1947-12-08

REPORTS AND PAPERS

Right Hon. W. L. MACKENZIE KING (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, I desire to lay on the table the following documents:
Two copies in English and in French of:
(A)	On general agreement on tariffs and trade-
1.	Speech of the Prime Minister in London, England, on November 17, 1947.
2.	Final Act of the second session of the preparatory committee of the united nations conference on trade and employment, held at Geneva from April 10 to October 30, 1947, and related documents. (Treaty series 1947, No. 27).
3.	Schedule V to the general agreement on tariffs and trade.
4.	Press release of November 17, 1947, with respect to the general agreement on trade and tariffs.
5.	Schedules of tariff concessions to the general agreement on tariffs and trade.
(B)	On emergency economic measures- -
1.	Speech of the Minister of Finance in Ottawa on November 17, 1947.
2.	Order in council P.C. 4678 of November 12, 1947, with respect to import restrictions.
3.	Order in council P.C. 4858 of November 20, 1947, amendments to the foreign exchange control regulations.
4.	Explanatory notes on import restrictions.
5.	Foreign exchange control regulations with respect to travel by Canadian residents.
6.	Notes on travel restrictions.
7.	Summary of proposed tax measures.
Order in council P.C. 3573, September 2,
1947, appointment of the Hon. Milton Fowler Gregg, a member of the King's Privy Council for Canada, to be Minister of Fisheries, vice the Hon. H. F. G. Bridges, deceased.
Order in council P.C. 4443, October 30, 1947, appointment of Ralph Maybanlc, Esquire, M.P.. K.C., to be parliamentary assistant to the Minister of National Health and Welfare.
Order in council P.C. 4444, October 30, 1947, appointment of Walter E. Harris, Esquire, M.P., to be parliamentary assistant to the Secretary of State for External Affairs.
Order in council P.C. 4445, October 30, 1947, appointment of Paul Emile Cote, Esquire, M.P., to be parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Labour.
Order in council P.C. 4446, October 30, 1947, appointment of Robert McCubbin, Esquire, M.P., to be parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Agriculture.
Order in council P.C. 4447, October 30, 1947, appointment of Gleason Belzile, Esquire, M.P., to be parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Finance.
Order in council P.C. 4448, October 30, 1947, appointment of Robert H. Winters, Esquire, M.P., to be parliamentary assistant to the Minister of National Revenue.
Copies in English of the report of meetings between delegates from the national convention of Newfoundland and representatives of the government of Canada.
Copies in English and in French of terms believed to constitute a fair and equitable basis for union of Newfoundland with Canada should the people of Newfoundland desire to enter into confederation.
Copies in English and in French of the "Letters patent constituting the office of the Governor General of Canada, effective October 1, 1947, with appendices reproducing documents relating to the office of the Governor General of Canada in effect prior to October 1, 1947" and an explanatory press release issued by the Prime Minister on October 1, 1947.
Report in English on the audit of the accounts of the federal district commission for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1947.
Right Hon. L. S. ST. LAURENT (Secretary of State for External Affairs): Mr. Speaker, in compliance with section 2, subsection 3 of the Bretton Woods Agreements Act, 1945, I wish to table order in council of September 5, 1947, whereby Robert Broughton Bryce was appointed alternate governor of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.


Hon. J. J. McCANN (Minister of National Revenue):: In accordance with standing order 84 I desire to lay on the table the annual report of the Department of National Revenue for the year ended March 31, 1946, in English and French. I wish to report further, with
Reports and Papers

reference to the export of petroleum and pulp-wood, that no orders or regulations have been issued under the export of petroleum and pulpwood regulations established under chapter 63 of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1927 since the last return made to parliament.
With reference to the Canada-United Kingdom income tax agreement, no orders or regulations have been issued under chapter 38 of the statutes of 1946.
With reference to the Canada-United Kingdom succession duty agreement, no regulations or orders have been issued under chapter 39 of the statutes of 1946, being the Canada-United Kingdom succession duty agreement section.
With reference to the Canada-United States tax convention, no orders or regulations have been issued under the convention relating to succession duties, enacted as chapter 31 of the statutes of 1944 since these were tabled in the house on March 20, 1946.
(For complete list of reports and papers tabled, see Votes and Proceedings, No. 2, December 8, 1947.)
FOREIGN EXCHANGE Canada's holdings of gold and united



STATES DOLLARS

Hon. DOUGLAS ABBOTT (Minister of Finance):: On Friday last the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bracken) asked me to table a statement showing the month by month holdings of gold in United States dollars as of the end of each month since December 31, 1945. I beg leave to do so now.



EXCISE TAX


Douglas Charles Abbott: Since it may be a day or two before we reach the emergency measures, I should like to make a brief statement regarding certain excise taxes which I announced on November 17 I would ask parliament to enact. As members will appreciate, this was a very broad and comprehensive programme, and since announcing it I have received many representations from business concerns and consumers affected.
In these discussions with the industries affected constructive suggestions have been put forward, and in cases where these proposals have not been in serious conflict with our over-all objectives they have been adopted. Needless to say, a minister of finance, cannot discuss these matters with

those who may be affected by them prior to their announcement.
I shall not take the time of the house now to explain in detail the various considerations which in each case led me to modify certain of these taxes. Members will appreciate, however, how important it is to industry to know of any changes in the government's intentions just as soon as possible after decisions have been made, and for that reason I am announcing now the following changes in the excise tax programme which I will ask parliament later to make effective as from November 18.
The tax on electric or gas refrigerators, refrigerating components, oil burners and oil burning equipment generally, will apply only when these items are adapted to household use or for use in apartment houses, places of entertainment, amusement or recreation such as, for example, rinks, halls, clubs and audiforia. At the same time the tax will be extended to cover air-conditioning, cooling or filtering equipment for the same uses. In the case of electric and gas stoves, ranges and heaters, the tax will be withdrawn. Organs for churches will be exempt from the tax on musical instruments. Tooth brushes will not be included in the toilet articles subject to tax. On pleasure boats the tax will apply only to the engines for use in such boats.



LOAN TO UNITED KINGDOM, 1946 INQUIRY AS TO AMOUNTS DRAWN, BY MONTHS, TO DATE

Mr. JOHN BRACKEN (Leader of the Opposition):: With the consent of the house, Mr. Speaker, may I be permitted to direct one question to the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott). A moment ago he answered a question with respect to the official holdings of gold and United States dollars at the end of each month from December 31, 1945. I want to thank the minister for that information. In view of the debate that is now pending will the minister give us an answer to this question at his early convenience? How much has been drawn by Britain to date, by months, on the Canadian loan granted in 1946?


Douglas Charles Abbott: I should be able to give that information tomorrow.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I have in my hand the motion which I placed before the house on

Business of the House
Friday last and which I asked for unanimous consent to introduce. Had that consent been given it would not have been necessary to introduce this motion at this time. However, consent was not given. Here I wish to correct at once a false impression that has arisen. The press in some quarters has indicated that I withdrew the motion. I never withdrew the motion because the motion was never before the house. All I asked for was the unanimous consent of the house to be allowed to introduce the motion which I thought would save time; but hon. gentlemen opposite refused to give that unanimous consent. Therefore the motion could not be put at the time it was introduced.


Mr. GRAYDON:: There was a retreat somewhere.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Yes, on my hon. friend's side.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The other false impression I should like to correct at once, because I think it is advisable that it should not become too current, is that the motion was intended in any way to deprive anyone of his right to speak in the debate on the address in reply. There is no intention of the kind. The government intends to give the fullest opportunity to every hon. member in the house, under the rules, to debate the address in accordance with his full rights. All that the motion had in its intent was that the debate should be begun by the leaders of the parties opposite, myself and another member on this side, and then be adjourned until later in the session when it would be resumed, so that in the meantime the house might have before it the important measures, for the purpose of dealing with which the house had been called at this particular time, and might know exactly what was to be expected of it in the way of procedure between now and the Christmas recess.
The motion reads:
That the debate on the address in reply to the speech of His Excellency 'the Governor General to both houses of parliament be the first order of business on Monday, December 8th instant, and that this order be followed by government notices of motion and government orders notwithstanding anything in standing order 15.
I have on the order paper immediately following that a motion to this effect:
Thait on and after Tuesday the 9th December, 1947, and every sitting day thereafter until Tuesday, the 30th December, government notices of motions and government orders shall have precedence over all other business except introduction of bills, questions by members and notices of motions for the production of papers.
As that motion will be coming forward immediately after this one, I think that part of the present motion which relates to precedence for government business is superfluous; if the house will give me its permission I will ask to be allowed to strike out the concluding words, "and that this order be followed by government notices of motion and government orders notwithstanding anything in standing order 15" so that the motion would simply read:
That the debate on the address in reply to the speech of His Excellency the Governor General to both houses of parliament be the first order of business on Monday, December 8th instant.
I think that will accord with the wishes of the house. It goes the length of simply indicating that today will be the date to begin the debate on the address in reply to the speech from the throne. Perhaps the house will allow me to amend the motion in the way I have indicated.


Mr. COLD  WELL@: Mr. Speaker, does it not require the consent of the house for this motion to be moved at this particular time and in this particular place? I am not going to object to it. I think it is the right place to move it, but as I see it the procedure really should be that the Prime Minister ask the consent of the house to make that motion at this stage. I do not think it is in the proper order. We have not reached government orders. Am I right?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: No; I gave notice of this motion last week. It appeared on the order paper and it is on the order paper now. It had forty-eight hours' notice. Therefore it is quite in order at this moment, and it comes up under motions.


Mr. COLD  WELL@: Under government
notices of motions.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: No; I beg my hon. friend's pardon. If he will look at the rules of the house, Beauchesne, page 41, Citation 130, he will find the following:
The house may, by unanimous consent or upon motion after forty-eight hours' notice, make such alterations in the order of business as it deems advisable.


Mr. COLD  WELL@: With notice. All right.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Citation 132 reads as follows:
The motions allowed on routine proceedings are motions relating ito the business of the house and for the discussion of reports from committees.
I think the motion is quite in order.


Mr. SPEAKER:: Is it the pleasure of the house to adopt the motion?
Business oj the House


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Carried.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


Gordon Graydon: If we accept this motion, Mr. Speaker, I submit that it will have the effect of making it impossible for us to discuss further this question of procedure, because we then go right on to the debate on the address in reply. If that is the case, I do not think we should consent to it.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: No. I have said today already that I intend to follow this motion by the one which appears on the order paper next to it. That will be the next motion. My hon. friends can discuss any matters that they wish that are related to the next motion when it comes before the house.


Mr. POULIOT:: If this motion is adopted, Mr. Speaker, and the debate on the address in reply is the first order of business, we cannot take anything else.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The house can first exhaust its rights under motions. That is as far as I intend to proceed until we come to the next of the three motions which I have on the order paper under my name. Those three can be taken up this afternoon. As soon as they are disposed of, the debate on the address will be proceeded with, if this motion is carried.


Mr. DIEFENBAKER:: I should like to ask the Prime Minister a question arising out of the statement he has just made, to the effect that the motion he placed before the house on Friday was not withdrawn. He said there had been a misapprehension in that regard. But Hansard at page 12 records what took place, and the following appears about half way down the page-after all, Mr. Speaker determines whether or not motions are being withdrawn. He said:
Mr. Speaker:	If there is not unanimous
consent, the motion will be withdrawn!.
Motion withdrawn.
Surely, Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister cannot now say that what is recorded in Hansard and directed by yourself, with the consent of the house, has not in fact taken place.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: With all due respect to my hon. friend and His Honour the Speaker, I submit that there was not a motion put before the house on Friday last. What I asked for was unanimous consent to have the motion put, and that unanimous consent was not given.


Gordon Graydon: On a question of privilege, if the Prime Minister now wants to

change Hansard he should have done so by raising a point of privilege, as any other hon. member would do. Hansard cannot be changed now. However, I think he now knows what I meant when I said he had retreated before.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I had no desire to change Hansard. The Votes and Proceedings is the correct record of what has taken place in the house, and I should be surprised if it does not report matters as I have indicated them. I have not looked at Votes and Proceedings, but I would say that if the motion had been put it would have been recorded there. What I have said is absolutely correct, and I stand by that record of the proceedings of the house, which contains no mention of any motion having been put, so no motion could have been withdrawn.


James Horace King: Is it the pleasure of the house to adopt the motion? Carried.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


Hon. W. EARL ROWE (Dufferin-Simeoe):: Mr. Speaker, the spectacle we have just witnessed is further evidence of the intentions of the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) last Friday; and I offer no apology for rising on this occasion. Parliamentary procedure is a basic and fundamental part of our democratic form of government.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


William Earl Rowe: Some of my hon. friends do little in this house except laugh. Before I sit down I intend to say some things to them which I think they will agree bear out the soundness of our contention at this time.
The preservation of parliamentary procedure is not only the prerogative of the executive of this house; it is the prerogative of parliament itself. Therefore we as members of this chamber should preserve our own privileges here. I have not been a member of this chamber quite as long as the Prime Minister has, but ever since I have been here I have assumed, and have assumed that he assumed, that I as a private member had the same rights in this house as he has. It is my view that confidence in our democratic form of government, which it is so necessary our people should have today, depends to no small extent upon the soundness of the practices and procedures followed in this house. I have had the privilege for perhaps longer than most hon. members of listening to the right hon. Prime Minister. For twenty-five years Hansard has been cluttered annually with his voluminous repetitions in regard to the supremacy of parliament.

Business oj the House


Mr. HOWE:: The opposition, is doing
pretty well now.


William Earl Rowe: Yes; but if you had been here longer than the Prime Minister you still would not know the rules as he does. You have to know them well before you can work them as he does to his own advantage. I have heard the right hon. gentleman almost weep about matters of procedure in defence of the rights of private members when the government of Right Hon. R. B. Bennett was sitting over there and the Prime Minister was sitting here.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


James Horace King: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member, but I should like to call his attention and the attention of other hon. members to the motion which is before the house, and to ask that his remarks be relevant to that motion. The motion is:
That the debate on the address in reply to the speech of His Excellency the Governor General to both houses of parliament be the first order of business on Monday, December 8th instant.
I would ask the hon. member who has the floor and others who intend to take part in the debate to keep their remarks relevant to the motion.


Gordon Graydon: On a question of privilege-


James Horace King: I did not raise a point of order; I just called the attention of the hon. member who has the floor to the motion w'hich is before the house. I do not think there should be any question of privilege.


Gordon Graydon: Then I raise a point of order, whether or not you brought up the question. My point is that when you read the motion of the Prime Minister you left out the last two lines.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: May I point out that I asked hon. members if they would have any objection to my amending the motion by leaving out the last two lines. I thought in so doing I would be obliging the opposition as well as everyone else who desired to get on with the debate. The motion is to allow the debate on the address to proceed.


Gordon Graydon: But until the consent of the house is given, surely that motion stands.


James Horace King: I must remind the hon. member for Peel (Mr. Graydon) that I read the motion which was put before the house a few moments ago. The hon. member for Dufferin-Simcoe (Mr. Rowe) may continue his remarks.


William Earl Rowe: I have always endeavoured to respect your rulings, Mr. Speaker, and I do not want to deviate from that course now. The spirit of this motion probably is more contentious than the- letter of it. I realize that it is the intention of this all-powerful executive to decree what procedure shall be followed during the next few days, if any is to be followed at all; but with all deference to your interruption, which of course it is your privilege to make, I repeat that the procedure of this house is a matter of fundamental importance. During the last twenty-five years no one has emphasized that fact more than the right hon. Prime Minister.


Clarence Decatur Howe: You said that before.


William Earl Rowe: My right hon. friend understands repetitions, for no one repeats himself more than he does; but I am not disturbed by these empty interruptions.
I well recall my first impression when I entered this house some years ago. I thought the present Prime Minister was the most vociferous member of the house in speaking about parliamentary procedure and defending the rights of the individual member. Now we see a plan by which the executive is to become all-powerful, and they offer scarcely an apology for this change. This sort of thing is permeating not only the procedure followed in this house but the administration of the government between sessions. You would imagine that this tired old executive was so allpowerful it did not need a parliament at all. The Prime Minister used to say that the supremacy of parliament must be upheld and that we should end the sort of dictatorial government he said we had between 1930 and 1935. It might be interesting to read some of the statements he made at that time. If they were good then, surely my hon. friends will listen to them today. If they were sound then, they should be sound now.


Jean-François Pouliot: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member, but I rise to a point of order. If we look at the record we find that the motion now being debated is the first of the government notices of motion.. On Friday there was not unanimous consent, or any kind of consent, to give it priority over any other item on the order paper. Therefore it is impossible to discuss this motion at the present time. The only thing we can do is follow the order paper unless unanimous consent is given. Those who speak on this motion at the present time are out of order, so the only alternative is either to ask for unanimous consent or to follow the order paper as it is printed.
Business oj the House


William Earl Rowe: Then I raise a point of order.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Mr. Speaker, answering my hon. friend, may I draw attention to the fact that evidently he did not hear my explanation or my drawing attention to the rule of the house which gives full authority to the introduction of this motion at the present time, and which makes it regular. I shall read again the citation from Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms, 1927, second edition, page 41, citation 130, which states:
The house may, hy unanimous consent or upon motion after forty-eight hours' notice, make such alterations in the order of business as it deems advisable.
This notice has been on the order paper since Friday last. It has received more than forty-eight hours' notice. Therefore it is perfectly regular and should come up at this time.
Mr. COCIvERAM: The motion is changed.


William Earl Rowe: Then, in reply to the Prime Minister, now that he has clarified the mind of the hon. member for Temiscouata, may I say that I can well recall that some years ago, when sitting on this side of the house, the right hon. gentleman emphasized the necessity of not disregarding parliament. I should think it would be unnecessary for me to read all the things he said, because I do not intend to hold the house up to any great extent. At that time he said:
Final decisions upon matters of national import should not be made by ministers, in their private rooms; should not be made without opportunity being given to the House of Commons to consider them in the first instance. There should be an end to government by order in council. Because of the extent to which the administration carried on government by order in council during the period of war it may be difficult for them to realize that this method of government, the method followed in the old days eighty years ago, is not the method of government which we have come to regard as free and representative government.
I am not going to burden the house, but I have many repetitions of this attitude, where in 1934 the Prime Minister criticized the government of the day for the way in which they were handling the situation which had grown out of the emergency of war.
It is time we realized that what there is by way of emergency in Canada has arisen because of the government's own policy, acts which were passed giving the executive power to legislate by orders in council. We have many places where the Prime Minister has repeatedly made reference to that situation.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh!


William Earl Rowe: My hon. friends do not like it as well as they did some years ago when this same right hon. gentleman who is Prime Minister said these things.


Jean-François Pouliot: Mr. Speaker, will you please give a ruling on my point of order? My hon. friend is not discussing the same point of order at all. I said that this was not the time for any discussion on the motion unless there was unanimous consent. I would ask Your Honour to rule that the hon. member is out of order in discussing this particular question.


Mr. HOMUTH:: Why should he give a ruling like that because you want him to?


James Horace King: Order. Is there any
other member who would like to speak on the point of order raised by the hon. member for Temiscouata?


William Earl Rowe: As I am most involved I should like to say a word on the point of order. It appears to me that if the argument is right, the hon. member for Temiscouata, no matter how hard he tries to support his leader, is wrong. If the motion deals with procedure in the house, then let me say I have been talking about procedure in the house, and I am in order. I submit that on the point of order, if the hon. member for Temiscouata is right, the Prime Minister is wrong.


Gordon Graydon: When you consider the point of order raised by the hon. member for Temiscouata, Mr. Speaker, will you please advise the house how you are able, under any of the rules of the house, to bring in at page 2 of the order paper a motion which appears at page 12, without the unanimous consent of the house?


James Horace King: Notices of motions standing on the order paper under the head "government notices of motions" can be moved under the head "motions" in routine proceedings on the order paper. I would ask the hon. member for Peel (Mr. Graydon) and the hon. member for Temiscouata, to turn to page 219 of Bourinot where it states:
Routine motions includes only motions relating to the business of the house.
I believe that is an answer to the hon. member's question as to why the Prime Minister's motion is moved, although it appears at page 12 of the order paper.


William Earl Rowe: I observe it is the intention of this motion, if carried, to restrict to one day debate on the speech from the throne at this particular time. Emergencies are being created so rapidly by the folly of the government-

Business of the House


Mr. CRUICKSHANK:: Is this your austerity programme?


William Earl Rowe: No, but it certainly is not yours. You belong to one over there, and no one contributed less to its prevention than you did.
I submit that while we all respect the Prime Minister because of the years he has been here-and I am glad to see his return from overseas in good health-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


William Earl Rowe: I would not have applauded that long. However, he does have respect. He has respect because of the geniality he extends to members on both sides of the house, but that does not permit me to disregard his other efforts. I can well recall listening to the Prime Minister in April 1932, when he criticized the government of that day for something it had done, and stated:
Arbitrary authority helps to breed arbitrary authority. The enjoyment of a certain amount of absolute power creates an appetite for more in the way of absolute power, and finally absolutism knows no bounds. That is the point we have now reached, so far as the Prime Minister and his colleagues are concerned.
And then he said:
I submit that the most serious objection to be taken to this resolution is that a violation of the constitutional rights of the members of this house is being sought by the government of the day.
And then he said:
It was worse in the session of 1931 to get from this parliament a blank cheque and legislation which set up a dictatorship between sessions, but it is infinitely worse for the government to have the temerity to come before this house and seek to perpetuate that dictatorship while parliament is in session.
We have had a long list of orders in council under which this government has carried on, despite the fact that the war is several years past. If this motion is carried we will not have the opportunity to do that which it is the duty of parliament to do. We will not be following one of the fundamental traditions of parliament as such, namely, discussing the people's grievances in the House of Commons.
Are there any grievances today? There is the tragic failure of the socialization experiment in agriculture. It is dying in its infancy, and we have no chance of debating it at the present time. Perhaps other members of the cabinet, if they had assumed as much responsibility, could have made as many blunders as the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner). But I am sure all will agree that no one other than the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott)
could have been brilliant enough to excel the Minister of Agriculture with respect to the classical error in the revaluation of our exchange.
These are matters about which the people of Canada are concerned. Why are we called only on Christmas eve to discuss them? The government so demonstrates the futility of this session. The Minister of Finance has just given today a statement of how he proposes to collect excise taxes. May I submit-


James Horace King: Order. I think I have been lenient and generous with the hon. member, but what he has been saying just now is not relevant to the question before the house. I would ask his cooperation in making his remarks relevant to the motion.


William Earl Rowe: Again I bow to your ruling. I do not want to go too far from your ruling, but I hope that I can keep within it and be able to explain to the house why I cannot give consent to this motion. This is the first time in the history of this or of any other British parliament that taxes have been announced over the air and behind the back of parliament itself.


James Horace King: Order. I think hon. members will admit that members on both sides of the house are anxious to discuss the policy of the government for and against. The motion before the house is:
That the debate on the address in reply to the speech of His Excellency the Governor General to both houses of parliament be the first order of business on Monday, December 8th . instant.
The hon. gentleman who has the floor is using that motion to make a speech similar to one he would make in the debate on the address in reply to the speech from the throne.


Mr. REID:: Are we going to be allowed to do the same thing?


James Horace King: Order. I ask hon. members to be serious and to confine their discussion to the motion before the house. Hon. members will admit that the session has been called earlier than it generally is called, and everybody is anxious to get down to business. Again I ask hon. members to discuss only the motion which is before the house.


William Earl Rowe: Mr. Speaker-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Question.


William Earl Rowe: I shall endeavour, seriously as you say, and I was more serious than you thought, to adhere to your ruling. There are several things I shall say with respect to the
2i
Business oj the House

Department of Finance and the Department of Agriculture, probably at a later date. I doubt if it will have as much effect on them as it may have on somebody else. I submit that if this motion passes it will deny to members of parliament the right to discuss these problems at this particular time. We have been called here just on the eve of Christmas and we will be denied this right before Christmas. Who can say how long it will be before this right will be gone entirely? Who can say what will happen if this trend is continued by the government of this country?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


William Earl Rowe: Hon. members may laugh. There is complete freedom in the executive, but there is very little behind you. Are hon. members content to be just rubber stamps? We have seen this high-handed executive make rubber stamps of the rest of the members. If by this motion you can stifle and still opposition, then our Canadian way of life is past and socialism has become a reality. This parliament cannot permit itself to be intimidated into such abject silence.
This is not something new. A few years ago we heard the then minister of finance tell us that the executive derived their authority from the crown. It is not new because the other evening we heard the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply (Mr. Howe) tell us over the air that socialism-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


William Earl Rowe: The time has come to call a halt to this tendency of making a hollow mockery of parliament.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


William Earl Rowe: I know what plans the executive have. I say quite seriously that a member of this parliament would be derelict in his duty if he continued to sit idly by, like some hon-. members to your left would do, while the Prime Minister and the executive proceed to trample into the green carpet of this chamber so much of the freedom of this parliament.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


William Earl Rowe: I do not propose to be interrupted by the gibes of backbenchers on the other side.


Mr. TUCKER:: Mr. Speaker-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Walter Adam Tucker: On a point of order, sir, I ask you to enforce the ruling that you have made.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Walter Adam Tucker: The hon. member should not be permitted to take advantage-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


James Horace King: Order. The hon. member for Rosthern has asked permission to interrupt the hon. member in order to raise a point of order. I ask that all hon. members listen to him.


William Earl Rowe: I listened to the hon. member and I did not hear anything new from him. He has not raised any point of order at all. You have given your ruling and I am adhering' to it. The new crown prince of Saskatchewan is not going to tell me what to do.


Walter Adam Tucker: I did not hear what the hon. member said, but I do submit that you have made a clear ruling that the discussion should be relevant to the motion before the house. The hon. member is taking advantage of your indulgence to make attacks that are entirely unjustified, and I ask that you have him adhere to your ruling.


Mr. SMITH (Calgary West):: That is not a point of order. The hon. member is simply repeating some of his Saskatchewan speeches.


William Earl Rowe: I doubt if any speeches have been more out of order than those which have been delivered by him in that province during the past quarter century. I hope, sir, that you with your clear mind will be able to distinguish between noise and common sense and order. No noise that can be created on the other side of the house is going to disturb me. After listening to them for many years I have come to the conclusion that they can make more noise than reason.
The government knows and everybody knows that there is great unrest in this country.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


James Horace King: Order. I insist again, and for the last time, that the hon. member keep his remarks relevant to the motion before the house. I would direct the attention of hon. members to the fact that the eyes of Canada are directed to what is going on in this house.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


James Horace King: Therefore I think hon. members should be more careful than ever and realize their responsibilities in this house.
I ask hon. members to cooperate with the Speaker in order that we may get on with the business of the house. What we have before us is a very simple motion, a motion

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which it should be easy to debate. I would ask hon. members on both sides to be kind enough to cooperate with the Speaker.


William Earl Rowe: Well, Mr. Speaker, I have been endeavouring to emphasize to the house the fact that the public have their eyes on the government at the present time. However, I am not going to give all the reasons why, because I would be restricted in giving even a few of them. But I know I am in order when I say that if we follow the procedure that is now to be adopted, many of these grievances cannot be aired before parliament. If I am to resume my seat I shall go back and tell my people that no longer can we proceed with the debate on the speech from the throne as we have done in the past, and that the farmers cannot have the members who represent them in parliament air their grievances; that they must air them in the garages and barber shops, and that the business people must air theirs in the offices of their executives. I did not come here for that purpose. I could be employed in other places. No hon. member came here for that purpose. We did not accept an increased indemnity to do less in this house.
If we are to adopt the procedure suggested, it will stifle, postpone and make ineffective our arguments in dealing with the people's grievances. If that is permitted to come about, then this parliament will be reverting to a hollow mockery. I shall not say more, but I shall leave it to you, Mr. Speaker, as an old parliamentarian, and to those hon. members who so glibly heckle me today, those who sit behind the Prime Minister, and have done so for the last quarter of a century. . I ask the Prime Minister what he would do if he were sitting here todajr. We all know what stand he would take. I am going to resume my seat-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


William Earl Rowe: If I have not left any impression on you, Mr. Speaker, I have left one on some hon. members. I urge the government to turn from these practices before it is too late. Let us restore to this house the freedom necessary to maintain our democratic form of government. It is the duty of this parliament to set this nation free once more.
Mr. GIBSON'(Hamilton West): What are you reading from?


William Earl Rowe: Not from your notes, anyway. There are those who would like to put us in a strait-jacket. They -would like to ration our scarcity and misery in this country.
I conclude with this. I urge upon the government that they reconsider the motion and
let us proceed in the usual way with the debate on the speech from the throne. I challenge the Prime Minister to tell me of any instance in which we have had a spectacle such as this


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Mr. MACKENZIE:: Hear, hear.


William Earl Rowe: When the Hon. Mr. Bennett came into power he asked that the debate be carried on for only one day to meet an emergency, and the present Prime Minister agreed to it. Again in 1932 when the emergency trade agreements were dealt with the same thing happened. These are the only instances I know of in my long experience in the house. There was no other power to meet them. The agreements were tabled in all the commonwealth nations on the same day, and as the Prime Minister will recall, Mr. Bennett asked, in view of the fact that the other members of the British commonwealth were tabling the imperial trade agreements, that they be tabled in this parliament at the same time. This is the only instance since confederation in which debate on the speech from the throne has been stifled, and stifled evidently to avoid the grievances of the people being aired in the house.


Mr. G. RUSSELL BOUCHER (Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, it is a bit difficult for a backbencher to know whether he is in order or not until he recapitulates what has taken place in the house since it opened on Friday last. As I recall it, on Friday last the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) rose in his place presumably to give notice of a motion that he would move later. He asked for the unanimous consent of the house to move the motion there and then. Shortly after that he took his seat and insisted that since he did not have unanimous consent he would not move the motion. The motion was withdrawn, but after the motion was withdrawn we were left with a notice of motion which was put on the order paper on Friday last. That notice of motion dealt with certain things; but it is not the notice of motion which is before the house now. The Prime Minister has changed it again. On Friday last the notice of motion given by the Prime Minister read as follows:
That the debate on the 'address in reply to the speech of His Excellency the Governor General'to both houses of parliament be the first order of business on Monday, December 8th instant, and that this order be followed by government notices of motion and government orders, notwithstanding anything in standing order 15.
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Today the Prime Minister asks permission to withdraw-I do not believe he has yet received consent to do it-the last part of this notice of motion and to propose an entirely new motion with the last part of his notice of motion deleted. But he tells the house again that if we pass his motion, he will bring in a second one. Therefore he in effect is using a notice of motion given on Friday, and withdrawn, as notice of two motions today. In view of the difficult state of affairs throughout the world today, and in view of what you, Mr. Speaker, have said as to the critical situation facing Canada, I do not know how we can continue this debate and vote intelligently on the motion before us. Nor do I know how rules ox order can be followed when a motion can be put in pursuance of a notice which is not specifically related to that motion. May we have enlightenment on that?


Mr. ANGUS MacINNIS (Vancouver East):: I should like to say a few words on the motion that is before us. In my opinion it is a simple motion. As I see it, it does not take away any of the rights possessed by hon. members; it deals solely with the procedure for today. The motion has had the usual forty-eight hours notice; consequently the house is not taken by surprise. I do not see what we can lose by agreeing with it. After the motion is disposed of we shall have another one that determines the order of business for the following days. There may be some reason why we should disagree with the method to be followed there, but we have not yet reached that. We should wait until we reach it
In his remarks the hon. member for Dufferin-Simcoe (Mr. Rowe) referred to the growing emergent condition in the country. I submit to hon. members to my right that we cannot deal with that emergency in a general debate on the speech from the throne. We can deal with it only if we face the questions before us and take action on them. That is the only way we can deal with them, and we cannot even reach them if the tactics of my hon. friends to the right are carried out. Perhaps it is good policy, but it is not good policy in my opinion.


An hon. MEMBER:: You will soon find out.


An hon. MEMBER:: Politics, not policy.


William Earl Rowe: It is getting closer all the time.


Angus MacInnis: We shall find it out when the crucial time comes. When that time comes we shall find out who is close and who is far ipart. When any question comes up which iffects big business in the country my hon.
fMr. Boucher.]
friends to my right and my hon. friends across the way are as one. Do not talk about coming closer.
I notice that my hon. friends are following some screwball advice that they received from the Ottawa Journal the other day. In an editorial on December 5 the Journal said:
There has grown up of late a belief, almost a complex, that an opposition must eternally be concerned with "responsibility," . . .
Certainly the Ottawa Journal could not have been referring to the official opposition here. The editorial continues:
. , . that its -sole job is to be "constructive." The belief is wrong. The job of an opposition is to raise hell with the government. If Or when an opposition ceases to do that, when its -members become obsessed with "responsibility," when they all want to become statesmen before their job of opposition is ended, -then an opposition is in a bad way.
There is no danger of the opposition here ever becoming statesmen if they follow the tactics which they have followed today, and I tell the opposition here, and the Ottawa Journal as well, that- any member who has not responsibility at this time has no business in this house. We must assume responsibility. I suggest therefore that we get down to the consideration of the issues that are before us. Let- us have the question put to a vote, and then we shall be in a position, whether the motion carries or not, to proceed. I am sure hon. members wish to get on with the matters that concern the people of Canada at this time.


Arthur Leroy Smith: Mr. Speaker, I will not keep you for more than * three or four minutes.


An hon. MEMBER:: Too much.


Arthur Leroy Smith: I wish to put before the house the position in which I find myself, which is the position of many of us who have come here from quite a long distance. I think I can state that position without any lectures from the gentleman who comes from further than I do, and Canada might be infinitely better off if he stayed away. The position is this. We come here now after certain very important pronouncements have been made over the radio and in the newspapers. Normally the time a private member has to discuss the grievances of his people is on the speech from the throne, because there we are not limited. I expect, as soon as I can catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, to have something to say on the speech from the throne.
The difficulty is this. Several considerations are involved. By this procedure we are

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being channelled into this subject and that subject and the other subject, and we are going to be told that we are out of order when we voice the criticisms we have been sent here to make. The speech from the throne affords a wide-open opportunity, and it seems to me that no good purpose is served by breaking this long^established tradition. We are talking about time. Well, things will be said on the speech from the throne which are relevant to these very items, because these are the items we have come to discuss, since they are the items that were mentioned in the broadcast.
So far as I am concerned, to bring me here and then chisel me out of the position I want to take, covering a number of subjects, is in my judgment nothing more than regimenting this parliament to the wish of two or three people.


Mr. W. A. McMASTER (High Park):: I submit, Mr. Speaker, that the motion cannot be put to the house until you have ruled whether or not it requires the unanimous consent of the house. This case is not without precedent, for in 1928 a motion was made by Mr. Edwards, the then member for Frontenac-Addington, who had changed the wording of his resolution slightly after it had appeared in the Votes and Proceedings. Hon. Mr. Lapointe then raised a point of order:
That the said notice of motion was out of order for the reason that it had been materially-amended after 'the notice thereof had been given in the Votes and Proceedings, and a new notice of motion, as altered, should appear on the order paper after other notices of motions which would have precedence over it.
The Speaker, Hon. Rodolphe Lemieux, ruled as follows:
What is the rule of the house? Standing order 45 reads as follows:	"Forty-eight hours'
notice"-in Great Britain only twenty-four hours' notice is required, but in Canada it. is forty-eight hours-"shall be given of a motion for leave to present a bill, resolution or address, for the appointment of any committee or for placing a question on the order paper, but this rule shall not apply to bills after their introduction, or to private bills, or to the times of meeting or adjournment of the house.
His ruling was that the resolution as it appeared in the Votes and Proceedings had been changed and could not be brought up without the unanimous consent of the house This ruling was accepted by the mover of the resolution, and it was withdrawn with his consent.


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, first may I point out to the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) that
he now finds himself, in the matter of procedure, the victim of his own plans. On Friday afternoon-and after all, the Speaker still retains the right of determining whether a motion is withdrawn or not-the Speaker declared, and received the consent of the house in so declaring, that the motion made by the Prime Minister was withdrawn. Today the Prime Minister says to the house, regardless of what the Speaker has said, that the motion was not withdrawn, and he finds himself in the position of asking for unanimous consent in order to deny to members of this house the right to speak on certain subjects that are of transcendent importance at this time.
My hon. friend the member for Vancouver East (Mr. Maclnnis) says that there are certain matters which have to be discussed. I agree with him in that regard, but we in this parliament have the right to assert to the Prime Minister, and I now assert to him, that he should uphold the great principles of democracy which he avowed from 1921 until 1940. They were departed from in 1940, and during the period of the war when this government became all supreme, and this parliament became a puppet in the hands of the executive. All we are asking today is that we return to the days when parliament embodied all the principles of government by, for and of the people instead of government of and by the executive of the country.
I ask the Prime Minister, through you, sir, this question: What would he have said if at any time in the days of peace prior to 1939 any minister of the crown in this country had imposed taxation upon the people without the consent of parliament? Sir, I raise these points to show why I cannot give the motion my support, and I trust I am keeping strictly within the ruling so properly made by yourself. Today in this house the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott), standing behind the Prime Minister, whose declarations on behalf of parliamentary government can be found on every page of Hansard before the war, stood in his place and said: I, the Minister of Finance for Canada, announced excise laws and taxes on November 17-


James Horace King: I am sure that with his experience the hon. member realizes that his remarks are not relevant to the motion before the house.


John George Diefenbaker: I thank you for the tribute to my experience, Mr. Speaker, but I have never had the experience before as a member of parliament of having the government try to make parliament its puppet. I
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point out to the Minister of Finance the words he used today. He says: I will ask parliament-


James Horace King: Order. The hon. member will understand that if I permitted him to go into details of administration I should be obliged to permit any other hon. member to engage in a discussion of any question that was not before the house. What is before the house now is the motion that the debate on the address in reply to the speech of His Excellency the Governor General to both houses of parliament be the first order of business on Monday, December 8th instant, which is today. The question is whether the motion is in order or not. If the hon. member will give the Speaker an opportunity to decide whether or not it is in order, he will do so.


John George Diefenbaker: I am going to read the resolution, Mr. Speaker, so that I can keep myself within the rules. It reads:
That the debate on the address in reply to the speech of His Excellency the Governor General to both houses of parliament be the first order of business on Monday, December 8th instant, and that this order be followed by government notices of motions and government orders notwithstanding anything in standing order 15.	*


Douglas Charles Abbott: That last part is struck out.


John George Diefenbaker: Yes. As the Minister of Finance says, the Prime Minister today asked that the latter words of the motion, after the word "instant," be deleted by unanimous consent. I take it, sir, that you will agree that there is very little indication of unanimous consent to the request of the Prime Minister in this regard.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: May I ask my hon. friend a question?


John George Diefenbaker: Yes.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: If the house is unwilling to give its unanimous consent to the deletion of those last words, I have no objection at all to the motion put just as it stands. I hope hon. gentlemen realize what I had in view in suggesting that the last few words might be left out. I thought that in presenting the motion to proceed today with the debate on the address in reply, I would get unanimous consent.


James Horace King: Has the Prime Minister unanimous consent to withdraw from his motion the following words, "and that this order be followed by government notices of motion and government orders notwithstanding anything in standing order 15?"


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Agreed.


James Horace King: If the hon. member has not unanimous consent, I will put the motion as it was originally.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Put the motion.


John Bracken: Mr. Speaker-


James Horace King: Mr. Mackenzie King
moves-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


James Horace King: If the Prime Minister has not the unanimous consent of the house, his motion is withdrawn. I will now put the original motion.


Jean-François Pouliot: The question is with regard to the precedence of government orders.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: No, not at all.


James Horace King: Mr. Mackenzie King moves, seconded by Mr. St. Laurent:
That the debate on the address in reply to the speech of His Excellency the Governor General to both houses of parliament be the first order of business on Monday, December 8fch instant, and that this order be followed by government notices of motions and government orders notwithstanding anything in standing order 15.
Is it the pleasure of the house to adopt the motion?


John George Diefenbaker: I sat down, Mr. Speaker, but I still have the floor.
The position we are now in is this. When this motion is passed, hon. members of this house will be rationed as to the subjects on which the government chooses to permit them to speak. That is the position exactly, no matter whether there is unanimous consent or not.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: May I ask my hon. friend why he was objecting to these words remaining?


John George Diefenbaker: Sir, my right hon. friend never asks the indulgence of the house unless he has something in mind, and what he had in mind was this. He would get through this apparently innocuous resolution and then the house would be faced with the next, whereby we would be kept to one solitary day for the discussion of the matters that we desire to bring before the house. I suggest this to the Prime Minister. I am not going to add anything more to the quotations. Some of the statements the Prime Minister made deny the statements of the present Minister of Justice (Mr. Ilsley) when he spoke of the position of the cabinet. Those declarations in regard to parliamentary government are no longer applicable, since certain of the members of this government have arrogated to themselves the- right to determine the

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future of this country without regard to any consideration of parliament. Sir, you asked me what I am denied, and I am going to bring this to the attention of the Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. Mackenzie). You ask, what am I denied? If I consent to this I get no opportunity to bring before the country the position of veterans today.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: That is not correct. It is absolutely incorrect. My hon. friend will have all the opportunity he desires to debate that matter.


An hon. MEMBER:: Sit down.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I will not sit down for any Tory that ever lived.


William Earl Rowe: Is the minister going to make a motion too?


John George Diefenbaker: We in this parliament are to be rationed by the executive, Mr. Speaker. We are to be rubber stamps for the government in regard to taxation imposed on the people without parliamentary consideration. We are to be denied the opportunity of bringing to the attention of the house and the country the situation with regard to veterans and their pensions, and the necessity of their being increased by twenty-five per cent to cover the increased cost of living. We are to be denied-


James Horace King: Order. I would call the attention of the hon. member to the fact that I cannot permit him to discuss anything which is not relevant to the motion.


John George Diefenbaker: Well, sir, that indicates that we are to be denied.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Withdraw.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: The hon. member is imputing motives.


James Horace King: Order. I would ask the hon. member to withdraw what he has just said.


Gordon Graydon: There is nothing wrong with that, surely.


James Horace King: Order.


Gordon Graydon: What is the matter with that?


John George Diefenbaker: I have never cast any aspersions on you, Mr. Speaker. You have told me that I cannot speak on this motion when I speak as a member of this parliament on behalf of those people who are denied the opportunity of speaking here. Did you say that I cast aspersions? I never did.


James Horace King: Order. The hon. member realizes how hard it is for the Speaker to be fair and to protect the right of freedom of speech, but at the same time to maintain the discipline and dignity of the house. I am ready to do everything possible to carry out my duty, but there is one thing that I will not allow. I cannot allow an hon. member to bring the Speaker into disrepute. I do not know whether the hon. member realizes what he has said, but it was to the effect that through my intervention the opposition would be denied some right.


An hon. MEMBER:: He did not say that.


An hon. MEMBER:: That is what he said.


James Horace King: Order. I would ask the hon. gentleman-who has had a great deal of experience, as I said a few minutes ago-if he would not be kind enough to cooperate with the Speaker.


Jean-François Pouliot: I. rise again, Mr. Speaker, as a peace maker, on a point of order. The question of unanimous consent is not with regard to the amending of the motion; it is just to give it precedence on the order paper.


James Horace King: Order. I have asked the hon. member for Lake Centre to withdraw what he said.


John George Diefenbaker: There was no
aspersion cast on you, Mr. Speaker; there was none intended. If Your Honour so took it, I certainly withdraw, because it was never intended. The trouble which arises with my hon. friends on the other side is this. When we in the opposition are denied our rights and want to place these matters before the country, we find ourselves hampered by the rules, or we find ourselves paralysed and controlled by a decision by the cabinet as to what subjects we are to discuss, and that we are to discuss that which the cabinet determines on and nothing more. It is against that, sir, that, as a member of the House of Commons, I protest, and I will continue to protest in defence of my rights.
I do not ask for a long debate on this question. No one has asked for that. The leader of the opposition asked, "Will you consent to a debate of three days so these matters may be brought before the country?" The answer of the Prime Minister in effect was: No; we are going to determine it; the cabinet has spoken. Through you, Mr. Speaker, we ask the government that it follow the words of the Prime Minister, uttered not so many years ago, when he said the government was an executive which derives its power from and is responsible to the House of Commons.
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Then he went on to point out that the House of Commons should not be a sort of rubber stamp for what the ministry might choose to do.
We can only ask for the opportunity of bringing these matters to the attention of the house and the country, not at the end of January or in February but now. We want the opportunity to discuss the position of the veterans, for one thing, including the psychopathic cases across this country who are being denied pensions. We can only bring that out this year, and then only if we are given the opportunity to debate the matter on the speech from the throne.
I make this appeal to the government. Have you all become dictator-minded? Have you all achieved the position where you believe you can rule and dominate the house without regard to the people? I refer you to a speech made by Mr. Churchill in the British house on November 11, 1947, in which he asked the government of Britain to give rights to parliament; not to derogate from those rights that have prevailed traditionally over the years; not to continue to diminish the right of the individual to place his views before parliament. In this country a pattern is developing-legislation denying the right of appeal to the courts; the rights of the individual interfered with by boards and controls, and now the right of the private member denied to place these matters before the house and the country.


Mr. CLAXTON:: We are discussing a motion to designate the business of the house, and I submit the remarks of my hon. friend are out of order.


John George Diefenbaker: I notice that other hon. gentlemen across the way are silent. My hon. friend is not one of the offenders, but some of those in the front benches are being fairly quiet. In his remarks Mr. Churchill referred to a right hon. gentleman, and I think how applicable these words are in this house: The right hon. gentleman has an obvious, un-coneealable, well known relish for petty dictatorship. He has many good qualities, but he should always be on guard against his propensity and love to eat and mouse the people from morning until night.
I do not refer to the Prime Minister; the identification is clear without any elucidation.


Mr. J. A. ROSS (Souris):: Mr. Speaker, as a private member I want to voice my objection to the proposed procedure. I want to tell you that as a result of orders in council and regulations passed by this government rMr. Diefembaker.]
many veterans throughout this country are being put out of business, while others are becoming unemployed.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


James Horace King: I have already called the attention of hon. members to the motion before the house. Again I would ask them to keep their remarks relevant to that motion.


James Arthur Ross: As I understand it this motion expresses the desire of the government to ration our time, so that probably we will have today during which to debate this first motion; then this debate will be adjourned until some time next winter, and the second motion will be adopted. That means this debate will not be resumed for some months. I do not want to repeat what has been said already about the prerogative of parliament and the prerogative of the executive council, but the people who are facing such hardships in Canada today, many of whom were promised so much, will not have a chance to have their grievances reviewed by their own representatives in this parliament. That is what this procedure will mean, and as an elected member of this house I strenuously object. I have never known a time in the history of Canada when the people were so much disturbed about the future. For example, I think of the disturbing position in which those engaged in agriculture from one end of this country to the other now find themselves, and I think of the effect that it is going to have on this country within the next few months if something is not done to clear up these matters. It ill behooves this government, so long after the termination of the war, to come to this house and try to throttle the elected representatives of the people, as they are proposing to do to-day, so that we may not air the grievances which are rampant, throughout the country.
I want to make very clear why I am objecting to this procedure today. I know I am only one of the members of this house, but I am sure the mail of every hon. member has been burdened with severe criticism of this, government, coming from people in all walks of life. Now we are to be refused a chance to bring up those grievances, though many of them concern veterans who made it possible-for us to meet here in a free parliament. They are being put out of business; they are becoming unemployed in large numbers. I am not: going to take more time, but I oppose as -strongly as possible the suggestion of the Prime Minister and the government in thiss connection.

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Mr. STANLEY KNOWLES (Winnipeg North Centre):: In just a few words may I say it is precisely because I, as a private member, want to see parliament get to the matters which concern the people of Canada that I support this motion. All it proposes is that we spend today-if we do not waste it in discussing the motion-on the address in reply to the speech from the throne. If I thought the effect of this motion would be to deny any right or privilege of a private member I think hon. gentlemen know I would be one of the first to oppose it, but as a private member I am concerned about the things which concern the people in the constituency I represent.


Mr. MERRITT:: Name those things.


Stanley Howard Knowles: My hon. friend asks me to name them. One of those things is the reimposition of price control to check the high cost of living. Another matter is the extension of the Agricultural Products Act. I want this parliament to get to those things in this short session, for if we do not get to them they will expire at the end of this month. That is why I support this motion; that is why I hope it will pass and we will get to these really important matters so we may discuss the things that concern the people of Canada.


Gordon Graydon: Just before this motion is dealt with by the house I want to say a word in clarification of something I feel has been largely forgotten in this discussion. It is very clear indeed that for some reason the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) has overlooked the meat of the whole debate this afternoon, because you cannot take this motion alone. You have to take it together with the second motion; and what do they together mean? It is all very well for the government over there to say, "Why don't you support this first motion and allow us to get on with the speech from the throne?" We will give you support for this first motion if you will tell us that you will introduce no more restrictive motions afterwards, but will allow us tO' discuss the issues of the day. That is all we ask. The government is not doing that; and it is not going to fool the opposition or the country on this.


An hon. MEMBER:: We do not need to.


Gordon Graydon: Perhaps we have taken care of you on that score already. You cannot fool the people, either, as to why the government is taking this action. None of us was born yesterday, I hope; certainly the people of Canada were not born yesterday. They
know why the government is restricting the debate on the speech from the throne. We have listened to every reason, except the right one; and the right reason is that the government is afraid to have this debate in the House of Commons. I charge the government with being afraid to face the issues which concern the people of Canada. They may argue all they like; but I say these two motions, linked together, one after the other, are just an answer to the Canadian people by the government which says, "We will not allow, by virtue of our over-powering majority in the House of Commons, a discussion of the issues which the people want discussed."
That is the issue. I say to you, Mr. Speaker, that the sooner the country knows the government is blocking the rights of the people, and their desire to have these matters discussed, the sooner the public will form their conclusions.
I am not surprised by the C.C.F. when it comes here supporting the government again. Sometimes I think they are pretty innocent, when they fall for the blandishments of the government. But, Mr. Speaker, this opposition party is not going to do that. And when my hon. friend in the C.C.F. talks about his desire to get on with the price control discussion, and the discussion about the high cost of living, I am not referring to any single member of the C.C.F. group, because that would be contrary to the rules, but I refer to the group when I say I am just about tired of listening to all their talk-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Gordon Graydon: I will stand here until I say what I intended to say. It is about time the C.C.F. party quit playing hypocritical politics with respect to the high cost of living. Not one member of the C.C.F., not one member-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Gordon Graydon: Mr. Speaker, not a single member of the C.C.F. group will stand up in answer to what I say, and say that he is prepared to put full price control and price restriction right across the line. He dare not do it. The last time they said anything on that question they said they would not put controls on wages. I dare them to say they will put further controls on agriculture today. I think if they were prepared to adopt something less than a hypocritical attitude about the matter, it would be better. These C.C.F. people are only playing politics with price controls.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Where do you stand?
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Gordon Graydon: I do not intend to say more at this time than I have said, but I do wish to make it clear to the country and the House of Commons that politics is being played over in that corner of the house.
Let me conclude by saying this, that the Prime Minister ought to give the house the opportunity parliament asks, an opportunity for which the people ask, that is, at least to let us bring to light the kind of policy which these people are asking for, and not the kind of policy which we have now, one of bungling decontrol.
If there ever was a time when parliament should have that opportunity, an opportunity to speak and debate these issues, that time is today. Parliament will be remiss in its duty if it does not fight to the end for its democratic rights, so that the people shall be heard in the House of Commons.


Mr. WILLIAM IRVINE (Cariboo):: Mr. Speaker, in what I have to say I shall not take more than a moment. I resent the speech just made, the tenor of it, the spirit of it and the charges and implications in it. My hon. friend should go upstairs and think out a policy which would be good enough to merit the support of this group.
He complains that we are supporting the government.


An hon. MEMBER:: We do not want your support.


William Irvine: There is not much danger of your getting it, either. You ought to be veiy proud if you could devise a policy which would merit our support.
Then the hon. member said we had missed the meat of this motion. I now propose to state the meat of that motion. The opposition demands that we go on with the debate on the speech from the throne.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The Tory opposition.


William Irvine: Yes, the Tory opposition. The Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) rose in his seat and made a motion that we go on with it. Then the official opposition opposed it, and they opposed it because they want to go on with it.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Mr. G. S. WHITE (Hastings-Peterborough):: Mr. Speaker, before you put the motion, I should like to say only a very few words. It has been made abundantly clear that, once this motion is passed, private members in the house are going to be restricted in their debate today.
Let me make my position clear. I have always felt that I represent all the people in

my constituency. I believe many hon. members will agree with me, when I say that for the past two or three months we have been receiving petitions, delegations and letters from all classes of people in our ridings urging that we present certain arguments and views when we come to parliament.
Today I find myself in a position of being restricted in the debate on the address in reply to the speech from the throne, and the result is that I shall not be permitted to speak on behalf of the constituents I represent. This infringes on my right as a member of the House of Commons. I agree with what was said so well by the hon. member for Calgary West (Mr. Smith), who pointed out that when we come to a discussion of the special matters which have been mentioned we shall be confined and restricted entirely to the particular matter before the house.
I was most anxious that an opportunity would be given me to speak on behalf of the veterans and also on behalf of the farming community of which such a large portion of my constituency consists. I had hoped that something might be said in detail respecting the powers assumed by the government in imposing new taxation without first having the consent of parliament.
Before taking my seat may I register my protest along with others who have spoken, that as a private member and a back-bencher I am being denied in parliament the right to present to it the views and briefs which have been placed before me by the people in my riding.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Mr. Speaker I should like to have the right to close the debate.


John Bracken: Mr. Speaker, if the .Prime Minister proposes to close the debate, I should like to make a few brief observations before he does so.
The substance of the question before the house is that of procedure today and in later days. That procedure is outlined in two motions which appear on the order paper under government notices of motions, and I shall read them both. The first one standing in the name of the Prime Minister reads:
That the debate or. the address in reply to the speech of His Excellency the Governor General to both houses of parliament be the first order of business on Monday, December Sth instant, and that this order be followed by government notices of motions and government orders notwithstanding anything in standing order 15.

Business oj the House
The next motion standing in the name of the Prime Minister reads:
That on and after Tuesday the 9th December, 1947,-
That is tomorrow:
-and every sitting day thereafter until Tuesday, the 30th December, government notices of motions and government orders shall have precedence over all other business except introduction of bills, questions by members and notices of motions for the production of papers.
The point of that motion is that government notices of motions and government orders shall have precedence after today. The motion of the mover and the seconder of the address in reply to the speech from the throne is a private motion and, if this second motion should pass, that motion could not be proceeded with after today. It is clear that the intention of the government was to deny this house the right to discuss His Excellency's address after today. That is quite clear when the two motions are considered. When the Prime Minister came in today he asked the house to give unanimous consent to deleting from the first motion these two lines:

and that this order be followed by government notices of motions and government orders notwithstanding anything in standing order 15.
The motion would then read as follows:
That the debate on the address in reply to the speech of His Excellency the Governor General to both houses of parliament be the first order of business on Monday, December 8th instant.	.	_
It is represented to us that that is all that there is before the house. First, I wish to say that the Prime Minister cannot have those two lines deleted without unanimous consent, and he has not been given unanimous consent by this house. As long as those two motions are read together it means that the speech from the throne cannot be debated after today. The suggestion by the Prime Minister that the two last lines of the first motion be deleted was made for the purpose of leaving the motion so that the debate on the address in reply to the speech of His Excellency the Governor General to both houses of parliament would be adjourned after today. The intent of the government is quite elear.
I say to the Prime Minister now that if he will grant two or three days debate on the speech from the throne we will support this motion or any other relative to procedure that he wants to bring forward, but if he leaves these two motions as they are with the clear meaning that they carry, if we are to be denied the right to speak on the address in 5849-3
reply to the speech from the throne after today then we shall have no option but to oppose his motion.
Mr. SOLON E. LOW (Peace River): When the Prime Minister replies I wonder if he would clarify the situation with this question in mind, as well as those raised by the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bracken)? Should these motions pass as they are and should the debate on the speech from the throne not be completed tonight and the leaders of the various parties given an opportunity to present their views, what would be the situation tomorrow?


Mr. M. J. COLDWELL (Rosetown-Biggar):: Will the Prime Minister answer the question just put by the leader of the Social Credit party? I think all of us on this side of the house who sit to the left of the official opposition are interested in that reply. We have spent two hours in discussing procedure, a matter which should have been settled in fifteen or twenty minutes. We are not interested in entering into the kind of debate that has been going on this afternoon because, as my colleague the hon. member for Vancouver East (Mr. Maclnnis) has said, we want to get down to the real business of the house, which is the condition of the people who are being oppressed today by the high prices that prevail in the country. As far as what was said just now by the hon. member for Peel (Mr. Graydon) is concerned, when the address is under debate I shall take the opportunity, as we have often done, to place our position very clearly before this house.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My attention has just been drawn to the fact that this is not a substantive motion and that therefore I have no right to reply. Under those circumstances I shall not say what I had thought of saying. I am, however, only too happy to answer any questions that hon. gentlemen opposite may wish to ask. On Friday last I indicated to the house that the government had a certain programme before it. We have the obligation of deciding upon the procedure which will afford the best opportunity for the discussion of questions that are to come up and the order in which the business of the house should be carried on. That is a government responsibility and we cannot get away from it, no matter what attitude hon. gentlemen opposite are or are not prepared to take. The government gave most careful consideration to the procedure that should be followed at this time and I was particularly careful to state it to the house at the first opportunity.
Business oj the House

It was suggested, first of all, that the mover and the seconder of the address should be allowed to proceed on Friday. If the government's intention in that regard had met with the acceptance of the house those two gentlemen would have spoken on Friday and we would have been that much farther along the way with the debate on the address.


John Bracken: I do not think any one objected to their proceeding on Friday, at least as far as I know.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I leave it to both the house and the country to decide whether or not it was desired that those gentlemen should proceed on Friday when a discussion took place that lasted until nearly a quarter to six on that particular afternoon.
In my next statement I made it perfectly clear to the house that the government did not think it advisable to have a lengthy debate on the speech from the throne at this time, that it was desirable to postpone the debate on the address until the purposes for which this particular session had been called at this time were fulfilled. At least one of those purposes was stated by me last October when I announced, at the end of the month that a session would be held to consider agreements which had arisen out of the conference at Geneva and that the session would begin on the date on which it was called.
Matters have come up in connection with the depletion of our reserve of United States dollars. This is a very urgent matter and is to be taken up at this stage of the session as well. The government believes that those two matters, as well as one or two others that have been mentioned, particularly the transitional measures act and the Agricultural Products Act, will afford ample opportunity to hon. members to deal with such important questions as they may wish to deal with at this time, knowing that later on, after this particular part of the programme has been completed, every hon. member will have as much time as he wishes to talk on the address and to state whatever grievances he may wish to state while the debate is moving forward in the regular way.
To ensure that the entire programme would be before the house this week and also to ensure that we might be through with this part of the. programme, if not before Christmas, at least before the end of the year I said that the government had thought it advisable to have the leaders of the opposition parties as well as the leader of the government and one other

member on this side of the house speak in the debate on Monday. That was to be today. It is quite apparent that if the mover and the seconder are to speak this afternoon and this evening, as well as my hon. friend the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bracken) and myself, it might well be that there would not be time for the leader of the C.C.F. (Mr. Coldwell) and the leader of the Social Credit party (Mr. Low) to speak tonight. I am quite prepared to say that the government will agree, if the house will, notwithstanding any resolution that may be passed, to see that these hon. gentlemen are given the opportunity to speak, if not tonight, then the first thing tomorrow, along with one member from this side of the house who will follow. But we do not propose, after the procedure has gone that far, to continue the debate on the address for this, among other reasons: obviously if we allowed the debate on the address to continue indefinitely we would not reach the measures for which this session has been called at this particular time, and equally we would be faced with this question at once: if the debate is to be only for a limited time, who are the members of the house and of each group on each side who are to have the privilege to speak for the one or two extra days? I think common sense has to govern in all these matters. I have not the slightest fear that the sound judgment of the house will be that it is the reasonable course to take.


Mr. FULTON:: Why was the session not called earlier to give us time to deal with these matters?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I am afraid I have not heard my hon. friend.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Why was the session not called earlier to give us time?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I would prefer to answer my hon. friend at another time, but I will answer him right now. The reason the session was called when it was, and was not called sooner, was that we expected to take up the Geneva agreement. The Geneva agreement was not in a state of finality until the day before the announcement was made with regard to the time at which this session would be called. In connection with the Geneva agreement there were the strongest reasons in the world why no step should be taken by the government which would in any way prejudice what was taking place at Geneva at that time, when it seemed they were nearing what fortunately they have secured, namely, an agreement on world trade of greater importance to the world than any

Business oj the House
agreement that has hitherto been reached. I think I have answered the question that my hon. friend has asked.


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: I should like to ask the Prime Minister if the course he proposes will give opportunity to the house to discuss the question of veterans pensions and an increase in them to meet the increased cost of living?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My hon. friend will have all the time that he wishes to discuss that question at the right time.


An hon. MEMBER:: Next February.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The government intends to follow the procedure that I have indicated, namely, to seek to get through the matter that I have already laid before the house either, as I have said, before Christmas or before the new year. Whether we shall get through at the earlier date will depend very much on hon. gentlemen opposite. It is in their own hands to decide how much time they wish to take up in obstructing the business of the house and how much they wish to devote to the immediate business that is before the country.


John Bracken: I know the Prime
Minister would not wish to leave any impression with the house that was not correct in what he said a moment ago about the mover and t'he seconder proceeding on Friday last. I just wish to refer to him his own remarks which he made at the close of the session on Friday. When he hears these remarks I am sure he will be agreeable to putting the matter right. Here is what the Prime Minister said, as reported at page 15 of Hansard:
Mr. Speaker, the next item I have on my list is the debate on the address, the speeches of the mover and the seconder. It is now twenty minutes to six o'clock. It is quite apparent that the mover of the address would not have time to conclude his speech before six o'clock. In the circumstances the house might be agreeable to an immediate adjournment, with the debate on the address to commence on Monday.
From the Prime Minister's remarks I gathered the impression that he was blaming those on this side of the house for not having proceeded with the debate on Friday. I quoted the Prime Minister's words to show that that was not the case. I just wish to make one other observation.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Question.


Mr. COLD  WELL@: I rise to a point of order.


James Horace King: Order.
5849-3J


Mr. COLD  WELL@: How many times may an hon. member speak on a motion before the house?


James Horace King: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member. The leader of the opposition has already spoken. I gave him the privilege of making a few remarks but I cannot permit
him to make a speech.


John Bracken: I accept your ruling, but I point out to you that the Prime Minister of Canada was allowed to speak the second time. You are not allowing me to say one word.


Mr. WYLIE:: I was paired with the hon. member for Gaspe (Mr. Langlois). Had I voted I would have voted against the motion.


Mr. AYLESWORTH:: I was paired with the hon. member for Chambly-Rouville (Mr. Pinard). Had I voted, I would have voted against the motion.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: As the motion that was just carried is in the complete form in which it appears on the order paper, I think it precludes the necessity, at least for the present, of my moving the motion which immediately follows it on the order paper; that is for today, at least. I would proceed therefore to the third motion, and move as follows:
That on Wednesday the 10th December and Wednesday 17th December, 1947, the house shall meet at three o'clock p.m., and that the sittings on such days shall in every respect be under the same rules provided for other days.
When I spoke of this on Friday last, I rather gathered that it met with the general approval of the house.


John Bracken: Before that motion is put, may I ask the Prime Minister if he has decided anything with respect to meeting on Friday evenings?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Yes. We intend to sit on Friday evenings.


John Bracken: Is that in this motion?


Major James William Coldwell: It is not needed.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: There is no motion required for sitting Friday evenings.


Major James William Coldwell: The motion that has just been passed governs the business of today only. What about tomorrow?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Tomorrow is
government day, and I have just indicated that my hon. friend will have a chance of speaking in the debate on the address in reply to the speech from the throne.


Major James William Coldwell: That is right.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Does my hon. friend suggest that by reason of its wording, this motion is limited in its effect to today?


Major James William Coldwell: It looks like it.


Mr. MALONEY:: I was paired with the hon. member for Northumberland, Ontario (Mr. Drope).


Mr. CARDIFF:: I was paired with the hon. member for Chateauguay-Huntingdon (Mr. Black). Had I voted, I would have voted against the motion.
.fMr. Bracken.]


William Lyon Mackenzie King: To secure
unanimity, I was seeking so to word it that it should relate only to today. For that reason I suggested striking out the last two lines. But hon. gentlemen opposite insisted on these lines remaining in, and I think perhaps they ought now to abide by the position thereby created.

The Address-Mr. Dion


Major James William Coldwell: We want to have a firm understanding about the position. I think the Prime Minister gave it correctly.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Yes.


Major James William Coldwell: I am just trying to
emphasize the point.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
William Lyon Mackenzie King: We go on now
to the debate on the address.



GOVERNOR GENERAL'S SPEECH


[Stage Direction]
The house proceeded to the consideration of the spee*ch delivered by His Excellency the Governor General at the opening of the session.
(Translation):
Mr. J. A. DION (Lake St. John-Roberval):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to move, seconded by the hon. member for Halifax (Mr. Dickey):
That the following address be presented to His Excellency the Governor General of Canada: May it Please Your Excellency:
We, His Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects. the House of Commons of Canada, in parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Excellency for the gracious speech which Your Excellency has addressed to both houses of parliament.
Mr. Speaker, may I, at the outset, tender to the right honourable the prime minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) on behalf of the worthy people of Lake St. John-Roberval, heartfelt thanks for the honour which befalls them today.


An hon. MEMBER:: Hear, hear.


Joseph-Alfred Dion: Indeed, when I was requested to move concurrence in the address in reply to the speech from the throne, I instantly realized that such an honour was less directed to my humble self than to the people of the interesting district I represent in this house. That is why I gladly accepted on behalf of my electors, the task now entrusted to me.


An hon. MEMBER:: Hear, hear.


Joseph-Alfred Dion: Because the form of the speech delivered by the mover of the address in reply has been fairly well established by rather venerable and eminently respectable parliamentary traditions, I shall therefore follow it as closely as possible.
I shall first say a few words about my constituency and my electors; later dwelling on important events which transpired since the last session, and finally I shall deal with the policy outlined by the government in the-speech from the throne. All this I shalP attempt to do without overstraining your patience, nor taking too much of the valuable time of this house.
Mr. Speaker, the Lake St. John-Roberval district was discovered on June 24, 1647. This year we commenmorated the centenary of that event by elaborate celebrations lasting many days. It was indeed in June 1647 that missionary Jean DeQuen, with two Indians of the Montagnais tribe, reached the now historic site of the Metabetchouan post. Father DeQuen, who had left Tadoussac a few days before, travelled up the dark and majestic Saguenay and, after many portages, beheld what is in truth an inland sea. He was the first white man to reach that lonely area.
In the years that followed, the region remained desolate and the forests lost none of their primeval character. Fur traders and missionaries were the only civilized people who ventured into the Saguenay and Lake St. John region. Not for almost two centuries later was this fertile land cleared and open to settlement.
In 1838, the Sodete des Vingt-et-un colons de Charlevoix (Twenty-One Colonists' Society of Charlevoix) undertook to open to agriculture the Chicoutimi District. In 1851, the Sociele de Colonisation de I'lslet et de Kaniouraska (L'lslet and Kamouraska Colonization Society), under the direction of Parish-Priest Hebert and Father Pilotej decided to open up lands on the shores of Lake St. John. Thus, Notre Dame d'Hebertville, the first rural! parish, was established. From then on, the clearing of land made rapid progress and now, more than 50 rural parishes, wealthy and prosperous. flourish all around Lake St. John. The rich alluvial lands which make up most of the Lake St. John basin are especially favourable to agricultural endeavours. Dairy farming and cattle raising have flourished in that district. Lake St. John cheese is at a premium on both the Canadian and British markets. One can say that in our district, agriculture is well on its way to prosperity, even if at present it is feeling the counter-stroke brought about by the scarcity and high cost of feed grains. Our farmers hope, however, that this uneasiness is only temporary and that it will be remedied by appropriate measures in the least possible delay.
The Address-Mr. Dion

1 Ten years ago, the Federal Department 1 of Agriculture established at Normandin, an experimental station which is making daily progress and which renders most valuable services to the district farmers.
But this region, whose fertile and productive lands were marked for agriculture, also had a great industrial future. Lake St. John covers 400 square miles, but through the many rivers which feed it, it drains a basin of 30,000 square miles. The lake is located at 310 feet above sea level and it empties into the Saguenay after two great falls, la Grande Decharge et la Chute a Caron, which are separated by a distance of about 15 miles. It is easy to understand what a potential of hydro-electric power Providence has seen fit to bestow upon this vast district. When one realizes that rivers such as the Peribonka, the Mistassini, the Ashuapmouchouan and the Metabetchouan run northward up to 150 miles and even up to more than 200 miles towards districts which are still fully timbered, it is easy to conceive that by controlling the flow of these rivers through the construction of reservoirs, ol appropriate basins, it is possible to ensure at all times a steady level on Lake St. John and a constant flow at the great power-houses. In fact, it is now possible to store 400,000,000 cubic feet of water in the whole of the Lake St. John basin.
This gigantic task was first undertaken twenty-five years ago when the Grande Decharge dam was constructed, along with the power station at He Maligne, whose output is 540,000 h.p. Some years later, in 1931, a dam and power station were erected at Chute a Caron, with an output of 300,000 h.p. for use in the aluminum plant at Arvida. Finally, [DOT]during the last war, from 1941 to 1943, the giant Shipshaw dam was erected. Its power station has a total output of 1,200,000 h.p., making it one of the engineering marvels of the age.
I might point out that some of these installations are situated in the neighbouring county, which is represented here by my good friend from Chicoutimi (Mr. Gagnon). It would hardly be in keeping with the liberal spirit to try and restrict to Lake St. John county the whole of this enormous industrial development. At all events, the two adjacent counties, Lake St. John-Roberval and Chicoutimi, form a single economic unit. Lumbering and metallurgical industries are to be found throughout the whole district, along with the hydro-electric plants which supply them with

power. Agriculture and industry find themselves in a happy state of balance, which enables us to look to the future with confidence.
There is still great potential wealth in our county. On the rivers which flow into Lake St. John, innumerable waterfalls have not as yet been harnessed. The basins of these tributaries contain great reserves of timber. The mines of Chibougamou and Mistassini are still in the prospecting stage but already show great promise.
There is still another source of wealth that most of you know and that I have kept for dessert, that is, blueberries. This blue manna, with which we are blessed every summer, provides our people with revenue in excess of one million dollars. In 1945 this revenue reached 2J million dollars.-
The blueberry has grown to be the namesake of the population of Lake St. John, and we are proud of it. The blueberry is a handsome, firm and palatable fruit that brings substantial profits and would be popular on that score alone.
The blueberry crop is of more than local interest. Last year the international blueberries congress held in the district was attended by representatives from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington and even Chicago, since the bulk of our crop goes to the United States market. I could dwell much longer on this palatable subject, but shall revert to it on some other occasion.
I should not want to close these few remarks on my district without a word about its chief and foremost asset, its population.
Some bon. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.


Joseph-Alfred Dion: The hardihood and resourcefulness of the Charlevoix pioneers, together with the tenacity, tidiness and frugality of the early settlers of l'Islet and Kamouraska, have blended with other qualities found in all parts of the province of Quebec to form a sturdy population to which I am proud to pay tribute in this, my country's parliament.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Joseph-Alfred Dion: Having in most cases no wealth other than their strength and courage, our early pioneers have been real builders in our part of the country. They have shown what the French race could do and can still accomplish when it keeps faith with its traditions and follows in the footsteps of its forefathers.

The Address-Mr. Dion
Grouped within the social unit which forms the backbone of our community, the parish, our large families have lived up to ancestral traditions in the matter of hard work and large families.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Joseph-Alfred Dion: If I am correctly informed, the mother parish of my district, Notre Dame d'Hebertville, has a record birthrate, with an average of ten children per family.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Joseph-Alfred Dion: Louis Hemon, the immortal author of Maria Chapdelaine, wrote about the population of Lake St. John: "They belong to a race that knows not death". He might have added that they belong to a race that is fully determined to survive.
During the last session, the Canadian parliament has seen fit to give official recognition to the extraordinary development of that part of our country which comprises the Saguenay River and Lake St. John. According to the new distribution, the three constituencies of Charlevoix-Saguenay, Chicoutimi and Lake St. John-Roberval have been subdivided into six counties, namely, Saguenay, Charlevoix. Chicoutimi, Lapointe, Lake St. John and Roberval.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Joseph-Alfred Dion: I take pleasure in thanking parliament for that act of justice. I am confident that the population which benefits through that move will prove itself worthy of it by continuing to develop and enrich that bit of Canadian soil. However, I do not wigh to leave the impression that all is well in the fine district of Lake St. John. For instance, I could not truthfully claim that the development of our means of communications has kept pace with our agricultural and industrial progress. The railroad was built over sixty years ago; it was good enough for a settlement, but it does not suit the purpose today and does not give good service to our agricultural and industrial organizations. There is room for much improvement in that connection. I shall not say more now, but I will probably have the opportunity of dealing with the matter some other time.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear!


Joseph-Alfred Dion: Those are a few of the things I had to say about the constituency of Lake St. John-Roberval which, needless to say, I am proud to represent in this house.
{Text):
Mr. Speaker, I wish to mention some events which took place, in our country and abroad, since the end of the last session of this parliament.
First of all, should I say how happy every Canadian was to celebrate the marriage of Her Royal Highness Princess Elizabeth to the Duke of Edinburgh. It was the conclusion of a fine romance. From every part of the commonwealth greetings were sent to the newly-married couple, and I am sure I express the sentiment of all members of this house in extending our best wishes to this young and charming couple. The expression of these sentiments, from all Canadians, had its best proponent in the person of our Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King). On that occasion he was conferred the Order of Merit, upon which we congratulate him sincerely. May I say also to the Prime Minister that we followed with great interest his visits in France, Belgium and Holland. On all occasions our Prime Minister expressed his pride in being a Canadian; and here in Canada, all Canadians were proud of him.
On the international scene may I mention the active part played by Canada in the united nations assembly? It was with just satisfaction that we noted the election of Canada as member of the security council. Our delegation, under the direction of the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. St. Laurent) and the Minister of Justice (Mr. Ilsley) accomplished good work despite diff-culties and obstructions.
The Canadian policy stands for the continuation of the international relations inside the united nations organization, which remains for us the cornerstone of our international policy.
We hope that it will be possible, in the early future, to arrive at the conclusion of treaties of peace, which could enable the return of normal conditions in Europe. The Canadian government has indicated that it was pleased to see the initiative taken by the United States for an early conference toward the conclusion of a peace treaty with Japan.
Here in the house, I am happy to mention the appointment and election of the new Minister of Fisheries (Mr. Gregg). He is not a newcomer to the house, and we are sure he will fulfil his new duties with all success possible.
I would mention also the election of the new member for Halifax (Mr. Dickey), who will second the address. I congratulate him upon his success, and I am sure he will be equal to the reputation which preceded his election to the house.
The Address-Mr. Dion

I extend also all my congratulations to the members of the house who, since the last session, were chosen as parliamentary assistants. With the qualities that we know are possessed by all of them, we are sure they will fulfil their duties to the satisfaction of all.
(Translation):
Mr. Speaker, I will now say a few words of the various measures mentioned in the speech from the throne and which will be brought to our attention during the present session.
It would be difficult to go into the whole legislative programme to be presented by the government. Therefore, I shall limit my observations to the two main measures announced to the Canadian people a few weeks ago, namely, the new trade and tariff agreements and the restrictions imposed on our imports from the United States.
On the evening of November 17, the Prime Minister spoke from London, informing us of the general trade and tariff agreements signed at Geneva and thereafter known as the "Geneva Agreements".
The signing of those agreements constitutes one of the most important economic events of our time. The 23 signatory countries agree, in the preamble, that:
. . . their relations in the field of trade and economic endeavour should be conducted with a view to raising standards of living, ensuring full employment and a large and steadily growing volume of real income and effective demand, developing the full use of the resources of the world and expanding the production and exchange of goods.
The preamble goes on to declare that the signatory powers are:
. . . desirous of contributing to these objectives by entering into reciprocal and mutually advantageous arrangements directed to the substantial reduction of tariffs and other barriers to trade and to the elimination of discriminatory treatment in international commerce.
The preamble sets forth a free trade policy. The intention is to avoid from now on, in so far as possible, boycotting and exaggerated protectionist measures which, in the past, amounted almost to economic warfare between certain countries and which can, in the long run, bring on real war.
Canada, with its immense natural resources, its unlimited agricultural and industrial possibilities, still numbers but a relatively small population. So that, both by nature and necessity, we are an exporting country. In fact, if we wish to retain the equilibrium and activity required to ensure the survival and progress of our economy, we must export
fMr. Dion.l
almost 40 per cent of our production. Therefore, the Geneva agreements are of the highest concern to us.
Thanks to this arrangement, many products needed to maintain our living standard will be admitted to the country more freely and in larger quantities or will benefit by tariff reductions. The latter apply to 600 items that come under the general tariff and to 150 items listed under the preferential tariff, while 94 articles appearing under the same heading are now admitted duty free.
In return, our country has obtained tariff concessions from the 22 other signatory powers, especially from the United States. The agreements will therefore help us to an increased volume of sales and to a diversified foreign market, thus assisting us in no small measure in solving the problem of our financial difficulties with which the government is greatly concerned at present.
Obviously, this brings me to discuss the steps taken in order to remedy our shortage of American dollars.
As I recalled a short while ago, we heard, on the night of November 17, the Rt. Hon. the Prime Minister who, speaking before his colleague, brought us comforting news. A few minutes later, however, the Hon. the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) and his parliamentary assistant, the hon. member for Rimouski (Mr. Belzile) told us rather harsh truths that we had perhaps forgotten; these gentlemen also informed us of the steps Canadians would have to take in order to guard against the impending danger.
Incidentally, may I point out that in this speech, broadcast simultaneously in French and English by the CBC, we have an example of that official bilingualism which should be in evidence as frequently as possible in this sphere of radio, not only in one province but in the whole of Canada.


An hon. MEMBER:: Hear, hear!


Joseph-Alfred Dion: At the beginning of his radio address, the Minister of Finance warned us that our rapidly decreasing reserves of foreign currency compelled us to take special steps to consolidate our commercial position. He added that those steps did not imply any relaxation in our determination to do all in our power for the economic restoration of the world and the expansion of international trade.
It seems paradoxical that we should be compelled to resort to restrictions at a time

The Address-Mr. Dion
when our trade with the other countries of the world has reached a peak in the economic history of our country, and that fact should help us understand the provisional character of the measures taken by the Government.
In order to explain the paradox and understand the various factors of our monetary problem in so far as our Southern neighbour is concerned, one must recall that Canada has had trade relations with two great countries for more than 50 years, namely the United States and Great Britain. We imported mainly from the United States, our best supplier and we exported mainly to Great Britain, our best customer.
Great Britain paid in sterling for wheat and other commodities imported from Canada and we paid that sterling back to the United States to balance our imports. That formed a sort of trilateral exchange which maintained a balance between the transactions of the three countries.
But that balance was upset the day it became impossible to convert the pound sterling. We had to pay cash for our imports from the United States, but Great Britain used her credit to purchase from Canada.
It has brought about an alarming decrease in our reserves of United States exchange funds which was accelerated by the steady increase in prices for American goods which Canada, had to import. The Government, therefore, had to take strong steps to cope with the situation as soon as possible. They did so with vigour and courage, and, above all, with frankness, in acquainting the Canadian people with all the facts.
The steps taken are divided into two main classes: first, restrictions on American imports through embargoes and, also prohibitive taxes; secondly, constructive steps designed to stimulate our industrial production so as to reduce the strain on our economy resulting from imports of machine-tools, spare and assembly parts, and many commodities which could be manufactured here. With respect to the first class, namely restrictions it has been labelled almost everywhere as an austerity program; such austerity, however continues to be opulence when compared with the present standard of living in almost all the countries of the world, especially Europe and Asia.
First there is a list of prohibitions on luxury and semi-luxury articles and nonessential goods such as certain household articles, jewelry, office supplies, etc.
This class also includes the importation of motor vehicles which is to be replaced by a quota system. Next in line are fruits, vegetables, textiles, leather goods, clocks and watches, sporting goods and smokers' supplies, etc., also under a quota system. Finally, a 25 per cent excise tax is levied on a great number of Canadian or imported manufactured goods. Comprised in this class are automobiles, electrical appliances, firearms, boat motors, musical instruments, stoves, oil burners, etc.
This programme is only temporary and its duration will depend, to a large extent, on the cooperation of the Canadian people and the saving of American dollars thus made possible. As regards the constructive programme, it will actually consist in bringing about a greater manufacturing production at home in order to buy less abroad. Canada in so doing is following the example of all new countries which have quickly reached economic maturity.
In its infancy our country was at first an exporter of unprocessed raw materials. This phase reached its end with the first world war, to be followed by a more intensive development of our natural resources, mines, forest and water power. We are then exporters of semi-manufactured goods, like pulp, paper, aluminum, electro-chemical and electro-metallurgical products, fertilizers, and so on. That is also the time when there came to this country industries whose head offices remain in the United States but which took root here, under the protection of a solid tariff barrier, and enjoy both the Canadian and the imperial market, through British preference.
In many cases, Canadian plants thus set up by American companies amounted to assembly rooms for parts imported from across the border.
The growing age of our economic life spans the interval between two great conflicts. But during the second world war, Canada advanced with giant strides on the road to industrial development and despite its youth, has attained economic maturity.
Let us not conclude that we are bound to fall into economic nationalism, by rendering Canada self-sufficient and living henceforth in
42

The Address-Mr. Dion
isolation without ever bothering about the rest of the world. That would not only be a mistake, it would be impossible.
Let us rather secure industrial autonomy, in order to avoid becoming too dependent on other countries, when such subordination gives rise to monetary crises as serious as that which we are now experiencing.
Some people, who are not averse to creating panic, hasten to say that we are bankrupt and that all is lost. Fortunately, they are a minority. Most Canadians are well guarded against either undue pessimism or wishful thinking. I may quote, as an example, an article signed by Robert Morin, in VAction Catholique of November 20, which concludes with true-ringing realism:
From this muddle of measures, arrangements ind recommendations, it emerges that if the situation is serious, it is not yet desperate. On the contrary, our country's future was never brighter. We need only accept a few temporary sacrifices and the sun will come out when the rain ceases.
But if there is a lesson to be drawn from the present difficulties, as I think there is, it would be to broaden our economic horizon. We can no longer abide by the England-Canada-United States triangle system, if we wish to prevent greater troubles than those which face us now.
Should we then abandon completely the British market? Not at all. Even if we wanted to, we could not do it overnight.
But we have to find outlets elsewhere, export throughout the world.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear!


Joseph-Alfred Dion: I therefore wish to congratulate the Minister of Commerce (Mr. MacKinnon) on his extended tour of several countries of Africa and Europe, which he carried to a successful conclusion since the end of the last session. Such activities can never be too numerous if Canada is to get her rightful share of world trade. The more varied our markets, the more easily we will achieve that economic independence which should be our goal and which will enable us to play our proper part in the international sphere.
Canada is a young giant who has grown very rapidly, especially during the last few years. Should we, then, be surprised if our economic system shows some signs of growing pains. But these symptoms are not as disquieting as they would be, were they symptoms of weakness or senility.

We have come through the dangers of war thanks to the courage of our soldiers as well as to the devotion and unity of the people at large. Since the end of the war, in spite of many difficulties, our leaders have managed to guide our economy from a wartime to a peacetime basis without too much trouble.
Today we are faced with new difficulties. Were we to weaken and despair, we would be unworthy of those who discovered, cleared and saved this great and beautiful land.
On the contrary, today more than ever, we must gather up our strength and raise our hearts to this land we love so well. There are still great days ahead, we may be sure, for Canada and for Canadians.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear!
(Text):
At six o'clock the house took recess.
After Recess
The house resumed at eight o'clock.


Mr. J. H. DICKEY (Halifax):: Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise to second the address in reply to the speech from the throne which has been so eloquently moved by the hon. member for Lake St. John-Roberval (Mr. Dion). His very fine speech and the manner of its delivery well typify the ease with which our fellow Canadians of French descent enliven and enrich the proceedings of this house. In these circumstances, Mr. Speaker, I feel that I cannot pay a higher compliment to the hon. member than to say that in spite of my own state of perturbation and expectancy I was able to enjoy his remarks to the full.
(Translation):
May I now be permitted, Mr. Speaker, to express congratulations to the hon. member in his own language and add a few remarks in French as an evidence of my great regard for those Canadians, the sons of the sturdy settlers of New France who, today, hold an important place in our Canadian nation.
The wonderful successes achieved by our fellow citizens of French descent and the contribution which, thereby, they have made to our Canadian economic and cultural development should be a matter of pride for all Canadians.

The Address-Mr. Dickey
Mr. Speaker, my election to this parliament will, I believe, afford me, among other privileges, an exceptional opportunity to appreciate and improve my knowledge of fellow citizens whose language I speak with, of course, great difficulty, but among whom, I am happy to say, I have close and valuable friends,
(Text):
The signal honour of having been invited to second this address is accepted for myself with deep appreciation and humility. As an honour to the great constituency of Halifax I accept it with pride and pleasure. The people of the county of Halifax will, I am sure, consider it a recognition of the outstanding contributions that they have made .through the long hard years of war to the magnificent and victorious efforts in which this whole nation shared, a recognition also of their contributions since the cessation of hostilities to the gigantic task of reconversion of the national economy.
I come to this house, sir, as the junior member for Halifax to succeed a distinguished and kindly man who served his constituency in parliament for six difficult and trying years. The sincere and generous tributes paid to Mr. Macdonald on behalf of all parties in this house at the opening of the last session gave testimony of the affection and respect he had won for himself among his fellow members, sentiments fully shared by the electors of Halifax city and county.
It was my privilege to know Mr. Macdonald in another capacity, having been articled to him as a law student. Appreciation of his qualities has already been so eloquently and fully expressed that there is little left for me to add, except to say that it will be my purpose to walk worthily in his footsteps and to follow, as best I may be able, his outstanding example. As one result of Mr. Macdonald's untimely death, his colleague the senior member for Halifax (Mr. Isnor) was left to carry out alone the exacting task of representing Halifax constituency during the whole of the last session of parliament. The manner in which he assumed and discharged this additional burden deserves the heartiest commendation of this house, and it is a source of the greatest possible satisfaction to the people of the county whom he has served so faithfully and so well
I have already seen many proofs of the extremely high regard in which he is held by his fellow members of this house, a regard which I may say is equalled and even surpassed by the opinion of him held by the voters of Halifax city and county. Proof of 5849-H
this is found in his unbroken record of electoral successes over a period of twenty years, through good times and bad, and a succession of overwhelming majorities which has grown throughout the years, all this, Mr. Speaker, in public life, where even outstanding service is not always accorded its just reward. The measure of his successes indicate# but does not limit the appreciation and the recognition to which his efforts establish his entitlement.
The task performed by my colleague can be fully appreciated only by considering the constituency of Halifax which, with him, I now have the honour to represent. There is much that I should like to say to you, sir, about the county of Halifax: its great natural beauties; the character and quality of its people-reliable, honest and industrious; the harmonious mingling of Canadians of English, French, Irish and Scottish descent; and the other elements which combine to impart to this constituency its individuality and its greatness. Over the entrance door to these houses of parliament are inscribed the words a man usque ad mare and "The wholesome sea is at her gates, her gates both east and west." Halifax provides that eastern ocean gateway considered by the fathers of this nation so essential and without which this dominion, now stretching from sea to sea, might never have come into being. We are the familiar "east coast Canadian port" of the war years. The eastern ocean on which we stand gives us our temperate climate and endows us with an ever-changing pageant of beauty: the rugged headlands, charming inlets, smooth sand beaches, magnificent harbours, ports, fishing villages and seaside towns. The industries and commerce of the sea provide a livelihood for a large proportion of our population. Fishing, shipbuilding and outfitting, the manifold activities surrounding the business of the great port of Halifax itself, all depend upon the riches of the sea or upon sea-borne trade. The fisherman is essential not only to the life of his own closely-knit community but to the economy of the whole province. His ancient calling-difficult, dangerous and not always profitable-is dignified by the essential quality of independence which to him is a precious possession.
In referring to the important fishing interests of Halifax constituency, I should like to congratulate the Minister of Fisheries (Mr. Gregg) on his appointment and election, and to acknowledge the energy and industry he has already shown in taking over the administration of this department which is of such fundamental importance to us. Under his
The Address-Mr. Dickey

to this country after a trip through western Europe and England where he gathered firsthand knowledge of present conditions both on the continent and in Britain. To our Prime Minister were accorded in the course of his visits a succession of well merited honours absolutely without precedent in Canadian history. The nations of western Europe with whom we were allied during the difficult years of war learned through our common effort to know Canada and Canadians better than ever before, and have fully appreciated the magnificent effort put forth by this country in the common cause. In our wartime Prime Minister they recognize the personification of many of the qualities of this nation which they found admirable. In him they saw a national leader entrusted by a free people with our highest office and responsibility for a longer period than any other individual in our history, a national leader regarded in other countries as one of the wisest, most distinguished and respected of world statesmen. The people of Canada must look with gratification upon the honours bestowed upon our Prime Minister if for no other reason than as eloquent testimony [DOT]of the sincere gratitude and affection with which the people of those countries regard this land of ours, feelings won for us by those valiant young men who were privileged to contribute much to the successful conclusion of the struggle by which these peoples were freed from enslavement and defeat.
The Prime Minister has, as well, represented the government and the people of Canada at a very happy and important event in the family life of Their Majesties, the wedding of Her Royal Highness Princess Elizabeth to His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, an historic occasion followed from afar with affectionate interest by Canadians from coast to coast and in every walk of life. It was a remarkable distinction for Canada to be represented by our Prime Minister, who is leader both in length and in excellence of service among ministers of the crown throughout the entire commonwealth of nations. I am sure his presence in London for the celebration of this marriage was the best possible expression of universal and sincere good wishes of Canadians to the happy couple, and to His Majesty of the loyalty and devotion of his Canadian subjects everywhere.
It was a particular pleasure to learn that His Majesty was graciously pleased to invest the Prime Minister with the Order of Merit, and our most sincere congratulations are extended to him on this great honour.
As Secretary of State for External Affairs, the Prime Minister has been succeeded by the right hon. minister (Mr. St. Laurent), who 
now holds this portfolio with such distinction and advantage to the Canadian nation. The very heavy responsibilities which world conditions today impose upon the statemen of all nations are being discharged on our behalf by the minister in a most admirable and satisfactory manner. At the opening of the united nations assembly at Lake Success, the Secretary of State for External Affairs, speaking on behalf of Canada, expressed with force and frankness the determination of this country to work in cooperation with all other peoples of like mind and will for the establishment and maintenance of lasting peace. He and the other members of the Canadian delegation have acquitted themselves with outstanding distinction. From their earnestness and frankness all the peoples of the world who are permitted to do so, have learned of the aspirations and ideals of the Canadian people and our single-minded purpose to contribute, to the full extent of our abilities and resources, to the cause of international amity and cooperation. Attacks upon our actions and our motives have been and will be made. These attacks are disquieting, not because of the unfounded and false accusations they contain, but because of the illwill and wilful prejudice they disclose on the part of those who indulge in them. It would indeed be unfortunate, Mr. Speaker, if these same opinions were to be kept alive and given currency by unthinking and self-seeking groups within our own country who, for political advantage, might attempt to misrepresent and distort Canada's position or intentions in international affairs.
It is well recognized that Canada has the special interests and responsibilities of a Pacific power. The conclusion of a peace treaty with Japan is an immediate and pressing problem. I speak from personal experience when I say that Canada, while not an occupying power, is well represented in Japan. The part that we have taken in the various activities relating to the Japanese empire since the cessation of hostilities has consolidated our position and ensures appropriate recognition of our interest in the whole far-eastern area. Canada is pleased with the initiative already taken by the government of the United States toward the final negotiation of a peace treaty with Japan, and we look forward to continued cooperation with the other interested powers to this end. However, our primary interest must always be in the improvement of world conditions generally, and in particular the early restoration of the economic life of Europe.

The Address-Mr. Dickey
Canada's contribution toward the relief of distress and the reestablishment of normal conditions in all the countries of Europe has been extremely high in relation to our population and resources. The government has recognized the essential nature of this task to the extent that many of our present difficulties have been caused or contributed to by our efforts to fulfil our commitments and avoid wherever possible any diversion of supplies to less needy, but more profitable markets. If the aid extended to the European nations had resulted, as was our hope and purpose, in the substantial improvement of their economic condition, the necessity for many of the temporary measures now contemplated would never have come about. I feel, Mr. Speaker, that this house realizes that, from a purely selfish point of view alone, it is in the best interests of this nation that the government be supported in its intention to continue to assist in the essential task of European reconstruction to the full extent of our. capacity within the limits of the emergency measures it has been found necessary to impose.
The government of the United States is at present considering the details of additional plans to aid the continent of Europe back to economic stability, and there should not be the slightest question of the firmness of Canada's purpose to continue her contributions to this same end. The early conclusion of peace treaties with the European nations we regard as an essential step which must be undertaken and completed at the earliest possible day. We also consider that the essential interests of international cooperation and harmony will best be served by the smaller nations being accorded an opportunity to join in the negotiations leading up to the conclusion of peace treaties with nations to whose military defeat we have made a signal contribution.
The government and this parliament are prepared to give to the question of our foreign policy the time and thought its importance and complexities require in these trying and difficult times. It should, I feel, be fully understood, both by the Canadian people and by the peoples and leaders of other countries that Canada is a sovereign nation among the nations of the world and that, together with our membership in the British commonwealth of nations, the very cornerstone of our foreign policy is our membership in the united nations, through which we expect to work for the firm establishment of peace in this troubled world.
It is a source of particular gratification to Nova Scotians to note the outstanding contributions which have been and are being made
on Canada's behalf to international politics by the Minister of Justice (Mr. Ilsley). Few men have been privileged to serve their country with more distinction than our wartime Minister of Finance; and he is now, in the wider sphere of the united nations organization, crowning his past accomplishments with new and distinguished service. To him, to the Secretary of State for External Affairs and to the other distinguished gentlemen who have the honour and responsibility of representing Canada in the international sphere, may I say that the Canadian people support them with their hopes and the prayer that their efforts may be crowned with success; that, as a result of their striving, the threat of the horrors of war may be removed farther and farther from our minds, and that we may look forward one day to the secure enjoyment of an era of international peace and prosperity won for us by the untiring efforts of men of good will.


John Bracken: Mr. Speaker, three days ago we listened with interest to His Excellency's speech when it was delivered in another chamber. The voice was the voice of His Excellency but the words were the words of the government. I want to congratulate His Excellency upon his excellent voice and his splendid diction. As for the substance of his address, there will be differences of opinion in this house and I shall express mine in a few moments.
We have listened today in this house to two other speakers, the mover (Mr. Dion) and the seconder (Mr. Dickey) of the address. I wish to compliment both speakers. I compliment the mover of the address upon his knowledge of the two languages and upon the facility with which he used both. I want to congratulate the seconder of the address upon his maiden speech and at the same time extend to him a welcome to this house. We did our best to see that a man with a more acceptable political philosophy would be here, but since we did not succeed we are very glad to welcome the hon. junior member for Halifax. As for the substance of what these hon. members had to say, we were neither surprised nor disappointed. In the traditional style they saw nothing but haloes over the heads of the hon. members who sit in the front rows on the government side. Perhaps we can excuse the new members for that because they have not known the front row as long as some of the rest of us have.
I am glad to have the opportunity on this occasion to welcome back to Canada the Prime Minister of this nation (Mr. Mackenzie King). I am sure we are all pleased to see him
4S
The Address-Mr. Bracken

looking so well. I want to join with others in this house in congratulating him upon having received at the hands of the king the Order of Merit. I am sure we shall all look forward with pleasure to hearing the Prime Minister give his report upon conditions in Europe, particularly in Great Britain. Speaking for myself personally, may I say I am very glad that it was the privilege of the Prime Minister of this oldest dominion to have the opportunity of representing this nation at the royal wedding.
May I take this opportunity also to welcome to this house the Minister of Fisheries (Mr. Gregg). We did our best to see that- I was going to say a better man-someone else came here, but since we did not succeed may I join with others in welcoming him. We wish him every success in the administration of his department. I am not suggesting that we wish him a very long life in that department, but as long as he is there we wish him success in his administration.
We are gathered here today in a critical time in the economic history of this country. At last we have been forced to realize that we have been living in a fool's paradise. We thought we had prosperity, but it was a sort of artificial prosperity and we realize now that we must face the ugly facts that are before us. At long last it has been brought home to us that the war has not been paid for, that it has to be paid for and that it must be paid for only by work and sacrifice on the part of us all.
The government have called us here in what they choose to speak of as an emergency session. They have suggested that there are four or five things in particular that they want done during the next couple of weeks. I shall discuss each of those matters before I am through, but before I do that I want to touch on some other matters. Some of these were mentioned in the speech from the throne and some of them were not mentioned in that document.
There is not much in the speech from the throne. I have never heard one with less in it, and I am not surprised. We have had four speeches from the throne this year, this being the last one. We could not expect much in it after what the others had said.
The first speech from the throne came to us over the air; it came from a far country; it came from Olympus; it came in the voice of the Prime Minister. He told us a fairy story; he told us that everything would be all right in Canada in the distant future. He used the term "long term", which to most of us meant a long time. He said, in effect, "It will be all right because we have had some men

over here sitting in with other people at Geneva; we have worked things out so that everything will be all right in about one hundred years from now when we are all dead."
To paraphrase his speech, in the meantime Canada is sick. We used to say that she was not sick, but she is sick. She needs some medicine and she needs some bitter medicine. He said, we have diagnosed her case and we have prescribed for it. We have appointed a Jeremiah to go back to Canada and tell you about it in the person of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott).
In about fifteen minutes after the Prime Minister had finished, the new Jeremiah came on the air. I am not an authority on Biblical affairs, but I understand that Jeremiah was the man who wrote the Book of Lamentations. He was a prophet of gloom who prophesied, among other things, the coming of Nebuchadnezzar, the King.
The modern Jeremiah went on the air and said, "We have been telling you that Canada was in splendid shape, but we are finding now that that was all a mistake, that as a matter of. fact she is in pretty bad shape. I am appointed to tell you what the decrees are that we have prepared behind closed doors to fix everything up." He said, "Among other things we can fix it up by increasing your taxes; we can fix it up by preventing you from buying vegetables or automobiles in the 'United States; we can fix it up by increasing the cost of everything you have to buy." He said, "We have decided on the man who is going to administer all these policies; we have decided on the man who is to be the modern Nebuchadnezzar. He is to be the Minister of Reconstruction."
Then the modern Nebuchadnezzar came on the air about three days later.


Karl Kenneth Homuth: He does not know his bible.


Mr. MITCHELL:: Is that a new portfolio?


John Bracken: When he came on the air he said, to paraphrase again, "They put me in this job. Canada is in a bad way. We told you a different story before but now we have to admit the truth." He said, "They put me in charge and everything is going to be all right in about six months' time." It reminded me of a report in one of the western papers. They had heard that the Minister of Reconstruction (Mr. Howe) had decided not to make any more prophecies, and they said, "We are glad to hear that. We do not think he is a success as a prophet".


Clarence Decatur Howe: He has not been very far off the beam yet.

The Address-Mr. Bracken


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


William Earl Rowe: He has never been on it yet.


John Bracken: In any event, this is what the writer said:	"The Minister of Reconstruction was not a success as a prophet; he could not prophesy correctly even after the event had happened." When he said that I am sure he was thinking of some of the prophecies of the Minister of Reconstruction about how soon we were going to have the housing problem solved in Canada.
Then came the fourth speech from the throne. It came from the representative of the real King. After the other three had spoken, there was not much more to be said; nevertheless I extracted these things from the throne speech, things the government had written into it. It told us that we had had a war; that now the war has been over for two years, we were going to start paying for it. In one paragraph it told us that Canada was prosperous, but by the time the end of the paragraph was reached it said she was not prosperous but was suffering from complications in her exchange position.
Then it told us that the government believed in freedom of trade. At the same time it told us that they were going to bring in a higher form of protection, namely, put-ing an embargo on the products of other countries coming into this country. It also told us that the government believed in mutual assistance. Then it said that we were too poor to continue giving mutual assistance. It was on both sides of the question. Then it told us that the government was going to proceed to build a lot of low-rental houses. It told us that in the face of the statement by the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. St. Laurent) that no government of which he was a member would ever engage in a plan for subsidized housing. How the government reconciles those two positions I do not know. Then the speech told us that Princess Elizabeth had been married. It ended up by saying that people in Canada would have to pay in taxes all the expenses of the government. That was the fourth speech from the throne.
As I said the other day, there were important public issues which were not emphasized in this speech from the throne, issues that the common people of the country are face to face with every day. I enumerated some of them: the rising cost of living, the unrest among workers, the plight of the veterans, the perilous state of agriculture. I should have added one other, the confusion and chaos in the business world. I wish to touch on these things briefly before I proceed to the
other questions that the government considers of major importance at this session.
Is it or is it not a fact that we have a rising cost of living today? Government statistics tell us it is up by forty-five per cent over pre-war years; that the cost of food is up nearly seventy per cent. Most people believe that the cost of living is up very much more than the first of these figures. The question arises, why do prices rise? I suggest that prices rise when we have too little goods for the money available. And prices rise when we have too much credit and currency for the goods available. And I say that is the condition we have in Canada today.
I charge the government of this country with being responsible for both. I charge them with being responsible for policies which have expanded our credit and our currency at a more rapid rate than their control policies have permitted goods to be produced and retained in this country. When you get a condition like that, a small amount of goods in relation to the credit and currency available, nothing can happen but that prices will go up. That is fundamental; it is a fundamental criticism of the results of this government's fiscal and control policies.
If you put a thousand dollars worth of goods on one side and ten men on the other with $100 each to buy the goods, what happens to prices? They remain steady. But, Mr. Speaker, lend $100 more to each of these ten men or let them get it any way they wish so that they have $2,000 in credit or currency to buy $1,000 worth of goods, what will happen? Nothing can happen but that prices will rise.
According to our calculations, this government has been responsible for increasing the credit and currency of this country twice as fast as its control policies have permitted the production and retention of goods, with the inevitable results we see about us today.
As to the unrest among workers, the fact is that in recent years we have had ten times as many strikes, or rather ten times as much loss of time in Canada from strikes as we had before the war. We have had rising prices up to now. And with the government's present policies as just announced, there can be no other result than that prices will continue to rise. In such circumstances more strikes are in the offing. When prices rise, when the cost of living goes up, people with fixed or small incomes protest; nothing can happen but that unrest should prevail among them. And unrest will be shown in an epidemic of strikes. The only permanent remedy is to get more production. If we get more production we
oO
The Address-Mr. Bracken

shall stop prices rising. We should then proceed to have policies which will not dissipate our production, policies which will leave as much of our goods in Canada as are necessary to keep prices from going up. As I said, the present condition traces back to fundamental government policy.
As to the plight of veterans, I shall make but one comment. During recent weeks we have had evidence as to how they are feeling with respect to their jobs and their pensions. The treatment that some of them have had has not been creditable to this government. I understand that there has been no increase in pension rates to these veterans for twenty years. Something was mentioned in the speech from the throne, but again it told us nothing. It said that measures affecting veterans will be brought in. I trust that when these measures are brought in we shall find that something will have been done to improve the situation they are facing.
I have mentioned the critical condition of our primary industry. Never before in Canada have I seen the farmers so disturbed or so disillusioned, and with so little faith in the future of the industry. They feel that they have been led down an empty trail. In western Canada the hog industry is back to where it was before the war. Here in Ontario it is rapidly getting back to that position, and the same is true all over Canada in all branches of the livestock industry-beef, hogs, dairying and poultry.
What is the cause? I will mention three of the major causes. The chief cause is the failure of government planning. The government undertook to regulate the agricultural economy, to take charge of it. And, having taken charge of it, they must accept responsibility for the condition it is now in.
Let me mention three things that happened. First, the government gambled with the farmers' wheat. They did not gamble with the government's wheat; they did not gamble with the nation's wheat; they gambled with the farmers' wheat. In the first year they lost for these farmers seventy-seven cents a bushel', or $123 million. In the second year, the year we are in now, they are losing at the rate of more than SI a bushel. When these two years are ended, the government will have lost on that gamble, for the farmers of Canada, the huge sum of around $300 million.
That is one reason for the criticism. A second reason for the criticism is the policy which the government followed in removing price ceilings and subsidies on coarse grains. What did they do? They had been paying fMr. Bracken.]
for several years subsidies on coarse grains and they had put on a price ceiling beyond which prices could not go.


Douglas Charles Abbott: Only eight months.


John Bracken: They decided to take off the price ceilings and subsidies.


Douglas Charles Abbott: The subsidy on feed grains was paid for only eight months.


John Bracken: As to the question of how long it had been paid, it may be eight months; but whatever it is-


Douglas Charles Abbott: You said several years. I thought I would correct you.


John Bracken: The government were giving subsidies and they had fixed price ceilings. What happened? They came along and took them both off. When? At the beginning of the crop season?


Mr. GARDINER:: Twelve months after you said they should come off.


John Bracken: Or at the end of the crop season? No. They took them off in the middle of the crop season. With what result? If I remember correctly, on October 20 these controls were on. The prices of these grains were lower. The farmers who had sold up to that time had taken the low prices. The next day the prices went up, in some cases nearly fifty per cent, and the farmers who sold after that date got more money than those who had sold before. The price of- oats before that date was sixty-five cents a bushel; after that date it averaged around eighty-five cents. John Jones over here who sold his oats today got sixty-five cents, and Bill Smith sold his the next day and got eighty-five cents. The inequity arose because of faulty administration by this government.
In the case of barley, the price which was being paid for the higher grades was ninety-five cents on the day before the controls came off, and the next day it was $1.35 and has since been around $1.25. The fact is that the farmers who sold before that date took twenty cents a bushel less for their oats, approximately, and over thirty cents a bushel less for their barley. In other words, the farmers who sold before that time took a loss of about $7 million and those who sold barley before that time took a loss of $14 million.
There has never been an answer to the question why the government made that decision at that time, and I ask them now to say why it was made. The farmers of Canada are waiting for the answer and it has never been given. There was no justification for that action at that time.

The Address-Mr. Bracken
And what effect had it had on the livestock of the country? Let me tell the house. Because of the government contracts with respect to much of our agricultural products, contracts to sell these products overseas in Britain at fixed prices-because of this, the farmers found themselves tied to more or less fixed prices for the things they had to sell. Then the government came along with its changed policy which allowed their costs of feed to go up approximately fifty per cent, until now the beef industry, the hog industry, the poultry industry, the dairy industry, most of these branches of agriculture find that they cannot make money. Some of them are losing money, many of them getting out of the livestock business. The livestock industry is almost in a state of complete collapse in Canada today.
That is one of the chief reasons for the present situation, and there is no satisfactory explanation for the government's action at that time, nor can there be. To illustrate the feeling of the farmers, I should like to read two paragraphs from a letter which I received from the Manitoba federation of agriculture, a. letter which was sent to the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott), the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) and the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. MacKinnon).
This letter states in part:
Manitoba farmers are angry about the recent removal of ceilings and subsidies on coarse grains. This action was taken without any apparent provision for the welfare of the livestock, dairy and poultry farmers. Irreparable harm has already been done to these industries. Farmers are continuing to liquidate young animals and breeding stock.
Let me interpolate here to give one illustration as to what is happening. Last year in a few months' time 22,000 sows were sold. This year, in the same months, twice as many have been sold. This means that people are going out of the industry. But the letter from the agricultural federation continues:
We demand that in the interests of Manitoba farmers your government correct this situation immediately by either (1) re-negotiating the British contract prices on a basis sufficient to cover recent increases in cost of production; (2) opening of the American market for export of livestock; (3) subsidizing the producer of livestock, dairy and poultry products to bring them in line with current prices of coarse grains.
At this point let me say a further word with respect to wheat. In the 1946 crop year the government's gambling with this crop lost seventy-seven cents a bushel for the grain growers and this year it is likely to lose $1 a bushel for them. Last year the government lost for these farmers $123 million, and in these two years together, last year and this year, the figure of losses may be $300 million.
I say we must keep the wheat board. This party brought that measure inro effect in Canada and we shall always retain it. I say, let the farmers have a choice of that board or of the open market. From August 1 next, let the farmers have an option either of the wheat board price or of the open market price. Never in my life have I supported the grain exchange and never did it support me, and I was in a government out there for twenty years. And it opposed us in the last federal election. I am not now speaking for them, Mr. Speaker. If there is any other way we can let the farmers get the open-market price, let us have it. But if we are to have governments and government boards gambling with the farmers' grain and losing a dollar a bushel each year of the farmers' money, I say that we have no choice but to give to the grain farmers the option to use either the wheat board or the open market.
I come now to a reference in the speech from the throne to the question of mutual assistance.


Mr. BRYCE:: Might I ask the hon. gentleman a question?


Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER:: Order.


An hon. MEMBER:: One at a time.


William Scottie Bryce: The hon. gentleman can say
either yes or no.


John Bracken: Go ahead with your question.


William Scottie Bryce: Was the hon. gentleman
quoting from his letter from the Manitoba federation of agriculture when he talked about the grain exchange?


John Bracken: No.


William Scottie Bryce: Thank you.


James Arthur Ross: They do not know which way they are going out there.


William Scottie Bryce: I know what road I am going.


William Ross Macdonald: Order.


John Bracken: I wish to refer just for a moment to one passage in the speech from the throne, namely the passage having reference to the question of mutual assistance. The government says it will continue as far as possible to grant mutual assistance but that under present circumstances it does not see how we can continue what we have been doing. Farther on, the text says:
Canada, nevertheless, remains one of the few great producing countries with capacities unimpaired by the war.
The Address-Mr. Bracken

I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that that is dangerous talk. In the past we have had dangerous talk, leaving the impression that we were going to have the millennium after the war. That kind of talk is dangerous when we look at the size of our public debt; when we look at the inflation we have in Canada; when we look at the unfavourable trade balance which we have met here now to try to do something about, that unfavourable trade balance with the United States approaching a billion dollars a year. It is dangerous talk in the light of the impending loss of much of our overseas markets, which markets in the past took half of our total exports.
In another place in the speech, it mentions, with respect to price increases, that the government is going to keep them under constant supervision. What that means I do not know. Presumably the government once kept under constant supervision the price of milk, the price of bread, the price of vegetables, and the price of automobiles. And yet those prices have all gone up and will go up higher under the government's present policies.
I mention these things only to point out this. If we do not get more production and retain more of it, these prices will continue to go up; because the money is there to buy it, unless the government takes it away from us by taxes or by loans. The only way in which we can correct this inflationary condition is to get more production; and, having obtained more production, then to see that enough of it is left in this country so that prices will not go up.
The other day the Prime Minister mentioned that there were about four or five measures that the government wished to have dealt with at this session. The particular measures were the Geneva trade agreements; the so-called emergency measures-more properly I would say the totalitarian powers measures; also the taxation measures; and then two measures already in effect which will terminate at the end of this year just because we happen to meet here this year. They would have lasted until March 31 if we had met after the end of this year. The government wants them extended.
. Let me refer very briefly to one or two of these and at greater length to the others. With regard to the transitional measures act, as I said, they would have been in effect until March 31 in any event if we had not met now. It was debated last year. There is no time now to discuss that measure. I suggest that there be discussed among the members the attitude they will take on it. We shall be opposed to much that is in it, but since it is only an interim measure, since it was passed
fMr. Bracken.]
before and since it will come up for discussion next year anyway, it is possible that it might be dispensed with after only a short debate. In any event, I want to say to the government that we are prepared to help them see that it is dealt with one way or another before we leave here this month.
With respect to the Agricultural Products Act, which is another act that terminates this year only because we are here in December and not in January, we shall want to ask some questions about it. We are concerned with respect to the future trade with Britain. We have been concerned, as I am sure the government must be concerned, because it has not been able to fill its contracts. Only a very small proportion of the contracts has been filled, in some cases. We want to know what the real situation is with respect to markets over there for hogs, cattle, cheese, eggs and other farm products.
I now come to what the government chooses to call its emergency legislation. My criticisms of the government's policies in this respect I shall state only briefly at this time. I will elaborate on them when I have stated them. We criticize the government first for delay in attacking this problem; a delay which has multiplied many times the severity of the problem; a delay which we say is inexcusable. We criticize them for the procedure they took to bring some of these measures into effect. We say they were an insult to parliament. We say they were brought into effect behind closed doors under a piece of legislation that the government itself told us it would not use for that purpose. We criticize the government also for trying to drag in an issue which has no relationship at all to this immediate problem; that is, the question of the Geneva agreements. That was dragged in to give a better appearance to the government's real' policies; dragged in to confuse the public with respect to the emergency parcel the government had decided to hand the country.
Now let me deal with these things one at a time, first with the delay. It is appropriate to inquire whether November 17 was the earliest possible day at which the government could have been aware of a problem of such gravity as to require the attention of parliament at a special session. For a few moments let me examine the record of events to see whether prior to that day, there was any evidence of Canada's critical condition. I have taken from the records a great deal of evidence to show the government had ample warning of the condition which was facing us.

The Address-Mr. Bracken
Here is one dated February 8, 1946, coming from the governor of the Bank of Canada, who said:
The prevailing optimism on the North American continent is dangerous if it diverts attention from the problems which have to be faced ... It seems likely that there will be far greater delayed reactions from world war II than from world war I, unless positive steps are taken to prevent this.
Again I quote from the same gentleman, under date of February 11, 1947:
It is normal for Canada to have a deficit in its current account balance of payments with the United States, and this deficit is likely to average higher in the future than it has in the past . . . Our imports from the United States in the fourth quarter of 1946 were about $430 million as compared with less than $500 million in the whole year 19.37, and less than $900 million in the whole year 1929.
That is from the governor of our own Bank of Canada. In April of this year the Economist, a distinguished authority in the United Kingdom on economics and finance, pointed out that Canada's position in regard to United States dollar reserves was almost identical with that of Great Britain. I could go on; I have a dozen or more of these warnings as to what was impending, but I need mention only a few of them. On April 17, in a dispatch from Ottawa, the Financial Post said:
The blackest possible picture of an approaching dollar crisis for the whole world has been painted here in Ottawa in the last few days by officials of the British 'treasury.
I need not take the time of the house to read all these warnings; those I have given indicate what most students of this question knew. On September 4, Australia found it necessary to cut her imports of Canadian newsprint by thirty per cent because of the dollar shortage.
In view of the evident lack of action, I then asked the government to call a special session of parliament to consider the obviously grave situation.
On September 8, New Zealand announced restriction on all imports from Canada except essentials, and on the same date Ceylon announced similar restrictions; yet there was no word from this government as to what was likely to be done. On October 8, I appealed to the Prime Minister, and I quote my words-
-as one Canadian to another, to forget party advantage and to concentrate upon the future welfare of this country; to call a conference of the commonwealth governments to devise plans for meeting the dollar crisis which we share in common.
The result was deep silence. The record goes on to show our reserves getting lower
month by month as we went along. At last, at very long last, the government admitted what the rest of the nation had known for months; that is, that a very grave situation faced Canada and that prompt, effective action was necessary. No longer could the government pretend that they alone belonged upon Olympus, or that they alone were endowed with superior wisdom and knowledge, or that they knew there was no danger and no need for action. The record of the warnings the government had is appalling; the warnings were constantly repeated; the facts were incontrovertible. The failure of the government week after week and month after month to take any action whatever has cost the nation hundreds of millions of dollars of its reserves and has doubled, trebled and even quadrupled the severity of the measures it is now necessary to take. Britain took action weeks before the Geneva agreements were signed. France did not wait, nor did Australia, New Zealand or Ceylon. But Canada did wait.
I need not take time to answer some of the excuses the government has given; there will be opportunities for that later on. Why was there this delay? Why the failure to act when the situation so clearly and imperatively demanded action? Why all this added cost to the nation? Why the long delay necessitating action so severe as that now being taken? I give the answer. It was because the government thought it politically expedient. The issue was before us. The government thought it saw an opportunity to excuse itself before the people of Canada by waiting until the trade agreements were announced, thinking it could confuse the issue in that way. The government delayed because it sought to hide the wolf of economic necessity in the sheepskin of the Geneva agreements. The government was willing to sacrifice the interests of the nation in order to protect its party from the . mounting criticism. The government delayed because it regarded political advantage to its party as more important than the welfare of the nation. The government in this matter stands revealed for what it is, insincere as well as incompetent.
I come now to the procedure followed by the government in dealing with this matter. They have used the powers conferred by the Foreign Exchange Control Act. I now refer to Hansard for August 9, 1946, at page 4530. where the present Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) said:
This is not an attempt to restrict trade between the two countries; it is just 'the reverse. This is a measure intended to assist trade.

The Address-Mr. Bracken
And further along on the same page:
I repeat that the whole purpose of the measure is to provide for the- efficient handling and conservation of our essential foreign exchange resources.
Then the predecessor (Mr. Ilsley) of the present minister had this to say, at page 2547 of Hansard for June 17, 1946:
We have no intention of using this exchange control legislation to restrict anything but certain types of capital movement.
Then a little further on:
It is for this reason that it is necessary to maintain our over-all machinery for control even though our intention is to place no restrictions on current account transactions.
I now come to what their experts told us in the standing committee on banking and commerce. The record is all here,.but I shall take only a few typical statements. I quote from page 10 of the proceedings of the banking and commerce committee last year:
Q. There would be the danger that funds might be dissipated by bringing in what you call non-essentials?
This is the answer by Mr. Rasminsky:
What would be necessary in that contingency, Mr. Queleh, would be for the government of the day to take appropriate action other than through the foreign exchange control board to limit our expenditure of United States funds for such purposes.
And a little farther down-and I will not take time to quote all these, but will refer to only a few-Mr. Rasminsky says:
I think the answer to that is that the ordinary legislative process would be at hand. If the government found it necessary to restrict imports from the United States because we are running short of American funds it would have the same courses of action open to it as were open to it and as it took in 1940, namely to introduce a measure into parliament to provide for the restrictions that were necessary. That is, as regards the import of goods, this act ensures-if I may say so-against bureaucratic control over the import of goods; it ensures that if it becomes necessary to take that measure it will be the legislature which takes it.
Then another quotation from another answer:
The foreign exchange control board has nothing whatever to do with the types or the quantities of goods which are imported into Canada or exported from Canada.
And a little farther down, Mr. Rasminsky says, in answer to a question by the hon. member for Lethbridge (Mr. Blackmore):
The answer is that if circumstances arose in which for one reason or another it seems desirable to place restrictions on the import of goods into Canada, then it is evidently the opinion of the government in this measure that the
fMr. Bracken.]
power to place those restrictions, should not be conferred upon an administrative body such as the foreign exchange control board.
That is the kind of impression the house was given as to the purpose of the measure, and for what it was to be used. Then, I read the following question by the hon. member for Eglinton (Mr. Fleming):
In other words, the suggestion there is no regulatory power vested in the board with reference to imports, at the expense of any power parliament now has in that regard, Mr. 'Rasminsky, was referring to the export and import of goods rather than securities and currency?
The answer was, "That is right".
Those are typicai of the views given to us by ministers of the crown and by experts in their employ as to the purpose of the act and how the government intended to interpret it. In spite of all that, they came along a month or two ago and used that act to do the very thing for which they said they would not use it.
I now come to my criticism of what the Prime Minister calls his short-term policy. But, sir, the government's sins are not alone those of omission. There are many sins of commission also for which they must answer. Most notable of these is their re-valuation of the Canadian dollar in July of 1946. The government artificially re-valued the Canadian dollar, raised it from ninety cents where it had been for years, to SI. This step was taken in defiance of the fact that the scales of Canadian-American trade were so heavily tipped in America's favour that the Canadian dollar situation did not warrant and could not support any theoretical parity.
The unfavourable effect of this re-valuation was immediate and overwhelming. Our unfavourable balance of trade rose from $5-5 million in 1945 to S525 million in 1946, and to $587 million in the first seven months of 1947. Let me say at once that the first figure I gave was one respecting an unusual year; that was not the normal state of unbalance. The figures just prior to that were around $300 million or $400 million a year.
Then came, as a result of the government's decision, the drying up of our American dollar income. The flow of United States capital investment in Canada then proceeding at a rate of nearly $300 million annually completely dried up. Only a trickle remained. Finally, Americans began to take advantage of an exchange position which they realized could not last. As a result, the loss on our balance of payments

that is, the export of gold and American dollars-rose in 1946 and the first half of 1947 to ten times the loss experienced in 1945.

The Address-Mr. Bracken
The ill effects of the government's action soon appeared in our domestic industry. In our gold mining industry, for example, production fell off to less than one-half that of the pre-war period. This was particularly serious because gold is the one commodity for which the United States maintains an unlimited market. Without our gold production, our trade deficit with the United States-and I would ask hon. members to take careful note of this figure-without our gold production our trade deficit with the United States would have been increased by 82,349,000,000 in the twenty-two year period 1926-1947. Yet this industry has been crippled by government policy.
Nor was the gold mining industry the only one placed in difficulties by the government's unwise policy. Our largest export industry, that of pulp and paper, found it impossible to continue selling in the United States market at the old price. Successive increases in price were necessary. This rise in the Canadian price level made it possible for Canada's competitors, notably the Scandinavian countries, to re-enter that market, and this year Sweden will sell to America approximately ten times the paper she sold there in the previous year. Nor is that all; the cost of Canadian paper, it is held by some authorities, is now approaching such a high price level as will make it economically feasible for Americans to process their fat pine of the vast forests of the southern states, thus permanently restricting Canada's largest single export.
Mr. Speaker, I now come to a consideration of what the government proposes to do. I come to the kernel of the government's short-term programme. The government has floundered into such a morass that only the most drastic action can retrieve our position. The Progressive Conservative party will not oppose any measure which gives hope of effective relief in these dire conditions into which the government has blundered. We object, however, to the term "austerity programme." The government cannot by attaching that phrase to its programme bask in the reflected courage of the British people.


Douglas Charles Abbott: I did not use that term.


John Bracken: The Canadian government's policy is a programme of totalitarian dictatorship. They pose as the great party of freedom; they pose as the great party of free trade. But as the government's good friend, the Winnipeg Free Press pointed out on November 26, the government's policy is one of super-protection. That is not my word; it is the word of the government's greatest newspaper friend in western Canada.
I come now to the question of embargoes. The first of the government's cure-alls are the import controls. Much of their benefit has been lost through the long delay which enabled United States businessmen to pour their goods into Canada, even by diversions from their own domestic market in some instances. The embargoes necessarily are more far-reaching than would have been the case had action been taken earlier. The government now says it has no alternative, that we must accept the restrictions. This, however, does not excuse the government for attempting to blame the people of Canada for the buying spree in the United States. When the government sets up conditions that favour buying in another country, manipulates its currency to facilitate that buying, and then does not even inform the people of the seriousness of the situation, then the government cannot shift one iota of the blame to the people. And the attempt to do so is cowardly.
Talk about a spending spree! When the government itself gives a lead in curtailing wasteful and extravagant spending it will be time enough for the government to censure the people of Canada for buying goods in the United States.
Just a word now about these new excise taxes. The new excise taxes are another of the government's remedies. They are to fall upon Canadian produced goods and upon British imported goods quite as much as upon United States goods. Their sole effect is to raise costs, to raise prices and to stimulate further the inflation which the government says it does not want. In our judgment, these measures serve no useful purpose; they will do much harm. We do not think they should be continued. So far as the government has proposed tax relief with respect to sugar, tea, coffee and so on, naturally they will have our support. However, we want to hear from the Minister of Finance with respect to the taxes they are imposing and why he thinks they are necessary. We will determine our course in the light of the argument he gives, but at the moment we are disposed to oppose these taxes.
Then with respect to the gold subsidy, it seems that the government has a positive genius for finding the worst possible way to do anything. One could wish that it would devote half of the energy which it puts into doing things the wrong way into finding the right way once in a while. Nowhere is this more clearly exemplified than in the case of the gold subsidy. Everyone is aware of the plight of the gold industry, of the fact that it is able to produce less than half of the gold it was producing five or six years ago.
The Address-Mr. Bracken

This industry produces the one commodity which can be exchanged without limit for United States dollars. But what does the government do? It sets up a scheme which will do either one, or both, of two evil things. Either the entire energy of the industry is to be diverted into new development, a procedure which will require imported equipment that the government has now banned; either there must be new developments which will produce no gold for two or three years, or the established mines will have to concentrate on their high grade ore, thus exhausting it prematurely and at great waste. If the present policy is continued much longer the gold industry of this country will be crushed out of existence. They are carrying on now only because the men in their employ are willing on account of the economic squeeze they are in, to take less than other men in similar callings just in order to have their jobs. As I say, if these policies are continued this industry will be destroyed. Today it is producing only half of what it did a few years ago.
Responsible men cannot countenance such false methods. We are against the gold subsidy as it now stands. There can be no justification in Canada for having two prices for the same commodity, for having this man getting $35 an ounce and that man getting $42 an ounce. Either there should be a free market for gold or, if it is to be subsidized, the subsidy should be industry wide. It should be fair to all and it should be sufficient to get out the gold.
I come now to what is perhaps the most objectionable feature of the government's policy. I come now to the crowning folly of the government's short-term scheme-the arbitrary powers given to the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply (Mr. Howe). This can be characterized only as the restoration of the great despotism. For years during the war this country lived under the arbitrary rule of the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply. I want to pay him the highest compliment for his work during the war. For years business, industry and the individual have been subjected to the arbitrary decree of ministerial discretion and secret decisions carried out 'by order in council. We were told during the war that it was necessary for us to be deprived temporarily of our liberties in order that we might enjoy them in security in peacetime.
Now that we are in peacetime, we are informed that we are to continue to live subject to arbitrary government and personal whim instead of by the due process of law and the judgment of the courts. Every Canadian was endowed at birth with the inalienable rights and privileges which are the heritage of
IMr. Bracken.]
British people everywhere. If these unparalleled restrictions are necessary in this emergency, and they well may be, then let them be embodied in detail in an act of parliament which can be debated by the representatives of the people in the proper democratic tradition, and let the statute be enforced in the impartial courts according to our immemorial custom. Well might that great jurist, Lord Hewart, refer to the new despotism of irresponsible authority. We have felt its heavy hand and we want no more of it. Naturally we shall oppose the bestowal of such arbitrary power upon any man or any group of men.
I come now to the Geneva trade agreements, the trade agreements which, as I said the other day, have been dragged in here to give a semblance of respectability to the government's other proceedings, or to confuse the public with respect to the other policies which the government is bringing in. The government did not need to bring this measure before the house at this time. It did not need to do that except for the purposes I have indicated, to confuse the Canadian people, to get them thinking about these things when the real issues are the immediate issues with which I have been dealing.
Section 11 of the tariff act reads as follows:
The governor in council may by order in council make such reductions of duties on goods imported into Canada from any other country or countries as may be deemed reasonable by way of compensation for reductions on Canadian products granted by any such country or countries.
That is the law. It has been there for many years. It enables the government by order in council to make reductions in tariffs by agreements with other countries. It has been used at least twice, once in 1935 and once in 1938. I hold in my hand a copy of the Canada-United States and the United Kingdom-United States trade agreements. Here is what happened. Those agreements were entered into and there was no special session called to deal with them. Members were not called in from all across Canada to talk about them and deal with them. What happened? The agreements were signed on November 17, 1938, and the rates were to be provisionally in force on January 1, 1939.
That is something like what is happening in the present agreements. I repeat that the agreements were signed on November 17 and the rates were provisionally in force on January 1. No special session was called. Parliament was called on January 12 of the next year, 1939. On that date the agreement was tabled. The resolution was introduced on February 11, and on March 9 the Right Hon. Mr. Lapointe moved that the agreement be

The Address-Mr. Bracken
referred to the committee of ways and means. On March 29 the resolution was reported and the bill introduced. It received second reading and the next day it received third reading. The legislation was passed four months after the agreements had been made.
That could have been done today with these agreements. There was no need to bring us here to talk about these agreements. They have very little if anything to do with the immediate question; they have been dragged in here for some reason which the government can try to make clear, if it can.
I can summarize now the position we take with respect to some of these things that have happened. The parliament of Canada has been brought into special session to consider a grave economic crisis in the history of the nation. I indict the government on the following counts:
1.	The government has been wilfully negligent of the public interest. It has let this crisis develop, in fact helped it to develop. It has delayed action and then deliberately set out to confuse the issue in the minds of the public.
2.	The government has carried out ill-conceived and hastily prepared stop-gap measures which have worked great harm and will continue to work great harm to the nation.
3.	The government has resorted to arbitrary and tyrannical methods, in an attempt to overcome its past mistakes.
4.	This is perhaps the most serious of all. The government is rapidly losing our overseas markets, markets which, as I indicated a little while ago, have been for decades the market for half of our exports.
I suggest, sir, that on these four grounds alone-and there are many others-the government stands condemned before this house and before this nation.
What are the alternatives? I think the government is wrong in approaching this problem entirely from a restrictionist and a scarcity basis. That is what all these measures mean. We should still consider all means of solving it on an expansionist basis. All embargoes on our goods entering the United States should be withdrawn. Let us keep in mind that the over-all problem which is pushing us into a severe programme of austerity is the scarcity of United States dollars. And in the face of that the government has been refusing our farmers the right to send products over there to get United States dollars. The government by its action hindered the increased production of our gold mines to get United States dollars. I was in British Columbia the other day. A man met me and said, "I am in the lumber business. I cut telephone poles. I cannot sell them where I am here in Canada, but the government will not allow me to sell them in the United States." That is the kind of thing we are up against. And when they changed the value of the dollar they ruined our tourist business.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: May I ask a friendly question?


John Bracken: Yes.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Sit down.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: I am very glad the leader of the opposition is more courteous than some of his supporters. My question is, does my hon. friend think for one second that this suggested policy will injure the lumber business of British Columbia?


John Bracken: I can only tell the house what this man said. He said, "I have carloads of telephone poles. I cannot sell them here and I am denied a market across the border." I am giving the minister the man's own words. He is in the lumber business.
As I said, let us keep in mind that the overall problem which is pushing us into a severe programme of austerity is the scarcity of United States dollars. We shall get United States dollars only if we sell our goods over there; we shall never get them by selling only at home. We are prepared to support gifts to Britain or loans to Britain, but it is absurd to be carrying on a lend-lease system with the British on our own, and then going on bended knee to the United States to get help ourselves. It is not realistic and it does not make sense. I would therefore remove the embargoes and permit our products to go into the United States and reap United States dollars as they do so. I suggest to my hon. friend who just asked me a question that he read the account in the paper which supports his party day in and day out in the city of Winnipeg, the Winnipeg Free Press. It will tell him whether the government's new policies are in the interests of Canada or not.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Time will tell.


John Bracken: Secondly, I would take full advantage at once of any reduced duties that are provided in the agreements; that is, [DOT] any that are not nullified by the action the government took the same day that they announced these agreements. They said, here are great agreements to expand trade. But then the modem Jeremiah came along and said, "We are not going to expand trade; we are going to prevent trade." I would take full advantage of the reduced duties that are
The Address-Mr. Bracken

provided in the agreements. These will be made effective by the President of the United States as of January 1 next.
Thirdly, I would correct the mistake that was made on July 5, 1946, when the value of the dollar was altered arbitrarily by this government. Great damage has been done since then, damage caused by that very act. The drain of dollars has been so great that the amount of depreciation permitted within the Bretton Woods agreement would not be sufficient to cure the worsened situation, but it would do something.
Fourthly, if we must temporarily restrict imports let the government come to us with a list of those restrictions, place them in an act of parliament and reserve the powers of making laws to parliament. Do not place the power to make tariff laws in the hands of a minister and a body of bureaucrats. We still believe in government by law rather than government by decrees dictated by czars. The men who will gain most are those who will have the smoothest trail to the minister's back door.
With respect to the long-range point of view, may I say that the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply (Mr. Howe) and the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) have left business in complete confusion. Even today we have changes in the hasty plans they made, and there have been several in the last few weeks. First, the government said that they were going to develop industries in Canada, to become more self-sufficient. At the same time they said, in six months everything will be corrected and we shall be on our happy unrestricted way again.


Douglas Charles Abbott: Who said that?


John Bracken: The government should make itself clear on this point. Did not my hon. friend say it would not be long before he would take off the special restrictions?


Douglas Charles Abbott: I asked who said that?


Mr. MACDONNELL (Muskoka-Ontario):: The Minister of Reconstruction and Supply.


John Bracken: If hon. members opposite would all speak the same language we would understand, but when one says one thing and another says another we do not know which to believe. On points like this the government should make itself clear. If we are to have new industries and new undertakings developed in this country, those undertaking them must know what the government's programme is. Industries' plans, unlike the plans of government, are made for the long term. We must set ourselves to the task of making ourselves less reliant on the United States market for the
fMr. Bracken.]
things we buy. We must therefore produce and process more ourselves, and we must encourage in every conceivable way the importation of British goods into this country.
Where this government's emergency programme is so wrong is that the restrictions apply to Britain and Australia just as they apply to the United States. We must develop our unused resources and make Canadian and foreign enterprise and capital welcome in this country, and give them freedom from the threat of expropriation. We must develop as well our empire trade, and restore our trade in all these countries of the world that have been buying our products over the past years. We have much of the undeveloped resources that the world needs. It is by policies of production and expansion that we can bring our international accounts into proper balance. By not developing industry we shall only invite scarcity, deflation and depression.
I should like to give one moment to the matters I mentioned as being in the minds of people everywhere across this nation. Just a sentence with respect to each of them.
With respect to the cost of living, the government's policy has resulted in too little goods for the money available. It has resulted in too much credit and currency for the goods available and under either condition nothing can happen but that prices will rise.
With respect to unrest among workers, it is getting worse every day.


Humphrey Mitchell: May I ask the hon. gentleman a question? Early in his speech-


John Bracken: If the minister has a question to ask, let him ask it. He must not make a speech.


Humphrey Mitchell: I will not make a speech. But early in his speech the hon. member said-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Question.


Humphrey Mitchell: The question is this. Early in his speech, the hon. member said that there was ten times more unrest today than last year. As a matter of fact there is less.


John Bracken: I object to the minister putting words into my mouth. I did not say anything of the kind.


Humphrey Mitchell: I should like to ask the hon. gentleman this question.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Sit down.


Humphrey Mitchell: How many persons are there on strike under federal jurisdiction and how many are there under provincial jurisdiction?	|

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King


John Bracken: I said a moment ago that in recent years there had been ten times the amount of lost time, as a result of strikes, than there was prior to the war. That is what I said, and that is the fact. Because of this unrest, men who have fixed salaries, finding their cost of living going up, will use the strike, if necessary, as a weapon to get better treatment. What I say is that these policies *of the government can have no other effect than to raise prices and thereby invite further unrest.


Humphrey Mitchell: May I say this to my hon. friend


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Sit down.


James Horace King: The minister must not interrupt the hon. member without his permission.


John Bracken: I said that the unrest among workers had been greater in recent years, and I say that under these policies it will be greater still and the minister will have an epidemic of strikes on his hands under these very policies. That is the only weapon the worker has when the cost of living goes up, and the government's policies will drive his cost of living up.
With respect to the crisis in agriculture, the .government undertook to run the farmers' business. And all its plans are now breaking down. The government's policies froze farmers' prices at the top and allowed the cost of the farmers' business to increase in some cases by nearly fifty per cent overnight. Such policies have caused unrest from one end of the nation to the other among those who have to work on our farms. The result is frustration and bitter enmity all along the line. As I said a moment ago, the farmers feel that they have been led down a blind alley.
With respect to veterans, they feel that they have been ill treated. Pension rates have not been increased, nor have war veterans allowances.
With respect to the chaos and confusion in the business world-


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: Is there any country in the world equal to us in the matter of war veterans allowances?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Sit down.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: You Tories cannot take it. Is there any country in the world equal to us in that respect?


John Bracken: One reason why the government is in the trouble in which it finds itself today is that it had held out the millennium before us and now it is realizing what the true situation is.


Ian Alistair Mackenzie: They have done a dashed sight better than your government did in 1914-18.


John Bracken: When the government has no good argument it goes back to 1914.
With respect to the chaos and confusion in business, I have only this to say. Businessmen find it impossible to make long-term plans because they have no way of finding out what the government is going to do next.
Under these conditions, Mr. Speaker, I have no alternative than to move, seconded by the hon. member for Peel (Mr. Graydon):
That the following be added to the motion:
"We respectfully submit to Your Excellency that Your Excellency's advisers do not possess the confidence of the Canadian people."


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Mr. Speaker, the house has now before it a motion by the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bracken) to the effect that the government does not enjoy the confidence of the people. May I ask my hon. friend whether there is any better test of the confidence of the people than that which is given either at by-elections or at a general election? So far as we have had an opportunity, thus far, of ascertaining whether we enjoy the confidence of the people, I would direct the attention of my hon. friend and his followers to the result of the four or five by-elections that have taken place during the last year. He will find that every single by-election in that period of time has been won by the present administration, expressing thereby the confidence which the people of Canada have in this government.


John Bracken: What about the sixth?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The sixth may be a general election and may come sooner than my hon. friend expects.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I am not saying that it will-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: -but what I do say is that my hon. friend the leader of the opposition would be the most surprised and disappointed person were it to come at any time, in the position-


John Bracken: That is your hope, not your judgment.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: -in which he is, as leader of his party, at the present time.


An hon. MEMBER:: Don't worry about him.

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William Lyon Mackenzie King: My hon. friend has spoken of there being no haloes round the heads of ministers here.


John Bracken: I said that others thought there were haloes.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I thought my hon. friend said there were no haloes.


John Bracken: I said that your two supporters said there were.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I will tell him there is no halo around his head at the present time.


John Bracken: Thank you very much, Mr. Prime Minister.


An hon. MEMBER:: Cheap stuff.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: My remarks have been occasioned by the motion my hon. friend has placed before the house. I hope that what I have said is, of itself, sufficient to convince him and to convince, as no doubt it will, other members of the house that this government does enjoy the confidence of the people of the country so far as confidence has been expressed in by-elections.
May I say, in regard to my hon. friend's speech generally, where he so often spoke of being disappointed at this and at that, that he did not think this was right and that that was wrong, that I have not thus far seen anything that the government has done which he thought was wholly right; everything we do is, in his opinion, more or less wrong. I am not surprised therefore that he makes the statement he does about the speech from the throne and the measures that appear in it. Let me give, by a reference to the last two by-elections, a very simple example of my hon. friend's method of criticizing the government.


An hon. MEMBER:: Bring on the general election.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The last two by-elections were in the constituencies of Halifax and York-Sunbury respectively. When the by-election was called in Halifax my hon. friend complained bitterly that the government had delayed the election for weeks and for months because we were afraid to go to the people. We had an election a very short time afterwards in York-Sunbury. We brought on the election immediately, thinking that my hon. friend would be pleased that we had not delayed this time. He then complained that we had tried to steal a march on him by bringing on the election so quickly.


John Bracken: Tell us about Portage la Prairie.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: He seemed to think it an offence that we should have sought to have a vacancy, which had been created by the death of a minister of the crown, filled by a minister of the crown; as though a government would not be expected to do all in its power to see that a province which had been previously represented by a minister would be represented again by a minister as soon as possible.


John Bracken: The government party had other members in the province of New Brunswick.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I am just
representing to my hon. friend that we do not expect much but criticism from him. We have grown so accustomed to his criticism now that we do not expect he is going to agree with anything that we do, and therefore we do not attach quite as much importance as we otherwise would to the criticisms he makes.


John Bracken: Let the Prime Minister tell us about Portage la Prairie when he talks about these matters.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: If my hon.
friend will pardon me, perhaps he will allow me to' speak along lines which are more agreeable to him, as they are to myself.
In the first place I should like to join with him in very warmly congratulating the mover and the seconder of the address in reply to the speech from the throne. I am sure it has been a pleasure to all members of the house to listen to the two addresses we have had this evening. It is a pleasure and satisfaction for many reasons. It must be apparent to all who have heard the mover and seconder, that we have in their persons valuable additions to the membership of this house. The hon. member for Lake St. John-Roberval (Mr. Dion) came into the house at the last general election. He has spoken very seldom thus far, but this evening he has shown us by his free delivery and carefully thought out arguments that he possesses the qualities which are so essential in making a good parliamentarian. I should like to extend the warmest congratulations to him on the manner in which, in what he has said, he has represented his constituency and in what, by way of example, he has contributed to debating in this house.
It will be observed in regard to both speakers that in some particulars they have had a similar training and possess a similar

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
background. Each is a lawyer who has a high standing in his profession. Each is a war veteran, which is a qualification of exceptional merit for any member of parliament to possess at this time. And as we have seen this evening, each is capable of addressing this House of Commons in both the English and the French language. That again is perhaps as helpful a qualification as a member of parliament in our country can possess. I do congratulate most warmly the mover of this address.
Now I say to the seconder of the address, mv hon. friend who has just come into the house from Halifax, we all appreciate the difficulty one experiences in making a maiden speech. Some of us have heard many maiden speeches in this house in the course of the years we have been members of it, but I am sure it will be agreed that no member of the house has acquitted himself more admirably in his maiden speech than has the hon. member for Halifax (Mr. Dickey) this evening. Like the hon. member for Lake St. John-Roberval (Mr. Dion), he has had important legal experience. He has dealt with some important national and international problems; and already, though he is comparatively young in years, he enjoys a reputation as a public speaker and as a sound thinker which few men of this country have enjoyed at his age.
May I say, Mr. Speaker, that it is encouraging to all of us to observe the type of men who are coming into this house at this time. Having regard to the ability which they are showing at so early an age in their careers, one, who, in the course of a short while, may be passing from the scene altogether, will be able to look back with confidence to those who are following on, realizing that our country will be safe under their guidance and direction. I for one am particularly happy that, in the addresses to which we have listened to-night, we should have had anew an assurance that Canada's younger men may be trusted to carry out the ever-increasing responsibilities which those who govern in this country will have to assume during the years to come.
Now may I thank my hon. friend, the leader of the opposition, and also the mover and seconder of the address, for the kind references they have made to the honour recently graciously conferred upon myself by the King. The pleasure derived from this royal recognition will always be the greater in that it has been so cordially received by my fellow citizens. May I say to this parliament that I am deeply grateful that, through the leader
of the opposition tonight and those who sit around him, all hon. members have been kind enough to cause me to feel that they too approve the award made by His Majesty.
My hon. friend the leader of the opposition asked me if I would say something about my recent trip abroad, to touch upon what I had thought and observed in the course of that sojourn. It is perhaps best to begin by referring to the trip itself and the reason for it. I was invited by His Majesty to be present as the representative of Canada at the royal wedding. A more exceptional opportunity to visit Britain could hardly have been presented to anyone. Among the special honours and privileges of the visit was that of presenting in person to Her Royal Highness the Princess Elizabeth the gift from the people of Canada. I think hon. members are already aware of the nature of the gift. In deciding upon a gift for Her Royal Highness, it was not an easy matter for the administration to hope to satisfy everyone; and it was very difficult indeed to know what would be the most suitable gift to make. Fortunately, we had in the Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, a lady in whose good judgment we knew all Canadians had confidence, and one who, we felt, would be able to assist the government materially in the selection of a suitable gift. We accordingly asked Her Royal Highness if she would lend the government her good offices in making the selection, and endeavour to ascertain from the royal family what gift would likely be most acceptable to the Princess herself. I may say we felt that the most suitable gift would be one the bride herself would wish to have; we ascertained through Princess Alice that what Her Royal Highness would really like would be silver for a table service which would be of assistance in entertaining and in carrying out some of the duties she and her husband would have to discharge later on. Her Royal Highness expressed a preference for pieces of antique silver. The government had very little doubt as to the wisdom of the choice; and we left it with Her Royal Highness Princess Alice to make the selection, within limits which were indicated. I should mention also that we felt a gift which would be especially welcome, in a very personal way, would be a mink coat. This was added to the gift originally chosen.
I want to convey to members of the house, and through this house to the country, the very warm thanks of Her Royal Highness Princess Elizabeth for the gift which came to her from Canada. Her Royal Highness expressed with real delight her appreciation of the gift, and asked if, upon my return, I would convey her thanks, as probably she herself

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
will do later on in a written communication, to the government and the people of Canada. I might add that the gift from Canada seems to have given great pleasure not merely to the princess but also to Their Majesties and to Her Majesty Queen Mary. One of the great pleasures afforded by my recent visit to England was the opportunity to renew friendships with Their Majesties, who have so great an attachment for Canada and who spoke at length of their visit here, and also to meet again Queen Mary, one of the greatest women in the world today.
I should say also that I extended to Her Royal Highness and the Duke of Edinburgh a very warm invitation to visit Canada at an early date. This I did not only on behalf of the government but also on behalf of His Excellency the Governor General and Lady Alexander. I was warmly thanked for the invitation, but a definite acceptance has not been given up to the present, and I imagine we shall have to wait a little time before we know when it will be possible for the visit ;o be made.


Mr. COLD  WELL@: Before the Prime Minster leaves the point, in addition to the mink coat exactly what was the gift?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I thought a very full account had already appeared in the press, together with pictures. The gift consisted of candelabra, of salvers, of plates, and generally a service for a large table for purposes of entertainment, all of antique silver. I shall endeavour to see that photographs of the gift appear in the press so that hon. members and the people of Canada may have some appreciation of the nature and beauty of the gift.
When it was announced in the press that I would be visiting England for the wedding, I received an invitation from the government of Holland to pay a visit to the Netherlands. I also received a similar invitation from the Prime Minister of Belgium, and shortly before leaving I received a communication from the President of the French Republic inviting mo to meet His Excellency and some of his ministers at luncheon on the day of my arrival in France I mention these invitations, as hon. members will be quick to recognize, not as having been extended to me personally, but as invitations extended to me as the representative of the people of Canada to whom the countries mentioned wished to give expression of their continued admiration and gratitude. Unfortunately the ship on which I crossed was a day late in arriving and I was unable to keep the invitation of the President of France. The day following, however, I had

the honour of meeting the then Prime Minister of France, Mr. Ramadier, and having with him a conversation of some length. In the evening I had the honour of being the guest of Mr. Bidault, the foreign minister, and met with him a number of other members of the government of France. I mention these receptions as they will enable hon. members to see the opportunities there were of gaining in a very short time first-hand information in relation to some of the conditions to which I shall make reference a little later on.
The visit to Paris, of course, was very short, but during that visit it was possible to gain some very denite impressions. The visit to Belgium, though fortunately longer, was similar in its nature, in that the Prime Minister invited me to be his guest and meet his colleagues. I also had the honour of meeting His Royal Highness Prince Charles, the Prince Regent of Belgium, together with a number of members of parliament and the Speakers and some of the members of both houses.
In the Netherlands, I had a similar opportunity of meeting the Prime Minister and his colleagues on different occasions, and of renewing a personal friendship with Her Royal Highness Princess Juliana, at the time the Princess Regent of the Netherlands, who became so well known to many of us in Canada during the. several years she resided in the capital of Canada. I also had the honour of meeting anew Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. Her Majesty wished me to renew her expression of thanks to the people of this country for what our armed forces had achieved in liberating the Netherlands.
I have made reference to the warmth of the welcome extended by these several countries. The warmth of that welcome; its many manifestations; the honours which came from the heads of governments, from parliaments, from universities, from municipalities and organizations, one and all, were intended as expressions of admiration and gratitude to the people of Canada, for our country's part in helping to liberate the nations of northwestern Europe during the period of the great war, and what has since been done to help them in assisting in the work of recovery. I do not believe it would be possible for anyone who did not actually have an opportunity of visiting these countries to begin to appreciate how deeply in mind and heart these peoples cherish the remembrance of all that has been done for them by Canada, and the gratitude they feel for what Canada stands for in the world today, particularly in relation to the solution of many of the problems they have been facing.

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
Nothing could have expressed more clearly the high place Canada holds in the regard of the governments and peoples of these countries than these several manifestations. And may I hasten to say that, at base, the gratitude is primarily for and due to the tremendous sacrifices made by members of Canada's armed forces in helping to liberate the countries in which they fougnt in the recent war. Nothing could touch the heart of a Canadian more in visiting the Netherlands than to see the cemeteries in which thousands of Canadian youths still with us until a year or two ago are having their last long rest. The same is true in Belgium and Erance of many who fought and died in the first world war. It must be a comfort to those who have lost relatives overseas to realize that the peoples of Belgium and Holland, where these cemeteries are located, are giving so much personal attention and exceptional care to the graves of their loved ones. The same will be found to be true of burial grounds in France. That is but one of many manifestations of a feeling which lies much too deep for words on the part of the citizens of these countries. I hope all of us will realize that, while the war has Drought terrific sacrifices in every way, nevertheless since the war, and as a result of what happened during wartime, there has grown up between the peoples of these countries and our own country what amounts to a feeling almost of kinship. It seems to me that is one of the great assets we now possess as we face the terrible situations which confront certain parts of Europe, and which may come to affect a very large portion of mankind.
Nations which fought together for liberty cannot bind themselves too closely to each other; we cannot bind ourselves too closely together as a means at this time of helping to continue to preserve liberty.
Just one further thought I should like to mention in this connection. I refer to our national anthem. When one is abroad, one experiences a double feeling of pride as one hears "O Canada" as well as "God Save the King" being played along with the national anthem of the country he may happen to be visiting. I felt an emotion greater than that I had experienced at any other similar time when I heard the playing of our "O Canada" at the same time as other anthems were played, as people stood bare-headed in reverence and recognition of our land. Also, the words of "O Canada" will ever have for me an entirely different meaning, or at least a supplementary meaning to that which they held formerly, after having listened to them being sung in other countries. The words of
"0 Canada" had been learned and were sung by choirs as a special tribute in one or two of the countries I visited. When we sing "0 Canada" we sing the words, "We stand on guard for thee." And, indeed, we do stand on guard for Canada, as our own country. But when one hears a great body of men and women in a country like the Netherlands sing "0 Canada, we stand on guard for thee," the significance of those words becomes more profound and deeper than they otherwise could possibly be.
I shall say only a word about the conditions in those countries so far as one could learn of them in so short a time. I would hesitate even to pretend to say anything about conditions, had I not had the opportunities I have mentioned, and had I not received a good deal by way of what one would regard as inside information-I might call it more accurately authoritative information-in regard to what is taking place at the present time.
From reading the press, I believe hon. members will have learned how deplorable conditions in France have become within the recent past, a condition which no doubt is due in part to the suffering of the people which has not yet been relieved, but which, I believe, is due in larger part to communistic influences which have been fomenting trouble and which, unless they cap be checked, will help to undermine the progress and security of that nation.
I wish to be guarded in my observations. I have no desire to add anything to the alarm which now exists; but I would say that, at the present time, I imagine nothing is occasioning more concern to the people of other countries, as well as to the people of France, than the very unsettled condition in France and in one or two other countries to which, later, I may refer briefly.
Let me speak about Belgium. A visit to that country today would perhaps disclose conditions more prosperous than one might imagine they could be. There can be no doubt that the people of that country have made a marvelous recovery in many directions. If there were no cloud overhanging their borders, and if they were not threatened with penetration from within by subversive forces, I believe it would be no time at all before Belgium would find herself pretty much where she was before the war.
There is this to be remembered when one observes conditions in countries like Belgium and Holland: They were occupied countries, just as France was an occupied country. For that reason they did not suffer, except in some places, to anything like the extent of a country like Great Britain which was not



The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
occupied, but which was bombed continuously from day to day over a period of years.
At times that fact may be lost sight of. There is still, however enough damage in cities such as Antwerp in Belgium and Rotterdam in the Netherlands to make it necessary for time to play its part in helping to restore the damage done to those countries during the war.
I would say at this point that the people of the Netherlands have reason to feel happy, as they do, that their country has recovered to the extent it has. I believe they would be the first to say, in that connection, that they owe to Canada a debt which they will never find it possible to pay. They have not forgotten that it was Canadian troops which freed their country from the oppressor and gave its citizens the opportunity to go again on their way as a free people.
To one who has had the opportunity, as I have had, to visit the United Kingdom on three or four occasions since the war, the fact becomes manifest that the British people are determined to restore the damage done by war as rapidly as possible and are meeting the situation with the greatest fortitude. In outward appearance London shows improvement on each succeeding visit. The same is true of the people one meets on the street. But one must continually remember that poverty hides its head, and misery does not appear in high places. Behind these outward appearances of improvement there can be no doubt that the great mass of the people are suffering from privation and from lack of food and, like other countries, that Great Britain is being held back by lack of materials. Having regard to what the people of the United Kingdom went through during years of war, and the years which have succeeded it, any assistance that can be given is something which cannot be considered too carefully.
The wedding was a bright spot in a very dark sky. For a moment it seemed to give the British public a chance to feel that old times were returning, and the people enjoyed a day of national rejoicing. May I say here what I said when leaving London, that, if there had been no cloud over the skies of Europe, I would have returned from Great Britain realizing that, while there is great privation and suffering there, nevertheless the people are determined to see and would find that in the course of time they will come back to the position they occupied some years ago. But again there are menacing clouds upon the horizon. I wish to say to this House of Commons that the cloud of uncertainty that is over the world today is something that is-1

might use this word-appalling. I do not believe it is possible to exaggerate what may come at this time or almost at any moment as a result of the conditions that exist in Europe at present.
I want to be very careful in what I say because I realize how serious the situation is and I should not like to exaggerate its seriousness in any way. We have at the present time, as hon. members know, the council of foreign ministers meeting in London. Thus far they have not been successful in getting very far toward agreement in the making of peace with Austria or Germany. Every one is asking himself today when searching his own heart. "What is to happen if that effort does not meet with success at this time?"
No one can say what may happen, but there are significent words that have been used within the past few days of which I think this House of Commons should take note. They are deeply significant. It is by such phrases perhaps, that one is able to judge just how serious the situation may be. I should like to draw attention to one word of the secretary of state for foreign affairs in England. This may have been noticed by some hon. members, but it may have escaped the notice of others. I should like to quote a passage that appeared in the press of November 29, in a dispatch from London as follows:
Russian Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov challenged the United States, Great Britain and France to deny that they had plans for setting up a separate German government in the western zones if the current London meeting of the big four fails. British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin replied to Molotov that he had never made such a statement but added "if the settlement of the peace is to be blocked we can't continue with chaos. If peace is to be denied we cannot be expected to stand by inactive."
Then within the past day the secretary of state of the United States made another significant statement. It is but one of many, but I should like to place it beside the quotation I have just given. This is a Canadian Press dispatch from London dated December 4. It reads:
Marshall and Molotov traded direct verbal blows for the first time in the present foreign ministers meeting, conference officials reported.
The American state secretary, his ire aroused by Molotov's charges that the other powers were trying to "enslave" Austria, indirectly referred to the Marshall programme and declared Molotov was trying to wreck it.
These are the words of Secretary of State Marshall:
"We are all aware of the real purpose of attacks of this nature," Marshall said. "It is to disrupt the great cooperative movement that is being launched for the economic recovery of Europe."

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
It seems to me that in those two statements hon. members have something which will enable them to get a picture of what is happening or developing in a large way at this time. The impression seems to be that Russia is aiming at a centralized government in Germany, one government which will have control of the whole of Germany, but which, according to the views of many, would be directed from Moscow, and that if she does not succeed in getting that, in having that aim met, we may have again a long period in which no peace settlement can be made with respect to Austria and Germany.
Then there is the impression that everything is being done that can be done to foment unrest, particularly in western Europe, and to make it impossible for the Marshall plan to succeed. In other words, it is felt that this is part of the deliberate policy of communism as it is being spread throughout Europe at this time, that there must be such unrest stirred up in all countries as to make it impossible for a settlement to be reached at the present time. There seems to be little doubt in the minds of those who are close to the matter that if western Europe cannot be saved from the appalling position in which it is at the present time, if there are to continue to be millions of people with insufficient food and clothing, if there is to continue to be social unrest fomented from underground sources, the whole continent may get more or less out of hand altogether.
I do not wish to say more at the present time. I think I have said sufficient to indicate that I believe there has not been a time, except prior to the recent war, when matters were shaping in such a threatening manner as they are at the present time. While it is difficult to suggest what can be done to meet the situation, perhaps the first step in that direction is to realize, that the situation is indeed a very serious one. I shall not say more on that at this time; I may have occasion later on to speak of it again.
Hon. members are, I think well aware that the Marxist theory is that there is inevitable conflict between communism and capitalism. That is where the hopelessness, in some ways, of this situation lies. The Russians appear to believe, or at least their leaders assert that, in order to save itself, capitalism will sooner or later turn upon Russia because she is the communist centre, that therefore they must be continually protecting themselves, that therefore they must have their satellite nations 5849-5
serving as a curtain along their frontiers in order to protect their people. That is on the one side.
On the other side you have the belief that, because of the doctrine of the class struggle being in the minds of the Russians the only means of solving the problems of today, that the development of the totalitarian state is the settled objective of the communist party wherever it is operating throughout the world; that it is being directed from the one particular centre, and that that is a situation which it is very difficult indeed to control.
I ask hon. members to look at the world as it is at the moment. First, go to the far east and see the condition that is threatening there. I ask them to look at Asia where today there is still actual fighting. Then come to the middle east where the threat of war is on the horizon at the moment. Then come to a country like Greece where you have a condition of unrest and strife that is extraordinarily difficult to control. Take next the position of France, Austria and Italy and consider the social problems they are facing and the unrest that exists in those countries. Wherever one looks, there are today on the horizon problems that are baffling the best minds of our day.
I hope I shall not be misunderstood if I say that our country does stand high in the eyes of other nations. We have seen the kind of thing that has taken place in the chamber of deputies in France within the last few days; we have seen the kind of thing that has taken place in the assembly in Italy and in legislatures of other countries. I believe that one of the torches we can hold high in the world at this moment is to keep this parliament a model assembly, illustrating to the world how democracy can be Carried on by argument and persuasion rather than by a course of procedure which is certain to create a wrong impression.
I believe, in my heart, that the greatest service men and women can render today- and this is about the only service that many individuals are in a position to render-is that of preserving, as far as they can toward everyone., an attitude of good will, of doing what they can to remove ill will which, so far as the human mind is concerned, is as contagious, in its way, as disease may be with regard to the human body. We are not going to solve any problem in this world today by any magical formula. They will be solved only if each individual does his part and each

The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
nation does its part to help to the utmost to further the common good of all, by a right attitude toward all.
I have not much time before it will be eleven o'clock. My hon. friend will perhaps excuse me, therefore, if I do not attempt to reply at this time to much of what he said. The greater part of my hon. friend's remarks this evening was taken up in discussing the Geneva agreements and also the so-called emergency measures. These are both items which are on the programme and which will be discussed in considerable part during the next two weeks. Therefore, I think I need not go into the points he has raised tonight, but will leave it to the course of the debate on these questions to develop the replies to him by other ministers, if not by myself, and by the discussion on the floor of the house.
However mistrustful hon. gentlemen may be of the government's intention in bringing these two groups of measures down at this time, I can say to this house quite honestly, knowing the situation as I have from the beginning, that we were deeply concerned about the loss of United States dollars over quite a period, but we were informed by those who were concerned with the Geneva negotiations that that conference had a great possibility of succeeding; and that it would be unfortunate if anything were done in Canada which would prejudice the success of the discussions that were taking place there. That was the reason we waited until we knew definitely that the final agreement had been reached before we took the step to call parliament and to have those great questions discussed here.
May I say that I cannot agree with my hon. friend when he says that the emergency measures are more important than the larger question. Both are questions of trade, and we shall find increasingly that our problems of an emergency character are going to be effectively solved only as the problems of trade as they affect the entire world are brought to a successful solution.
No country in the world is as much dependent as Canada is upon foreign markets, and the development of this nation, as my hon. friend knows very well, lies in our having the largest possible measure of opportunity to trade with other countries of the world. The Geneva agreement is something that has not been equalled at any time in negotiations between nations in the way of freeing the barriers of trade and restrictions as between different nations. It is a great triumph; and it is right that the people of Canada, when they are discussing these emergency measures which are unpleasant, which are the last thing in the world that this government would wish

to bring down at this time, should fully realize that they are temporary measures. They are not permanent measures; they are not protectionist measures in any sense of the word. They are sharp for the reason that we hope they will be effective. We hope that their duration will be the shorter, because they are sharp. It is out of the prosperity that we have had in this country that this situation has arisen. If our people had not been' making and spending the money they have they would not have been purchasing to the extent they have in the United States, particularly great quantities of luxuries. I will not go into that question tonight, but the government wants the people of Canada to understand that these emergency measures are temporary in character. The people must not be blind to the larger opportunities that are going to come out of the Geneva agreements as a consequence of the agreement that was reached there.
My hon. friend spoke about this being an emergency session!


John Bracken: Will the Prime Minister permit one word?


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Yes.


John Bracken: The Prime Minister said I left the impression that the emergency matters were of more importance than the trade agreements. I did not mean to leave any such impression. I think what I said was that the emergency matters are the problems before us now and that the trade agreements did not have to be discussed at this time.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The impression I received-


John Bracken: I never made any comparison between the emergency matters and the trade agreements. They are both important.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I am glad my hon. friend has said what he just said. It looks to me as though he agrees with me. Of the two, in the long run, the Geneva agreement is a much more important matter to this country than any of these emergency measures which may come up at the present time.


John Bracken: The government could have dealt with them without bringing them up now.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: With regard to the question of bringing them up now, the government felt that when the agreement was signed we should be prepared to accept it and we ought to put it into force at the time that was provided, but that parliament should know about it immediately and should approve it

____________The Address-Mr. Mackenzie King
as soon as possible. We also felt that the emergency measures should be brought forward to be dealt with. We could not undertake them earlier, because to have done so would have interfered with negotiations at Geneva. As my hon. friend well knows, we had to put the emergency measures into force at the moment we did, and not wait any longer because of the fact that otherwise, as in the case of the budget resolutions, all kinds of advantage would have been taken by those who wish to profiteer and those who wish to benefit from changes that were to come about.
My hon. friend spoke of this as an emergency session. This is not an emergency session. We carefully considered that very point. The government might have had an emergency session to deal with these questions only, but we felt that the people of Canada and hon. members themselves would much prefer to begin the regular session now. Let us get that much further ahead, if we can, with the business and spare the country the cost of an extra session and spare hon. members the necessity of coming to attend a special session. This is the regular session of parliament for the balance of the present year and for the coming year.
My hon. friend spoke about the speech from the throne. He said that there was not much in it. He said that he had heard many speeches from the throne and this had less in it than any other. I hope he will not mind my saying that I have heard many speeches by leaders of the opposition, but I never heard as long a one with as little in it as I have heard tonight.
My hon. friend christened the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) Jeremiah. I think he said that Jeremiah was the author of Lamentations. May I say to him, if he digs a little deeper into the source of the Scriptures and becomes more accurate, he will probably discover that leading authorities
claim that Jeremiah had nothing to do with writing Lamentations; the Book of Lamentations was written by half a dozen different poets and authors whose combined efforts were brought together in Lamentations. I would say to my hon. friend that, be that as it may, there can be no denying that his speech tonight was a Jeremiah from one end to the other. If there ever was a weeping political Jeremiah, I think he would merit that title after his address tonight.
My hon. friend spoke about other issues. I see it is eleven o'clock and I will simply say this. He referred to the rising cost of living in this country. Yes, undoubtedly the cost of living is rising and it is a real problem, but may I say that in that regard he will search the world over before he will find another country that is as fortunate as ours.
Iu regard to strikes, as the Minister of Labour (Mr. Mitchell) has brought out this evening, we have fewer strikes in Canada today than there are in any other country.
The question of primary industries and the like brings us to another field, to which we arc going to give fuller attention later. As it Is now almost eleven o'clock I will not delay the house any longer. I will give my hon. friend the leader of the C.C.F. party (Mr. Coldwell) the assurance that a continuance of the present debate will come first on the order of business tomorrow; that he will be afforded the right to speak first, to be followed by the leader of the Social Credit party (Mr. Low), with a reply to be made by some hon. member from this side, after which the government intend to proceed with the introduction of the resolution respecting the Geneva agreements.
On motion of Mr. Coldwell the debate was adjourned.


[Stage Direction]
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
5849-5J
[Stage Direction]
Tuesday, December 9, 1947