to take 1,120, and there are only*146 there now.
Alberta will be asked to take 980. They have almost 3,500 there now, and the premier has asked that they be removed.
It should be remembered that, outside the protected area which was proclaimed for about 100 miles up the Pacific coast in British Columbia we had Japanese resident for a considerable number of years. Those Japanese are still there, and when the removal from the protected area threatened, the Japanese started moving in to that area that I represent and to the area represented by the hon. member for Kamloops (Mr. Fulton). So that in that section we have certainly enough for the quota for British Columbia: we cannot be expected to take any more, particularly bear-
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ing in mind the statement of the Prime Minister that they must not be allowed to concentrate again in British Columbia.
Therefore I find myself in this position. The government's policy of distribution has certainly not succeeded. I see no likelihood that it will succeed in the future if it has not done so in the past. The policy which sets up a commission to measure their loyalty is not, to my mind, a satisfactory one. I am driven, therefore, to the only expedient which I think is left, namely, that we should boldly undertake the removal of the Japanese from Canada.
Ah , it is said, to do so would be flouting British justice." Mr. Speaker, of the many problems which confront us in private life and the decisions which have to be made in this house in international questions, how many of those problems can be decided by the application of one simple formula? We have to weigh the pros and cons. In matters which come up for decision here it is no easy thing for a government in Canada to balance all the arguments and decide which is the right course to take. Think of those boundary decisions which followed the great war. Think of the boundary of Sudetenland, and Poland, and the Polish corridor, to mention but a few. Why, justice could have been argued on both sides on each of those questions. You could not say that justice ruled the answer. The decision had to be weighed in the light of many^ circumstances, and the application of no simple formula settled one of these boundary cases.
Likewise in, this matter there are other cactors which have to ,be considered than merely the application of " British justice." One of the duties that each member of this house has to perform, is to have a vision of what Canada will be like when our descendants are occupying our places. We are here to represent those who sent us to this House of Commons. We are here to consider these matters from the point of view of Canada at large. I am not sure but that the most important duty falling upon us is to endeavour to see the .picture that may be painted in Canada when our grandchildren andi their descendants are here, and I cannot bring myself to believe that we shall be wise if we fail to remove these people from Canada now when the opportunity of settlement at the peace table is before us.
I do not consider that it is proper to expect our descendants to work, in that great task of building Canada, in collaboration, in cooperation, with the equal help of people whom, I consider unassimilable, people whose loyalty is unquestionably in doubt. They are unas-

similable in ths sense that, Gvsn though mixed marriages diid take place, it would be unwise, for the resultant children that would be born would start that hateful trouble of the Eurasian question as we see it in many other lands. It is all very well to say that half-breed children ought to be accepted by society and placed on an equality with either of the two races; it is easy to say that. But the answer is that they are not, and all their lifetime they are pathetic people who are looked down upon by the rest of the population, and are not received on an equality with them. It will be lamentable if we give countenance to the setting up in this country of a half-breed race composed of Canadians and Japanese.
I do not accept for a moment the doctrine that we have not the right to remove these people from here. We cannot trust them,. They have shown that they are unreliable. We cannot answer for it that if they say they are. loyal to Canada they really are. For a generation past their births have been registered with the Japanese consul general. How can a child whose birth was registered with the representative of another country have the same form of loj'fllty to our country and our king as we ha,ve? They are not on a par with us; and it would be a very grave mistake, in my opinion, if we allowed this matter to be settled by leaving some of them in this country, when the Prime Minister tells us that they shall not concentrate in our province and yet there is no means at present to prevent them from doing so.
Before this bill passes out of our hands, I trust that the government will see fit to make a statement clarifying the position in which it finds itself at present with respect to the policy it has enunciated, and explain particularly whether it is its intention to proceed to the privy council for a decision on the matters which were submitted to the supreme court.


Mr. G. H. CASTLEDEN (Yorkton):: In rising to speak in support of the principle of this bill, I might say it is my belief that one of the greatest and longest standing needs of the Canadian people is unity; not only that, but a sense of equality among our people.
It was a realization of this need that caused the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation national convention to adopt as part of its programme the establishment of the legal status of Canadian citizenship for the people of Canada by way of birth and residence qualifications. It was in realization of that need and the resolution from our convention that caused me last July 23 to write to the

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Clerk of the house and inform him that it was my intention to place the following resolution upon the order paper:
That, in the opinion of this house, it is in the best interests of Canada to establish a distinctive Canadian citizenship, which shall be available to all persons of certain residence or birth qualifications within the dominion.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Great minds think alike.


George Hugh Castleden: Yes; I hope they are thinking at the same time. My hon. friend had a long time to think about this and his party has been in power for many years.
When the house opened there was an undertaking in the speech from the throne that it was the intention of the government to bring in such a bill. When the bill was introduced, out of deference to it and under the rules of the house I withdrew my resolution. Unfortunately the bill died after it received first reading and the last session closed without anything further being done.
I again placed my resolution on the order paper prior to the opening of this session, and we welcome this bill. I hope it does not suffer the same fate, either in this house or in the other place, as did the last one. ''"-Canadians must feel that they are all members of one family. We must have that feeling in order fully to, develop our possibilities as a Canadian nation. On meeting Canadians from all parts of Canada one is struck forcibly by two or three things. The first is the lack of a real understanding and (appreciation of the problems, of the contributions, of the difficulties and even of the way of life of our fellow Canadians within our own-country. Tliere is a provincialism Which is stifling Canadians and which prevents and overshadows a national outlook. As a nation Canada lacks the spirit of greatness and the passion for knowledge which is one of the attributes of a progressive nation.
One fact which proves this, and which causes Canadians to think deeply is that so many of the cream of Canada's educated youth, the graduates from our universities, the brains and ability of our young people, the greatest asset we have, have migrated in their thousands, yes, in their hundreds of thousands to the great nation to the south of us. The fact is that we have lost a nation in the making to the United States where the statue of. liberty is a symbol of the great unity of that country, of its freedom. Had those Canadians who left our shores been imbued with a true realization of their duty as Canadians they would have remained in this country and helped to remedy its defects which prevented them from having within this
land those opportunities which they found elsewhere. The truth is that Canadians do not know Canada.
I do not wish anyone to think I am not aware of, or wish to belittle, the achievements and contributions that Canada has made. What I am trying to emphasize is the fact that we are only about five per cent of what we could be, five per cent of what we should be. It is my opinion that we shall not achieve that greatness until we have a consciousness of our unity. We are prone to emphasize our differences and, to overlook our common heritage. We lack a realization of our own greatness, our own strength and our own possibilities for the future. There cannot be a future unless we are a united people.	.
J In the part of Canada which I have the honour to represent and where I was born, are people who came to Canada with hope, pride and faith that this was the greatest country in the world in which to live*J These people carved out their homes from the park areas and the prairies, like their brothers from the wooded lands of Canada from coast to coast. They built their schools, their churches and their little communities. Their children worked and played with their fellow Canadian children in their youth and mixed their blood with the blood of their fellow Canadians in the wars of this land, j They thought they were becoming Canadians.' When they took out their naturalization papers it was a surprising thing to them to find that they were not called Canadians.
_ Naturally they feel that there is, discrimination between them and those who were here before them; particularly when officials appointed by the federal government to take the census come and ask them this question: "What nationality are you?" Proudly they ' reply: "I am a Canadian." They are told, "No; you cannot put down on the census paper that you are a Canadian. What is your racial origin ?'j_J Many of these people came to this country as adults. They spent the latter part of their years in this country, -sometimes twenty and thirty years. They have been busy making a living; in pioneer Canada it is not an easy job. Many of these people did not learn the English or the French language. On reaching the age of seventy many of them find themselves unable to make a living. They have applied for the rights of Canadians to the pittance of an old age pension such as we give in Canada, only to find that they are not qualified. These are people who have done everything.to make Canada a nation. They have given their all to Canada, contributed their sons and their life work;
Canadian Citizenship

yet they are denied even that right. The fact that this bill ends that injustice commends it to the support of every hon. member.
I believe this bill should have been embodied in the terms of confederation almost eighty years ago. Certainly it should have been in the Statute of Westminster which was intended to give Canada the status of nationhood. What reasons the governments of the past had for not establishing, citizenship I do not know. Such a citizenship is the very foundation of nationhood. Without it no nation can be progressive. We pay lip-service to something which does not exist. Without it Canada will never achieve real progress. If Canada is to rise in the scale of nations, we must brothers be. The consciousness of unity is the first essential in the building of a nation. That unity cannot be built merely by a bill. There must be something deeper than that. In the hearts and minds of all Canadian citizens there must be a realization, an acceptance of the principle of equality of people irrespective of their colour, race or creed. Without it, jealousies divide us and progress is impossible. Irrespective of colour, race or creed, human beings within the Dominion of Canada must be conscious of an equality with each and every other Canadian.
It is interesting to note that one provincial government recognizes that equality. I have a news item here from the Toronto Globe and Mail, which, at any rate, can scarcely be accused of C.C.F. sympathies. To its credit it says this:
Appointment by the Saskatchewan government of a Canadian-born Japanese as legal adviser to its economic planning commission again focuses attention on the dominion governments plan for wholesale deportation of Japanese from this country. This particular individual has been given a position of great responsibility. The colour of his skin may be different from that of most Canadians, but the fact remains that he is a Canadian and is entitled to opportunities of citizenship in keeping with his abilities, so long as there is no abuse of this right
There are persons of Japanese origin who can be expected to make a definite contribution to the country. They should be allowed to stay here and make the best of the opportunity of citizenship. There are others who are not to be trusted. There is ,no place for them m Canada and the government has at its disposal all the machinery required to send them elsewhere. But it will be a sad day indeed when a Canadian government expels people from the country on the sole grounds that it has the legal power to do so.
To illustrate further what I mean about equality among people, I am sure the person concerned will not mind if I tell of a little incident which happened in this fair city of Ottawa. Recently a lady entered a street-car

on her way home. It was a windy day, and the lady was wearing on her head what I believe is termed a babushka. She took her seat in the street-car and overheard another lady remark to her companion, "There is another foreigner." The lady with the babushka was none other than the only lady member of this house. This illustrates the sort of thing Canada must overcome. Within this nation everyone must be conscious of the fact that all people are equal. The people of Canada must subscribe to that principle. The basis upon which unity must be built and wnich must become a part of Canadian citizenship is a recognition of the fact that citizenship must carry with it these basic freedoms: freedom of speech; freedom of peaceful assembly; freedom to worship as one chooses; freedom of the press; the right to a speedy public trial; the right to hold property. Canadian citizens must also appreciate their obligations and duties. They must inform themselves thoroughly of those duties which are related to citizenship. The Canadian must learn his responsibility in connection with voting; he must learn that this is a part of the democratic process. There must be instilled in each and every citizen of this country a passion for education and enlightenment.
I am going to suggest to the government that it prepare a simple, easily read pamphlet outlining the rights of every citizen before the law and some simple, basic principles of legal rights within this country so that a citizen rnay know what his rights are irrespective of the price of the lawyer whom he may or may not be able to hire.
In closing, I wish to say that only upon this unity can Canada hope to reach its full status. Self-governing and free, we can then work out our destiny. It must be a destiny of peace, happiness and enlightened freedom. We shall then be able to make our contribution to brotherhood among men, to a heritage of freedom which is a right common not only to people in Canada but to people everywhere in the world. We realize and appreciate that to-day we are part of one world. We cannot hope to make our contribution to the welfare of that world until we have achieved brotherhood within our own nation. This bill can form the basis of a new conception of Canada; it can place Canada among the nations moving toward a common brotherhood of mankind throughout the whole world.


Mr. W. A. McMASTER (High Park):: Mr. Speaker, it is largely because of what was said this afternoon by the hon. member for Spadina (Mr. Croll) and the hon. member for Winnipeg North (Mr. Stewart) that I felt

Canadian Citizenship
I must say a few words and apologize for being one of British descent. I felt I also should apologize to the hon. member for Rosthern (Mr. Tucker) for being of Scottish descent. I do not know why the hon. member took a Scotsman and placed him beside an American before the court of naturalization. I could understand why he would choose a Scotsman, but I do not know why he should mention an American as well. I can only say that if the hon. member believed the Scotsman could be made to think any less of himself by having to appear before a court, he is very much mistaken. A Scotsman in his own quiet way will still think he is one of the best people in the world.
I did not take in very good part the lecture given us to-day by the hon. member for Spadina, who spoke of something being very wrong here in Canada. That did not seem to be entirely in accord with the eloquent way in which he told of many people having come here from his own and other countries, and having found this a land of opportunity. Surely he must recall that at the time they came here there was no citizenship act in force. But I cannot believe the fact that no such act was in force made Canada any worse to live in, or the fact that this act will come into force will make it any better. My ancestors came from Scotland when Canada was quite different from what it is to-day. My grandfather remembered when the battle of Waterloo was fought. He came to Canada, to Glengarry. I venture to say that Glengarry was not a very easy place to live in then; opportunity was a long way off. When he worked on the Rideau canal,.which passes near these parliament buildings, I venture to assert that he earned his money the hard way, because in those days they had no mechanical tools with which to work. Then he left the eastern part of Ontario to go to the southwestern part of this province, and settled in a virgin forest. For many years he lived in a part of the country where he had to carry on his back for seventeen miles the flour used by his family. They were really the people who made this country the land of opportunity to which people now come, and where those now entering enjoy the benefits provided by our forefathers. Then they proceed to lecture us as to what we should do about the laws of this country.
Neither did I take very kindly the statement made by the hon. member for Spadina that our boys overseas died without any citizenship and without any flag to salute. It is a wonder he did not go on and say they had no Canada day to observe. I feel sure the 10,000 airmen and the 17,000 infantrymen and others who died overseas believed they had a
flag to salute, and believed they were citizens of a great country. I can say to you now, Mr. Speaker, that I believe the flag they believe they did salute, and would want to salute, was the union jack, or probably the red ensign.
I can remember reading that the Minister of Reconstruction (Mr. Howe) said that when he as an engineer came to parliament he forgot about his engineering. Perhaps as a lawyer it is very easy for me to forget all about law. However, I believe that in an approach to any bill there are certain rules of interpretation which must be observed, and that those rules should be applied to the present bill.
What defect was it intended to cure? There must have been some reason for introducing the bill. In the debate there have 'been many eloquent speeches, perhaps the most eloquent of which was given by the Secretary of State IMr. Martin) who introduced the bill.
After all, no good and sufficient reason has been given. It is true they have mentioned that there was no particular act defining citizenship. But the hon. member for St. John-Albert (Mr. Hazen) has pointed out that there are three acts of parliament in which citizenship and nationality are mentioned. They are the Immigration Act, the Naturalization Act and the Canadian Nationals Act. This latter act was mentioned only incidentally by some hon. members, and by the Secretary of State.
I wondered what was said about Canadian citizenship when this act was brought into force in 1921, a generation ago. With that in mind, I took the time to look into the debates of that session, to find what was said. I find that the bill was introduced by the Right Hon. Charles Doherty, who at that time was Minister of Justice in a Conservative administration. The hint was offered by some hon. members, and possibly by the Secretary of State himself, that the real reason for introducing that bill was that it was required so that a Canadian should be a national, as distinct from a British national, in order to obtain greater responsibility before the league of nations.
In introducing the bill, the then Minister of Justice stated this, at page 645 of Hansard of that year.
But the purpose of the bill is to define a particular class of British subjects who, in addition to having all the rights and all the obligations of British subjects, have particular rights because of the fact that they are Canadians. I think we have always understood that without a specific statutory definition there has for a long time been such a person as a Canadian, and some outstanding indications v'hich justify a man in claiming to be a Canadian.
Canadian Citizenship

In other words, at that time the then Minister of Justice did not believe that it was necessary that they be made citizens by statute but believed that in fact they were Canadians.. Then he went on to explain the use of the word "national" instead of the word "citizen", the reason being that in the French version of the league of nations documents the word "ressortissant" more nearly approximated in English the meaning of the word "national" than any other word.
In the course of the debate, in which there was a considerable amount of discussion, and during which Mr. Doherty seemed to answer some questions forty or fifty times, he was asked by Mr. Fielding:
Is there such a thing now as a Canadian national? Is it right to say, "the following persons are Canadian nationals," or do we not by this bill make them so? It is a very fine distinction; f merely call the hon. gentleman's attention to it.
Mr. Doherty:	I think that both things are
true. There does exist to-day such a thing as a Canadian national: if there does not, then all those who are proud of the fact that they are Canadians have been attaching to themselves a designation that means nothing. It is equally true that this a'Et speaking the day it is passed, declares the fact to exist that certain persons are Canadian nationals. The moment this bill is passed-whether by virtue of this law or by virtue of any anterior thing is immaterial- * these people are Canadians.
So that again Mr. Doherty states that, he believes that they were Canadians, and that there was such a thing as Canadian citizenship prior to that act.
Later on, Mr. Marcil referred to the fact that when he went to France on one occasion he wanted to register as a Canadian, but it was suggested to him that he should register as a British subj ect. When that point was raised in the debate Mr. Doherty said:
I certainly think he would be entitled to . . . That is, he would be entitled to register as a Canadian subject.	.
. . . indeed, I thought he was, in the past. On any occasion when I have [DOT] been travelling and have been asked what my nationality was, I have said, "Canadian"-and it went right down. At the league of nations we from Canada were never known as anything else-and we were not anything else-than the Canadian representatives', and we sat at the table in the position officially designated "Canadian delegation."
Then, again, later on, Mr. D. D. McKenzie, who at that time was an outstanding Liberal, took part in the debate. As I recall, he was a doughty fighter. He, as a Liberal, criticized the bill introduced by the Conservative administration. in these words:
I do not think the good loyal people of Ontario will like the idea that we have forsaken Canadian citizenship with all that term meant, and 
that we are now nationalists if we take our definition as a nationalist from what Mr. Bour-assa and those behind him were preaching . . .
Then he proceeded to discuss a matter of domestic strife in the party which I shall not bother reading. There again he thought there was a Canadian citizenship, before that time r A~great deal has been said about the taking of the census. I went to some trouble to find out why a census is taken and, so far as I can discover, it is because the British North America Act says there must be a census every ten years. Those ten-year periods were in 1871	1881 and so on. I find nothing in the
British North America Act which says that any particular questions shall be asked. They wanted to find out only how many people there were in the country; at least that was the chief reason.
Yet, in 1941 I find that on the form which was handed the census takers there are two columns, one immediately following the other, the first of which calls for nationality or citizenship, and the country to which the person owes allegiance. I have not a copy of the instructions given the census takers, although I tried to get them. I was late in asking for them. However, if the government in office at that time-a Liberal government-said to those census takers that a natural-born Canadian was to be classified as anything other than a Canadian, it gave those census takers wrong advice.
The next column deals with racial origin. This would refer to Scotsmen, Irishmen, Englishmen, or Frenchmen, as the case may be. I believe the instruction there was that it should be traced through the father, rather than in any other way, a procedure which, of course, is not always fair.
I have mentioned one reason for introducing any legislation, namely, that there must be a defect. Since the introduction of this bill I have believed firmly that it is not necessary in order to establish Canadian citizenship. What is the reason for it? One of the other rules in interpreting a statute which the minister will know better than I do-	,


Paul Joseph James Martin: No, not at all.


William Alexander McMaster: -is to ask: "What is the true object and intent of this amendment?" In this case, what is the object and intent of the bill? Perhaps in this instance I can help the minister. I do not believe there is any . other reason in the world for introducing the bill .than that of having a codification, and to compel those who come from the British isles

Canadian Citizenship
to appear to declare themselves nationals in the same way as do the peoples from any other country.
It is no disgrace to anyone coming from a country not speaking the English or the French languages to be asked to appear before a court, because they must give proof that they understand one of those languages.
It is a fair thing to ask that that be done. One of the previous speakers referred to elderly people who would be naturalized although they do not speak the language. I know of a fine lady in Toronto who had not learned the language and1 who was naturalized. It was only right that she should be, because she is a good citizen. But, generally speaking, it is not unfair to ask anyone to learn either English or French before he becomes a citizen. This does not mean that he will necessarily be a good citizen. As I have said time and again, and as has been said in other countries, when naturalization is at stake the smart immigrant will learn the language quickly, whereas the good immigrant may perhaps find it difficult to do so. But this reason does not apply to British subjects.
I should like to deal for a moment with the question of intolerance. I do not think I ever heard any of the members of a certain political party praise anyone except those whom they call members of minority groups. I am bound to say that I have heard people of British stock say the same thing. I do not believe there is any justification for such statements. They have a strange idea of intolerance. Lately we heard of a case in Toronto where the owner of a rink refused admission to a certain boy. His friends rallied around; the case was brought to court, and the owner of the rink was compelled to allow that boy to go in. It has been said that this is a case of intolerance when, in, fact, it is just an example of tolerance. They will not stand for that sort of thing in Toronto. I cannot understand why anyone should1 think that we in Canada are intolerant. Reference has been made to this twenty per cent of our population, but we are not intolerant toward them in Toronto and we do not hear of this' intolerance towards them. It is strange to hear this sort of thing from other parts of the country.
Then we have heard of the wearing of a babushka. The hon. member for Qu'Appelle (Mrs. Strum) was referred to by bystanders as a foreigner because she wore a babushka. No doubt it was rather unusual, but the mere wearing of it would not make her a foreigner.
I am opposed to this bill on principle. I
believe it is proposed for one purpose only, a purpose with which I certainly am not in agreement.
Mr. G. A. CRUICKSHANK (Fraser Valley); Mr. Speaker, there are only fifteen minutes left before I adjourn the debate. I know the hon. member for Vancouver-Burrard (Mr. Merritt) is ready to give way to me because I am probably more conversant with what I am going to speak about than he is. I am not going to take up much time, but being a good Canadian I am interested in this bill. Being a good Liberal I. am glad to know that the hon. member for Vancouver South (Mr. Green) agrees with me. In this instance I think the hon. member is right. If he listened to me more often he would be right more often.


Howard Charles Green: I would be in trouble.


Mr. CRUICKSHANK:: The particular section in this citizenship bill with which I am concerned is section 10. I am not a lawyer, and I have listened to lawyers in the house talk about Canada day and every other kind of day. As I understand this section, a man who resides in Canada for twenty years automatically becomes a Canadian citizen-


Paul Joseph James Martin: Oh, no.


George Alexander Cruickshank: -whether or not he can speak the language. Not being a lawyer,
I do not know about that, but I am opposed to it. As I see it, this will discredit our minister, for whom I have the greatest regard and for whom I believe every veteran in Canada has the greatest regard. As my minister has said, "Not a Jap from the Rockies to the sea." I stand by that and I presume he stands by that. However, I am in position to go still farther.
The province of British Columbia is the gateway to the great Pacific, the greatest market that this country ever had. There are 400,000,000 people in China alone who offer a great potential market for Canadian products. I wish to ask the members of this house what they would think of the province that was the gateway to that great market if it had no minister in the cabinet. I am here to tell the house that no member of the Liberal party from British Columbia wall ever sit as a member of the government if he permits the Japs to come back to the coast. That is covering a lot of territory, but the minister gave me that opening. I am talking for the rest of the members. If any other private member cared to go into the government and permitted the Japs to come back he would never be elected as a Liberal from British
Canadian Citizenship

Columbia. I think the hon. member for Vancouver South will agree with me when I say that no Conservative member would be elected from our province who allowed that. I am making no comment about the hon. member for Vancouver East (Mr. Maclnnis).
A citizen of this country must have all the rights of law and all the privileges of a Canadian citizen. I am glad the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) is making careful notes of what I say because, added to what he has learned in Moscow, it will be an addition to his knowledge.


Mr. COLDWELL:: He will read it in Hansard in the morning.


George Alexander Cruickshank: I always have the greatest respect for and admiration and appreciation of what the hon. member for Rose-town-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell) says. I have never had the privilege of visiting Moscow. I renaember when the premier of the great province of Saskatchewan told off this house and said that a man such as the hon. member for Vancouver-Burrard had no knowledge of what they were doing at Dieppe because he had been there on a twenty-four hour visit on one occasion.
We are told by this C.C.F. that these Japs should have all the rights which they will have under this bill. I am not a lawyer, but according to the press this is what the hon. member for Vancouver East said, and I quote from the Regina Leader-Post of April 19, 1945. He may have been misquoted because my hon. friend, the leader of the C.C.F., is always being misquoted. The article is headed, "Would disperse Canadian Japs". It reads:
Angus Maclnnis, C.C.F. member of parliament for Vancouver East, said in an interview Wednesday night that Prime Minister Mackenzie King should follow up his proposal of August 4 last, that orientals be dispersed across Canada.
I am not going to read the whole article.


Mr. MacINNIS:: What did you come across that you did not like to read?


George Alexander Cruickshank: I will read it all; do not worry.	*


Angus MacInnis: I want it all read.


George Alexander Cruickshank: It goes on:
"All restrictions against loyal Japanese should be removed," he said- I
I want the hon. member for Vancouver East to bear this in mind.
-"except that they should not be allowed to return to British Columbia after the war."
Loyal Japanese should be permitted to settle anywhere in Canada without disadvantages or prejudices, he added. After the war. British Columbia, should be prepared to take her share. The Japanese problem before the war," he [Mr. Cruickshank.J
said, "was essentially a British Columbia problem, but now it is a dominion problem and should be handled as one."


Angus MacInnis: What is wrong with that?


George Alexander Cruickshank: The point I wish to make is this. If the hon. member for Vancouver East is sincere in his idea, and I give him credit for that, particularly as regards the C.C.F., I ask him, how can you give all the rights of citizenship to a man when you tell him what province or what municipality he shall live in? You cannot tell him where he shall live if he has all the rights of Canadian citizenship. But that is what the hon. member for Vancouver East advocated.


Angus MacInnis: No, it is not.


George Alexander Cruickshank: You will have your chance to-morrow.


Angus MacInnis: I am going to take it too.


George Alexander Cruickshank: I hope you do because I will finish up after you are through.


Angus MacInnis: No; you are shooting your bolt to-night.


George Alexander Cruickshank: The people I represent in British Columbia support me in my stand. The hon. member for Vancouver East,
I presume, represents the C.C.F. party which says that the Japanese must have every right as Canadian citizens, and there is a section of this bill which says that after twenty years' residence in Canada you may foe given all those rights whether you can speak the language or not. But you cannot possibly give a -man all the rights of Canadian citizenship and then tell him which province of which municipality he shall live in. To carry that to its ultimate conclusion, can you imagine anybody, Mr. Speaker, wanting to reside in Vancouver East when he could reside in the Fraser Valley? I want the hon. member for Vancouver East when he rises to speak on this question to tell me and the fishermen and the berry growers of British Columbia how the Japanese can have all the rights of Canadian citizenship if you are going to tell them which province and which riding and which municipality they shall reside in.
On motion of Mr. Merritt the debate was adj odrned.



LABOUR CONDITIONS

[Stage Direction]
Hon. IAN A. MACKENZIE moved that the house go into committee of supply.
Major James William Coldwell: May I ask what the motion is?

Labour Conditions


Mr. MACKENZIE:: I announced last evening that we would ask for permission to go into supply, to take an item in the Department of Reconstruction and one in the Department of Labour, and I am now asking for permission to call these items in committee of supply.


Major James William Coldwell: Before you leave the chair, Mr. Speaker, there is a matter I wish to raise. I should like to preface my remarks by saying that I think this practice of moving the house into committee of supply at three or four minutes to eleven o'clock, which does not give the members of the house an opportunity to raise any matter which they wish to raise, should be discontinued. But we have been doing this now for a considerable time. So far as we are concerned we are determined to take advantage of the motion, and we expect that the house in the future will be moved into committee of supply at a more convenient time. One of the departments mentioned by the minister was labour, but there is no guarantee that the estimates of the Department of Labour, if moved into supply to-night, will come before the house for consideration before ' Easter, and there are some matters dealing with labour problems in this country which should be considered by the house before we adjourn for the Easter recess. I propose, therefore, to raise some of them now.
Within the last week or so two delegations have met the cabinet and discussed with them the problems of labour, the Canadian Congress of Labour and the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada. Both of these organizations have pointed out to the government that conditions in the realm of labour in this countrj are far from satisfactory, and indeed far from the conditions that were expected when this government was elected to power in June of last year. .
May I point out to the members of the house, and to the government in particular, that the principal slogan which was used by the party in power during the general election of last June was: Jobs for all. To-day we find that there are-I was going to say, several hundred thousand; I would be within the mark in saying that, but I will put it in this way-a very large number of men and women who have contributed to the winning of the war in the field of industry and labour who are at the moment unemployed; and not only those who have contributed to the winning of the war in industry and other forms of labour, but thousands of veterans also . who have returned from overseas who are at the present moment unemployed and living on their gratuities.
The briefs which were placed before the cabinet by the two labour organizations I have mentioned were comprehensive, and I *was surprised at the reception they received when they were placed before the cabinet. I noted the reports in the daily newspapers of the reception which the brief of the Canadian Congress of Labour received from the Prime Minister and the cabinet. I have the brief before me, and I am .at a complete loss to understand why it aroused the kind of criticism that was made on the occasion of its presentation; for, after all, is it not a fact, for example, that we have no real plans as a nation for the orderly transition from war to peace, apart from the disposal of industries which were established by the government and which should have been retained for the making of needed civilian goods and the giving of employment to large numbers of people in Canada at this time?
The hour is too late. Air. Speaker, for me this evening to say what I intended to say and intend to say on this matter. There are several other important considerations which I wish to place before the house in connection with what is going on in the country in the realm of labour and the attempts that are being made by certain persons in Canada to carry on propaganda against labour receiving its rights in this country at the present time. But I see it is eleven o'clock, and I therefore move the adjournment of the debate.
Motion agreed to and debate adjourned.


[Stage Direction]
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant .to standing order.
Wednesday, April 10, 1946.