1947-03-27

Right Hon. C. D. HOWE (Minister of Reconstruction and Supply):: Mr. Speaker, I desire to table two documents, the first a Forecast of 1947 Investment by Canadian Business, and the second a Forecast of Production of Basic and Building Materials in Canada. The first is a forecast based on inquiries of the plans of 12,000 businesses in Canada, and I believe is a very important document. The second is an attempt to forecast the demand and production of building materials during the current year.



PRIVATE BILLS


[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 74, for the relief of Isabel Lindsay Mackay Dietz.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 75, for the relief of Edith Dean Michaels.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 76, for the relief of Maurice Michael.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 77, for the relief of Otto Hemlein.- Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 78, for the relief of Mary Josephine Jessop Croker.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 79, for the relief of Rose Lazar Nadigel.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 80, for the relief of Frances Clare Lynch Layton.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 81, for the relief of Robert Alfred Nall.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 82, for the relief of Juliette Adrienne Labrosse Renaud.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 83, for the relief of Jean Isabel Dalton Ryan.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 84, for the relief of Rose Elkin Steinman.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 85, for the relief of Clinton Ecott Vipond.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 86, for the relief of Alison McKinnon' Palmer.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 87, for the relief of Ralph Wighton. -Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 88, for the relief of Claude Garcin Coffin.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 89, for the relief of Bea Helen Taffert Levin.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 90, for the relief of Elsie King Moorhouse.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 91, for the relief of William John Edgar McVetty.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 92, for the relief of Alfred John Holton.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 93, for the relief of William Howell MacDonald Brown-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 94, for the relief of Henrietta Elizabeth Forde Norrie.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 95, for the relief of Gaston Cartier. -Mr. Maybank.	*
Bill No. 96, for the relief of Margaret Lillian McCorkell Baldwin.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 97, for the relief of Hilda Wylie Bannister.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 98, for the relief of Sarah Goldberg Cohen.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 99, for the relief of Esther Mary Harding Breeze.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 100, for the relief of Jessie Mac-Farlane Boyle Smith.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 101, for the relief of Paul Jaeggin.- Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 102, for the relief of Murial Agnes Martin Adams.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 103, for the relief of Edwin Theophilus Phillips.-Mr. Maybank.

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

Mr. STEWART (Winnipeg North):: 1.	Have any amounts of money been received by the custodian of enemy property and placed to the credit of German, Austrian, Czechoslovakian or Japanese corporations since 1st September, 1939? If so, what are the amounts and to what corporations are they credited?
2.	From what companies in Canada, or from what sources have such sums been received by the custodian of enemy property?
3.	Has any interest been received on funds held by the custodian of enemy property?
4.	If so, from whom was interest received?
5.	How much has been received in interest?
6.	What has been the disposition of funds received as interest?
7.	Have any profits been received by the custodian of enemy property since 1st September, 1939, from businesses in Canada ow-ned or controlled by enemy nationals?
8.	If so, how much has been received and from what sources did this money come?


Mr. GIBSON (Hamilton West):: 1.	Yes. The supplying of names would involve an examination of nearly 54,000 accounts. There is no separate category of corporations as distinct from individuals.
Questions

2.	See answer to No. 1.
3.	Moneys transferred to the custodian were invested from time to time in dominion of Canada victory bonds, with the approval of treasury board, and interest was, of course, realized on these investments.
4.	On general fund, from government of Canada.
5.	As of December 31, 1946; $3,379,692.66.
6.	Held to cover administration costs and subsequent disposition of funds after terms of peace treaties have been settled.
7.	Yes.
8.	See answer to No. 1.


NATIONAL DEFENCE DEPARTMENT-LADISLAUS BIBEROVICH
Mr. WINKLER:: 1.	Was the employment of Ladislaus Biber-ovich as principal translator for the Department of National Dfence terminate! in 1946?
2.	If so, were any reasons given for this termination by the Department of National Defence ?
3.	What were they; who authorized them, and who signed the document of dismissal?


Mr. LAPOINTE:: 1.	Yes.
2.	Yes.
3.	General directive for a reduction of staff in connection with the re-organization of the department of national defence on a peacetime basis. Tht actual notice of release was signed by the director of civil personnel in the regular course of his duties.


CARBERRY, MAN., AIRPORT
Mr. KNOWLES:: 1.	Has any decision been reached as to the use of the airport at Carberry, Manitoba, either as an R.C.A.F. station or for civil purposes? If so, what is such decision?
2.	Have representations been received since the end of the war, pointing out the advantages of this airport? If so, from whom, and are these advantages being given full consideration by the government?


Mr. LAPOINTE:: 1.	So far as the department of national defence is concerned, the R.C.A.F. station at Carberry, Manitoba, is now in process of being declared surplus to the crown assets allocation committee w'ith the exception of: (a) twelve buildings being retained temporarily for the storage of R.C.A.F. reserve equipment; (b) five buildings being dismantled for use elsewhere; (c) a recreation hall being retained for air cadet use. The buildings specified in (a) above will ultimately be declared surplus to crown assets allocation committee.

2.	Representation was received from Mr. B. W. Caldwell, mayor of Carberry, and the merits of continued use of this airport by the department of national defence were fully considered before the above decision was made.


OLD AGE PENSIONS
Mr. NIXON:: 1.	How many persons are employed in the dominion administration of old age pensions?
2.	(a) WTiat provinces pay supplementary amounts to pensioners in addition to their share of pensions paid under the Old Age Pensions Act; (b) what are the supplementary amounts paid?


Mr. MARTIN:: 1. The old age pensions division of the department of national health and welfare employs thirteen peisons and the division of blindness control employs three persons. Other departments of the dominion government including mines and resources, trade and commerce and secretary of state are required to provide information for use of the provincial pension authorities.
2. (a) and (b). British Columbia, $10 a month to each pensioner; Alberta, $5 a month to each pensioner; Saskatchewan, $3 a month to each pensioner; Manitoba, any amount up to $1.25 a month to a pensioner whose pension does not exceed $21.25 a month; Ontario, 15 per cent of the pension payable under the act based on a maximum pension of $20 a month; Nova Scotia, $5 a month payable at the discretion of the pension authority to any pensioner whose income including pension does not exceed $365 a year.
In addition to paying supplemental allowances the provinces of Ontario, Saskatchewan and British Columbia have plans under which certain medical or medical and hospital services are provided free to pensioners.



Mr. McCUBBIN:: What steps are being taken by the government to bring into operation any changes in the Old Age Pension regulations recommended by tlie interprovincial board in November, 1946, pending amendments to the Old Age Pensions Act during the present session?


Mr. MARTIN:: Subsection 2 of section 19 of the Old Age Pensions Act provides that no regulation by reference to which any agreement with a province has been made shall be altered except with the consent of such province or in accordance with the provisions of the regulations to which it has agreed. The changes recommended by the interprovincial old age pensions board in November, 1946 are now being considered by the governments

External Affairs
concerned. They must be approved by the lieutenant governors in council of the provinces and by the governor in council before they can be brought into force.


FAMILY ALLOWANCES
Mr. BREITHAUPT:: 1.	What provision has been made in the administration of family allowances to see that the money is spent for the purpose intended?
2.	How many cases were investigated during the month of January, 1947?
3.	How many family allowances accounts are in pay to administrators and trustees, as a result of information obtained through welfare investigations?
4.	What steps have been taken to implement the requirement that a child must be in regular school attendance or receive equivalent training in order to receive family allowances?


Mr. MARTIN:: 1.	Welfare supervisors are employed in each family allowances regional office. As part of their duties they are responsible for investigating possible eases of misuse of allowances. In some instances this is done by the regional office staff, in others through the provincial welfare department or through private agencies. Working agreements with the provincial welfare departments have been made with Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Manitoba and Ontario. In New Brunswick the child caring agencies are dealt with directly. If the investigation reveals misuse of allowances arrangements are made to appoint a third party administrator who is responsible for seeing that the money is spent for the benefit of the child.
2.	(i) through provincial welfare departments, 175; (ii) through other agencies, 41; (iii) by regional office staff, 100; total, 3.16.
3.	As of January 31, 1947, there were 172 accounts in pay to administrators and trustees.
4.	In each province arrangements have been made with the provincial school authorities to notify the family allowances regional office when the school attendance of a child becomes unsatisfactory. Upon, receipt of this information appropriate action is taken to suspend allowances until attendance becomes satisfactory.


QUESTION PASSED AS ORDER FOR RETURN
Mr. BENTLEY:: 1. Did the federal government invest any money in a briquetting plant at Bienfait, Saskatchewan? If so, when and how much was so invested?
2.	What was the total cost of the said plant?
3.	Was any of the money so invested by the federal government repaid?
4.	Was any interest paid to the federal government on account of this investment?
5.	Has the property been sold?
6.	If so, (a) to whom; (b) when; (c) how much did the federal government receive from the proceeds of its sale?


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Right Hon. L. S. ST. LAURENT (Secretary of State for External Affairs):	Mr. Speaker, hon. members will recall that on March 25 I indicated that announcements of diplomatic appointments to Mexico and Australia would be made today, and I have pleasure in informing the house that Mr. Kenneth Alfred Greene, O.B.E. has been appointed as High Commissioner for Canada in Australia. Mr. Greene has been prominent in the business and community life of the capital for some years. During the first world war he served in the Canadian armed forces, and during the second he took a leading part in the organization of a number of bodies engaged in war work.
In addition, Mr. S. D. Pierce is to succeed Doctor Hugh L. Keenleyside as Canadian Ambassador in Mexico. Hon. members know that Mr. Pierce has had a distinguished career in academic work, in private business and as a war-time public servant. Until his appointment, Mr. Pierce was chief of the economic division of the Department of External Affairs.
In addition, Doctor Henry Laureys, formerly Canadian Ambassador in Peru, is to be Canadian minister in Norway and Denmark, with the personal rank of ambassador. Doctor Laureys in 1940 became the first High Commissioner for Canada in the Union of South Africa, where he served until 1944, when he w^as appointed Canada's first ambassador in Peru. Before entering the public service, Doctor Laureys had a distinguished academic career in the field of international economic and commercial studies.
Mr. GRAYDON:: May I ask the minister how many vacancies that now leaves in the senior diplomatic service abroad?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: I believe the only one that could be called a vacancy is that in respect of Peru. I had hoped that that appointment might be announced today, but the agrement
Inquiries oj the Ministry

of the Peruvian government has not yet been received. It is expected at any time, and as soon as it is received the appointment will be announced.


Mr. COLDWELL:: I understood the minister to say that one gentleman had been appointed minister to Norway and Denmark, with the personal rank of ambassador.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: Yes.


Major James William Coldwell: What is the difference?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: The gentleman had been ambassador to Peru. He retains his personal rank of ambassador; but as our missions in Norway and Denmark are still legations, he can be accredited only as a minister.


Gordon Graydon: Does that mean any difference in salary?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: No.


Mr. SPEAKER:: May I ask hon. members in the chamber to be kind enough to moderate their voices. At the beginning of every sitting there is so much conversation going on that it is difficult to follow what is being said by hon. members who are speaking. Hon. members will realize that we do not need so much a loudspeaker system' in the chamber as we do silence.


Mr. CRUICKSHANK:: That is in line with the question I was going to ask, Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the apex of the Liberal party. We are afraid our names may have been mentioned to some of these positions, because, without amplifiers we could not hear a word that was being said.


Gordon Graydon: You can take that for granted.


[Stage Direction]
CAliTIER BY-ELECTION
On the orders of the day:
Mr. T. J. BENTLEY (Swift Current):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask a question of the Minister of Justice, of which I gave notice rather late. Will the minister inform the house what measures he proposes to take to ensure a free election in Montreal-Cartier?


Right Hon. J. L. ILSLEY (Minister of Justice):: Mr. Speaker, I have no reason to think that there will be any disturbances, or that if there were any they would not be properly dealt with by the usual law enforcement agencies.



SUGAR BEETS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. J. A. ROSS (Souris):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask a question of the Minister of Labour with respect to a labour shortage in the sugar beet industry during 1947. I understand there have been discussions with the dominion authorities, the beet growers association and the Manitoba Sugar Company. Can the minister say what the prospects are for sufficient labour to assist in sugar beet production in Manitoba during 1947?


Hon. HUMPHREY MITCHELL (Minister of Labour):: Conversations have been going on between the sugar beet growers and the departments of labour and immigration with respect to the labour situation in the sugar beet fields of that province during the coming season. Consideration is being given to using Polish veterans or other forms of labour. In addition a senior officer of the department of labour is en route to Winnipeg to open up conversations with the department of agriculture in that province.



INCOME TAX


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. H. R. ARGUE (Wood Mountain):: I should like to ask a question of the Minister of National Revenue. Is it true that farmers who have neglected to file income tax returns between January 1941 and December 1946 are to have their incomes for those years appraised in a net-worth statement which must be filed before March 31? If so, on what basis will the department calculate the farmer's total income tax for those years?


James Horace King: Order. I do not see any urgency in the hon. member's question.


Gordon Graydon: The farmers do.


Hazen Robert Argue: Perhaps Your Honour did not note the full significance of the question. Returns must be filed before March 31. It will soon be March 31 and the farmers are anxious to know on what basis income tax will be dealt with.


Hon. J. J. McCANN (Minister of National Revenue):: There are no regulations to that effect, nor have instructions been issued to take any such action. The matter as to the basis on which the department will calculate a farmer's total income tax for those years is one of rather complex accounting. I suggest

Emergency Powers
that if the hon. member wants a detailed answer he should put his question on the order paper, and it will be answered.



EMERGENCY POWERS


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from Wednesday, March 26, consideration in committee of the following resolution-Mr. Ilsley-Mr. Macdonald (Brantford City) in the chair:
That it is expedient to introduce a measure to provide for the continuation of certain orders and regulations of the governor in council for a limited period during the national emergency arising out of the war and to provide therein that the governor in council may appoint and fix the compensation of the officers, clerks and employees necessary for the administration of any order or regulation continued in force by the act and further to provide that certain officers, clerks and employees may continue to perform the duties for which they were previously appointed.
Mr. HACKETT:: "Will the minister provide the committee with a statement showing the total of all bonuses, subsidies, remissions of duty, remissions of other taxes and1 other benefits, direct and indirect, which the government has paid, in order that we may have a fuller appreciation of the cost of controls? I would ask that over and above the total of these bonuses, subsidies and remissions the statement show what has been paid out each year since controls went into effect. I am sure the government has this information and can make it available. I have spent more time than I care to admit in trying to work it out for myself, and I arrived at a figure which exceeded the billion dollar mark. I then asked myself whether I was wrong in my figuring, but I have been unable to find in any report a complete statement of these payments. It would be of great assistance to the committee to have a concise statement showing exactly what these contributions by the government have been.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Some of the items would be debatable. For example, under the War Exchange Conservation Act, which was passed in December, 1940, the duties on goods imported from Great Britain in some cases were removed, in other cases they were reduced by fifty per cent and in other cases were reduced by twenty-five per cent. Undoubtedly the reduction of those duties had some effect upon the prices of the goods imported, yet those duties were not reduced or removed for the purpose of controlling prices. They were removed or reduced for another and entirely different purpose, namely,
the encouragement of imports from Great Britain so that not so many goods would be imported from the United States to the end that our stocks of hard currency would be conserved. Such items would present a problem to any one attempting to compile a complete list of tariff reductions, taxation remissions and so forth.
I do not know what should be done with subsidies which were paid for the purpose of stimulating production, or encouraging the production of high quality goods, such as certain bacon subsidies which were graded in accordance with the quality of the product, and the cheese subsidies which were graded in a similar manner. It is impossible to say whether certain subsidies were paid for the purpose of keeping prices down, for the purpose of keeping production up, or both. The main class of subsidy is that which was paid by the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation Limited, and a statement of these subsidies is to be found on page 74 of the report of the board. This statement reads:
Appendix G
Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation Limited summary of operations from December 1, 1941 to December 31, 1946.
The operations of the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation Limited, from inception to December 34, 1946. have resulted in a cost to the government of $410,864,133.02, made up as follows:
1.	Subsidies paid (see detail
below)	 $348,538,612	60
A.	import .$183,692,970 54
B.	domestic 164,845,642 06
2.	Losses on commodity trading (see detail below) ...	57,703,880	69
3.	Administrative expenses and
miscellaneous items	 4.621,639	73

In addition to those subsidies there were, as I say, production subsidies and subsidies which were paid to encourage the production of high quality produce. Then there were customs duty removals which were motivated by the desire to keep prices down. I think there were some remissions, athough I do not recall any.


John Thomas Hackett: There was a remission on sugar, for instance.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I do not remember just what form that took. Whether it was done by legislation or by order in council under the Consolidated Revenue and Audit Act I do not remember. I could give all the information which is certain and make reference to some which is not so certain, and arrive at a result w'hich probably would be more approxi-

Emergency Powers
mate than accurate, but it would take a little time. Perhaps something could be done about it between now and Monday.


John Thomas Hackett: Will the minister say whether the explanation he has given in detail in which the items add up to $410,000,000 include the production subsidies?


James Lorimer Ilsley: No, they do not.


John Thomas Hackett: I am going to ask a specific question which may convey what I am trying to get at. Can the minister give in round figures what the production subsidies amount to? I know that they obtain in a number of departments. He has made reference to those which refer in a particular way to items under the Department of Agriculture.


James Lorimer Ilsley: The agricultural production subsidies are the only ones I can remember. Replying to the specific request that I give the information in round figures, the figure I have in mind is in the neighbourhood of $100 million over two or three years.


John Thomas Hackett: Per annum?


James Lorimer Ilsley: Per annum, but the amount varied ever-y year and it is much below that for the forthcoming year.


Mr. BLACK (Cumberland):: I would like to get information from the minister with respect to the subsidies provided for the production, distribution and control of prices of coal. Where does the authority obtain to expend the coal subsidies, which amounted to about $8,000,000 a year-$7,720,015-and to $28,000,000 for the entire period? I have looked through the omnibus bill for an order in council extending the authority for those expenditures. I think it is agreed that these subsidies must be continued for the time being on the production of coal; I do not think anyone disputes that. Disappointment prevails in many quarters because these subsidies have not been increased to enable the wages to be paid which have been asked for by the workmen in eastern Canada so that coal production would continue. Personally I wish the payment of subsidies could be avoided, but it is recognized that they cannot be avoided. What I want to know is under what authority they have been paid, and under what authority they will continue to be paid.
In the report of the Carroll commission on coal the commissioners unanimously agreed that the payment of these subsidies must be continued. A clear statement should be made with respect to that, so that the workmen and the operators in these coal fields may have the assurance that provision is being made for the continuance of the subsidies. I would ask the

minister to tell the committee under what authority the subsidies have been paid and under what authority they will continue to be paid.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I shall have to get that information from the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply, under whom these subsidies have been administered.


Percy Chapman Black: They amount to a very large sum. Either they are being paid under the omnibus bill or they are not. Can the minister answer this question: Are these subsidies provided for under the legislation now before the committee?


James Lorimer Ilsley: I do not think so, but I had better get the information from the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply. My impression is that certain subventions are paid.


Percy Chapman Black: They are statutory and appear in the estimates.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes, in the estimates. The production subsidies are paid by the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation and appear under that vote.


Percy Chapman Black: That was under the War Measures Act originally.


James Lorimer Ilsley: It is a crown corporation which works with and under the wartime prices and trade 'board, and my impression is that the production subsidies so-called- are paid by that corporation. In the estimates there is a vote to the corporation of $35,000,000. Whether it includes the production subsidies on coal I cannot say. I would have to get information on that from the minister.


Mr. GILLIS:: Mr. Chairman, I should like to arrive at some understanding as to this debate. Most of us have been sitting here silent during the whole time this resolution has been under discussion, trying to make up our minds whether to speak on the resolution or to wait until the bill is before us for second reading. This afternoon a long discussion is -being carried on with respect to most of the items covered by the resolution. If it is your intention, Mr. Chairman, to permit d-ebate at the resolution stage on the subject matter of these orders in council I think we ought to know7 it so that we may have the opportunity of speaking. Or is it the intention of the house and the ruling of the Chair that this legislation should first be put into bill form, and that a regular debate may then take place upon it? I should like to have an understanding on that. I have a good deal to say on the orders in council, but I had intended to reserve my remarks until the second reading of the bill.

Emergency Powers


John Thomas Hackett: Mr. Chairman, I should like to say a word on that. I am reserving what I have to say until the second reading. But this is a matter of some importance and I hope that the gentlemen to the left will not be too impatient with us. We have sat here many a long day when they were talking about things that interested them-and I am not at all questioning their right to information. But this is a very important enactment, and the attitude taken with respect to it will depend to a considerable extent upon the information that is made available. The minister is peculiarly- fitted to give the information because of his long experience in another office. He has shown no disinclination to answer serious questions which come from people who are trying to get information so that the debate may be carried on on the facts and not on supposition. Until you, sir, detect some indication of frivolity or an attempt to waste time, I shall ask you to permit questions addressed to the minister to be answered. This is not a debate; we are seeking information on which our attitude on second reading will be based.


Clarence Gillis: This is not a matter of
great importance, because the information which hon. gentlemen are seeking has been in their hands for many weeks.


John Thomas Hackett: Will the hon. gentleman
kindly tell the committee, for the benefit of those who are as ill-informed as the minister himself, just what are the totals of the subsidies, the totals of the bonuses, the totals of the remissions, and answer the questions which I have asked the minister, in connection with which he has been good enough to say that the information has not been assembled and that he will do his utmost to get for us? If the hon. gentleman who is objecting can supply this information to the committee with the accuracy that characterizes the information he vouches for here, we shall be grateful, and will wait for what the minister will give us later.


Clarence Gillis: I said the information had
been in the hands of hon. gentlemen for several weeks. They have only to read the last report of the wartime prices and trade board to get it.


Mr. MERRITT:: We have read it,


Clarence Gillis: The hon. gentlemen will get in that report the information they are seeking.


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: No, not the information. What does the hon. member know about the information we desire?


Clarence Gillis: The hon. gentlemen are
just too lazy to do their own reading; they want someone else to do it for them. The hon. member for Cumberland just asked a question. I am just as much interested in these questions as my hon. friends to the right. I have had returns made to the house within the past few weeks on the coal subsidies, telling how much was paid, to whom it was paid, and why it was paid. That can all be found in Hansard. The only one that is outstanding is a separate agreement with the Dominion Coal Company. I have not that yet. All that other information is available. I happen to be Scotch and I hate to waste time. I hate to sit here and provide an opportunity for my hon. friends over there to obstruct the bill getting second reading and going into committee. That is all that is going on here. All the questions they are asking are nonsense.


John Thomas Hackett: On a question of privilege, I ask that the word "obstruction", so far as it applies to the person who had the floor when it was taken from him by the hon. gentleman who persists in standing while I am speaking to the point of order-


Clarence Gillis: The hon. member has the
floor and he is out of order.
The CHAIRMAN; Order. The hon. member for Stanstead is speaking on a question of privilege.


Clarence Gillis: I have been waiting for you, sir, to give your decision.


The CHAIRMAN:: With respect to the
resolution which is before the committee, I would point out that it is my duty to endeavour to direct the committee on this resolution in accordance with the standing orders, precedents, customs of the house. It is clearly set forth that on a resolution there shall be nothing discussed but the terms of the resolution. The present resolution deals with controls. I think the only question for the committee is whether or not it is expedient to continue these controls. It would be irregular to take each order in council and go into it at this time. That can be done when the order in council appears in the bill. At the present time it is the desire of members of all parties that we get through with the resolution as soon as possible and proceed with the bill. There is a fine distinction as to what is and what is not in order when we are on a resolution. If we all endeavour to deal with the resolution with the idea of getting enough information to satisfy us that the resolution should be passed and that
Emergency Powers

it is advisable to continue certain controls, then I am sure we shall get through with this stage of the proceedings soon.


John Thomas Hackett: I rise to a question of privilege and ask that the hon. gentleman be asked to retract the statement of obstruction which was directed to the person who was asking the question.


Mr. MACKENZIE:: No; it was directed1 to the whole crowd, if my friend will look it up.


William Ross Macdonald: I did not understand the hon. member to refer to any particular hon. member as trying to obstruct. I understood that he thought that the continuing questioning was an obstruction.


Clarence Gillis: That is right.


Gordon Graydon: You are just trying to help the government again.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I rise to a point of order. I just heard the hon. member for Peel say that you were just trying to help the government.


Mr. GREEN:: No.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: He did not say that at all.


Gordon Graydon: I know that is what my hon. friend would like to have heard me say.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Again I rise to a point of order. I want that withdrawn at once.


Gordon Graydon: Who has the floor, I should1 like to know, Mr. Chairman?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I have, on a point of order.


Gordon Graydon: I do not think both of us should be standing at the same time.


William Ross Macdonald: I might say there was so much noise in the chamber I did not hear the remark of the hon. member for Peel.


Howard Charles Green: Neither did the minister.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: In accordance with the hearing of hon. members to my right, who heard the hon. member say distinctly that that is what I would like to have heard him say, may I say that it is a definite imputation upon me as an hon. member of this house, and I resent it. If the hon. gentleman-


William Ross Macdonald: If the hon. member for Peel thinks that he made the remark-


Gordon Graydon: After all, my hon. friend need not be so touchy about it.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Again I resent that remark. I do not have to entertain any irreverent impertinence from the hon. member for Peel.
iThe Chairman.]


Gordon Graydon: I cannot control what my hon. friend thinks.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: You might try to control your manners in the house.


Gordon Graydon: I think we can leave it to the house as to who has the manners in this debate. I should like to say, Mr. Chairman, that what I said was this, and you and my hon. friends will have heard the thing clearly. I did not mention you at all, Mr. Chairman. What I said was that as usual this C.C.F. member was trying to help the government.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: No, you did not.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: He did.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: On a further point of order, when I made my objection to that remark my hon. friend made this remark: "that is doubtless what you would like to have heard me say."


Gordon Graydon: There is nothing out of order in that.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I object to anyone using such irreverent language in this house and I want the remark withdrawn.


Mr. MACDONNELL (Muskoka-Ontario):: I rise to a point of order. Speaking as a Highlander I think it is most extraordinary to object to being called touchy, because I understand that Highlanders are touchy.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: My hon. friend can speak for himself. As I understand it, recent affairs in Toronto have been exceedingly touchy. Mr. Chairman, I want the remark made by the hon. member for Peel with regard to me personally withdrawn, that I would like to have heard him say what I said he said, and what he said was made in regard to the hon. member.


William Ross Macdonald: Order. I have not been able to hear, and I am sure hon. members have not been able to hear, all that has been said. I think we have now come to a time when we should revert to the discussion of the resolution.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I want that remark withdrawn because it is a definite reflection upon me as a member of this house. It was heard by my colleagues around me, and I object to that remark standing on Hansard as a reflection on myself.


William Ross Macdonald: Older. I am anxious that we should get on with the discussion.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: So am I.

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William Ross Macdonald: The hon. member for Vancouver Centre feels that the remark was offensive, and I think that under the circumstances the hon. member for Peel might withdraw it.


Gordon Graydon: Oh, Mr. Chairman-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Withdraw.


Gordon Graydon: -if you are really treating my hon. friend opposite seriously in this matter, then of course that is a different thing altogether. I made no statement that should be withdrawn; and I think most hon. members realize that I do not make statements in this house that I have to withdraw.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Every day.


Gordon Graydon: More than that, if I made a statement particularly referring to the hon. member for Cape Breton South, that he was helping the government again, surely there can be no objection raised to a statement of that kind. If at certain times I am referred to as helping the government, I have to take it; I do not think I can ask anybody to withdraw a statement like that, because there is nothing there to withdraw, and there is no rule in any way violated. I am amazed at the hon. member for Vancouver Centre, because if he reflects on the position he is taking, he himself will not ask for such a withdrawal; because after all I am afraid I cannot do it.


William Ross Macdonald: I think I should say to the committee that the hon. member for Peel has stated that he did not mean anything offensive.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: There were two
remarks, Mr. Chairman.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Sit down.


William Ross Macdonald: I think we must accept the statement made by the hon. member for Peel when he says that he did not intend anything offensive.


John Thomas Hackett: He says he did not say it.


William Ross Macdonald: He says he did not say anything offensive with regard to any hon. member. I think under all the circumstances we should proceed with consideration of the resolution.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Mr. Chairman, may I ask to have the record read?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


An hon. MEMBER:: The other day you said it could not be done.


George Alexander Cruickshank: Mr. Chairman, may I get into this? I am from British Columbia
and I am speaking to the point of order. I wish to make a suggestion to the hon. member for Peel, who has a man in his riding who won the M.C., DjC.M. and M.M., and we are proud of him. I suggest to the genial member for Peel that he withdraw the remark that he definitely did make. I do not know about the first one. In order to expedite matters, I am suggesting that the hon. member for Peel withdraw that remark.


Gordon Graydon: Mr. Chairman, if I
thought for a moment that there was anything unparliamentary in what I said, of course I would withdraw it. I may say to the hon. member for Vancouver Centre that I think on reflection he will realize that there was nothing unparliamentary in what I said. After all, in these cross fires in discussion if I were to rise and ask that the rules of parliament be applied to the hon. member for Vancouver Centre, on some occasions I think the same thing would apply.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I think this is out of order, Mr. Chairman.


Gordon Graydon: There must be a little good nature and a little good humour in the house, and we might drop this. After all, I should be the first one to withdraw if there was anything to withdraw, but there is not.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Mr. Chairman, I rise again to a point of order. I say that my hon. friend made two statements, and I can speak very quietly about the statement that he did make. In the first place he said: "My hon. friend is, as usual, endeavouring to help the government." Whether he was referring to the hon. member for Cape Breton South or yourself is in my opinion immaterial. In regard to the second remark, when I was getting up on an interruption, I said, "You cannot make that statement," thinking honestly it was made in regard to the chairman of the committee. My hon. friend said, "That is what you would like to have heard me say." I say that is a definite reflection on me as a member of this house.


Gordon Graydon: What is the matter with that?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I want the record read.


Gordon Graydon: That cannot be a reflection on anybody.


Clarence Gillis: Mr. Chairman, may I say a word-


Mr. KNOWLES:: As co-respondent.


Clarence Gillis: I am not sitting very far from the hon. member from Peel and I heard
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everything that was said. I think that a man who makes a remark in the house should be big enough to stand behind it. This is what happened, and the record will bear it out. When I sat down the hon. member for Peel said, "Trying to help the government again." I figured that he was talking about the chairman.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Yes.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


Clarence Gillis: Oh, yes.


William Ross Macdonald: Order. The hon. member for Peel has stated that the remark he made was not referring to the chairman at the time he made it. At the time the hon. member made the remark I did not take it that he was referring to the chair, and he has now definitely stated that he was not doing so. We must therefore accept his statement. Some other statements have been made. There has been a good deal of cross fire during this debate, considerable of it good-natured and a little bit of it otherwise. I do not think there has been anything serious. The hon. member for Peel and all hon. members have said that they had not intended to be offensive towards anyone or towards any party. It occurs to me that at this stage we should proceed with the resolution. It is possible, of course, to have the record read, but it will take some time to do that. I am in the hands of the committee. I would ask hon. members to consider if it is not in the best interests of the committee that we proceed with the resolution.


George Alexander Cruickshank: This is more interesting than the other discussion.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I give notice, Mr. Chairman, that at the opening of the proceedings tomorrow, I shall rise on a question of privilege and read the record as it stands, and we shall see what the hon. gentleman said.


Clarence Gillis: My name has been bandied about in this discussion, and I should like to clarify matters. I just wish to say to the hon. member for Peel that if saving the time of this house in getting the resolution passed, and getting the legislation to the point where it can be properly discussed in the best interests of the Canadian people, is helping the government, that will always be my attitude.


William Ross Macdonald: The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Chairman, I am afraid that what I have to say will sound prosaic after the discussion which has taken place

during the past half hour. I should like to say a word about the kind of information that the hon. member for Stanstead was seeking before we got into this wrangle. It seems to me that he is justified in asking the minister at this stage of the debate to provide us with information about the total cost of the government's price control programme. I would say that he has every right to list the various items which he feels should be included in such a total computation. But I feel that if and when that information is brought to the house by the minister, he should do his level best to give us the other side of the picture as well.


Mr. McIVOR:: He does that all the time.


Stanley Howard Knowles: 
James Lorimer Ilsley: That is right; it might not be quite that soon.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Those amendments would have to pass in the other place. I should hope that other place would approve increases in old age pensions for they have theirs. Even then we do not know what that legislation is going to be. It might still require the concurrence of the provinces.
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James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes.


Stanley Howard Knowles: And that might require sittings of the legislatures in the various provinces, which might not take place until next year, which would mean that the benefit of any increases to be provided by these amendments might not reach the Canadian old age pensioners until some time in 1948. That is the reason I am afraid of this method of dealing with the matter. It provides a basis for delay, and for that reason I have been hammering away, trying to get under the skin of the government, or whatever you may call it, in the hope that the request made yesterday by the hon. member for Eglinton, which appealed to the Minister of Justice as reasonable, might be met. I would appreciate it if the minister would comment on this matter.


James Lorimer Ilsley: The fear my hon. friend has expressed that legislation may require concurrent legislation by the provinces I think is far-fetched. Of course I am hampered by not being in a position to state anything about the provisions of the forthcoming old age pensions legislation. I cannot do that. But I do not think that in any previous old age pension legislation we have required legislative action by the provinces. Perhaps we have. At any rate, they have old age pension legislation now.


Stanley Howard Knowles: It would probably depend upon the nature of the provincial legislation, would it not?


James Lorimer Ilsley: Perhaps so. But there is no idea of putting off old age pensions legislation so as to provide that it will not come into force for a year, or anything like that. The only question is whether we are to break into this emergency legislation with old age pensions legislation. As I asked before,, to how many things are we going to give priority?


Stanley Howard Knowles: Just this one.


James Lorimer Ilsley: All right; and the hon. member would defer the budget until after this, would he not?


Stanley Howard Knowles: Yes.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Well, he might defer everything.


Stanley Howard Knowles: And I think you would get the approval of the house to do it.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I don't know-and take a chance on having to come back here to get another extension of time on the emergency legislation? My hon. friend would take that chance, too?


Stanley Howard Knowles: To keep price control going, yes.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Well, we cannot be talking about this continuation of transitional measures all summer-or I hope we cannot. I hope that if we are going to continue these measures we can have them voted on and over and done with some time soon. And when we do, we can go into our regular legislation, the important measures, of which old age pensions legislation would be one. I believe that would be the proper course to take. There need not be a long debate on the continuation of these orders in council. If the house has the assurance that as soon as we can get to it old age pensions legislation will be introduced, there need not be two debates over the same subject matter. Of course I realize it is a subject concerning which many members like to make speeches. But they do not need to do so, because they can defer their discussion on old age pensions to the legislation we introduce. We believe that priority ought to be given this legislation. I do not want to have to come back here to try to have this date extended again-this date of May 15. But I fear we are going, to talk so long on the resolution stage that we shall be late in having the bill brought in; and then when we get the bill in we may take so long again in a discussion of its provisions that we may crowd pretty closely that May 15 time limit. But to ask that we break into the middle with a substantive piece of legislation, the discussion of which undoubtedly would require a long time, is not fair. That would involve government policy in the matter of old age pensions, and would be of considerable importance ; it is something to which we would have to give careful consideration. I said yesterday, in answer to the hon. member for Eglinton, that so far as I knew there was no reason for delay in the introduction of that legislation except that it conflicts with the emergency legislation; that is all.


William Ross Macdonald: It seems to me that the discussion which has taken place in the last five or ten minutes has not been strictly in order. If there is allowed a discussion on orders in council relating to old age pensions and whether or not they should be included in the bill to be brought down, there is no reason why there should not be a similar discussion on the other fifty-six orders in council. Some other member may think that each one of them should be the subject matter of separate legislation. A discussion was allowed yesterday afternoon on this subject, and for that reason I did not interrupt the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre. But I do not think the discussion should continue on any particular order in council. What is before the com-

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mittee for consideration is the question whether there should be continuation of these controls, whether it is expedient to provide legislation to continue them. If any hon. member does not think that certain controls should be included in the legislation which is to be brought down, wrhen the bill is before the house he will have his opportunity to suggest that certain orders in council be excluded. At the present time however we should stay strictly within the terms of the resolution.


Mr. CHURCH:: I shall take only a few minutes. We have seen the results of this resolution. Are we to sit here day after day, day in and day out, listening to the government trying to pacify hon. members to my left, the socialist party, the totalitarian party, and all that kind of thing? Several of them have got up and suggested that they are the same as the Labour party in England. I say that if they are, then God save Canada-when we consider what has been happening in Britain in connection with coal, electricity, power, food, and everything else.
The government of the day have at last awakened to the fact that if they are to follow the gentlemen to my left, the socialists, they are going away down deep into the sea, and they had better pause before they come to the brink-because the time is not far distant when there will be an election. They can call an election, if they want to, this year- and the sooner the better, in some ways.
We have to listen to all this kind of socialist talk. And I can tell you this, that so far as the function of the opposition in respect of this resolution is concerned, as I see it, I should have liked to see it passed on Friday night. It is not just enough to bark; to oppose is the function of an opposition. But since then a great number of extraneous matters have been brought in. Are we in the opposition going to sit here and do nothing about it? I can remember away back in March, 1939, when I asked the Minister of Justice a question along these lines. Are we going to go over the same story five or six times? That has been done here. For five or six days now we have allowed all kinds of irrelevant matters to be brought into the debate. I believe it was on April 24, 1939-it was either March or April, I am not quite sure-when I asked the former highly respected minister of justice if the War Measures Act of 1914 was still in existence. He said, "No". I said, "Yes, it is." He then looked it up, and later he found out that the War Measures Act was still in existence, that it had not been wiped off the statute books. It took a long time to declare that war at an end. That was the first matter.
I wish to stick to the text of the resolution, except to reply to one or two things which have been said. In the first place, this whole emergency measure, this War Measures Act, should have been cancelled and abrogated. The War Measures Act of 1914 has been on the statute books, with only some changes in phraseology. That is the first thing that should have been done. Then, second, I would rather see the Minister of Justice bring in separate bills for what he has left. Mind1 you, I sympathize with the minister at the present time, because he has a hard task to answer some of the questions which have been asked.
I am sorry the hon. member for Cape Breton South is not in his seat, because I was gonig to point out what Mr. Shinwell said. The Labour party over there has everything cut and dried. They are taking over the mines. Mr. Morrison said that nationalization of the mines would not in itself produce one extra truck of coal. And Mr. Attlee declared that the whole future of the Labour party depends upon the success of the nationalization of coal mines. Here are Herbert Morrison's words of December 1, 1946:
Nationalization will not in itself produce one extra truck of coal.
Unfortunately the Labour government has not thought the matter out. Mr. Shinwell admitted on June 11, 1946, that the socialist party had paid little attention to the extremely difficult technical and administrative problems which nationalization involves. Notwithstanding all that, here we have gentlemen to my left trying to persuade the government of the day and the Minister of Justice to follow them on socialism. If it does, the government will get into the sea, and it had better stop before it is too late.
I believe the resolution should have been reported before this. We would then be in position to deal with the motion for Mr. Speaker to leave the chair for the house to go into committee of ways and means. We have spent five or six days on this resolution.
I would like to have the undivided attention of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre. He is always making speeches and taking time by raising points of order. He takes more time than anyone else and then he does not want to listen to anyone. I would like to have the attention of the minister for a moment or two. The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre does not like anyone to say anything that may affect his speeches. I am not in a hurry; I can wait, but I want the attention of the right hon. Minister of

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Justice. The hon. member has spent enough time over there; he should go to England and join the socialist party.
I have great admiration for the minister in many ways. In 1924 I asked the Minister of Justice a question when he got up to give an opinion on a matter concerning the Toronto Hydro Electric Commission which was before the privy council and with which I had something to do on this side of the water. The minister was asked by the head of what was then called the progressives to give an opinion, and he gave that opinion. After he had spoken I called his attention to the fact that the Minister of Justice should not do what was done last Friday night. It has been a rule since confederation that the Minister of Justice, who is the Attorney General of Canada, should not be asked to give a legal opinion. I raised this question in 1924 and his predecessor said that I was right.
When the minister was asked for an opinion he gave the opinion of his deputy, Mr. Varcoe. He is an able man, and he should be because he comes from Toronto. The minister gave the substance of the opinion of the deputy minister of justice. This particular resolution will be followed by a bill and the Attorney General of Canada may be brought into the matter. The War Measures Act was brought up in the courts across the country, and no doubt this bill will be brought up for interpretation by the courts. The courts will have to find what was the intention of the legislature when they passed this bill to be based on this resolution. There may be disputes and the Attorney General of Canada or the attorney general of the provinces may be brought into the matter by order of a judge of the high court of justice or of the county court on any action to declare the new bill ultra vires. For that reason I think it wise that the Minister of Justice, who is the Attorney General of Canada should not be asked to give an opinion to the house.


James Lorimer Ilsley: What the hon. gentleman is saying is very interesting, but I should like to ask him this question:	Is what any hon.
member says in the house admissible as evidence before a court as to the intention of the house? I believe it is not.


Thomas Langton Church: I believe what the minister says is quite correct. But the courts can read Hansard to construe the intention of the legislature, so say the textbooks on construction of statute law. I may not have the exact words of the minister, but I do not think he gave any official opinion, but that of his deputy and others. I think it is far better that no opinion

should be given at all. It only leads to the sort of debate we have had by hon. members to my left and by hon. members from our sister province.
Reference was made last Friday to decisions of the privy council. It is a blessing to this country that we have the privy council at the present time, otherwise everything connected with provincial rights would have been wiped out. It is the one court where the litigant can get justice and minorities their rights. You have only to read its decisions to know that that is the court that holds a system of checks and balances between federal and provincial rights under our federal system. It is a blessing to our country that we have that court.
When a war is on it is a different matter, but the war has been off for two years. The War Measures Act of 1914 should be repealed, as the hon. member for Lake Centre said the other night in his very able speech. The decisions referred to, including Snider and Toronto Electric Commissioners, do not relate to the war at all, and it is beyond me why the words "peace, order and good government" have been used as a basis for the resolution now before us. I would like to see the resolution reported. Silence in parliament, I take it, means that we are assenting to what has been done or to what has been said here for six days. A lot has been said here in the last five or six days. In my opinion the country is not going to stand much more of this socialism. The people in the constituencies are sick and tired of the increasing debt of this country and the over-taxation and over-government that we have. Lord Hals-bury, Lord Chief Justice, once said:
I think it is something new in the history of this house that it should he admitted that a bill is injurious and unjust, and that nevertheless your Lordships are not to protest against it.
The public is bewildered that no lead is given to them. On September 11, 1945, which I think was the third day after we met in this parliament, I objected to what had been provided for in the address. I said that in my opinion the country demanded certain measures for private industry and private enterprise and initiative. That is the key to the solution of our economic problems from Vancouver to Halifax. There should be an extension of the national policy, not only for capital but for labour, for coal and for all other industries. That should be the policy of the future as far as the government is concerned. I do not blame the hon. member for Vancouver Centre for getting sick and tired of all this business. He is supposed to be an astute politician and I know he is getting sick and tired of what he hears

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from that leftist corner. The people of this country want to know all about the bill. In my opinion we should change our rules and our way of doing business; for if we go on as we are doing now we shall be here all summer. I am against following the methods of socialism and destroying private enterprise and private capital and hamstringing private business as has been done in the past.


Mr. POWER:: Mr. Chairman, just for my own sake at any rate, and to keep the record straight, I should like to call your attention to what you said a few moments ago, namely that there was only one question before the house, whether we were in favour of or against controls. I very respectfully wish to differ in opinion with you, Mr. Chairman.
There are fifty-seven bills before us, all in one bill. Only ten or fifteen of them, so far as I can gather, refer to controls. The rest refer to all kinds of other matters. The objection I raised earlier in this debate, and which since the debate started I have found no reason for abandoning, is to the method followed in bringing before the house fifty-seven money bills in one bill without explaining what each money bill involves, what specific or at least what readily ascertainable amount is involved. I do not believe that is the proper way in which legislation should be introduced. It may be a more convenient way, but democracy does not look to the convenience of ministers or rules but rather to the convenience and ease of the governed.
Certain suggestions have been made to the minister bjr the member for Winnipeg North Centre, the hon. member for Eglinton, the hon. member for Vancouver South and others, to the effect that it would be possible to take about twenty-five of these orders in council out of this omnibus bill and introduce and pass them separately. The only answer I have heard from the minister is that he does not wish to give priority to these particular bills. But what would prevent him, for instance, from introducing a bill to amend the Civil Service Act to give a preference in civil service appointments to returned soldiers who served in the war of 1939-1945? I am not asking for priority for that bill. If it is not passed by May 15, I for one would be quite willing to have the order in council extend until such time as that bill could be passed. But do not get that mixed up with other things that have no connection with it. I may be all wrong, but I think it is throwing doubt in the minds of these veterans as to their right to have the same sort of treatment as the soldiers of 1914-18 received by providing for it in this kind of bill. It seems to 83166-1141
me that everybody is agreed upon giving the veterans this preference. Therefore let us introduce a bill to amend the Civil Service Act accordingly and send it before a committee of this house, if you like, and if it is not passed by May 15 there will be no difficulty in granting an extension of these four orders in council. The same with respect to old age pensions and the same with respect to labour relations.
I have strong objections to having inserted in our statutes fifty-seven pieces of legislation in one bill, to be duplicated by other statutes. Look how ridiculous it will make us appear in the years to come. When people are looking over the statutes of this year of grace, 1947, they will see, in identical language, one piece of legislation appear as an appendix to an omnibus bill stating that the returned soldier of the war of 1939-45 will have certain preferences, and then twenty pages further on in the same statute book they will find a law to amend the Civil Service Act stating exactly, so far as one part of it is concerned, what is contained in an appendix to an earlier statute. It seems to me that it will only tend to involve people in confusion.
I should like to make reference to something else that has been said in the course of the debate. It seems to me that a debate on the resolution is perfectly proper. There is nothing out of order in it. I do not know of any rule of the house that would preclude members from discussing the financial provisions of any resolution. That is what the resolution is for. It seems to me it is going a little far to be repeatedly telling us we are out of order in discussing the financial provisions of the resolution that is before the committee.
The only precedent I know of, and I referred to it a week or so ago when I made a few remarks in the house, is the unemployment and farm relief bill of Mr. Bennett in 1931 and the Unemployment and Farm Relief Continuance Act of 1932. That bill was debated-I have not the exact dates but it looks to me as if it was debated from March 8 until the end of March or the beginning of April and then closure had to be applied to pass the resolution. At that time the debate was on the financial provisions of the resolution and the extraordinary powers being taken by the Bennett government. That was not so very long ago. It is the latest precedent of this kind of extraordinary legislation that I know of, and I can see no reason why there should be complaint if we try to discuss what should be discussed on a resolution introductory to a money bill.
I can see no reason why we should not ask the minister to withdraw from the appendix
179:
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to this particular bill certain provisions and place them in a separate bill. I do not think that is out of order, with all respect, Mr. Chairman. I do not think it would be out of order to ask the minister to bring in a separate bill dealing with the regulations for the administration and distribution of naval, military and air force estates. Why put that in with timber control, or with the commodity prices stabilization fund, or with a new sugar control which is to be formed by changing the name of a corporation known as the Food Corporation or something of that kind, instead of setting up a new corporation? Surely the matter is involved enough already if we deal with only one matter, but it is rendered far more involved when we are asked to deal with forty or more bills which have nothing to do with controls or the principle of controls.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Mr. Chairman, I should like to say a few words about the position taken by the hon. member for Quebec South. As I understand it, one of his objections to this bill is that this is virtually blank cheque legislation and that the amount of the expenditures contemplated under these orders in council should be specified in the resolution. I want to point out that this resolution is not similar to the resolution to which mj' hon. friend referred as having been passed in 1931. The point of difference is extremely important. The resolution which related to farm and unemployment relief, and which will be found at page 4275 of Hansard of July 29, 1931, reads as follows:
That it is expedient to bring in a measure to confer certain powers upon the governor in council in respect to unemployment and farm relief; and for the maintenance of peace, order and good government in all parts of Canada; and to authorize the governor in council to expend for the said purposes out of the consolidated revenue fund such sums as may from time to time be necessary.
The position we took at that time was that authority to pay undefined and unlimited sums out of the consolidated revenue fund was in effect a blank cheque which should not be given to the government. The situation is entirely different if the money is to be provided out of money appropriated by parliament, as is the case in the legislation before the committee.
The other night the hon. member referred to the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation. He pointed out the fact that one of these orders in council provided for the setting up of the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation and authorized that corporation to buy and sell goods, to import goods, and to pay subsidies on goods. He argued that when we do that the minister must certainly be in a

position to come before the house and state the limits of the financial liability of the government in respect of the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation. The answer to that is that the limit of our financial responsibility in respect of the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation is found in the estimates. The amount voted for the proposed Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation is 135 million. That is provided for in the estimates. It will be found on page 69 of the main estimates under finance, vote No. 499, "Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation, $35,000,000". Just above that may be found vote No. 498, "wartime prices and trade board, administration, $6,410,000". If the amounts that were to be spent by boards operating under these orders in council were to be paid out of the consolidated revenue fund without its being necessary for parliament to provide the money the hon. member's point would be perfect. It would be blank cheque legislation; it would be on all fours with the legislation we attacked in 1931. That is not the situation. As a matter of fact, the form of this resolution is the form which this house has passed repeatedly under similar conditions. For instance, when we propose to authorize the formation of any new department like the Department of Veterans Affairs, which dispersed as much as $700 million in the course of a year, we do not put any figure in the resolution. The reason we do not put any figure in the resolution is that we have to vote the money separately. When we do vote the money we have most specific resolutions. A great number of them go through with the amounts of each vote provided in these resolutions.
I have, in my hand a copy of Hansard for the session of 1944, volume 2. On page 1638 may be found such resolutions as this:
That it is expedient to provide for a Department of Veterans Affairs to replace in part the Department of Pensions and National Health and to assume the management and control of and to consolidate in such department all matters not by law assigned to any other department relating to the care, treatment, training or reestablishment of members and former members of the armed forces and other persons and all such other matters as may from time to time be assigned; and to provide further for the appointment of such officers, clerks and employees as are necessary for the proper and efficient administration of the act.
Generally speaking, that is the form of resolution which is passed when you are vesting a department, a board, a commission, or any other body, with authority to disperse money and employ officers, servants and agents. That is the reason for the form of this resolution.

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The hon. member takes exception to the fact that we have combined these various orders in council dealing with disparate matters in one bill. I must say that we never would enact new legislation in this way. If there were any danger whatever that this was a precedent for bringing along new legislation and combining various subject matters in one bill and putting it in one schedule I would be alarmed. We never would do that. The schedule to this bill is a schedule of orders in council, all of which are the law now and have been the law for years, some of them for more than nine years. They are well known to people who have been interested in them. They are not new. All this legislation does is to prevent these orders in council from lapsing, while it allows everything else to lapse. That is all it does. It just prevents these from lapsing. Under these circumstances I do not think it is proper to describe it as a combination of fifty-seven different bills.
It must be borne in mind that when the house passed the National Emergency Transitional Powers Act and extended it in 1946 it gave sanction not to fifty-seven orders in council but to six or seven thousand. The house passed that legislation without hon. members having any of these orders in council before them on their desks. The orders in council were accessible to them; they could be consulted, but they were not put in a schedule to a bill. It is entirely inconsistent to swallow six or eight thousand orders in council without looking at them, by passing legislation, and then to object to passing fifty-seven orders in council which are before hon. members. That is the situation here. I thought this matter was given a great deal of consideration as to what was the proper thing to do.
I said that this had been done in Great Britain and in Australia, and I was told that it did not make any difference what they did there; that we have our own democracy and should follow our own rules. I wholly agree. I would' not follow a certain course of procedure because it was followed in Great Britain, in Australia, or in the United States. But if the reasons for taking a certain course in Great Britain were sound, or for 'taking a certain course in the United States or Australia were sound, and the same reasons existed here, the fact that they took a certain course would raise the presumption that we were not very far wrong in taking the same course.
In Great Britain and in Australia they had the same problems before them. I have the bills before me. The name of the bill in Great Britain is the Emergency Laws Transitional Provisions Act of 1946. It has a long schedule
with all kinds of regulations. They call them regulations over there. Our own orders in council are regulations by orders in council. Here are many pages of regulations dealing with all kinds of things. All this act did was to pick up what was the law of the land then by regulation and say that these that are appended to the bill shall not lapse. It is quite a different matter from initiating new legislation. They did the same thing in Australia. Provision apparently was made for amendment to them by the house.
I thought I tried to make it clear at an earlier stage of this discussion that the government is not taking power to legislate by order in council. The government has been accused of wanting power to legislate by order in council instead of legislating in the house. I made it clear, I thought, earlier in the session that by this legislation we were saying, "No longer shall we have any power whatever to make any changes in these orders in council or to pass any orders in the fields covered by these orders in council. We shall have no power to do that any longer. We shall retain the power to revoke the orders in council in whole or in part, but these orders in council are frozen." Parliament expresses its will in the matter. It places its imprimatur upon these orders in council and says, "Under that code you must operate during the remainder of the time and under no other."
I do not know whether I need1 to go over again the principles upon which these orders in council were selected. They are orders in council which are expected to be required for a short period of indefinite duration. I cannot put it any more briefly than that. Some of these orders in council will be revoked within a matter of weeks; some of them will be revoked within a matter of months; some of them will run the whole year; and as to some of them, we may need to come back and ask that parliament extend them further at the end of the year, depending upon what developments are. Provision will be made in the act for the presentation of an address, so that parliament can do that. But parliament will do it; it will not be the governor in council. In no sense will it be legislation by order in council. There do not seem to be any good or practical reasons why we should take orders in council which may last for only a few weeks or only a few months and pass separate bills regarding them.
My hon. friend speaks about the confusion that the reader of the statutes will have when he sees in the same statute book an act relating to veterans preference and an order in council appended to this so-called omnibus bill. The position will be perfectly clear. 1
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think, to the reader of the statutes. Undoubtedly, when that statute takes effect, the order in council will be revoked. Perhaps the statute itself will revoke the order in council. That would make it clear beyond peradventure that there are not two acts but only one, under which the veterans preference is provided. The reason why we did not introduce a bill at the beginning of the session was that we were given to understand; or perhaps I should not say that we were given to understand, but rather that we thought, from the representations which we had received and the controversy which there had been, that this matter of veterans preference would create a great deal of discussion, and that the proper way to deal with it was to refer it to a committee. I do not know now whether that is to be done or not, but we did not [DOT] think there was any reasonable prospect of that bill, if we introduced it, becoming law before March 31; and certainly it would not have, as events have proved, because so much time has been taken with other legislation such as the wheat board legislation. In that situation, where it ought to be incorporated in legislation, where you know you cannot get your legislation through before March 31, where there may be much controversy about it, and where a reasonable way of dealing with it, as we thought, was to refer it to a committee of the house, what was the sensible thing to do? Was not the sensible thing to do to continue this order in council until the legislation should be passed, at which time the order in council would be revoked?
The same or substantially the same considerations apply to the old age pensions legislation and also to the labour relations legislation. In those cases there were special reasons why we thought it was impracticable to have our legislation enacted before this emergency act lapsed, and therefore we decided that we should continue it and not let it lapse, but have our legislation introduced as soon as we could. If we break up this schedule now and introduce a number of bills, each with its first, second and third reading in this house and in the senate, it will immensely prolong our work during this session, and I do not see any reason for doing so. This case does not create a precedent for new legislation. This is a situation which arises once in a lifetime; perhaps it will never arise again. It is a situation which arises at the end of a great war, when you have many emergency orders in council, some of which must not be allowed to lapse; some of which will run for a short time and some for a longer time. In that case it appeared to us to be the practical and right course to

gather them up and, if they were orders in council which would be required for a short period of indefinite duration, put them in one bill and then get rid of them by revocation from time to time as the occasion might require.
There was another class of orders altogether that we replaced by legislation, such as the wheat board orders. There was a large number of orders that we replaced by legislation, but the careful selection was made of these for the reasons I have mentioned. It is a course of procedure which parallels that taken by other peoples in other countries who were confronted with a similar problem. It is a course of procedure which economizes the time of this house in a session which promises to be very long anyway. It is not blank cheque legislation. It does not create any dangerous precedent. It affords the house an opportunity of discussing every one of these measures seriatim in committee of the whole when the bill is before the committee. In my judgment, it is a course which should receive the support of the house.


John Thomas Hackett: The minister's interesting point of view has done this, if nothing else: it has accentuated and proven to the house the first point raised by the hon. member for Quebec South. We are dealing, to quote the minister himself, with a bill the like of which has never previously been before parliament and is not likely to present itself again before this body. The point which the hon. member for Quebec South made-and one which I hope impresses itself upon the chairman as well as upon the committee-was that there is nothing unusual, nothing against the rules of the house in discussing at length a resolution of this type. The right hon. gentleman, in acknowledging that a resolution some fifteen years ago was discussed for a month in this house, and that he and the hon. gentlemen who surrounded him yielded only when closure had been imposed upon them, accentuated, I think, and endorsed the point which was made by the hon. member for Quebec South, to the effect that this is the way to elicit information necessary to the proper weighing and discussing of the bill on second reading.
So far as my observation has gone, I must say that the minister has not been impatient nor has he been unwilling to answer questions. I do not think any members on this side of the house can complain about his attitude in that regard.
As to the other points raised by the hon. member for Quebec South, I shall not deal with them; but I do ask you to recall, Mr. MARCH 27, 1947
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Chairman, that matters very unusual in character are before the committee and information is being sought which at the moment is not available even to the ministry itself, information the committee needs in order to express an enlightened opinion upon this resolution.
I was interrupted earlier in the afternoon when I was asking the minister for information concerning certain subsidies. He was good enough to tell me where some of that information could be found, but he referred to some difficulty that might arise in putting into the form of a statement amounts paid in remissions of customs duties or excise taxes because, he said, it was possible that some of these remissions might have been enacted for one purpose and some for another. Whatever may have been the purpose, these remissions of customs duty and excise tax constitute a loss to the treasury. They are amounts that would have been available to defray the expenses of the government had it not been for their elimination, and I think the minister will agree that they enter into the total cost resulting from regulation. I am going to ask the minister if it would be possible to have a statement prepared showing the total amount of these remissions of customs duty and excise tax, and any other benefits which may have been conferred or other taxes or duties which may have been remitted, putting them into such categories as he deems fair, with such explanatory notes as he thinks would complete the information necessary for hon. gentlemen who are anxious to bring their best powers to bear upon a situation which as yet has not been fully disclosed.


William Ross Macdonald: I feel that I should
make my position clear with respect to my view as to the proper procedure in regard to this resolution while it is in committee. The hon. member for Quebec South referred to the fact that I had said the purpose of the committee was to consider whether or not it was expedient to continue controls. Probably my language was not sufficiently definite, and I thank the hon. member for bringing it to my attention. I should have said the committee must decide, according to this resolution, whether it is expedient to provide for the continuation of certain orders and regulations of the governor in council for a limited period during the national emergency arising out of the war, and also with respect to the other words in the resolution.
The hon. member for Stanstead suggested that I should allow full discussion on this resolution. I wish to assure him and all other hon. members that this is my view also; but
I do suggest as strongly as possible that the discussion should be on the resolution, not on extraneous matters and not on the bill. When I was speaking the other day with regard to the point of order I referred to Sir Thomas Erskine May's Parliamentary Procedure, fourteenth edition, from which I read these words:
Debate in committee on a financial resolution is confined 'to the terms of the resolution itself and must not be extended to the related bill.
This house has adopted a form of procedure. Briefly it is as follows. On money matters there is first a resolution. To my mind, discussion on the resolution, should be along the line of whether or not it is advisable to bring in such a resolution, instead of going into the details of what the bill will be. After the resolution is adopted, a bill is introduced and given first reading. Second reading is not given immediately; an opportunity is afforded hon. members to consider the legislation; and the following day, or some later day, when they have had that opportunity, second reading is moved in the house. At that time a full discussion of the principle is permitted. Then the bill is referred to committee, where questions may be asked as to the details of the bill.
What I am endeavouring to do is to direct the attention of the committee to the resolution, not to the bill. I realize that it is very difficult. I believe all information should be given hon. members to enable them to decide intelligently whether or not this resolution should be adopted and whether it is expedient to introduce a measure to provide for the continuation of certain orders, and so on. All necessary information should be given to enable hon. members to come to a conclusion as to whether it is desirable to provide for the continuation of the orders; but when we discuss the bill itself we are far from the resolution. A number of hon. members have mentioned certain regulations and suggested that they should not be included in the bill. I repeat what I said1 previously. If one hon. member mentions one regulation, such as old age pensions, and says that should not be in the bill, there would be no reason why another hon. member should not bring up and discuss some other regulation and say it should not be in the bill, there would be no reason why each of these fifty-seven regulations could not be discussed at this time. I submit to the committee that is not the purpose of the consideration of this resolution. I believe any discussion as to whether or not certain regulations should be in the bill should be left over until the bill itself is before the committee. If at that time the committee does not think
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certain regulations should be in the bill a motion can be made to have them eliminated. Nothing can be gained, as far as this resolution is concerned, by discussing these regulations now. We cannot amend the resolution in that way. A full discussion of each of these fifty-seven regulations would not allow us to amend the resolution, and it is the resolution we are considering. Therefore I feel that in the interests of the committee hon. members should remain strictly within the terms of the resolution and discuss the resolution only, not the bill.


John Thomas Hackett: I hope it is not suggested that the questions which I have asked, and which the minister has had no opportunity of answering are not within the strictest terms of the resolution. I have made no reference to regulations; I have made no reference to the bill. My questions are based upon the resolution.


William Ross Macdonald: I did not rule the hon. member's questions out of order. Indeed, I did not question them. I believe the minister said that at some time he would endeavour to get the information. He did not suggest that he would get it before the resolution carried, but that he would endeavour to get it at some time before the bill was introduced.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes. I believe I said earlier this afternoon that I would try to get that information for the hon. member, and I suggested that it would be impossible to get anything worth while before Monday. I said I would see if I could get as much as possible of the information for him by Monday.


Stanley Howard Knowles: And an estimate on the other side, too.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes, if it is possible to make that estimate. I will try to see if that can be made.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Ask Donald Gordon.


John Thomas Hackett: Will the minister say if the supplementary estimates have been included in the cost which was considered, when he was comparing the Canadian cost of living index with that of the United1 States?


James Lorimer Ilsley: Well, the supplementary estimates do not increase the cost of goods, do they?


John Thomas Hackett: I did not know but what they might have something to do with payment for them, or with outstanding liabilities.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Perhaps I understand what the hon. member means, and perhaps I do not. The cost of living index is just what the words
IThe Chairman.]
imply. It is an index of the cost to the consumer of the goods he requires for living purposes. That is what the cost of living index is; and it should not be necessary for any hon. member to ask whether subsidies paid by the government are included in that index. The index is made up of what a buyer of goods has to pay for them.


John Thomas Hackett: Yes, but whether he pays the merchant or pays in taxes does not make much difference, so long as it comes from him.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Well, I do not hesitate a moment; and, as I say, I do not know why the question should be asked, or why anyone should ever hesitate to answer it. When we are giving information about what people pay for goods, we are not giving information at the same time in that statement about what they pay in taxes. Of course we are not.


Mr. SKEY:: I wish to support the view taken by the hon. member for Stanstead, and to make some observations respecting the words "national emergency". I feel that I, like every other hon. member in the committee at this time, should be trying to balance two things: first, how much has the situation of emergency been caused by the policies of the government, and second, how much comes as a result of the war?
I can see exactly what the hon. member for Stanstead is seeking. He is seeking information which will permit him to weigh in the balance how much the government has paid for this policy of control it is now advocating; what is the cost to the country in subsidies, remissions of customs duties and excise taxes, and whether if we were to abandon the government's policy the resulting tremendous reduction in taxation would not be worth while.
I say in all seriousness that if hon. members wish to balance their views they are entitled to that information. I believe that probably many hon. members on the government side of the house would want to know the same thing. We are not in a position at the present time to assess the cost to Canada of the government's policies, and I believe that is why we are seeking this information.
It is perfectly easy for anyone to see-and I am sure my C.C.F. friends will agree with this-that without much trouble a cartel could be produced under the wartime prices and trade board. A price fixing agreement is made, and industry is brought in under one leadership. In turn the country may suffer from that. Therefore I contend that the committee should have this information before it. U

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this is the right stage at which to give it, then I hope we shall be able to have it fairly soon so that we may proceed with this discussion.


Mr. DIEFENBAKER:: Mr. Chairman, we have listened this afternoon to the discussion of a question which I believe is of great importance, namely the cost to the country of price control. As a result of propaganda that has been continued throughout the period of the war, and since, there has been embedded in the minds of the people a terrible fear of what will happen to them and to the country in the event of price controls being discontinued.
As a matter of fact, there has been propaganda-I am sure it was not intentional-which has consisted of building up a comparison between United States and Canadian costs of commodities. The result is that people are fearful of any change taking place in the whole matter of prices. I believe there has never been any fair comparison made by setting the cost of living indices of the United States and Canada alongside each other. That does not tell the picture at all. In order to have a proper picture it would be necessary to have the taxation levels of these two countries. And from information all of us have available to us it would appear that, on incomes under $3,000, the income tax in the United States is materially less than it is in Canada. In addition to that, with the exception of a number of states, in the United States they do not pay a sales tax such as we have in Canada. These are elements which must be taken into consideration.
I have the full information Before me respecting our own cost of living index, as it is contained in a pamphlet entitled "Wartime Controls", issued by the wartime information board in Ottawa on September 12, 1944. This contains particulars as to how the index is made up. So far as that cost of living index is concerned today, based as it is in many instances upon commodities no longer in production-much less in consumption-the index gives a false picture in that it creates a delusion based upon the fact that non-existent goods do not rise in price. In other words, it is based on unrealities in that it is based on various commodities which are no longer being produced.
The hon. member for Stanstead raised a good point when he asked how much this subsidy system, has cost the country. I have seen various estimates. According to the estimates contained in the reports of the wartime prices and trade board and the stabilization board, the total would be approximately $650 million, which would include some $54 83166-115
million for administration. But those estimates do not tell the story at all, because they do not give the cost of some of the methods employed by the government, such as the suspension of customs duty, the remission of excise taxes and so on, all of which reduce the public revenue.
I should like to deal with a commodity which is in short supply, not only in Canada but in other parts of the world, a commodity which is controlled in Canada by international agreement. I intend to take sugar and the sugar control as an indication of how the picture revealed by the report of the wartime prices and trade board is not correct. On page 1505 of Hansard there appears an answer given to the hon. member for Lethbridge in connection with raw cane sugar. It is stated there that the government lost some $233,834 in a twelve months period on its operations in connection with sugar. However, a little later on it states that other revenues resulted in the sugar administration operating at a profit of $287,951. I ask the minister: What are the other revenues of the sugar administration? Has the sugar administration been permitted to run some other business? If so, what is the nature of the investment that it has made?
I go on from there to submit that, while the answer on March 19 states that there was an operating profit of $287,951 in connection with sugar, that statement does not reveal the story at all. Instead of there having been a profit, there was actually a loss of several million dollars. I am going to place certain figures before the minister in order that he may make an answer. If my computations be correct, instead of the sugar administration making an operating profit of $287,951 out of its sugar and other businesses, the loss in fact amounted to almost $7,000,000 in revenues to the people of Canada.
The figure given on page 1508 of Hansard show that the sugar administrator obtained thirty-five per cent of his 1947 supply of sugar from Cuba, Santa Domingo and other countries in connection with which there is normally a duty of $1.29 per hundredweight.


John Thomas Hackett: It is really forty per cent.


John George Diefenbaker: It may be, but I am giving it approximately. It is estimated that 213,000 tons of sugar will be imported from the countries I have named, and normally the customs duties on that sugar would amount to $5,517,000. In other words, while the sugar administration claims that it made $287,951, it fails to show that in making that it lost $5,517,000 in customs duties.

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I pass on from there to the other countries. Forty-seven per cent, or 287,000 tons, will come from other British countries, and the preference duty in these cases is twenty-nine cents per hundredweight. This represents a further loss to the country of approximately $1,665,000. In other words, as a result of sugar control there is a total of $7,182,000 lost to the revenues of this country during the current year. Subtracting what is given as the profit leaves a loss of $6,894,000, by reason of the remission or whatever you call it when customs duties are not charged. I might mention that Canada is the only country of the three countries in the sugar pool which is not collecting normal duties.
We come now to the local situation. Our domestic beet sugar production will be 222,000,000 pounds this year. If the domestic production of sugar were encouraged sufficiently to engage the full capacity of our factories there would be produced 320,000,000 pounds. We are in an international pool, but if the production of beet sugar were encouraged Canada's share would be immeasurably increased. If the other of the two large factories in Ontario were in production there would be an additional 50,000,000 pounds of sugar produced in Canada, which would make a greater supply of sugar available to Canada as well as encouraging an industry in this country.
The figures given in connection with the sugar control picture do not establish the true loss to this country. The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre said today that we want the whole picture, and that is what we are asking for.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Both sides.


John George Diefenbaker: That is the purpose of the discussion at this time. We want to find out what the picture actually is. On the one hand, we have a statement showing the benefits of control, but that statement fails to place before the people the picture with reference to what it is costing the taxpayers to apply this control. I should like the minister to take up not only sugar but the various other commodities with respect to which duties have been remitted or withdrawn or postponed. We would then have the picture before us as to the real cost. The estimate of $650 million given in the reports of the wartime prices and trade board and the stabilization board covers merely one side of the question. It does not cover the tens, yes, hundreds of millions of dollars represented by tariffs, by excise not charged and by other matters to which reference can be made later. I ask the minister to give the committee, as I

know he will, a full statement, so that for once we shall know in this country the actual position.
We hear so much about how much lower prices are in Canada than in the United States. But as a matter of fact within the past month, in the United States prices of commodities from which the ceiling has been lifted, after having risen in December and January last, and particularly in December, to a high level, receded gradually until today in most cases prices on comparative commodities are not any higher in Canada than in the United States; and if consideration were given to the difference in wage levels between the two countries and in taxes and other elements that go into the cost of living and to availability, to which I made reference earlier, the argument that we have heard so often used in the past that price control is placing us in Canada in an immeasurably better position than the people of the United States would be found not to be so applicable today. As a matter of fact, the "Letter Review of Toronto", in a very full review made in the latter part of January of prices of all commodities, clothing, food and all the things ordinarily used by the average household, as between the city of Toronto and the city of Buffalo, shows that, while there was an increase in prices in the United States when price control was removed, the increased production resulted in availability, and availability resulted' in a return to more or less normalcy in the matter of prices. At the moment I am not advocating one thing more than another. I am just placing before the committee these comparative figures.
Further, Mr. Chairman, the Bank of Canada has put out various charts and graphs showing relative wage rates and commodity prices in the United States and Canada, but all these graphs that I have seen have been in respect of prices in the months of November and December, 1946. I have seen none for February or March, 1947. I would ask the minister to place before the committee on Monday, if it is possible for him to do so, a comparison showing wage rates and cost of living index as between the two countries as of today, for the graphs hitherto have been comparisons for November and December, 1946, when it is admitted that prices in the United States were high.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Would the hon. member refer me to the document from which he was quoting which referred to prices in Buffalo and Toronto?


John George Diefenbaker: 1 will furnish the minister with that.

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Mr. MacINNIS:: I gather, Mr. Chairman, that after what was said by the last speaker, the debate is now wide open, and that I can say the one or two things I wish to say.
The hon. member for Lake Centre stated that considerable propaganda was being spread in favour of price control. He said that he did not think the propaganda was being spread consciously but that the impression left by certain reports, and comparisons made in government statistics, was that price control was saving money for the people of Canada. I do not know whether propaganda has been spread either consciously or unconsciously in favour of price control, but I know definitely that there has been a great deal of propaganda against price control.
The cost of price control to the people of Canada was mentioned as being something over $600 million. But the people of Canada can only mean all the people of Canada, and if price control cost the people of Canada $600 million or whatever the actual figure was, that cost was reflected in lower prices to all the people of this country. It is just as broad as it is long. Whatever the cost may have been in taxes it 'was represented in the saving to the people wrhen they purchased goods. In my opinion, there is not the slightest doubt in the world that, since price control came into effect in this country not only has it saved the people of Canada money in the cost of. the things they had to buy, but because they were able to buy and because we had orderly rationing and stabilized prices we not only saved dollars and cents, but also saved in the health and strength of our people and in the orderliness of our society. These are gains that cannot be measured in dollars and cents, and there is no doubt that these gains have been made.
I imagine that the hon. member for Lake Centre is receiving letters from organizations and individuals in his constituency as I am from individuals and organizations in mine, protesting against any quick removal of price control. These letters come from responsible organizations. I am sorry I have not my file with me or I would mention their names. But propaganda is not necessary to convince the housewife of the value of price control when she goes to market and finds that, without price control, she has to pay ten, twenty or thirty per cent more than she had to pay last week for the same article when price control was in effect.


An hon. MEMBER:: Fifty per cent more.


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: Why not make it eighty per cent?


Angus MacInnis: It might have been eighty per cent because, once you take control off the increase in the price will be whatever the traffic will bear and whatever the greed of the seller determines to make it. You can get it for a while. You can get it if there is a scarcity of goods, and when you come to the time when supply more than equals the demand artificial scarcities will be created, as they have been created in the past, in order to maintain prices.


Mr. JAQUES:: It is not necessary.	:


Angus MacInnis: I do not know whether it is necessary or not. It would not be necessary in a properly organized society, but it is done in the cut-throat society we have today. That is what I am saying. We should be clear about what we decide here.
If price controls are removed those of us in this house will not feel it much. A family getting $6,000 a year is in the middle or high income brackets. But take the thousands and hundreds of thousands of families in Canada who are receiving $1,500 or $1,000 a year. The removal of price controls is an important factor in the lives of these people where every cent has to be counted. I know these people. They are people who have to consider whether they will take a street car or walk and save six cents. These are considerations in the lives of the common people of this country. When I hear people talking for big business which is interested in exploiting the people of Canada, and not their social welfare, I feel that there is something radically wrong with our outlook on life.
I suppose controls will go within a brief period of time, but when they do, there will be organizations and delegations, many of them, on the doorstep of the government-and I do not care who that government will be- insisting that controls be imposed in order that they may make a living. Controls will be imposed.
I read in the Ottawa Journal yesterday that report of a debate in the Ontario legislature. In that debate Mr. Acres, a Progressive Conservative member, suggested a pretty complete control over the distribution of milk. He suggested that cities and towns in the province should be divided into zones and that certain deliveries be made only in those zones. According to the same report, the Minister of Agriculture of Ontario said that although there was a scarcity of dairy products, dairy farmers of Ontario had difficulty in selling their milk. Surely there is something wrong in a society of that kind.
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As controls go, and as we get back to the so-called economy of supply and demand, these conditions will be accentuated as they were accentuated in the years between 1930 and 1939.


James Lorimer Ilsley: The hon. member for Lake Centre made certain general references to prices in the United States. I was surprised at some of the statements he made because they are at variance with my information. I shall await with interest the document to which he referred with regard to comparative prices. My purpose in rising is simply to read into the record a dispatch from Washington dated March 26, which has been called to my attention by my colleague.


John Thomas Hackett: What paper is the minister quoting from?


James Lorimer Ilsley: The Ottawa Evening Journal. The dispatch reads as follows:
Washington, March 26-(BUP)-President Truman today expressed concern over high prices and advised business to make reductions where-ever possible.
Mr. Truman told a news conference he hoped prices would not continue to rise, lest a serious inflationary spiral set in.
The President added that he hoped business would see the handwriting on the wall so this spiral would not take place.
He pointed out that some major industries already have cut the prices on their products. He expressed the hope that other businesses would follow suit.
Mr. Truman was asked to elaborate on his phrase-handwriting on the wall.
This meant, he said, that he did not want to see a spiral in prices which would cause inflation and lead to another round of new wage demands. This process could be endless if prices continue to rise, the President said.
My information is that the hope of lower prices in the United States has been largely disappointed. I shall get the figures so that I shall not be talking generally; I hope that the hon. member for Lake Centre was not.


John George Diefenbaker: I told the minister I would give him the document.


James Lorimer Ilsley: We shall eventually get the facts of the situation.


John George Diefenbaker: It is the letter of January 19, 1947.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I wish to give the hon. member for Vancouver South a little information which he asked me for yesterday. He asked me to state what orders in council would be replaced by legislation. The orders in council which will be replaced by legislation are the four orders in council relating to old age pensions, the order in council P.C. 1003 relating to wartime labour relations and the

five orders in council relating to the civil service commission, on page 1 of the table of contents. That is the lot.


Howard Charles Green: These are the only ones?


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes; that is my intention at the present time, and I think I can say pretty positively that these are the only ones which will be replaced by legislation.


John Thomas Hackett: The hon. member for Lake Centre has made some reference to sugar. The international food council has, I believe, allotted to Canada some 504,000 tons. Is it true that the excise tax of $1 per 100 pounds has been abolished or eliminated on refined sugar?


James Lorimer Ilsley: I am sorry, I am not in a position to answer that question. The history of these excise taxes has gone out of my mind. It seems to me that there was a tax of two cents at one time and that it was divided in two. The hon. member is asking whether there is any tax at the present time. Is that the question?


John Thomas Hackett: The hon. member for Lake Centre has pointed out that there has been a hidden subsidy in the form of a remission of import duty which he has figured out to amount to about $7 million per annum. I have been under the impression that there is or was an excise tax of $1 per 100 pounds on refined sugar, and that that tax has been remitted or is no longer exacted as a condition of control.


James Lorimer Ilsley: That may be so. I will get the information.


John Thomas Hackett: I was trying to get that information. If that be true, it means that
504,000	tons of sugar, yielding something over one billion tons of refined sugar, would yield an excise tax of something in excess of 810,000,000. So that if my information and belief be correct, there is a small item of $10,000,000 a year to be added to the $7,000,000 to which the hon. member for Lake Centre has referred. It would be of some interest to the committee to know if this excise tax amounting, as I say, to about $10,000,000 a year has been absorbed.


James Lorimer Ilsley: We should not get it in our minds that when a duty or tax is removed we are thereby giving a subsidy to anybody. The hon. member has almost got into the state of mind where he believes that is the case. For instance, if we took the excise duty off sugar permanently, I would not admit that we were subsidizing the sugar users of Canada. I would say we were just taking a tax off. While I think the request for the information is legitimate-how much more would our

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revenue be if we had higher taxes; that is what it amounts to-I would almost be tempted to say plainly, as is the fact, that we have taken some duties off and some taxes off and thereby kept down prices to the consumer. And why not?


John Thomas Hackett: That may be the point of view of the minister, and undoubtedly it is if he says it is. This dominion will be eighty years of age if it holds together until July 1 next, and for fully three-quarters of that time the chief sources of revenue, the chief sources of money to pay the expenses of running the country were two: they were the import duties and the excise taxes. There was a blessed day when there were no income taxes, believe it or not, and when we relied almost entirely upon duties collected at the customs ports and upon taxes collected by excise officers. It is submitted that any remission of these duties and taxes means that they must be made up in other ways or by other taxes, and that where they have been remitted as a part of the system of control they constitute part of the cost of control. If the dollar a hundredweight, which was collected in excise on the refining of sugar, is not there to pay for some expenditure of the dominion, the Minister of Finance must find that dollar somewhere else. It merely means that the control has cost us that dollar, and in my point of view it is part of the cost of control just as much as a direct subsidy.
I should also like to ask the minister if any figures are available as to the cost, not only of administration of the wartime prices and trade board and the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation, but of the cost of enforcement by the police, by the special agents, the cost of prosecutions in the courts and the whole range of supervisory and incidental expenses which are necessary for the enforcement of these controls.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I think they are all included in the cost of administration, but I will verify that fact.


John Thomas Hackett: Does the cost of administration include the cost of prosecutions?


James Lorimer Ilsley: I think so, but I will verify that fact. I think all the costs are included.


John Thomas Hackett: Where would that be reflected? Would it be in the Department of Justice?


James Lorimer Ilsley: No; the wartime prices and trade board; the cost of administration is here. It is not small, by any means. I think it includes the cost of enforcement. There is a report here somewhere. It is in that appendix which I read, administrative expenses and miscellaneous items.


John Thomas Hackett: I do not think that includes the cost of prosecutions.


James Lorimer Ilsley: No; I am sorry, it does not. I will get the cost of administration. I will see whether it does not include the cost of enforcement. I think it does.


John Thomas Hackett: I would ask you, Mr. Chairman, to declare it six o'clock.


William Ross Macdonald: Shall the resolution carry?


John Thomas Hackett: No.
At six o'clock the committee took recess.
After Recess
The committee resumed at eight o'clock.


The ACTING CHAIRMAN (Mr. Golding) :: Shall the resolution carry?


Howard Charles Green: The minister is not here yet.


John Thomas Hackett: Possibly I might direct my questions to the Minister of Veterans Affairs. I find him always most responsive to any questions directed to him. At the six o'clock recess the Minister of Justice had said that he thought I was possibly confused in asking for the cost of these controls, because he considered that prices were one thing and taxes were another. In my submission, the cost of living includes the cost of the commodities a person has to purchase to maintain himself; and it does not make much difference whether the initial cost is high or whether that cost is low, later to be supplemented by a subsidy paid out of taxes, the result is the same. If the ordinary laws of supply and demand were permitted to operate, the vendor of the goods would get his price at once. Now, if the purchaser gets the goods at a low price and the government supplements it by a subsidy, then it seems to me that taxes are a part of the price of these goods though it may be filtered through two or three hands on its way to the vendor.
On that basis I wish to ask the minister if all the housing being provided at present contains any contribution from the government, or whether it is all self-liquidating. I should like to know if these different projects for housing to which the government is advancing money, either to the private individuals, to the builder who is going to rent, or to a corporation organized by the government for the purpose of supplying this housing, are self-liquidating, or if in these various housing projects there is a disbursement that will not come back to the government.
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James Lorimer Ilsley: The housing plans of the government are remarkably free from government subsidy as compared with the housing plans of other countries, as members of this house know. For years the most extraordinary pressure has been brought to bear on the government to go into a system of state subsidies to housing. It is fair to say that these housing schemes are not wholly devoid of possible subsidy, nor have they ever been. Under the National Housing Act there was a guarantee by the government within limits against losses on loans, though I do not think the government was ever called upon to make good any of those guarantees. The housing enterprise scheme is, I think, devoid of subsidy. The interest rate may be low; I am not just sure about that, but I do not think there is any subsidy there. The wartime housing plans through the war may have had some subsidy to some extent, partly by municipalities and partly by the federal government. It is not possible to make a generalization, a comprehensive reply, without examining the present housing act and without examining in detail the schemes or plans under that act. But the proposition I stated at the outset is true, that the housing plans in Canada are remarkably free of subsidies as compared with those of other countries.


Daniel (Dan) McIvor: Mr. Chairman, I rise because I am rather confused. My parliamentary experience is limited to about eleven years. Yet I have never known a resolution to be debated as long as this one has been.


Howard Charles Green: Rubbish.


Daniel (Dan) McIvor: When Mr. Speaker was in
the chair it was debated loud and long by hon. members. When Mr. Speaker left the chair we have had it again. My question now to the minister is: How long? I have some questions I should like to ask, but I shall not ask them at this stage. The resolution has been debated long enough. I do not want to be like the lady, and have the last word, but I do want to say that.


Mr. LOCKHART:: Notwithstanding what
the hon. member has just said, may I inquire of the minister if in his last remarks he referred to the municipalities having been brought in. Their contribution was, I think, mostly by way of lands and services.


James Lorimer Ilsley: That is right.


Norman James Macdonald Lockhart: Almost entirely.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes.
* Mr. LOCKHART:	Then there was quite
a cash outlay, I would imagine, so far as the government was concerned, because I know

of instances where there was a considerable outlay in actual money. I mention that in connection with what the hon. member for Stanstead has said to the effect that if the matter were carefully scrutinized we would probably find there is a large amount involved.


James Lorimer Ilsley: It is not large, at all. With most of the wartime housing, the question as to whether the government make a substantial contribution or not depends upon how much they get for the houses when they sell them.


Norman James Macdonald Lockhart: For instance, in connection with staff houses, and that kind of thing, there would not be much reclaimed.
Mr. MaeINNIS: Those were wartime.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I am talking about wartime houses. Undoubtedly there would be losses in some sales, and there may be some contracts to sell to municipalities, under which contracts the government would take a loss. The municipality would forgo certain taxes in some instances, or collect less in taxes than they collected on other properties. There was some contribution by various governmental bodies at different levels to the wartime housing scheme. But you do not have a comprehensive system to subsidize rental housing, which we have been so urgently pressed to adopt. And my hon. friend has not a very strong point in that regard. If he is seeking to develop the argument-and I assume he is-that subsidies are coming in here and there, and that those should all be brought out in the open in order to make a complete picture, then he has not a very strong point on the housing end of it.


Thomas John Bentley: What I have to ask the
minister has a direct bearing on the matter before the committee. This afternoon, in reply to the hon. member for Lake Centre, or Stanstead, I have forgotten which, the minister quoted from the Ottawa Journal, indicating that, at times, he does place some credence in newspaper reports.
On the front page of tonight's Journal there is a brief item, two paragraphs of which are as follows:
A timetable for full decontrol of the Canadian economy is expected to be announced shortly by the prices 'board.
The coming decontrol order will contain future dates for the lifting of price ceilings from the greatest part of consumer commodities still subject to restriction.
If the report is correct, are we to understand that the government, or the wartime prices and trade board, proposes to announce to vendors of consumer goods the date ahead when prices will be lifted, and allow them to

1S03
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hoard between now and then those goods which are in short supply, and then take advantage of increased prices?
I gave an example of what is taking place at the present time when I referred to Kleenex, ini speaking the other day in another debate. If one wants some things, he finds it almost impossible to get them, while other things that one does not require he can get in abundance.
One can go to Woolworth's or Kresge's, or any of those stores, and buy the flat connections for flatirons or toasters, by the bushel. No one wants them. Everyone has them. However they probably have a large quantity on hand, and want to sell them. But if one wants an ordinary little plug to plug into a wall socket for a lamp, he cannot buy it. Both of these articles are made of exactly the same material, and both must be made all the time. The ones one cannot get now must have been made during the war for the various military offices and for industrial establishments. They must be in existence. Why are they being held up?
If these things are in short supply, or anything from which they are made-I believe there is some metal in them-as is indicated in the newspaper article, does the government propose to tell manufacturers and sellers when they can expect a rise in price, and then take the public for another little ride, such as we have had in the last two years?


James Lorimer Ilsley: I have no knowledge of the newspaper report from which the hon. member read, or as to the truth of it.


Thomas John Bentley: It is in tonight's paper. I do not know whether it is true, either.


James Lorimer Ilsley: There is a slight presumption there might be something in it-but only slight.


John Thomas Hackett: Do not ask what newspaper it was.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I do not know whether there is anything in it or not. All I can do is to bring the hon. member's warning or representations to the attention of the Minister of Finance.


Thomas John Bentley: I am sure the minister must know whether the wartime prices and trade board proposes to commit this action, or not.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Well, I do not.


Thomas John Bentley: You do not know that? That is the answer, that you really do not know?


James Lorimer Ilsley: I do not know.


Thomas John Bentley: But you agree there might be slight truth in it?


James Lorimer Ilsley: Well, perhaps I was a little facetious. The only point I was making about the report was that newspaper reports may or may not be correct. I just do not know. I admitted there was a slight presumption that, if there was something in the newspaper, perhaps there was something in it. But it is so slight that it cannot be taken for a fact.


Thomas John Bentley: Then I should like to express the hope that the government will not permit action of that kind in connection with goods in short supply.


John Thomas Hackett: I do not wish to ask the minister anything concerning the opinion he read to the house the other day, and his comments on the Canada Temperance Act case. I understand he has told the house that in so far as this legislation is concerned, it rests on what it has pleased the government to describe as an emergency.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes.


John Thomas Hackett: And I am not going beyond that for the present. I am now anxious to know just what constitutes the emergency. I believe our purchases from the United States exceed substantially in dollars the amount of our sales to that country, and that settlement is becoming more and more difficult for us because we have not the dollars necessary to make settlement. Through many years we used to sell goods to the United States; but never-and I am not speaking of the war years-in normal years did we sell goods in value anywhere equalling the value of goods we bought from that country. We made settlement with the proceeds of the sale of our commodities to other countries, principally to Britain. At the present time our sales to Britain are not yielding us a return which enables us to meet our obligations in the United States. I am quite aware that the Minister of Justice has escaped from the burdens of the high office which he held for many years, but I know he is familiar with the financial and fiscal situation of the country. I should like him to tell the committee if this shortage of dollars to meet our United States obligations constitutes any part of the emergency with which the government says we are confronted at the present time.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Whether the shortage of dollars constitutes any part of the emergency relied upon?


John Thomas Hackett: Yes.
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James Lorimer Ilsley: I should not like to say anything more about the emergency than what I said in my speech. I set out the nature of the emergency there and I think that is as complete as I can make it.


John Thomas Hackett: I do not wish to contradict the minister; I did not understand that he attempted to enunciate in his speech all the causes of emergency upon which he was relying. He referred to the disparity between the rise in the cost of living in the United States and in Canada since the war. I do not wish to press that point unduly, but I think any fair person is bound to admit that that example is totally without value. We were told that the rise in the cost of living in the United States had been eighteen per cent and in Canada but six per cent. Nothing was put before the committee to show what were the taxes paid by a man in the United States, earning $2,000, $3,000 or $4,000 a year with one, two, three or more children, nor was that set opposite the taxes paid by a man in Canada who was similarly situated. The minister told us quite candidly that he had not taken into consideration any subsidies, bonuses or tax and duty remissions, so I submit that in so far as that example went it was totally without value.
The minister went on to talk about housing and the disorders he anticipated were the restrictions on tenancy removed. He did not dwell extensively upon the person who might find himself accommodated by the lifting of these controls. Nobody wishes to dispossess anyone in order to leave a house vacant; decontrol would have the effect of putting someone else into the house and frequently it would be the owner who by some accident, absence at war or some other cause of that kind, is denied access to his own home and prevented from the enjoyment of that which is his own.
The minister gave some other instances in connection with prices. 1 do not think we can rely upon that information until we know to what extent the taxpayer in Canada pays for what he buys over and above the purchase price in the form of taxes which are given to the vender to make up for what he loses through the control. A number of the instances which the minister gave vanished before the inquiry which has gone on while this resolution has been under consideration.
I do not think the1 minister was attempting to give a full list of all the causes of the emergency. Many people who are familiar with national affairs and who are deeply interested in the prosperity of the country feel that the unbalance in our trade which has

resulted in a shortage of dollars to pay the obligations becoming due in the United States is a cause for grave alarm. Some consider that it is one of the most alarming questions which confront the government and the nation today. I should like the minister to say if, in his opinion, the fact that there is a shortage of dollars to pay debts that are accruing in the United States is a matter of grave concern to the government and if, in consequence, it constitutes a part of what it has pleased the government to call the emergency which is being dealt with in this legislation.
Mr. ILSLEY; It did not occur to me that that was part of the emergency which is the basis for this legislation. This afternoon the hon. member for Broadview pointed out the dangers of a Minister of Justice outlining too fully the exact legal grounds upon which the government relies. For instance, if we were taken into the courts on this we would define, I presume with considerable clearness, exactly the nature of the emergency being relied upon, but I do not think the House of Commons is the place to do that. I consider that the speech I made on March 20 was sufficient to indicate the emergency which would serve as a basis for this legislation and the economic controls. My considerations are set out on pages 1584 and 1585 of Hansard.


Howard Charles Green: Yesterday the minister promised to give us a list of the outstanding orders covering the equitable distribution of goods. Has he that list this evening?


James Lorimer Ilsley: No, I have not.


Howard Charles Green: When could we get it?


James Lorimer Ilsley: I communicated with the wartime prices and trade board and asked them to read yesterday's Hansard and get as much information as was available at the earliest possible day. I have not got that yet.


Howard Charles Green: There was some other
information which the minister promised this afternoon he would get on Monday. Will there be any possibility of getting that information before the bill comes up for second reading?


James Lorimer Ilsley: I cannot tell. Hon. gentlemen are asking for a vast amount of information. I thought I would make as complete a statement as I could on Monday on the question raised by the hon. member for Stan-stead. I should not think there would be much trouble in getting the orders tomorrow respecting equitable distribution.


Howard Charles Green: The bill will not be up for second reading before Monday in any event?

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James Lorimer Ilsley: It could come up for second reading tomorrow if we got the first reading tonight, but we would not bring it up tomorrow.


Howard Charles Green: There are five of these orders in council which deal with people of the Japanese race, and I would ask the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Veterans Affairs and the Minister of Labour for some explanation about these orders. One of them is listed as under the Department of Fisheries; there are two under the Department of Labour and two under the Department of the Secretary of State. The one under the Department of Fisheries is an order in council prohibiting persons of Japanese racial origin from fishing on the Pacific coast. I should like to know whether this order is included in this bill because that restriction is to continue only until this bill expires, or whether the government has not yet decided what its permanent policy will be with regard to allowing Japanese to fish on the Pacific coast.


Humphrey Mitchell: Would my hon. friend make his question more specific? What does he want to know?


Howard Charles Green: I want to know with regard to this order in council, in fact with regard to all five of them, whether they are included in this bill because they are to continue in existence only for a period of one year, or whether it is because the government has not yet decided what its permanent policy is to be with regard to the matters covered by these orders.
First of all, as regards the order in council preventing Japanese from fishing on the Pacific coast, I would point out to the committee that for many years it has been the policy of' the Canadian government that all the fishing on that coast shall be done by white British subjects and Canadian Indians. I have in my hand the annual report of the Department of Fisheries for the year 1925-26- that is twenty-two years ago-and at page 53 I find this statement under the heading "Reduction in Orientals";
The department's policy of eliminating the oriental from the fisheries of the province-
That is the province of British Columbia. *-with a view to placing the entire industry in the hands of white British subjects and Canadian Indians appears to be working out well as is shown by statement No. 10.
Further on, under the same heading I find this statement:
It is the intention to continue this percentage-
Referring to the percentage of reduction of oriental licences each year.
-each year until these industries are entirely in the hands of whites or Canadian Indians.
Those are the fishing industries on the Pacific coast. They have been in the hands of whites and Canadian Indians since the evacuation of the Japanese from the Pacific coast during the war. I want to know with regard to this order in council whether the government intends to continue that policy which has been in force for many years, or whether the policy is to be allowed to lapse with the lapsing of this omnibus bill, and then the Japanese will again be permitted to fish on the Pacific coast.
I have much the same question to ask with regard to the second order in council, which is under the Department of Labour, P.C. 946, and deals with the evacuation and relocation of persons of the Japanese race in Canada; and a similar question with regard to the next order in council, P.C. 7355, which deals with financial assistance to voluntary repatriates to Japan and for liquidation and transfer of their assets to Japan.
Then I should like to hear from the Secretary of State with regard to the other two orders relating to the Japanese. One is P.C. 1665, and is described as "Administration by the custodian of property of persons of the Japanese race"; the other is P.C. 469, "Transfer to the custodian of the property of Japanese evacuees". It seems to me that the two last orders in council are in a different category from the first three. The last two deal with the property of the Japanese in the hands of the custodian.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: What were the first three orders?


Howard Charles Green: The number of the fisheries order is 251, relocation 946, financial assistance to repatriates 7355. I would ask the Secretary of State why the provisions of the last two orders in council were not included in Bill No. 22, which is "an act to continue the revised regulations respecting trading with the enemy". There may be some good reason for not including the orders in council in that bill, but I should like to know what the reason is.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: What was that one?


Howard Charles Green: It is P.C. 469. I should like to know why these two orders were not included in Bill No. 22 and put in statutory form, because it will take some time to work out and complete the closing of the transactions with the property. I would like answers from the ministry on these questions.
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Humphrey Mitchell: I can answer in a few simple words. The policy with respect to the relocation of the Japanese is to be continued during the life of the bill which the hon. member referred to as the omnibus bill. During that period no Japanese will be permitted to return to the protected, security areas.


Howard Charles Green: Did the minister say that no Japanese or that some Japanese will be permitted to return there?


Humphrey Mitchell: I said that no Japanese would be allowed to return there. I think the policy that we have been pursuing in the relocation of the Japanese across the dominion is in their own best interests. With respect to the return to Japan of anyone who desires to go there, that policy will be continued. Already about 4,000 have returned to Japan. I think that answers my hon. friend.


Howard Charles Green: No. The question I asked was whether the policy as represented by these orders in council was to continue in effect only for the life of the omnibus bill, which will be for a period of one year with the possibility of an extension for a further year; is it the final policy of the government that this restriction will apply only for the life of the bill?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: May I say at once that that certainly would be a matter for further consideration.
In reference to the question raised by the hon. member with regard to fisheries and not referred to by the Minister of Labour, may I say I can speak with exactitude in regard to the nature of the order in council. Steps have been taken to prohibit absolutely and completely fisheries along the Pacific coast, at least for a certain period. My hon. friend's problem and mine is not during the period of this legislation; it is the establishment of a certain amount of security for our people over a period of five or ten years, and the protections that this house has seen fit to take and keep for the security of our own people along the security zone of British Columbia. I think that is the worry of my hon. friend. He may feel that this may lapse possibly with the effluxion of time. When these things lapse-I am speaking only for myself as an individual-


Stanley Howard Knowles: The minister had better.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Perhaps even then I can speak with greater authority than the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, because I think the chances are if I want to be here that I have a far better opportunity of being on this side of the house than the hon. member who has interrupted me so unneces-

sarily. May I say that, even though the hon. member for Vancouver South and I disagree on many problems, we disagree with my hon. friend on this problem. This is the problem of British Columbia, and we are as one in our viewpoint with regard to future legislation. There are two great issues


Mr. REID:: There is nothing wrong with that.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: The pioneer behind me says that there is nothing wrong with that, because when no other voice was heard in the Commons with regard to what we look upon as a vital problem in British Columbia, the voice of the hon. member for New Westminster, now joined by the hon. member for Fraser Valley, the hon. member for Comox-Alberni, the hon. member for Vancouver North, the hon. member for Kamloops, the hon. member for Nanaimo and the hon. member for Vancouver-Burrard, was heard. We are all as one; we are no longer a lone band of fighting forces for the cause of British Columbia. In regard to this issue in this house we are a united body. We have to face certain difficulties-and my hon. friend knows that-in regard to our obligations and to the united nations charter, especially under sections 55 and 56. I believe these things can all be worked out satisfactorily. But there is one thing; if I know my province which I have represented now for nearly thirty years, and which my hon. friend has represented for a long time; if I know my province, which had only one lone voice in these halls for many years in regard to this oriental problem, the members from British Columbia, regardless of their political affiliations will stand as one in regard to the maintenance of these principles they have had in regard to the security of our people. It is a question of security in British Columbia. On the establishment of that security we stand together. We want to tell our good friends from the other provinces that we shall stand together upon this issue, come what may.


Howard Charles Green: The Secretary of State has not answered my question.


Mr. GIBSON (Hamilton West):: In regard to the Japanese nationals who were moved from British Columbia, their assets were taken over by the custodian of enemy property under the provisions of the orders in council which are published in the schedule to the bill which will be introduced. I shall be prepared to discuss the orders in council when the bill comes up for second reading. But I may say it is not considered that these orders in council

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will be required beyond the period of the one year, in view of the fact that the custodian expects to have these assets distributed or returned to the Japanese before the year has expired.


Stanley Howard Knowles: May I ask the Minister of Justice a question on this same subject? Will he give me the assurance-let these British Columbia gentlemen express their views if they see fit-that these orders in council are being continued so far as this legislation is concerned only for the period of this bill?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Who can tell?


James Lorimer Ilsley: What is the meaning-


Stanley Howard Knowles: I am not trying to put the
minister on the spot.


James Lorimer Ilsley: What is the meaning of the expression, "so far as this legislation is concerned"?


Stanley Howard Knowles: The answer is so obvious the question is hardly necessary.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Why ask it, then?


George Alexander Cruickshank: To waste time.


Mr. FRASER:: The hon. member wants to pit one minister against the other.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Taking all these other factors into consideration, I am interested in Canada getting back to a basis where we do not make distinctions on the basis of race.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I am anxious for that.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Oh? I have some pretty strong views on this matter, but I am sure my views are shared by the majority of the Liberal members of the house. I should like to be sure that in passing this particular bill we are extending these orders in council with respect to persons of the Japanese race, and that includes Canadians of Japanese origin, for one year only.


George Alexander Cruickshank: Can the hon. member not read?


James Lorimer Ilsley: I want to be courteous, but the remark the hon. member for Fraser Valley has made is the answer, I think.


Stanley Howard Knowles: That it is obvious. That is fine. I want that to be said to the hon. member for Vancouver South.


George Alexander Cruickshank: He is quite capable of looking after himself.


Stanley Howard Knowles: He wants it extended beyond the year.


Howard Charles Green: No; the hon. member must not put words in my mouth. I was simply-


William Henry Golding: Order.


Howard Charles Green: Surely I am to be allowed to speak when an hon. member raises a point against me like that. All I wanted from the ministry was the information as to whether or not this order in council expressed their permanent policy or whether there was some further policy to come afterwards. The Minister of Veterans Affairs has answered that question and I do not know why the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre should try to muddy the waters.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I do not think the hon. member for Vancouver Centre expresses the view of the government.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: If he did not he would not be in this seat for two seconds. At least he has a conscience, which some day my hon. friend may discover.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Then the hon. member is expressing the views of the government?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: His views on the question so far have been the views of the government. If it should come about that the views on these things change the member for Vancouver Centre will no longer be a member of this government.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I am glad to have that on the record.


George Alexander Cruickshank: The hon. member will never be on this side; do not worry.


Mr. FLEMING:: I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Justice with regard to the observation he made this afternoon in connection with those particular orders in the volume which will be the subject of bills introduced later in the session. As to the bill dealing with labour relations, the Minister of Justice indicated that it would be a bill to replace order in council 1003. I wonder whether the bill will include those orders on the same subject appearing on page 6 in the volume which follows the one the minister has referred to, particularly the half dozen orders in council which deal with administration of P.C. 1003 in various provinces.


Humphrey Mitchell: I can answer that. On
the 31st day of the month it will be possible to say that only the main order will be necessary. These four or five orders my hon. friend speaks of arise out of arrangements made by different provinces to suit their approach to labour relations. When this bill goes through we shall be able to eliminate these orders. Ontario takes over jurisdiction on March 31, a few days hence. On May 15
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all the other provinces take back their original jurisdiction.


Donald Methuen Fleming: These particular orders
to which I have referred will be allowed to lapse at that time?


Humphrey Mitchell: Yes.


James Lorimer Ilsley: That is right.


Donald Methuen Fleming: So far as I am concerned, this is my closing observation and I address it to the Minister of Justice in terms of an appeal for a reasonable procedure which will save the time of the house in the long run. I for one had looked forward to the sittings of this committee in the hope of deriving from the ministers a great deal of information which would be of considerable assistance to myself and, I believe, to other hon. members on the later stages of the bill. In view of the ruling that was made, information of a detailed nature has not been forthcoming and discussion has been confined to more general questions.
We have had it made clear during the course of this discussion, quite apart from the opening statement of the Minister of Justice, that the orders were of three kinds: regulative, administrative and legislative. A further break-down is possible. We have had a statement from the minister that there are certain of these orders which are themselves to be the subject matter of bills to be introduced at this session: the old age pensions orders, P.C. 1003 dealing with labour relations, and those dealing with veterans preference in the civil service. I am urging on the Minister of Justice that the course which ought to be taken even at this hour is a course which will lead the government to bring in separate measures. I urge him now, once this resolution is reported, to bring in the bills which they have indicated they intend to bring down at this session on these particular matters, so that at least these matters may be dealt with apart from the omnibus bill and be considered on their own merits.
The difficulty we have been up against- and it was, I think, quite apparent from the time the ruling was made in the committee confining discussion-is that there is bound to be a great deal of confusion and it is confusion which will take up the time of the house. That confusion will not be lessened by simply being told by the government, "Oh, well, you will have an opportunity of getting the information in detail in committee after second reading." It is all very well to assume that the house is just going to slur over the matter of second read-

ing in order to get into committee again. I ask the minister in all fairness and reasonableness to ask himself how members of the opposition, who are here to do their duty as members of this house, are to be able to discern the principle of a bill of this kind, which proposes to extend the life of fifty-seven orders in council-because they have not yet been reduced in number-of three distinct kinds, and containing some orders which are to be the subject matter of bills to be introduced later this session. As the hon. member for Quebec South put it, some of the fifty-seven orders are good and some of them are not good. How can a hodge-podge like that fail to create confusion in the house and prolong debate? I urge on the Minister of Justice even at this late hour that the course of expediency is not that indicated in the resolution, namely, that one bill be introduced for this general purpose, but rather that the government ought to break this measure down into a number of bills so that there can be an orderly approach to them, both on second reading and in committee of the whole, on the part of members of the house.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Carried.


John Thomas Hackett: Oh, wait a minute.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I can assure hon. members in the corner yonder that they are not contributing anything to speeding up proceedings or to clarifying the confusion which has been created as a result of the course which the government has followed to date on this bill. I am appealing to the Minister of Justice on the basis of reason, on the basis of what his own leader had to say in 1931; because, with all respect to the observations made this afternoon by the Minister of Justice, I think the distinction which he; sought to draw between the resolution before the house today and the one which was before the house when the present Prime Minister spoke in 1931, as reported at page 1274 of Hansard of that year, was a superficial distinction. The essence of the objections to the resolution which is now before the committee is the same as that of the criticism in 1931 by the right hon. gentleman who is his leader and other members opposite at that time. The whole point raised by the present Prime Minister, when leader of the opposition on that occasion, was that the course followed was one which was bound to create confusion, that the house would not be able to deal with these matters as it should be able to deal with them, separately, inasmuch as they were matters which were widely divergent in their nature. What would the Prime-

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Minister of today have said in 1931 if he had been faced with this galaxy of orders in council of all possible hues and varieties? The minister himself has indicated three varieties into which the fifty-seven are broken down; and there are other sub-varieties into which they in turn have been broken down. That is my appeal, and I make it on the basis not only that it is in keeping with the stand taken by hon. members opposite in 1931 and 1932 but that it is the course which will contribute to the most orderly procedure and will save the time of the house in the long run.


Mr. TUSTIN:: I have a problem which I should like to put before the minister so that he may give it consideration before the bill is introduced. I have had a good many complaints about the eviction order under the wartime prices and trade board, not with regard to housing but with regard to commercial properties. These complaints have been particularly from men who have served five and six years overseas. In some instances these men were in business before they enlisted in the armed service. They closed up their places of business. They spent five or six years fighting for this country. They came home, and when they endeavoured to get a place in which to do business and rehabilitate themselves, they were unable to do so. In several instances, these men bought properties, but up to date they have been unable to get possession of them.
I should like to cite one particular case, that of a young man who was in business up until 1940. In that year he closed his business and enlisted in the navy, serving five years, four and a half of which were on the high seas. He came back home in the fall of 1945 and endeavoured, as I say, to rehabilitate himself. He was not able to get a suitable place. He purchased a store on the main street of the town. That store had been rented from month to month by a man who had an opportunity during the war to cash in on a first-class business. This young man, in order to get started, finally was able to lease the back part of a small warehouse at one end of the town, for which accommodation he had to pay twice the rent he is getting for his own store, which is situated in one of the best business sections of the town.
I am bringing this forward at this time, for the simple reason that I hope the minister will give it consideration and will see to it that one particular order is eliminated from the bill-which in my opinion would not cause any hardship on any person-and that at least veterans who have served this country for a
number of years may be able to secure possession of their own commercial properties and get themselves back into business again. I trust that the minister will give this matter his earnest consideration, and that he will take it up with the Minister of Finance who, I am sure, will consider it with him.


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: I think there is one field which
has not been covered by the Minister of Justice in any statement he has made so far and which ought to be covered by some member of the government, since it has an important bearing on this whole question. I am very glad to see the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply in the chamber because this is a subject with which he is particularly fitted to deal.
I wish to talk for a moment about the subject of production. We have had a great deal of talk about controls, their effect in maintaining present prices and in preventing inflation. and all the other very worthy objects, and of course we are all in favour of preventing inflation. But the question of production has been giving many of us on this side of the house a great deal of concern, and before we come to consider this legislation it might be fitting for the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply to make a comprehensive statement as to the difficulties he must have found in getting production of building materials under way in view of the policies of the wartime prices and trade board. For instance, I have the statement of the Prime Minister on January 31, 1946, with which I wholly agree, when he said:
The one satisfactory answer to the danger of inflation is more and more production.
Many of us in the house would be much more content to grant continuation of the controls for which the government is asking if we could believe that such continuation, at least under present policies, would lead to increased production and, what is more important, if we could believe that it would not lead to a decrease in production. I have here the report of the wartime prices and trade board up to February 1, 1947. I wish to refer to a few statements made in this report, because they bear closely on the question of how controls affect production.
First, I want to point out to the committee, as I have pointed out before on the question of housing, that last year the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply, who had just started and, I think, most energetically, to stimulate building production, stated in this house what he had to do in order to get
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increased production of various lines of goods. In every case he had to go against the price control policy of the government. He will remember that he had to get more bricks, and that necessitated a price increase of bricks. He will remember that, in order to bring about an increase in the capacity of plants producing plumbing fixtures and materials, he had to give those plants an incentive subsidy. He will remember that in some cases he had to guarantee a market for excess production in order to induce some manufacturers to increase their productive capacity at prevailing price levels. I could go on and on. Of course he has given double depreciation and tax relief, all in order to carry out the same good purpose. That is what concerns me tonight, and I wish to refer to some of the statements in this report of the wartime prices and trade board which bear out what I say. First, I want to refer to page 39, where the production of lumber is being dealt with. I find this paragraph:
In the course of 1946, there were a number of price adjustments applying to lumber and lumber products. They were necessitated by increased costs of production, inadequate output of certain lines, and by difficulties in distribution and grading.
There we have a direct statement of inadequate production. Again reference is made to the increase of twenty per cent made in October, 1946, in the price of red cedar shingles. I remember, as I know the minister will remember, the circumstances under which that increase was granted, after a regular outburst by the people producing those shingles which simply could not be denied. Again on page 40 I find this:
In November, 1946, ceiling prices of doors, screen doors and windows, and door and window frames were increased twenty per cent and a twenty-five per cent increase was authorized in the price of sash ... In the previous April the timber control had made arrangements for the production of a substantial quantity of these doors which had been off the market for some time because of the low basic period prices established for them.
At this juncture I wish to point out that in every case the price advance which brought these goods back into production followed the building up of such a pressure that the wartime prices and trade board could no longer withstand it. That must inevitably be so, and I am not criticizing the officials of the wartime prices and trade board for it. I wonder for how long before the minister got on the job this holding down of production of the things which he stimulated had been going on, and how much production had been lost. If we are to continue these controls is there a policy which will see to it that any ill effect of the 
controls in regard to production is met before it becomes so acute and so obvious that action must be taken? If I turn to the paragraph on other construction products, on pages 40 and 41, I find exactly the same sort of statement made by the person who prepared the report. For instance, I see this paragraph:
The maximum prices of builders' hardware were also raised during the year. Some companies had discontinued the production of loss lines, while those manufacturers who had maintained production were in a position to demonstrate financial need.
Then comes this significant paragraph:
Towards the end of 1946 an additional criterion was admitted in pricing supplies which were urgently needed for the housing programme. When the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply advises that a particular building product is in critically short supply, the board is prepared to consider authorizing an increase in prices to induce additional production, even though the increases may not be warranted on the basis of over-all financial need.
In reading those words, it will be seen that the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply, who, as we all know, is an energetic man, in order to carry out the task laid upon his shoulders of stimulating the production of building material had to get in there and get production going. When he found himself blocked by the then rigid policy of the board he had to bring about a change in that policy, and it is a change that hon. members on this side of the house in this party, suggested long before the minister actually brought it into effect. It would give me much more assurance that these controls eventually would come off, and much more assurance that, while they are on, they would be doing us some good, if I could feel that the policy which was introduced by the minister of reconstruction could be carried on generally, and not only in respect of building materials.
It seems to me that there must come a time in the decontrol programme when production becomes more important than holding prices at an artificial and unrealistic level. The choice of that time may be, as the minister has said, a matter of judgment; but there is a point before complete decontrol which is certainly a matter of judgment and when production must be considered. Perhaps I might give one other example as to what can happen, one which will be within the memory of all hon. members. They will recall a time, I believe it was at the beginning of April last year, when, for about four or five days, one could not buy a pound of butter in Ottawa. Then the four-cent increase was granted, and along came the butter. That is the tendency I am warning about.

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As I have said, I would feel more sure of decontrol, and the policy of the government in connection therewith, if I could feel that the policy being followed was one of making the board the conscious instrument of the production of useful goods which, as the Prime Minister has said, is the only real cure for inflationary tendencies. I might go farther and say that if I could feel that the controls were being administered so as to be the conscious instrument of their own quick destruction, then again I think we would be better off.
I want to pass on for a moment to another matter vitally connected with this whole question of production and the maintenance of controls. It is this, that you have a much better case for the maintenance of the control of prices if, in fact, you control prices. But if you are not going to maintain the price level, and if prices rise, despite the maintenance of those controls, then it is questionable whether the maintenance of the controls is in the interests of the country, or that they are serving the purpose for which they were designed, which, as I understand at the present time, is the negative principle of maintaining price levels and not the positive principle of inducing production.
Let me give- an example of what I mean. The hon. member for Swift Current has already mentioned it. This evening he read from a newspaper report a rumour to the effect that prices were going to rise very shortly. I read the same thing some time ago in a Canadian Press dispatch, and it suggested that because subsidies on many articles would be coming off on March 31, and for other reasons, there would be a considerable increase in prices in the period April-May. It even went so far as to suggest that it was planned to decontrol about half the food items which are now controlled. The report to which I have referred was as specific as that.
If that is to be so, then the case the government makes for these controls becomes less and less useful. Let us not fool ourselves. If we are to maintain the machinery, and not maintain the prices, then hon. members to my left are not getting very much out of the simple maintenance of the machinery, and neither will the people of Canada.
I have referred to a report to which the hon. member for Swift Current directed the attention of the committee. I have another one, which I believe appeared in yesterday's Ottawa Journal. Apparently a delegation of property owners went to see the Minister of Finance. This is a report of what was said by Mr. W. J. LeClair, president of the Property Owners' Association. They presented their
brief on rent control to the Minister of Finance, and Mr. LeClair had this to say to the press:
Mr. Abbott made no comment, but he said he was faced with a decision on the problem very shortly, and that the brief came at an opportune time.
He said he was faced with the decision on the problem of whether or not to increase rents very shortly. Yet in the house the other day, when the hon. member for Eglinton asked the Minister of Finance that very question, and other questions of a similar nature, the minister gave no indication that very shortly he would have to make a decision as to whether or not rents would be increased.
There is one other important point. What was the significance of the resignation of Mr. Donald Gordon and of other senior officials, the picture of one of whom I saw in the paper only the other day-one who had resigned after having given good service during the war emergency? Can one believe Mr. Donald Gordon would have resigned his post had he not felt his job was over? Surely his job was that of protecting against inflation. Must he not feel that his job is virtually over?
When I was in Vancouver just before coming to Ottawa I talked to a house builder who told me it was impossible for him to enter into any contract for construction at a fixed price, because he did not know what was going to happen. This particular builder who was talking to me thought there would be decontrol on March 31, and that after that date he would be able to figure out his future business in the way he had prior to the war.
My suggestion to the government is this, that there will be a time when it will be better to make a clean break than to go on and try to ease it off, meanwhile not succeeding in your intention of releasing controls gradually.
I should like to refer to another matter which has amused me very much, and which again, has to do with the question of production, and whether or not the government can justify the keeping on of controls if it is not going to make them serve the purpose for which they were intended. My hon. friends to my left have taken up a week of the time of the house, when we could have been discussing more important matters-and I do not suppose they will like my saying this to them -in trying to put over what the Minister of Justice has referred to as their social policy. The very reason we in this party say that controls endanger freedom is that, no matter what the Minister of Justice may be trying to do, we know that the members of the party to our left want to maintain these controls as
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an instrument of social policy, and not as an instrument of getting this country going, and of expanding its production-which, after all, is the only means of producing wealth. They want to do it to further their socialist aims.


Mr. NICHOLSON:: They extended production during the war, did they not?


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: But the government might play into the hands of the party to my left, if it does not take into consideration the needs of increased production. In their anxiety to shove the government along socialist lines, they go off into rhapsodies on the evils of big business, and the fact that if you take off controls you play into the hands of big monopolies.


Stanley Howard Knowles: You said it.


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: Hon. members to my left are not really an opposition at all because they are just trying to further their own doctrine. They never try to criticize the policies of the government in order to improve them. In trying to further their own policies they are, in fact, playing into the hands of big business. I want to protect them from playing into the hands of big business. I want to bring to my support some important men whose names are household words among my hon. friends to my left. I am referring to the two officials of the government whom I think they love the best, Mr. Donald Gordon and Mr. McGregor, commissioner of the Combines Investigation Act. I do not think they are helping Mr. McGregor or Mr. Gordon in their work by the way they attempt to use them to further their own socialistic aims. I should like to tell the committee what Mr. Gordon said in 1945, I believe in January, with regard to the removal of price control. This is quoted with approval by Mr. McGregor in the report of the Department of Labour for the year ending March 31, 1945. Mr. Gordon said about price controls:
In some cases the continuance of such controls beyond the emergency would have the effect of restricting competition and production, and of strengthening the position of established businesses. I think you will agree that this would be most undesirable. To create a healthy and prosperous economy more competition and more freedom for newcomers to start up in business is needed-not less.
Then follows a sentence which I commend particularly to the Minister of Justice:
That is one of the principal reasons why such controls have to be eliminated as soon as feasible and before the emergency is quite gone rather than after.
That was an important statement by Mr. Gordon. He gave it as his opinion that the controls should be removed before the emer-

gency is quite gone, rather than after. Strangely enough he has said this to protect the people of this country from the monopolistic position which big corporations might be able to obtain during the period should decontrol be held off too long. I often think that if hon. members to my left paid more attention to facts, particularly to facts' of production, rather than trying to change the social system and not caring what happens to the country while they are doing it, we would all be much better off.
I referred to that passage not only for the benefit of hon. members to my left, but I commend it to the government as something they should keep in mind when they are considering decontrol. What is the emergency that we are facing? How is the government to decide when we have reached a point just before the end of the emergency when they should decontrol? Above all, do not let us go on maintaining controls as a heavy weight on production while at the same time we do not succeed in keeping prices from rising continually and perhaps to not very much less heights than they would rise if there were no controls at all?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Carried.


Mr. HOMUTH:: It will be carried when we are ready to carry it.


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: I understand the tone of the committee and I am not surprised that they would like me to take my seat. However, I want to say to hon. members opposite who are calling "carried" now that, had they called "carried" last Thursday, a week ago tonight, when my leader said in half a paragraph of Hansard that he was prepared to see the resolution go into committee right away, my speech could have been made last Friday. Since all this delay is the direct result of an attempt by hon. members to my left to make this into a tremendous political issue without regard to the rights or wrongs of it economically, I cannot apologize to anyone in the committee for taking up time now, and I do not.


Stanley Howard Knowles: We certainly seem to have bothered the Tories.


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: I do not think you bothered the Tories very much. My hon. friends to my left thought they were going to, but they have been slapped down so many times during the week that they probably wish the week had never happened. Do you want me to go on?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Certainly.

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Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: I had just about finished everything I wanted to say.


Mr. FOURNIER (Maisonneuve-Rosemont):: Your vote is enough; we do not need your opinion.


Stanley Howard Knowles: He did not vote.


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: That was a significant remark from the other side, "Your vote is enough; we do not need your opinion." Hon. members have the duty to express their opinions in this house and other hon. members have the duty to listen to the opinions expressed by hon. members who are on the other side.


George Alexander Cruickshank: Anyone from British Columbia is good; go on.


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: I wish the committee would remain silent so that I can sit down.


William Henry Golding: Order. I ask hon. members to remain quiet while the hon. member is speaking. If we want to make progress on this resolution we hshall not make it by interrupting in this way.


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: The final paragraph on page 41 of the report of the wartime prices and trade board is very important. It reads:
While price increases may follow in the case of some of the other products released from control, they will frequently not exceed the advances which would have1 been necessary if price control had been continued. At the same time, producers will be free to correct anomalies in their price structures which may possibly result in some improvement in the pattern of production.
That is a significant statement and it is one which should be considered carefully by members of the government. Perhaps I have got a long way from what I was saying at the beginning of my remarks. I think it would be most helpful to members of the committee, including the hon. member who does not want my opinion, to hear that of the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply on the effect of controls on construction material. I have just received from his department a pamphlet dealing with building materials and, even though he has stimulated construction considerably, in some cases he estimates that for 1947 the production of cement will be below the production in 1929. It is estimated that the production of building brick will be no less than 330,000,000 bricks below the 1929 production. It is estimated that the production of structural tile will be about 80,000 tons less than the 1929 production. It is estimated that the production of steel pipe, tubing and fittings likewise will be below the 1929 levels. It might be that if the minister's policy of giving price
increases as an incentive to production were followed generally he would be able to do much better than these figures. If that policy were followed throughout the whole range of articles under control we might all benefit from the increased production, which the Prime Minister says is the only real remedy for inflation. I wonder if we might hear from the minister.


Clarence Decatur Howe: The primary question that was asked of me was whether controls had hampered production. I can conscientiously say that since I have been associated with controls, which is from their inception, controls have never been permitted to hamper production. In fact, controls at the moment are greatly stimulating production in several important lines. In my opinion the over-all production today would not be improved by the immediate removal of controls. If the control of lumber were removed today-and lumber shows the greatest discrepancy between export and domestic prices of any commodity-I doubt if one additional tree would be cut. If the control of steel were removed, the over-all production of steel today would drop by at least twenty per cent. The reason is that under control we are able to take the surplus primary production from Sault Ste. Marie and move it to the finishing mills at Hamilton, Toronto and Montreal. We are able to bring billets from Sydney, Nova Scotia, something that is never done under ordinary conditions, and move them to Montreal and Hamilton and convert them into finished steel. Were this not possible, the over-all production of steel in this country would be at least twenty per cent less than it is at this moment.
There are certain commodities such as brick which are influenced by price. There are brickyards which are closed down and some which have been closed for years. One price will cause certain brickyards to open, and a higher price will perhaps bring into production one or two more yards. Then it becomes a question of what the public should pay for that increased production. It may be expensive. If the ordinary production at one price is three-million, is it worth a substantial price rise to bring the production to three-million-one? That is a matter of judgment.
Then we have the effect of price on diverting production from one line to another but not affecting the over-all production. Price differentials will cause a manufacturer to go into one line of production which returns a higher profit as against another line which he is equally well able to make but which shows a lower profit. Maladjustments of that kind
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are, of course, corrected by price adjustments. The production situation is studied carefully by the officers of the wartime prices and trade board and by the officers of my department who are associated with production. Adjustments have been and are being constantly made as we find overproduction in one side of an industry and underproduction in another side. That is particularly true of lumber, where we may find that an undue amount of rough lumber is reaching the market as against finished lumber. The hon. member for Vancouver-Burrard has spoken of trim and finish. The reason for that increase was that we found that that particular side of the industry was falling behind in the requirements, and a price adjustment ,was made to stimulate that side of the industry as against the other side.


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: How long has that been going on?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Since the beginning of price control.


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: I mean the non-production of doors?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Doors is a case in point. The planing mills may find that another type of production is more profitable than doors and they may swing in that direction. If we find ourselves short of doors our remedy is to grant a price increase in doors and stimulate that side of the industry.


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: Was there any considerable delay between the time those circumstances arose and the time when a price increase was granted.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Under a free market how would that be adjusted? It would be adjusted by supply and demand ordinarily, but where the demand is far in excess of supply that adjustment does not take place, and there would be further discrepancies in my opinion in a free market.
I have heard a great deal about ideologies, about the forces of freedom as against the forces of control. But it seems to me there is no principle of that kind involved in this bill. The policy of this goverment is for an orderly return to a free economy, and the bill before us is simply a measure to provide the machinery for effecting that orderly return. It seems to me that the word "freedom" is being used entirely outside its proper context. Someone, for purposes of illustration, spoke of a man falling off the deck of an ocean liner in mid-ocean. That man would have freedom of the seas, freedom to sink or

swim, but still he would not be very happy.
Freedom involves a certain price-how much can the community afford to pay for that freedom? In the case of lumber, if we decontrolled lumber today the cost of that to the people of British Columbia who buy in the retail market would be about $50 a thousand. It would be very fine to have a free market in lumber and no one would desire it more than myself, but that is a high price to charge the people of British Columbia for the privilege of buying in a free market in competition with the present export demand.
That is the case with many commodities. As I say, steel is today controlled, and it is being moved in an abnormal way to meet an abnormal demand, which is partly the result of Canada's inability to buy steel outside its own boundaries. That is a unique situation; it does not ordinarily apply. But that has been the situation for the past year and probably will be for another year. It is necessary for Canada tc get the last ounce of production from its own facilities and to control the price, which otherwise would be a runaway price. For the first time in history, I presume, steel is selling in Canada below the price of steel in the United States. The price of steel in Hamilton, is below the price of steel in Pittsburgh.


John Thomas Hackett: That is a subsidized price, is it not?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes; the movement from Algoma and Sydney is a subsidized price, but the price of production in Hamilton is not a subsidized price. Suppose we removed control from steel. Steel is the basis of all industrial costs; if the price of steel went up five dollars a ton every product that uses steel would rise in price, and one of the principal items would be a rise in the price of agricultural implements. We control steel in order to control a vast list of commodities against an abrupt change in price which would be entirely out of proportion to the cost to the government of control. That, I believe, is the desirable thing to do at this time. It is a thing we hope we shall not have to do for many months. We hope that there will be an easing of the world situation in steel; but, until that easing comes, it is very much in the best interests of the buyers of Canada to have steel control continued.
We are freeing commodities as fast as we can, and we do not always wait for them to get in easy supply. For example, cement was freed from control last summer when cement was a very tight commodity in this country. Why was that done? It was done because the production of cement is in a few hands, and

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we were able to get the assurance of industry that removal of control would not result in price increases; that is, we were able to get that assurance with regard to many articles even though they may continue to be scarce. Of course, articles that come into free supply can be freed immediately so that the law of supply and demand may operate.
It has been said frequently that the removal of price control would play into the hands of monopolies and great corporations; but I can tell the committee from experience that there is less price fluctuation and less taking advantage of removal of control by monopolies and big corporations than there is by a great group of smaller producers. You get a more disorderly market where you have a great number of smaller producers selling on the market than you do on a market that is controlled by a small group of producers.
A great deal has been said about aluminum in this country. I may say the price of aluminum was twenty-one cents a pound at the beginning of the war; it was fifteen cents a pound at the end of the war, and it is now lli cents a pound. That is not a controlled commodity. That price is established because responsible producers believe that a lower price stimulates demand and is a wholly desirable part of their merchandising.
This government is moving to a return to a free economy as rapidly as it can. It seems to be perfect nonsense to cross-examine the government on the meaning and intent of this bill. It is a simple bill; it asks that certain regulations which have been maintained in the orders be allowed to remain for a period of not longer than another year.


Howard Charles Green: No; it can be two years.


Clarence Decatur Howe: No; it cannot be two years.


Howard Charles Green: It can.


Clarence Decatur Howe: It cannot be two years.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Not without further parliamentary action.


Howard Charles Green: The Minister of Justice knows better than that. He told me last night or the night before that-


James Lorimer Ilsley: No.


Howard Charles Green: -the bill can be kept in effect until March 31, 1949.


James Lorimer Ilsley: By further parliamentary action.


Howard Charles Green: The government will still be the government.


Clarence Decatur Howe: This bill can be kept in force until March 31, 1948.


Howard Charles Green: And then extended a year.


Clarence Decatur Howe: It cannot be extended a year. Another bill can be brought in.


Howard Charles Green: The minister is wrong there.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Or addresses by both houses of parliament.


Howard Charles Green: The minister is wrong. We should like to get that cleared up.


Mr. CHEVRIER:: It has been cleared up.


Howard Charles Green: That is not the answer the Minister of Justice gave me the other night.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I happened to be here. I heard the Minister of Justice give the answer last night. I give it now and I suppose we shall be giving the same answer next week. Perhaps by that time my hon. friend will believe it.


Howard Charles Green: This is not the first time the minister of reconstruction has been completely wrong.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Now wait; the minister of reconstruction is not wrong. This bill expires a year from now unless extended by further parliamentary action.


Howard Charles Green: Unless extended by addresses from both houses.


James Lorimer Ilsley: That is parliamentary action.


Howard Charles Green: That is in the control of the government which has a majority in the house, so that in effect the bill can be continued in force until March 31, 1949.


James Lorimer Ilsley: That parliamentary action is no more within the control of the government than new legislation would be, not a particle.


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: I asked another question which was brought up first by the hon. member for Swift Current. I have referred to the statement that the Minister of Finance made about rents. It seems to me that if a lot of these subsidies are coming off on March 31 we shall inevitably be faced with a price increase in April or May, control or no control. The press, which is often accurate on this kind of thing, seems to be speculating considerably on this matter. Do not let us keep on discussing this thing on the basis that the success in keeping prices levelled off which existed during the war can go on. If, in fact, the result of the ending of the subsidies is to mean a price increase anyhow let us hear about it now and not because some president of some association or the press speculates on it.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I certainly cannot nor can any minister state what time and on what
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articles decontrol will take place. Our policy has been made clear; it is the policy which was reiterated by my colleague, the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply. Our policy is to make an orderly decontrol, an orderly return to a free economy. That will take longer for some commodities than for others. With rents it may take quite a while longer than with any commodities. I cannot tell about that, and we cannot announce these things in advance. We do not know when this will take place. There are many reasons why it should not be announced in advance even if we could announce it in advance. The position of this party and of this government is clear. I think the soundness of that position is pretty well demonstrated by the fact that we have been assailed first from one side which says that we should decontrol perpetually and at once and then from the other side which says we should continue controls indefinitely. That is a very good indication of the soundness and moderation of the position we are taking.


John Thomas Hackett: One party believes in perpetual controls; whereas your party and mine do not.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes. There is. very little merit in either extreme position. The position that we are taking here is the moderate position. The trouble with the C.C.F. position is that it seems to assume that controls will be possible indefinitely under our constitution. That is not so. We have to get back to a system of decontrol whether we want to or not. The trouble with the Tory position, if I may say so, is that they talk about this being a disorderly decontrol, and the control they advocate a more orderly decontrol. They are flying in the face of the experience of the United States, and they are flying in the face of probabilities. To listen to the speeches which were made this afternoon, one would have thought that marvellous results accrued from the decontrol in the United States; that prices went up slightly and that that stimulated a vast volume of production and that that volume of production brought prices down again. That is the theory of the hon. member for Vancouver-Burrard, and the theory that some of these hon. gentlemen are putting forward. But it is pure theory. It was not fact. It was not the factual development. I heard one hon. member this afternoon talk about the dip in United States prices, and one hon. member over here was good enough to hand me the last copy of "Business Week", the issue dated March 22, 1947. On one of the early pages are to be found these prices averaged for the week: "spot commodity index, Moody's; December 31, 1931, equals

100". That is the base, par if you like. These are the figures today and for recent dates: last week, 428; that is very nearly four times as high as they were on December 31, 1931.


John Thomas Hackett: Wheat was worth twenty cents a bushel then.


James Lorimer Ilsley: The preceding week, 423-2; a month ago, 396-3; a year ago 271-2; the 1941 average, 198-1.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Going down.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes.


Howard Charles Green: You are comparing it with the depth of the depression.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


James Lorimer Ilsley: That is not the point. I am comparing with a week ago; I am comparing it with a month ago; I am comparing it with a year ago; and I am comparing it with 1941.


Mr. HARKNESS:: Will the right hon. gentleman tell us-


George Alexander Cruickshank: You cannot understand it.


James Lorimer Ilsley: This theory which is held by so many members of the Conservative party, that controls can be thrown off and then there will be a great increase in production suddenly-which is not the case at all-is pure theory again. The theory that there will be an increase in production and that that, in turn, after a slight rise, will mean a drop in prices and the avoidance of inflation is completely denied by the experience of the United States.


An hon. MEMBER:: Not by the way they fell.


James Lorimer Ilsley: These are facts and not theories. They are so serious that the president had to call in this group and have a conference, the report of which I read from the Ottawa Journal this afternoon. I would ask hon. members to consider quite seriously what is the sensible position to take when we are talking about the extension of controls. It is not the extreme position of the hon. member for Stanstead who has inveighed against controls so vehemently in speech after speech. It is not the position of the C.C.F. which talks about our headlong decontrol and playing into the hands of the big interests, and so on, with the mistaken viqw apparently that we can perpetually have controls when, under our constitution, we cannot do that. Those are the extreme positions, and they are not positions which will appeal to the common sense of the people of Canada. I do not

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see why there should be so much delay about this resolution. I think it ought to go through and that we ought to get on with the bill.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Carried.


Lawrence Wilton Skey: Mr. Chairman-


George Alexander Cruickshank: Not again?


Lawrence Wilton Skey: The Minister of Justice has spoken about the common sense of the people of Canada. I want to say that in a great many cases the common sense of the housewife tells her that there is not much control of prices in this country.


James Lorimer Ilsley: The hon. gentleman wants less, apparently.


Lawrence Wilton Skey: The minister has spoken of an orderly return to a free economy and orderly decontrol. I wish to quote to him what appears in the Globe and Mail of today's issue.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh!


George Alexander Cruickshank: Give us Dick
Tracy, too.


Clarence Decatur Howe: If the Globe and Mail stopped publishing, the Conservative party would stop; they would have nothing to talk about.


Lawrence Wilton Skey: This is the financial page.


An hon. MEMBER:: That is worse.


Lawrence Wilton Skey: As a matter of fact, I am quoting the words of a staunch supporter of the Liberal party.


An hon. MEMBER:: George McCullagh?


Lawrence Wilton Skey: No. This is the president of the Robert Simpson Company, Mr. Burton. Will anybody deny that he is a supporter of the liberal party?


Clarence Decatur Howe: We do not know; he has not told us.


Humphrey Mitchell: I should like to ask the hon. member a question. Will he call that the workingman's advocate?


Lawrence Wilton Skey: No. But I am answering the minister's charge that we in this party want disorderly control. This is what one of their supporters says about it, in the second column of the financial page:
Decontrol serious.


Mr. ISNOR:: What is the date?


Lawrence Wilton Skey: Today's date; March 27.


William Ross Macdonald: Order.


Lawrence Wilton Skey: The minister quoted from the issue of March 22. This will be a little more recent.


George Alexander Cruickshank: Hon. members
opposite are talking themselves out tonight. They will not have anything for tomorrow.


Lawrence Wilton Skey: Under the heading I have indicated, the quotation is as follows:
No less serious in its effect on the Canadian economy is the price decontrol policy of the government. The authorities have initiated a policy of piecemeal and so-called orderly decontrol, whereby some prices are adjusted by the prices board while others are removed from the ceiling. The policy of so-called orderly decontrol is in fact one of disorder. It distorts the situation as we change from a controlled to a buyers' market. An over-all and immediate lifting of ceilings would quickly react to the benefit of customers.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: What did Mr. Stevens say about that firm?


Lawrence Wilton Skey: I think they are an excellent firm, and I admire the policy of the man who has, in seventy-five years, built up the business which is a model of merchandising in Canada.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: Mr. Stevens gave it a very rough ride.


Lawrence Wilton Skey: As I say, I admire that man's policy and I admire his opinion, too.
I wish to go one step farther, Mr. Chairman. In this paper there are other comments about how disorderly the decontrol is, but I will not quote them. I shall just return to the point about production which the hon. member for Vancouver-Burrard brought up. Production is the thing we need today. If controls are not hampering production-and I must say the silver tongue of the minister of reconstruction was very effective when he rose just now and said that controls had never been permitted to hamper production-what we on this side of the house want to know is, what is hampering production?


George Alexander Cruickshank: Too much talk.


Lawrence Wilton Skey: Mr. Chairman, I must say that the hon. member for Fraser Valley is pretty productive, too. In this same paper this session taxes are charged as being a thing that is hampering production.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I thought it was controls.


Lawrence Wilton Skey: Heavy corporation taxes, individual income taxes and the denial of purchasing power to the small man in the small income tax group.


William Ross Macdonald: Order. I do not think a discussion of taxes-


Lawrence Wilton Skey: We are discussing controls.


William Ross Macdonald: Order.
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James Arthur Ross: Who pays for the controls?


William Ross Macdonald: Will hon. members kindly allow the Chairman to make a few remarks with respect to the procedure which is to be followed in this committee? I think the discussion at this time should refer directly to the resolution, and I hope that we shall not get into a discussion of taxes. [DOT]


George Alexander Cruickshank: May I speak on the point of order, Mr. Chairman, and I am again speaking from the apex of the Liberal party.


An hon. MEMBER:: What is the point of
order?


George Alexander Cruickshank: Just a minute and I will come to it.


James Arthur Ross: You are a long time in doing so.


George Alexander Cruickshank: I am going to suggest that we realize that there is a large audience here from various parts of Canada. My point is, Mr. Chairman, to give hon. gentlemen opposite every break; let them talk tonight.


Lawrence Wilton Skey: I assure you, Mr. Chairman, that I am not talking for the benefit of any large audience.


George Alexander Cruickshank: Have you not any delegation here, at all?


Lawrence Wilton Skey: Nor am I talking for the strawberry growers, the fruit growers or anyone else. I am trying to get from this government an answer which will be for the good of Canada. I am prepared to argue that if this national emergency, which is referred to in the resolution, is not produced by controls, it is produced by taxes.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Let us abolish both.


An hon. MEMBER:: Let us abolish controls, definitely.


Lawrence Wilton Skey: The heavy taxation which has been imposed on corporations and individuals in Canada is the cause of lack of production. I have good authority for that, and with this I will sit down, having been charged by the hon. member for Fraser Valley with trying to get publicity.


James Lorimer Ilsley: If I may ask a question, have we not by far the largest volume of peacetime production we have ever had in Canada?


Lawrence Wilton Skey: I can answer the minister in a moment. If we have the largest volume of production in Canadian industry it still does not seem to suit the Liberal party, because
[The Chairman.]
when they had their national conference their first resolution read as follows:
That "further substantial reductions" in taxation be made as quickly as possible, to "stimulate consumption at the levels required to support high production and employment."


Mr. ARCHIBALD:: Mr. Chairman, I would not have spoken, but I realize that the Tories are going to speak all night anyway, so that I might as well say a word.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Go ahead.


Harry Grenfell Archibald: You may not enjoy it over there, but at least it may have more sense to it than what has been coming from my right. I have listened to this debate with a great deal of interest, especially to the remarks of those lawyers who have said that if controls continue they will interfere with the constitution. That bogey has already been dragged up in human society since the day of the first man; yet constitutions have been changed and they will be changed in the future. They tell the story of Thomas Carlyle-


An hon. MEMBER:: Going literary?


Harry Grenfell Archibald: Yes, going literary for a purpose. He was once at a banquet and observed the gentlemen attending that banquet laughing at some of the political ideas being expressed at that time. He stood it as long as he could and then said, "Gentlemen, there once was a man named Rousseau, who wrote a book called "The Social Contract." The gentlemen of that day laughed at the ideas contained in that book, but their skins went to bind the third edition." The people of this country are going to demand fair wages and a - high standard of living, and if the constitution gets in the way it will be brushed aside. It is a man-made institution, and it can be changed.


An hon. MEMBER:: That is revolution.


Harry Grenfell Archibald: That is revolution, my hon. friends say. I noticed that the other night the hon. member for Vancouver-Burrard did not have enough sand in his craw to rise in his place and vote, because he said it might be construed as a vote for a socialist resolution. He said it was the responsibility of a member to speak in this house. It is also the responsibility of a member to vote in this house.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


George Alexander Cruickshank: On a point of
order, Mr. Chairman, nobody is going to tell me that the hon. member for Vancouver-Burrard, of all people, has not sand about anything.

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Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Mr. COCKERAM:: Especially somebody
who did not fight in the war.


Harry Grenfell Archibald: Mr. Chairman, I should like to bring to the attention of the hon. member for Fraser Valley the fact that there are various types of courage. There is physical courage and there is moral courage.


George Alexander Cruickshank: I want to tell you he has them both, as compared with anybody over there.


Harry Grenfell Archibald: At least we have
enough sand to stand on our own feet and vote for the principles in which we believe.


William Ross Macdonald: Order. It is very' necessary at this time that the discussion be confined strictly to the resolution, and that hon. members do not refer to previous votes in this house.


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: With all deference to
your ruling, Mr. Chairman, -I believe I should have an opportunity of referring to what the hon. member has just said.


William Ross Macdonald: I will not deprive the
hon. member of that. I hope, however, the discussion will not continue.


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: I shall be very short.
I shall not say anything about -what the hon. gentleman said about me, but I am glad he raised the point. I am glad to have an opportunity to explain the matter to the house once more, because the other day I did not have enough time to explain fully why I did not vote during the division on the motion that the Speaker leave the chair for the house to go into committee on this resolution. That vote was forced by the members of the C.C.F. party for no purpose whatever except that they thought they could get some political advantage out of wasting the time of this house by bringing on a vote which they should have known would be resolved 100 per cent for the motion.


William Ross Macdonald: Order. I think probably both the hon. member for Skeena and the hon. member for Vancouver-Burrard have been out of order, and I would ask them to speak to the resolution. I am not going into any discussion as to why I think they are out of order, but I believe we have had enough of this discussion. Does the committee not feel that we should get back to a discussion of the resolution?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Alan Cockeram: On a point of order-


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: Mr Chairman, I am not content to leave this unanswered. I want my opportunity, if necessary on a question of privilege, to answer my hon. friend, and I shall be but a moment more. I simply want to say that in the first place that vote was silly and unnecessary. I would have voted for the resolution; until it came my turn to vote I had determined to support the motion that the Speaker leave the chair. Of course I would have done so, because even the most ardent opponent of all controls would want to go into committee to discuss the matter. But when I heard the catcalls and laughter from members of the house to my left, in the C.C.F. party, and across the way on the government benches; when I even heard ministers suggesting that because we voted for a simple motion to go into committee we were voting in a different way than we had been speaking, or voting for socialism, or for something other than the resolution itself-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: I had to come down here when the division bell rang, but I determined that I did not have to stand up and be dragooned into voting on a silly division, if hon. members were going to take it that we were voting on something other than the motion that the Speaker do leave the chair. [DOT]


Harry Grenfell Archibald: On a point of order-


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: I hope I have made myself clear on that point.


William Ross Macdonald: I think the hon. member for Vancouver-Burrard has explained his position. As I said before, this evening a good deal of unparliamentary language has been used. I do not believe it should be necessary for the Chairman to rise every few minutes and call hon. members to order. I believe most hon. gentlemen know when they are using unparliamentary language, and I hope they will desist. The resolution before the committee is with respect to the expediency of introducing a measure to provide for the continuation of certain orders and regulations.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Question. -


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: In conclusion, may I just say to the hon. member- for Skeena that I will look after my vote if he will just look after his.


Harry Grenfell Archibald: Well, Mr. Chairman,
I had a friend in the old country who had a dog. He used to say, "I'll kick you if you bark, and I'll kick you if you dinna bark."
It doesn't matter what you do; that is the Tory attitude.	.
1S20
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Gordon Knapman Fraser: And you sneer all the time.


Harry Grenfell Archibald: Don't strain that pipsqueak treble tone or you'll ruin it.


Alan Cockeram: Why didn't you put on the uniform during the war?


Harry Grenfell Archibald: You're a liar; I had it
on.


Alan Cockeram: Yes, in the home service, or something like that; and don't say that.


Harry Grenfell Archibald: Don't you tell me what to say.


William Ross Macdonald: Order. May I ask hon. members of the committee to assist the chairman in maintaining order, and proceed with the business of the committee. The hon. member for Skeena has the floor.


Harry Grenfell Archibald: I was doing all right. It is said the C.C.F. has advocated controls for the sake of controls. Nothing comes about, even in the economic field, because people will it. It comes about through necessity. Certain conditions will come up which will force control by this country or any other country, whether it likes it or not.
For example, I have a clipping here from one of the daily papers, which refers to planning for economy, and it states that because of the absolute misery in Europe they have been forced to plan on an international basis. We here shall have to recognize, in governing ourselves, that we must trade with this country or that country on an international basis of planned economy.
I have here an article from the Montreal Standard, of last Sunday called "Nature Limited." It points out what is happening to our natural resources, and deals chiefly with natural resources in the United States. But in that respect it highlights what could possibly happen here within a few years, inasmuch as United States capital is moving into this country in tremendous amounts, and exploiting our natural resources. Let us read about what is happening in the United States:
During the war the United States mined more than five billion tons of minerals. Included in this total are over 516 million tons of iron ore-far in excess of anything produced by one nation in a similar period. As a result of this enormous drain, twenty-one United States minerals have now dwindled to the point where there is less than a 35-year peace-time supply left. Among them are petroleum, copper, lead and zinc, in the production of which the United States led the world for many years.
W. E. Wrather, director of the United States geologic survey, recently released the following estimates for the lifetime of reserves of these

metals now remaining in the United States. Copper, 13 years (based on present proved reserves and the present rate of consumption); lead, 4 years; zinc, 10 years. When these are gone, United States industry will be forced to rely on imports and her defence potential in the event of a future war would be seriously affected.
It goes on to point out that the Americans will be coming up here hunting for lead sinkers for fishing lines. They will be souvenirs in that country. In his closing paragraph, he had this to say:
We have been lapping the cream off the earth's resources and now the cream is almost gone. If wars and waste continue, we may some day discover that the pitcher itself is dry.
In a few years, sir, we shall be forced to recognize that we have not unlimited resources, and that we will have to conserve them. We shall have to plan the development of our resources on a national scale.


Mr. LENNARD:: What is the hon. member reading from?


Harry Grenfell Archibald: I read it from the Montreal Standard of last week.


Frank Exton Lennard: What is the date?


Harry Grenfell Archibald: It was the Sunday edition.


Frank Exton Lennard: What date?


Harry Grenfell Archibald: It is the magazine section; there is no date on it.


Frank Exton Lennard: That is ten years old; not this year.


Alan Cockeram: He is reading the funnies now.


Harry Grenfell Archibald: The government is
seemingly taking great credit now for the fact that it is going in for orderly decontrol. But the fishermen on the coast do not think the government is going in for orderly decontrol. The price of halibut gear has gone up


George Alexander Cruickshank: Is that the Japanese fishermen?


Harry Grenfell Archibald: Mr. Chairman, I will put my position quite clearly on this Japanese issue right now.


An hon. MEMBER:: You would lose an election on it.


Harry Grenfell Archibald: Wait a minute, now.


William Ross Macdonald: Order. I feel it would be out of order to discuss the Japanese question at this time. There will be other opportunities to discuss that.

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Harry Grenfell Archibald: I will abide by your ruling, Mr. Chairman. The price of halibut gear here-


An hon. MEMBER:: Stick to fish.


Harry Grenfell Archibald: -has gone up seventy-one per cent.


George Alexander Cruickshank: Tell us about the Japs.


Harry Grenfell Archibald: And the fishermen on the coast are finding out who the real Japs are.


George Alexander Cruickshank: Tell us about the Japs.


Harry Grenfell Archibald: That is what I am telling you.


William Ross Macdonald: Order.


Alan Cockeram: He is a great supporter of the Liberal party, this fellow.


Harry Grenfell Archibald: According to the report in the Calgary Daily Herald of February 1, 1947:
Prices and trade board officials commenting on higher cotton prices:	In the case of cotton
products, the subsidy has gone down nine cents a pound, which means an increase of from 17 to 20 cents a pound for cotton yarns and fabrics. Although this means a 60 per cent jump in the price of raw cotton to primary mills, retail prices of the finished products will be held to a 25 per cent increase.
Cotton, is a basic material in halibut line, and it went up seventy-one per cent. But the price of fish has not gone up seventy-one per cent; it has gone down. And the fishermen are going to get caught in the vise. They do not want to be driven back to the poverty-stricken level they had during the depression. And that is the effect of this decontrol. It is precipitous. This seventy-one per cent is having its effect on those men. I want to bring to the attention of the government the fact that decontrol, as advocated by the government, is having a detrimental effect on the standard of living of the workers in this country.


Mr. PEARKES:: Mr. Chairman, with infinite patience I have been sitting through this rather undignified performance this evening, because I wanted to ask one simple question, to see if I could get some assistance in helping the returned men of this country who are trying to establish themselves in business. I have had quite a number of cases brought to my attention, where men have set up some little business where they have got assistance, or hope to get assistance from the new act which has been passed to assist them in starting up business, only to find that they have not been able to get the required quantities 83166-116
of the various commodities to start business, simply because they were not in business in 1,930-or possibly it was 1941.
I could give a number of instances, but I am thinking at the present time in particular of three men from the Royal Edmonton Regiment who started up a steam laundry and who, after operating for a couple of months or so, found they were unable to get their ration- if I may use that word-of soap, because they had not been in business in 1939, or 1941, in each of which years they were overseas. Is there any way in which that form of control -and I do not necessarily mean price control, but use the word in its broader sense-can be removed in order that assistance may be given to veterans who are anxious to reestablish themselves in small businesses, so that they will be able to get the commodities which will enable them to carry on whatever business they are going into.


James Lorimer Ilsley: The question is one which
would have to be answered by the Minister of Finance. I am sure he will be prepared to answer it when we get into committee on the bill. Commodities which are subject to equitable distribution must be very much limited in number. I would be surprised to learn that that is the situation at the present time so far as soap is concerned.


George Randolph Pearkes: This happened in either December of last year or January, of this year, before the house assembled.


James Lorimer Ilsley: The complaint is usually about sugar.


George Randolph Pearkes: I am talking about soap.


James Lorimer Ilsley: There are very few commodities in connection with which that situation arises. It might very well be that if there were no controls those men could not get anything. Certainly, if they were able to get anything it would be at the expense of somebody else; somebody else would go short. In those circumstances it seemed the fairest thing to do was to make an order for what is called equitable distribution; that is, distribution on the basis of the business done at a certain period.


Mr. MacNICOL:: The soldier could not do anything when he was overseas.


George Randolph Pearkes: I want to put in a special plea for the men who were overseas when this deadline was set. They have returned, and the reason given is that they were not in business in 1941 and therefore cannot get allotments of the different commodities they require.


Frank Exton Lennard: Following what the hon. gentleman has said, I do not know anything

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about sugar, but I do know there are many chaps in the district from which I come who were butchers in the army. When they came home they applied for butchers' licences, but they were refused because they had not been established butchers before they went overseas in 1940 or 1941.


Alan Cockeram: I listened this afternoon to the hon. member for Quebec South and, in substance, I am entirely in agreement with him. 1 believe the minister is doing something today which this country will not approve in the days to come. He is putting fifty-seven bills, some -of which we can approve and others which we disapprove, in one bucket, and he is saying, "You will take them all or you will leave them".


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


Alan Cockeram: That is what the
minister is doing. I am one of those who believe that the future development of this country is dependent on private enterprise. The minister may be one of those who come from Nova Scotia who does not think that, but I happen to be interested in the development of the north country. I believe the minister and the Minister of National Revenue should take stock of what they are doing. If we want to do something for this country in the days that are to come we should not be confining our development to the settled areas; we should be pushing our frontiers back to the north, if necessary, right to the Arctic circle.
There are many hon. members who know that industries in their cities and towns derive a great deal of benefit from the great mining industry which has been developed in this country. In Labrador, possibly one of the greatest iron mines in the world is being developed today with Canadian capital and Canadian labour. In Quebec and Ontario, many low grade mines which had been developed have been forced to close because of the action last June of the Minister of Finance. In northwestern Ontario there is considerable new development in mining. In Manitoba you have the Snow lake area and the new Lynn lake area. That is likely to develop into another major nickel area. Then you go into Saskatchewan, Alberta and the northwest territories where you have the Yellowknife and many other mining areas being developed. These different developments are not taking place because of the good graces of this government. By means of orders in council and the manipulation of exchange this government has apparently decided that it does not want any more new mining areas in the country.


William Ross Macdonald: Order.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Sit down.


Alan Cockeram: Do you think I should?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Yes.


William Ross Macdonald: I did not interrupt the hon. member for York South and I think I gave him a good deal of leeway. What I am doing now is to draw the attention of the committee once again to the resolution and to the rule that the discussion in committee must be in accordance with the terms of the resolution. Is it the pleasure of the committee that I should report the resolution?


Alan Cockeram: No. I have a definite idea in my mind-


An hon. MEMBER:: No!


An hon. MEMBER:: Impossible!


An hon. MEMBER:: Get it out.


Alan Cockeram: This industry meant much to this country during the depression. If the country should again come to a period of depression it will mean much in the future. While there may not be any special section of this resolution under which I could speak, I felt that I should say that.


John Thomas Hackett: I do not think what I have to say will infringe the rules of debate or will cause ill-will or bad temper on the part of anyone. The Minister of Justice, in language to which I take no exception, has characterized me as an extremist. I wish to say that I have been consistently against controls. I believe that during war, controls were necessary, but, when the war was over, their usefulness came to an end. I have always believed that the sooner we were rid of them, the better it would be for Canada. Approximately eighteen months have elapsed since we emerged from the war, and, roughly speaking, we still have all the controls we had when hostilities finished. I draw to the attention of the minister the fact that quite possibly he has the votes of the committee with him. But if I am an extremist I would have him know that I speak the feelings of a vast majority of the population of the province of Quebec.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


An hon. MEMBER:: Prove it.


John Thomas Hackett: Just a moment. I will prove it in this way. I will ask any member for a rural riding in Quebec to stand up and say his people favour controls. It is all very well for hon. gentlemen to jeer, but where are the members from rural ridings

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who stand up and say that they favour these controls and that they believe an emergency exists.
The minister is entitled to his own views. As I am probably the only member from the province of Quebec who is not more or less under the influence of the whip of the party of the right hon. gentleman opposite, it is my privilege to express a view which is prevalent and, I believe, dominant in that province.
I wish to remind the minister of another fact: between the two German *wars there has completely vanished from Europe the forms of parliamentary government which existed before the first German war, and most of those parliamentary governments have been dissolved by following the path that this parliament is following. First, there was control; then, there was a dictatorship, and then, parliamentary government disappeared. If I appear to be somewhat reluctant to cast in my lot with hon. gentlemen opposite it is because I cherish, revere and respect the parliamentary institutions which we have inherited and by which we have become a vigorous and important people in the world, although our numbers may be somewhat small.
I hope that the right hon. gentleman will not take amiss what I say now, even though it be somewhat personal because I can assure him that I have a great regard for the services which he rendered during a most trying period, and I hope I have a measure of his respect. But I believe that the ordeal through which he passed when he was galvanizing Canada into great financial effort, when he stood solid against a horde of influences that might have caused him to waver, has totally unsuited him in mind, in outlook and in bearing for the period of reconstruction. I believe that the right hon. gentleman is convinced that the system which he struggled so manfully to maintain during the period of the war is one which must endure, and in that, sincere though he be, I believe that he is in error and is inclined to be a little harsh in his judgments of those who do not see eye to eye with his point of view.


Mr. MARQUIS:: I wish to say to the hon. member that the farmers and the working men of my constituency are ready to accept those controls which are necessary to protect them against the abuses of capitalists.


Donald Methuen Fleming: May I ask the hon. member if the working men and farmers to whom he refers support all fifty-seven of these orders in council?


Eugène Marquis: We will discuss that in due time.
83166-116J
Resolution reported, read the second time and concurred in. Mr. Usley thereupon moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 104, to provide for the continuation of certain orders and regulations of the governor in council for a limited period during the national emergency arising out of the war.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.


Howard Charles Green: May I ask the Minister of Justice when he expects to bring on the second reading of this bill?


James Lorimer Ilsley: It will not be tomorrow. We expect it will be on Monday. If there is any change in that we shall announce it tomorrow.


Howard Charles Green: Is the bill available now?


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes.



GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES


[Stage Direction]
Hon. LIONEL CHEVRIER (Minister of Transport) moved that the house go into committee to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to present a bill to provide compensation to government employees who have suffered death or disability by accident:, arising out of or in the course of employment or by reason of an industrial disease out of or in the course of employment and to the dependents of such employees; such compensation and. costs as may be awarded and the costs of administration to be paid out of the consolidated! revenue fund. With provision also empowering the Minister of Finance to require employers to pay the compensation awarded their employees together with expenses of administration.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Macdonald (Brantford City) in the chair.
John Ritchie MacNicol: Is the minister not going to make a statement?


Lionel Chevrier: Mr. Chairman, the principle contained in this resolution is to recognize and extend the principle of compensation. The Government Employees Compensation Act enacted in 1918 provides for compensation to those who are injured or whose death may be caused by an accident arising out of and in the course of their employment. That act is known as chapter 30 of the revised statutes of 1927, as amended by chapter 9 of the statutes of 1931. The principle recognized therein is one which has been asserted over the years. This resolution is the forerunner of a bill which will extend the principle materially. The compensation which will be provided is that which is already provided under provincial legislation for persons other
1824	COMMONS
Compensation for Government Employees_
than employees in the service of His Majesty under the law of the province in which the accident occurs.
The liability and the amount of compensation are also provided under that legislation. Since 1922 compensation for the employees of His Majesty has been in the hands of and administered by the Department of Transport. Claims arising from accidents or otherwise are handled differently according to the provinces. I think it is safe to say that in all provinces except Quebec the application is made directly to the workmen's compensation board of the province in which the accident or death occurred. The Department of Transport, by agreement with the provincial boards, is able to deal with the accidents through the boards and to grant compensation in accordance with the schedule of tariffs set out in the provincial acts.
In Quebec the procedure is somewhat different, in that the department deals directly with the individuals, except in cases which I shall mention when we come to the bill.
The resolution extends the principle of compensation, in that it would include disabilities and deaths arising from industrial diseases.
The resolution's main features may be summarized under the following heads: (1) it continues the Government Employees Compensation Act as it now stands; (2) it provides compensation in cases of disablement by industrial disease, as I said a moment ago, according to the law of the province in which such disease is contracted; (3) it empowers the governor in council to declare employees of government companies, corporations, boards or agencies to be employees subject to the act; (4) it provides compensation for employees residing in the northwest territories in accordance with the law or ordnance of the Yukon territory; (5) it provides compensation for employees ordinarily resident in a province who are injured or disabled while performing the work in the Yukon territory or northwest territories, according to the law of the province where such employee is ordinarily resident; (6) it provides compensation for employees who are injured or disabled while employed outside Canada; (7) it empowers the governor in council to make regulations providing compensation for employees who contract pulmonary tuberculosis in government hospitals. There are several extensions of the principle of compensation as outlined in the original act, and I shall be glad to discuss them in greater detail when the bill is before the house.


John Ritchie MacNicol: I had something to do with the first compensation act, which, I

believe, was enacted in Ontario, because I have always been a firm believer that workmen should have the utmost compensation when injured in the work in which they are engaged.
I have some memory of what we have passed in this house before. I can understand why the government would pass a Workmen's Compensation Act pertaining to the northwest territories. The minister also included "outside Canada", presumably where our men are working. There is probably some good reason for that; but I was always under the impression that workmen were adequately protected under the present compensation acts of the provinces.
So far as Ontario is concerned, it has a number one workmen's compensation act. I am not 100 per cent satisfied with the details of the administration of it. The act is a first-class one, and I shall explain in a moment why I am not satisfied with the administration of it.
If the government passes an act along the lines indicated by the minister it will have to set up some considerable staff. The administration of the northwest territories will take-


Lionel Chevrier: Not a larger staff than now exists.


John Ritchie MacNicol: In the provinces the workmen's compensation administration have on their staff experts all along the line. The minister mentioned industrial diseases. If this new legislation is to consider industrial diseases I presume that it will be something new in the northwest territories. They have not been long enough in the mining business in that section of the country, and certainly not in the manufacturing business, to have had much experience in industrial diseases. Thus, the department will require a staff of experts competent to decide what particular industrial disease has caused- the sickness or death of an employee. That will mean a large increase in staff.
What I am worrying about at the moment -and I am not finding any fault with it-is that we are to set up another big department.


Lionel Chevrier: May I interrupt the hon. member. Perhaps I should have covered this when I made the original statement. The Ontario act and the provincial acts do not cover government employees. It has been the policy in the past to use the service of provincial boards. That is what will be done in this case except in one or two instances which may be mentioned when the bill is up for discussion. Generally, I think I am safe in saying that it will not mean an increase in staff. It may be that, because of government regulations which will have to be enacted/ to cover

Compensation jor Government Employees
pulmonary tuberculosis, one or two more may be needed, but certainly nothing in the nature of what my hon. friend has in mind. I can assure him of that.


John Ritchie MacNicol: That is a good explanation. I want the minister to believe that I am in support of the bill. I am just seeking the widest information that I can get.
The minister particularly mentioned industrial diseases. That is something with which I am familiar because of my many years' connection with a large industry. I have seen many men lose their lives as a result of industrial diseases, and that is what I had in mind a few moments ago when I said I was not 100 per cent satisfied with the operation of the Ontario act in that regard. I may say that many many cases have come to my attention in the last twenty-five years, cases of employees of industry who lost their lives because of industrial diseases.
I had one case brought to my attention not so long ago, that of a man whom I knew. He was a moulder ini a plant. It is not necessary to mention the name of the city or to specify the plant. He contracted a disease which caused his death. I am certain that he contracted the disease because he worked under a skylight which was unprotected. There was no glass covering between him and the skylight. In due course he died. In spite of anything I could do to obtain compensation for his wife-I was certain he died through a disease contracted from the unprotected skylight-I could make no impression on the board because they stated they had to take the decision of. the medical staff. I hope that in the bill which the minister is going to bring in, under such circumstances, if a workman in any plant over which the government has control contracts an industrial disease and the medical staff say that the disease was not contracted through his employment, he or his family will have an appeal from the medical staff. If the minister has not that in his bill, then I hope, when the bill is brought down and I bring the question up again, he will be able to assure me that the workmen will have an appeal from the medical staff. I do not think for one moment that the medical staff of any compensation board should have the last word on whether a workman has come to his death through disease contracted in a plant, if they say he has not. Doctors know a great deal, I admit, but there are some industrial diseases they do not know to the extent of 100 per cent, in any event.
I myself worked in industry for approximately a quarter of a century and, as I said a few moments ago, know of many men dying
from having contracted industrial diseases. They died from that cause, in spite of what the medical staff of the compensation board said. If I were in the Ontario house or had any connection whatever with the workmen's compensation board in Ontario, I would do my best to have the Workmen's Compensation Board Act amended to such an extent that the report of the medical staff in reference to an industrial disease would not be final until the workman or his family was allowed to appeal to a judge or a court. I would1 take the decision of the judge more readily than I would take the decision of the medical branch of the compensation board. I hope that when the minister brings his bill in he will, having in mind what I have said, be able, to assure me in any event that a workman in any government plant, or a miner, in the Northwest Territories, who contracts an industrial disease, will have a court of appeal above the medical staff of the board.
I do not know that I have much more to say about the matter tonight. I am not opposing introduction of the bill. I shall be prepared to discuss it when it does come in, and its various clauses. I have no doubt that I shall be in a position to support the bill very generally. The reference I have just made to the medical branches of compensation boards is a result of many contacts with them in contests for compensation to families of men who, I knew, died from an industrial disease. I hope that there will be some provision in this bill to give the workman an appeal above the medical branch of a board.


Gordon Benjamin Isnor: There is just one question
I desire to ask the minister before the resolution is carried, and it arises out of the wording of the resolution where it says "employees who have suffered." Does that mean that it is retroactive and will take into consideration employees' cases which are now being considered?


Lionel Chevrier: Yes. That is covered
by a section in the bill which will protect any cases which are now pending.


Angus MacInnis: The minister mentioned
two compensation acts, the act of 1918,1 think, and the act of 1931. Is this a bill amending those acts, or is it a complete bill in itself?


Lionel Chevrier: It is a completely new
bill repealing the old acts and extending the principles contained therein.
Resolution reported, read the second time and concurred in. Mr. Chevrier thereupon moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 105, respecting compensation for government employees.
1S26
House of Commons

Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Tomorrow the Minister of Finance will ask for interim supply, as he has already informed the leaders of the various parties and groups in the house, and also ask that we deal with further supplementary estimates for 1946-47, which amount to approximately $55,000,000. Then we shall continue with the discussion of the bill in the name of the Minister of Transport; then second reading of Bill No. 26, also in the name of the Minister of Transport; then there is a bill in the name of the Secretary of State in regard to trading with the enemy. I think that will probably be sufficient.
Mr. MaeINNIS:	In what order will they
be taken?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: As far as possible in
the order I have mentioned.


Howard Charles Green: Will the house be sitting
tomorrow night?


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: No. On account of
certain obligations elsewhere, I understand that the house will not sit tomorrow night.
Mr. MaeINNIS:	What are the particular
reasons why the house is not to sit tomorrow night? It seems to me that we have all the time in the world, judging from the way we are carrying on.


[Stage Direction]
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
Friday, March 28, 1947