1946-06-14

FOREIGN EXCHANGE CONTROL


[Stage Direction]
Right Hon. J. L. ILSLEY (Minister of Finance) moved that the house go into committee at the next sitting to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to present a measure to make statutory provision for foreign exchange control now exercised- under the authority of orders in council passed under the War Measures Act and for that purpose, inter alia, to (a) continue the special exchange fund account in the name of the Minister of Finance established under the Exchange Fund Act; (b) establish a foreign exchange control board which will be the successor of the existing foreign exchange control board and have power, under the direction and control of the Minister of Finance, to regulate and control transactions in foreign currencies and related transactions and to manage and operate the exchange fund account; (c) authorize the Minister of Finance to make advances to the exchange fund account out of unappropriated moneys in the consolidated revenue fund on such terms and conditions as the governor in council may prescribe; (d) authorize the payment out of the exchange fund account of such remuneration to authorized dealers as the governor in council may prescribe.
He said: His Excellency the Governor General, having been made acquainted with the subject matter of this resolution, recommends it to the consideration of the house.
Motion agreed to.


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. ANGUS MacINNIS (Vancouver East):: I wish to ask a question of the Minister of Labour. I am informed that representations have been made to the minister by certain engineering firms in Vancouver whose business has been affected by the prolonged moulders strike. May I ask the minister whether he has any statement to make and whether the Department of Labour is able to do anything in the circumstances?


Hon. HUMPHREY MITCHELL (Minister of Labour):: The hon. member was good enough to send me notice of his question. The wartime labour relations regulations, P.C. 1003, are administered in British Columbia by the Minister of Labour for British Columbia. That was the original arrangement when the regulations were drafted. As a consequence, all industrial disputes in that province are dealt with by the conciliation service of the province except those which are ordinarily within the legislative authority of parliament, such as disputes affecting railways, navigation or shipping, and by arrangement disputes affecting the coal mining industry. The foundry dispute is being handled by the provincial department of labour.
Mr. MacINNIS1: May I ask a supplementary question? Has the minister been advised by the premier of British Columbia or by any official, that they consider this a matter that comes under the federal department of labour?


Humphrey Mitchell: I have no knowledge of that. I believe the statement I have made is a fairly practical one. It is obvious that the federal department of labour cannot get into every dispute in every province. I know that some newspaper editors, with little experience of these things, have expressed opinions to the contrary-


Angus MacInnis: They do on everything.


Humphrey Mitchell: -but that dispute is being handled by the provincial department, and I have no knowledge of any communication either to my department or to anyone else with respect to it.

Canteen Funds



CANTEEN FUNDS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. CLARENCE GILLIS (Cape Breton South):: I sent the Minister of Veterans Affairs notice of a question, but I see he is not here. Since the question has to do with the three defence departments, I will ask that it be taken as notice. Has the government complied with the recommendations contained in the fourth report of the canteen committee, which was set up in 1942, to arrange machinery for the allocation and disposition of canteen funds accumulated during the war?


Hon. DOUGLAS ABBOTT (Minister of National Defence):: Perhaps I might answer that question now. We are giving careful consideration to the whole question of canteen funds. I have asked the officers of my department to get me certain information in connection with them. Although I will not make any positive statement to this effect, I think I shall wish to suggest that at the next session of parliament we set up another committee on canteen funds, because the question is an important one. Substantial sums of money are involved. My present view is that it would be well to have the question considered by a committee of this house, but I do not think it would be possible to do it at this session. I make that statement in reply to my hon. friend's question in order that he and others interested may know the way we are thinking about it at the moment.


Mr. OOCKERAM:: May I ask the minister a supplementary question? What is to be the disposition of the funds of regimental canteens and clubs? Are they to go into the canteen funds?


Douglas Charles Abbott: That is a complicated question. As my hon. friend knows, some of the funds come from regimental canteens and some from other sources, and the matter would have to be considered as a whole. At the moment I am not in a position to say just what will be done with respect to these funds, any more than any others.



SERVICE PERSONNEL


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. STANLEY KNOWLES (Winnipeg North Centre):: I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Mines and Resources in his capacity as Minister of Immigration. On behalf of a number of Canadian

servicemen who have fiancees in Holland, Belgium, France or other European countries, may I ask the minister whether he will try to find a way to facilitate their coming to Canada at an early date? Is it possible to give these girls the same consideration as that given to overseas war brides?


Hon. J. A. GLEN (Minister of Mines and Resources):: The hon. member gave me notice of this question. The problem of the movement to Canada from the continent of Europe of the fiancees of Canadian servicemen is primarily one of transportation. A similar situation exists in the British isles, where many fiancees are awaiting an opportunity to proceed to Canada to join their intended husbands. It is not possible to make provision for the movement of fiancees on the same basis as the wives and children of servicemen. There are still approximately 25,000 servicemen's wives and children in the British isles, and 2,400 on the continent. These are being brought forward just as quickly as transportation is available and they are, of course, entitled to preference.
I can assure the hon. member that everything possible will be done to facilitate the movement of servicemen's fiancees. The situation is a difficult one. There are still many Canadians overseas who have been waiting for many months to secure accommodation for return to Canada; in fact some of them have been endeavouring to return since early last year. There will, of course, be an immediate improvement in the situation when the movement to Canada of service personnel and their dependents is completed.



ATOMIC ENERGY


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from Tuesday, June 11, consideration in committee of bill No. 165, relating to the development and control of atomic energy-Mr. Howe-Mr. Macdonald, (Brantford City) in the chair.
On Section 1-short title.
Mr. GREEN:: Press dispatches of this morning indicate that the United States government has released information about the use of atomic energy. Can the minister give a statement to the committee telling us just what the United States action means?
Right Hon. C. D. HOWE (Minister of Reconstruction and Supply); I am afraid I did not read the article. I saw the headlines and intended to read it, but I have not had time; therefore I cannot answer the question.

Atomic Energy Control
I know of no special release of information about atomic energy, although there very well may have been such a release. Canada, in any event, was not consulted in the matter.


Howard Charles Green: Can the minister indicate
what the expenditures in connection with atomic energy control will be during the fiscal year? I notice that in Great Britain an estimate was given when their bill was introduced into the House of Commons. The Canadian ministry must have some idea as to what the cost will be.


Mr. HOWE:: So far as the current fiscal year is concerned, there are two types of expenditure involved, one on capital account and the other on operating account. At the moment the two pretty well overlap, because there is still some work going on in construction, and also some on operation. The construction of the Chalk River project will entail a cost of about $20,000,000. I am not sure how much will be spent this year; perhaps it will be five or six millions, which will be a carry-over from last year


Howard Charles Green: The total capital expenditure on Chalk River will be $20,000,000?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes. The operating is estimated to cost $3,500,000 annually.


Howard Charles Green: Are there any other expenses involved in addition to those at Chalk River.


Clarence Decatur Howe: No, not directly on atomic energy. At the moment the activities of the Eldorado company are self-supporting, and I know of no expenditures outside of those I have mentioned.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 2-Definitions.
Howard Charles Green: This is the section which deals with various definitions. For example, it defines the board, the president of the board, and a member of the board. Has any consideration been given to having the minister, who is over the board, a member of the board itself? It does seem to me that there might be some merit in having a member of the government an actual member of the board. It would tie the House of Commons in that much closer with the activities of the board.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I suggest that it would not be good organization. I think the board should have some body capable of sitting outside its orbit to review its work. For example, in my department the deputy minister is never permitted to be a member of a board of directors, the theory being that the job 63260-157J
of the deputy minister is to see that the work of the board is kept in order. I rather think there should be a wholly outside body to check this work. If the minister was on the board there would be no one except parliament, or the government as a whole, perhaps, to check the work of the board.


The CHAIRMAN:: Order. May I point out to the committee that we are now dealing with the definitions. Section 4 of the bill sets forth the composition of the board. Probably this discussion would be more appropriate under section 4.


Howard Charles Green: Section 2 defines a member, the board and the president. Surely we are in order in asking questions such as I asked on this section; and I think we will get along a great deal faster if we are not tied down too rigidly on the sections. I believe my question was quite in order.


William Ross Macdonald: I am not saying it is not in order, but I should think any discussion as to who sits on the board should be taken up when we are considering the composition of the board. I thought it would facilitate the work of the committee if we discussed that matter when discussing the composition of the board. However, I am entirely in the hands of the committee.


Mr. HACKETT:: I want to ask the minister if he believes the rule-and I consider it a good rule-which precludes deputy ministers from sitting on the board of a crown company would necessarily apply to a minister. It seems to me that it would be a proper thing to have the minister on the board, because the company is administering and spending crown moneys. With the minister on the board the house could feel that it had a watch-dog on the board, and it would have a representative responsible to the house whose presence on the board would do away with much of the criticism that has been levelled at crown companies in that they are spending money without control on the part of the house.


Clarence Decatur Howe: It seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that the objection to having a deputy minister as a member of the board would apply with even greater force to the minister himself. After all, this board reports to a committee of the privy council, of which the minister is chairman. I never think it is very good organization, though many people would disagree with me, to have the president of a company act also as general manager. I believe the management should be separate, in a sense, from the policy-making branch, so that there may be a check on the manage-
Atomic Energy Control

ment without the policy-making body necessarily becoming part of the technique of management.


John Thomas Hackett: I do not want to press the argument unduly, but I submit that while the theory to which the minister has just given expression may be good in business, there is a difference between ordinary procedure in business and the procedure which should be followed when crown moneys are involved. Does he not feel that a distinction should be made where a crown company is spending crown moneys; would it not give parliament more security and the government a better opportunity to maintain control of the moneys spent if it were represented on the boards of these companies?


Clarence Decatur Howe: It occurs to me that there would be two or three objections. For example, sitting on a board of five the minister might be overruled and outvoted four to one, which would hardly be consistent with the line of authority. Then if a recommendation came from a board of which the minister was a member and it became the duty of the deputy minister to overrule the decision of the board, or to recommend to the minister that he overrule that decision, there would be some difficulty. I am strongly of the opinion that the board will function very much better if no minister of the crown is a member of it.


Howard Charles Green: Would that difficulty be overcome if provision were made in the bill that the minister be an ex-officio member of the board? That would give him the right to sit in at any time.


Clarence Decatur Howe: He would still be a member of the board, and I think the same objection would apply.


Howard Charles Green: If the minister has some direct tie-up with the board it brings parliament that much closer to it. As the minister knows, in the United Kingdom the minister of supply is the whole board; there is no one else. Everything is handled directly under voe minister. Perhaps we could get around the difficulty in the way I suggest.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I would call my hon. friend's attention to section 7 of the bill, which reads:
The board shall comply with any general or special direction given by the committee-
That is the committee of the cabinet.
-with reference to the carrying qut of its purposes and shall advise the committee on all matters relating to atomic energy which, in the opinion of the board, may affect the public interest.

In other words it is a board under the minister and subject to direction by the minister. I have never found that boards exceed their authority in spending money. The boards with which I am familiar have been most careful to make sure a project is approved before any expenditure is undertaken. The fact that the minister can change the personnel of the board at will, and the fact that the board must be subject to a specific direction if the minister gives it, I think set up a relationship better than would result if the minister were to act as one of the five members of the board itself.


Mr. CHURCH:: Section 2(a) provides:
"Atomic energy" means all energy of whatever type derived from or created by the transmutation of atoms.
In his able address on June 3 the minister mentioned the possibility of this energy being applied to civilian pursuits for the benefit of mankind, and he referred particularly to heat. The cost of producing this energy will be so prohibitive that in my opinion it will never be used to furnish heat and for other social and civilian purposes. The other day I quoted authorities to support this opinion. Electrical energy in Ontario, which in 1923 amounted to one million horsepower, at that time was the equivalent of twelve million tons of coal. I believe we have some 47,000,000 horse-power in Canada, only one-sixth of which has been developed for the benefit of the cities, towns and farms of this country. The atom will never accomplish anything like that. Fancy that, Mr. Chairman; in your own province the electrical horse-power developed in 1923 was the equivalent of 12,000,000 tons of coal. The other day I quoted the opinions of two of the greatest scientists in the world to-day on the cost and distribution of atomic energy. As you know, after every war some new invention comes along which causes people to have fabulous dreams of big things which, when examined from the scientific standpoint, do not measure up. If atomic energy would do anything comparable with what electrical energy has done in taking the place of coal, then we would have something to look forward to. The cost of using the atom to produce heat and the cost of transmitting that heat would be prohibitive.
There are other matters dealt with in section 2 to which I referred the other day. I do hope the real men of science will be in charge, not just gentlemen who may be presidents of universities, with administrative power, but men who know something about science itself. It is only in the last ninety years (hat science has discovered the power

Atomic Energy Control
inherent in coal, oil and falling water, and the great benefits resulting therefrom to mankind. Those three discoveries did more for science than any other agencies. After all is said and done, in the last ninety years science has won the admiration of the world. It argues from facts, realities and examinations. It makes discoveries after taking great pains, with care and toil. The work of many thousands is devoted to science; they are the missionaries carrying on their explorations for the benefit of mankind.
Science is not like politics, or some other branches of endeavour. It is not always up in the clouds; rather it argues from facts. If the atom can be developed as a producer of power, as have coal, oil and falling water, it will be worth while. I am very very doubtful, however, about that development because, as I said the other day, sometimes we have on these scientific research boards men who are just executives and who have no knowledge of science. They are appointed because they may have been the heads of some department or other. I should hope that the board would consist of Canadians, because people in this country have shown that they are second to none in scientific endeavour.
From his experience in this connection, I believe the minister knows more on this subject than most of us in the house. I do suggest to him that any development of atomic power, while commercially costly, would most certainly be an important factor in a country such as Canada which requires heat for ten months of the year. Does he hope that from atomic energy heat will be developed, as it has been from the other discoveries I have mentioned, so as to relieve the people of this country from much of the cost involved in heating houses, hospitals and other buildings? Does the minister hope that the very laudable object mentioned in his speech of June 3 will be attained?


Clarence Decatur Howe: I am hopeful that means will be found to convert atomic energy into usable heat at reasonable cost. When one stops to consider that a person could put enough plutonium in a capsule the size of a fountain pen to drive a battleship around the oceans for three years, it seems conceivable that means can be found to make use of atomic energy as valuable to the world as is the use of electricity at the present time.


Mr. FLEMING:: A few minutes ago the minister referred to a committee of the cabinet to which the atomic energy control board will report, of which committee I believe he said he was chairman. Who are the other
members? I suggest it would be particularly desirable to have the Minister of National Defence a member of that committee.


Clarence Decatur Howe: As I said the other day, the committee consists of the following:	The
Minister of Reconstruction and Supply, chairman; the Minister of Trade and Commerce, the Minister of Mines and Resources, the Minister of National Defence, the Minister of National Health and Welfare, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Agriculture, and the Minister of Labour.


Howard Charles Green: I note there is a definition of the expression "prescribed substances." It is my understanding that wide powers are taken to deal with the production and use of prescribed substances.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes.


Howard Charles Green: The definition reads:
"Prescribed substances" means uranium, thorium, plutonium, neptunium, deuterium, their respective derivatives and compounds and any other substances which the board may by regulation made under this act designate as being capable of releasing atomic energy, or as being requisite for the production, use or application of atomic energy.
Those last few words would seem to be wide indeed, because there must be many substances which could be regarded as requisite for the production, use or application of atomic energy. Is it necessary to have a definition as wide as that? Are the last two lines required?


Clarence Decatur Howe: We are only at the beginning of the age of atomic energy. At the present time the only element capable of setting up chain reaction is uranium. Uranium is the heaviest of the elements. The next heaviest is thorium. While it is not believed at the present time that chain reaction can be set up with thorium, it may be used to supplement uranium by using the two together. It is quite possible that improved methods of setting up chain reaction will be found, and that the metals lower in the scale of the elements may be used. Therefore it is felt the board should have power to extend the list of metals over which it may exercise control, as the advance of science may indicate.


Howard Charles Green: Yes, but the words to which I have referred go much farther than the matter of defining substances. They cover articles used in the production of atomic energy. For instance, those words could be construed as being applicable to machinery, and many other articles. I refer in particular only to the words "or as being requisite for the production, use or application of atomic energy."
Atomic Energy Control

It may be necessary to have those words, but it seems to me there is a question whether the definition is too broad.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I have no doubt the hon. member has the British act, which is considerably broader than ours. That act says that a "prescribed substance" shall mean uranium, thorium, plutonium, neptunium, or any of their respective compounds, or any such other substance as the minister may by order prescribe, being a substance which in his opinion is or may be used for the production or use of atomic energy, or research in matters connected therewith. The United States act contains a broader definition than this measure does. I suggest this provision is no wider than may be required to meet further developments. I can assure the hon. member that the board will not take action in respect of a substance unless it can prove to the minister, and through him to the house, that such action is justified.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 3-Board constituted.
Donald Methuen Fleming: While section 3 makes the atomic energy control board a body corporate, and gives it the right to contract in the name of His Majesty, and to acquire property, it does not contain any provision that such body corporate may sue or be sued. I suggest that in that respect it is out of line with the policy we have heard enunciated in recent days. Of course we are not dealing with companies which may be set up by the board; but when the board itself is a body corporate, one would think the same principle ought to be adhered to.
In bill 155, respecting the operation of government companies, there is provision in section 7 under which every company may sue and be sued in respect of any right acquired or obligation incurred by it, as agent of His Majesty. It is true that the atomic energy control board is not to be a joint stock company; it is to be a body corporate, and it would seem only reasonable and logical that the same principle should be applied, that it may sue or be sued.


Clarence Decatur Howe: My hon. friend will appreciate the fact that we are not organizing a business; we are organizing a corporation to deal with atomic energy. It is intended that that corporation shall have the same immunities as the crown in acting for the crown in connection with that subject. I have suggested to the house on several occasions that if the board intends to do business, for instance if it intends to run Chalk River as a business institution, a company will be set up under the Companies
fMr. Green.]
Act which would not enjoy these immunities. This is simply to give the board a corporate identity with immunities similar to those enjoyed by the crown.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I do not think the situation is completely covered by the minister's answer. It may be intended at the moment that the actual transacting of business in respect to the development of atomic energy shall be carried on by companies to be set up under a later section. Under section 3 certain powers are being conferred upon this board, which is to be a body corporate. Situations may arise which we cannot foresee at the moment, where the board would have dealings with individuals out of which contractual rights would arise. Section 3 provides that the board may contract in the name of His Majesty and that property acquired by the board shall be the property of His Majesty, but a situation might conceivably arise in which persons would acquire contractual rights against the board, and it would be a hardship to compel such persons to apply for a petition of right to' sue the corporation. If we recognize the principle that business is to be carried on through a corporation, we should recognize the principle that such corporations should be able to sue and be subject to being sued.


Mr. MACDONNELL (Muskoka-Ontario):: I should like to supplement the questions put by the hon. member for Eglinton by referring the minister to section 8, subsection (h), which seems to contemplate the actual carrying on of business and which would seem to be in line with what the hon. member for Eglinton has said about the impropriety of there being immunity.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Section 3 indicates that the atomic energy control board can act only as the agent of His Majesty, and that the powers exercised by it shall be exercised only as an agent of His Majesty.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: Is not that true of all crown companies?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Oh, no.


Howard Charles Green: Oh, yes.


Clarence Decatur Howe: They are not restricted.


Howard Charles Green: That is provided in the bill
we passed the other day.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I would refer the minister to section 7 of the bill we passed the other day respecting the operation of government companies. It reads:
7.	(1) Every company is for all its purposes an agent of His Majesty and its powers may be exercised only as an agent of His Majesty.

Atomic Energy Control
(2) Every company may on behalf of His Majesty contract in its corporate name without specific reference to His Majesty.
The minister's answer may have reference to the second subsection, but the first subsection makes it quite clear that every one of the companies set up under that bill, or under the research council act, shall act as agents of His Majesty.


Clarence Decatur Howe: A corporation set up under the Companies Act contracts in its own name, whereas this board will be able to contract only as an agent of His Majesty. In other words, if it buys land, it will buy it in the name of His Majesty, and the land will be registered in the name of His Majesty. There would seem to be no purpose and every reason against putting in a provision that this board may sue or be sued.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: Would it not be a corollary that there is nothing in this act which does apply to the carrying on of business or which empowers the board to carry on business in the ordinary course of events?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Under section 9 the board is to make regulations for developing, controlling, supervising and licensing the production, application and use of atomic energy. It has power to regulate those matters, but those are not matters of business. They are matters for the crown, and in carrying out its duties the board will be acting only as the crown. Would it not be better to discuss these matters under the proper sections? It is hard to jump back and forth.


Howard Charles Green: Section 3 is the one that provides for setting up the board. It seems to me that some consideration should be given to having an advisory committee, such as I referred to the other day when we were discussing the bill on second reading. When the minister closed the debate on the second reading he did not deal with the advisory board that is to be set up in the United States. They are to have an honorary board of nine members, presumably scientists or manufacturers, which will check the activities of the atomic energy control commission. Could not something of that type be set up here? The other night the minister told us that perhaps in time it would be well to have a committee of the house check the activities of our atomic energy control board, but how about an advisory board made up of civilians?


Clarence Decatur Howe: It will be remembered that the atomic energy control commission in the United States will take over more than two billion dollars' worth of property. They are to, take over a going concern which is spread over a great deal of territory. The position
here is quite different. We are setting up our board at the inception of the development, and there would seem to be no purpose in having an advisory committee. It will be difficult enough to get five men who can make any real contribution at this time, and I would not know where we could get nine more. While consideration has been given to the matter, the decision has been taken that at the present time, rather than having an advisory committee, the board will report to a cabinet committee.


Howard Charles Green: Is it not a fact that the advisory board in the United States is to be appointed because such tremendous powers are being given to the atomic energy control commission? Those powers may be so far-reaching that no one can tell just exactly how broad they will be, and that is why the advisory board is to be appointed.


Clarence Decatur Howe: The advisory board in the United States is not in position to regulate the authority of the commission. It simply advises on scientific and atomic matters.


Howard Charles Green: I know the atomic energy control commission is supreme at all times, but I understand that the advisory board is to act as a check.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Not as a check-simply to advise it on scientific matters; that is all.


Howard Charles Green: What about the United States plan of . having a military liaison committee? We have no provision for a committe of that type in Canada. It does seem that there would be some benefit in having our Department of National Defence tied up in some way with the atomic energy control board, particularly in view of the fact that uranium is found in Canada.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I think it would hardly be wise to try to duplicate in Canada the machinery in the United States. Their organization is quite different. For example, the members of the cabinet in the United States are not responsible to congress. They are not even members of congress; therefore the tie-up is quite different. My hon. friend will appreciate that the link between the army and the board is through the minister who is a member of the committee on scientific and industrial research. As a matter of fact one of the highest ranking army officers in this country, one of our only two full generals, will probably be a member of the board, if only for the reason that he is Canada's representative on the atomic energy commission. Therefore there is no trouble about a link with the army. It must be remembered that from the start and up to the present the
Atomic Energy Control

development in the United States has been carried on by the army, and carried on for the purpose of developing military weapons. That situation in the United States does not obtain in Canada.


Howard Charles Green: There will be-


Mr. BLACKMORE:: Mr. Chairman, would the minister take a seat further down the aisle so that we can hear him? Where he is now it is becoming a hole-in-the-corner discussion, and this sort of thing goes on until it becomes unbearable.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I shall be glad to do that. I apologize to my hon. friend, but the other seat was occupied when I attempted to move.


John Horne Blackmore: I thank the minister. We are deeply interested in this subject, and we simply cannot hear these Conservatives when they start whispering.


Howard Charles Green: Then there is no direct connection between the Department of National Defence and the atomic energy control board?


Clarence Decatur Howe: There is the same connection between the Department of National Defence and the board as there is between the Department of Finance and the board or between the Department of Reconstruction and the board or the Department of Agriculture and the board. The Minister of National Defence is a member of the committee to whom the board reports.


Howard Charles Green: I suggest to the minister that consideration be given to having a closer tie-up with the Department of National Defence.


Clarence Decatur Howe: We have one of Canada's two full generals as a member of the board, and reporting to a committee one member of which is the Minister of National Defence. What closer tie could we have?


Howard Charles Green: After all this may be a matter of life and death to the Canadian people.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Quite.


Howard Charles Green: And the uranium is in Canada. I am suggesting that there is some merit in having a military committee in liaison with the atomic energy control board. But under the proposed set-up there is no direct connection between the Department of National Defence and the board.


Clarence Decatur Howe: The United States Act provides:
There shall be a military liaison committee consisting of representatives of the departments of war and navy, detailed or assigned thereto, without compensation, by the secretaries of war and navy in such number as they may determine.
(Mr. Howe.]
In Canada we have the secretary of war- the Minister of National Defence-a member of the committee to which the board reports. Surely he can assign to the board through that committee any person he wishes.


Howard Charles Green: The minister has told only half the story. In the United States the secretary of war and the secretary of the navy, if they do not approve a decision made by the atomic energy control board, can go direct to the president and complain about the action of the board, and in that case, as I understand it, the decision of the president is final.


Clarence Decatur Howe: May I point out that the reason they must go to the president is that they cannot go to parliament. I am not sure that going to the president means any more than going to the prime minister here.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: Does not that mean anything?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Certainly. But in the United States it is the last resource remaining to the members of the cabinet.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: May I say this, following up what has been said by the hon. member for Vancouver South. The minister says that as things are now the board reports to a committee on which the Minister of National Defence sits. I presume by that he means the cabinet.


Clarence Decatur Howe: No; the committee of the privy council on scientific and industrial research.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: Is it not one thing to have a department of national defence with a definite responsibility for decisions taken and on the other hand only a vague or partial responsibility? Nobody wants the civil power to be omnipotent more than I do. But surely to have military people with definite responsibility as the developments go along is very different from their being only vaguely concerned with those developments.


Clarence Decatur Howe: My hon. friend will appreciate that the military are responsible for the defence of Canada at all times. It is proposed to appoint in the person of General McNaugh-ton a man who was chairman of the joint defence board of the United States and Canada and Canada's representative on the atomic energy commission of the united nations, one of Canada's only two full generals. Surely he would not close his eyes entirely to defence matters associated with atomic energy.

Atomic Energy Control


Howard Charles Green: It is admitted that there is need for the greatest secrecy with regard to some aspects of atomic energy. Is that not primarily the concern of the Department of National Defence? Are not they the ones who should decide whether certain information should be given out? Surely they are at least partly concerned with the decision as to what must be kept secret and what need not be. Is not the whole need for secrecy based on defence?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Perhaps it is based on defence, but the decisions are not taken on the military level. The united nations commission on atomic energy is not a military body.


Howard Charles Green: Why is there need for secrecy at all if it is not for defence purposes?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Perhaps it is for defence purposes, but all defence decisions need not necessarily be taken by military men. If my hon. friend will read the debates in the United States congress he will see that at first the May bill provided for military control, but they finally adopted the McMahon bill, which provided for civilian control.


Howard Charles Green: There is a big difference between military control and having a member of the military sitting on the committee.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Does my hon. friend suggest that there is a better defence authority than the man I have mentioned as Canada's probable member on the commission?


Howard Charles Green: I do not think the minister should get down to personalities.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I am not. I am getting down to rank, the rank of a full general.


Howard Charles Green: The rank does not always make the best man for certain purposes.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I give up.


Howard Charles Green: General McNaughton may not be there all the time. The question is whether there should be any closer tie-up with the Department of National Defence.


Clarence Decatur Howe: The government will take the responsibility for the membership of the commission, and I think it can be left to the government.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The dispatch to which the member for Vancouver South referred- a number of us have read it, but the minister did not have time to read it-gives new information with respect to atomic energy not only in the field of armaments but also in a good many other fields affecting humankind. One of the items in particular had to 63260-158
do with what it was now believed atomic energy might mean in the medical field, covering the entire question of health. We are^ so definitely on the fringe of the whole question that it would be a mistake to set up the kind of board or relationship that would imply that our only interest, or our main interest, was in the field of defence. If it is to be a boon to humankind it will not give all its benefits if it is to be regarded as a means to more efficient methods of warfare. It will have to be used in all these other fields. If I were going to make a case for any special relationship on the part of a particular department of government, I would prefer that it be with the Department of National Health and Welfare or some other department which is equally important from this point of view. I am not asking for that. What I am saying is by way of antidote to the remarks of the member for Vancouver South, and I am suggesting that it is far better to have the general all-inclusive kind of relationship which the minister is proposing. If a committee of the cabinet includes all the ministers whom the minister has mentioned-I listened closely to the list, and it embraced about all those who are involved in the matter-and if the board is similarly wide in its interests, then I suggest that this approach is the best one to make at the present time. It may be that later we shall have to weight it in the direction my hon. friend suggests, though I hope we shall find it better to weight it in the direction of other matters that are in the interests of the human race. In the meantime this general all-inclusive set-up which the minister proposes in the bill is a good one, and for my part is quite satisfactory.


Mr. SKEY:: Speaking of property in clause 3, and coupling that with defence, I would ask the minister if the government is making full plans to ensure the defence of Canadian mines, the atomic energy plant at Chalk River and other atomic projects.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes; that is taken care of.


Lawrence Wilton Skey: And adequate security
measures?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes.


Lawrence Wilton Skey: The commanding general of the army ground forces of the United States is reported in to-day's press as having predicted that the peace of the world depends upon the ability of the United States forces to move in and destroy the atomic energy plants and installations of any aggressor country in the near future. He says they will drop their ground forces; therefore we should

Atomic Energy Control

make sure that our own plants are adequately protected against a similar form of attack from beyond this continent.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Will the minister say something about the extent of the knowledge that is possessed or will be confided to the members of the atomic energy control board and the members of the cabinet committee who will be receiving reports from the board? In the fall session of this parliament the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply said, if I recall his words correctly, that he was the only person in Canada who knew the secret of the atomic bomb or atomic energy- one or the other. I take it that secret has been imparted to others within the limited official circle, or will be imparted to those who are to compose the board and the cabinet committee who will be reviewing reports from the board. Otherwise, on the one hand reports of the board will be of little value, and the review by members of the cabinet, on the other hand, will be valueless unless they share the secret knowledge which the minister said then that he possessed.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I think my hon. friend has gone rather far afield. If I made any statement it was that I was the only man in Canada, except for the Prime Minister, who knew that a bomb was in the making or that a bomb was to be dropped. I am sure my hon. friend did not know it, and I do not think he will find anyone who did. It is a very well kept secret.


Mr. GRAYDON:: Did the cabinet not know that?
Mr. HOWE. No.


Donald Methuen Fleming: How much knowledge is possessed or will be possessed by the members of the board? Will they have all the information in relation to atomic energy and the development of it? I take it these men will be appointed on the basis of their ability to sift out the knowledge thus far developed and apply it to continuing and increased uses. Will that be their particular function?


Clarence Decatur Howe: The board will have all the information there is. It will be in charge of the project, and will decide how much information other men may have; but I can see no possible way of limiting the amount of information they will have, or any reason for limiting it.


Donald Methuen Fleming: How many people within the official circle will have that information? To how many will it extend?
(Mr. Skey.]


Clarence Decatur Howe: I cannot imagine what information my hon. friend has in mind. People have all the information they need to do their jobs. That is about the status of the matter to-day.


Donald Methuen Fleming: By information I mean all the information available in Canada as to the secret of the development of atomic energy, and such knowledge as may exist as to its potential use for other purposes in the future: in other words, that part of the information which is secret, because very few of us know anything about it. I refer to the kind of information which the minister referred to several days ago as information which he felt should not be made available to the public or to a parliamentary committee. What I want to know is, how many people will be possesed of this secret information. Will it be confined to the cabinet and members of the board as well as a few top ranking scientists working under the direction of the board? How far will it extend?


Clarence Decatur Howe: I cannot imagine what information my hon. friend has in mind. Without such information as I have indicated, a vacuum would be created for lack of knowledge. The position to-day is that if a man has a job to do, he has all the information he needs to do that job. There are people. I presume, who have comprehensive information regarding the whole field, but I am sure I am not one of them. I am not one of those who can answer all question about atomic energy. There are people who know certain phases of atomic energy, and that will always be so. If a man could absorb everybody's knowledge in every field he would be the wisest man on atomic energy. I cannot think of any question my hon. friend could ask that I could not answer; nevertheless I would not want to be cross-examined by people who were posted by scientific men who were in need of more particularized information.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I do not think the minister has completely answered my question. There is certain information, perhaps a good deal of it, in relation to the development of atomic energy which is not public property. A good deal of it is highly secret, so secret that the minister the other day intimated he did not think it was wise that a parliamentary committee should be set up to review what might be a proper form of control of atomic energy, lest much of that information might leak out. My question is a simple one. How many people are going to be possessed of this secret essential information under the pro-

Atomic Energy Control
*posals contained in this bill? Obviously the members of the board must have it. I should think the members of the cabinet would need to have it. Certainly the members of the committee who will be reviewing reports from the atomic energy control board must have it. How many others must have the information which the minister does not think should be possessed even by a select committee of the house?


Clarence Decatur Howe: The science of atomic energy is there for all to read. As I said, it has been published in the Smyth report. The processes by which atomic energy is created are secret processes. I do not think this committee would be particularly interested in how the thing is done; they are interested in results.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Or lack of results.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Or lack of results. I suppose the people who built the pile know how it was built, and they probably know how it works. They may or may not know the whole story. A great many people know certain phases of this work; very few people know the entire chain, and there is no disposition on anybody's part to widen the circle of those who do know the whole chain.


Mr. COLDWELL:: Is it not a fact that there is confusion-


William Ross Macdonald: Order. The hon. member for Eglinton has not quite finished.


Major James William Coldwell: I have no objection to giving way, but I notice that others do not give way when I rise occasionally to follow up questions that I have in mind.


William Ross Macdonald: The hon. member for Eglinton was asking a question. If he feels that he has not received his answer, he should be allowed to continue.


Major James William Coldwell: I think he has received his answer.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I thank the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar for giving way. I wish to get this point cleared up; his point may be a different one. If I understood the minister's answer correctly, the members of the atomic energy control board are not necessarily to be possessed of the secret of the processes by which atomic energy is being developed. If there is to be that limitation on the knowledge of thfe members of this board, how useful is their work to be? It may be that the committee has taken an exaggerated view of the function of the board under the bill. Most of us understood that this board was to be a body possessed of all the information in this field, and was to give direction to development. If we have to take a nar-63260-I58J
rower view of the functions of the board, in the light of the suggestion in the minister's last answer that they are not necessarily to have all the information about the processes by which atomic energy is to be developed, then we should have further elucidation from the minister as to exactly what powers the board is to have.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Perhaps I can give an analogy. No doubt my hon. friend drives an automobile.


Donald Methuen Fleming: It is pretty nearly done
for now; I need a new one.


Clarence Decatur Howe: It is something that he does. Does he know how it works? I doubt whether he can take it apart and put it together again.


Donald Methuen Fleming: No.


Clarence Decatur Howe: There is nothing to prevent him from learning all that if he cares to do so; therefore the amount of knowledge he has of the automobile is just what he chooses to learn. It is exactly the same with this atomic energy commission. The atomic energy commission can direct the work of atomic energy just as my hon. friend can drive a car. If they want to delve into the construction of the pile, learn how to make a pile, no doubt that would be possible, though it might be a lifetime job. The amount of knowledge they will have is just the amount that they think it is necessary for them to take the time to acquire.


Donald Methuen Fleming: But that information would be available to them?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Certainly; they will be the people who will own the atomic energy plant.


Major James William Coldwell: Are we not rather confusing the matter of secrecy with the secrecy about the bomb, and secrecy as to the basis of atomic energy? It seems to me that they are two different things. It is pretty well known that a first-class scientist-and there are not many of them-in each country knows what is the basis of atomic energy. The council that we are setting up might conceivably consist of people who have not the scientific knowledge to understand the whole process. Once before I referred to a conference which I attended in December, at which there were many of these first-class scientists. They told us that there were not three hundred first-class scientists in the United States who were qualified to follow through the whole process of atomic energy. If there are not three hundred in the United States, there would be fewer than three hundred in this country, by a long way.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Not thirty.
Atomic Energy Control


Mr. COLD  WELL@: There is all this talk about secrecy, but you cannot keep secrets from scientists. As a matter of fact it would be wrong to prevent scientists from exchanging scientific information, because to that extent you would retard the development of science all over the world. Therefore when we talk about secrecy, I think that probably scientists could come before a parliamentary committee and tell us all there was to know about atomic energy.


Clarence Decatur Howe: About the science.


Major James William Coldwell: And when we were all through with the examination probably most of us would be as wise as we were before-


Gordon Graydon: It would not be the
scientists' fault.


Clarence Decatur Howe: And quieter.


Major James William Coldwell: I quite agree that this is a matter that has to be left to this commission, the best qualified commission we can get. Unless he devoted a great deal of time to it, I doubt very much whether the minister himself, an outstanding engineer, would be able to follow all the steps leading up to the production of atomic energy.


Mr. CASE:: How does the commission propose to control the production of uranium? There is a company operating now under the name of International Uranium. They are offering their stock for sale to the Canadian public, contending that they are the only private company in the world producing uranium. If they are producing uranium they must find some place to dispose of it. Will they dispose of their product to this government agency, or will there be a free market eventually in which this uranium can be disposed of? If there is a free market, then there would be competition in the development of atomic energy. Competition itself might not be too bad, but the fact remains that unless we can control this substance-[DOT] and I hope we shall be able to do it through the agency being set up by the government and by research, so that atomic energy will reveal itself as a great instrument for peace and for the welfare and general well-being of mankind-there will be difficulties. There are agencies in the world which are seeking out this latent power to be developed solely for destructive purposes. We have uranium deposits in Canada, and they are largely concentrated in the northwest territories. There is a private concern known as International Uranium which is going to seek to develop and produce uranium and to offer it for sale on the markets of the world, if I may use that term. If they cannot do that, where

will they dispose of their product? How will this proposed commission control the production of uranium?


Clarence Decatur Howe: No uranium has ever been produced in Canada except by the Eldorado Mining and Refining company, which is owned by the government. There will never be a free market for uranium in this or any other country. If uranium is produced, the government will take steps to acquire and control the product.


John Horne Blackmore: I hardly know how to ask the minister exactly what I have in mind, but the members of this committee ought to have some means of learning, confidentially if need be, one or two important matters. The first has to do with the possession by Canada of the actual knowledge of processes requisite to the creation of atomic bombs. We ought to know whether or not there are in Canada and available to this board men who have knowledge of all the processes involved. Then we ought to know whether we have in Canada the necessary equipment to manufacture bombs. When the news first came out I gathered that the United States had been entrusted with full responsibility, first of all for the knowledge of how to make the bomb, and secondly for the equipment with which to manufacture it. Now I see this difficulty: Suppose we should get into another war under conditions similar to those which obtained in the beginning of the last war, when we were involved as a commonwealth with a prodigious enemy and the United States were not yet in the war. Would this mean that we as a British commonwealth would not have access to atomic bombs which we could use in case of need, until we could get the United States into the war?


Clarence Decatur Howe: No one in Canada to-day knows how the United States make their bombs. No one has asked for the information. I am sure if they did ask for it, the information would not be given unless it was thought Canada needed the information, which I do not think it does at the moment. I have no doubt that having the explosive material which we make in Canada, our ordnance people could make a bomb of their own. I doubt very much whether they will do so, but that will be a matter for the military forces. I do not think it js particularly difficult to make a bomb, and I do not think it is necessary for us to have knowledge of how the United States make their bomb in. order to do so.


Mr. ZAPLITNY:: An interesting thought occurred to me when the minister said we have in this country the explosive material

Atomic Energy Control
from which the bomb could be made. Apparently it is being produced now. Can the minister tell us what is being done with it, how it is being disposed of?


Clarence Decatur Howe: It builds on itself. It is being used to build more. There is no disposable plutonium at the moment.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: It is being accumulated?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes, and we are building up the chain reaction. It will be used for experimental purposes, for medical purposes. For instance, there would be no objection to distributing some of the by-products of plutonium for use in medical laboratories for experimental purposes. I take it from what has been said here to-day the article referred to the fact that the Americans are beginning to distribute the by-product material for medical use. We shall do the same.


Lawrence Wilton Skey: Has the minister considered the appointment of the Minister of National Defence for Air to his board?


Clarence Decatur Howe: No.


Lawrence Wilton Skey: It seems to me that the air side of the use of atomic-energy for military purposes is just as important as the ground side, and I believe the government should give consideration to this appointment.


Clarence Decatur Howe: The suggestion was made that the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply should be a member of the board, and there *would be objections to that. The same objections would apply to any minister of the crown.


Lawrence Wilton Skey: I am referring to the committee.


Clarence Decatur Howe: The cabinet committee on scientific research?


Lawrence Wilton Skey: Yes.


Clarence Decatur Howe: That would be a matter for the cabinet to discuss. I dare say if the minister for air thought he should be on the committee it would not be difficult to arrange the appointment. It is not one of the prize appointments of the. government.


Mr. HAZEN:: Will the board to be set up under this act assist and foster private research and development in respect to atomic energy, or will it discourage private research and development and limit it to the board itself and its subsidiaries?


Clarence Decatur Howe: I would refer my hon. friend to section 9(a):
(1) With the approval of the governor in council the board may make regulations,-
(a) for encouraging and facilitating research and investigations with respect to atomic energy.


Howard Charles Green: But what is to be the policy? Is it to promote private research?


Clarence Decatur Howe: It says so. That is the mandate to the board.


Howard Charles Green: That is only the power to make regulations. Can the minister tell us whether governmental policy is to give private research every encouragement?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Oh, yes; certainly.


Mr. STEWART (Winnipeg North):: I should like to know if any requests have come to the government for these by-products for medical purposes.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I know medical science is looking forward eagerly to the day when these by-products will be available. I could not say whether definite applications have come in, but certainly we know where to put the by-products when they are available, which will be in a few months in the future.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: May I take it, then, that hospitals, colleges and so on will have priority?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Oh, yes.


Wilfrid Garfield Case: Is there a fixed price for the product? The minister says the market will be restricted, that the commission will buy the uranium which is available. Will the International Uranium company, which is listing its stock and producing this material, sell to this agency at a fixed price? Is that price fixed the same as the price for gold is fixed, or how do you measure its value?


Clarence Decatur Howe: I know something about the sale of stock of International Uranium, but I do not know anything about the sale of uranium by the company. Eldorado sells its uranium based on the cost of production, and I presume the largest seller would fix the market for anyone else.


Major James William Coldwell: Is there to be a free sale of uranium in Canada?


Clarence Decatur Howe: No. I said there would never be a free market.


John Horne Blackmore: It must be obvious to everyone that if Canada does not possess the knowledge necessary to manufacture bombs; if she does not possess the mechanical equipment with which to manufacture bombs, then in effect Canada is practically subservient to the United States.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Oh, no.


John Horne Blackmore: I hope not, but I am interested in this question. Already during this session a number of hon. members have
Atomic Energy Control

been exercised over changing the name of Dominion day to Canada day so that we can be more independent of Britain. We are supposed to do several other things in order to assert our sovereignty, but no one seems to be at all concerned about taking precautions to see that we do not lose our sovereignty to another power. Certainly we can lose our sovereignty completely if we have the United States right alongside of us possessing the knowledge and mechanical equipment to manufacture bombs and, as the minister said, in a position to use her discretion as to whether or not she will let us have the knowledge. If she thinks we ought to have it, she will let us have it. Surely that is a grotesque situation.


Clarence Decatur Howe: If I may interrupt my hon. friend, Canada is perhaps the only country in the world that is not that position vis a vis the United States. I said we had sufficient skill in this coimtry to design and produce a bomb if we wished to; we do not need to go to the United States for that information. I did not indicate that we intended to do so, but I said our ordnance people certainly could produce a bomb that would use the material *we make in this country. We have made it a point not to ask the United States for any information we do not need. We never ask for things that are likely to be refused, and I could not think of any good reason at all for asking the United States to tell us how to make the bomb. I think they would say, "Go and do what we did; find out for yourselves."


John Horne Blackmore: I feel reassured. There are some people who do a great deal of talking and worrying about non-essentials, but *who completely ignore things which are fundamentally essential. I have been accused in the house of being an imperialist-which is complete nonsense. I want to see Canada great and free in every respect. My reason for concern in this matter arises partly from the fact that we are entering a time of great danger; surely everyone realizes that. As a member of the house I feel it my duty to probe into the general situation sufficiently to find whether we are still a sovereign nation.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 4-Composition and appointment of board.
James MacKerras Macdonnell: What are the proposed salaries?


Clarence Decatur Howe: I cannot say. Salaries will be fixed by the governor in council, and I presume they will be on the scale required to

obtain the type of men needed. For example, the chairman of the national research council is ex officio a member. He would receive only one salary, his present one. I presume that others might be in a position where they would require no salary. But if a person considered desirable required a salary, I am sure the governor in council would fix one sufficient to attract him to the job.


Howard Charles Green: Is the minister in a position to say at this time whether the board will be operative, or merely advisory?


Clarence Decatur Howe: No.


Mr. McIVOR:: We can rest assured the salaries paid will not be much higher than those paid in the United States. I see in the United States act the general manager appointed by the president is to receive $15,000. I was surprised the amount was not larger. The director in the research division is to receive $14,000, or less than our cabinet ministers.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Sections 5 and 6 agreed to.
On section 7-Duties of the board.
Howard Charles Green: Would the minister explain this section?


Clarence Decatur Howe: It says:
The board shall comply with any general or special direction given by the committee with reference to the carrying out of its purposes.
I should think that is sufficiently clear. Then it continues:
-and shall advise the committee on all matters relating to atomic energy which, in the opinion of the board, may affect the public interest.
It has the responsibility for advising with respect to atomic energy in all matters which may affect the public interest.


Howard Charles Green: When the resolution was under discussion on June 3 the minister said, as reported at page 212 of Hansard:
The bill provides that the board will operate by directives.
I presume he was referring to section 7 when he said that.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes.


Howard Charles Green: And he continued:
-that all directives will be published and tabled in parliament by the chairman of the committee of the privy council to which my hon. friend referred.


Clarence Decatur Howe: The hon. member is discussing section 9. He will find provision for that when we reach that section.

Atomic Energy Control


Howard Charles Green: Section 9 deals only with the regulations passed by the board. Section 7 deals with directives given by a committee of the cabinet to the board. The minister said on June 3 that those directives would be tabled in the house.


Clarence Decatur Howe: No; the directives of the board.


Howard Charles Green: Then he went on to say:
As set out in the bill, it will be the duty of the chairman of the privy council committee to bring to the attention of parliament any regulations or orders issued by the board and to give parliament any information acquired by the board that it would be in the public interest to publicize.


Clarence Decatur Howe: That is correct.


Howard Charles Green: Is it the intention that the directives given by the cabinet committee to the board shall be laid on the table of the house?


Clarence Decatur Howe: No.


Howard Charles Green: The provision is merely for the regulations and orders issued by the board itself.


Clarence Decatur Howe: That is right.


Howard Charles Green: They are to be laid on the table of the house?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes.


Howard Charles Green: Is there any provision under which parliament can override or reverse any of these regulations or orders? It will be recalled that last year when we passed the National Emergency Transitional Powers Act a provision of the type I have indicated was inserted, under which parliament has power to override an order.


Clarence Decatur Howe: That is a negative resolution.


Howard Charles Green: That is the way it is described in the United Kingdom, but I have never heard it described as such in Canada. Would it not be well to have some such provision inserted in this bill?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Parliament is being asked to pass the bill. If it desires, parliament can repeal the act. I cannot think that the regulations of the board would be such that they would require the action indicated. My hon. friend has referred to the National Emergency Transitional Powers Act. That is the only act ever passed by this parliament which required a negative resolution. If such negative resolution were included in this measure, then I cannot think of any measure which would not require it.


Howard Charles Green: There is only one purpose for a provision of that kind, and that is to give parliament more control over the actions of a board. The board indicated here is given very wide powers. It may be almost completely out of the control of parliament, and I suggest we should consider the suggestion of giving power to parliament to override regulations or orders issued by the board. For example, it may make a drastic order respecting the use of property. Would it not be well to give parliament the right to override an order or regulation passed by the board and laid on the table of the house?


Clarence Decatur Howe: I think there is a distinction between this and that done in respect of the National Emergency Transitional Powers Act. In that instance the governor in council was given permission to legislate. This board has no such power; it operates under the direction of a minister. It has not as much power as certain boards I could mention. For instance, it is not as independent as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which is not a board under a minister.


Howard Charles Green: It might be a good idea
to have some control over the broadcasting corporation, too.


Clarence Decatur Howe: My own view is that it is
unwise to set up boards which are not under ministers. Nevertheless, parliament has done so frequently. This board is under a minister. That minister is responsible to parliament. He holds a seat in and is a member of parliament. I suggest the situation is quite different from that which obtains in connection with the National Emergency Transitional Powers Act.


Howard Charles Green: In Great Britain that power has been given, namely that parliament can override a regulation passed by the minister.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I know.


Howard Charles Green: The other point I would
mention is that the bill says the board shall advise the committee on all matters relating to atomic energy which, in the opinion of the board, may affect the public interest. Should that not be "in the opinion of the committee"?


Clarence Decatur Howe: The committee might not
know about it.


Howard Charles Green: Should not the board report everything to the committee?


Clarence Decatur Howe: What is "everything"? The
committee can ask the board for any information it likes, anything it wishes to have. That is one privilege. The other obligation on the board is to inform the committee of every-
Atomic Energy Control

thing coming before them which may affect the public interest. I do not think the hon. member would suggest they should tell everything; that would be a heavy responsibility to place on any man.


Howard Charles Green: Would it not be wiser to
leave out the words "in the opinion of the board", so that the section would read:

shall advise the committee on all matters relating to atomic energy which may affect the public interest.


Clarence Decatur Howe: How could the board be sure? That would be putting upon the board an obligation which the board might be reluctant to accept, to tell everything that in the opinion of the board would affect the public interest. The board might think a certain thing did not affect the public interest and then find later that it did. I do not see how one could place an obligation of that kind upon the board.


Major James William Coldwell: It would have to exercise its opinion anyway.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: The wording of section 7, coupled with what the minister said a moment or two ago in answer to a question, raises a question in my mind which may have some substance. Is it the board or the committee that would exercise initiative? Does the board go ahead subject to questioning by the committee, subject to suggestions by the committee and complying with any general or special directions by the committee? In the answer given by the minister I got the impression, perhaps wrongly, that the board sat back and waited for the committee to direct it to do things. If I am wrong, then I suggest that the wording of section 7 does not seem to be apt. This may not be a substantial point, but it seems to me that the way the board is instructed is a substantial point.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I have said on one or two occasions that the position of this board is analogus to the position of the national research council. The national research council is the driving power. The committee of the cabinet does not tell the national research council what kind of activity it shall carry on. That is bound to be the case with a board that is spending its full time on a certain problem as against those people who are spending only a small fraction of their time on it.


Major James William Coldwell: Does not section 8 answer that question? It says that the board may undertake. Is that not a partial answer to the question?


Clarence Decatur Howe: I think so.


Mr. STIRLING:: Several times the minister has referred to the fact that the board is under the minister. The bill does not describe the minister. True, it relates to the chairman, who must be the minister, but does that mean that the board in a sense will be under the direction of the minister who at the time being is the chairman of the board?


Clarence Decatur Howe: That is right.


Mr. HERRIDGE:: The commission set up under the security council for the control of atomic energy is sitting in New York. The press to-day reports that the commission is considering the following specific proposals: First, extending to all countries the exchange of basic scientific information for peaceful work; second, the control of atomic energy to an extent necessary to ensure its use only for peaceful means; third, the elimination of atomic weapons and other major weapons which could be used for mass destruction and, fourth, effective safeguards by way of inspection and other means. I should like to ask the minister from whom our representative on that commission would get his instructions. Would he receive them from the board, from the committee or from some other body? What would be the chain of responsibility between our representative on the commission and the government of this country?


Clarence Decatur Howe: The representative is advised by a scientific panel, but he is instructed by the committee of the cabinet. The committee of the cabinet met with our delegate only three or four days ago; written instructions to the delegate were approved by the cabinet and the delegate proceeded with those instructions.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 8-Powers of the board.
Alistair McLeod Stewart: Perhaps what I have to say might more properly come under section 12, but in case it does not I am bringing up the matter under this section. I think the committee realizes the dangers involved in working with fissionable material, despite the care that is taken. Two or three weeks ago an accident took place in New Mexico. A young Winnipeg scientist, Doctor Louis Slotin, was working with several other physicists and some fissionable material was released. This young man placed himself between that material and his companions. He went farther than that; he seized it with his own hands and put it out of harm's way. He saved their lives but unfortunately he himself died. He was one of the most brilliant young scientists that Canada has pro-

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duced, and now he is lost to us. My question arises out of such a tragedy happening here. Will the board have power to ensure that relatives will not suffer economically through the death of one upon whom they are dependent?


Clarence Decatur Howe: There is no way of compensating for the type of accident my hon. friend has mentioned. That is comparable with an accident that would happen to a workman in a hazardous occupation. For instance, men were killed in our explosives plants during the war, not many fortunately, but their dependents received only the compensation that is provided by law under the workmen's compensation acts. The board will have a retirement fund, but I doubt if any special provisions will be made for accidental death. Accidents occur everywhere, but I do not think our accident rate at Chalk River is likely to be any greater than the rate in other classes of hazardous occupations.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: Take a young scientist who is married, perhaps with one child. He is killed because of an accident and he may have very slight financial resources. What responsibility will the board or the government take to see that his widow and child do not suffer?


Clarence Decatur Howe: There is no special provision. A young scientist is just as likely to be killed in an industrial accident in a private laboratory as in a public laboratory. A private firm might make certain compassionate allowances and the government has been known to do that as well. I think it is impossible to make provisions which will ensure that the family will not suffer when the breadwinner is killed.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: Are scientists who have to work closely with this material required to pay an additional premium for life insurance?


Clarence Decatur Howe: I am not sure, but my impression is that it is not regarded by life insurance companies as a hazardous occupation.


Mr. MacNICOL:: Are they not covered by the workmen's compensation laws of the provinces?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes.


John Ritchie MacNicol: Deplorable as the accident would be, their survivors would receive 100 per cent compensation.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: The pension is just as deplorable.


John Ritchie MacNicol: A hundred per cent pension would be comparable with the annual salary of the scientist. I have had a lot to
do with compensation matters. In the days when I was in business a machinist would be paid perhaps $6 or $7 a day. In the event of his being killed in the plant his wife would be compensated with an amount equivalent to that.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: Oh, no.


John Ritchie MacNicol: She would get a 100 per cent pension.


Angus MacInnis: Not 100 per cent of his wages.


John Ritchie MacNicol: She would get a substantial pension and all other expenses would be taken care of. Everyone deplores the death of a workman, especially those who employ him and know his value. The only means we have to-day of taking care of accidents of that kind is the workmen's compensation act.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I should like to ask a couple of questions with reference to the powers given to the board under section 8 (a) to undertake research. Am I right in understanding that the actual research will be carried on through the instrumentality of the national research council or by a body set up by the board itself? Would the minister indicate if patents have already been issued with reference to any of the processes involved in the production of atomic energy and, if so, whether they are issued in the name of His Majesty or otherwise?


Clarence Decatur Howe: The work is being undertaken both directly by the board and indirectly. At Chalk River there are extensive laboratories which are now operated by the research council but which will probably be operated by the board. In addition, every university in the country is doing certain work in the atomic energy field, some of which is financed by the board in whole or in part.


Donald Methuen Fleming: My second question was with respect to patents.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I cannot say whether patents have been taken out or not. They will be taken out if patentable discoveries are made.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Will such patents be
taken out in the name of the board or in the name of His Majesty if there are developments in the field of atomic energy? I ask that question in view of what the minister has just said about the work being carried on under the direction of the board instead of the council.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Section 13 provides:
All discoveries, inventions and improvements in materials, methods, processes, apparatus or machines, made by a member or any number of members of the technical staff of the board or of a company shall be vested in His Majesty.
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In other words, they become the property of His Majesty. I am told that certain applications for patents have been made arising out of the work of the Montreal laboratory.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: Would the minister give a little more information with respect to paragraph (i), which provides that the board may grant:
. . . scholarships and grants in aid for research and investigations with respect to atomic energy, or for the education or training of persons to qualify them to engage in such research and investigations.
Would the minister inform us what plans he has in mind to implement this provision?


Clarence Decatur Howe: It has been the custom of the research council ever since its inception to offer scholarships in universities for students to pursue certain lines of research. The board would have similar authority to set up scholarships to encourage young science students to pursue certain lines of investigation in the universities.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: Will that be done soon?


Clarence Decatur Howe: It is being done now.


Major James William Coldwell: There is the same objection to section 8 that we made to the bill dealing with the control of patents. Section 8 (h) provides that the board may:
. . . with the approval of the governor in council license or otherwise make available or sell or otherwise dispose of discoveries, inventions and improvements in processes, apparatus or machines, patent rights and letters patent of Canada or foreign countries acquired under this this act and collect royalties and fees thereon and payments therefor.
I realize that the safeguard in that clause is "with the approval of the governor in council". I presume that the public interest would be carefully studied by the governor in council before the sale was made, but it seems to me that at this stage there should be some limitation on the sale. I would quite agree that we might sell to any one of the united nations a patent that had been developed in our own organization, but I do not think it is wise to contemplate the sale of important patents for the exclusive use of an organization within Canada. My view is that we should not sell but license the use of these patents. I am not suggesting for one moment that under circumstances which now exist in relation to industry we should not make available to industry discoveries that are important in our economic life to improve it. What I am suggesting is that any discovery of that sort should be made available 
to anybody in Canada who would use it in the public interest. We should not sell it to a particular group which might give them in this particular field such an advantage over anybody else as to upset our economy. I realize that the safeguard is "with the approval of the governor in council", but I should like to see the sale limited to other members of the united nations. We advanced that point the other evening in connection with the control of patents, and I think it is even more important in this case. I quite agree that we should license or make available, but we should not sell the exclusive right to a patent within Canada itself. That is the point I am making.


Clarence Decatur Howe: It is always dangerous to set up prohibitions unless they are necessary. In this case the recommendation would come from the board, which itself is charged with the responsibility of safeguarding the public in matters relating to atomic energy. Then the board has to recommend it to the committee, and more than that that it must be recommended by the committee to the full cabinet. So that you have your safeguards there.


Major James William Coldwell: It depends on the
cabinet, of course.


Clarence Decatur Howe: It depends on the board, plus the committee, plus the cabinet.


Major James William Coldwell: Yes.


Clarence Decatur Howe: My argument is that the safeguards are ample without setting up a prohibition. We have also the fact that over the years no patent has been sold in Canada by the research council.


Howard Charles Green: There are two points I would bring to the attention of the minister. The first is this. What about a patent taken out by a private individual or private firm?
I see no power given under this bill to the atomic energy control board to take over such patents. I think there is that power in the United Kingdom bill. In the United States a private firm cannot take out a patent on anything having to do with the development of atomic energy.
My second question has to do with the right to inspect. In the United Kingdom bill, in sections 4 and 5, power is given to obtain information on materials, plant and processes, and power of entry and inspection is also given to the minister of supply. I do not think any such power is contained in this bill. It seems to me it might be helpful to the atomic energy control board to have that power.

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Clarence Decatur Howe: Paragraph (c) is very broad.
It reads:
The board may,-
(c) with the approval of the governor in council acquire or cause to be acquired by purchase, lease, requisition or expropriation, prescribed substances and any mines, deposits or claims of prescribed substances and any works or property tor production or preparation for production of, or for research or investigation with respect to, atomic energy.


Howard Charles Green: That does not deal with patent rights. It refers to works or property. There is no word there covering the taking over of private patent rights.


Clarence Decatur Howe: A patent right is surely property.


Howard Charles Green: No. I submit that the
minister's legal advisers have not given him the proper interpretation of that clause. If the intention is to have the power to take over private patents having to do with the development of atomic energy, I suggest that that power be written into the bill specifically. I do not think anyone can contend successfully that these words "works or property for production or preparation for production of, or for research or investigation with respect to, atomic energy" would entitle the board to take over any patent rights.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I think it is far-fetched to believe that there would be private investigation, entirely independent of the board, which would lead to patent rights which the crown would wish to take over. There is sufficient latitude so that a man would have material to work with on his own without restrictions from the board, and he would be quite entitled to keep his patents. I do not think we would want to say at this time that the crown would own every patent relating to atomic energy.


Howard Charles Green: But suppose the board
wanted to take over certain patent rights. How could they do it?


Clarence Decatur Howe: I think paragraph (e) of section 9 would cover that: "for the purpose of keeping secret information respecting the production, use and application of, and research and investigation with respect to, atomic energy, as in the opinion of the board, the public interest may require." In other words, they could stop publication of a patent.


Howard Charles Green: That is under the next section, which provides for regulations, and that particular provision deals only with keeping information secret. But that still does not give the board the right to take over patent rights. I am trying to help the minister and I suggest that he give further consideration
to having a section added. It certainly is not clear under either of the clauses that he has read that the board will have the power to take over patent rights. The Americans have gone so far as not to allow any person to obtain a patent having to do with the development of atomic energy.


Major James William Coldwell: Where it is not clear it should be clarified.


Clarence Decatur Howe: My officers advise me that the question of acquiring patents was considered and it was felt that to put a prohibition for all time on the acquisition of patents resulting from research carried on privately would be to discourage that type of research unnecessarily. It is felt that paragraph (e), which provides for secrecy, would be sufficient. Presumably no patents would be issued without the approval of the board in the light of the secrecy provision as long as that was necessary. We all hope that the necessity for secrecy and for the control of patents will have a time limit. We trust that in ten years' time everyone will have all the scope he requires in the field of atomic energy.


Howard Charles Green: I was not suggesting a prohibition. What I am suggesting is that the control board should be given the power to acquire private patents if it wishes to take them over.


John Ritchie MacNicol: What is the objection to the hon. member's suggestion?


Clarence Decatur Howe: I do not think there is any objection to it.


John Ritchie MacNicol: It would not weaken but would rather strengthen the provision.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I will ask my officers to see where that proviso can best be inserted in the bill. The reason it was not included originally was that it was thought it might discourage private invention which might be entirely independent of the board. There would be no objection to putting it in if it were regarded as desirable.


Howard Charles Green: What about the power to inspect? The minister has said nothing in reply to my question.


Clarence Decatur Howe: That is covered by the broad powers with respect to property as set out in paragraph (c): "Works or property for production or preparation for production of, or for research or investigation with respect to, atomic energy".


Mr. McCULLOUGH (Assiniboia):: I would again call the attention of the committee to a section which has already been referred to by the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar, namely
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that, with the approval of the governor in council, the board may license or otherwise make available, "or sell or otherwise dispose of discoveries, inventions, processes, apparatus or machines." I wish to say in the strongest terms possible that I am in disagreement with the words "or sell". This is of such importance, and situations may arise in such a way that if that portion of the clause were left in with the words "or sell", the country might be prejudiced. I suggest that they might very well be left out. I consider that the exclusive right which would be given to any company under the words "or sell" would be too great. Therefore I recommend that those words be struck out, because the other portion of the clause would give power to make available to companies the information which scientists might impart to us. I respectfully submit this to the committee.


Clarence Decatur Howe: That subject has been discussed at some length and we have already pointed out the safeguards. Although the power to sell has always been present in the Research Council Act, no licence has been sold for use in Canada. It is difficult to know what may develop. There may be an exchange of patents with another country. We might sell patent rights to a country and purchase in return certain other patent rights. In my opinion the provision to sell should be retained. It has been put in the bill for a purpose, and the safeguards are adequate to ensure that the power to sell is not misused.


Edward George McCullough: I hate to repeat, but once such rights or information were sold to any company, it would be difficult to rescind these privileges. I submit that the people's government should have the right to control such inventions and patent rights, and I insist therefore that the words in clause 8 to which I have referred should be deleted.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 9-Regulations.
Gordon Graydon: It is provided that "with the approval of the governor in council the board may make regulations governing cooperation and the maintenance of contact, through international organizations or otherwise, with scientists in other countries or with other countries, with respect to the production, use, application and control of, and research and investigations with respect to atomic energy." The only question I have to raise there is whether or not it is good policy to give powers to this board to deal with what seems to be governments of other countries. It may be that the minister will not assent

to that interpretation of this particular paragraph. But if there are to be dealings with other governments, then this government is the only agency through which this country should deal with other countries on the government level. Would the minister clarify this paragraph for us, because it is not too clear as it stands?


Clarence Decatur Howe: There might be an arrangement between governments covering atomic energy, possibly arising out of the atomic energy commission of the united nations. The bill simply specifies that this body is the body which would issue rules which would carry into effect in Canada such regulations as might be agreed upon with other governments either through the united nations organization or by direct treaty between these governments. I cannot read into the paragraph the implication that this board would deal with boards of other countries. That is not the intention and I think it is not indicated by the wording of the paragraph.


Gordon Graydon: In other words, the minister assures us that there will be no interference with the dealing which normally takes place on the government level between the governments or various boards involved.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes.


Grote Stirling: Most of the subparagraphs indicate that these regulations are made for encouraging and facilitating research and so on, but paragraph (b) refers to developing. Does that mean that the board will proceed to the actual work of developing?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes. It gives the board that power to develop.


Stanley Howard Knowles: To make regulations.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Developing the use of atomic energy. I think that is a reasonable interpretation. It is to make regulations; that is right. The board may make regulations.


Grote Stirling: It does not necessarily envisage the board actually doing the work?


Clarence Decatur Howe: No.


Gordon Graydon: May I ask the minister another question arising out of the previous one. As a country we are one of the twelve nations comprising the atomic energy commission in the international field. Some weeks ago an announcement was made that General McNaughton would be Canada's representative on the atomic energy commission. To whom would General McNaughton be responsible? Under what ministry would Gen-

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eral McNaughton find his jurisdiction? To what department would his responsibility be attached?


Clarence Decatur Howe: External Affairs.


Gordon Graydon: He will report to External Affairs in each instance. Will the board which is now being set up have any direct liaison with the atomic energy commission other than through the Department of External Affairs.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I mentioned here that it is the intention to have Canada's representative on the atomic energy commission a member of the board, but it is the duty of External Affairs to pass on communications of the type which would come from our representative on the atomic energy board, to the interested departments. In other words, if there is any agency of government which requires to be advised of work of that kind, that department would be so advised.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 10-Board may procure incorporation of companies.
John Ritchie MacNicol: Would the minister, if he thinks it desirable to do so, give the committee some idea of the number of companies that he has in mind setting up? The sentence reads:	"One or more." If more than one,
the number; for that matter, would he tell the committee what companies may be set up?


Clarence Decatur Howe: I have in mind only two
possibilities, and they are only possibilities. One is that it might be decided to put Eldorado, which is an existing crown company, under this board, and it might be decided to operate the actual industry at Chalk River as a crown company under the board. I can think of no other possible crown company.


John Ritchie MacNicol: There was another question I intended to ask, but it was answered by the previous bill. It had to do with whether or not the government intended to set up these companies under a separate bill, by statute.


Clarence Decatur Howe: It was provided not by statute but by an order in council. The previous bill required an order in council.


John Ritchie MacNicol: The minister is going
to follow the same procedure in this case?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes.
May we revert to section 8, Mr. Chairman? I ask my colleague, the Minister of Public Works, to move that paragraph (c) of section
8 be amended by inserting after the word "substances" in line 4 of paragraph (c) the words "and patent rights relating to atomic energy."


Mr. FOURNIER (Hull):: I so move.


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
Grote Stirling: With regard to section
10, I want to record once more our strong objection to such power being in the hands of the board with the approval of the governor in council. In the other bill our arguments thereon were presented, and they did not receive the support of the committee; but I should not like this to pass without our objection being again recorded. Our opinion is that if such a crown company is set up it should be set up by a charter which it receives from parliament.


Lawrence Wilton Skey: I should like to ask a question on section 10. My question arises out of newspaper reports that the Manhattan project and the atomic energy plant in the United States are about to be unionized, or that the C.I.O. and the A.F. of L. have gone in with the purpose of organizing the employees in these projects. Where in Canada's atomic energy projects do the civil service leave off and the companies, projects or corporations, which can be subject to unionization, commence?


Clarence Decatur Howe: There is nothing to bar any government activity from being unionized if the employees wish to join a union. To-day all crown companies are unionized.


John Ritchie MacNicol: As a rule it does not
hurt a company to be unionized. In my experience I have found that good unions have done splendid work as far as the operation of companies is concerned. A union properly operated and conducted in harmony with the management of a company can do great good. I have found that such unions set as their objective the keeping of the company in operation, if at all possible, and the workers employed. If they give cooperation to the company their working conditions are bound to be better than they otherwise would be, and their protection more assured. In my experience I have found that good unions have done a great deal along those two lines, keeping plants in operations and providing greater safety and security for those employed therein.


Gordon Graydon: I was interested in the minister's statement with respect to employees of government corporations having the right
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to unionize. Does that apply to every corporation set up by the government that employs help of various descriptions?


Clarence Decatur Howe: I can think of no exceptions.


Gordon Graydon: Perhaps I might ask the minister a question which I have asked on one or two previous occasions, to which I have not obtained a clear answer. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, for instance, is a corporation set up by the government. Have its employees the right to unionize, or have they not? At one time they had not; I think the government would not permit them to form a union. I am not informed as to the latest developments, but it would seem strange if the employees of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation should not have the right to unionize, while the employees of these crown companies were treated in a different way. I should be glad to have that point clarified by the minister.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I suggest that my hon. friend will have to ask a minister who has some knowledge of the situation. I would remind him that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is not a board under a minister. It is an autonomous board, reporting to parliament through a minister. I have not been in touch with the affairs of the corporation for many years; therefore I could not answer the question.	.


Gordon Graydon: If the employees of these companies, which as the minister says are perhaps closer to the crown than the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, have that right, it would seem only natural that employees of the broadcasting company also should have the right to unionize. Perhaps that is the case. For my own part I should like to see them all have that right, and I am wondering if the minister can give us any information along that line.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I have no information.


Gordon Graydon: When I asked the question of the appropriate minister his reply was that he had never heard that they had asked for it. That was not exactly the answer I expected, but no doubt it was a convenient one for him.


Clarence Decatur Howe: The officials of the corporation are now before a committee of parliament, and I am sure if the hon. member asks that question in the committee he will get a full explanation from those competent to give it.
I really do not know the answer.


Gordon Graydon: I appreciate the minister's attitude in the matter. It may be that he has no information, and I appreciate his frankness in admitting it.
Mr. SKEl: : When I brought up the question of unions I had in mind the immense benefits that the unionization of Research Enterprises had brought that company. They had a union there which was under the ablest and best of leadership. They achieved cuts in the cost of production, and contributed to improvement in the efficiency of many operations. I also had in mind the thought of secrecy concerning atomic projects, and whether under those conditions the minister will allow his atomic energy projects to be unionized.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I do not think the secrecy would have anything to do with unionization. The secrecy might interfere with the physical means of organizing. I mean we could not permit people to enter the Chalk River project just for the purpose of unionization; but if a union grew up within the organization there would be no objection to it, and I see no breach of the secrecy regulations arising in that connection. The secrecy regulations are paramount. If within those regulations it is the desire of the employees to unionize there would be no objection to it.


Angus MacInnis: I think the hon. member has said either too much or too little. Am I to gather from what he has said that workers who are members of a union are less trustworthy than workers who are not?


Lawrence Wilton Skey: Not at all, if I may at once correct the hon. member I did not mean to imply that. I meant to imply that the secrecy relating to the project might make it difficult for a union to have contact with the employees.


Angus MacInnis: I cannot see how that w'ould enter into it. As long as the employees are allowed to organize there can be no question of that difficulty arising. As I understand the situation, scientific workers are organized in * their professional groups, for their own benefit and protection, in the same way that trade unions are organized for the protection of other classes of workers. I think the hon. member has made the point quite clear, and it would not be a good thing for that impression to go out. My understanding at the moment is that an order in council was passed in 1943 making it possible fot crown companies to enter into and sign working agreements with trade unions. Whether or not there is an agreement with the Cana-

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dian Broadcasting Corporation would not be a matter of prohibition, but it might be because of the attitude of the company. However, I do not know the situation there.


John Horne Blackmore: I should like to ask a question or two regarding the directors of the companies which might be set up under the board. Section 10 states:
The hoard may with the approval of the governor in council:-
(a) procure the incorporation of any one or more companies . . .
Then I notice in the last two lines of paragraph (a):
... of section eight of this act as the board may from time to time direct and all the issued shares of the capital stock of each such company shall be owned or held in trust by the board for His Majesty in right of Canada except shares necessary to qualify other persons as directors . . .
I am wondering about those directors. How many directors would be involved in one of these companies, and how many shares would it be necessary for a director to hold in order to qualify as such?


Clarence Decatur Howe: The Companies Act provides that each director of a public company shall own one share of the stock. The ownership of the stock of a crown company is more or less a legal fiction. The share is made out in the name of the director and is endorsed for retransfer by the director and returned to the custody of the crown. It has been the custom to obtain the resignation of a director at the same time his appointment is made. In other words, that is held in trust as well, so that the crown is amply safeguarded as far as the actual ownership of the property is concerned.


John Horne Blackmore: It means in effect, then, that all shares will be in possession of the board?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes, in effect, though I am told by the Secretary of State that is illegal. Nevertheless it has been the practice in crown companies. The share is actually registered in the name of the director, but the director has already endorsed the certificate for transfer. The certificate is in the possession of His Majesty and can be transferred at the will of His Majesty.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: To come back to this question of unionization, a short time ago the minister said that employees at the Chalk River plant are free to unionize if they wish. Is this privilege extended to all employees working there, or is there a restriction on scientific workers, engineers, or any other types of workers in that project.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I have no knowledge of any restrictions against the unionizing of any group of people in the government service, in any capacity.


John Ritchie MacNicol: Perhaps I might add a word here, in reference to the observations made a few minutes ago by the hon. members for Trinity and Vancouver East. I am not criticizing the remarks of either of them, but what they said impels me to refer to the experiences I have had in which the loyalty of workmen has been clear to me. I am sure your experience, Mr. Chairman, has been the same as mine. If companies trust their workmen or officers as they should, they will receive loyalty from those workmen and officers. No class in our community is more loyal; that has been my experience. That loyalty is best shown when secrets are given under their care; and it is well known that many big companies have important secrets, of which their workmen have knowledge. My experience was that workmen were absolutely loyal; in fact I cannot think of one instance of disloyalty. I suggest, therefore, that we need not fear that the secrets of our country will be betrayed by Canadian workmen.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 11-Pension fund.
Gordon Graydon: Are these employees to be hired or employed by the civil service commission, by the governor in council, or partly in one way and partly another.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Entirely by the governor in council.


Gordon Graydon: Will the same system be followed as was described by the minister in respect of the crown companies bills, namely that there would be a sort of super civil service?


Clarence Decatur Howe: My hon. friend is putting words into my mouth. I wish he would not do that, because I said nothing of the kind.
_ Mr. GRAYDON: I do not know whether I am putting words into the minister's mouth; but whether he used those words or not, he certainly in his description of the system implied that it was to be a super civil service.


Clarence Decatur Howe: That may have been my hon. friend's inference; but I wish he would keep it for himself, and not give it to me.


Gordon Graydon: I have no objection to accepting the words, if the minister wishes to give them up. In any event, does the minister not think that, as in respect of the crown companies, he is in this instance driving a coach and four through the Civil Service Act?
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I believe he will find that this situation will give rise to considerable difficulty, so far as the whole civil service set-up is concerned. I have no desire to be critical without being constructive; but as we find more crown companies being set up, and the government going into business from time to time, one wonders what the attitude and reaction of the ordinary civil servant employed by the government in ordinary government enterprise will be. We now have the civil service commission, which has set up certain standards of salaries and promotions. At the same time the government is setting up companies, and in doing so abandons the civil service scale and establishes a different structure altogether. I believe this situation will lead to grave difficulties. In the light of the necessity which the minister no doubt feels in this connection, where higher salaries are to be paid, I suggest that the government should give consideration to a complete review of the whole position of the civil service in Canada. We should have nothing short of a complete overhaul and review of the general picture in respect of the new companies together with normal civil service requirements. I do not believe we can have operating in this country successfully and concurrently two civil service standards, one set much higher than the other. It seems to me that some day one will run counter to the other, to the detriment of one or the other, or both.
I do not wish to be unduly critical of the present set-up, but I am wondering why we have to leave the scale of the present civil service at what would appear to be substantially lower levels of returns than are offered in these crown companies. It would appear that we are creating a superstructure which in the end will lead to trouble for the government, or for any government which may succeed it. I would ask the minister to consider finding some way by which the two systems may work together concurrently, without effecting discrimination to the extent which I believe will develop within a reasonable time.	-


Clarence Decatur Howe: The national research council has operated along these lines since 1923. As a matter of common sense, the salary scales in the two are kept comparable. In other words, the national research council consults with the civil service commission in respect of what it shall pay stenographers; and those stenographers, are graded in the same way. Appointment by gvernor in council means appointment by treasury board. Naturally treasury board keeps a careful watch on salaries, to see that they do not get out of line. My hon. friend suggests that people in

corporations are much better off than those in the civil service. It seems to me. however, that there has been much more said in the debate about low salaries paid to scientists appointed by the national research council than there has been about the great benefits accruing to employees of corporations with the national research council rather than with the civil service. The hon. member may rest assured that the matter is being watched carefully.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 12-Application of R.S., c. 30.
John Ritchie MacNicol: What would be the compensation of these government employees in the event of death, as was discussed a short time ago?


Clarence Decatur Howe: The Government Employees Compensation Act means the workmen's compensation act of the province affected. Payments into the compensation fund are made by the government.


John Ritchie MacNicol: The compensation act of Ontario would apply in that province, that of Manitoba in Manitoba, and that of Quebec in Quebec?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Section 13 agreed to.
On section 14-Claim for compensation may , be referred to exchequer court.
Douglas King Hazen: This section provides that in the event an agreement cannot be reached as to the amount of compensation to be paid, the claim for compensation shall be referred by the Minister of Justice to the exchequer court. No time limit is set within which the Minister of Justice shall refer the matter.
I do not know if other acts contain a section similar to this; but it seems to me that it would be well to have a provision whereby the Minister of Justice would be obliged to refer the matter to the courts within a reasonable time.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I think it should be assumed that the Minister of Justice will act in a reasonable way. I do not think we need to pass laws in this parliament to regulate the methods of the Minister of Justice in carrying out the duties of his office.


Douglas King Hazen: Are there similar sections in any other acts?


Clarence Decatur Howe: In the War Measures Act and,
I think, in other acts as well.


Douglas King Hazen: Is the wording practically the same?

Atomic Energy Control


Clarence Decatur Howe: Always the same.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Following up that question, in what form is the reference made? In what particular form do the proceedings commence in the exchequer court?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: The usual procedure is to have an information in the name of the Attorney General of Canada filed in the exchequer court setting out the facts and praying the court to award such remedy as may be appropriate in the premises.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Then pleadings are
delivered?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: Yes.


Douglas King Hazen: Could an owner under this clause bring the matter to the attention of the court, or must the initiative be taken by the Minister of Justice?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: The owner could always submit a petition of right but that, like the other action which may be taken, would be subject to the recommendation of the Minister of Justice. There have been cases under the Expropriation Act where a plan has been filed and, as a consequence, expropriation has taken place. Sometimes there have been regrettable delays in filing an information to get court action. In such circumstances an owner has submitted a petition of right and, if there appeared to be unjustifiable delay, there has been a recommendation that a fiat issue.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Take the converse case. Suppose there has been a delay. There is no provision in this bill that the provisions of the Expropriation Act will apply. I am thinking about periods of limitation. Within what time must a claim arising out of expropriation or requisition be lodged before it becomes barred?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: I am not sure just what the hon. gentleman is fearful about. In the administration of the department I have tried to act as I would have hoped the department would act if I were still practising at the bar. I found at times that there were regrettable delays. For instance, a petition would come in and a report would be requested from the department concerned. Then the matter appeared to be pigeon-holed until the report came in, and sometimes that took a very long time. I made it a rule that in an application to a department for information they should be told that if we did not get it within thirty days we would assume that they had no special objection to bring to our attention and we would proceed without waiting any further to hear from them. I think the same procedure would be followed in a
case of this kind. As soon as the Department of Justice is advised that action on its part is required, I feel confident that anyone having the responsibility for the administration of the office will endeavour to see that it is done in the way he would want it done if he were on the other side.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Section 15 agreed to.
On section 16-Expenses.
John Ritchie MacNicol: This section reads:
All expenses under this act shall be paid out of moneys appropriated by parliament for the purpose or received by the board or a company through the conduct of its operations, bequest, donation or otherwise.
Should not something be added after the word '"company" so that it would read, "company set up by and under the control of the board"?


Clarence Decatur Howe: That is covered by section 2(e).


Grote Stirling: Does this imply that each year there will be a vote in the estimates for the atomic energy control board, provided, of course, that its other revenues are insufficient for its purposes?


Clarence Decatur Howe: That is correct.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Sections 17 and 18 agreed to.
On section 19-Oath of fidelity and secrecy.
Stanley Howard Knowles: I notice that both subsections refer to the schedule which is to be found on page 8 of the bill. I am wondering whether the phrase "affairs of the board" ' in the oath of secrecy is broad enough to include everything one might think of. That phrase "affairs of the board" might not be understood by a party taking the oath to include more than business affairs of the board. What about technical and scientific secrets? The second thing about which I am concerned is the atomic energy secrets that become the possession of an individual working under the present set-up at Chalk River and who may in due course return to full-time employment with the private company from which he may be on loan. Would this oath of secrecy have a bearing on those?


Clarence Decatur Howe: This refers to information relating to the affairs of the board. If a man has learned a lot about atomic energy in a university or in books which he has read that is his affair, but if he indicates particulars of the work the board is doing he would be violating his oath.
Atomic Energy Control


Stanley Howard Knowles: "Affairs" does not mean just business affairs but technical and scientific information as well?


Wilfrid Garfield Case: This oath would apply only while he was employed by the board. Should he leave the board and seek other employment there would be no importance to the oath.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I am not sure about that. No; it is not limited in time. If he disclosed the affairs of the board, whether employed by the board or not, it would be a violation of the oath.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: Is it not possible that a scientist working with the board might learn a certain process, perhaps not overly important from the defence point of view, and then leave the board to take up employment with some private corporation. Then, in the course of his work with that corporation he might unwittingly divulge what he had learned with the board. How could you guard against that?


Clarence Decatur Howe: I think he would have to prove that he had done it unwittingly. I believe there will be very little danger of that because it does not relate so much to processes as it does to the affairs of the board.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 20-Offences and penalties.
John Horne Blackmore: This section reads:
Any person who contravenes or fails to observe the provisions of this act or of any regulation made under the authority of this act shall be guilty of an offence . . .
That opens the door to a wide variety of offences and punishments. I wonder by whom these regulations are to be made and what opportunity parliament or a parliamentary committee will have to review the regulations. We are conferring on whoever is to administer the act tremendous powers. I can understand why there should be prosecution and punishment under section 20 for any infringement of any clause of the bill which parliament has scrutinized and passed, but to make the same punishments apply possibly to any regulation passed under the act, with such regulations not being subject to the scrutiny of parliament or any parliamentary committee, seems to me to be going very far. Would the minister comment on that?


Clarence Decatur Howe: May I refer my hon. friend to section 9(2) which provides:
Regulations under this section shall forthwith be published in the Canada Gazette and laid before parliament within fifteen days after they are made if parliament is then sitting, and, if not, then within fifteen days after the commencement of the next ensuing session thereof.


John Horne Blackmore: That clears the point
up.


Mr. JOHNSTON:: Will the regulations be in effect before parliament has had an opportunity to scrutinize and approve them? They are to be submitted to parliament, if not then sitting, within fifteen days after the commencement of the next session. Would it not be a safeguard to provide that the regulations will not come into effect until parliament has approved them?


Clarence Decatur Howe: No. After the regulation is made with the approval of the governor in council it is in effect. The statute provides that it must be published forthwith in the Canada Gazette, and laid before parliament at the first opportunity. But the regulation is in effect as soon as it is sanctioned by the governor in council.


John Horne Blackmore: That confers wide discretionary powers on whoever is administering the act, but I presume it must be necessary.
Another question. The section also says:
... at the election of the Attorney General of Canada or of the province in which the offence is alleged to have taken place, be prosecuted upon indictment, and if convicted shall be liable to a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars.
Would the minister explain, so that we can understand, what sort of set of circumstances would impell the attorney general to cause a man to be tried upon indictment and possibly punished with a fine of 310,000. The fine is double that provided in the preceding paragraph.


Clarence Decatur Howe: The seriousness of the offence would be the reason. The attorney general of any province would not be moved to prosecute a man for trivial cause. The offence must be in keeping with the size of the penalty, and the penalties prescribed are maximum penalties.


John Horne Blackmore: What was passing through my mind was the very possibility that was implied by the hon. member for Bow River. Suppose these regulations are made and published in the Canada Gazette and that before parliament has had a chance to review them, someone offends against one of the regulations. A severe punishment may be inflicted on the offender before parliament has had a chance to approve or review the regulations. If that is quite in order, I suppose there is nothing further to say, but it seems to me to be drastic.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 21-Annual report.

Supply-Health and Welfare
John Ritchie MacNicol: I want to say a word, although I know it will have no effect now. It is a suggestion for the future. I have long asked myself if it would not be possible for Canada and its crown corporations to have their fiscal year end as the financial years of the majority of companies do on December 31 instead of March 31. We may not receive the annual report of the board until June 30. The house will then be in session and the report cannot be dealt with until the year after that. That is one reason why we cannot keep close check on what business the government does through these companies. I throw out the suggestion to each and every member that we start considering bringing the fiscal year to an end on December 31. I know that for a few years it would not fit in with the reports for previous years, but after a few years it would be 100 per cent better than the present system.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: I find myself in sympathy with that suggestion. I see no reason why the crown companies cannot end their financial year on December 31, even though the fiscal year of the government ends on March 31. As has been pointed out, the financial year of the board ends on March 31. Although it has to submit an annual report to the committee within three months after March 31, parliament will not get the report for some time after that and we cannot discuss it in the same year. If the financial year of these crown corporations were made to end on December 31 we would have a reasonable chance during the next year to discuss its transactions. I strongly support the suggestion that the financial year end on December 31.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Section 22 agreed to.
Schedule agreed to.
Bill reported.
At six o'clock the house took recess.
After Recess
The house resumed at eight o'clock. SUPPLY
The house in committee of supply, Mr. Macdonald (Brantford City) in the chair.

[Stage Direction]
National health branch
[Stage Direction]
212. Civil service health division (including medical investigation division), $180,078.
Donald Methuen Fleming: Under this item, the services for which the minister intends to provide, as outlined by him at page 3608 of Hansard of the previous session, are covered by a six-point programme. The minister referred to the fact that in May, 1945, he was authorized by the government to announce a programme involving an expenditure of $328,000 for the first year to provide a number of health services for civil servants. The six-point programme mentioned by the minister was to cover: (1) Examination before entrance into the civil service, including X-ray for tuberculosis; (2) periodical examinations; (3) emergency service; (4) educational facilities; (5) advice; and (6) the establishment of sanitary standards. The item approved at the previous session called for an expenditure of $145,750. I do not recall whether there was a supplementary estimate in connection with the item, but the item now before us involves $180,078, and we are shown the same figure as having been appropriated in the preceding year.
Will the minister indicate the relationship of the item shown here to that appearing on the page in Hansard to which I have referred, and also the development of the programme as outlined by him at that time, and the relationship of the item to the expenditure of $328,000 for the first full year of service which he indicated was then intended?


Hon. BROOKE CLAXTON (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: When the civil service health programme was approved by the governor in council in May, 1945, as the hon. member said, and as I mentioned last week, the estimated cost of providing full service for one year was, as I intimated, $328,000. It was not found possible to inaugurate the programme in full and it is not yet in operation in several important respects. Our inability to put it into effect has been due to shortage of doctors and dentists, shortage of nurses and shortage of space. These shortages are being gradually overcome and the programme is now being carried more fully into effect. I described it last session, and I do not propose to take the time of the committee to-night in going over again the objects of the programme in detail.
Generally speaking, it aimed at giving a health service comparable, if not superior to that generally in force among the employees of leading employers. We had in mind the services provided by the Canadian National
Supply-Health and Welfare

Railways, the Bell Telephone company, the Metropolitan Life Insurance company and other large employers who had instituted services of this kind and who, we were informed -investigation proved this to be the case- had found that these services not only improved the health of the employees but also improved employer-employee relationships. It was demonstrated in other cases that the cost of the service was more than met out of the savings in illness, premature retirement, sick leave and the like.
As hon. members no doubt know, there has been a serious shortage of doctors in Canada, since so many were engaged in war services, and every public health service and every community are consequently suffering from the shortage. The same is true of this department; and it has not been possible for that reason, as well as because of the shortage of space, to implement the programme more fully. I may tell the committee, however, that there already was a health service provided for civil servants in Ottawa under which X-rays were taken; and a very large proportion of the civil servants in this city were examined in the year 1943-44. In consequence of that, a number of cases of active tuberculosis were discovered; a number of persons were hospitalized, and the results obtained have more than justified expenditures.
In addition, at that time-the same is true to-day-civil servants on becoming permanent were required to be examined; and also, in connection with retirement and sick leave, examinations were undertaken by the medical investigation division of the department. That division really laid the foundations for the more ample service that we are now giving. The service, we hope, will be centred in the offices ,in the Jackson building where the department's headquarters are now situated.
We hope there will be health units in a number of office buildings in different sections of the city where there are large numbers of civil servants, and there will be preliminary examinations on entrance and regular laboratory tests, medical advice and emergency service. There will also be a programme of health education which will be an important feature of this service. Altogether it is expected that with the return and discharge of members of the armed forces who are in medical, nursing and dental professions, it will be possible to bring this rapidly into effect by stages in the different buildings in which we hope to establish units.


Donald Methuen Fleming: The minister has not dealt with one or two of the points that I raised. I notice that last year the amount voted for

this item was $145,750, but it appears on page 27 of the estimates as $180,078. Is that a mistake, or was there a supplementary appropriation last year? That is the first question. In the second place, I should be obliged if the minister would indicate the exact expenditure, if he has it, under this heading during the past year so that we may have some reference to the actual expenditure in considering the proposed appropriation.


Brooke Claxton: During the year 1945-46, the expenditure was $31,590.01. The difference in the two items mentioned by the hon. member is not due to a supplementary. The item is $180,078 in the estimates under item 212 for both the years 1946-47 and 1945-46.


Donald Methuen Fleming: There must be a mistake in the year 1945-46, because the item voted on December 15 last was $145,750. If there was not a supplementary it must be a mistake in the book of estimates.


Brooke Claxton: This represents a consolidation of two items. The previous division which carried on this service was, as I mentioned, the medical investigation division. If my hon. friend will look at the estimates for 1945-46 he will see an item for the medical investigation division w'hich, taken with the item for the civil service health division, makes up the total of $180,078 which he mentioned. There has been a consolidation of two divisions.


Angus MacInnis: Would the minister add a little more to the statement he made a little while ago that before becoming permanent a civil servant had to undergo a medical examination? If the medical examination discloses that the civil servant has an impairment of health, what is his status? Would he or she receive a permanent position, or what would be the result following the examination?


Brooke Claxton: The purpose of the examination first of all was to show if the person was fit to do the work, and if he or she were found to be unfit then the employee would not become permanent. In the translation from the status of temporary to permanent the civil servant would be dealt with as if he or she were sick at that time. Its purpose also was to discover what defects the applicant for the civil service might be suffering from so as to advise him or her of any treatment that should be undergone.


Angus MacInnis: The impaired condition of health would not result in the civil servant losing his employment?	.

Supply-Health and Welfare


Brooke Claxton: My understanding is that it would not necessarily, but he would not become permanent and entitled to superannuation.


Mr. BLAIR:: I notice that there is a travelling expense bill of $4,500. The greater part of the work is done here in the city, is it not?


Brooke Claxton: It is intended that this work will cover all Canada. The places where we shall have our own units will be Ottawa and the other places where we already have units of the Department of National Health and Welfare. In other parts of Canada the work will be carried on by part-time doctors if there are no federal government doctors to do the work. That will require a certain amount of travelling in order to coordinate the work, check records, give advice and so on.


Mr. McLURE:: I notice that there is quite an item for publicity and advertising; as a matter of fact, $68,000. What is the total amount of publicity and advertising in the Department of National Health and Welfare? There is a big increase over what it was last year. Even if we leave out the film board it is a couple of hundred thousand dollars extra. What will be the total amount?


Brooke Claxton: That was gone into when item 200, departmental administration, was under discussion. Under this item the amount for publicity is $18,000. Particulars were given of the expenditure last year which totalled only $230. It is intended, as part of this civil service health service, to carry on an educational campaign. The item of $18,000 would be intended to cover short films dealing with health, a film strip, film distribution, booklets, leaflets and posters.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
National health branch-[DOT]
213. Nutrition service, $142,992.
Stanley Howard Knowles: This is an item in which the amount asked for this year is $6,000 less than what was asked for last year. If I may say so, I am sorry to note that reduction because it seems to me that it might turn out that there is nothing more important in the field of national health than nutrition. I notice in the details given on page 164 of the main estimates that, although there may be some explanation which the minister can give for it, the top person listed in this division is a grade 2 stenographer. That is hardly good enough for nutrition. Perhaps in the temporary assistants' item there may be amounts for the employment of people of a little higher grade. But I want to impress upon the minister my feeling-and I think it is shared by a good many-that this is a field in which research ought to be done, and in which all possible information should be got out amongst our people.
The idea that care of our health consists not only in curative and corrective measures but also in preventive efforts is now pretty well established. When we stop to think of it I believe we all recognize that if we are to encourage preventive attempts to improve our national health, probably this is the place where we shall have to do some real work, namely in connection with the whole question of nutrition and diet. I think it must be admitted that even though there is the will to eat according to the best ideas of the correct diet we do not yet know what is the best diet for the human body. I was interested in a press dispatch which appeared in the newspapers earlier to-day, to which reference was made this afternoon, about developments in connection with atomic energy. In that dispatch it was suggested that very soon it would be possible, because of the research being done in atomic energy, to learn more about the chemistry of the human body, what it does with medicines that are given to it and what it does with food, so that possibly we may be on the threshold of new discoveries and greater knowledge about the effect on our national health of nutrition, diet and the foods we eat from infancy throughout the whole of life. Therefore I would urge most strongly that in this field the minister not pay too much attention to those who are trying to pinch pennies here and there. I urge that he fight within the cabinet and treasury board for all the money he can get for this kind of work.
While I am referring to the importance of nutrition as far as research, knowledge, publicity and information are concerned, I hope there will be no request for this item to be cut down, because I want to see it extended. But I think one must also tell the minister again what has been said to him a number of times on this subject, that it is not enough just to find out what is the proper diet, to give publicity and information in regard thereto, and to ask the people to eat the best foods, if at the same time the government takes off the subsidy so that the price of milk goes up, fails to give old age pensioners adequate allowances, and so on. I suggest that it is part of the minister's job, as guardian of the national health, to fight for measures on the part of the government to which he belongs which will make it possible for people to get the foods which, nutritionally, are best for them. This is really something pretty basic, pretty fundamental
Supply-Health and Welfare

to the health of our people. Not only is that so with respect to the generation now living in Canada, but it is also possible that if we really put some effort and research and money into this subject we may receive the thanks of two or three generations ahead, if by having done so we find ways and means of so feeding ourselves that we become a healthier and happier race of people.
My tune, as the minister recognizes, is a little different from that which he hears from some hon. members with respect to these estimates. I regret that there has been a reduction this year in this item, and I should be glad to hear what plans the department has in the field of nutrition service.


Brooke Claxton: I appreciate the remarks of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre on the importance of this subject. The reduction in the estimates-which is not very great, amounting to $6,039-is due entirely to an adjustment with regard to the amounts provided for temporary assistance and cost of living bonus. If the hon. member will look at the estimates for 1945-46 and* compare them with the estimates for 1944-45 he will see that there was a considerable increase as between those two years. As a matter of fact they went up from $63,181 to $149,031. Our experience during the year has shown that we can make this adjustment without impairing the service.
With regard to the type of work done by the division, it includes research activities, including dietary and nutrition service and tabulations. There we work closely with the provinces, and at the request of provincial health authorities have made surveys of a considerable number of places. Surveys are being carried on to bring to light nutritional deficiencies due to one reason or another so that proper nutritional standards may be built up. The work also includes education with regard to nutrition, both through contacts with the provinces and communities and through various media. These include the use of films; wall charts, which are distributed wholesale and are colourful and useful with regard to diets; small sheets that were distributed on street cars and which had a general distribution; a wide range of pamphlets, and posters. The division also gives advice on group feeding in connection with quantity food services to industries, camps, small hospitals and so on. An active correspondence is carried on and a considerable amount of field work is done. Finally, the division works closely with other agencies of the government, as, for example, the armed

forces, veterans affairs and others, in seeing to it that as far as possible the nutritional standards of the country are built up.
It is common knowledge that during the war the nutrition of the Canadian people was greatly improved, partly due to higher take-home wages, partly due to improved knowledge, and partly due to the development of good nutritional practices in industries and other places where groups of people were fed. We hope that work will be continued and extended. We find there is a great deal of room for work in marginal areas, as, for example, in the far north with our Eskimo and Indian people, and in various parts of Canada where nutritional standards are not as high as they should be. We hope to continue along that line, working closely with the provinces and any other agencies engaged in that field.


Stanley Howard Knowles: There are two questions I should like to ask the minister. First, I want to repeat a question I have asked already; that is, as to what liaison there is between the division of nutrition and the Department of Finance. After all, it is in the finance department that decisions are made which affect the amount' of money our old age pensioners receive, which affect the price of milk, and things like that. Is there any means whereby the knowledge gained by these people as to what the nutritional standards should be is brought impressively to bear upon the colleague of my hon. friend, the Minister of Finance?
The other question I should like to ask- and I am not being facetious nor am I being critical of the people employed there-is in regard to the nutritional standards of the cafeteria in which many of us in this house eat from day to day. I feel that the employees there do a good job with what they have, and give as good and courteous service, but my question is, are this department's nutritional standards really put into practice in connection with the meals members of the house must live on? Or is there some conspiracy to keep us at a low ebb so that we shall not be too hard on the government?


John Ritchie MacNicol: They are certainly good in the main dining room.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Certainly, for those who can afford to eat there all the time.


Brooke Claxton: The answer to the hon. member is that the nutritional standards and practices of hon. members are within their own control. Through Mr. Speaker they can exercise that control, by working through the proper agency, namely the committee on the

Supply-Health and Welfare
restaurant. I feel that Mr. Speaker and hon. members would not wish us to engage in any campaign in that field without their express invitation. If they invite us we shall be glad to serve them, as we are glad to serve any other group in Canada.


Mr. BRACKEN:: Will you not give them the benefit of your service?


Brooke Claxton: If we are invited.
With regard to the other question, as to the awareness of the Minister of Finance respecting the need for high nutritional standards, I believe it can be said that he is well aware of it; indeed all of us are. The best answer I can give the hon. member is that I do not think there has been any period in the history of Canada which compares with the last five years, so far as the average incomes of Canadian people in all classes are concerned. We hope that will be maintained and improved.


Wilfrid Garfield Case: May I call attention to the item now before us appearing in the estimates for the fiscal year 1946-47. Item 213, for nutritional service is placed at $142,992, and it is stated in the next column that the amount for 1945-46 was $149,031, showing a decrease this year of $6,039. Then, if I can read correctly, I turn to the estimates for the fiscal year 1945-46, and under item 203, and the heading "nutrition service", I find the sum of $69,027 for 1945-46 as compared with $63,181 for 1944-45, or an increase of $5,846. My point is this: While the estimate for last year, in the estimates for 1945-46, is shown as $69,027, we find in the second column of the estimates of 1946-47 the sum of $149,031 for that year, as having been granted. Is there some explanation for that? If so, what is it?


Brooke Claxton: I shall have the answer for the hon. member in a minute.


Donald Methuen Fleming: While we are waiting for the answer, may I put to the minister with respect to the item for publicity and information amounting to $50,000 the same question we have asked with respect to all such items in the estimates of this department? First, what were the actual expenditures under this heading during the fiscal year ended March 31, 1946? Second, what are the projected expenditures for the current year?


Brooke Claxton: In answer to the hon. member for Grey North, I would point out that the difference is due to the supplemen-taries. We obtained large supplementaries last year, which are included in the comparable vote.


Gordon Graydon: Surely the supplementaries would not be as great as that.


Brooke Claxton: They were.


Gordon Graydon: Then the minister must have been a poor judge of what was coming if his supplementary estimates were nearly twice as large as the original amount. What is the reason?


Brooke Claxton: I was not minister at the time; in fact I do not think the department was then in existence. The division was just in process of being set up. That is my recollection, and that would no doubt explain the failure to make a more accurate estimate. Then, too-and I shall verify this in a minute-I believe there was some adjustment between the war appropriation item and the civil item. I shall check on that.
In reply to the hon. member for Eglinton, the expenditures on publicity and information -that is, educational activities-in 1945-46 were $16,213.01. Does the hon. member want the items? They are lengthy.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Might we have a breakdown of them?


Brooke Claxton: They are classified under the different types of publicity, as follows: Canadian nutrition notes, $381.51; a pamphlet prepared for the national radio farm forum, $213.77; an eight-page booklet illustrating good business principles in selling food and food sanitation, prepared for the trade at a price of $78.60; a leaflet to improve the health and welfare of Canadian children by promoting good school lunches, which was prepared at the request of the dominion-provincial nutritional committee, and was distributed by the provinces to the schools, 800,000 copies in English and 200,000 in French at a cost of $3,145.27. Then, a poster which hon. members may have seen, called "Canada's Food Rules", 5,000 in English and 1,000 in French at a cost of $298.23. There is a poster to promote a contest in schools, 20,000 copies in English and
5,000	in French, for $1,573.58, and prizes in connection therewith of $602.25. Then, a street-car poster, "Eat the foods that keep you fit", at $6,356.31; camp feeding, which has been referred to already, $235.95 ; reprints of scientific articles from professional journals, $39.13; forms of diet, $14.63; Canadian food nutritional statistics, $17.57; writing of nutritional plays and pageants for school children, $115; Canadian Press clipping service, $19.96; nine displays on nutrition for use in schools, $192.56; "Start the Day Right", newsclip for commercial theatres and broadcasters, $990.75; a film strip, "Canada's Food Rules", in colour, $27; "Let's Talk Food, Mother", prepared at
Supply-Health and Welfare

the suggestion of the dominion-provincial nutritional committee, 300,000 copies in English and 100,000 in French, $135 for the preparatory work, the printing bill having not yet been received; eight health exhibits from the Cleveland health museum, $1,657.50; "Lunch Boxes on the March", to improve the health and welfare of Canadians in industry, schools and offices, distributed through the provincial departments, of health, $742.94. This makes a total of $16,837.51.


Donald Methuen Fleming: The other question was as to the projected expenditures for the current year.


Brooke Claxton: Some bills for part of the work are still outstanding-quantity food service, nutrition survey, winter diet poster, and the caterers' bulletin. They enter into the present year's estimates.


Donald Methuen Fleming: What is the total?


Brooke Claxton: The matters in process of production are in great detail. They go up to $48,400, leaving an unallocated amount of $1,600:	periodicals, "Canadian Nutrition
Notes" and "Caterers' Bulletin", $500 and $100 respectively; pamphlets for teachers, on school lunches, $1,000; for mothers on school lunches, $1,000; for a revised edition of "Healthful Eating", $3,000; Camping Manual, $2,000-


Donald Methuen Fleming: I do not wish to interrupt the minister, but I did not want that much detail.


Brooke Claxton: The hon. member asked for it.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I do not think we need those items in such detail. Might we have just the larger ones, anything over a couple of thousand dollars?


Brooke Claxton: For posters and coloured maps showing the food production areas in Canada, $5,000. A kitchen wall chart which has been issued and reissued and which is to be issued in revised form, 100,000 copies in English and 25,000 in French, $5,300. Those are the only large items.


John Bracken: The minister referred to a map showing the food production areas in Canada. What is the purpose of that?


Brooke Claxton: That is to bring home to the people and school children of Canada by means of an illustrated map the kind of food that Canada produces which they should eat to make up a suitable diet and the importance of eating different types of food that we produce in Canada in order to make up a balanced diet.


Thomas Langton Church: This department is labelled the Department of National Health and Welfare but, so far as making any contribution to nutrition is concerned, the department is doing nothing that I know of. They have a national health department in Great Britain, and what do they do? They provide meals for the underprivileged children in the schools. What are we doing over here? We have a skeleton department that spends $11,000,000 on public health and which used to spend only $500,000 before the war. All they do is to give advice to the provinces and municipalities regarding public health.
I read a letter in the Globe and Mail this morning criticizing one of the officers of the department because he was travelling all over the world giving advice. They must have an awful lot to do here in Ottawa in the national public health department when they can find time to take trains and planes all over the civilized world. Planes here and planes there, hotel bills everywhere; they have a staff travelling along, secretaries and a whole retinue; almost a small standing army. When the war started and so many men were overseas the municipalities were faced with the necessity of setting up day nurseries to take care of the children in those families where the mothers had to go to work because they did not have enough money to pay the rent. These day nurseries were opened up and the children were taken in and given milk and food. What are we doing? We are spending money to visit security councils when there is no security at all in any land.
The first thing I want to know is: What does a lawyer know about nutrition? Why should a lawyer be heading the Department of National Health and Welfare? When I was chairman of the board of health I had one of the greatest health officers at the head of the department, Doctor Hastings. He knew the whole business from top to bottom. If the government is not prepared to do the right thing, let us abolish the department altogether. They are doing nothing for national health. What has happened to the nurseries which were opened in order to provide hundreds of children with a little bit of lunch when their fathers and mothers were out working? They closed them up. They told the municipalities that that item would be struck out of the estimates, but yet they find money with which to visit New York and travel all over the United States taking up all the hotel space and the reservations on planes. These are the wonderful people who are doing so much for public health.
fMr. Claxton.l

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As far as I can see, the department is doing nothing. All that they do is give advice to the municipalities. I receive their literature but I just throw it in the wastepaper basket because it would be a waste of time to read it. The writers do not know very much about public health and yet they clutter up the mails with all this stuff. If the government want to do something they should do what they are doing in Great Britain. Some of the officers of the department have just come back from the United States. They cannot see a day wasted without visiting Washington, Chicago, Buffalo, Cleveland and New York- all aboard! The whole staff are ready to go to make some investigation or inquiry into public health and make speeches in the United States. What do they care about the children in our public and separate and other schools of the country who cannot get milk, with the two-cent subsidy now cut off? There are a great many of these children in my own constituency. They had a school down at Little Norway. They cannot get houses, they cannot get homes; they cannot get anything. Yet all we have is this skeleton department giving advice to the municipal health officers.
A lot of the health officers are getting pretty sick of it. I was talking to three or four of them about it the other day, and they wanted to know what I was going to do to try to get this item for the day nurseries back in the estimates. Many of these men know more about public health than some of the fellows I have seen in the department. If we are to have a national health department, let us have a good one. Health is the most important thing that I know of. Some of those who have been in this parliament have gone because they could not stand the pace. If we are going to do something for public health let us find the money to do it with. It is the duty of the government to look after the peace, health, comfort and prosperity of its people. Do you think visiting the United States will help the children of this country?
Nothing has been done at all. No houses, no homes, no food, no milk, no day nurseries. All they need is one or two cents for milk to provide the necessary nutrition, and yet they are ready to spend thousands of dollars in carrying on a useles advertising campaign. I often pity the taxpayers of the countiy. Fortunately there is an election every year in municipalities and here every five years, and the government will have to answer when they are asked: What are you doing for public health? What are you doing for consumption? What are you doing about heart diseases? What are you doing about cancer? One of the finest members of the house suffered from
that dread malady. It is just like Santa Claus; one of the officials of the department said that there was no Santa Claus, and there is no Santa Claus as far as this department goes. The municipalities have to be the Santa Claus. They have to provide the funds for real public health.
We spend more money on education in one year than they are spending. Here we are spending 811,000,000 on a skeleton health department of talk. We spend from $12,000,000 to $13,000,000 a year on educating our children. These day nurseries are needed and we should have visiting nurses who could go to the homes of these poor people who are living down in the cellars and all that kind of thing. It is a good thing that we have had the school system we have because the children can at least go to school and be warm in the day time. Some of the schools are beginning to give meals, but they are getting no help from Ottawa.
Ontario is the forgotten province. There has been no cabinet minister from the Toronto district since 1935. Yet there are one, two, three, four, five or six from Montreal. The time is coming when we should either have a real national health department that can provide nutrition and all the rest of it, or we should have no department at all. It is time the government cut out a lot of this waste and duplication. I know the young minister is not to blame for all this because he took charge of the department just at the time of the baby bonus. But I think it would be far better to give bonuses, subsidies and subventions to municipalities to build and maintain hospitals, and liberal grants for cancer, heart disease, consumption, than to spend money the way it has been spent by the government in the past on a national health department that is merely national in name and gives only advice.


Wilfrid Garfield Case: I come back to the item of $69,000 for 1945-46. According to the answer the minister gave me, he was out only $80,004 in his estimates. In view of that discrepancy, will the minister tell the committee how much money was voted to the department in the supplementary estimates and how much the department spent?


Brooke Claxton: I will get that for the hon. gentleman.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I was interested in the cards, which the minister described as colourful, for display in kitchens, showing what is believed to be a proper diet. I think he said that 100,000 in English and 25,000 in French of these cards had been distributed. That strikes me as meagre, considering the number

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of homes and kitchens there are in Canada. Maybe there is some explanation. Would the minister give us some idea as to how they are distributed and whether consideration has been given to distributing these and other worth-while posters to every home in Canada?


Brooke Claxton: The figure was based on the distribution that was made of the previous wall charts. It was expected that that kind of distribution would be needed to cover the needs calculated for the various provincial and other agencies through which the distribution is made. We have given consideration to the idea of a distribution of 'wall charts and similar material to all homes in Canada, and such distribution has been made so far in inserts in the envelopes containing the family allowance cheques. The insert is in pictorial form and gives nutritional rules that would be useful in the feeding of children. We have considered whether or not that could be extended along the lines the hon. member suggests, but so far it has been felt that the same results could be achieved through the family allowance distribution, which goes to practically every home in Canada where there are children.
In answer to the hon. member for Grey North the main estimates for 1945-46 wrere S69,027, and supplementaries, $80,004, or a total of $149,031.


Wilfrid Garfield Case: I have that figure, but I
asked how much was the total voted in supplementary estimates for the department.


Brooke Claxton: The total supplementaries for the department were $760,828 for the health branch, and $53,005.27 for the welfare branch. The expenses, of course, were nowhere near the estimates.


Mr. CRUICKSHANK:: What provision is
being made to provide a suitable and proper diet for the people of Canada by seeing that berries and other fruits are made available to them? Will the minister give us the assurance that he will try to convince the government that it should take steps to see that berries and other fruits are made available to the Canadian people so that they will get proper nutrition?


Brooke Claxton: We are most anxious
to see that everyone in Canada gets adequate nutrition and we shall do everything possible to see that that is done.


Mr. PROBE:: Is there any place in this
estimate for doing something practical in the line of nutrition, not simply giving advice or suggesting diet rules to follow? I was thinking

specifically of the distribution of milk in schools for children of public school age. Now that the two cents subsidy on milk has been taken off, a simple calculation would show that all school children of public school age in this country could be provided wuth a bottle of milk in the morning recess and again in the afternoon recess at a cost of from $1 to $1.25 per student. I know the minister is anxious about the technical side of nutrition, but the practical side is equally important. I think the minister could make a worth-while contribution in a practical way to nutritional standards, particularly of children of school age who are not likely to have enough milk, by providing through the provincial governments a subsidy of twro cents a quart on milk, on a distribution of say 200 half pints a year, and the provincial governments could work out a plan of distribution with the school districts so that every child of elementary school age will get the milk he requires. I think that would be something worth while. Would the minister say whether such a scheme would be practical? I am sure the cost would not be more than a million or a million and a half dollars a year, and it would be of as much practical value as sending out a bunch of charts which the hon. member for Broadview says are thrown into the wastepaper basket.


Brooke Claxton: The hon. member's suggestion is not in my view a practicable one. We have never had any suggestion from any province that we should make such a grant-in aid.


John Oliver Probe: There is no reason why the minister should not take the lead, or at any rate the federal government.


Brooke Claxton: I still think we have in Canada a constitution that we ought to respect. What we aim to do is to put the provinces, by agreement with them, in a position where they can discharge their proper constitutional responsibilities, and I simply cannot conceive of any arrangement whereby the federal government could grant money for bottles of milk to individual children across Canada. We have not that kind of constitutional set-up.


John Oliver Probe: What is the constitutional limitation upon the federal government making a grant to the provinces on the basis of the number of school children who would receive such service through arrangements made by the provinces themselves? To me it is highly practical and I do not see any constitutional difficulty.

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Mr. FERGUSON:: Mr. Chairman-


John Oliver Probe: I should like to get an answer from the minister. He is a lawyer and he might indicate where the constitutional limitation applies. I am not a lawyer but I am interested in nutrition.


Brooke Claxton: At present we are discussing an item in the estimates. If the hon. member really wishes to have me develop the constitutional position of Canada, the relationship between the federal government and the provinces, and the constitutional and practical limitations upon a system of grants in aid, I am prepared to do so at the proper time. This, however, is not the time. I repeat, it has never been suggested to us that we should make such a grant for such a purpose and I cannot conceive of the provinces agreeing upon our doing that, nor can I imagine a system under which it can be done effectively.


Julian Harcourt Ferguson: The Department of
National Health and Welfare is one of the most outstanding in Canada, but in the administration of it I suggest that the old taxpayer of Canada should be given just as much consideration as he is under any other department. A moment ago the minister mentioned an item of $5,000 expended in the distribution of a map to demonstrate, and to educate the children of Canada in, the various products of this country, where they are produced, and the benefits to be derived from them if they are consumed in certain quantities and in certain ways. I do not think the department gave that item much consideration apart from the fact that it is an attractive illustration of the various products of Canada. Surely the departments of education of the various provinces could look after this matter. Here we are spending $5,000 to impress upon Canadian children where various products come from throughout the dominion. I suggest that this department is treading upon the toes of the provincial departments of education and that this is $5,000 thrown away. The purpose is to reach children who cannot read or who, if they can read, can find in their school books throughout Canada exactly where various products are grown and produced. If the schools in the different provinces cannot spend a little time in instructing their children in the matter of better diets for their general welfare, I suggest that it is extravagant for this department to turn out a $5,000 pamphlet for the purpose of informing the Canadian people where their products are grown. Considering the fact that this government could not give more than $9,000 to the entire boy scout movement for 63260-159J
the improvement of the health of young boys, when it can spend $5,000 extravagantly in connection with such a pamphlet.


Brooke Claxton: The maps would be distributed to the schools, through the provincial educational authorities.


Julian Harcourt Ferguson: Why is it necessary to spend $5,000 in this way? A well worded letter to all the schools would cost one-tenth of the amount.


Mr. BROOKS:: I think the point raised by the hon. member for Regina City was a very good one, namely, that something should be done to see that the health of our school children is improved. It occurred to me that in England-the minister will correct me if I am wrong-under the children's allowance, instead of paying so much money to heads of families they give in part food and milk to school children, the idea being to see that there the benefit of all the money goes to the children. I was wondering whether, under the children's allowance in this country, the minister had thought of giving possibly so much to the different provinces so that they could see that the money which is going here for family allowance really provides the service for which it is intended. We hear reports that people are taking the money and going to the moving pictures and spending it in other ways which are not beneficial to the children, and the department has no way of remedying this. If we want to bring up healthy children in this country it cannot be done if the money is to be wasted on something else. It seems to me that the suggestion of the hon. member for Regina City is a good one, and we should see to it that the money which is being spent is used to build up the bodies of young children attending school. Possibly this will come up under children's allowances, and the minister will be able to discuss it then.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
National health branch-
ZH. Combating veneral diseases-administration, $36,970.
Donald Methuen Fleming: Items 214, 215 and 216 relate to the combating of venereal diseases, and perhaps what I have to say now will apply to all three. The first item is administration, $36,000 roughly; the second is assistance to the provinces for control of venereal diseases under regulations approved by the governor in council, $175,000; and the third is distribution of drugs under regulations approved by the governor in council, $50,000.
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The first two represent reductions from last year's estimates; the third item is the same as last year's.
In all fairness to the work of the department under this branch, it should be observed that the actual administration of methods of combating venereal disease must fall under the jurisdiction of the provinces, and the contribution of the dominion in this field cannot in peace time be as great as in war time. There was a great opportunity during the war for the dominion, through this department and its predecessor, to take effective measures on various fronts to combat the spread of venereal disease. It requires no further words on my part to establish the seriousness of the whole problem. It is a serious problem in this country; but it is one which, by enlightened methods, can be reduced in its scope if, indeed, it cannot be overcome.
The effect of remedial measures of the right kind is shown by the reduction in the incidence of venereal diseases in the armed forces during the war, by methods carried on under dominion jurisdiction. The report of the department for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1945, at page 62, gives certain figures showing the reduction in incidence in the disease in the armed forces, beginning with the year 1940 and ending with 1944. Statistics for 1945 are not available to us. In the navy the rate per 1,000 in 1940 was 58; in 1941 it rose to 60, and from that point on it was reduced until in 1944 it was 32, which is less than 50 per cent of the incidence of venereal disease in 1941. In the army the incidence of the disease reached its peak in 1940, with 62 per 1,000 in that.year. It was reduced each year until in 1944 it had been reduced to 29, less than half of the rate of incidence which prevailed in 1940. In the air force in' 1940 the rate of incidence was 29, and it was reduced in each year until in 1944 it was 18 per 1,000. These figures are most significant in showing what can be done by effective measures. Of course it is not possible to take measures with reference to the civilian population in the same way as it is possible with reference to the armed forces. There are not the same opportunities for inspection and control, but there are important lessons to be derived from the experience of Canada in time of war in seeking to combat the incidence of venereal disease in the armed forces.
In a review of this particular item in the estimates of the department last year, the minister outlined a programme on four fronts. His remarks are to be found at page 3600 of Hansard of December 15, 1945. He spoke about a series of advertisements issued by

the department emphasizing a four-sector front against venereal disease. These four sectors of the front are health, welfare, legal and moral. If the minister will be so kind I should like him to outline what programme his department proposes to follow this year with reference to this problem, bearing in mind, of course, the constitutional limitations on the powers of the department. In particular, I should like to ask him what measures the dominion hopes to initiate or bring about by education or other methods on the moral front? I am moved to say this, not with a view of repeating what has been discussed more than once in this chamber, but because I think it has a direct bearing on any measures that this department proposes to take to combat venereal disease on the moral front. I am sure that we must put far more emphasis on the moral attack on venereal disease than has been done hitherto.
The deputy minister of this department on the health side has made certain public statements, and I should like the view of the minister in regard to the relation of some of the statements of his deputy to the efforts of the department to combat venereal disease on the moral front. Doctor Chisholm's opinions are his own business; but the statements which he makes in his capacity as deputy minister of national health in the time of the department, the time of the people of Canada, are, I think, a matter of genuine Concern to the members of this committee. When Doctor Chisholm speaks in public on these matters, undoubtedly he is recognized as speaking in his capacity of deputy minister of national health, and his remarks must certainly be construed by the public as having some relationship to the policy of this department.
In all fairness, I say that there has been a good deal of misapprehension about the remarks of Doctor Chisholm. There has been so much publicity given to his remarks on the subject of education of children, on the subject of Santa Claus, that some of his remarks which are of greater significance have been lost sight of. What I am speaking of to-night has nothing to do with Doctor Chisholm's views on the matter of instructing children in regard to Santa Claus. His remarks which I shall quote relate directly to what may or may not be the policy of this department in attacking venereal disease on the moral front. I shall quote the exact words used by Doctor Chisholm in his lectures at the William Alanson White memorial lectures in the United States last fall. This is what he said:
Is there any force so potent and so pervasive that it can do all -these things in all civilizations?

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He was dealing with the question of inferiority, guilt and fear and the effect of these things in controlling people's actions and inhibitions. I continue:
There is-just one. The only lowest common denominator of all civilizations and the only psychological force capable of producing these perversions is morality, the concept of right and wrong, the poison long ago described and warned against as "the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."
In the old Hebrew story God warns the first man and woman to have nothing to with good and evil. It is interesting to note that as long ago as that, "good" is recognized as just as great a menace as "evil." They are the fruit of the one tree and are different aspects of the same thing.
We have been very slow to rediscover this truth and to recognize the unnecessary and artificially imposed inferiority, guilt and fear, commonly known as sin, under which we have almost all laboured and which produces so much of the social maladjustment and unhappiness in the world. For many generations wre have bowed our necks to the yoke of the conviction of sin. We have swallowed all manner of poisonous certainties fed us by our parents, our Sunday and day school teachers, our politicians, our priests, our newspapers and others with a vested interest in controlling us. "Thou shalt become as gods, knowing good and evil," good and evil with which to keep children under control, with which to prevent free thinking, with which to impose local and familial and national loyalties and with which to blind children to their glorious intellectual heritage. Misguided by authoritarian dogma, bound by exclusive faith, stunted by inculcated loyalty, torn by frantic heresy, bedevilled by insistent schism, drugged by ecstatic experience, confused by conflicting certainty, bewildered by invented mystery, and loaded down by the weight of guilt and fear engendered by its own original promises, the unfortunate human race, deprived by these incubi of its only defences and its only reasons for striving, its reasoning power and its natural capacity to enjoy the satisfaction of its natural urges, struggles along under its ghastly self-imposed burden. The results, the inevitable results, are frustration, inferiority, neurosis and inability to enjoy living, to reason clearly or to make a world fit to live in.


Mr. REID:: I have listened to what the hon. member has read. What does Doctor Chisholm really mean?


Donald Methuen Fleming: I should have thought the pith of the remarks of the deputy minister is that the heart of our problem is that we choose to recognize such things as good and evil. His argument here is that the cause of our troubles is the conception of morality which rests on religion and the religious conception of good and evil; therefore he says, do away with that and a lot of your trouble will be over. Further on in his address, he says:
Freedom from moralities means freedom to observe, to think and behave sensibly, to the advantage of the person and of the group, free from outmoded types of loyalties and from the magic fears of our ancestors.
The committee is entitled to know whether that represents the type of attack which this department conceives to be the proper type of attack on the problem of venereal disease on the moral front. I suggest that when we are called upon to vote substantial sums of money to assist this department in combating this dreadful venereal disease; when it is recognized by the minister himself that it has to be attacked on four fronts, not the least of which is the moral front, we want some positive assurance from the minister that statements of this type are disclaimed by the department as representing the policy and view of the department. In the second place, we want an assurance that it is not going to be countenanced by the department on the part of a civil servant, speaking in his capacity as a civil servant, in time paid for by the department. If the deputy minister is to continue in office, and I take it he is since this matter was touched upon last fall, we want some assurance that remarks of this kind will not be made by him in his official capacity.


Brooke Claxton: The hon member for Eglinton has raised, this question and I am very glad to reply to him. In the first place, I should say that Doctor Chisholm is a doctor and scientist of considerable distinction who during the war rendered great service as director general of medical services of Canada, during the very period when this reduction in venereal disease was effected and when the front against venereal disease included the moral front. He was selected to come to this department and was appointed on the recommendation of the Prime Minister in November, 1944, and he has given great service in organizing the department. When he delivered the speech in Washington just referred to he was speaking as a professional man to an audience of professional men. In no wav did he represent himself as speaking for the department or the government of Canada. Incidentally, not that it matters so much, he spoke when he was on leave from the department, his first leave since joining it.
I do not intend to go over the ground covered in the speech to which the hon. member has referred, or what has been quoted by my hon. friend. Nor do I intend to try to explain what Doctor Chisholm meant in the words he used. But I think, if the speech is read as a whole, its general purpose will be seen. It is this: that because of his experiences in two wars, because of his knowledge as a scientist, Doctor Chisholm, like a great number of other people in the world, including the present Prime Minister in speeches in this house, has reached the strong conviction
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that unless mankind does something to look after its own affairs better than has been done in the past we are likely to have another war which will destroy a very large proportion of civilization, if not mankind itself. That, I think, is clear from this speech and other utterances of Doctor Chisholm, as well as of other people. Holding that view as strongly as he does, he finds that the trouble lies in ourselves, and he suggests some remedies, some changes in attitude.
Certainly I do not pretend for a moment that the views he expresses are my views. I believe, however, that he has sincerely stated his views because of his strong convictions, and has stated them in all sincerity as an approach to the settlement of the question of war and peace, of man controlling himself as well as his environment. The object. I think, is to try to get people to think for themselves. I have discussed this matter witn Doctor Chisholm, as hon. members may imagine, and from that discussion I personally do not think one would find anything in what he said which was an attack on morality in any proper sense, or on a proper concept of good and evil, or on any religion. That is the impression he left with me in the discussions I have had with him.
It is quite obvious that in this he was not speaking for the department or the government. I think it is equally obvious from his whole record that he is a man of great sincerity and deep personal conviction. When as deputy minister of the department he supports and , in fact directs a campaign against venereal disease, which includes an attack on the moral front, he means that; and it is an important element in the attack on venereal disease, as the publicity and educational activities of the department have pointed out and as the hon. member for Eglinton has said. It is mentioned fourth in - the list for reasons of climax, as being the most important element in it. The publicity issued, either through films, posters, pamphlets or newspaper advertisements, all emphasizes this; and I can assure the hon. member that as long as I have anything to do with the department they will continue to emphasize it.
The campaign to which he referred and the programme about which he desired information is being carried on largely in cooperation with those agencies throughout the dominion which are directly engaged in dealing with the problem. Within the last two months there was held in Ottawa a meeting at which the venereal disease enforcement officers of the various provinces and others representing the armed forces discussed further plans and

agreed on a common line of attack. Among the most important things are the distribution of infomation, the cooperation with regard to statistics, and also the possible development of common lines of attack through action in the courts and otherwise, as well as in the all-important field of education. All that activity is being carried on in cooperation with those agencies, in the directions that were outlined previously.


Mr. LENNARD:: Then might I ask the minister the reason for this great reduction in the amount for publicity and information in the estimates for 1946-47?


Brooke Claxton: The reason for the reduction is the relatively large item which was included in the estimates for the previous year to cover the cost of a campaign that was carried on during the month of November. 1944. That campaign included a large amount of newspaper and other kinds of publicity. It received general commendation and was useful, but it is not the kind of thing we would wish to repeat every year. It was done in conjunction with the war, and also in conjunction with a similar campaign being carried on in the United States. The possibility of holding another campaign will be under consideration, but it is not contemplated for this year.


William Gourlay Blair: 
Brooke Claxton: I agree with the hon. member in what he says respecting the amount provided. It surprises me, and I shall certainly see that it is reexamined. I noted his statement as to the expenditure of $226,710 for the care of lepers. That, of course, includes the quarantine service. The actual expenditure on the care of lepers was somewhat under $15,000, if my memory is correct.


John Oliver Probe: I congratulate the hon. member for Lanark upon his drawing attention to the serious implications of venereal disease. At the same time, however, I would question the consistency of several of his colleagues who have been attacking the ministers, including the one now before the committee, for too heavy expenditures on publicity. I believe that inconsistency should be explained, because [DOT]on the one hand we cannot have increased expenditures for some worth-while form of publicity, and decreased expenditures on the other. I believe it was the hon. member for Vancouver-Burrard who on June 7, as reported at page 2314 of Hansard, referred to this specific appropriation.
I note that in connection with venereal diseases there is an appropriation to the provinces. Why is it constitutionally sound to make additional grants to the provinces for the control of venereal diseases, for physical fitness programmes, but constitutionally unsound to make a grant in connection with the nutritional matter of supplying milk for school *children, which I mentioned a minute ago. It was pointed out that such additional grant was ultra vires or unconstitutional. What is the explanation?


Brooke Claxton: Replying to the hon. member for Lanark, might I point out that under the next item, 215, there is included in the sum of $175,000 an amount of $25,250 for
education in connection with venereal disease.
Then, replying to the hon. member for Regina City, I could, as I have said, discuss at some length the constitutional question. Offhand I would say, however, that whereas it would be possible for the federal government to make additional grants in aid to the provinces for purposes such as this, and to make them constitutionally and practically, I fail to see how we can make available to the provinces for payment to individuals throughout the provinces moneys for the purpose he has mentioned. I should think that kind of payment would lead to all kinds of constitutional and administrative difficulties.
It seems to me that there is a fundamental difference, and that the answer we have given is the right one, namely that the right way to deal with such a matter is by general arrangement to put the provinces in a position where they can discharge their own responsibilities.


John Oliver Probe: There is no hint in anything I have said that additional grants made by the Canadian government should not be to the provinces in the nature of grants for milk for school children. The details could be worked out, if the approach were properly made in the form of an offer from this government. We have made a much greater grant by way of family allowances. We are told that in the next year it will amount to $250 million. It seems that the expenditure depends on what the grant is to be made for. It seems to me that the minister is not logical in what he says.
I approve entirely the principle of a grant to fight venereal diseases, a grant for a national physical fitness programme, and for payment of family allowances, and hope that the list can be extended, because it is only in that way that we can equalize opportunities as between the wealthier and poorer individuals. It seems to me that the minister has not fully answered my question as to the constitutional difficulties.


Mr. SHAW:: What I have to say relates specifically to item 215, wherein it is indicated that grants to provinces for assistance in the control of venereal disease have been reduced by $33,000. I must confess I was a little surprised when I read of the proposed reduction. I appreciate fully that the government must be under great pressure to effect economies, but action of this kind must be characterized as nothing short of false economy.


Brooke Claxton: I can answer the hon. member at once. The allotment for 1945-46 is shown as $208,300 as against $175,000 for 194647. The $33,300 difference was simply to cover
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the payment of the amounts outstanding to the provinces from 1944 to 1945. The amount allocated for both periods was the same, $175,000, and it has been the same since 1943 if spread over the years.


Frederick Davis Shaw: The grants were first made to the provinces in 1919 to assist in the control of venereal disease, and then they were progressively reduced until in 1932 they were completely eliminated. When were they resumed?


Brooke Claxton: 1943.


Frederick Davis Shaw: Could the minister give us the statistics from 1938 to 1946?


Brooke Claxton: I have not the morbidity rates going back that far.


Frederick Davis Shaw: Will those be made available to the committee before we complete these estimates? As I said before, in 1919 the dominion government undertook a policy of making grants to the provinces. In order to qualify, a province had to establish free clinics, free hospital beds for indoor patients, provide treatment to gaol inmates, appoint a specially trained director, all of which was subject to inspection by a federal official. In 1919 the total grant was $180,000. By 1922, all the provinces with the exception of Prince Edward Island had qualified by meeting the conditions I have just stated, If I may repeat, in 1932 the grant was eliminated.
The provinces were left in this position, which has happened in connection with so many federal grants. They were encouraged to establish machinery to meet certain conditions and they banked upon the grant made by the dominion only to find, after the machinery was functioning and could not possibly be done away with-the people demand these services-that the dominion was withdrawing from the field and leaving the provinces to bear the full burden of the cost.
There should not be any reduction this year, next year or the year following in the grants to provinces to assist in the control of venereal disease, unless at the same time it can be said that venereal disease has been wiped out entirely in this country. I realize that health is primarily a responsibility of the provinces; but we have just come through a national tragedy, namely, a war, and we have had to face abnormal conditions in connection with these diseases. Since people migrated from one section of the country to another this has really become substantially a federal responsibility. Let me emphasize what I said a moment ago. I trust that there will be no attempt made, no matter what demands for economy are put forth, to eliminate this fed-
[Mr. Claxton.l
eral grant to assist in the control of venereal disease, unless it can be said that veneral dis-' ease no longer exists in this land.


Frank Exton Lennard: I should like to refer back to the remarks made a few moments ago by the hon. member for Regina City and assure him there is no inconsistency as far as this group is concerned. I wish to assure him personally that wrhen I make any criticism of any department I do so honestly and sincerely and because it is my opinion. Remarks such as his are entirely uncalled for. As far as I am concerned, the members of this group are not hamstrung as are those in his group.


John Oliver Probe: I am very happy to accept the statement of the hon. gentleman, but I would draw his attention to the fact that the Progressive Conservatives were not all of a mind on this.


John Horne Blackmore: I expected that the hon. member for Eglinton would follow up his attack on the moral aspect of this venereal disease question, but he appears not to be intending to do that. I find myself somewhat confused by the whole situation. I am not able to gather w-hat the minister conceives to be the moral attack on venereal disease.
I could understand his conceiving venereal disease to be the result of a lack of morality in the country and that lack of morality to be owing to a lack of faith in religion and in God and his undertaking to use a method of attack through an educational campaign that would restore the belief of the people in God and Christianity and thereby make the people sense their responsibility to God a little more and refrain from the offences which result in venereal disease.
I can understand some such line of attack as that being a moral attack on the problem, but I must say that apparently the minister has left unsaid the very things that he needed to have said in order that I would be able to see how the speech of Doctor Chisholm, which the hon. member for Eglinton quoted, could have anything to do with the moral attack on the venereal disease question. Perhaps the minister can elucidate the matter for me. I have three questions to ask which will probably assist him.
The first one is: What does the minister mean by a moral attack on the venereal disease problem? Second, does the minister conceive Doctor Chisholm's remarks, as quoted by the hon. member for Eglinton, to be a contribution to the attack on venereal disease on the moral front? Third, the minister has said that Doctor Chisholm is a great scientist; what bearing on the moral aspect of the attack on venereal disease does the minister conceive that fact to have? If the

Supply-Health and Welfare
minister will explain that I probably can get myself correctly orientated in regard to this matter.


Brooke Claxton: I am not prepared to develop for the benefit of the hon. member for Lethbridge-


John Horne Blackmore: Why not include the committee?


Brooke Claxton: -and this committee my concept of morality. I think every hon. member has his own concept and is living up to it as best he can.


John Horne Blackmore: That is not a sufficient answer. If a moral attack on venereal disease means anything, it means a moral attack. If remarks are made in the country which tend to destroy the faith of the people in God, in Christianity and in the moral standards which we have had for generations; if those things are being done in a public way and the faith of the people being destroyed, I fail utterly to see how a moral attack is being made on the venereal disease question. I believe a good deal of explanation is due the committee. I represent a constituency in which this is a serious matter, and I believe that a good many hon. members do. What does the minister mean by morals when he speaks of an attack against venereal disease on the moral front? If the minister will explain that, we shall proceed from there.


Donald Methuen Fleming: The item reads:
Assistance to provinces for control of venereal diseases under regulations approved by the governor in council.
Are those the regulations which were promulgated on April 30,	1946, and which
appeared in the Canada Gazette on May 18, 1946? They provide, briefly, for a distribution of the grant on the basis of a minimum organizational grant of $4,000 for each province, and the remainder of the grant is apportioned according to population.


Brooke Claxton: That is right.


John Horne Blackmore: I am not at all satisfied about this matter. I think the people of Canada are entitled to a clear statement as to the significance of some of the speeches that have been made by the deputy minister of health. He might have been speaking in an unofficial capacity, and in so far as he was doing so, well and good. I am not particularly criticizing that gentleman. I am criticizing more the attitude which is being adopted by a good many men who call themselves scientists and who assume things that have never been proved and then proceed to make a great many remarks based on their 63260-160
false assumptions and spread them abroad all over the country, tending to destroy the faith of the people.
My judgment is this. At least I am inclined to believe that there is a lot in this, that the venereal disease which has developed in this country has developed as a result of a deliberate propaganda which has been going on now for something like two generations and which is aimed at the destruction of the faith of the people. I had the privilege of going to university, commencing in 1909 and going on to 1913, and what went on in that university was a long, long way from anything that would be conducive to the building up of faith in God. About all that we were taught faith in was evolution. I have an idea that that sort of thing is going on in most of the universities in this land. Certainly it is being propagated in a good many textbooks and in many of the illustrated lectures and in slides. If this sort of thing goes on throughout the country and no attempt is made on the part of Canada as a whole to offset that tendency, we are just throwing good money down the drain when we attempt to cope with venereal disease.
I do not suppose that hon. members will accept this as a particular authority, but I happen to have in my hand a statement by Henry Ward Beecher, which is of interest in this connection. He says: "Morality without religion has no roots." I am inclined to think that philosophy is just about right. "Morality without religion has no roots."
I said the other day, on June 7, that I believed the people had to return to God, and I think that is one of the very first things to do if we are to make an attack on venereal disease on the moral front. If we do not do that, we are not attacking venereal disease on the moral front.
The minister will remember that on June 7 I asked a number of questions designed to bring out the number of films which were being shown by the national film board and which tended to indoctrinate evolution. I do not know whether the minister has had time to get the answers to questions, I asked that day, but if he has, I should like to have him give the answers now. I asked another set of questions on that same day designed to give him an opportunity of telling how many films the national film board is showing which are designed to increase faith in the bible. If he can tell us that I shall be glad. If we find that there are a good many films tending to establish the evolution concept and very few films tending to establish faith in the bible concept, we can get a pretty

Supply-Health and Welfare

good idea of what the minister and his department mean by	a moral	attack	on
venereal disease.


Brooke Claxton: Perhaps I had better
deal with the hon. member's question with regard to the film board, although it is totally	irrelevant to this item,	by saying
that when the item comes before us I am prepared to deal fully with it. I do not know of any film such as he has in mind.
With	regard to his	question	about	themoral front and various other fronts in attacking venereal disease, it is quite obvious that we are doing the job of combating venereal disease	through various	agencies	which	are
appropriate for each part of the job. With regard to health, that is done through the weapons of modern science, making treatment available, educating people to look after themselves, public health procedure.
Mr. BLACIvMORE:	That would be the
intellectual front, not the moral front.


Brooke Claxton: 1N0; that is the health
front.


John Horne Blackmore: That is intellectual.
You would not call that moral.


Brooke Claxton: On the health front you find physicians, health nurses, university medical training centres, hospitals, free treatment centres and so on. On the welfare front are the people who work to improve living conditions, social workers, welfare agencies and all the other instruments used to combat squalor and overcrowding, bad sanitation, neglect and insecurity.
On the legal front the aim is to conduct a vigorous, unrelenting and sustained attack in the courts, through the use of the machinery of the courts, and police agencies whose job is to seek out and bring to justice those who for personal gain cater to man's weaknesses. On all these different fronts the agencies appropriate to each are the ones to take action. On the moral front the battle is led by the churches and by the homes of Canada. They work together to inculcate a moral attitude and uphold the sanctity of marriage and of family life.	[DOT]


John Horne Blackmore: If that is the meaning of "moral" I believe that every member of this committee will agree that anything that tends to establish the evolutionary theory or the higher criticism attitude toward the bible or to undermine belief in God, Christ or the bible is diametrically opposed to every one of the elements working in the interests of the moral life of the country, because they are opposed to those elements which are working [Mr. Blackmore.j
for the establishment of spirituality in the country. I do not wish to labour this point. I believe that there should be a united effort from coast to coast in this country among the people, not among the lawmakers, to reestablish faith in God, faith in the bible, faith in Christianity and to offset the pernicious effects of the evolutionary theory. The evolutionary theory was never more than a theory and, as the days go by, it is being shown more and more to be unfounded in fact. Why, then, should we have our films filled with it, our textbooks filled with it, our university courses filled with it? It is a problem the people must deal with, and as a member of this house I suggest that the people from coast to coast take this matter with great seriousness.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
National health branch-
21G. Distribution of drugs under regulations approved by the governor in council, $50,000.
Donald Methuen Fleming: Would the minister say a word as to the development of the drug treatment of this disease? There was some discussion last year. There has been much public discussion of the use of penicillin and it may be that the public has been led to expect more of it than it is entitled to. I think the committee would be interested to know what, in the view of the department, has been the progress made with new drug treatments.


Brooke Claxton: The purpose of the vote is to distribute arsenicals for the treatment of venereal disease on our basis which has been worked out and stated in the regulations. Arsenicals are used for the treatment of syphilis. I do not think the hon. member would wish me to go into the standard treatment. This vote has been in existence since 193S. Distribution is made to the provinces and it largely meets the need. With regard to penicillin, it is available in increasingly large quantities for all purposes and has proved efficacious in the treatment of one type of disease. It is rapid and its effects a complete cure as far as we know.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Will this item be used' simply for distribution of arsenicals or is any penicillin provided under it?


Brooke Claxton: Consideration is being
given to the provision of penicillin, but there are reasons which differentiate it from the arsenicals. There are reasons why the arsenicals should be made available through the federal department and penicillin not. We are giving further consideration to the question.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.

Supply-Health and Welfare
National health branch-
218.	Dental health division, $56,785.
Donald Methuen Fleming: This item contains, under the heading of "publicity and information", an increase from $2,000 in the previous year to $30,000. Will the minister give a breakdown? We need not bother with last year's expenditure, but I think we should have a breakdown of the contemplated expenditure under this item for the current year.


Brooke Claxton: This division was established late in 1945, and the amount of $2,000 which was sought in the estimates was to cover publicity contingencies, but no complete programme was worked out at that time. The $30,000 is now asked to cover the purchase of two films, one to encourage dental health among children, and the other an instructional film for use of public health nurses and school nurses. That will take up almost the total amount asked for.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
National health branch-
219.	Hospital design division, $72,516.
William Gourlay Blair: The amount has been increased substantially since last year. Is it the purpose of the minister to afford architectural experience or help to municipalities that wish to build a hospital? Is the architect free? Suppose a municipality wanted to build a hospital; would the department advise them and send the architects to look over the plan or to produce a plan.


Brooke Claxton: Yes. The hon. member for Lanark has correctly described the purpose of the division. It was created in consequence of a resolution passed at a meeting of the dominion council of health held in May, 1945. That council consists of the deputy ministers of health of the dominion and the provinces and some laymen. The resolution recommended that this department be established and devolped to provide a special service for the purpose of advising the provinces in respect of the planning and building of modern, practical and reasonably priced public institutions including tuberculosis, mental, convalescent, and general hospitals and public health and other clinics, old age homes and so forth, to collect and tabulate and make available all the latest information on the subject, to be prepared to study problems of construction, and to advise on the planning of buildings and the development of minimum standards as a guide for future types of public institutions. That is a very large programme, and it is intended to achieve this through the appointment, which has been made, of a well-qualified architect. He will also concern himself with 63260-160J
the development of plans for the department's own hospitals, advise the other departments of the federal government with regard to hospital design, equip himself by looking at hospitals that have already been built, of different types in different parts of Canada, the United States and other countries; and otherwise acquire the knowledge necessary to develop standard types of design and specifications for different sizes and different types of hospitals. These will then be available to any province or municipality or private hospital which desires to build in order to put their plans and specifications in the hands of their own architect, thus enabling him to start with something from which he can work in order to meet the needs of the particular type of hospital and locality concerned. It will be a free service to facilitate the design and construction of hospitals in the various communities. It is important because it is estimated that to fill the needs of Canada there will have to be an amount ranging from $125 million to $200 million of hospital construction over the next ten years. It is thought that this service will be of use in that connection,


William Gourlay Blair: The architect in charge of the building of a hospital will have the benefit of consultation?


Brooke Claxton: He will be available and provide typical plans, et cetera.


William Gourlay Blair: He will not do the work himself?


Brooke Claxton: No, that would be done by the local architect.


Douglas King Hazen: Have any of the provinces already consulted with this department about the construction of buildings? If so, what provinces ha,ve consulted, and what is the type of buildings regarding which they have consulted the dominion?


Brooke Claxton: The chief of the division was appointed only on February 25, 1946, and so far has been busily engaged in planning the design of three hospitals for this department. so that he is just beginning to make available- material of interest to the provinces. We hope to develop knowledge on the subject quickly.


Douglas King Hazen: Was the $28,150 voted last year all expended?


Brooke Claxton: The amount expended last year was $1,268.98. The position could not be filled until the year was practically' over.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Supply-Health and Welfare
[Stage Direction]
National health branch-
220.	Mental health division, $32,285.
John Ritchie MacNicol: I wish to support this item and to compliment the minister on increasing it. A short time ago I had occasion to go to the psychiatric hospital in Toronto near Queen's Park to see a friend who I had not known was sick. Apparently the party I have in mind had a mental breakdown. That was the first occasion on which I had to go to such a hospital, and while there I made it my business to inquire, as much as I could, into what the hospital was doing. I had conversations on other visits and learned that Doctor Clarence W. Hincks was the head of the committee on national mental hygiene, in Toronto, perhaps for all Canada. I arranged to get. in touch with him because I was anxious to learn as much as I could about the programme of mental hygiene. I had a conference with Doctor Hincks and made a short memorandum consisting of a number of his statements. I shall read four of them. They are as follows:
(a)	That one out of every ten persons examined for the armed services was mentally affected or afflicted.
(b)	That thirty-five per cent of illness is attributed to mental disorder of some kind;
(c)	That there are only ten mental clinics in Canada to take care of the problem;
(d)	That the services to combat the problem are inadequate.
He did not blame anybody for that. I gathered that this is more or less a new conception. I gathered that only in the last two or three years has a department really made an effort to deal with the problem.


Brooke Claxton: This is the first year.


John Ritchie MacNicol: Then what I was informed was correct. I shall re-read (d):
That the services to combat the problem are inadequate.
I am going to deal with each one of these items, but not from any knowledge I have. I was very happy to read almost a complete description of these four headings in the Toronto Star of last evening. Here is what the Star said in an editorial:
A third of all discharges from the armed forces in Canada were due to psychiatric disabilities.
That bears out what I have been told by Doctor Hincks.
Over ten million persons in the United States require hospitalization for mental illness, but adequate institutions are not available.
[Mr. Claxton.l
That bears out heading (b). I am not reading these remarks consecutively as they are written in the Star, but consecutively to suit the headings I have before me. I continue:
It is deplorable that known methods for the cure and prevention of mental disease are not being applied on an adequate scale. Hospitals for mental disorders are many of them understaffed, overcrowded, ill-equipped and in old buildings unsuitable for modern therapy.
In one year the minister, of course, has not had time to overcome such a big problem; but . I am glad to know that the programme is greatly expanding and is to be greatly enlarged. I continue with the Star's editorial:
If the curative and preventive measures developed during the war were applied many now in hospitals might be restored to normal society; many more might be prevented from requiring institutional care.
When I visited that hospital some few weeks ago I had no notion that mental hygiene was of such importance, or that our mental problem was of such a magnitude. In this connection I read to-day an article entitled "The Problem of Prison After-Care," by J. Alex. Edmison, K.C., executive secretary, prisoners' rehabilitation society of Ontario. In the article I found some interesting figures which bear out what I have already said. The article states:
In the annual report upon the prisons and reformatories of the province of Ontario for 1945 it was shown that during the year 2,810 inmates had been in the Ontario reformatory at Guelph. Of these 10-13 per cent were mental defectives . . .
I am glad the Minister of Justice is in his seat because I shall likely be repeating some of this material when his estimates are up for consideration, particularly in connection with the matter he referred to last year on prison reform. I continue:
Of these 10-13 per cent were mental defectives, 14-04 per cent were borderline, 32-79 per cent dull normal.
The evidence from the prison bears out what I read in the Toronto Star article and supports the four headings into which I divided the remarks of Doctor Hincks.
I am happy to notice that this item has been increased. I trust that the programme the minister has in mind will be greatly expanded and that this disease which appears to be a great scourge, something which I had not known of before, or that we had such a great percentage of people who are mental defectives, will be vigorously attacked. I remember what Doctor Hincks said, namely, that if the disease could be caught when people are young the effect of it in after years could be greatly

Supply-Health and Welfare
overcome if not wholly eliminated. Therefore I wish to repeat that this item has my undivided support.
I know nothing whatever about medicine. I am sure the hon. member for Lanark could give a much clearer talk on this subject than I can. I am happy to know that the hon. member for Lanark is a medical man. I am pleased to note that every time he speaks in the house the press gives him wide publicity because they know that he knows what he is talking about. I was also glad to note what the hon. member for Broadview said this evening. He is modest in his statements; but I know that the hon. member for Broadview, who was the mayor of Toronto for seven terms, was the father of the well-known, highly-commended medical department of the city of Toronto. I believe he was responsible for urging the late Doctor Hastings to become the head of that department, and everybody knows that Doctor Hastings did a good job.
I wish to compliment Doctor Hincks who, as I have, learned from other sources, devotes his entire time to this work, but not for the remuneration that he gets out of it. I was told by a gentleman who was well acquainted with him that Doctor Hincks was offered a large salary to go to New York and carry on mental hygiene work there, but being a Canadian and a lover of the great city in which he lives he decided to concentrate his life's work to that city. I am sure that the minister knows about that great work. I have heard Doctor Hincks speak very highly of the minister. He has a splendid board supporting him. The president of that board is a man whose name has been mentioned earlier this evening,' Major General G. Brock Chisholm. The vice-president is Sir Ellsworth Flavelle, bart. The treasurers are Philip S. Fisher and Fred Page Higgins; the latter is the only one I know, and he is an estimable man. The scientific adviser is Professor D. Ewen Cameron. The medical director is Doctor J. D. Griffin, and there is a long list of eminent men who are directors, whose names I shall not take time to read. Perhaps I should mention one who is no doubt, well known to the minister, Mr. Morris W. Wilson, C.M.G., chairman, who I believe, lives in Montreal. The list also includes Mr. Norman J. Dawes, Mr. William F. Angus, and quite a number of others, including Doctor F. Cyril James.
That is all I have to say about this matter. As I said a moment ago, personally I know nothing about it, but I became enthusiastic by what I heard, and I was greatly pleased with the improvement in the health of the person I went to the psychiatric hospital to see. If the psychiatric hospital can do that
sort of work, can bring about a restoration such as I saw in the person I went to see, a person well up in years, I have a pretty clear conception of what can be done if this type of illness is treated in time.


William Gourlay Blair: Ontario, in common with the other provinces, takes care of its own mental cases. While it is true there is a shortage of beds for mental cases in this province, still it is a fact that psychiatry is really a new science, and a large percentage of the people going into these mental institutions are cured. They are not called crazy people any more. It is recognized now that people can suffer from mental illness as well as from any other kind of illness. I should like, however, to ask a question of the minister, in view of the fact that the care of mental cases falls on the provinces. Of what benefit will be this amount of $32,000? How is it to be expended by the dominion government in connection with mental illness?


Brooke Claxton: The purpose is to make available to the provinces, the municipalities and local institutions technical advice on matters of mental health. The chief of the division is to give a series of lectures to public health institutes, doctors, nurses and so on. Already he has given those lectures in British Columbia, where he gave a two-day institute for workers in Vancouver. The division is to act as a clearing house for the provinces in matters of professional information and to provide them with information as to the availability of personnel for all classes of mental health work. A directory is being prepared. Tire division will plan, in consultation with the provinces, adequate preventive measures and treatment facilities. It will stimulate parent education across the country by making available literature and other educational material to direct the attention of parents to the advisability of seeing to it that the mental health of their children is looked after as well as their physical health. It will carry on the education of the public. It will encourage research in the field of mental health.
This is not designed to be in any sense a large division. It will have a chief and a clerical staff, and I think that is all. Just one doctor will be available in the way I have described. The situation with respect to mental - health is described at some length in the green book, the reference paper, "Health, Welfare and Labour," where full statistics are given showing the incidence of these conditions across Canada and the need for a great deal more work in this field. The proposals of the dominion government
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did include a substantial grant for mental health among the health grants which were proposed, which was to be increased to a total of $6,000,000 a year distributed among the provinces in accordance with population. That was to be a conditional grant. This division will work closely with the Canadian council on mental hygiene, to which the hon. member for Davenport referred.


William Gourlay Blair: I am still not clear on the
tie-up with the provinces. Since they produce their own personnel for the hospitals, and the psychiatrists, I am not clear on the part played by this division in giving advice on matters of mental hygiene.


Brooke Claxton: I thought I gave a full
answer.


William Gourlay Blair: There was just the one point, about giving advice to the provinces.


Brooke Claxton: The director will be
available to give advice. Already in one case, that of British Columbia, he has given a course of lectures on this subject, and I think that illustrates the way in which he will be available. The division will also act in the interchange of information between the provinces, so that they may exchange professional and technical information and information as to personnel.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Following up that point,
did any of the provinces request that this service be provided? As I understand it, this dominion service is of recent origin. How did it come about? Was it at the concerted request of the provinces?


Brooke Claxton: In this sense only, that in 1944 the provinces were called into consultation in regard to the health insurance bill then being considered by the social security committee, and that bill provided for health grants, including the mental health grant to which I have referred. After spending three days in Ottawa, the representatives of the provinces made a number of suggestions with regard to those proposals, and then it was understood that they agreed to them. It was quite obvious that the federal government could not arrive at a plan for the distribution of any such sum as four or five, six or seven million dollars to assist in mental health work unless it had its own professional adviser in that field; and at that time the question of such an appointment was considered. As far as I know, that is the only way the provinces might have known this appointment was under way. I think it was implied in the extent of the project which was under discussion.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: Would it be correct to understand that an attempt is made to avoid duplication of expert opinion? Is there an attempt by the dominion to get experts of different kinds who will not be in any way duplicating the provincial work, so that it might be considered an addition to the field; or might one find there is duplication?


Brooke Claxton: I think I can assure the hon. member that there is no duplication; that the functions we have in mind for the various divisions of the department involve no duplication whatever. The various divisions are charged with the work of securing the interchange of information between the provinces. Attached to almost every division in the department there is an interprovincial committee or a committee of professional experts with representatives from each province. In that way the divisions of the federal government provide machinery whereby views are interchanged and plans are coordinated. I have not known of any case in which there has been any duplication at all.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: Then is it quite clear that the dominion has become a sort of channel of communication between the provinces, and that the provinces find it more convenient to communicate with each other through the dominion than directly; or are there two parallel lines of communication?


Brooke Claxton: The fact is that through these agencies such as the dominion council on health, the Canadian council on nutrition, the national physical fitness council, the advisory committees to the division of food and drugs, the conference of workers on venereal disease, people from the provinces meet at Ottawa, exchange views, receive information and give advice. That is the way in which a large part of the work of the department is carried on. That is, we are in (communication with them and they are in communication with us. Then the representatives of the provinces or of professional associations meet at Ottawa and exchange views. It is the best way we know of in which the work in different fields can be coordinated throughout Canada. But it is largely the result of consultation and discussion.


Mr. CARDIFF:: I do not know whether the same condition applies throughout Canada, but in most county homes I believe at least a third of the cases could be classified as bordering on mental. Is any assistance given in that regard?

Supply-Health and Welfare


Brooke Claxton: No assistance is given by the dominion. That was the kind of assistance contemplated in the dominion government's proposals under which grants totalling S7 million might be made, for assistance in providing care for mental cases. That money would have been paid to the provinces, and distributed through various types of institutions within those provinces. But at present there is no such provision.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
National health branch-
221.	Blindness control division, $42,566.
Donald Methuen Fleming: This item contemplates an increase from $10,520 to $42,566. What expansion in programme will there be?


Brooke Claxton: The largest single item is an increase of $19,000 to cover the cost of medical specialists' fees in connection with a survey of blind pensioners, together with the cost of treatment of some of those pensioners whose vision may be benefited by medical or surgical procedure as indicated by the findings of the survey. This is part of a programme we have set under way, under which we hope to find out what proportion of blindness can be prevented or cured by treatment.
In the proposals to the provinces we offered to contribute 50 per cent of the cost of providing treatment, where that treatment might result in preventing or curing blindness, by operation or other means. As it is, we are going to continue the survey so as to find out the causes of blindness, what proportion can be treated, and carry on some test work to see how much it will cost to do a really big job in that field, with the hope of reducing the number of blind people from the substantial number there are in Canada to-day. It is believed that expenditures by the dominion and the provinces on this work would ultimately result in a reduction in the amount of pensions payable to blind persons.
. Mr. FLEMING: Will that survey involve original research work? Will that not be done in provincial institutions? We are concerned lest the programme contemplated by the minister's department might result in a duplication of the work now being carried on. How will the proposed expansion of expenditures under the item meet a need not at present being met by work done by the provinces?


Brooke Claxton: I believe it is correct to say that at present no one is charged with finding out from medical files what the causes of blindness are, from a statistical point of view. This is largely a statistical operation, but it must be done by doctors. It is believed
that this is the only way in which the information can be obtained. The work was started some time ago, and this is for an extension of that work. We hope through this means- the only means we know of-to find out all there is to know about causes of blindness in Canada, and to estimate what proportion might be cured by treatment or operation. This is not a duplication of work being carried on anywhere.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Is the work being done by persons on the staff of the department, or are expert research workers being retained for the purpose?


Brooke Claxton: I do not think the expression "research workers" would be exact.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Statisticians, then.


Brooke Claxton: This $19,000 additional is to provide payment to specialists who will do the survey work.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Specialists outside the department?


Brooke Claxton: Yes.


Angus MacInnis: There are six items in the division, and I am not objecting to any of them, because in my view the work supposed to be done is most desirable. The point raised by the hon. member for Eglinton is worthy of consideration. Is there cooperation between the minister's department and the various provincial departments in these matters, or are they matters which are outside provincial departments altogether?


Brooke Claxton: The situation is that of the 12,652 known blind people in Canada, some 6,882 were on pension as of January 1, 1946. We have records in the old age pensions office relative to each of those pensioners. Our aim is to go over those records, and also to go over the records of other agencies to find out the causes of blindness in Canada. There is no duplication in the work.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
National health branch-
222.	Tuberculosis control division, $32,051.
Mr. BRYCE:: I do not rise to criticize the minister, but rather to appeal to him for support. I was sorry that the dominion-provincial conference failed, because I had hoped that we would receive from that conference some support in the control of this terrible scourge which sweeps the country.
In Manitoba one person dies each twenty-four hours from tuberculosis. That is a heavy deathrate. I have told the house before just how bad it is. When we send tuberculosis-
2ozti
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tested cows to the north country we find that the people give the cows the disease before they are there three months. That is how bad the condition is. I have read in the newspapers where this matter has been discussed by provincial governments, but we find that very little has been done for the control of the disease.
I am pleased to note that another $15,000 is being set aside for that purpose. However, that is not nearly enough. The disease in the northern part of my constituency is spreading like wildfire. I know of one poll consisting of 120 voters. There are about 200 people in the settlement, and it was found that of that number there were seventy-two people infected with tuberculosis. There were twenty-one at home. At the last report eleven were active and probably would require treatment; three needed further investigation and eighteen were reported as having communicable diseases. When you have seventy-two out of 200 people in one little settlement in this condition you can realize how serious it is. This matter was brought up in the Manitoba provincial house by Mr. Hamilton, who represents a northern constituency, and Mr. Richards, but they do not seem to be able to do anything. This is a matter for the dominion to tackle. The dominion will have to step in and do something about it.
I do not want the committee to think I am speaking only about Indians because this is a mixed population. I hope something will be done, because people who go up there and work come back and find that there is something wrong with them. It is so easy to get this disease. I appeal to the minister to try to provide more money to control this disease in the north country, because it is worse there than in the southern parts of the province.


Mr. KNIGHT:: I should like to congratulate the minister upon increasing the amount being made available to deal with this scourge of tuberculosis. We have been fighting tuberculosis quite successfully in the province from which I come. Of course, we have no monopoly upon what we are doing, since this is general throughout the country.
I wanted to speak about something not altogether connected with the disease. I should like to draw to the attention of the minister certain privileges which are denied to people confined in sanitaria. I refer to the exercise of the franchise. Prior to the last dominion election this caused considerable trouble in my constituency. The electoral act does not appear to be clear on the matter, and the electoral officers at that particular time seemed
FMr. Bryce.]	I
unable to give a clear definition of the act. As I say, they did not seem to be sure on the matter, and the information we received at different times prior to the election was quite conflicting. As I understand the act, it provides that people in charitable institutions-I want to protest now against the use of that word-and inmates of sanitaria were to be deprived of the right to vote. As I contended when dealing with citizenship, the right to vote should be irrevocable, and I want to protest as forcibly as I can against the disenfranchisement of anyone unfortunate enough to be afflicted with tuberculosis.
We attempted to have the inmates of a sanitarium in my city enfranchised. We wired the electoral officer several times, and finally we were told that only those who had been in residence for a period of twelve months and had no hope of getting back to their constituencies could vote. We thought that was perfectly clear and we rejoiced when the telegram came through, but it is a sad commentary upon the stupidity of some of the returning officers in this country when I say that they interpreted that to mean that only those could vote who had been in residence for a period of twelve months and were considered to be incurable. After further wiring, we were able to change their minds, and we were permitted to take those people out to vote who had been certified by the doctors to be able to go.
Tuberculosis is not like other diseases and that is one reason why those patients who have been certified by the doctors to be able to do so should be able to go out to vote. I appeal to the minister to use his influence in this, particular matter. I see no reason why the electoral act should not be amended to permit or even to compel the setting up of polling booths in these institutions, so that the inmates could vote without sacrificing their comfort or running the risk of aggravating their condition.


William Gourlay Blair: I notice that we have the same situation here as existed in connection with the other matter. When I was discussing the matter of research in tuberculosis two or three weeks ago I got into an argument with the hon. member for Mackenzie. I have here a copy of my local paper, the Perth Courier, and the editor has plastered the whole front page with the statement that free tuberculosis clinics are being provided. That is what is being done in Ontario, and they are doing the same thing in Saskatchewan. I cannot see why $32,000 is necessary when the provinces have control of their own tuberculosis campaigns and their own sanitaria.

Supply-Health and Welfare


Brooke Claxton: The answer I would give to the hon. member for Lanark is exactly the same answer that I made with regard to mental health. The relation of the medical officer to be appointed with respect to tuberculosis is the same as the relation of the medical officer appointed with regard to mental hygiene. The positions are exactly the same; the divisions set up are similar, and the provisions for salaries are the same.


William Gourlay Blair: Would the medical officer consult with the Ontario department of health? Would he go out to the Lady Grey or up to the Muskoka sanitarium in order to give advice?


Brooke Claxton: He would if he were called in, and he would also be available in connection with work in other provinces. It is easy for any persons coming from Ontario to feel that they are able to look after their own health matters. That is so to a marked degree, but the same situation does not apply in some of the other provinces wThere the need with respect to certain diseases is much greater than that of Ontario. None of these officers would do work on patients in a province, but they would be available to work with the province in a consultative capacity.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
National health branch-
223.	Advertising and labels division, $70,463.
Donald Methuen Fleming: In this item we have an increase from $13,000 to $70,000. Would the minister indicate just what the programme is that *would justify this increase in expenditure?


Angus MacInnis: Perhaps the hon. member would allow the minister to tell us just what this item covers, just what this branch of his department does? Perhaps the hon. member for Eglinton knows, but I must plead ignorance and I should like to have the minister explain.


Brooke Claxton: The Food and Drugs Act is one of the oldest acts dealing with any matter affecting health which the department has to administer. It antedates confederation. There are extensive provisions in the act to protect the public against fraud and against injury to health, and not only for maintaining a service to ensure the purity of food and drugs but also to review the labelling and advertising of food and drugs. There are provisions in the act and in the regulations made in consequence of the act requiring that all packaged food and drugs be labelled and their contents be shown. These provisions are
enforced by the enforcement officers of the division. There is also a considerable amount of work involved in ensuring that the advertising matter does not make unjust or unfair claims. That requires close cooperation with those engaged in the production of food and drugs, and with advertising agencies and others who have to deal with advertising.
This division also reviews all radio scripts advertising food or drugs. It makes the cases on which prosecutions under the Food and Drugs Act for contraventions in respect to labelling and advertising are instituted. During the last year it has been working at a code which it is proposed to discuss with those engaged in the trade, in the hope that they will largely enforce this. It is also assembling a series of administrative decisions on the use that may be made of various words and so as to establish uniform practices by those who want to advertise.
The division has hitherto operated under two or three different branches of the department. Those have been assembled this year in one division, known as the advertising and labels division. That is the reason for the increase. There is also an increase in salaries-


James MacKerras Macdonnell: You mean that the $13,000 shown for last year is not strictly comparable with the range of work covered by the $70,000 for this year?


Brooke Claxton: That is right, but I should add that there is a considerable increase in the provision for salaries, with additional staff.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: The minister has already pointed out that this thing has been going on for many years now, and we like to think that the work has been conducted reasonably efficiently up to the present time. I was going to ask, therefore, why the item has gone up six times, but that question is not applicable after what the minister has just said. It would, however, be well to know just why it has gone up, and to have figures which are comparable.


Brooke Claxton: I will repeat that this division is brought into existence through the assembly in one division of work that has hitherto been carried in various divisions. The first vote that was ever made to this division was $13,000. That was in the supple-mentaries for last year, but it represents only a portion of the year's work.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: I do not quite understand. Why are we not given the whole picture? Let me make this comment. I do not want to appear to be quibbling, but we should all face the fact
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that when you set up a new department you set up a new kingdom, and a lot of people are continually wanting to extend that kingdom. While these are small amounts, nevertheless we should have a look at them and make sure that we are getting value for these items, and the only way in which we can make sure is to have the figures presented in such a way that we can make a strict comparison and know exactly what is going on. As the hon. member for Vancouver East said the other evening-and I considered it wise- these discussions either mean something or they do not.


Brooke Claxton: I shall be glad to get the information for the hon. member.


John Bracken: The columns of figures showing the expenditures for last year and this ought to be as strictly comparable as they can be made. From what the minister has just said, these are not strictly comparable so far as this particular item is concerned, and wherever that occurs I think a detailed explanation ought to be made by the minister. Otherwise the comparison set out in the two columns is of no value to us. Where the two columns are not strictly comparable, the first explanation the minister should make is that they are not comparable and are not intended to be. If the different ministers have submitted their estimates in this way I think they ought to look over the figures that have been given to us for, as one hon. member said, either they mean something or they do not. This particular comparison is valueless.


Brooke Claxton: Hon. members must recognize that when a new department is formed and takes over the functions of an old department and fits them into the work of the new department, necessary adjustments must be made as it is established. When we planned the work of the department in October, 1944, it was without any administrative staff, and it was not until March 31, 1945, that we were able to establish separate books and begin our own operations. Then the estimates came on in November, 1945, before there was a fully developed administrative staff and before we had had even one full year's operating experience. In view of that, some adjustments were necessary, and these adjustments I am ready to explain. I have answered every question that has been put and I shall be glad to answer any other questions. The item before us is due to the fact that the work which it is proposed to carry on under the advertising and labels division was hitherto carried on by the dominion analyst as part of his functions and with his office and by the director of
public health service as part of his functions and with his staff. It was found that the work had developed, and there were complaints from the trade with regard to the efficiency and fairness of administration and the speed with which answers were given. It was felt that it was necessary to establish a new division and this vote is put in for the first time to do that. The explanation that I gave before, that the only time the vote appeared was in the supplementary estimates, being $13,000, is quite correct. If there are any items which appear in this vote of $70,463, which were taken out of the votes for other divisions and appeared under other columns in previous estimates, I shall be glad to let the leader of the opposition know, or on the other hand I shall let him know if this represents an entirely new expenditure over and above the $13,000 put into the supplementaries last year.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Will the minister bring in the actual expenditures in the last fiscal year on comparable items?


Brooke Claxton: Yes, if there are any.
Item stands.
Progress reported.


[Stage Direction]
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
Monday, June 17, 1946.