1947-12-12

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Public accounts for Canada, and report of the Auditor General for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1947.-Mr. Mayhew.


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On the order for government notices of motions:
That, whereas section eleven of The Agricultural Products Act, being chapter ten of the statutes of 1947, provides that subject as thereinafter provided, that act shall expire on 'the thirty-first day of December, one thousand nine hundred and forty-seven, if parliament meets during November or December, one thousand nine hundred and forty-seven, but if parliament does not so meet it shall expire on the sixtieth day after parliament first meets during the year one thousand nine hundred and forty-eight or on the thirty-first day of March, one thousand nine hundred and forty-eight, whichever date is the earlier: Provided that, if at any time while that act is in force, addresses are presented to the Governor General by the Senate and House of Commons respectively, praying that that act should be continued in force for a further period, not in any case exceeding one year, from the time at which it would otherwise expire and the Governor in Council so orders, that act shall continue in force for that further period.
And whereas it is considered desirable to continue the said act in force until the thirty-first day of March, one thousand nine hundred and forty-eight;
The following address be presented to His Excellency the Governor General of Canada:
To His Excellency Field Marshal The Right Honourable Viscount Alexander of Tunis, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, Knight Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, Companion of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India, Companion of the Distinguished Service Order, upon whom 'has been conferred the decoration of the Military Cross, one of His Majesty's aides-de-camp General, Governor General and Commander-inChief of the Dominion of Canada.
May it Please Your Excellency:
We, His Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the House of Commons of Canada, in parliament assembled, respectfully approach Your Excellency praying that The Agricultural Products Act be continued in force until the thirty-first day of March, one thousand nine hundred and forty-eight.
Right Hon. J. L. ILSLEY (Minister of Justice):: Mr. Speaker, I suggest that this stand for consideration later today, after we have finished the order we were debating yesterday.


Mr. SPEAKER:: Stand, until later today.



CHRISTMAS RECESS


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On the orders of the day:
Mr. M. J. OO'LDWELL (Rosetown-Biggar): Mr. Speaker, for the information of hon. members who live at long distances from Ottawa is it possible for the government to give any indication as to when, if we adjourn before Christmas, the house is likely to resume? I am asking this question because a number of members want to know what arrangements to make with respect to the accommodation they are occupying.
Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING (Prime Minister):: The intention is to have the house resume in the latter part of January; I cannot give the exact date at the present time. If it suits the convenience of hon. members, we shall adjourn on Friday night of the coming week. But that will depend upon whether the whips find that to be in accord with the wishes of hon. members generally.



INQUIRY AS TO SETTING UP OP STANDING COMMITTEES

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On the orders of the day:
Mr. GORDON GRAYDON (Peel):: May I ask the Minister of Veterans Affairs, who I believe is in control of these matters within the cabinet, when the standing committees of the house will be set up? Will it be done during this special short pre-Christmas session, or afterward? On Wednesday I asked that a certain matter be referred to one of the standing committees, and I was wondering when we might expect that reference to take place.
Right Hon. IAN A. MACKENZIE (Minister of Veterans Affairs): The desire of the government would be to have these committees set up with the utmost dispatch, but from my experience of other years I find that we must rely largely upon the co-operation of the very efficient whips of the other parties in the house with the chief whip of this party to bring about this result. I can assure my hon. friend that as far as the government is concerned there will be no deliberate restraint placed upon the immediate setting up of these committees.


Mr. KNOWLES:: You can have our list tomorrow.


Mr. CASSELMAN:: Will the minister call a meeting of the whips so that this can be arranged?


Mr. MACKENZIE:: The minister will endeavour to call a meeting of the whips at once, but sometimes he finds certain difficulty in having some of the whips turn up.



TRADE WITH UNITED KINGDOM


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On the orders of the day:
Mr. JOHN BRACKEN (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask a question of the Minister of Finance TMr. Graydon.]
with reference to trade, and I ask it only because of the discussions in and outside the house. In the press of today there appears a report that Britain will be able to supply about one hundred manufactured articles, ranging from films to capital goods, in quantity to the export market in 1948; and further it is understood that the list has been sent to the British delegation at Ottawa, which is seeking a readjustment of trade with Canada. My question is this: Since Canada's embargo now applies against many of these goods, have the British made any representations to Canada with respect to removing the embargoes against them? If so, will the government lay on the table the substance of the representations made?


Hon. DOUGLAS ABBOTT (Minister of Finance):: I shall take note of my hon. friend's question, as he did not give me any notice of it. May I say that the embargoes contained in the bill now before the house do not materially affect exports from the United Kingdom.



AVIATION


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On the orders of the day:
Stanley Howard Knowles: May I ask the Minister of National Defence if he can indicate whether the ground search for the crew of the Mitchell aircraft missing from Penticton, British Columbia, since October 18, is still in progress? Has he any reports as to whether or not the ground search for this crew has been thoroughly and properly conducted?


Hon. BROOKE CLANTON (Minister of National Defence):: I received notice of this question just before coming into the house, and I shall have to speak from my recollection of the reports that have been made and be subject to correction if anything that I state is not correct. Personnel have been detailed to continue to follow up every clue as to the whereabouts of the lost aircraft. Answering the second part of the question, I would say that from the reports it would appear that since the loss was reported searches have been prosecuted by planes and on the ground by R.C.A.F. personnel and by others under their direction, as well as by members of the community at large. I have been assured that everything possible has been done, but consequent upon the hon. member's question I shall be glad to look further into the matter. If anything further can be done I shall be glad to tell him about it.



LEGAL SERVICES


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On the orders of the day:
Mr. JEAN FRANCOIS POULIOT (Temis-couata):: I have given notice to the Right Hon. Minister of Justice of the following question in connection with Mr. Philippe Brais, K.C., of Montreal, who was employed by this government in the recent trials of Doctor Boyer in that city. The front page of the Montreal Standard of December 6, 1947, contains the following:
Mr. Brais prophesied that "war between Soviet Russia and the United States is coining.
I wonder if this gentleman was authorized by the Department of Justice to make that statement in his address to the jury.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. gentleman knows, the department does not give counsel instructions as to the statements that they are to make in addresses to a court or to a jury. My answer would be that no instructions to make that statement were given by the government.



LABOUR CODE


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On the orders of the day:
Mr. KARL HOMUTH (Waterloo South):: In the absence of the Minister of Labour (Mr. Mitchell) I should like to ask his parliamentary assistant if he can give any indication of when the labour code bill will be re-introduced.
Mr. PAUL E. COTE (Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Labour): I have no authority to answer that question, sir. I shall refer it to the minister.



TRANSITIONAL MEASURES ACT, 1947 CONTINUATION IN FORCE UNTIL MARCH 31, 194S

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The house resumed from Thursday, December 11, consideration of the motion of Mr. Ilsley for an address to His Excellency the Governor General praying that the Continuation of Transitional Measures Act, 1947, be continued in force until the 31st day of March, 1948.
Mr. J. A. ROSS (Souris):: Mr. Speaker. I should like to make a few observations at this time. First of all, I should like to clear up one little point. When I was speaking in the house' on March 24, 1947 on emergency powers legislation I made certain statements. I do not intend to quote everything that I said at
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that time, but I do want to clear up a point raised the other evening by the leader of the C.C.F., the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell). The hon. member used only the last six lines of the statement I made at that time. I said, as reported on page 1697 of Hansard:
The greatest production of hogs for market in the history of Canada was in 1944, and that rather on a sound economic basis as compared with some of the controls we'have developed in the later years. Out of a total of 8,863,178 hogs, 5,768,046 were produced in the prairie provinces where the grain was also produced to feed the animals. Alberta led all provinces that year, producing 2,981,940 hogs. In 1946, Canada as a whole produced only 4.465,161 hogs. May I also add that during 1945 there were in Canada some 6,760,000 beef cattle, and of that total 3,596,000 were in the three prairie provinces.
Without reading the rest I might say I went on to point out that to produce a select hog required twenty bushels of barley. A subsidy of 25 cents a bushel on barley would amount to $5. The subsidy on freight rates from given points in the west to given points in the east amounted to another $4, which made a total of $9 per hog in favour of the eastern producer. I was making the point that it was rather unfair that the man who grew the grain and fed it to animals on his own farm could not collect those subsidies. If the hon. member, having stated only the last six lines of my remark, is ready to say that these should be reinstated under the same regulations as before, I will give him the opportunity to stand up and state that to the house right now.


Mr.  M. J. COLD WELL@Rosetown-Biggar: I was dealing with the hon. member's remarks with regard to subsidies generally as I understood them. I would agree with the statement he has just made, that there is a great deal of unfairness to the western producer. But I understood from his summary that he was opposed to subsidies generally as not being in conformity with the best interests of the economy.


James Arthur Ross: When the hon. member for Melfort (Mr. Wright) was speaking yesterday-I may say that I have the greatest respect for him because he is a most successful farmer-he said that the group to his right were opposed to freight subsidies. When speaking on another matter six days earlier, on March 20, I stated that I favoured freight assistance to feeders in other parts of Canada. I have never heard any member of this group oppose that legislation at any time, either in or out of the House of Commons. I have
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Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Believes very largely.


James Arthur Ross: Yes. very largely. I hope our Socialist friends will give credit where it is due and acknowledge that this is a very fine gesture on the part of free enterprise. Some may say that they are able to do it out of their profits, but I find from a more recent issue of the Free Press that the milk board demands a public inquiry and the chairman of the board points out that the companies cannot continue to do this for very long because they have been working on a smaller profit than in any other part of the dominion. So that should dispose of any argument that it is being done because the profits are large.
As has been stated in this debate, there are many _ angry and frustrated people in this dominion today, more especially among the farmers. Last evening I followed the discourse of the right hon. Minister of Agriculture with considerable interest but found great difficulty in following his line of reasoning. My difficulty was not lessened when I read his speech in Hansard today He stated

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at one point in his discourse that when we reached August 1 of this year-hon, members know' that that is the first day of the grain marketing year in Canada-delegations of farmers and farm organizations came to Ottawa and said that the grain ceilings should not be lifted. Then he went on to say that no one, including the farmers, had a right to expect that this price would be taken off during that period of two months-August and September-and that if there wras any difficulty it would only be between October 1 and October 21, when the ceilings were lifted.
My contention and that of most of the farmers with whom I have discussed this matter, is that if the ceilings were to be lifted it was good business to lift them on August 1. That would have been a matter of good business. You did not have to advertise the matter in July, but on the evening of the last day of July or the first of August the announcement should have been made. I reject the argument made by the minister last night. I argue that the farmers who got into this jam had a right to expect that if the ceilings were to be lifted they would be lifted on August 1, and if not that they would be continued for another year. They had no way of knowing anything different. Why he went back to September 15 and said that it might have been expected, I cannot see at all. In my part of the west the farmers were marketing coarse grains the first week in August and from then on.
There has been some controversy over who is responsible for holding the grain and how much grain has been marketed. According to the research department of the Searle Grain Company, in their pamphlet dated October 22, 1947, the amount of oats delivered from August 1 to October 17, four days before the ceilings were lifted, was 25,922,835 bushels, and the amount of barley delivered for the same period 31,906,698. I have seen other figures given elsewhere but I think that the research officials of the Searle Company are accurate in their estimates. Then if you compare the deliveries further east you will find that they compare very favourably with those of the previous year. The minister went on to discuss this matter and told of the consideration that had been given by several grain companies and pools to having some form of adjustment. I happen to know something about the pools in the province from which I come. I will hazard a guess now that the people who delivered to that pool may be reimbursed for about one-third of the loss they took when they marketed their grain during that period. I have seen some of the correspondence to which the minister 5849-15
referred last night between certain line companies and other officials, some of them pretty close to the minister and to this government, and when he says that the government are not in a position to give a lead I wish to say that most of these companies expected some lead from this government in that respect. Without special legislation these people who delivered their grain during the period will not be fully reimbursed-


Mr. GARDINER:: They did not expect it yesterday.


James Arthur Ross: I say some of them
were expecting it a few days ago. I do not know what the developments are in the last few hours. I know they are looking forward to a statement from some responsible minister just as soon as possible on that and many other agricultural matters, because they want to develop their plans for the coming year. There is no argument about that at all. One of my colleagues just reminds me that the third day has arrived when the parliamentary assistant (Mr. McCubbin) to the Minister of Agriculture said that a full statement would be given and everything was going to be rosy for the farmers of Canada. However, we are still waiting and looking for the promised land in that respect.
Last evening the Minister of Agriculture developed his argument, and I must say it was a bit difficult to follow him, because he tried to tie the value of almost all agricultural products to the wheat contract with Britain or to the price of wheat. I read many articles which showed that our price ceilings on barley did not bear a fair relationship to the price of wheat in that contract. I am not sure how the minister arrived at the conclusion to base his argument on the value of wheat in the contract, because it is agreed that the price of wheat in the contract is SI.55, as he rightly said, basis Fort William, whereas the open world price of Canadian No. 2 wheat is S3..35 today. There is a big difference between $1.55 and $3.35. He stated that when the price of barley got beyond $1.25 the people would feed their wheat. I know a lot of farmers who will not feed anything under the fulfilling of this agreement over a long period, but they are still hopeful and they certainly think that they are entitled to the prevailing world values of their products. There is a hundred per cent difference, and more, in these two prices at the moment. I am not sure, but I believe the Minister of Agriculture is a member of the wheat committee of the cabinet. He has made statements out west, and has asked: who knows anything about the world

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price of wheat? I wish to say that our Canadian wheat board know that the committee has set this price-


James Garfield Gardiner: That is not the world price. The price the hon. member quoted is not the world price.


James Arthur Ross: It is the price at which Canada is selling its wheat on the open market to countries other than Britain.


James Garfield Gardiner: It is about fifteen or sixteen cents above the United States price.


James Arthur Ross: Certainly it is, but that is the price at which we are selling No. 2 wheat to countries other than the United Kingdom under the agreement, and it will average over S3 a bushel to all these countries. In fact I could take the time to give a list of the prices. I have the statement here. Therefore I was not able to follow the argument as to why these values should all be tied to the price of wheat under the United Kingdom contract.
Somebody said, and I believe it myself, the fact that we had embargoes against oats and barley going out of this country-we are not allowed to ship to the United States-resulted in a ceiling on the price of these grains. My argument is that if that be true, and I think it is, we have practically the same system with respect to our beef and all other agricultural products, and we have the same system of ceilings with respect to all these products. Perhaps that is why the minister has attempted to tie these things all together in that way.
A word as to the price of barley. It is rather strange that in two points just across the border, United States barley sells for slightly over a dollar a bushel higher than it does in Canada. That is the existing United States market at the present time. There is a big difference in our oats, and so it runs all through these items. I say there is a tremendous amount of dissatisfaction throughout Canada today with regard to this feed policy. I repeat that the producers and the feeders, all agriculturists throughout this country, consider that action of the government most inefficient a.nd unbusinesslike, and they contend that if the subsidies were to come off they should have come off on the first day of August, because it was not feasible to do it after that. It should have been done at that time. Since it was not done at that time they are entitled to some consideraion in the matter of reimbursement. I refer particularly to those who disposed of their coarse grains during that period.
(Mr. Ross (Souris).]
There has been some argument in past years as to whether the United States wanted our beef. I received a letter last year from the United Stated Department of Agriculture stating that they were always ready and willing to accept our beef. I have an article which appeared in the Free Press Weekly Prairie Farmer on October 29, written by Mr. Morrissey, in which he states that he investigated the situation over there and that there is a great market always available for our beef, the most natural ready market that this country has ever had or is ever likely to have for our beef products.
In the same address last night the Minister of Agriculture spoke of the price of wheat and pointed out that it was $1.55 under this contract. He said1 that legislation had been passed under which the producers will be paid $1.35, basis Fort William, for their product. This will average something less than S1.20 at the elevators in the prairie provinces. They receive a participation certificate. He also mentioned that an amendment had been moved when we were considering amendments to the wheat board act last year, asking that the initial price be $1.55. He might also have mentioned that an amendment was moved by members of this group asking for disbursement of the surplus of the 1945 crop, none of which comes under the United Kingdom agreement. I forget the figures now, but there are many millions of dollars surplus of the 1945 crop which, at that time, it was argued was going into the pool to make a five-year pool under the four-year contract. I have always argued that it was not good business to put that money in the pool. When the farmers planted their crop and harvested it they expected that any proceeds over and above the initial payment. based on participation certificates, would have been disbursed. I understand, that some consideration is being given to>
advance payments and that legislation will be introduced this year to give another twenty cents a bushel. I w'as never able to understand why the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. MacKinnon) said last year that this could not be done until parliament met. I am not able to understand it yet. I am not a lawyer, but I remember the discussion (hat took place on the amendments to the hill last year. Section 22, subsection 3 of bill 23. amendments to the Canadian Wheat Board' Act. 1925. which was passed during the last session of parliament, said:
The board shall, with the approval of the-governor in council, determine and fix the-amounts to which producers are entitled per bushel, according to grade and quality undercertificates issued.

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I would think certainly the government had authority therefore to make these payments immediately, if they wished, and they should have done so, and they should not have taken advantage, as the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefenbaker) said yesterday, of certain other emergency legislation to bring in taxation without consulting parliament anyway.


James Garfield Gardiner: If the hon. member
reads the act-it is not before me at the moment

I think he will find it definitely states that the advance payment which is to be made is $1.35 a bushel. The quotation he has read is one which provides for making the payments on the other grades to correspond with that $1.35 a bushel, but the basic price is $1.35.


James Arthur Ross: That is quite right,
but there is a proviso in there which refers to order in council. Apart from that, in the disbursement of these other payments on the completion of the crop year, I do not ever remember parliament being consulted before the disbursements took place. The board received authority from cabinet council. I am sure of that. My point is this:	the
argument was that this money was to be all pooled and left in the pool until 1950. I remember asking the Minister of Trade and Commerce a question in this regard, to which he replied that if someone died and it was necessary to clean up the estate it could not be done until 1950, for the reason that all these funds, from 1945 to 1950, would have to be pooled because the disbursements could not be made until then. That was the argument of the government at that time. These payments should be made, and I think they could have been made before now. The 1945 payments could have been made without having them tangled up with this contract.
The ministers make much of the fact that there are to be disbursements to the extent of $200 million this year, but these producers should have been receiving more than that amount and they will not get all their own money or all that they are entitled to. They have sustained a greater loss than that figure, and that loss in these days is much greater. The difference between $1.55 and $3.35 is SI.SO a bushel, an amount which they are losing and which they might have been receiving in the open world market.
The minister and others have argued that, with the other 160,000,000 bushels on the open market, no one knows what would happen. I would point out, however, that 5849-151
there is a greater shortage of cereals in the world today than ever before, and consequently a greater demand, and we can guess what the situation would be.
I am not able to follow all the-resolutions that are forwarded to members and to the government. As I said a year ago, about the time that deal was being negotiated with Britain, I was receiving resolutions from farm gatherings in my riding; the majority of the farmers attending those meetings were pool members, and they had been asking for an initial payment, from 1945 and on, of $1.80 a bushel. If these farmers were in support of these resolutions I do not understand how they could be satisfied with less. I repeat, the majority of the farmers attending those meetings were pool members. I received one resolution today from a large gathering in Manitoba, and after setting forth all the difficulties that had to be met, the resolution concluded:
Therefore be it resolved that the government of Canada should at once reimburse those farmers for the loss sustained on coarse grains by this government action, and that the government of Canada should increase at once the price of wheat and other agricultural products at present controlled by the government to levels in line with world markets.
Resolutions of this kind are being passed all the time. I might refer also to the Winnipeg Free Press of Wednesday, December 10, which contains an editorial that I should like to quote in part, I admit that that paper carries a great many articles on what the Minister of Agriculture and the government are doing. This is an enlightening editorial. It appears under the heading "Mr. Gardiner and Prices", and deals pretty much with the dominion-provincial conference held in Ottawa some days ago, which was called to plan agricultural production objectives for the coming year, and of which we have heard nothing since. The editorial is rather lengthy-


James Garfield Gardiner: They are all in the report.


James Arthur Ross: I have not time to read them all. However, I should like to quote from this editorial:
The passage in Mr. Gardiner's speech occurs in an answer given by him to Mr. H. H. Han-nam, the president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. Mr. Hannam asked this question:
There are two things we would like to know. Is our agricultural policy to be based on needs of the peoples of Britain and Europe or on dollars? Is our agricultural ecouomy to be on the dollar or the sterling basis?
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Then it goes on to give the minister's answer, and continues:
Mr. Gardiner's meaning is clear. Prices of the various farm products are related to each other and must be kept in balance. Some of these products-cattle for example-cannot be allowed entry to the United States market because the U.S. prices are higher than the United Kingdom contract prices. Farmers who raise hogs would also demand entry to the U.S. market; so would dairy farmers and finally so would the grain growers.
Thus the wheat agreement emerges as a kind of a strait-jacket binding not only the wheat growers but the whole agricultural industry.
The editorial then concludes:
Is it possible that the whole farming community, without knowing it, has been compelled since August 1946 to accept low prices just because of this wheat agreement? Is it the fact that the hog industry, the cattle industry, the dairy and the poultry industries all have had to suffer because the government made a bad bargain in wheat?	[DOT]
Mr. Gardiner's reported statement would answer-"Yes" to these questions. And if, as he declares, the removal of the emargo on cattle and their sale in the United States puts the rest of these contracts including the wheat agreement in jeopardy-no other answer is possible.
Hitherto it has been generally believed that the only victim of the wheat agreement were the wheat farmers. Evidently this is not so. On the basis that all farm prices are related and must be kept in balance, the whole agricultural industry appears to have been sacrificed to maintain this wretched deal.
That is just the summing up of their findings in that respect. I do not care what province you go into, you will find there a state of confusion among agricultural producers. I regret to say that the farmers are disposing of their best breeding stock in great numbers, as well as of their poultry flocks, and a state of disorganization and confusion prevails, from which it will take the nation a considerable time to recover so that we may get back once more to a basis of production such as we should have.
I have myself been condemned in editorials for my stand on the question of controls. I have stated that many controls are hampering production, and I repeat that statement because I believe it is true in many respects.
My time is almost up, Mr. Speaker, but before I conclude I wish to appeal again to the government, as I have done in many sessions, for the removal of embargoes against our cattle entering the United States market. I have given many reasons why we should enjoy that natural market. I have also urged the removal of restrictions against the entry into the United States of our agricultural products of all types. Before I left home I did
fMr. Boss (Souris).]
some checking up on prices. I understand that the nearest thing we have to automobile manufacturing in Canada is the Ford, and I would point out that a Ford sedan in the town in which I live-Melita, Manitoba; that happens to be in Canada-has been selling since November 18 for 81,905.50. For that same type of car at West Hope, North Dakota, United States, over the border from my town, the price is $1,577. That is quite a contrast.
During the war, around 1942, I was greatly concerned about the prices of cars in Canada as compared with the United States. At that time in the United States it took ten finished 1,000-pound steers to purchase a car, whereas, just across the border in Canada, it required twenty such animals to purchase the same type of car.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: What month of the year did the hon. member refer to a moment ago?


James Arthur Ross: Since November IS. It was around the first of December.


Stanley Howard Knowles: He is arguing for free trade.


James Arthur Ross: Call it what you like. I am used to being called everything by some of your supporters. That comparison, Mr. Speaker, is enlightening-ten steers in the United States as against twenty in Canada to purchase the same type of car. What do you suppose the difference is today? To purchase the same type of car it takes five such steers in the United States and approximately fifteen in Canada. In other words the ratio has gone up from two to one to about three to one. More than that, an American citizen can today clothe his family for less money than it costs the Canadian citizen to clothe a family of like size in Canada, with similar clothing.
I have studied the clothing of children from head to foot, both in the United States and in this country, since November 18, and I can produce catalogues and bills to prove that the situation is as I have stated it. I believe that we in Canada, living alongside such a nation as we find to the south of us, cannot continue to exist with ever-increasing economic disparity operating against us. I am convinced that the general income of citizens in the United States, as well as their standard of living, will continue on a considerably higher scale than existed during pre-war years. Their own economists declare that their standard of living in the future will be considerably higher than it was prior to the war, and I submit that it should be our ambition and our sincere

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endeavour to raise the general standard for all citizens of Canada, considering the opportunities that we have in this country.


Mr. CLARENCE GILLIS (Cape Breton South):: I consider the present debate, Mr. Speaker, to be perhaps the most important that has ever taken place in this house, and by far the most important that will take place at tihis session of parliament. Despite the fact that you have the Geneva agreement and the austerity program, I think the meat of the whole problem today is contained in the bill now before the house and in the discussion that logically should take place on this bill.
It amuses me and amazes me at times to hear our friends to the right complaining about controls. What I should like to find out from them some time during the course of the debate is, what, controls? The Minister of Justice (Mr. Ilsley) is piloting this resolution through the house asking for continuation of controls. After checking the thing over as best I can, I do not think the Conservatives have much to complain of in the matter of controls and I do not think the government has much to ask for in the way of continuation of the controls they now exercise. Rents, fats and oils, and foreign exchange, in fact the whole economy of this country, as far as the average producer and consumer is concerned, is completely uncontrolled. What we are suffering from today, and the reason why we have an austerity program in Canada, is that the government of this country is throwing the machinery of production andi distribution too quickly back into the hands of irresponsible individuals who do not know what to do with it. That is the problem which confronts Canada and the United States today.
There is one thing I should like to draw to the attention of hon. members. In this discussion, and in the general discussion that will take place in this house, we must realize that the time has gone by for playing politics.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Clarence Gillis: Oh, I do not expect anyone over there to my right to understand that, because that is all they know. That is why they are folding up throughout this country. They are rattling the bones of free enterprise in a vacuum from which that system dropped a long time ago, but they have not discovered it yet. Wha-t we must realize is that there is a show'down in this world today. There are two contending orders of society with two different sets of economics. There is the socialist movement, which dominates throughout the wmrld with the exception of this North American continent, and which is offering the peoples of the world something that is new.


Mr. GIBSON (Comox-Alberni):: A lower standard of living.


Clarence Gillis: I do not care what the hon. member for Comox-Alberni may think. He is entitled to think what he likes. But he must admit that the system he defends and stands up for has had ample opportunity to prove itself during the lifetime of all of us here. It has given us two wars in one generation, has slaughtered people indiscriminately, has made the greatest development the world has ever seen in the methods of destruction but it has not yet learned how to distribute the needs of life, bread and butter, to the ordinary peoples of the world. After that trial three parts of the world today lie in ruins, with civilization practically blotted out because of stupidity and greed on the part of that very system. It cannot be defended. The evidence is plain all over the world in the ashes of destruction.
What I am trying to focus attention on is that members of this House of Commons will have to remember that the struggle today is not between Liberals, Tories and so forth as it was in the past. To yourself and to your people you are going to have to answer the question, where you stand in this showdown; because you are at a period in the world's history where changes are going to be made, whether you like them or not. The question is whether you are prepared to make those changes in the reasonable and sensible way that the rest of the British empire has made them, and they are still going forward, or whether you are going to bring about on this continent the destruction which took place In other parts of the world because they tri i*. to hang on to something which no longci served the needs of the people. There is a showdown, and there is no middle course. You stand either in one place or in the other.
The reason why the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) - was obliged to announce an austerity program in this country is, in my opinion, simply this, that the government acquiesced in the swan song of the Tory party on behalf of big business "back to free enterprise".


Mr. CARDIFF:: That is a great excuse.


Mr. JACKMAN:: I thought the hon. member was not going to talk politics.


Clarence Gillis: During the war, what did we have here? Free enterprise did not fight wars. Meighen said in the Senate that if there were
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not any profits in war, there was nothing to fight for. Free enterprise could not make profits out of war, so they said, "We will leave it to the government. There is no risk capital in this. We cannot make any money, so we will give it to the government. We are free to work for profits in this faulty economic system of ours, -but when it comes to throwing away money, we will let the government throw it away in buying materials for war".


Mr. SMITH (Calgary West):: Did not the socialist government of Germany start the war?


Clarence Gillis: There was never a socialist government in Germany, and no one knows that better than the hon. member for Calgary West. He was legal adviser to the mine workers of America in district 18 for many years and he knows the labour movement, or should know it. What you had in Germany -my hon. friend knows, and I know he knows it as well as I do-was the last stand of the capitalist system; the boss with the gun at the head of 'his workers, still taking the profits.


Arthur Leroy Smith: The boss was the government over there.


Clarence Gillis: That system was built up by the Tories of Britain, the Tories of France and the Tories of the world through Hitler to maintain their privileged position. The hon. member for Calgary West knows that as well as I do. He happens to be caught in the machine today. Why he is there, he can best explain. I have my own ideas.


Arthur Leroy Smith: I had better tell the hon. member that I was fired the other day.


Clarence Gillis: What I was trying to tell the house was that hon. members, those who are capable of thinking would have to re-arrange their thinking; for anybody who thinks today-


Gordon Graydon: Do you allow that?


Clarence Gillis: I do not mean that as an insult, because my observation in the house is that most members are just rearranging their prejudices when they think they are thinking.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Clarence Gillis: During the war free enterprise sat back; no profits as Meighen said, and Meighen should know. The government of this country then undertook planning. They allocated materials. They arranged wages,

too low in many cases. Nevertheless they took control there; they allocated materials; they told you what you were going to produce. They did a good job, but it was a planned economy to a large extent; and they controlled prices, with a system of subsidies that worked well. But we did more than that during the war. In addition to planning our own economy, stepping up our national income and all the rest of it, we worked with our allies. There was worked out a system of co-operation with our allies. The world was one world so far as the fighting of the war was concerned. The common danger gave the people of this country a national objective in the winning of the war and the fighting of tyranny and oppression. The people responded to that. But as soon as the war was over we forgot its lessons and, instead of continuing co-operation, understanding and planning, the controls were thrown off; we have set up again in world affairs, competition with our allies, and that competition comes largely from this North American continent.
Had we continued in the post-war period with the controls we had during the war- and we need them far worse now than we did when we were fighting the war-we would be in a much better position. In my view the war is not over and will not be over until its destruction has been repaired. Had we continued with lend-lease and with the gifts, as we made them during the war; if we had continued with co-operation with our allies and kept these elements of competition out of the way, I believe the continent would be well on the road to recovery. All we would be contributing in the post-war would be materials to put our allies back on their feet, so as to show them that we are still allies and recognize their problems. Life would not have to be sacrificed. If we could do all these things during the war, why could we not have continued them into the post-war period? But we did not do that.
I believe this continent is in much more danger now than it was in 1939 or 1942. I think we are smack up against a decision which members of the House of Commons will have to make. I listened to the debate with respect to the Geneva trade agreements, and while. I do not consider I know all about it, in my view those trade agreements are a dream of the future. I do not see any international trade today, and I think there will not be any for a long time to come.
What is happening with respect to shipments of bacon to Great Britain? We do not know whether they will be able to accept our shipments next year. Why? Because the price

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is too high. Then, they are getting wheat from Russia in a bilateral trade arrangement. Canada must trade in that way, too, unless we are going to hook ourselves to the United States and mortgage this country for all time to come. The condition is not realistic. We are alienating our allies from us, the ones who fought the war with us and who were our best friends and customers. And we are doing all this for the benefit of some of our friends who are still sticking to the theory of capitalism as it existed before the war in respect of world trade, and in our internal economy.
That is not going to work. We have to think about it. I will vote for this measure, certainly; but let me say to the government that I am not at all satisfied with the manner in which they used the emergency powers given to them. What did the government do? For a beginning they threw controls off as fast as they could, and brought about the domestic situation now confronting us. Not only did they throw those controls off, but they are now asking for the continuation of the few that are left. Then, while they have been taking off controls they have scrapped most of the administrative machinery. While at one time there were 120 wartime prices and trade board offices across the country, today there are only five. If the government intends only to continue with the measure of controls it now has I suggest we would be much better off without any, and that we should insist upon bringing before parliament bills which would be passed by parliament, and also insist upon holding ministers responsible for them.
I am not saying that I would ask that at the present time; but I would say that if the government is going to accept responsibility for regulating the economy of the country, it should begin doing it and not just talk about it. Controls should be re-established, and the necessary machinery should be set up -because I believe it will be permanent machinery in the future. I do not think we can get away from it, because we are going to have to live in a world operating on that basis. Governments will be expected to do business rather than play politics, as they were expected to do in the past. Men are going to have to come to the House of Commons and take responsibility for doing business with other countries which are starting out on a policy of conducting their business along the lines followed during the war-but, for another purpose, the purpose of construction.
I am somewhat critical of the complete disregard by some members of the functions of democracy. I think, for example, of the milk
subsidy, which was removed despite a vote of the House of Commons. I do not think any government, or any member of it, had authority to remove that subsidy when parliament was not sitting. The result was the price of milk has increased to the point where children cannot get it to drink. Farmers are not producing as much milk as they did before. They are confused.
If we are to expect the people of Canada to respect the institution and members of parliament, at least we must be consistent and show that parliament means something. Speaking to the Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. Mackenzie) may I point out that under the Veterans Land Act the land requirement was placed at one-half an acre. That was the qualification placed upon a veteran who wished to build a house. The bill was passed in the House of Commons without a dissenting voice. After the house rose, someone in the government changed that provision and stepped up the requirement to three acres. That sort of thing does not create respect for the House of Commons.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: The statute gave that power by regulation.


Clarence Gillis: Yes, but it should not have been done. The bill should have stood as it was passed by the House of Commons and-should not have been changed until the members of the house came back and had an opportunity of obtaining an explanation as to why changes of that kind were necessary.
If we are to continue to keep the respect of the people we represent, then we must begin to show that the House of Commons is a responsible body, and that when it says something it means it. If controls are to mean the exercise of powers of that kind by the government, then so far as I am concerned I am not going to hand over the institution of parliament and its functions to any body behind the scenes.
A moment ago I referred to bacon deliveries to Great Britain. I have had meetings with farmers, of whom there are a considerable number in my part of the country; and I can tell the house that they are completely discouraged, even to the point of going out of hog production. This condition has arisen through the removal of the subsidy on feed grains. That applies not only to hog production, but also to the production of other livestock.
My understanding is that when the bonus on hog production was removed it was added to the selling price of the bacon we were shipping to the old country, thus stepping up the bacon price by one or two cents a pound. There is no doubt Great Britain is having great difficulties in the matter of obtaining her food
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supplies; otherwise she would not be turning to other sources of supply. If we are going to think in terms of trading with other nations, then I do not think we can tie ourselves completely to any country because of the dollar sign. If we continue that road we will find ourselves isolated from the British empire, and I do not think that would be a good development.


James Garfield Gardiner: What bonus on hogs is the hon. member speaking about?


Clarence Gillis: All through the war the minister bonused hogs for the purpose of stimulating production.


James Garfield Gardiner: We have a premium on grade A hogs and also a premium on grade B, to improve the quality.


Clarence Gillis: That is a bonus, is it not?


James Garfield Gardiner: It is still on.


Clarence Gillis: Does it apply to the whole country?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes.


Clarence Gillis: Just before coming to the chamber today I was informed by what I considered some well informed farmers that the bonus had been removed.


James Arthur Ross: It is still there, if you have the right class of hogs.


Clarence Gillis: Take the question of fertilizers -and this all dovetails into the matter of controls.


James Garfield Gardiner: In order to make it
perfectly clear perhaps I should say that a premium was on by arrangement between packing companies and producers at the time the war started. During the war we put on a premium of S3 and $2, and this was changed some years ago to $2 and SI, which is still on.


Clarence Gillis: I thank the minister for
that explanation. During the war this country built up a considerable productive capacity. The members of this group have always contended that that productive capacity should have been reconverted and used for peacetime need. But that was not done. An outstanding example is the three fertilizer plants, one at Welland, one at Calgary and I believe the other at Trail, British Columbia. I understood from the announcement made in this house that the plant at Welland was going to be retained, but my information now is that these plants have all been sold for about half their value.
I am informed that fertilizer could have been produced in these plants for about $19

per ton on an average. Just before leaving Nova Scotia I met a number of very angry farmers who apparently were expected to pay $91 per ton for fertilizer, that is the ammonium nitrates. They simply cannot pay it and they are not going to farm. They told me that the people in Canada are going to be badly starved during the next year or two unless some drastic changes are made.
How can the Minister of Finance justify the mesa we are now in as far as our United States dollars are concerned when it is realized that seventy-five per cent of the productive capacity built up during the war has been sold to United States companies which are operating many of these plants today? We buy parts from the United States to assemble them in Canada, and those parts are paid for in United States dollars. Then the finished product is shipped to other markets and in many cases we are not paid for them. There is no reason why we should be in the present tangle as far as Canadian dollars are concerned. However, I am afraid we shall continue to be in that tangle until we realize that Canada is a nation, that we can stand on our own feet and compete with the United States if necessary.
I think the people of Canada would be willing to make some sacrifices if they had some incentive to build up this country for themselves. We should have a national objective such as we had during the war. Plant production should be developed for our own use. The man on the street is not as backward as he was in 1939. He realizes what this dollar crisis is and what brought it about. Then he sees that no changes are being made, that no leadership is being given or no objective is being set up whereby he can do something for himself. He is not ready just to tighten his belt and go through another austerity war in order that this country can be mortgaged to the United States. That is the sentiment that has been expressed to me right across this country.
There is no objective. That is why the farmers are confused. That is why the industrial workers are confused. That is why many people are confused. The world is completely changed; it is a new world. We must realize that and try to do something about it. I picked up a little news item a few days ago which I should like to read. It is as follows:
Cleveland, December 8 (AP)-Directors of Portsmouth Steel Corporation announced today the purchase of a non-eontinuous sheet mill with an annual capacity of 100.000 tons to bolster its critical supply of hot rolled sheets.
The plant is to be dismantled at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, the directors said, for transfer

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to Portsmouth, and was purchased from John P. Ludgate Associates of Pittsburgh for $275,000.
Scheduled to start production by the second quarter of 1948, the mill will produce carbon and alloy sheet specialties and will provide the foundation for a continuous strip mill, contemplated at a later date, an announcement read.
Why should a plant of that kind be dismantled in Canada and shipped to the United States? Why should a plate mill be standing idle-it is dismantled now because War Assets have sold it-in Sydney, Nova Scotia, when we are still importing plate from the United States? You are not fooling the people of the country one bit when they see that kind of thing going on. The steelworkers union is up in the air over the dismantling of this steel mill which is to be shipped to the United States in order to bolster steel production there, so that more parts can be sent to Canada to be assembled in Canadian plants owned and controlled by United States directors and financed by United States capital.
The answer is that there must be more government ownership of these plants. If risk capital cannot be found in Canada to develop our own resources, then I think the government will have to take the initiative and supply the necessary capital to build up our own economy and stand Canada on her own feet. I think we have one answer in the Polymer rubber plant at Sarnia. I believe this plant will go down in history as a monument to the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply (Mr. Howe) who followed it through and who I understand is still directing it. The plant certainly does not show any inefficiency as compared with any other rubber plant in Canada or the United States. It is a wonderful plant that is turning out a good product, and it is owned by the people of Canada. It must be remembered that we were pioneering in that field, but if it can be done with rubber, it can be done with other things. I do not believe we can solve our problems in any other way.
Then the question is asked, is there or is there not control? I want to tell my hon. friends over there that there certainly is irresponsible control in this country. My quarrel with the government is not over what they have done with their controls; I am critical of them for having given' up their controls. I think those controls will have to be re-established if we are to save ourselves from travelling a rocky road in the future.
What happened when the government threw off practically all the controls that had existed during the war? The result was that the control went from the hands of responsible people in this House of Commons to the hands of irresponsible people who acted behind 5849-16
the scenes, people who were not responsible to any one but their own boards of directors. I ask the hon. member for Souris (Mr. Ross) whether or not there is price fixing in farm commodities? The price of everything that is produced today on a farm is fixed by Swift Canadian and Canada Packers. They dominate the picture very definitely, and the farmers know that. The farmers are told what they are going to get for what they produce. That is decided week by week in Montreal by the representatives of these two organizations. That is the kind of price fixing and monopoly control we do not want in this country. The whole of Canada depends on that industry, and if controls are necessary to protect the farmer and the consuming public, action should be taken through the board under the direction of the Minister of Agriculture, who in turn would report to this house.
Someone has said something about the control of wages, that we believe in the control of prices and that with it there should be control of wages as well. Are we not using the wrong terms in these things? Control striking people? My conception is that it is a matter of regulating your economy to get things in balance. It is not a matter of control. Control presumes something rigid, adamant, inflexible. My conception is that it should be a matter of regulation. I think the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar made it very clear, as did the secretary treasurer of the Canadian Congress of Labour, that no one is silly enough to think that wages can skyrocket to any peak and not affect prices. Certainly we do not. It is one problem, as the secretary treasurer of the congress pointed out, and I have said in this house on many occasions that I want to see labour relations in this country established on a national basis under the federal Department of Labour so that we can get uniformity. Secondly, I want to see wages regulated through a national board composed of representatives of labour, industry and the government, who will sit down together and analyse their problems and come to an understanding with a view to getting uniformity right across Canada and getting away from this anarchy of strikes and nonsense where no one wins anything except misery. That is the way to offset it. That is the plan of this group and of labour right across this country. It is not a matter of controlling and regimenting the people at all. It is a matter of this house taking the responsibility for regulating the economy of this country in the interests of all concerned. You will not have a dictatorship as long as you have a free parliament and sensible members who will exercise their rights in this house. You may
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make a mistake this time; you can change it next time. There is no suggestion of regimentation. All this nonsense you read about regimentation in the press is doing a disservice to this country and the United States in the troubled and mixed-up world in which we are living. It is making a lot more trouble quite unnecessarily.
There is another angle to price controls, and no one knows it better than the minister who is piloting this resolution through the house. I do not think it is possible to maintain price controls without a subsidy arrangement. The government, through the Minister of Finance, at the last session of parliament was adamant on that point. He said that they were continuing the subsidy policy no longer, they were finished with subsidies. I think it is nonsense for us to be talking about price controls now unless we can get a statement from the government as to their policy on subsidies. I think the time is ripe for that. The Minister of Justice made a statement on this question in the house last year when he said:
A subsidy policy at a time of grave danger of serious inflation is a valuable policy, in that it prevents the spiral of inflation from developing. If that spiral once gets under way it may carry prices to grave heights; and a judicious expenditure of government money by way of subsidy may result in a very much greater saving to the consumer in prices than the expenditure by way of subsidy.
I think the minister was absolutely correct in saying that, and as he is piloting this resolution, now, when there is an inflationary spiral in Canada, would be a very good time to test that theory, so that inflation may be checked and prices held or brought back to reasonable levels in relation to the earnings of industry and agriculture, through price control accompanied by a subsidy arrangement. That may be the fastest way out of our austerity program. I hope when the minister speaks he will say something on subsidies, because price control without subsidies is a vain hope. I do not think you can hold prices without subsidies.
I think every member of the house recognizes the grave position in which Canada finds herself at this time, and wants to do something to better conditions. But let us be realistic. Our talking here is not going to accomplish very much. You can say what you like, but after the house adjourns the cabinet has certain responsibilities and must run the country. We are living in a fluid world, with changes taking place day by day, and the cabinet must have authority to meet situations as they arise day by day when the house is not in session. If we recognize that

an austerity program is necessary in this country because of our foreign exchange position, and because of our whole internal economy being in a mixed-up state, I do not think there should be a dissenting voice in this house to granting the government power to maintain what controls they have until March 31 or whatever other period may be advisable. But let me say that I do not think the controls they now have are worth anything without subsidies. I believe they have to go back and do as they did during the war, everything with the exception of raising armed forces.
The hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell) has placed on record six suggestions which I believe are all necessary. I draw them to the attention of the house again because I believe no other program will take us out of the tangle in which we are today. We all want to get out of this tangle. I am sure that we are all receiving telegrams and resolutions from all over this country, and I would like to go back to my people and be able to tell them that the government is going to take these six steps, and take them immediately. If they take these six steps I believe that within a few months there is hope at least that we shall be working toward a better day and a more realistic program in this country. Our troubles are not going to be over for a long time, but this program will ease them;
1.	Reimposition at the earliest possible date of price controls on all the basic necessities of
-life: food, clothing and fuel.
I believe that should be implemented at the earliest possible day, that price controls should be reimposed on the basic necessities of life, food, clothing and fuel. That is absolutely necessary.
2.	Renewal of the subsidies on milk, butter, bread, feed grains, cotton and wool.
We need great production, but in some places, for geographic or other reasons, it may not be economic to produce, and I believe that a subsidy arrangement would get production in such cases.
3.	The closing of the Winnipeg grain exchange and the elimination of speculation in essential foods.
I am not going to argue that, because the necessity for it is obvious. There should be no gambling with the stomachs of people in any part of the world. If the exchange is a detriment, and there is no doubt about it, it should be closed. It is a relic of the past and I believe it will be closed.
4.	Reconstruction of the wartime prices and trade board in such a manner that it can adequately administer the price controls.

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I believe that the board should be set up again as a permanent feature of our economic life, perhaps not to the extent that we had it during the war so far as the number of personnel is concerned, but the future mechanics of society are going to be such, I believe, as to require the board to be reconstituted.
5.	Continuation of the excess profits tax after December 31, 1947.
Of course that tax should be continued. Is not an excess profit profiteering? Is there not a law against it? Then why should we legalize profiteering when we have another law against it? The government should determine profits, what is a fair rate to receive on investment. I worked for wages all my life. I never saw the time in this country when I would not have been pleased to have labour relations established on a national basis and a responsible minister help decide just what I was entitled to out of the earnings of the industry, my share of what I was producing. If it were fixed I would know what I was doing, instead of having to fight it out with a pick-handle with the boss, and have the Minister of Labour put a monocle in his eye and say, "It is not a bad fight but I know who is going to win." Anarchy!
Profits should be determined and regulated. I would not say "frozen" or "fixed" or "controlled". That is bad language. I say "regulated."


Mr. HARKNESS:: I did not think the hon. member wanted any profits at all.


Clarence Gillis: Yes, a fair share of what I produce. I do not think that Arthur Cross should get $100,000 a year out of the coal industry while the man who actually digs the coal, gets up at four o'clock in the morning, earns only about $1,300 or $1,400. Anyone who does not want to accept the government's fixing of a fair profit should take his capital somewhere else and invest it. He should go over to the United States with it. If that were done we might start developing our own country.
My last point is not a very popular one either. Rationing should be instituted where necessary, where commodities are in short supply, so that everyone will get a fair share. The austerity program is not going to hurt anyone in this country except the middle class and the lower income groups. The fellow who has the money will think nothing of paying 5849-16J
$300 or $400 extra for an automobile. He will payr it. It is just a matter of a few more figures on a cheque, that is all. It does not mean a thing to him when he has a new car, or a washing machine, or a radio, or a vacuum cleaner. He will still get them, but the civil servant under fixed income and the middle class generally are not going to get them.
During the war hundreds of people were not driving cars. They were waiting for radios, waiting for washing machines, waiting for all these things. They saved up for a car. They said that the first two or three years after the war taxes would be down a bit, along with prices, and the cars would be cheaper. But what d'o they find today? Conditions are much worse. High prices have siphoned off their savings, but the fellow who could always drive a big car, in fact two cars, and smoke a big cigar, is still driving the;n, and he turns them in every year. He still has his two cars. The sum of $400 more is just a figure on a cheque to him. Therefore this program is austerity only for certain groups in the country.
With regard to foodstuffs, this chap with the two cars will always get what he wants. Why should we not do what they are doing in Britain, ration food, so that everyone will be able at least to buy a fair share of the necessities of life? We may catch up later with the man with the two cars.
I see my time has expired, Mr. Speaker, and to save your calling me to order I shall take my seat.
(Translation):


Mr. REAL CAOUETTE (Pontiac):: Mr. Speaker, at this stage of the debate on controls, I owe it to myself and to my constituents to state openly and energetically the position they took last year, during the session, and to express their wishes in the matter of controls.
We are opposed to all controls, just as we were during the last session.


An hon. MEMBER:: Unlike everyone else!


David Réal Caouette: We believe in liberty and security; but security with a yoke, as suggested by our good friends of the C.C.F., we'll have none of it, neither in the constituency which I have the honour of representing nor in the province of Quebec.
During the past two or three months when I had the opportunity of visiting most of the constituencies in the province of Quebec, I
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found that people are against controls. These, we maintain, will not guarantee freedom and security to the Canadian people.
Controls have been maintained since the end of the war on the grounds that they were useful and needed. The war has now been over for two years, but economic conditions in Canada are in a worse state than ever before. Farmers are downhearted, consumers penniless, middlemen and dealers demoralized, all because of controls.
In my constituency, in every constituency, what the people want is food, clothing, and a decent and comfortable dwelling. All this we could have, but controls will neither supply nor build houses. What we need is lumber, nails, and building tradesmen. Controls will not take care of housing, nor will they give us clothing, for these can only be made available through increased production.
The prevailing chaos is due to controlled consumption and over-production.
Mr. Speaker, in order adequately to convey the feelings of the electors of my constituency, I shall quote from a letter I have here on my desk. As have many members across the floor in the last few days, I have received thousands of such letters that tell us what the people think of controls and the emergency powers which parliament has given to the government.


An hon. MEMBER:: Who wrote that letter?


David Réal Caouette: My hon. friend can take the floor after I am through. I quote:
Sir,
Using the full powers which you conferred on them last year, the dominion government have just decided that the Canadian peop.o would have to lower their standard of living. A new austerity program is being foisted upon the Canadian people by the government program.
We have been following for some reason or other an austerity program for at least seventeen years; it was initiated either by financial interests, with no interference on the part of the government, or by the government itself.
Without any reason, under the sole pretext of a scarcity of dollars in this country, we have been reduced to ten years of poverty and privations while an abundance of goods filled our stores and warehouses.
What was the Ottawa government doing then to remedy this dollar shortage? Nothing; absolutely nothing. It stood by waiting for the war-days to bring the dollar-days. And now, we have the selfsame politicians expounding the necessity of further privations!
When war came, there were more dollars so the government stepped in to replace 'the bankers and ration us, thus preventing us from spending our dollars. Rationing was imposed,

so the government said, for the sole purpose of winning the war and victory once achieved we were to experience a new order, an unprecedented and endless era of prosperity, forever free from war and depression.
Nevertheless, hardly had the war come to an end when the government dropped all subsidies while maintaining taxes that drained all our money. One would think that we are to have money only when it is needed to wage war; as soon as the massacre is over we must be deprived of every cent we possess.
And now, two years after the end of the war, we have a new austerity program introduced by the government. The reason given this time is the necessity of a contribution to Europe's recovery. Not so long ago, however, the great objective was the bombing of the same countries' plants and private dwellings.
Sir, we are completely fed up with all that humbug to which our government . . .


Jean-François Pouliot: Disgusted: aye disgusted! Mr. CAOUETTE:
. . . with the help of Parliament-of which you are a member-are a party when they do not promote it.
The excuse given was the depression, then Hitler, then the war; now it is the aftermath of war and depression: tomorrow, it will be Stalin, another war or another depression. Someone or something can always be blamed, but to our minds the responsibility lies with the government and parliament who fail to accent their responsibilities for the welfare of the country.
A few- years ago. we were unable to find sufli-cient Canadian dollars to buy our Canadian goods. Today, a shortage of American dollars prevents our buying American products.
Yet Providence is just as generous, workers just as efficient and consumers just as reasonable. This situation has been created by those who are in power and take steps which have no bearing on realities.
Who will believe, honourable members, that there is actually a shortage of goods? Will there be less oranges and less grapefruit in the United States because the Canadian government prohibits their importation into Canada? Financiers rule the world, but they do not bother with realities, and governments, including that in power at Ottawa, act in collusion with them.
During the six years of war Canada was able to provide food and clothing for our people, even better than it did during the ten preceding years, and at the same time produced guns, tanks, bombs and corvettes, and used over 750.000 of our young men, the flower of our youth to destructive purposes. Who will believe that this same Canada is unable to provide a better living standard for its population, since those 750,000 young men have returned and are available for peacetime industries, together with the 800,000 men we used to employ in our war plants?
We speak of Europe, but the same thing is happening there. It provided for soldiers who did not produce anything, armies of them imported from every country; at the same time Europe produced arms and munitions of war.

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All that productive energy is now available for peacetime production. Europe can even afford the luxury of gigantic strikes.
If the government had not urged Canadians to produce for strangers, boasting that a third of our population was living on international trade, we could have produced sufficiently for the needs of our people.
First class workers, brains and resources are plentiful in Canada. Yet, instead of using our Canadian dollars to increase production, we allowed our technicians to go abroad and stimulate the productive capacity of foreign countries. Then, we deplore the lack of United States dollars which we need to pay for our imports from that country. Instead of using Canadian finance for Canadian production and consumption, we preferred to favour foreign capital, inviting outsiders to establish branches of foreign industries in Canada, thus contracting debts toward foreign capitalists.
What are parliament and the government doing to put an end to all this nonsense? Nothing but burden us with restrictions, bureaucrats, debt, taxation, hardship and war.
We have had enough of this idiotic system for which we hold responsible each member of parliament who accepts it instead of berating it and using the prestige and power of his position as representative of the people to stir the country into forcing the government to take a sensible stand more in keeping with the facts and the welfare of everyone.
Instead of digging into our too scanty income and controlling us at every turn, why does the government not take over the management of finance, moulding it to serve men and reality? How often have you, hon. member, urged the government to free itself from the guardianship of a financial regime that has dollars to spare only for war?
A century ago, Canadians were less hidebound by controls, and less involved in debt while their future was not mortgaged to such an extent; yet, they did not starve to death. In an age where oil. electricty, chemistry, science and machinery are at their beck and call, must they sink beneath the yoke and submit to controls as well as austerity programs?
Once again, hon. member, we find absolutely-revolting the incompetence or criminal complicity of a government and parliament we pay so well only to be punished by them.
An ordinary human being would be jailed for doing much less mischief.
We request a change. We want Canada foT Canadians, a Canadian financial system and Canadian products to fill our needs. Further, each and every Canadian must be provided with enough money to buy Canadian goods.
Since you are a member of parliament, I hold you personally responsible to do all you can to achieve that purpose. If you will not or cannot do so, the seat you occupy is but a burden on the country.
I warn you that, in order to judge you at your worth, I and others will keep close watch on your words, deeds and omissions, as well as on your vote. We want servants of the people rather than yes-men of the dictatorship that rules Canada and the world as it sees fit.
As far as I am concerned, I shall refuse to vote for whoever has not proved himself intelligent and active enough to make Canada's wealth and productive capacity available first to Canadians. I shall also do everything in my power to enlighten my fellow-citizens and shall ask them to follow the lead.
One of your constituents,	i
Jos. Dallaire C'Eouyn).
Mr. Speaker, copies of these letters were sent to every member of the House of Commons to ask for the renewal of subsidies instead of controls and for a policy exclusively Canadian in outlook, designed primarily for Canadians. The system or regime that spends its time weighing international problems instead of looking after the home front has caused us enough hardship.
We are not particularly concerned at the moment in knowing whether the Japanese should go on eating rice or the Chinese using chopsticks. We are interested rather in knowing whether Canada is able to produce enough to ensure freedom and security to all at the present time. I said a moment ago that our farmers and producers were discouraged, our dealers and manufacturers upset, our consumers frustrated, nobody content in this country and everyone dissatisfied.
When I was out west this year-


Mr. THATCHER:: Moose Jaw.


David Réal Caouette: Moose Jaw, Calgary and all those places. While visiting the west, I met at St. Jean Baptiste, in Manitoba, a farmer who admitted quite frankly that he has been raising hundreds of head of cattle for slaughtering until March or April last, when he suddenly lost heart and sold all his livestock. He told me that he would never go into the business again. When I asked him the reason why, he replied, "Things had come to a point where I was breeding livestock only in order to pay taxes to the government and to be subjected to price controls. I got rid of everything. If the government or parliament wish to have stock and calves or the like, let them raise them themselves. I am through with it." Such is the answer I got from a western farmer.
In the counties of Megantic-Frontenac and Pontiac, in the province of Quebec, I noticed that the situation was the same. I received from Pontiac a resolution passed by the
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Timiskaming diocesan section of the U.C.C., and a request from all our farmers who are forced to slaughter now-bom pigs because they realize that they will be losing when they try to sell them. They kill them at birth so that they will not have the trouble of feeding them, because it costs too much and they do not wish to face an unavoidable deficit. It is one way of coping with the situation.
When my C.C.F. friends are asking for controls, they do not wish to have them imposed on themselves but on others. Control our neighbours, but not us.
' They remind me of the man who walks along the street with his friends-and this will help you understand what the C.C.F. is- saying to them:	"Buy a cigar, will you; I'll
smoke it and you can spit." That's the C.C.F. for you.
Mr. Speaker, subsidies must be distributed on a large scale to the producers of Canada in order to enable them to expand Canadian production to the greatest possible degree. When our goods are sold in abundance in this country the government, by adopting a Canadian policy, will encourage agricultural production so that our farmers will be happy to co-operate in the economic rehabilitation of Canada. And when that time comes, when goods are to be found in large quantities, prices will become more reasonable. There might be middle-men on the way to take advantage of the situation, to accumulate stocks of goods, so as to be in a position to control the economic existence of our people. Mr. Speaker, when a young lad steals a case of tomatoes in a store we put him in jail, but when a man steals 500 million dollars, we just call him a financier. It's about time we changed the motto and put him in his place, that is in jail. These men are a menace to our country.


Jean-François Pouliot: Name them.


David Réal Caouette: I can name some.
Mr. Speaker, I saw recently in a newspaper a statement made by my hon. friend from Peace River (Mr. Low), suggesting a popular loan of two billion dollars to help the United Kingdom. I know he is entitled to his own views, but this is not our opinion in my county and it certainly is not the opinion of the province of Quebec. Our people urgently need billions of dollars for themselves. It is

our duty to distribute all supplementary purchasing power to Canadian citizens, before helping other countries which may be in need and which we would normally help, should our standard of living allow us to do so. For the past ten years, the government did not cease complaining that there was no money in the country to ensure security and liberty, and yet, during the war, this same government kept telling us that we had to make sacrifices in order to ensure peace in Canada, to win the peace, safeguard our security and our liberty, to bring about an absolutely new system, a system under which the value of human beings would be recognized. During the war years, Mr. Speaker, the dominion cabinet ministers went to England, France, Russia and Italy to promise our young veterans that, upon their return to Canada, they would find a new system under which they could settle in their own country to their hearts' desire, occupying well-paid positions, developing freely, etc. These young veterans were also promised that, once the war was over, there would no longer be any hardship in this country. Today, we see the same ministers coming to us and telling us over the radio that, during the war, we had too much of a good life, too much plentifulness, that we must now tighten our belts to win the peace, that this peace is not yet ours, and that to win it, we will have to tighten up our belts. Falsehoods, Mr. Speaker. When they should co-ordinate the normal course of economy, the controllers of economic blood create a scarcity of money at will. They have no right to risk the lives of our fellow-citizens and to maintain such a system in Canada. It is neither the duty nor the function of the government and parliament of Canada to control electors, producers and consumers. But their duty and function is to see that the physical possibility, in Canada, of giving and guaranteeing liberty, of creating a high standard of living for Canadians, be made financially possible. Let the government control money instead of controlling the electors!
It is time for the people to stand up in Canada, and they are standing up. It is also time for the hon. members to stand up in this house and to demand that financial interests serve the people instead of always asking that the people serve the financial interests, as has always been the case in Canadian history.

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Mr. Speaker, when we think of exporting to all countries of the world, I do not think that we are much help to starving populations. I believe sincerely that some countries in the world have sought to obtain necessities of life for which they had great need, but there are also some countries which, at any price, wish to hold control of international trade. In fact, I should not be at all surprised to learn that some European countries import goods from Canada and resell them at a profit to other European countries in great need of such goods.


Mr. MICHAUD:: Which countries?


David Réal Caouette: It is very bad, Mr. Speaker, to act thus, but I am convinced that this practice has been carried on.


An hon. MEMBER:: Which are they? Name them.


David Réal Caouette: My hon. friends may be sure that I shall quote the figures in due course.
We want Canada for Canadians. We want a Canadian parliament first and foremost, and when we have secured for Canadians a decent standard of living I, together with the members of my group, will not be outdone in our desire to help those in need of assistance.
At this time when economic conditions are so very unsteady in Canada, and when we have to cope with problems within our own country, it ill behooves us to be concerned about other countries which are perhaps not better off than we are. When two ships sail at sea, and one of them suddenly sinks or is in distress, it is hardly practical for the master of the other one to attempt a rescue by letting his own ship go down too. It would unquestionably be a poor solution.
Mr. Speaker, I shall not take more of the time of the house this afternoon. There will be further opportunities to discuss the matter. I merely wanted to record the expressed will of the electors of the constituency of Pontiac whose representative I have the honour to be. I was in duty bound to do so and I shall do it again at every opportunity, whenever my electors ask me to voice their feelings in this house.
As I did last year, I want to say that I am not responsible to any political party, or any organization; I am responsible to the electors of my constituency, purely and simply. I shall always voice whatever claims they want
me to expound on their behalf in the dominion parliament.
Mr. JEAN-FRANCOIS POULIOT (Temis-couata): Mr. Speaker, I feel that the hon. member who has just resumed his seat should have attempted in the first place to convince his leader. Had he done so, he would not have had to talk so loudly. He could have used a conversational tone and I have no doubt that with his powers of persuasion he would have prevailed upon his leader to relinquish his suggestion of a two billion dollar gift to the United Kingdom, which, though not yet a part of Canada, may some day be Canada's brightest jewel and finest colony. (Text):
It is quite true, Mr. Speaker, that the hon. member who just sat down is a gifted speaker. I am sure that all the fairies must have passed by his cradle, touched it with their little wands and endowed him with a new gift each time. But may I say that he has one particular gift, namely, that of auto-suggestion.


An hon. MEMBER:: He is sincere, too.


Jean-François Pouliot: He goes so far as to believe sincerely, undoubtedly, what he dreams about.


An hon. MEMBER:: That is right.


Jean-François Pouliot: That is a fortunate position to be in. He must be in a state of constant happiness.


An hon. MEMBER:: Certainly; more than the hon. member is.


Jean-François Pouliot: He is unique in this connection. I am sure that he is so well gifted that he can keep his smile even in his most profound affliction.
It is strange when we see those gentlemen parading around the province of Quebec and trying to teach the people great truths about the government of this country. They speak in generalities. They never come down to concrete facts. The hon. gentleman was just saying a moment ago that there were people who were robbing the country of hundreds of thousands of dollars. I said, "Name them", and with his genial nature he smiled. Then he asked what it was all about and said that they were always selling their produce to other countries. He said that they were re-selling to other countries the produce they imported and described that as a crime. To me that is just the ordinary course of business. There
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are many importers who obtain goods from other countries for purposes of re-sale; that is legitimate trade. My hon. friend has no reason to get into an argument with the importers of this country; they pay their taxes, just as do other citizens. Their trade is acknowledged as a legitimate one, just as is that of the exporters. It is simply a process of the coming and going of goods. Surely my hon. friend has no reason to be scandalized about it.
But the caravan of Social Crediters which goes to the province of Quebec acts like the Bohemians. They go from place to place selling their old horses, telling stories to the people. They passed through my county rather quickly. I never had an opportunity to see them, because I never listened to them when they came there-and there were very few who came.
They do not attract large crowds, but they make plenty of noise. There must be something behind the brass band. So the result is that we hear lots of noise and we see many advertisements telling us that the Social Crediters are coming to speak and to evangelize the people. They are coming to preach the right gospel-the gospel of fake money. Then they go around, each one saying to himself, "Listen to me; look at me; listen to me; I am the great ego; I am the one who knows all."
But in my county the people are sophisticated. They say, "Those people are crazy" -yes, that is wrhat they say. Let them come to my part of the country and they will find the people believe there is something wrong with them, not only with their theories, but with themselves.
That is the way they go, travelling around with their caravans, making a lot of noise, noise that is forgotten as soon as they pass by.


David Réal Caouette: And you are still talking.


Jean-François Pouliot: And here is some more noise. We shall hear the drums beating in a short time.


David Réal Caouette: He is still talking.


Jean-François Pouliot: I thank my hon. friend. He knows I have great respect for him, but he never was in the caravan. Had he happened to be in the window with me when it passed I am sure he would make the same remarks as I am making. It is most unfortunate that my hon. friend has never witnessed such a performance.
If I am in order I should like to refer to some instances. For instance, the caravan went to the county of Montmagny and there, at Cap St. Ignace, a nice old place, they

decided to invite the hon. member for Mont-magny-L 'Islet (Mr. Lesage). They challenged him to come to their meeting and left the impression that, had he not been there he would have been a coward. He went, so that he might hold a discussion with them. The hon. member spoke until sundown, keeping the crowd there. And the members of the Social Credit group-and I do not know whether they are called the Social Credit group or the union des electeurs, or whatever the name is-were there, but they were very much embarrassed and completely unable to reply to the hon. member for Montmagny-LTslet. The result was that they held another small meeting at some distance away, but they were not listened to, to any extent. They did not attract a big crowd because the crowd was listening to the hon. member for Mont-magny-L'Islet.
Another performance occurred in the county of Levis. A challenge was issued to the hon. member for Levis (Mr. Bourget) and he attended the meeting. It was supposed to be a joint meeting. The hon. member asked that a discussion take place, but it was refused.


David Réal Caouette: On a point of order-


Jean-François Pouliot: This is a statement of fact. If I am not correct my hon. friend may correct me. He said he would speak after the meeting, although it was supposed to be a joint meeting. There was a man from Levis at that meeting who complained that he was a tenant and a man with a large family, living in only two rooms. The story he told was pitiful, and he made it clear that stress was being placed upon those who had families. He said they could not obtain housing, and he referred to the housing situation very much in the same manner as my hon. friend has just done.
People had tears in their eyes listening to him. One of my hon. friend's supporters was at that meeting and said: "Poor fellow, he has no house for himself, his wife or his family". But then it was brought out that the man who had spoken was the owner of a big house which he had divided so that he might rent it out in apartments. He was making money from it, and using only a small part of the building. This was a case of preferring money, real money, rather than the welfare of his family.
I know very well why my hon. friend and others were unwilling to let the hon. member for Levis speak before them, or in the middle of the meeting. It was because the hon. member for Levis was able to show the true facts about those men who have tried to divert the attention of the people by offering them

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the moon. Let me tell my hon. friend that what he is doing is most dangerous. I have seen some caricatures on the front of their publications which would be disavowed by the leader of their party, for whom I have the deepest personal respect, although I disagree totally with him.
i attach no importance to the letter I have received; I have not even read it. However,
I know in advance what it says. I will tell my hon. friend who is ready, in an anonymous fashion, to cast aspersions on everybody by drawing pictures of some people in this country, or of large groups of people, and describing them as those who are answerable to the people, that he should be careful about doing so, because it is a dangerous game. At times there are difficulties in life. There are social difficulties; there are ups and downs, and it is a dangerous thing to take advantage of those circumstances to try to arouse the feelings of the people.


David Réal Caouette: Who made those circumstances?


James Horace King: I am sorry to interrupt
the hon. member, but I believe I should point out to him -that the remarks he intends to make should be relevant to the motion before the house.


Jean-François Pouliot: Mr. Speaker, the hon.
member has spoken about controls, and he tries to substitute subsidies for controls. He must know -that subsidies go with controls, and that it is precisely because controls were instituted that such large amounts were paid in subsidies, both during the war and until recent times.
However, I should like to have a clear picture of the social credit policy with regard to controls. I know very well what the hon. member for Jasper-Edson (Mr. Kuhl) would tell us. He would say that controls could not be constitutionally established because the British North America Act was illegally adopted and is of no effect. Therefore all the money that has been paid since confederation should be paid back. That was the most incredible performance and I can deal with it only in a jocular way in order to show its absurdity. When you demonstrate -that a proposition is absurd, everybody laughs. The hon. member for Medicine Hat (Mr. Wylie) is sufficiently gifted to argue about the matter.
We have two systems or philosophies. We have the system of free enterprise which is also called capitalism and we have the system of socialism and communism. A short time ago the hon. member for Cape Breton South
(Mr. Gillis) made an eloquent speech, in which he said that socialism covers the world. That may not be -his exact expression but that is the meaning of what he said. Therefore, in his mind socialism must be about the same as communism because communism is the system that prevails in Russia and in the satellite countries of Russia.
Some of my hon. friends have tried to speak of private enterprise in a most contemptuous way. They have endeavoured to show that the man who is a capitalist must be dishonest. If the Social Credit party does not agree with the socialist party, in which I see so many old Liberals, it must be because their policy is capitalistic. Either the Social Credit party believes in private ownership, which is tied up with capitalism, or it does not. If the members of that party believe in the rights of private ownership, then they are in favour of free initiative and private capital. Otherwise, they are in favour of socialism. On the main issue there is no difference at all between the sound policy of the Social Credit party and that of the Liberal party.


Mr. JOHNSTON:: The Liberal party is socialistic because a cabinet minister said so the other day. Look it up in Hansard.


Jean-François Pouliot: Does my hon. friend believe in Hansard? We must consider the facts as they are and realize that at times an appreciation of facts might be erroneous.


Mr. LOW:: What is socialism?


Jean-François Pouliot: Socialism is a system under which all goods are kept, in common. Communism is a system which denies the right of ownership to the private individual and takes all his property.


Charles Edward Johnston: What is the difference between communism and socialism?


Jean-François Pouliot: The socialists believe that everything should be owned in common; therefore they are not in favour of private ownership. Communism deprives everyone of his ownership. Therefore the only difference between the two is in words.


Mr. McGREGOR:: Do you believe what your minister said yesterday?


Jean-François Pouliot: I was not here.


Charles Edward Johnston: He said he was a socialist.


Jean-François Pouliot: He may be a socialist. He has the right to be, just as my hon. friend has a right to be a Social Crediter. I do not deny his right to be a Social Crediter, but I find that the policy of the Social Credit party is something in which I cannot believe. It is

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absurd in certain ways. He has the right, to say that the Liberal policies which I believe in are absurd, but when he says that he is wrong. AVhen I say that the policies in which he believes are absurd, I am right.


Mr. KUHL:: When you lose your seat you will believe it.


Jean-François Pouliot: That is the reward of a man who speaks with deep conviction.


Solon Earl Low: And little knowledge.


Jean-François Pouliot: I do not contend that I have much knowledge, and that is precisely one of the difficulties of the moment, that some people are a little bit too clever, and what is too clever is the part that is in excess of what they really are. The house is in a good mood and I appreciate that, but I see in the ranks of the C.C.F. group-


Robert Henry McGregor: The communists.


Jean-François Pouliot: No, not the communists. I see there men who have a Liberal background, men who were Liberals and whose families were Liberals for many years. Perhaps they found that everything was not going to their satisfaction in the prairie provinces and they thought they would try something else; they thought they would try the C.C.F. group.
I would remind them of what happened in England after Lloyd George and Lord Reading destroyed the Liberal party through their dealings in the Marconi affair and other matters and the efforts of Lloyd George to supplant Asquith and all that. What is needed in England today is not a socialist government; it is a good Liberal government which would carry on according to the Liberal traditions of England. There is a great gap between the Tories and the socialists in England, and there is no one to fill that gap because the actions of some Liberals in years past destroyed the party. But it should not be said that Liberalism cannot exist in England. If Liberalism existed in England today we would have free enterprise and England would not be at the mercy of other nations of the world; she would not be forced to ask for assistance like a poor woman. Letters that I have received show the results of the socialist policy in England.


Robert Henry McGregor: The Liberal policy.


Jean-François Pouliot: I am not speaking of the Liberal party; I am speaking of the socialist party that holds the reins of power in Great Britain at the present time. The condition of the people in Britain is pictured as rosy under a socialist regime, but actually it is very bad. 
I have received a letter which was mailed at Herne Bay, Kent, England, on September 22, 1947, in which the writer says:
Dear Sir:
Since receiving your very true letter in April I have written Mr. Strachey five times asking him to give us more of the food you so kindly send to this country, but all I get is excuses and no satisfaction. Well, my reason for writing to you this time is because I am asking you if it is possible for you and the Canadian government to put a ban on Strachey for letting our food go to thousands of foreign restaurants and cafes while we in our miserable homes see about one-quarter of what you send. Every foreigner in England is getting a better deal than any English person and I plead with you to demand that the food you send goes to the mothers and families of England. My daughter of seventeen is a lovely girl but she has lost a stone-
That is fourteen pounds.
-in weight. She gets up and goes to work hungry and comes home hungry. It is nothing but cuts and cuts in our food. I can tell you nine mothers out of ten are tired of trying to go on. Strachey is a dictator to this country-
A dictator, mark you, sir. I know he is.
-and the whole rotten government with him.
Rotten government. This is an Englishwoman calling Strachey's government a rotten government. She is a good Englishwoman and she is not afraid to tell the truth. Her letter continues:
We have one rasher of bacon a week each. For the rest we starve. The best fed people in this country are the government and the foreign twisters but the real English are downtrodden starved and-
Then a word is used to describe their condition which is awful.
I will now close, hoping so much that you and your gentlemen can make a law that the food goes on our tables instead of to the wrong people.
Thanking you,
Faithfully yours,
P.S. My daughter and husband have gone to work today on a slice of margarine each.
That is a letter I received from one lady.
I have another here which is just about the same. I have a number of letters like this.


Solon Earl Low: That is the result of the distribution of the food.


Jean-François Pouliot: That is the result of the government of England by socialists. We have that experience before us. The socialist party is like the Social Creddters.


Solon Earl Low: Heaven forbid!


Jean-François Pouliot: They promise marvellous things. Now in Alberta-

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Solon Earl Low: Alberta, yes; go on now.


Jean-François Pouliot: In Alberta you have a government which is social credit only in name. It passes laws that are not constitutional. But the management of that province by that government is on a most conservative basis, as my hon. friend knows. If you want to see the application of social credit theories there, that time is still to come.


Robert Henry McGregor: What about Saskatchewan?


James Horace King: I call the attention of the hon. member for Temiscouata (Mr. Pouliot), to the fact that his remarks should be relevant to the motion before the house.


Jean-François Pouliot: I wonder if the house would like me to finish.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Yes, go on.


An hon. MEMBER:: The sooner the better.


Jean-François Pouliot: I do not want to be unpleasant to any member because the whole house is so kind to me. I appreciate that deeply and the house knows it. I am sincere in what I say and I thank my hon. friends for their words of encouragement.


Charles Edward Johnston: I do not think the hon. member was sincere because if he was he would have to clean the communists out of his own government.


Jean-François Pouliot: I have received many letters from Great Britain. I cannot read them all to the house; I cannot even carry them all in my pocket, but I have another one here which moves one's sympathy. It comes from a woman who is a councillor in her town. She has been a member of several delegations which have called on Mr. Strachey, and if the house is interested I shall read the letter. It comes from Essex and reads:
Sir,
I wrote to you some time ago and you so kindly answered, remarking of the sympathy you felt for us people having such a government with so many incompetent men.
Here I have enclosed a cutting in our today's Express.
The clipping is dated December 1, 1947.
I am shocked to think that people of your country receive such treatment. Heaven only knows what is going, to happen to this mother country of ours. People are starving. Everyone has a gloomy cast upon their faces. Day after day we feel hungry. Shortage of potatoes, petrol stopped for car owners, aged people getting less than anyone. God help our future generations if this sort of thing keeps on.
Christmas is approaching and we have nothing to look forward to
Strachey bought nuts and resold at 10 shillings per pound; tangerines, 5 shillings; apples, 2 shillings and sixpence. So what are the little children going to get? I look at my five children and wonder why should they suffer. A few years back we had plenty to eat, however poor one -was. Mr. Churchill never once got this country anywhere near the state it is in now, even when the enemy was on our back doorsteps.
I sincerely trust I am not boring you. You may be more conversant -with our state of affairs than ourselves.
With all best wishes,
Yours respectfully,
Mrs.

of men who are full of books, as my hon. friend said just a moment ago, men who are not practical but dangerous, men who may be geniuses. Plato was a communist. He was one of the greatest minds that ever lived on this earth. Others may be well gifted as my hon. friends are, but they are most dangerous because they are doctrinaires. A doctrinaire is a man who enjoys more the application of his theory, even if it is nefarious, than the welfare of his fellow citizens. That is why we find that these proud and conceited theorists are a danger to the world. They are a danger to the world because they want to apply their theories, not for the good of mankind, but for the personal satisfaction of their own ambition. I regret it. Some of them may be sincere. I appeal to those who have lived in the old country, those who have known Campbell-Bannerman, those who have known Asquith, those who have known Earl Grey of Falloden, those who have known the great Liberals who are now dead but will never be forgotten, those who have read the life of Gladstone, those who know about Morley, and other great men of England, those who have assured the supremacy of England. They must not be comfortable in the ranks of the socialist party, because the main role of the party is to deny, not only private initiative in terms of money, in terms of currency, but private initiative in terms of human freedom.


An hon. MEMBER:: No.


Jean-François Pouliot: I remember that one of my hon. friends disagreed with his leader. He was turned down. He was told something that was most unpleasant, something that I would not have suffered from any one of the cabinet ministers. But this is the policy of the party. It is, believe or die; believe anything that I tell you; it must be true. That is a very dangerous situation.
I remember that the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply (Mr. Howe) last summer spoke to the youth of this country. He made a wonderful speech. I entirely approved it. He said to these young boys who had been attending the lectures of professors who were trying to deform their minds, and unsuccessfully-and I say that is a tribute to these young men and girls who were there and who were bright enough to discern the truth in all the falsehoods that were told to them-"Let us be practical; let us look at the application of the theories that have been propounded by some people." Of course he did not mention the lecturers. He said, "Let us look at the socialist government that is now in power in the United Kingdom and see the result. The result is disastrous". My hon. friends are so

eager to forget liberty in their proposals that they would not admit that anything done by [DOT] Strachey is wrong, and that anything done by any of the ministers in the United Kingdom is wrong because the government is socialist.
I do not agree at all with Mr. Attlee, but I have a profound respect for him. I think he is a great man, but I could not say that of many of his colleagues. My hon. friends are ready to swallow them all, and they would protest vigorously if something was said about the incompetence of the government of the United Kingdom at the present time. But times have changed. Some years ago fanaticism was so thick and opaque that no member of parliament could have said that the government of England, even the present government was incompetent. If my hon. friends are scandalised by what I say I shall tell them only to remember what has been said by Mr. Churchill and not to forget the letters that I have just read to them which come from honourable, respectable and good women in the United Kingdom who suffer because of the despotism and stupidity of the socialist government over there.


Mr. T. L. CHURCH (Broadview):: I am pleased to follow the hon. member who has just taken his seat and whose great grandfather, then member of parliament for Rimou-ski, gave up his seat in 1844 when the Hon. Robert Baldwin was beaten in York county, Ontario. The hon. member has a great deal of humour in his make-up, but there is also a whole lot of wisdom and common sense in what he says.
I am somewhat alarmed, Mr. Speaker, and also shocked when I look at this transitional bill. It is well named " transitional," as he will see. I wish to refer to three facts in connection with it. It has to do with chapter 16 of the revised statutes, bills of exchange and so forth. I will deal with the cause and effect of this resolution and the uses this transitional resolution is to be put to for the next six months.
I might say that this bill is well named. In 1896 Sir Wilfrid Laurier said that he was going to make Ottawa the Washington of the north. The government of the day has already made Ottawa the Washington of the north by the policies announced in this resolution and the Geneva charter. You cannot consider this one resolution by itself; they are all coupled together, this one, Geneva, the excise part, are all inter-related.
I should like to call your attention, Mr. Speaker, to the effect of this resolution. The effect of it is simply this. Last Easter I said that our policy was one of " wait and see."

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Our policy now is to wait and see what Washington is going to do. Before last February it was to wait six months to see what Geneva was going to do. I took my stand last spring when the Geneva meetings were held as I do now. The meetings opened in February and continued to the end of August. Had the dominions stood with the mother country they could have said to the United States government and to the others, preferential trade is a family matter of the British empire and admits of no controversy from without. Instead of that, what did we do? We surrendered all our political, financial, economic and military initiative to Washington, and now we are doing here the same thing, depending on and waiting to see what Washington does.
It will be nearly three years next Easter since the war ended, and all that this government has done has been to surrender in the Geneva pacts our power, military, financial and economic initiative to Washington. That has been the whole policy of the government; and its policy, in the measures we now have presented to us, is being laid down by Washington. Apparently the policy of the government is to wait and see what Washington will do, instead of waiting for six months or so to see what the outcome of the Geneva agreements will be. In the meantime, I should like to know how Britain is to be fed. She has only enough food for 27,000,000 of her population. Who will feed the other 20,000,000 when Britain cannot get the food she needs from Canada, her best customer, if contracts are ended?
Britain has been our best and, indeed, our only real customer. As I pointed out the other night, it was the opinion of the late Lord Bennett that Canada's welfare was wrapped up in the British preference and the British market, but now the government is evidently throwing the mother country overboard in favour of Washington. Our interests are now, it seems to me, identified with Washington, lock, stock and barrel. We are now committed to the United States economy entirely, and it is the greatest mistake in our history. The actions of the government have resulted in upsetting our entire economic policy as we have known it since confederation.
What use will be made of these Geneva agreements and foreign exchange acts? There will be another gamble in connection with our livestock, our bacon and eggs, our grain and our dairy produce. I am not criticizing the officials of the government. I am not one of those who criticize our officials, because I believe they are merely the victims of a
system. They have to carry out the orders they receive from the government. I suggest, however, that we should hold fast to the faith which is in us and which we profess and acquit ourselves like men. Let us stand by the British preference; let us hold on to the empire. The British empire with the dominions is richer in natural resources and in all kinds of raw materials than either Russia or the United States, and if we had elected to remain a part of the empire we shall do the only thing that can save Britain. But what are we doing? I contend, Mr. Speaker, that we are simply taking part at the present time in a gamble with Washington that will be fatal to the future prosperity of this country.
I fear that the effect of what the government is proposing to this parliament today will be to throw Britain overboard, and Canada, which was first in the diamond jubilee procession of 1897, will now be the last today.
Next to the united nations organization, these Geneva agreements are the most mis-, chievous proposals that have come before the people of the British empire or the world in history, and if they are followed to their logical conclusion, taken in conjunction with other agencies, Bretton Woods and the United States loan, it will mean the liquidation of the empire and the loss of our best customer. Britain will have to find other sources for her food supply than Canada when contracts are cancelled.
The loss of the British market is serious but the government apparently does not appreciate this fact. Britain is the only country that has afforded us a steady market for our meat, for our grain and food products, for our men, for our bacon and eggs in the past, and it is the only one that can save us now. What are we going to do when we lose the British market and find the United States raising embargoes against us? I predict that food costs will go up still higher in Canada. Canadian prices are going to reach an unprecedented high. It seems to me that we are showing very little faith in Britain after all that she has done for us, not only in the past, but during the last war, and I greatly regret the action that is being taken by the government. Apart from the position of the mother country, however, there remains the question as to where we shall find new outlets for our Canadian products, and in what countries other than Great Britain, certainly not in America.
The farmers of Ontario will suffer through the loss of the preferential trade which they have enjoyed. For seven years during the war Britain gave our farmers what amounted to their greatest prosperity, and if we remain
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in the empire we can do a great deal to help Britain in her hour of need. The natural resources of Canada, New Zealand and Australia, together with the resources of the motherland, could provide the necessary supplies for the British people to enable them to get along until they can get on their feet again. That, however, does not seem to be the objective of the government.
I am absolutely opposed to the program submitted by the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner), because, as I say, in my opinion it represents nothing but a great gamble. Canada's policy is being laid down in the United States. The statements made by various ministers are certainly puzzling to me, as I believe they are others, and as I said the other day the action of the government will simply mean that Canada will become a Lazarus at the feet of Washington. But we do not know what will happen after the next ejection in the United States, though it is safe to predict that they will go in for high tariffs again. As a matter of fact, there will always be tariffs. By these Geneva and other agreements we have to all intents and purposes committed ourselves to Washington's economy, and that is not in the interests of the Canadian people. No government in Canada has ever had such powers as the present government has exercised in connection with these excise tax measures and all these other things, and it is my submission that the government should have obtained advice from some other source than the justice department. Before this session was called, there should have been a reference to the Supreme Court of Canada under the Supreme Court Act to see if it was legal. What the government did on November 17 in connection with foreign exchange is illegal. Such action to make it legal now will have to be passed by both houses of parliament; there is no doubt about that; and if a reference were made to the supreme court I have no doubt that the position I take now would prove to be the right one. But the government, by these orders in council on exchange, has gone over the heads of the law courts and of the House of Commons alike. We are simply wasting our time. These proposals of the government have been made retroactive to November 17 last, and all parliament does is to conduct a post mortem.
I suggest that we should change the name of this institution from the House of Commons to the house of coroners and undertakers, for that is all we are. All we have to do is to hold post mortems on these measures before us. We are just conducting proceedings as in a morgue. I can tell you this. That is one 
of the reasons why the popularity of the monarchy has increased so much as was evident in the recent empire marriage, with the corresponding decay of parliament, and the decline of the House of Commons and the present government by their measures are responsible for it. Talk about the family compact! The family compact, back in 1837, would never had dared to propose a measure like this which was brought into force on November 17, without the knowledge and over the head of the House of Commons, with regard ' to foreign exchange, as a result of which policemen have been stationed all along the border to see what you have in your pocket. That was done by the executive over the head of the House of Commons and parliament. The government is now proposing to make retroactive and legal what they did by order in council on November 17.
I believe that the Conservative party has been the pioneer party with respect to control. What do you call the national policy but control? What are controls but bonuses, subventions and subsidies, rvhich are the backbone of the national policy? My proposal for labour, industry and agriculture is to bring that national policy up to date and adopt the principles that I have suggested. My proposal is to bring in a national policy for grain that we are sending to the mother country and to our allies over there, and to bring in a national policy with respect to many other industries and callings up to date to meet after-the-war conditions. The whole Conservative policy that we have built up has that as its foundation. I propose that the national policy of the late Sir John Macdonald be brought up to date. I am for controls and subsidies for this winter on milk, bread and coal, but I should like to see the controls during the next three or four months adapted to our circumstances. I believe the day is not far distant when the people will wake up and the government will see that they have made a mistake. They have thrown away any hope of preferential trade. While I support the measure and extension to March 31 now before us in connection with the Transitional Measures Act, I should like to see this temporary control policy supplanted and instead adopted what one might call a long-term control policy for 1948, because the government seem to have had no vision having regard to what has been done in connection with these controls, such as is adapted to our circumstances. The government's policy is. "On again, off again, on again".	;

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la the last six months everybody has been going to New York. What time have the ministers had to attend to their departments, when you have a whole carload of them going down to that farcical performance called the UNO which has just turned out to be a second Geneva? What time have they had to attend to these matters which are before the house at the present time? Why did they not do something long before this? Away back last spring they knew that we needed fuel and coal in September? They knew it in September and October. Fortunately we had a warm fall. Otherwise there would have been a great deal of suffering in the country. They knew that we needed controls with regard to food and milk; yet they threw them all away. I should like to see a long-term control policy adopted. There is by the United States in their loan policy coercion by Washington of countries that cannot pay such loans on any terms. I referred to this the other night. What I said will be found on pages 160 and 161 of Hansard, where I referred to the United States policy as shortsighted. None of the countries under lease-lend can pay them back. I said:
If successful, it can lead only to a repetition of the disaster of 1931, from which the United States suffered more than the rest of the world. Any loans which the United States grants to Europe on its terms cannot possibly be repaid, *while the loans will, sooner or later, be universally repudiated. Mr. Amery said that the fatal mistake made by Great Britain and, in large measure, by other countries had been its endeavour to conciliate the United States and facilitate the securing of its help by pretending to agree with the aims of the United States policy when we knew those aims to be out of date and impossible of fulfilment. The only way to avoid further misunderstanding and em-bitterment for all concerned, he said, was to speak frankly and to point out that, while grateful for such help as the United States may in her own interest care to give toward recovery, it must be free from all conditions which make that recovery impossible.
I regret deeply that the government have thrown over the preferential trade policy of the late Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Mr. Fielding and others, and have thrown away the principles of it. I believe that policy did more to save Canada during the depression in the thirties than any other. I believe that the people of Canada will some day wake up to find that out. As my former leader, Lord Bennett, said in his speech last June in the House of Lords when he saw the way Geneva was going with regard to trade pacts and the policy of the labour government over there, "The abandonment of preferential trade will mean the darkest hour in the history of the British empire, if not in the history of the world".
In conclusion, I wish to say that the present government's whole policy at Geneva is to be wrapped up in United States economy. It is part and parcel of it. Now we are tied up. We have not only financial but economic annexation to the United States. Let us look at what the government of hon. gentlemen opposite have brought before parliament. They are sending us all home now, after a post mortem on all these measures, and we might just as well be down in the morgue on Lombard street as here in parliament, discussing these pacts and Geneva agreements at a coroner's inquest. I think the people someday wall wake up. Nobody will wake them up now, bu-t they will have a re-awakening a little later on.


Stanley Howard Knowles: It is six o'clock, Mr. Speaker.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I wonder if I might say a word without intruding upon the kind indulgence of the house. Inasmuch as we are all more or less in agreement on the essential terms of this resolution, I wonder if we could not try, after eight o'clock, to expedite it as much as we could and help the government and parliament to finish up next week as early as possible. That is said not at all in a party spirit. It is said just in order to try to expedite the business of the house.


John Bracken: Agreed.
At six o'clock the house took recess.
After Recess
The house resumed at eight o'clock.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, I feel that the people of Canada will be greatly disappointed in this December portion of the current session of parliament. The question has been asked a good many times; Why are we here? I begin to feel that we were called here in December, rather than six weeks later, simply to give the appearance of action-but it is only the appearance. So far as matters laid before us by the government are concerned, we are doing literally nothing in this period before Christmas.
To my mind it is even worse than that. Not only is parliament doing nothing with reference to the serious problems facing the Canadian people, but there does not even seem to be any recognition on the part of the government or on the part of the majority
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of members in the house that there is, in the field of high prices, a serious problem facing the Canadian people.
The debate now before us, I submit, comes closer to that problem than, any other measure presented to us at this time. Even in this measure, which is only a resolution asking for the continuation of the Transitional Measures Act, there is little that we can do to bring home to the government the wishes of the Canadian people. Nevertheless this is the one debate in which it is in order to discuss the whole problem of price controls and subsidies, along with the other matters which are covered in the statute, the extension of which is being asked.
Despite the fact that there is that opportunity, there has been very little discussion in the debate on this important matter. I submit that it behooves parliament to keep pressing this matter upon the government until we get from the ministers something more satisfactory than the negative answers and excuses we 'have had thus far. I know the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) is busy with other matters, but I do not think it is altogether fair that the minister, whose department should be dealing with this problem, should have been out of the house so much of the time when this resolution has been before us. The Minister of Justice (Mr. Ilsley) is piloting t'he resolution through; but the matter contained in it which concerns us most is that which is uppermost in the minds of the Canadian people, namely, the high cost of living.
May I take just a moment to underline that which is well known, namely, why it is that the people back home are so concerned about rising prices? First of all, it has meant a lowering of the living standards of t'he Canadian people. In addition to the lowering of our living standards in a material way, it means a lowering of the health standards of our people. That is something the seriousness of which should demand our attention, until something is done about it.
Most of us in the House of Commons have homes and families; all of us know the problem it is, under current prices, to provide sufficient food to maintain proper health standards. Frankly I do not know how families with incomes of S30 or 835 a week-and there are some with less-manage to get along at all, to buy sufficient food so as to maintain their families in health and decency, to say nothing of the plight of pensioners and others on fixed low incomes. The fact of the matter is that, in years to come, Canada will pay for the lowering of our standards of health. Not only is there a lowering of health standards, but

there is being added to all the fears and insecurity people already have in today's world, the fear of economic chaos and the spiral of inflation in Canada.
I submit that it is not good enough for the government to keep on saying "no", as if there were any virtue in the consistency of that answer, and that it is not good enough to make excuses. Rather it is their responsibility to present to parliament plans for the economy of the country under which it can be regulated so as properly to distribute our goods and services with a view to proper living standards, adequate health standards, and some sense of security and stability in the minds of our people.
Although they do not seem to be revealing it,in the course of this debate, hon. members know that all kinds of organizations and people by the thousands back home are watching us with respeot to this one point. They think that is what this session was called for-to deal with the rising cost of living.
I am sure that every member has in his mail letters and resolutions calling for the re-imposition of price controls, calling for the re-institution of subsidies and other measures to bring down the cost of living. I shall not take time to read many of those I could bring before the house, but I do call attention to one received only today by the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell), the leader of this group. It would appear that similar letters were sent to the leaders of the other groups in the house, also to the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King), to the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply (Mr. Howe) and to the Minister of Labour (Mr. Mitchell). This letter comes, not from some ad hoc organization, not from any body whose political leanings might be suspect in the eyes of the government, but rather from the town council of the town of Port Colborne in the constituency represented by the Minister of Labour.
This resolution was passed unanimously at a meeting of the town council held on Monday, December 8. I shall not take time to read all the recitals which we find in the resolution, but the important part is in these words:
Therefore be it resolved that this council of the town of Port Colborne petition the federal government to re-iinpose controls and subsidies where necessary to roll back prices on basic consumers goods, of food, clothing and fuel.
There is the issue in a nutshell. There is the issue that the people of Canada expect this session of parliament to deal with. There is the issue placed squarely on the lap of the government. But instead the members of the government act like the French monarch who

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said, "After me, the deluge." They act as though the whole thing has got out of their hand and there is nothing they can do. The Minister of Finance does say what the government will not do and gives his excuses, but he does not come forward with any plan for controlling or directing the economy of the country in the interests of the people as a whole. I suggest that it is high time the Minister of Finance had something more to say than simply to tell us that the party in power sits there with a mandate for decontrol. It is possible to interpret the platform of the Liberal party'at the last election in that light; but I point out that if the government is going to treat every item in its 1945 election platform as something for which it has been given a mandate, there are some other things for which it has also received a mandate from the people of Canada. It has a mandate to do something about housing, but it does not seem to be quite so concerned about that. It has a mandate for a national labour code, for which we are still waiting; it has a mandate for a national health policy; it has a mandate for decent old age pensions. We are still waiting for the government to fulfil these mandates as well as the mandate which ran through all its election literature of that year, the mandate for a new social order.
With regard to price control, I submit specifically that the government received a mandate in 1945 to continue price control as long as it was necessary. It is terribly obvious that it is necessary today, and if the Minister of Finance is going to talk about carrying out mandates, I submit that that is a mandate he should fulfil immediately.
Indeed there is one mandate which any democratic government always has, the mandate to pay some attention to the problems of its people, to pay some attention to the things that the people really want. I am sure hon. members generally realize how well this resolution of the town council of Port Col-borne, as well as similar resolutions which have been passed throughout the country, express the wishes of the Canadian people at this time.
We in this parliament also have a score to settle with the government in connection with this whole business of mandates. We have given the government wide powers with regard to price control and subsidies. The controls which were carried over from the war period have been continued from year to year. We did not give them those powers with the idea that they would be thrown away as soon as possible, but rather that they would be used, at least as long as they were necessary for
the well-being of the Canadian people. But we have received what amounts to an insult because the powers given to the government have not been used. I submit that that is not good enough.
It does seem a tragedy that there is no way in which parliament can obligate the government to do the things that parliament wants it to do. As far as the resolution now before us is concerned, we seem to have only two alternatives. We can vote against it, which would mean the end of all controls on December 31 and additional chaos on January 1. Therefore we will not adopt that alternative. The other alternative is to vote for it without any assurance that the government will make any more use of the powers that we are giving it than it has thus far. The only thing we can do is to avail ourselves of the opportunity to speak in this chamber in an effort to drive the matter home to the mind of the government.
There is only one thing we can do in the way of an amendment or vote. While it does not express all that some of us would like to say to the government, we of this group intend to take that action. Before I sit down I shall offer an amendment to the motion, the effect of which will be to extend the control measure, not just to March 31, but to December 31, 1948. I want to say immediately that when I offer that amendment on behalf of this group it is not to be interpreted as an expression of confidence in the way in which the government has handled price control since the end of the war. On the contrary, our saying that these controls should be continued in force, not just for three months, which amounts to nothing, but for a full year, is a way of telling the government that we believe that these controls should really be used.
In addition to that, we feel that extra time should now foe given so that some of the suggestions made this afternoon by the hon. member for Cape Breton South (Mr. Gillis) might be carried out. The hon. member had something to say about the desirability of having permanent statutes passed by parliament which would look toward the planning of the economy of this country. If we extend the present bill for three months only and then come back and have another debate in February and March on the extension for another nine months, we believe that would be a case of getting nowhere fast. I submit that we should continue these controls for the full year which is possible under the provisions of the act. By doing
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that, we would give the government time to bring before parliament statutes of a more permanent nature.
That is not the only reason for suggesting it. The immediate reason is that by the government's resolution the controls are to be kept in effect for only three months and the result will be that they are not likely to be administered very diligently. The tendency on the part of the wartime prices and trade board, who will feel they are going 3ompletely out of business in another three months, or at least that there is a chance of that, will be to wind up their affairs instead of implementing the principles of price control and subsidies as the people of Canada would like them to do.
I can imagine that the Minister of Justice who is piloting this measure might make certain objections to my proposal that the bill oe continued in force for the full twelve months of 1948. One of his comments might be that not all the orders in council under the control bill will be needed for the whole of 1948. The reply I would; make to that is that the government has the power under section 4 of the act to revoke any order in council which is no longer required, and in fact some orders have already been revoked. On the other hand, if the measure is allowed to lapse on March 31 the government would then not have the power to re-introduce any of the controls provided for in the act.
To say that we shall be able to see what is needed in February or March is, I submit, to suggest a further waste of time and another unnecessary debate in this house. There is no doubt about what the people of Canada want. They want the re-imposition of price controls and the re-institution of subsidies.
I submit that, in response to that demand, the government should accept our proposal that the act be continued in force for the full year and that during that period they change their policy of decontrol to one of re-control in order to try to meet the needs of the Canadian people. It is too serious a thing to allow our living standards to go down, to permit a threat to the health of the Canadian people and to create the danger of chaos and confusion in this country.
With the hope that the government will realize the urgency of this matter and in an effort to bring it- before the house as forcibly as possible, I wish to move, seconded by the hon. member for Mackenzie (Mr. Nicholson): That the word "March" in the seventeenth line and also in the next to the last line of the resolution be deleted and the word "December" be substituted therefor in each case.

The effect of that amendment would be to change the paragraph which reads:
And whereas it is considered desirable to continue the said act in force until the thirty-first day of March, one thousand nine hundred and forty-eight.
-to read:
And whereas it is considered desirable to continue the said act in force until the thirty-first day of December, one thousand nine hundred and forty-eight.
There would also be a change in the petition addressed to His Excellency the Governor General at the end of the resolution, so that it would call specifically for the extension to the control measure until December 31, 1948.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Mr. Speaker, much as I personally may be in sympathy with the amendment moved by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles), I do suggest that any amendment which would impose a contingent additional impost upon the taxpayers is essentially out of order. It does not necessarily have to be declaratory of a direct impost or burden upon the people, but if it would have the possible effect of imposing an additional impost-I say with all respect that it is only possible; it may not be so-then such an amendment moved by a private member is, according to the rules of this house, out of order. The amendment declares in favour of a policy which might impose an additional impost upon the taxpayers of this country. Whether we agree with it or not, I am not arguing at all. But I do say this, that fundamentally, according to the rules of this house, the amendment is out of order because it does declare for the imposition of an additional impost upon the taxpayers of this country.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, may I speak to the point of order raised by the Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. Mackenzie). He contends that my amendment might involve the expenditure of money and, therefore, would not be in order for a private member to move. I fully recognize the rule that prevents a private member from moving a money resolution. I contend, and I think I can prove to my right hon. friend's satisfaction that this is not a money resolution. The basis for my argument is standing order 60.
I will give my right hon. friend time to turn it up, although I am sure he knows it well. Standing order 60 reads:
If any motion be made in the house for any public aid or charge upon the people, the consideration and debate thereof may not be presently entered upon, but shall be adjourned till such further day as the house thinks fit to

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appoint; and then it shall be referred to a committee of the whole house, before any resolution or vote of the house do pass thereupon.
That is the standing order under which provision is made for the introduction of money resolutions. If one reads the citations that follow the standing order one finds reference to the phrase that ministers use when they introduce a money resolution to the effect that His Excellency has been made aware of the contents of the resolution and recommends it to the consideration of the house. I point out, Mr. Speaker, that any money resolution, according to standing order 60 and the citations that follow, can be introduced only by a minister, and three things must be done. First, the minister must announce His Excellency's recommendation; second, the resolution must be laid over for consideration at a future sitting of the house; and, third, it must be referred to the committee of the whole house.
If my amendment asking for a further nine months' extension of this resolution is described as a money resolution, then the resolution brought in by the Minister of Justice for a three months' extension is also a money resolution. But the Minister of Justice did not announce His Excellency's recommendation. He did not, when it was called under government notices of motion, move for its consideration at a future sitting of the house. He did not move for its reference to the committee of the whole house. I am not saying that he should have; I am glad that he did not. But the fact that he did not do these things means that, in his view, it was not a money resolution. It was something special. It was a simple direct petition to the crown. I submit, further, Your Honour, that the fact that you permitted the Minister of Justice to introduce this resolution without announcing His Excellency's recommendation, and the fact that you did not require it to be laid over for consideration at a future sitting and to be referred to a committee -of the whole house implies that, in Your Honour's view, it was not a money resolution, but rather something special, namely, a petition from parliament to the crown.
And so. Mr. Speaker, since it was not a money resolution in the first instance, extending it further cannot make it a money resolution, and I submit that it is within the power of the house as a whole to amend this resolution as it sees fit, provided that it comes within the terms laid down in the act itself, which of course it does as indicated in the preamble to the resolution now before the house.


James Horace King: Does any other hon. member wish to speak to the point'of order?


Mr. HANSELL:: Mr. Speaker, I take great exception to the observation the Minister of Veterans Affairs has made, for the reason that if this amendment involves an increase in expenditure, almost any resolution, on. the order paper involves an increase. What the Minister of Veterans Affairs has done has been to attempt to give his interpretation of the motion. I might rise and suggest that my interpretation of the motion is that it will reduce expenditure on the country. I do not say it will, but I have as much right to make that interpretation as the Minister of Veterans Affairs has to give his interpretation, and 1 suggest, Mr. Speaker, that if you rule against this amendment you would have to rule against almost every private member's resolution on the order paper today. There are thirty-three of them and nearly every one of them can be interpreted as imposing increased taxation on the people.


Mr. G. A. CRUICKSHANK (Fraser Valley) :: Mr. Speaker, seeing that we are in technical difficulties, I wish to make one or two citations which I might have used to put some obnoxious legislation out of action. I want to quote Bourinot 23, Fraser Valley No. 1. If it would not have been abusing my prerogative I would have ruled oleomargarine out of order.
I came three thousand miles to Ottawa, to 40 degrees below zero and four inches of snow to put myself on record on two subjects. As I have sat and listened to the debates in this house. I realize more than- ever what it means to be a Canadian and to have the great freedoms we enjoy under democracy. We fight for freedom of speech; but, having listened to the official opposition, I think we are overpaying them at that.
I came here to endorse the attitude ol the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner), who unfortunately is not in his seat at the moment, but whom I am glad to see present in the house. I hope he will live up to what he implied he was going to do. I was interested in his explanation, yesterday of what has been done in the past, but I wish to assure him that my riding, a rural riding, is not particularly interested in vrhat has happened in the past. We are very much interested in what is going to happen in the future.
I shall be very brief, Mr. Speaker, because I realize that more entertaining speakers are to follow me. I should like to quote from an official government publiration entitled
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Farm News. I presume the taxpayers of Can-are paying for'it because it is issued under the authority of the Right Hon. James G. Gardiner and Doctor G. S. H. Barton. The item I wish to quote is headed "Government to act on feed grain prices," and reads as follows:
At the second day's session of the dominion-provincial agricultural conference held in Ottawa, December 1 to 3, Right Hon. James G. Gardiner, Dominion Minister of Agriculture, said:
"I am authorized to state that some action will be taken which will result in prices rising on products fed from grain which will take care in future of the increase brought about in feed costs through the removal of ceilings and withdrawal of drawbacks or subsidies."
In that connection, all I wish to say is that the people in my riding naturally hope to have a favourable decision made. Above all, we are asking the minister to declare a policy, and to declare it now, even if it is an unfavourable one, and not two or three months from now. In saying this, I speak with full authority from my riding and, I believe, from rural British Columbia. I believe that the Ontario and Quebec members agree with me in that. What we are asking particularly is that the decision and the policy be announced. If it is not favourable let the farmers know. We hope it will be favourable.
I wish to assure you, Mr. Speaker, and, through you, the minister, that in my province the poultrymen are being forced out of business, not so much by the prices, but by the fact that they do not know what the future holds for them. You cannot contract to sell your eggs on the British market at a certain fixed price, with a certain fixed price for grain, and then have the grain price go up but your contract price remain the same. I want to know what the policy is before I go to my own riding, and I am going home next Friday whether the house adjourns or not, because I believe in spending Christmas where every man should spend it, in his own home, and particularly in British Columbia. Before I go home I want to know, on uehalf of the farmers of my riding, what the policy is to be.
I now turn to the man in this parliament in whom I have the most confidence, namely, the minister from my own province. I know he has a more considered approach to matters this session than he had in the last one, and there is a reason why he should. Like the member for Fraser Valley the minister now at least has hopes. While the veterans in British Columbia believe that all veterans and all members of the legion in Canada will get better results if all legion affairs are' left to the veterans affairs committee which will be set up in the new year, yet I wish to point out

to the minister from my province and, through him, to the government, that the matter is too serious to wait. The veterans cannot wait until the findings of the veterans affairs committee are made known.
So far as I know, the basic pension was set in 1919. Is it fair to expect veterans to wait for the results of the findings of the veterans affairs committee which may not be made known until June or July of next year? I believe it all goes back to the War Measures Act, and in case I shall be called to order with a little advice I wish to impress upon the minister the necessity of arriving at a decision. A decision should be arrived at before we leave next week as to what exactly is going to happen to the veterans, at least temporarily.
One thing more, Mr. Speaker, and this certainly is in order. The people of my riding quite firmly believe that price controls should be re-established at least on the basic commodities under the War Measures Act. I cannot understand my hon. friends across the way who one year ago-


Mr. FERGUSON:: There is no mystery in that.


Mr. MacINNIS:: They do not understand themselves.


George Alexander Cruickshank: As my hon. friend says, they do not understand themselves; therefore why should we understand them? They wanted price controls removed one year ago. They did their utmost to have them removed one year ago, and if this government had not had the support of the C.C.F. party the combined efforts of the two Conservative parties in each end of the house would have wiped out controls.
So far as my riding is concerned, we believe that at least the basic controls on the necessities of life should be reimposed, and I urge upon the government immedate action.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Mr. Speaker, may I rise to a point of order. I have definite personal convictions which I certainly would not like to impose upon the house. I should like to have leave of the house to withdraw my point of order in the interest of expediting the legislation which, according to the best advice, the government is prepared to give the house. I am still convinced that I am right. A Scotsman loses his convictions very reluctantly. I must say I abandon mine in this case just in the interests of harmony and expedition.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Would you rule that the amendment is then in order, Mr. Speaker?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: No ruling is necessary.

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James Horace King: I understand that the minister has withdrawn his point of order. He having done so, no ruling is necessary.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Mr. Speaker, I should like to say a few words about the amendment that has been proposed by the hon. member for Winipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles). I am sorry that the amendment has been proposed because I am afraid it will precipitate, and I am inclined to think it should precipitate, a considerable debate in the house.
It was not the government's intention to debate this matter of controls in this part of the session that is being held before Christmas. It was our intention to formulate our policy as to the extension of controls and put that policy before the house in the part of the session that is held in the early part of the new 3-ear. We simply ask for the extension until March 31, not with a view necessarily to the abandonment of all these controls on March 31, but merely to maintain the position in statu quo for the time being. We shall be in a much better position to make recommendations to the house as to what controls should be abandoned and what controls should be continued in the month of February or in the month of March than we are at the present time. I think it is hardly fair to the house to ask it to take that responsibility now under the circumstances.
I cannot ask my hon. friend to withdraw his .amendment, but I am afraid that I shall have to oppose it. On the other hand, it will be pretty difficult for us to regard this striking tribute to the government as a vote of nonconfidence in the government. It is really saying to this parliament and to the country that we are quite content to leave it to the government of Canada as to what controls they shall continue and as to what controls they shall abandon; as to what orders they shall rescind and as to what orders they shall continue on through the year 1948. I find it somewhat difficult, if the house wants to force these powers on the government, to look upon such a vote as a vote of want of confidence in the government. The only point is this. There may be a serious objection to passing this amendment now because of some constitutional aspects of the case. I want to know if the extension of these powers would Impair or possibly impair the constitutional validity of this act, and I shall try to get the advice of my officers in the next hour or two or in the next half hour to see whether there is any such possibility and, if there is such a possibility, I shall have to take a firm position against this amendment.
I wish to make it very clear again, as I tried to make it before, that we are not, in voting against this amendment, saying that we are abandoning controls on March 31. The whole spirit of these resolutions is that they are stop-gap resolutions, interim resolutions. They maintain the position as it would be if we had not met in December. I shrink from the prospect of a debate, lasting perhaps all next week, on the merits of these particular orders in council relating to a wide variety of matters, as to which controls may be necessary during the year 1948, or may not. Some of them probably can be dropped; some have already been dropped. Do not let us get into that kind of debate today.
We are met here for a different purpose, for the purpose of considering the emergency legislation of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott), and I should like to get to that. This debate has lasted much longer than I expected it would anyway. I certainly expect a very considerable debate when we bring in our measure dealing with controls, but I should not like the house to embark upon a protracted debate tonight and Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.
I have not had an opportunity of consulting the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) or many of my colleagues; but my position, and probably it will be the position of the government, is this. I will vote against the amendment, but unless I am satisfied that there is some real constitutional danger to the act, that is, that the validity of the act is imperilled by extending it to the end of 1948, I would not regard the forcing of powers on the government as a vote of want of confidence in the government.


Mr.  M. J. COLD WELL@Rosetown-Biggar: I am sure we do not want to initiate a protracted debate upon the amendment, and I do not propose to speak at any length. What I rose to say was that the amendment has been introduced tonight because of the emphatic "no" which we understand the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) gave today to a representative delegation which met him on the restoration of price controls.
We know that the emergency legislation to which the minister referred is of great importance to the country, but we also know that the question of rising prices at the present time, and the difficulties that arise in the homes of the people across Canada, call for decision, and in that sense these matters are matters of emergency.
We believe that price controls are necessary as prices go up almost day by day, and it is more difficult for the people to get the things
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they really need. We know also that, coupled with price controls, certain subsidies should be restored. The Minister of Finance is in his seat and he can say whether or not this report is as correct as I take it to be from the name of the journalist which appears at the masthead. Perhaps I might read a paragraph from it:
About seventy strong, the delegation met Mr. Abbott in his east block office to air grievances arising out of the continued rise in the cost of living. Mr. Abbott accepted the brief but indicated the government's answer to the whole contentious issue of restoration of price controls would continue to be "no."
It is because we feel that price controls will be necessary for some time at least that the amendment has been moved by my hon. friend the member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles).


Douglas Charles Abbott: I might say a word in view of
the points raised by the hon. member for Ilosetown-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell). I received this delegation from the consumers' league, or the roll-back-prices' group, this morning and I told them exactly what I told the house the other afternoon. I explained the reasons why I felt, and I thought the government felt that an over-all system of price controls was not practicable in Canada unless one were prepared to embark upon what I described as a completely controlled economy which would necessitate as well the imposition of wage and salary controls.
I discussed the various points in connection with the program which they submitted, but, as I have said, the statements which I made to this delegation were substantially identical with the statements I made to the house the other afternoon, when I said that, while I felt and the government felt that an over-all price control system was not feasible or even possible in peacetime under our system of government, the government nevertheless was not adopting a hands-off policy, that we still had the power to re-iinpose price controls. I held out no hope to the delegation that the government proposed to reimpose over-all price controls.
There is nothing I can add to that. My hon. friend heard my speech the other afternoon. I believe it was reasonably clear, and other members have probably read it in Hansard, but that was exactly the attitude I took with the delegation this morning. The report is probably a fair report, but it obviously reflects the impression the reporter may have gathered from the remarks I made.


Mr. HERRIDGE:: I was paired with the hon. member for Vancouver North (Mr. Sinclair). Had I voted, I would have voted for the amendment.


Lewis Elston Cardiff: Mr. Speaker, the reason I rise in my place tonight to take part in this debate is that I have received a number of protest letters from my constituents and from different groups in my community.
The trouble in connection with controls has been that they were taken off at the wrong end. Controls on agricultural products should have been removed first, because they were put on first. Instead of that, however, they were the first to be imposed and the last to be removed. I am not complaining about the removal of controls, but I do complain that they were taken off at the wrong time; and I think even the government will agree to that now.
There has never been any group in our population which has gained more respect and admiration throughout the country than have the Canadian farmers. During the war, from one end of Canada to the other, they were congratulated upon the wonderful efforts they made in producing food. More than that, they accomplished that performance short-handed. Because of the high cost of labour, farmers were compelled to carry on as best they could without the aid of outside labour.
In many communities a census was taken and it disclosed that the average farmer engaged in agriculture was more than fifty years of age. That means only this, that many farmers operating farms were well over seventy years of age. Those men were not farming because they had to do it; they farmed because they felt they were doing a a job to help win the war, and that they should
continue until after the war was over. Today the war has been over for almost three years, and yet many of these men who have wanted to retire for some time find now that they cannot sell their farms at prices which would make it possible for them to buy houses fit to live in, in adjacent towns or cities. Prices of town properties are so high that they find it impossible to sell their good farms for sufficient to enable them to buy houses in the towns suitable to live in.
The result is that these men are compelled to remain on their farms. That is what I call an unbalanced economy. It just cannot work for any considerable length of time. The difficulty is that we have been taxed out of production. It is my belief that the producers of food should never have been charged income taxes, due to the fact that the}' have so many different problems to contend with.
For instance, crops are very uncertain. We have many good farmers everywhere doing a remarkable job. A good farmer will first prepare his seed bed as best he can to assure a crop and, if he is a good farmer he will pick the best seed he can buy. Again, he will sow his seed as early in the spring as possible and, by doing so, he feels he is reasonably sure of producing a crop. Then what happens? He may run into a dry year, or he may get a wet year as we had last year. Then he may have a good year with a heavy crop, but he is likely to wake up some morning and find that it has stormed through the night and his crop is pasted into the ground as though a steam roller had run over it. Very often he will lose half of such a crop when he tries to harvest it. The farmer never knows when he is going to be able to harvest a crop, and that is one reason w'hy.he should not be taxed on his income.
They have also been taxed out of production. This is true, not only in my section of the country, but in all sections. This applies also to other groups of the population. When labour was not receiving enough take-home pay last year its only redress was to go on strike. The result was that production fell at once. They were taxed out of production. After working four or five days, the working man refuses to go back to work because he knows he would be working for the government for the rest of the week.
The government has shifted so far to the left in order to win votes and has passed so much social legislation to hold the C.C.F. vote in the house that it now finds itself faced with the problem of collecting the money to pay for this legislation. If you want production
Ross (Hamilton East) Ross (St. Paul's)
Ross (Souris)
St. Laurent
Shaw
Sinnott
Skey
Stanfield
Stuart (Charlotte)
Stokes
Timmins
Tremblay
Tucker
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Viau
Weir
*White (Middlesex East)
Whitman Winters-129
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and prosperity you must reduce taxes. No one complained about the high taxes in war time, but if we are to win the peace taxes must be brought down to a level where the ordinary man can make a decent livelihood. It is my opinion that you cannot have high taxes and high production at the same time.
Here we are at a time when almost everything you can think of can be sold, especially food. This is the most important because it affects the greatest number of people. However, we are low in almost every other commodity we manufacture in Canada. Our only hope is production. That is the only thing that can and will pull us out of the mess in which we now find ourselves. Instead of Canada keeping up full production, we find ourselves resting on our oars waiting for the government to correct an error which they made a short time ago when they made it impossible for the farmers to make ends meet. This state of affairs has gone on so long that we are now faced with the fact that breeders are selling most of their breeding stock. It is impossible to repossess that breeding stock; it is gone; it has been slaughtered. More of such stock is being sold every day on account of the fact that the government has been too slow in waking up to the damage they have done.
Unlike some other speakers, I have no fault to find with the price the western farmer is getting for his coarse grains. But I do want to say that the government is forcing the eastern farmer to grow his own coarse grains. When that happens the western farmer will lose the best customer he ever had or ever will have. We cannot afford to feed hogs and fatten cattle at the prices we are getting, neither can we produce eggs and feed poultry unless the prices of these commodities are raised. The government has the choice of either raising the prices of hogs, cattle and eggs or supplying grain at a price where we can feed hogs, cattle and poultry at a profit. Regardless of what the government may think, you have to do one or the other.
Farmers never got what they should have in my time. Prices were pegged during wartime and the farmers were not allowed to make much money. Now, when we expect to make some money we find ourselves in an utterly impossible position. I want to know when the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) is going to start running his own department and give the farmers of Canada what is rightfully theirs without any dictation from the bureaucrats or abattoirs or the rest of the cabinet.


Mr. NORMAN JAQUES (Wetaskiwin):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to make my position clear on the question of controls. As the leader of this group has intimated, we shall support the government in its request for the extension of these controls for another three months, at the end of which time we shall be in a position to know what we shall then do. The claim has been made by some hon. members of the C.C.F. that living standards have risen in England under socialist control. I have in my hand some figures issued by the ministry' of labour showing the consumption of different foods by an average working-class' family today as compared with consumption in 1938. These are as follows:
1938	Today
Per week	Per week
Margarine and butter 10 ounces	6 ounces
Fats	
ii ounces	1 ounceBread	
4f pounds	4 poundsSugar	
23	ounces	8	ouncesBacon	
6	ounces	2	ouncesMeat	
24	ounces	10	ouncesCheese	
3	ounces	2	ounces
This article then goes on to say that the working man is getting less fats today to eat than he got in 1938. Those figures show that not only do controls mean loss of freedom; they also entail a lower standard of living. I should like to quote briefly from "The Road to Serfdom" by Professor Hayek. On page 28 he says:
And Walter Lippmann has arrived at the conviction that "the generation to which we belong is now learning from experience what happens when men retreat from freedom to a coercive organization of their affairs. Though they promise themselves a more abundant life, they must in practice renounce it; as the organized direction increases, the variety of ends must give way to uniformity. That is the nemesis of the planned society and the authoritarian principle in human affairs."
On page 31 Professor Hayek says:
That democratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few generations, is not only unachievable, but that to strive for it produces something so utterly different that few of those who now wish it would be prepared to accept the consequences, many will not believe until the connection has been laid bare in all its aspects.
Finally, I should like to quote one of the oldest and most respected members of the Labour party of Great Britain, who evidently has seen the consequences laid bare in some of its aspects. I quote from an Edmonton paper of some weeks ago. The Labour member I shall quote is Mr. Rhys Davies, one of the oldest and most respected members of the Labour party in Great Britain. In the House of Commons he moved a motion to kill the

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measure enacted recently giving the government there almost unlimited powers to deal with Britain's economic crisis, and in the course of his remarks Mr. Davies said that the line that the government in Great Britain was taking was the line that the nazis in both Germany and Italy took when they were in an economic crisis, and he went on to say.
"Unless parliament puts a stop to these totalitarian tendencies, there will be a goodly number of our working class folk sent to prison under this regulation. I challenge the new philosophy that has arisen in our party," Davies shouted. "They say to me, 'if you are to have a planned socialist society you must accept compulsion of labour.' If that is so, I am not having a planned socialist society.
A pair of handcuffs is no easier to wear if they shine with a socialist solution. If a Tory or Liberal government had tried to do this, the Labour party would have howled them into silence. If you tell me that I might bring down government, I say better that the government should meet its doom than that individual freedom should perish from the British Isles."
I should like to think that those words of Mr. Davies would hang in every office in this building and be in every desk in this chamber, and I should like, if I could, to have them framed and hung in every house in Canada.


Mr. E. B. McKAY (Weyburn):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to speak on this resolution for the continuation of the Transitional Measures Act, 1947. I think it is generally understood now that, without the adopting of this measure, it would be quite impossible constitutionally for the federal government to control prices in this country. I for one feel that this power should be granted to the government for as long as they feel they need it, so that there would be no excuse then for not controlling prices. This measure will give the government power to defeat inflation, if they will, by the reimposition of controls which were so effectively exercised during the war.
I should like to commend now the Minister of Justice (Mr. Usley) who, during those war years, was the instrument through which those controls were effectively put to work. It is recognized that, should the federal government vacate this field of control now, the provinces, even though they may be willing, would be in no position to establish such a system, except perhaps in rental control. Interprovincial trade would militate against the success of controls of this kind, making them ineffective. The lack of trade barriers between the provinces would nullify the effect of any provincial legislation to control the 5848-17
high cost of living. Price control is definitely a federal responsibility and I think the people of Canada recognize it as such. Therefore, in the interests of all the Canadian people, power should be extended to the Canadian government to legislate in this field. The provinces may have the right in normal times to legislate on this matter, but even then the right would be useless without the existence of trade barriers between the provinces. Indeed it would appear that the Canadian constitution should be revised so that the federal government should have power at any time of emergency to control prices and apply subsidies where they are required.
May I express the hope at this time, despite all that has been said from the government benches, that the government will not neglect this opportunity which the adoption of this measure affords them to reimpose price controls and check the alarming increase in living costs.
The continued increase in the cost of living is, I believe, agitating the minds of more Canadians today than any other one thing. It is causing real distress in some quarters of this country, particularly to the disabled veteran who has had no increase in pension, to the old age pensioner and many others on low incomes. During the war, price controls proved effective, and rationing assured to almost everyone a reasonable supply of those essentials which are so necessary for a decent living. Those controls should have been maintained until production was adequate to supply consumer demands. Everyone ought to be aware of what happens when shortages prevail. Prices are certain to rise because people bid one against the other for the goods when they are offered for sale. The result is that prices jump and soon an inflationary condition develops. Only price control can handle such a situation. Advocates of decontrol have led the people to believe time and again that, freed from restrictions, business will serve the consumers just as well as, if not better than, under price control. They forget that it was under price control exercised by this government that Canada had the highest production in her history, and I am sure some of them today are painfully aware that, without controls, prices will reach fantastic levels as they have in the United States. You know, Mr. Speaker, United States business pledged that prices would be held once controls were lifted, but they did not hold prices. Prices rose alarmingly; profits in the United States today are
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the highest they have ever been in the history of that country, and I am sure the story here is very little different.
The people most affected by the rise in prices are those on low incomes who are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. Most of us can recall the distress and the suffering which constituted the unhappy lot of many people following the first world war. In western Canada sugar went as high as thirty-two cents a pound; flour was $6 a hundredweight; suits of clothes were $100 each, and shoes were $20 a pair. Most of us will also recall the aftermath of such inflation when in 1932, according to the Rowell report, the following prices were paid in Saskatchewan: oats thirteen cents a bushel; eggs, 8i cents a dozen, cattle $20 a head, and wheat, thirty-five cents a bushel. Surely Canadians do not want a repetition of that disastrous situation again. Only a reimposition of controls can prevent such a recurrence. In my belief, we are in a -fair way even now to realize the beginnings of such a situation. Prices in the United States are the highest in all time, and prices here are not very far behind. I sometimes wonder whether we are not too late even now to ask for the reimposition of controls to rectify the evil that inflation and too hasty decontrol have brought upon this country. As a matter of fact the great majority of the Canadian people have never asked for decontrol; therefore they cannot be blamed for the situation.
In January of this year sixty-six per cent of the people interviewed by the Canadian Institute of Public Opinion expressed disapproval of the federal government's decontrol measures. This represents a cross-section of the Canadian people and ought to be considered a fairly accurate index of public reaction. I submit, Mr. Speaker, that there are many more Canadians today than that sixty-six per cent who realize that the price control line should have been held.
Everyone assumes that Canada has a democratic government which should reflect the point of view of the majority of the Canadian people. Someone has said:
In a democracy the people must be able to state in a definite manner the result they want in common; command obedience to their wishes from those who manage their affairs, their governments, and those who operate industry, trade and finance.
I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that the people did state in no uncertain manner in that survey what they wanted in common. The survey has always been considered quite accurate. The government, therefore, has the support of the majority of the Canadian people, should it

restore price controls again. Indeed, if it does not, it seems to me that the government is not acting in accordance with the wishes of the vast majority of the Canadian public. One must assume that the government was stampeded into its present untenable position by the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, which in January last called for the removal of price controls as soon as possible. No doubt they were also influenced by the social credit attitude as expressed by their leader on March 21 in this house when he said: "Social Crediters are implacably opposed to planned controls", and by the Progressive Conservatives who have repeatedly in this house called for the removal of all controls.
On the other hand, the C.C.F. requested the government on March 20 in this chamber to retain price controls to keep prices down, but were defeated by a combined vote of government, Social Credit and Progressive Conservatives.


Mr. FRASER:: I think the hon. gentleman would like to be fair. I do not think he will find any place in Hansard where such a vote was taken.


Solon Earl Low: When was the vote taken?


Eric Bowness McKay: On March 20.


Solon Earl Low: There never was such a vote.


Eric Bowness McKay: Yes, there was.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: On the retention of price controls?


Eric Bowness McKay: Look in Hansard.


Solon Earl Low: It is not there.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: It was not called for that purpose.


Eric Bowness McKay: That was the essence of the motion. I submit that this group was reflecting public opinion when that motion was presented to this house last March.
Recent events have proven without a shladow of a doubt that controls should not have been removed until a surplus of goods was available in this country. There is only one way by which the cost of living can be checked during the period the country is in short supply, and that is by the re-establishment of price controls and adherence to a scheme of subsidization. A serious situation has developed in this country-some people almost call it a national crisis-as a result of inflation. If we are to avoid a collapse of our economy such as that experienced in the thirties price control shoul 1 be reimposed immediately.

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Certain interests in Canada argue that increased wages have forced decontrol of prices. But responsible people have known for a long time that prices advance first, forcing labour to demand higher wages. The increase in living costs is the most forceful argument used by workers and, Mr. Speaker, the only effective one, in their demands for increased wages. Higher wages are only a small part of the huge price increases which consumers are now forced to pay. Clothing prices in 1946, for instance, advanced twenty-two per cent, but wages in the textile industry increased only six per cent. Prices of consumer goods have always been out of line with wages.
In a bulletin released last year by the United States trade commission it was shown that for every increase in wages of one dollar in the United States, prices had advanced S6.50, or six and a half times as much. One might very well ask who obtained the difference of $5.50. Certainly not labour.
The situation in Canada is little different from that across the international border, except that labour here is not as well paid, which only aggravates the situation for them. The real reason why prices are high is revealed in the enormous profits enjoyed by big business as the result of decontrol of prices in this country. There seems no limit on the profit that they may make.
Corporation profits in 1947 in Canada are estimated at $347 million, an increase of 12^ per cent over those of 1946, according to a news dispatch appearing in the Winnipeg Tribane on December 3 of this year. Companies such as the Monarch Knitting made profits of 309 per cent in 1946 over those of 1945, according to the Ottawa Citizen of February 1. Building Products Limited, which deals in building material, showed an increase of 286 per cent in the same period of time, according to the Financial Post of March 1.
A host of other companies have made tremendous profits because of the decontrol measures of the government. In the face of such exorbitant profits, the government should reconsider its intention of abandoning the excess profits tax at the end of this year. Much the same interests blame the farmer unjustly for the high cost of living because of the seemingly high returns he receives for butter fat, eggs, milk, stock and grain. If this were a just charge, the answer to rising prices would be a reduction in prices paid for farm products. This would, however, be a most ridiculous proposal since many farmers can hardly make ends meet now because of the high production costs, and such a pro-
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cedure would only decrease production and! add to the difficulties of the present trying situation.
In many cases the farmer's margin of profit is less now than during the war years because' of the high prices he is required to pay for consumer goods. Scores of farmers are reducing herds, disposing of flocks of poultry, and even destroying young pigs because feed prices -are so high. There is no profit in these particular products. The lifting of the ceiling on coarse grains has made the situation even worse.
The government, in its haste to return to free enterprise, removed the ceiling control on coarse grains after most western farmers had disposed of their crops. About the only people-who have benefited from the action are the' speculators in grain and feed into whose hands a good deal of this grain had found its way. Speculation in this commodity promptly increased prices in these grains to almost prohibitive heights. Speculation of this kind is most unhealthy. If a large price is to be paid for coarse grains it seems to me that the producer who works and toils to produce the grain should have received the benefit and not a few speculators on the Winnipeg grain, exchange or anywhere else in the world.
President Truman, in a broadcast on October 5 last, stated:
The cost of living must not be a football to-be kicked around by gamblers in grain.
Most growers in the west desire the closing' of the Winnipeg grain exchange and insist that grains be marketed through the Canadian wheat board. I have received numerous resolutions and many other members of the House of Commons have received resolutions to this effect in the past few weeks. On the prairies, machinery, fuel, twine, trucks, gasoline and household necessities have advanced in price tremendously. The lifting of the ceiling on coarse grains has increased production costs to live stock producers and has benefited but few of the growers of these grains. The farmers' costs of production are rising because of the lack of price control on the goods they buy. Costs of production have in some instances almost doubled, but the ceiling still remains on the farmer's chief product, wheat.
I do not believe the farmer would complain if prices of consumer goods had been held down, but if everything he buys is allowed to advance because of decontrol, surely there is no justification for controlling the price of wheat. If the government is not prepared to re-establish price controls on consumer goods, then the farmer has a right to ask for a higher price for his chief product, wheat.
2C0
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The farmer will not accept with good grace increased prices of the goods he needs if the present ceiling is retained on wheat. The farmer, and I believe that on the whole this is true, is not opposed to the British wheat agreement. On the contrary, he favours the stabilization of prices which such agreements permit. He is also anxious to retain the British market, so important to him in normal times, and the prices set for wheat were readily accepted when price control was in effect. But price control has now been abandoned and his cost of producing wheat is soaring.
There is a feeling on the part of many farmers that they have been double-crossed by the government by the decontrol of prices of consumer goods. I feel that controls should be reimposed or the ceiling on wheat removed, and I definitely prefer the former. This is the only fair thing to do. Canada must respect the wheat agreement, but the Canadian farmer must not be expected to carry more than his fair share of the load in rehabilitating Britain. The federal treasury should make up the difference between the price he now receives and the parity price which many farm organizations insist is substantially higher than the $1.55 f.o.b. Fort William that is paid. All Canadians should assist in the rehabilitation of Britain along with the farmers, and the federal treasury should come to the aid of the wheat producer in this matter. That is the only acceptable alternative to the reimposition of price control all along the line.
The C.C.F. supports the reimposition of price control because a large section of the Canadian people is on small incomes. A heavy burden is falling upon their shoulders by the high cost of living. In the United States, according to the federal reserve board, thirty-five per cent of those receiving incomes in 1946 either had gone into debt or had just broken even. There are no comparable figures in Canada, but conditions here are certainly no better and probably are worse.
Public opinion is demanding the return of price controls. The disabled veteran who fought for this democracy has a right to that protection. The old age pensioner struggles for existence without it, and the worker and the farmer are insisting upon it. On these grounds, the C.C.F. appeal to the government to take immediate steps to arrest the trend of prices by the re-establishment of price controls in order to curb excessive profits of corporations across this land and thus reduce the living costs for every Canadian. Only by developing a proper relationship between prices, wages and profits may this nation have economic as well as political democracy.
Mr. F. E. JAENICIvE (Kindersley): I have prepared some notes on the general topic of price control and on the disastrous results of the government's decontrol policy, but I have listened to all this debate and it seems to me that my colleagues in this group and the hon. member for Fraser Valley have fully covered the factual arguments in favour of control and the reimposition of controls. I desire to deal only with the legal and constitutional aspect of the matter.
The Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) several weeks ago was reported in the press to have stated that it is impossible for this parliament to reimpose price control in peacetime, and he.said something to that effect in this house about an hour ago. With that statement I take issue.
I maintain, in the first place, that we have power to reimpose controls, as an emergency measure, war or no war. A few days ago we had a debate on the Geneva trade agreements, and the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) and other speakers pointed out the importance of our foreign trade, the importance of exports. I agree generally with those arguments, and I do not think it is open to argument that the economy of Europe remains unstable at this time. As we are dependent to a great extent for our exports on the European markets, the Canadian economy must remain unstable as long as Europe remains so, and I think it will remain unstable at least until the end of 1948. I therefore suggest that there is an emergency, a grave emergency as far as our economy is concerned, because of the necessity of exports which now exists and which will exist for some time; and that, by reason of that, we have power to enact legislation to retain controls and to reimpose controls if this parliament so wishes. But I maintain, Mr. Speaker, that this parliament has jurisdiction over price control irrespective of emergency because I maintain that this question of price control is one that, by its inherent nature, is of national importance. I was sorry this afternoon to hear the Minister of Justice (Mr. Usley) have some doubts about the matter of the law in this particular case; because last March, in a speech which will be found in Hansard at page 1554, he gave to this house a fine exposition of the constitutional aspect of legislation in view of the decision of the privy council in the Canada Temperance Act case. It seems to me, however, that this important exposition of the law by the Minister of Justice, with which I fully agreed at the time, has not been fully appreciated by this house or by the country in general, because we still talk about an emer-

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gency, andt say that there must be an emergency in order that this house may legislate upon such a matter.
The opinion of the Minister of Justice at that time was based principally upon the decision of the privy council in the Canada Temperance Act case. The important section of that decision was not quoted at the time, and I should like to place on Hansard a portion of it which I think will support the contention I am making, namely, that this parliament has power to legislate about anything that is of national importance, whether or not it encroaches upon the powers of the provinces. I quote from the Canada Temperance Act case as reported in (1946) 2 Dominion Law Reports, page 1; and I quote from the judgment of the Viscount Simon at page 5:
The first observation which their lordships would make on this explanation of Russell's case is that the B.N.A. Act nowhere gives power to the dominion parliament to legislate in matters which are properly to be regarded as exclusively within the competence of the provincial legislatures, merely because of the existence of an emergency. Secondly, they can find nothing in the judgment of the board in 1882 which suggests that it proceeded on the ground of emergency; there was certainly no evidence before that board that one existed. The act of 1878 was a permanent, not a temporary, act and no objection was raised to it on that account.
And here comes the important section of the judgment:
In their lordships' opinion, the true test must be found in the real subject-matter of the legislation: if it is such that it goes beyond local or provincial concern or interests ami must from its inherent nature be the concern of the dominion as a whole . . . then it will fall within the competence of the dominion parliament as a matter affecting the peace, order and good government of Canada, though it may in another aspect touch upon matters specially reserved to the provincial legislatures. I
I think this is the first time, Mr. Speaker, that the privy council has grasped the meaning of the words, "peace, order and good government" as they appear in the British North America Act. I believe the decision is a true interpretation of the attitude of mind of the fathers of confederation when they discussed the framing of our constitution. They were out to create unity. They were out to create a new nation. I do not think it is a question of centralization which is one that has always been raised in this house. I think it is a question of attaining the aims of the fathers of confederaton. What they had in mind was the unity of Canada, and this unity is very often confused with what some hon. members call centralization. I therefore maintain that, apart from the question of emergency, this
matter of price control goes beyond local and provincial concern because it is a matter which, by its inherent nature, must be the concern of the dominion as a whole. Therefore it falls within the competence of the dominion as affecting the peace, order and good government of Canada, though it may touch upon some matters reserved to the provinces under section 92 of the British North America Act. What proof is there that this question of price control is a national matter and not a provincial matter? I think the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefenbaker) yesterday gave us proof of that when he referred to the Saskatchewan act passed by the provincial legislature last year, and in respect of which no action was taken; and he asked us why, although he supplied the answer. I may say, just by the way, that he put the largest part of this act on record as it appears on page 190 of yesterday's Hansard. He quoted the introductory wording of the section; then he quoted paragraphs (b) and (c), but it will be noticed that he did not quote paragraph (a). Paragraph (a) deals with control of wages and salaries; and I was wondering whether or not the omission had something to do with the challenge that was thrown out to this party by the hon. member for Peel (Mr. Graydon) a few days ago. However, this is what the hon. member for Lake Centre says, as reported at page 190:
Why do you not do it in Saskatchewan where vou have the power to do it, not only under the constitution, but also under the statute passed for the purpose?
Then on page 191 he says:
I am going to help them answer the question because I think the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell) this afternoon answered the question himself. . . . He pointed out by inference how difficult it is for people of this: country to maintain a price level lower than the price level that maintains across the boundary, and I presume that would be the situation were the government of Saskatchewan to bring into effect its system of price control.
I may say that with that I agree. I do not think it is a provincial matter. It is impracticable. It is impossible for a province to legislate about price control or to try to enforce it. I think this is full proof that the matter is one for the jurisdiction of this parliament. I would therefore argue and suggest to the government that they have power to enact legislation reimposing price controls, irrespective of the question of-emergency. In view of the state of mind of the people of Canada-and I think it is a majority of the people of Canada-as argued by many hon. members in this house, I would
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say that the government would have a mandate and full jurisdiction for doing so. I would ask them to reconsider the matter seriously in order that when we reconvene after the Christmas recess they may give us some price control for the purpose of curbing the rising cost of living.
May I now be permitted, Mr. Speaker, for a few minutes to refer to a matter that arose in the house yesterday in connection with a statement which was made by the hon. member for Lake Centre and which has particular reference to me. He intimated that while I introduced into the house at the last session a bill to abolish appeals to the privy council, Professor F. R. Scott, who i3 the national chairman of the C.C.F., argued *in an article in the Canadian Bar Review, at about the same time as my appeal was introduced that it would not be advisable to abolish appeals to the privy council by reason of the fact that we now have a socialist government in Great Britain. At pages 192 and 193 of Hansard the hon. member is reported in this way:
Mr. Scott said why the appeal to the privy council should be retained in the Canadian Bar Review of June-July, 1947. At the same time as the hon. member for Kindersley was abolishing the appeal, Mr. Scott was giving reason why it should be retained. And do you know what the reason is, sir? It was this. We have a socialist government in England today and it appoints some of the members to the privy council, so we may expect favourable consideration of the policies of socialism if we maintain the appeal to the privy council.
And at page 193 the hon. member said this:
At the moment I am pointing out that the one reason why the appeal to the privy council [DOT]was to be taken away was to ensure Canadian *sovereignty. On the other hand, there is the 'argument now used by one of the great leaders tof the C.C.F. that possibly it would be worth maintaining because the court might, by reason *of its proximity to the social changes taking place in Britain, in consequence give a better interpretation than the Supreme Court of Canada. I
I have never met a person who is a more ardent advocate of abolishing appeals to the privy council than is Professor Scott. Not having read the article, I was astounded to hear what the hon. member read, and I must admit I was greatly embarrassed at the time the hon. member read these excerpts from Professor Scott's article, until, of course, the Minister of Justice (Mr. Ilsley) put that timely and pertinent question to the hon. member, which naturally gave some relief.
I should like, through you, Mr. Speaker, to [DOT]thank the right hon. gentleman for putting that question to the hon. member, which {Mr. Jaenicke.]
was of such great assistance in explaining the situation. I have always admired the fairness of the right hon. gentleman, and I think he exhibited that fairness yesterday when he put that question.
I tihink, however, that some further explanation of Professor Scott's position and his attitude in this connection should be made. The Canadian Bar Review of June-July, 1947, has three articles from prominent jurists in Canada on this question of abolishing appeals to the privy council, in view of the decision of the privy council itself that this parliament has the power to abolish such appeals. The first article is written by Mr. D. M. Gordon of Victoria, who does not agree with the decision, and is very sad about it; the second article is by Mr. J. W. deB. Farris of Vancouver, who does not say much about the decision. He says that the practical result of this decision is a fait accompli. And then there is the article by Professor Scott. He is the jurist who advocates that we should take advantage of the decison of the privy council and immediately amend our Supreme Court Act in order to abolish appeals to the privy council.
In the first portion of his article, Professor Scott deals entirely with the legal aspect. He agrees entirely with the decision of the privy council, and their argument, in coming to the conclusion to which they did. Then he goes on to say this:
So much for the legal considerations. The real issue is now before us-when shall we abolish the appeal? When shall we use the power which we know we possess? At present though we pose as an important world power, we are minus a prime element of sovereignty. Nowhere is Canadian hesitancy, timidity and irresponsibility more clearly shawm than in this matter of the privy council appeal. Australia abolished it in constitutional matters nearly half a century ago; Ireland has totally abolished it; it has nearly died out for the other dominions. Yet we in Canada drag it along, neither believing in the appeal nor doing anything about it . . . The perpetuation of the appeal, apart from the injurious delays it occasions and the unjust advantages it affords to wealthy litigants, perpetuates in Canada that refusal to shoulder responsibility, that w-illingness to let some one else make our important decisions, w-hich is a mark of immaturity and colonialism. Surely our period of political adolescence has been unconscionably long already.
Then he proceeds to discuss some of the objections which might be made. For instance, there is the argument that we would sever the link with the empire, and the argument that we should be entitled to take our grievances to the foot of the throne. Then he goes on to say this:
If the judicial committee itself can tell us, as it does in this judgment, that the establish-

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ment of our supreme court as a final court of appeal is a mark of Canada's new status in the commonwealth, it would be odd for us to tell them, by our clinging to the ancient ways, that they were wrong. Are we to be more imperialist than this ancient imperial institution?
Then he proceeds to talk about another argument that may be advanced against abolishing appeals to the privy council.


Mr. DIEFENBAKER:: And that is the socialist argument, a similar argument to that used by Dr. Shumiatcher before the court of appeal in Saskatchewan.


Mr. JAENICKE:: I am making the speech.


An hon. MEMBER:: You are reading a book.


Frank Eric Jaenicke: Professor Scott discussed the argument which might be advanced against abolishing appeals to the privy council. He says that there might be some socialists who would argue in that way; but be does not agree with them. He says:
These are weighty questions. The answers given will often depend on the ideological preferences of the individual concerned. Yet no such considerations, in my opinion, justify the retention of the appeal. They suggest again that Canadians are not yet qualified for complete self-government. They imply an inferiority in Canadian judicial institutions. Even if that implication were plausible-and it can never be proven-it should still not weigh against the fundamental principle of national'responsibility. If our supreme court should show itself* incapable of shouldering the new duties and the heavy responsibilities which the abolition of the appeal will bring, then Canadians will have to deal with that problem in their own way. No one else can do it for us. The judicial authority of and over Canada, like the executive anj legislative authority, should be vested in Canada, and entrusted to the general court of appeal whose establishment was one of the high purposes of confederation.
I say there was no inconsistency whatsoever between my attitude and that of Professor Scott; as a matter of fact, we both thought alike.


Mr. ALISTAIR STEWART (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, there has been one argument advanced on both sides of the house which I believe is fallacious. Anything fallacious should be exposed. The argument was put most cogently, as one must expect, by the leader of the official opposition (Mr. Bracken) as reported in Hansard for February 3, 1947. On that occasion the hon. member said:
All the indications are that delay from now on in removing controls will cause constantly increasing difficulties. The moral of this is that the sooner these hindrances to production can be removed, the sooner we will get the advantage of free and full production.
We have seen what has happened now, with most of the controls removed. Prices are rising rapidly; and inevitably the effect of those
increases in prices will create next year a round of demands on the part of labour unions-and rightly so-for increased wages. In all probability these demands will be resisted1 by the companies on which they are made. Therefore there is the possibility that next year we shall have more strikes in Canada than we have ever known before. I submit that as a result of decontrol, production in this country will be decreased rather than increased.
I am not going to mention many of the matters which members of this group have brought up already, such as the increase in the price of milk, bread, butter, clothing and fuel and the almost devastating consequences to families with small incomes. However, there are one or two items I should like to mention, one being an article which appeared in the Ottawa Evening Citizen of November 19, 1947, reading as follows:
A young Ottawa couple who had been looking at refrigerators found one in an Ottawa store marked "For immediate delivery." Previous to November 18 they had priced this refrigerator at $379. But on going down to order it on Tuesday following the government's anonunce-ment the price had jumped overnight from $379 to $495 or $116 increase. When the housewife protested the merchant laughed, "You'll be paying $600 later on," he said.
There is no use in saying that there is no rationing in this country. Of course there is rationing. He who has the money can buy. That is the type of rationing we have under this capitalist or free enterprise system. The poor are denied because of a lack of funds, but the wealthy can still afford to buy. We have that sort of involuntary rationing.
Another example is that of nails. Last session the hon. member for Peterborough West (Mr. Fraser) repeatedly raised the question of the shortage of nails in Canada, and he was told by the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply (Mr. Howe) that more nails were being manufactured in Canada this year than at any time before. Yet you could not buy nails until after the controls were raised. Then an advertisement stated in a Toronto newspaper that nails could be purchased by the carload at prices more than double the controlled price. Obviously the removal of controls has increased beyond all measure the cost of commodities which we have to buy, and equally obviously there has been a sit-down strike by the manufacturers of this country infinitely worse than any strike ever conducted by a trade union.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: Nails are only $8 a keg now.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: Th*y are more than that in some areas.
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Gordon Knapman Fraser: The hon. member sitting next to me bought a keg for $8.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: 
Mr. WILLIAM IRVINE (Cariboo):: Mr. Speaker, perhaps it is somewhat unusual for so many members from one party to speak one after another, on the one issue, but that probably reflects the fact that we are responsive to what we believe the people we represent actually want.
The resolution before us is a mere technical incident arising out of the fact that parliament was called in December of this year rather than in January of next. There is not much purpose in entering into an elaborate discussion of the principle of controls at this stage because it appears there is not very much that we can do now. We have tried to move an amendment extending the control powers beyond March 31. I am wondering whether the government mean to use these powers at all beyond those which they are now using. To be of any value to the people of Canada, there will have to be a reimposition of these controls; if not all the way, most decidedly controls will have to be reimposed on many of the essentials of life.
As I said, we have tried to amend this resolution and the house has voted down our amendment. That is to say, the three capitalist parties in this nation joined together to vote down an amendment to control the prices to the Canadian people of essential commodities in order that their incomes might be able to purchase the necessities of life.
We have also moved an amendment to the address in reply to the speech from the throne. In that amendment we ask for the reimposition of price control. So I shall discuss the principle of price controls under that amendment at the proper time.
I desire to say now, sir, that I believe in controls, and I am going to support the government resolution which will place in their hands the power to extend those controls if they desire. But I must say that I have not very much hope that they will do so although I think it is very clear that the people of Canada want the restoration of these controls. I would suggest that neither the government nor the opposition that is before me nor the opposition that is behind me would be prepared to submit the question before us in the form of a plebiscite to the Canadian people and abide by what they said.


Solon Earl Low: I would.


William Irvine: I think my hon. friend is very sure that the government will not submit the question to the people. If they would do so, it would be perfectly satisfactory to me, and if the people of Canada decided against controls, then of course we would not have them. But I do not think any one of the parties which
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have opposed controls in this house today would be willing to submit the question to the people.


Solon Earl Low: I repeat, I would.


William Irvine: I repeat also that you cannot. The only one that can do that is the government, so you are quite safe in taking that position.


Solon Earl Low: May I ask the hon. member a question? Does he think I am insincere in making that statement?


William Irvine: No. Far be it from me to question the sincerity of anybody, but there are more things that make error than insincerity. A man can err without deliberately doing so from some ulterior motive. I most certainly do not attribute that to my hon. friend.
All I want to do now is to register the expressed opinion of many groups of people in the riding I have the honour to represent. I begin by mentioning the position taken by the Alberta farmens' union, which has a very strong following in the Peace River block. They have gone on record as favouring the reimposition of price controls.
I have also here a wire that I received just a few minutes ago, which reads:
Your support requested for C.C.L. brief requesting reimposition of complete price jontrol.
IWA Local 1-424,
Prince George, B.C.
I have also a number of resolutions here.
I shall skip the "whereases" so as to save time. This one is from a joint meeting of local and municipal rehabilitation committees held in Murrayville, British Columbia, on November 25 last. It says:
Therefore be it resolved that quotas be set at a reasonable quota rate based on a 1939 regular business turnover, and further, that rent controls be continued. If controls are not kept on rents, many veterans in the retail business will be forced to vacate.
The same body also passed another resolution. Skipping the "whereases", which are very informative, I read the gist of the resolution: Therefore be it resolved that we request the federal government to reinstate price controls as at September 15, 1947, and further, that as the profits were regulajted by ceilings during the past, that floor prices be now instituted covering the goods the veteran has to sell, basefl on the contracts that were in force with Great Britain on September 15, 1947.
I have already said I have not a great deal of hope that the government will now pay much attention to what I or anybody else may have to say; but may I take just a moment or two to offer what may be regarded 
as a little gratuitous advice to the government itself, and if they are very wise they will not resent this, even though it comes from me.
I believe it is true to say that we have in Canada at the present time the last Liberal government in existence in any nation in the world.


Solon Earl Low: Ah, piffle!


William Irvine: My hon. friend is sitting in judgment on the only subject of which he is a perfect master.


Mr. ZAPLITNY:: That being nonsense, of course.


William Irvine: The statement I have made is, in my opinion, perfectly true, and I believe that they are here because up to the present they have endeavoured to give some expression at least to the true liberal spirit.


An hon. MEMBER:: Socialism.


William Irvine: But I think they had better be careful lest that great historic liberal spirit depart the decaying body and take up its abode in some other group. I notice that the present Liberal government has a tendency to go to seed in the expressly cultivated field of neo-individualism.
I notice that one of the leading Liberals, none other than the Premier of Nova Scotia, has undertaken to define "liberalism." I notice also that the Ottawa Citizen has taken the trouble to write an editorial on the matter:
Premier Macdonald of Nova Scotia tells the students at Dalhousie university that in its broadest sense (liberalism) is "a way of life which emphasizes the absolute value_and dignity of human personality."
That sounds very good, but the editorial goes on to say:
The definition is good-but inadequate. The hermit cuts himself off from the world because he thinks his personality is more important than all else. But rvould Premier Macdonald consider him a good Liberal?
The editorial then goes on to say that the Liberal party should not only take the negative position such as that but, it says:
It should have a positive side-a social and economic objective. It is just because they have such objectives, whether good or bad, that socialists and communists have been gaining adherents all over the world.
Then it goes on to say:
If, as Premier Macdonald suggests, it has none beyond the defence of the rights of the individual, then in an age of such political and economic dynamism as that in which we live today. Canada's distinction of having the only Liberal government in the world may soon be superseded by that of having had the last

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I hope the government will take warning from what I have said and read and not become the last of the Mohicans, as has been predicted as a possibility.
I am convinced that there is very little use in asking the government to reimpose price controls. The Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) was perfectly frank, as I heard him, when he virtually said that the government cannot reimpose price controls in peace time and retain its ideology of free private enterprise, and so this rigid, rugged individualism of the Premier of Nova Scotia has dominated the thinking of the present administration to the point that it will not take any action, however socially necessary that might be, which infringes upon its already accepted ideology. The government has already made its choice. It has made its choice as between chaos and that of directing the national economy to an expanding and serviceable order. But the fact that the government refuses to reimpose price controls does not by any means mean that price controls will not be imposed by somebody else. They will be carried out by others who accept the responsibility which the present administration refuses to exercise. It means in reality that our economy will be directed by the largest and the most ruthless aggregation of profit seekers in the industrial arena. Monopolies and cartels will do freely and do very gladly the public duty which the government so far has refused to exercise. Therefore, sir, I conclude my remarks.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


William Irvine: I warn my hon. friend that he had better be careful because, although I am concluding, there are many things that I should like to say, and there are some things that I might say rather sharply with respect to the hon. gentleman who started the clapping. But I shall wait for a more convenient season because I believe the government wants to take a vote.


Angus MacInnis: Ordinarily this motion would take very little time. If circumstances and conditions had developed in the way in which it was assumed that they would develop when we passed this legislation last session, it is likely there would not be very much discussion on extending it for three months. That is all the more likely because, since parliament prorogued on July last, the government has progressively done away with such controls as remained in the act. But conditions have not developed in that way. As a matter of fact the situation in Canada and throughout the world is more precarious today than it has been at any time since August, 1945. If 5849-184
controls on our economy and if the protection of people who are not able to protect themselves were considered the duty of the government in 1945 and 1946 it should be equally so today, because they are in a more precarious position today.
At this late hour in the evening and in the debate I do not suppose it would serve any useful purpose to try to show why the world is in the state in which it is. But I think it can be said briefly that the reason we are in the position in which we are-I am not saying Canada alone, but Canada along with other nations, and particularly the great nation to the south of us-is that we were in such a hurry to get back to the anarchy of private enterprise after the war ended we did not realize that the war really would not and could not end until the devastation which was caused by the war was repaired. In essence, that is the cause of our difficulty, together with bad crop conditions in Europe and in other parts of the world.
I admit that controls of themselves will do little to remedy that situation, but they will give confidence to the people who really have to remedy the situation. It will give them confidence that the government is going to protect them until such time at least as we get back to normal. And if we are thinking of normality in terms of the conditions that prevailed in this country prior to the war, then I do not think anyone particularly wants to get back to that state of things. The only thing that can remedy world conditions today is greater production, greater production of almost all the essentials of life, and particularly greater production of food.
If this government cannot tell the farmers of Canada that over a period of years they will have stability in their industry and will! get cost of production out of their efforts,, the farmers of Canada will do just what they are doing now. They will slow down on production, and slowing down on production today, particularly food production, when millions of peple are starving throughout the world, is a crime of the greatest magnitude.


James Arthur Ross: There are vacant
farms in the country.


Angus MacInnis: Yes, there are.


James Arthur Ross: Did you ever try to
operate one?


Angus MacInnis: Yes, I did, perhaps before my hon. friend was born. If my good friend had picked as many stones off a Prince Edward Island farm as I did, he would know what farming is like. Going around looking to see the help work is not farming. However, that
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is the situation today; and I have on various occasions in this house, during the last few years, urged the government to call together the industrialists of the country, the farmers and organized labour, and put the world situation before them and impress upon them the necessity for the utmost effort in production.
That has not been done. It has not been done because those who are directing the government believe in the principle of everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost-and the devil will get a lot of people before long. And let me say, the people will hold my hon. friends responsible for their difficulties.
Like my good friend the hon. member for Cariboo (Mr. Irvine), I have no great hope that any argument I can put forward will move the government to take action to protect the interests of people who are unable to protect themselves. I refer to those with low incomes, the war pensioners, those receiving war veterans' allowance and widows' pensions and that great class of people who live on fixed incomes. Their standard of living and their incomes have disappeared to a great extent during the last year. That happened because of the inaction, and the action too, of this government. I say to the government:	You could have maintained
*controls; you could have prevented prices from rising. I realize that there were difficulties, but the fact is that you did not try. Consequently these people have every right to hold you responsible for their condition and to insist that you make good their income.
I was surprised, both today and the other ivening, that certain members of this house, despite the gravity of the situation in Canada, were taking up the time of the house in pointing out the evils of the socialist government in Britain. The hon. member for Wetaskiwin (Mr. Jaques) took up the time of the house to do this, and I presume his constituents have no complaints at all, except that they are worried about the socialist government in Britain. I am glad that the electors in his constituency are so well off. It is the only constituency in Canada I know of, except perhaps the constituency of the hon. member for Temiscouata (Mr. Pouliot), which is in that wonderful position. But I would warn these two hon. gentlemen in particular, as well as a certain number of other hon. members who insist on telling the people of Canada that there is no difference between communists and democratic socialists, that there is a danger in that attitude. There is also danger in the opposite, that is, of calling

everyone on the other side who does not agree with you a fascist. Not every capitalist is a fascist, and not everyone who believes in free enterprise is a fascist, nor is everyone who believes in the social organization of society a communist, not a communist in the sense that the term is used.
I was at the united nations conference with the member for Peace River (Mr. Low), and I did not notice that he had any antipathy to Hector McNeil who led the United Kingdom delegation, a member of the Labour party and a minister of the crown. I rather felt that the hon. gentleman thought that Mr. McNeil, about the only one who was able to talk to Vishinsky on his own terms, was honest, intelligent and capable. That was largely my own impression too, but I let it go as something that one should expect from a socialist.


Douglas Charles Abbott: And from a Scotsman.


Angus MacInnis: Yes, certainly; I did not think of that at the time and I am glad my *hon. friend brings it to my attention. It is more understandable now than before. I am in earnest in this: The struggle that is going on in the world today is not a struggle between capitalism and socialism. It is not a struggle between free economy and a collectivist society. The struggle that is going on in the world today is a struggle as to whether that collectivist society shall be totalitarian or democratic.
The hon. member for Wetaskiwin read what a Labour member had said in the British House of Commons, but he forgot that that Labour member said it in the British House of Commons, speaking to the government. That is democracy, but that sort of democracy is lost in the hon. member for Wetas-kiw'in.


An hon. MEMBER:: Page Mr. Pouliot.


Angus MacInnis: Yes. I noticed, when the hon. member for Temiscouata was speaking the other night, he had something to say for everyone in the province of Quebec except the workers of Quebec-something for the farmers, something for the businessmen, but he forgot the great working masses of Quebec.


An hon. MEMBER:: He does not know them.


Angus MacInnis: Of course he does not know them.


Jean-François Pouliot: I was the only one to defend the dignity of the working man at the time of conscription, and my hon. friend was new. So were the members of his party; they were all new.

Transitional Measures Act


Angus MacInnis: I would urge the government, if they are going to assume their responsibility-andi they have demonstrated that they have the administrative capacity- to demonstrate that they have social vision and to take steps to remedy this situation beifore it gets out of hand.


Mrs. GLADYS STRUM (Qu'Appelle):: I felt that this debate would be incomplete, Mr. Speaker, without a few words from the only housewife in the House of Commons, although I have no faith in my ability to convince the government of the need to act. They still remain unconvinced and unrepentant in spite of all the evidence that should persuade them that this is a national emergency and that the . individual needs protection. In spite of the speeches I delivered in this house last spring in which I did my best to convince them- and I made about three or four on this matter-the government went merrily on with their program of decontrol. The Canadian housewife is now feeling the impact of the result of the decisions which the government took at that time. We are now beginning to know what it is like to live in Canada where the controls have been handed over to people whose only interest is profit. We have price control, but we have irresponsible price control, not in the interest of the Canadian family, but in the interests of the Canadian industrialist and the Canadian profit-taker.
I wish to point out to the government that when the people of this country, through their consumer associations, through their women's institutes, through their boards of trade, and through their wheat pool committees, plead with the government to reintroduce price control and subsidies, this is evidence of the fact that the Canadian people are beginning to recognize this as a method, not because they want a controlled economy, but because they realize that this is the only method which will give the results they need. So I would speak on behalf of the Canadian mother, the Canadian family and the Canadian consumer, although I have no belief that it will do any good. I believe that only elections convince the government of the need for action; and believe that these speeches are better made in the country where the people Still have the right to act. But I want to add my voice to that of the consumer associations on behalf of the Canadian family, in warning the government that this is a crisis. It is a crisis in every Canadian home. As the guardian of the safety of the Canadian people, the government dare not shirk their responsibility.
Right Hon. IAN A. MACKENZIE (Minister of Veterans Affairs):	I wish to occupy
the time of the house for only one minute, Mr. Speaker. I must confess that I have been both bemused and bewildered by the last two speeches, the one delivered by the hon. member for Vancouver East (Mr. Maclnnis) and the other by the talented lady member for Qu'Appelle (Mrs. Strum). May I say that this government has worked in anxiety and agony throughout the years of the war, 'by a carefully calculated policy of controls largely directed and inspired by the former Minister of Finance (Mr. Usley) to keep the Canadian economy on a sound basis throughout the Dominion of Canada.


Mr. CASTLEDEN:: Why now throw it all
away?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Who interrupts? I
want no mumblings. If there are any interruptions I want them to be made so that they can be heard.


George Hugh Castleden: The question I should like to ask is this. We all agree with what the minister says, but we want to know why the government is throwing away tlhat good work.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I am indeed glad that my hon. friend agrees with that because it is incontrovertible. Just as that statement was incontrovertible, so is the policy that is now being pursued by my hon. and distinguished colleague, the Minister of Justice as he now is, in regard to price controls in Canada the safest and the sanest for the security, stability and solidarity of our Canadian nation.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: Why drop it?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: My sentimental friend speaks about conditions in the home. Does she think for one second that each one of us has not equally at heart the welfare of the homes of our people? I have been in parliament for thirty years-and I say that not in a boastful way-and I know of no man who has a kinder heart or kinder feelings for the plain people of our country than has Jim Il'sley, the present Minister of Justice.
What are we arguing about, sir, may I ask? Why are we delaying this issue? We are all in agreement. We all agree that this resolution should go through. It is only a matter of whether we have it until March or until November or December or some such time as suggested by the agile and alert hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles), who always gets peculiar mathematical calculations introduced in peculiar amendments.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The Minister of Justice liked it.
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Ian Alistair Mackenzie: If this is good until March, we shall be here in March-


Stanley Howard Knowles: Do not be too sure about that.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: -and if we want it longer, I am sure the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre will not be unvocal; I am sure the hon. member for Qu'Appelle (Mrs. Strum) will not be unsentimental; and I am sure the hon. member for Vancouver East (Mr. Maclnnis) will not be uncynical. So let us pass this thing. Let us get on with the work. Let us pass this resolution right now and let us get on with the work of this session. Let us get on to the next business,* and let us get home next Friday night, so
that hon. members can join their beautiful families in their wonderful constituencies.


Mr. SHAW:: Even though running the danger of incurring the wrath of the Minister of Veterans Affairs, I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, to call it eleven o'clock.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


Frederick Davis Shaw: If I may do so, Mr. Speaker, I would ask permission to move the adjournment of the debate.
On motion of Mr. Shaw the debate was adjourned.


[Stage Direction]
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
[Stage Direction]
Monday, December 15, 1947