1947-04-18

Right Hon. C. D. HOWE (Minister of Reconstruction and Supply) :: I desire to lay on the table copies of an exchange of notes between the governments of Canada and the United States regarding the modification of the Canada-United States air transport agreement of 1945.



NATIONAL HOUSING ACT


[Stage Direction]
Right Hon. C. D. HOWE (Minister of Reconstruction and Supply) moved that the house go into committee at the next sitting to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to present a measure to amend the National Housing Act, 1944, and more particularly; to increase the ratio of loan to lending value under part I of the act, to include under part I houses having two family housing units, of which one is to be occupied *by the owner, to extend the period of amortization of home ownership and rental housing project loans to thirty years, to empower life insurance, trust and loan companies to purchase, improve and sell land to be used for residential housing developments, and to authorize Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation to guarantee to such companies the return of the principal invested in such land and improvements, together with interest thereon at a rate not to exceed two per centum per annum.
He said: His Excellency the Governor General, having been made acquainted with the subject matter of this resolution, recommends it to the consideration of the house.
Motion agreed to.


[Stage Direction]
Canada's part in settlements
On the orders of the day:
Mr. GORDON GRAYDON (Peel):: I should like to ask a question of the Secretary of State for External Affairs. In view of the fact
[The Deputy Chairman.]
that the council of foreign ministers at Moscow are about to abandon their present proceedings, perhaps,, as reports indicate, to meet again in London in the summer, can the minister indicate whether there is any change in the Russian opposition to Canada's fuller participation in the peace settlements, and what are the prospects of Canada's playing a larger part at future meetings of the kind?
Right Hon. L. S. ST. LAURENT (Secretary of State for External Affairs): There has been nothing determined yet by the council of foreign ministers as to what will be the participation of the other allies in the preparation of the peace settlements for Germany and Austria. There has been some indication of willingness to have the belligerent allies, and even those who merely declared war against Germany, associated in some manner with the preparation of these settlements. The extent to which the Russian foreign minister or his deputy has been willing to go in the meetings has not yet been regarded as satisfactory by the others attending the meetings and for that reason no agreement has been reached. There is the prospect of Canada and the other belligerent allies, even the others who took no active part in the fighting but who declared war against the axis powers, being associated in some degree in the work to be done. But that degree has not been regarded by the other three foreign ministers as sufficient to justify them in accepting it.



UNITED NATIONS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. ALISTAIR STEWART (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to address a question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. The appointment of a select committee to consider the question of human rights and fundamental freedoms is forecast in the speech from the throne. Can the right lion, gentleman inform the house when this committee is likely to be appointed and start functioning?
Right Hon. L. S. ST. LAURENT (Secretary of State for External Affairs): The notice of motion for the setting up of this committee, together with the terms of reference, has been ready since quite some time ago but has been withheld only because it was felt that that motion would be the occasion of lengthy debate in the house and that it would not be proper to ask the house

Inquiries oj the Ministry
to take up that time before we have disposed of the emergency legislation. The notice of motion is ready and will be placed on the order paper just as soon as it appears that it may be dealt with without interfering with the work of the house on the emergency legislation.



LABOUR CONDITIONS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. CLARENCE GILLIS (Cape Breton South):: Mr. Speaker, may I be permitted to ask a question of the Minister of Labour? It arises out of a telegram I received from the president of the United Mine Workers of America in Nova Scotia. Has the minister been advised that 1,600 coal miners and their families are prepared to go to central Canada to take other employment if suitable arrangements can be made? If the minister has received that information, does his department contemplate taking any action with respect to it?


Hon. HUMPHREY MITCHELL (Minister of Labour):: I have not only received the wire but I have replied to it. The wire I received read as follows:
Phalen Local in regular session today prepared to transfer 1,600 men and their families to central in accordance with proposition-
What proposition I do not know.


Mr. KNOWLES:: The one you made in the house.


Humphrey Mitchell: The telegram continues:
Advise if transportation will be paid for families.	.
This is the text of my reply:
In Cape Breton the programme upon which the employment service has been engaged has been to register unemployed persons for whom employment is not available in the province and who are willing and capable of taking steady employment offered in central Canada. In such instances when employment is secured and accepted the transportation of the worker to the job is being paid by the employment service. In consequence of housing difficulties employment opportunities available at the present time are for single men or in the cases with dependents, for men willing to take jobs and await removal of families until they can secure accommodation at their new location.
I should point out that it is not the policy to pay travelling expenses of families. That should be clearly understood. My reply continues:
Transportation costs will not be paid for persons who are temporarily unemployed by
reason of a current strike or other work stoppage of a similar nature as there is work available for them in the local area. I want to make this clear because, as I understand, the number of 1,600 men mentioned in your wire includes men whose employment is affected by the current mining strike. The local employment officers at Glace Bay and Sydney will register unemployed persons wishing to secure employment outside the maritimes and who are eligible for transportation to the places of employment.
I would advise that each application from an unemployed person in the area for employment outside the area will be dealt with by the employment officers in the light of the policy which was outlined in the house by me on Wednesday.


Mr. BLACK (Cumberland):: Has the minister given consideration to the advisability of providing employment within the province rather than facilitating this drain on the population in that part of Canada?


Humphrey Mitchell: I would say to my hon. friend that in the last five years I have moved tens of thousands of people from different parts of Canada. I think it can be truthfully said that many members of this house have also moved to other locations during the war in search of employment-or seats, as my colleague suggests-because it was to their advantage. The same thing happened in Great Britain, the United States and other countries which had built up an enormous war machine during the war years. Just as we provided for the movement of population during those years it will be necessary to provide for the movement of population under present conditions. I think that is elementary; it is simple common sense. But my hon. friend can rest assured1 that the employment service in the maritimes will use every effort to secure employment in that area for those who are unemployed.


Mr. HAZEN:: Will transportation be provided by the government to the place of employment for persons in New Brunswick who are unemployed and who are prepared to accept employment that is offered elsewhere? The minister has referred to people employed in Nova Scotia, but does the statement he made on April 16 apply only to that province? Does it include unemployed in New Brunswick?


Humphrey Mitchell: As my hon. friend is well aware, my department is not in the business of providing Cook's tours for everybody in Canada. There must be a measure of control over the situation. The policy up to the present has been to restrict the provision of transportation to areas in which the employment conditions are acute, such for instance
Inquiries of the Ministry

as Vancouver a little over a year ago, and recently in the city of Windsor; also in Cape Breton. I think my hon. friend will agree that there must be some control and common sense exercised in the application of the policy.


Mr. MACDONNELL (Muskoka-Ontario):: I should like to ask a supplementary question of the Minister of Labour arising, out of the answer he gave a moment ago. Does this effort to move large numbers of Nova Scotia miners mean that the government has abandoned its effort of trying to deal on the spot with this Nova Scotia coal problem? If it does not mean that, just what does it mean? The implications to me are very far reaching.


Humphrey Mitchell: If my hon. friend had listened to what I said he would have, had a clear understanding of what I implied, and if he will take the trouble to read Hansard tomorrow he will get the answer.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: I think I understood- perfectly well; I repeat the question.


Mr. CHURCH:: I should like to direct a question, to the Minister of Labour. Does the minister propose to extend across Canada the policy of providing work for those out of work as is done in Nova Scotia?


Humphrey Mitchell: Because of the noise I did not get my hon. friend's question.


Thomas Langton Church: Does the minister propose to extend the policy across Canada which has been extended to those unemployed in Nova Scotia, or is it limited to Nova Scotia and the mines?


Humphrey Mitchell: I do not think anyone can accuse me of not speaking loudly enough.
I think I answered that question previously. There has to be common sense in this thing. Before I came to the government I had experience in moving people at the expense of the government, particularly in the pre-war days. We picked out certain areas where the situation was difficult, such as the Cape Breton area, and Halifax, and Vancouver fifteen months ago, as I said. By the very nature of things I do not think it is financially possible for any government to bear the expense of everybody who wants to move from one place to another, and I am sure my hon. friend will see the difficulties and complications that would arise if it were made a universal policy.


Thomas Langton Church: You still have the ambassador cure for unemployment.



PRIORITY FOR CONSTRUCTION UNDER VETERANS LAND ACT

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. HAROLD W. TIMMINS (Parkdale): Will the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply see that builders of houses under the Veterans Land Act in the Toronto district who are unable to get nails are given priority? The act provides for priority for construction under the Veterans Land Act and for integrated building. I have a communication here on the subject which I shall be glad to submit to the minister.
Clarence Decatur Howe: A builder under the Veterans Land Act or under integrated housing is entitled in every case to priority on nails. If he is not getting it he needs only go to the proper official in the area to have the priority implemented.


Mr. FRASER:: Who is the proper authority in that area?


Clarence Decatur Howe: It is the Toronto representative of the priorities branch of the Department of Reconstruction and Supply. His name is Mr. E. K. Smith, and his office is at 371 Bay Street.



INDIAN ACT


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. J. G. DIEFENBAKER (Lake Centre):: Mr. Speaker, last Monday I asked a question of the Minister of Mines and Resources regarding the British war bride of an Indian service man who had been convicted of an offence under the Indian Act. Is the minister now in a position to say what the government proposes to do in regard thereto?


Hon. J. A. GLEN (Minister of Mines and Resources):: I promised I would give an answer to the hon. gentleman to the question he raised on April 14 regarding the status of a- British war bride who was convicted of an offence under the Indian Act. This is a case in which a white woman married an Indian and consequently acquired Indian status under the provisions of the Indian Act, section 2(d) (iii). This section is the one dealing with the status of an Indian. It is clear from this definition that any woman who marries an Indian thereby assumes the status of her husband. Under section 128 of the Indian Act it is an offence for an Indian to be in pos-

Emergency Powers
session of liquor. This woman was prosecuted for having liquor illegally in her possession and the provincial magistrate wdio tried the case had no option but to convict her. A minimum fine was imposed.
The Citizenship Act does not apply to this case. I have no doubt that when the special joint committee now inquiring into Indian affairs directs its attention to a revision of the act, consideration will be given to recommending amendments to deal with cases of the kind. I may add that the question of the remission of the fine in this particular case will receive consideration.



EMERGENCY POWERS


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from Thursday, April 17, consideration in committee of Bill No. 104, to provide for the continuation of certain orders and regulations of the governor in council for a limited period during the national emergency, arising out of the -war-Mr. Ilsley- Mr. Golding in the chair.
On P.C. 394.
Some hon. MEMBERS:: Carried.


Clarence Gillis: No, it is not carried. I
presume we are dealing with the Department of Finance, P.C. 394, anthracite coal-importation exempted from customs duty, et cetera. As I understand this order in council, it makes provision for the importation of anthracite coal duty free if it is carried by boat from the United States and deposited in any port in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia or Prince Edward Island. It is hard to understand why this order in council should be carried forward in view of the announcement made by the Minister of Finance in the house a few days ago that all subsidies on imported coal were discontinued. That announcement meant that in Ontario and Quebec the price of coal imported from the United States, which they largely use, has increased from S3 to $4 a ton. Coal imported into Nova Scotia and New Brunswick duty free is taken there in direct competition with the basic industry of Nova Scotia and to some extent with the basic industry of New Brunswick.
With the situation as it is at the present time in all the coal fields of the maritimes, as a maritime representative I strenuously object to retaining this order in council. In view of the struggle which is taking place there at the present time my assumption is that this order in council is retained specifically

for the purpose of helping to defeat the workers who are engaged in a struggle to attain a decent standard of living. That is my assumption, and I object strenuously to it.
Without going into the merits or demerits of the strike I wish to say that yesterday in the house the Minister of Labour announced that the unemployed war veterans in the coal mining area from which I come, to the number of some 2.600, can be moved to central Canada under certain arrangements. I am questioning whether those arrangements are still in existence. I saw a statement in the Ottawa Journal of April 17 by Mr. MacLaren, of the minister's department, who administered the selective service regulations, to the effect that the machinery described yesterday in the house by the minister for removing personnel from one province to another expired on March 31 of this year.


The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN:: I should like to draw' the attention of the hon. member to the fact that we decided last night to try to stick to these orders in council. If the hon. member will look at the bill he will see what is before the committee.


Clarence Gillis: I am not going to argue
with you, sir, but I claim it definitely comes under this order in council, which provides for the importation of coal into those coal mining areas, and I am dealing with the question of unemployed coal miners or potential coal miners. So long as the government is ready and willing to bring in duty free and indiscriminately United States fuels which hold back the development of our own industry in that section, the question is relevant to this particular order in council.


William Henry Golding: That is, but not the question the hon. member was discussing before I intervened.


Clarence Gillis: I am discussing unemployed miners in the coal mining areas where this coal is coming into direct competition-


Mr. MICHAUD:: Is the hon. member not a free trader?


Clarence Gillis: Yes, I am, but unfortunately the government is not. It has pretty well isolated the maritimes so far as trade is concerned.


Mr. MACKENZIE:: No.


Clarence Gillis: We never had trade in that part of the country. As I was pointing out a moment ago, my objection to the order is that it will retard that industry. The suggestion that the unemployed of Nova Scotia

Emergency Powers
should be taken to other parts of Canada is not the solution. Last evening when the Minister of Labour and I got into a discussion on the question I merely stated that there were 2,200-I underestimated the number; I always do-unemployed ex-servicemen in that part of the country. Someone over here said, "Well, they won't work" and the Minister of National Revenue said "Nonsense". I told the minister I could find men if he could find the jobs. As I say, that suggestion is not a solution. The solution is the development of our own resources in that province, but that has been the solution for the last twenty-five or thirty years.
Pious people in Nova Scotia will stand up and say that a public works project should be developed, that moving people out is not the answer. I have been listening to that story by men who had responsibility in that province. I have heard it now for twenty-five or thirty years and I have come to the conclusion that it is desirable, instead of having men, women and children on the streets starving without any income, to take them to any part of the world where they may be able to establish citizenship and a standard of living for themselves. It is time for people with responsibility in the maritimes either to develop the resources of that province and put our people to work, or at least to be big enough to try to shift people to places where they will be able to get an income for themselves.
I seriously suggest that the Minister of Labour reexamine the regulations, because on that question of moving people out of the maritime provinces I do not think he has any regulations today. As I pointed out when the chairman suggested that I was out of order, I saw a statement only yesterday by Mr. Mac-Laren, who administered the regulations, in reference to this very question, pointing out that these regulations had expired on March 31st of this year.
Even if- we did decide tomorrow to shift 2,500 people from the maritime provinces into some other part of Canada where there was employment, I do not think we have machinery to do it, and I am objecting that that machinery was not carried forward under these controls, because I think the selective service machinery during the war did a very desirable and a very good job. The people of this country were rooted, they knew where employment was, and they were assisted greatly from one part of the country to another. We have dropped these controls and are back in the hands of the boss, where he
[Mr. Gillis.)
can cow, where he can pick and choose, and unless you are four feet between the eyes you cannot get a job. It militates against the ex-servicemen in the mine districts particularly.
The minister's statement yesterday was a startling one. Of some 1,200 who had volunteered to go from Cape Breton Island to the gold mines in Ontario only 260 odd could pass the necessary examination to take employment underground. What does that mean? Suppose there was plenty of employment underground in Nova Scotia, the men are still not eligible for employment, and that definitely brings them back into the realm of government responsibility, because if they went into the forces fit for war service and came back unfit for industrial service they must certainly have some pension claim.
That is about all I have to say. I would like the Minister of Justice, who is himself a Nova Scotian, to tell the house why this order in council has been carried forward, which merely means the free entry of American Coal borne by water into Nova Scotia or New Brunswick, in the light of the fact that every other subsidy and regulation that was assisting American coal has been discontinued.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Perhaps I should say a word on the subject, since the Department of Reconstruction and Supply has been responsible for the movement of coal over the past several years. The subsidies on coal ended on April 15 and the result has been a very sharp rise in the price of anthracite in all parts of Canada, but particularly in the maritime provinces. Ordinarily no great tonnage of anthracite is used in the maritime provinces. In Nova Scotia last year it was, I believe, about 80,000 tons. That province has depended to some extent on coke for fuel in the ordinary house furnace. The demand for steel and pig iron has increased so greatly that a new blast furnace has been opened in Cape Breton which will take the entire coke output from the steel plant for the rest of this year. Therefore the alternative fuel, coke, will not be in supply from domestic sources to the same extent as last winter. Under the circumstances, and after careful consideration, it is believed that the duty on imported anthracite which was suspended during the war years should not be reimposed at this time. We believe that the present fuel situation is abnormal, and that relief should be extended in the maritime provinces to the extent indicated in this order in council.
My hon. friend has suggested that this is a detriment to the production of coal in that province. I suggest to him that the two are

Emergency Powers
not competitive. Furnaces that ordinarily use anthracite coal or coke are not suitable for bituminous coal. Therefore he is talking about a class of fuel which is not produced in the maritime provinces, except in the form of coke, and which will not be produced as coke for domestic purposes next year, because of the abnormal industrial demand for coke.
Referring to his remarks about the movement of labour from Cape Breton, the Minister of Labour is here, and he will speak for himself, but it is my understanding that it is the policy of that department to move labour from a distress area to areas where there is a shortage of labour. I am quite sure that provision for the movement of men from Cape Breton did not lapse on April 1 and that if men who are unemployed, for reasons other than being on strike, wish to take advantage of the movement, their applications will be considered in future as in the past.


Clarence Gillis: Under what regulations can they be moved? All the orders in council you are carrying forward are here. Will the minister answer this question? The Ottawa Journal of yesterday, discussing this very question, carried a statement from Mr. MacLaren, who administered the regulations, to the effect that these regulations had expired on March 31. Is Mr. MacLaren correct?


William Henry Golding: Order.


Clarence Gillis: I want the minister to
answer the question. It is very pertinent.


Humphrey Mitchell: My hon. friend does not need to worry about this.


William Henry Golding: I would appeal again to hon. members to deal with the items as we reach them. We may reach an item which will cover the questions the hon. member is now asking, but I would ask hon. members to discuss these items as they appear. That is necessary if we wish to make any progress.


Clarence Gillis: There is no item in this under which I can ask the question.


Douglas King Hazen: For many years I have had a furnace in my home going during the spring, the autumn and the winter, and I cannot agree with the hon. member for Cape Breton South when he says that the anthracite coal which comes to this country is in competition with bituminous coal from the maritimes. The bituminous coal can never take the place of anthracite coal for the heating of houses. Nor can coke ever take the place of anthracite coal. The Minister of Reconstruction and Supply has referred to coke taking the place of anthracite coal, but coke can never do that
in the furnaces in homes and apartment houses in the maritimes, particularly in the smaller places.


Mr. BAKER:: I wish to explain a situation in regard to the maritimes. As I see it, P.C. 394 is not a subsidy. It is merely taking off a tariff and continuing it off. That is what we have been asking for for years in the maritimes. For many years in southwest Nova Scotia we have been importing American anthracite coal. If we are to ship out lumber and laths we cannot have the hulls returning empty; we must bring something back. So we used to bring back anthracite. It is just a straight trade. We have built up a certain demand for anthracite. I should not think it will increase, because as a matter of fact oil is coming in. Nevertheless customers of the coal merchants who are buying anthracite today will need anthracite in the future to meet their requirements, because their heating equipment is of such a type that it must have anthracite. Naturally we use a great deal of Nova Scotia coal all over Nova Scotia. But all I can say is that P.C. 394 is helping Nova Scotians and not hindering them. I hope it will continue for all time and that some other tariffs will come off too.


Mr. MacNICOL:: Did I understand the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply to say that ini ordinary heating boilers such as those we use in Toronto, Nova Scotia coal cannot be used?
Mr. HOW'E: I should not like to generalize. It depends on the heating unit. But in a small heating unit in a small house I should presume that Nova Scotia coal would not be suitable. I think the hon. member for Cape Breton South will support me in that.


Clarence Gillis: Why not coke it?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Coke would be all right if it is available, yes.


John Ritchie MacNicol: The minister is correct perhaps to a certain extent when he says that ordinary bituminous coal does not give the greatest satisfaction in the ordinary house heating boiler. But I use a good deal of Nova Scotia coal in ordinary heating boilers by putting blowers on them. As the house well knows, I have been advocating for many years that we build up a big exchange trade between Nova Scotia and Ontario, that we send them a large quantity of our goods and that they send us back coal. In years past we did buy a good deal of coal from Nova Scotia. I have forgotten what the maximum was, but I believe it was one and a half million or two million or more tons. It is
Emergency Powers

some years ago now. I should not like the impression to go abroad that we cannot use Nova Scotia coal in ordinary heating boilers, because by the use of blowers we can do so, although it is not a hundred per cent satisfactory. However, we must have something to burn, and we are glad to get Nova Scotia coal when we can get it.


Thomas Langton Church: This order in council as
extended shows the need for the government doing something further every year regarding coal supplies for Canada, so that it will not be necessary for us to send $58 million a year down to the Pennsylvania coal barons in order to aid and assist them. We should be expending that amount of money for coal and coke produced under the British flag, in Nova Scotia, Alberta and Wales, if necessary. That is what I proposed away back in March, 1923. The government of the day opposed it when I urged a national fuel policy, then adopted it by paying a bonus, subvention or subsidy five years later as I proposed. It was the only way to solve the problem of a national fuel supply to make provision for the extended winters, as they seem to be growing every year by two or three weeks. The people in this country have been nearly frozen this past winter, and they have been clamouring for a new policy. After the C.C.F. and their predecessors from 1923 to 1928 opposed a national policy for coal for five years, the government of the day after 1928 adopted all kinds of methods of protection by bonuses, subventions and subsidies. '
I agree with P.C. 394. I hope that the small man will get some relief in his coal bills. There should be some regulation by the government; they should have this exemption from customs duties for coal, which is only a right and proper one. I hope that it will be extended not only to the small man who uses a few tons of coal but also to the retail coal merchant who has suffered a great deal during the war by not having some proper allowance-50 cents, 75 cents or $1.25 for delivering the coal, sometimes half a ton at a time. It is the poor man that needs protection under this measure.
Mr. GORDON B. ISNOR (Halifax): I think the point raised by the hon. member for Cape Breton South is worthy of attention from another angle. Like other Nova Scotia members, I am deeply concerned about the employment situation. As I have sat here in the house day after day and listened to the wheat question being discussed, and then on other occasions have listened to discussions about fish and coal, I wondered why a practical miner like the hon. member fMr. MacNicol.]
for Cape Breton South did not advance some constructive thought which would help to solve our coal production problem. I do not wish to enter into a discussion of the reasons why the strike is going on in Cape Breton at the present time; I might be accused of favouring one side or the other. But I think I can say this without fear of getting into trouble, that it is generally recognized that the problem as it appears to the average man in the street is one of production. An industry cannot continue to produce less and less and expect to show signs of improvement; and that is the situation which has existed in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, and the mari-times in general for a long period of years. I think I can safely say, although I am trusting to my memory now, that the average unit of production per man per day has steadily declined during the past forty years, certainly back to 1901. In all lines of business-I am not talking about coal alone-you must produce in order to create employment; and it is that steady decline in the production of coal which has made employment a very difficult problem so far as our mining industries are concerned. I support the hon. member for Cape Breton South, and I am hopeful some inquiry will be made in order to find a solution to this dispute between the operators and miners of Nova Scotia, so that operations may be resumed. While the Minister of Labour is here I want to bring to the attention of the committee-


William Henry Golding: Order. I should like to read the item: "Anthracite coal -importation exempted from customs duty." That is the item with which we are dealing, and I hope hon. members are not going to get into a discussion of the coal strike, labour relations and everything else. The question is simply whether or not we are in favour of the importations of anthracite being exempted from the payment of customs duty.


Mr. ISNOR:: I quite appreciate that point, Mr. Chairman, and my next sentence will show that I am strictly in order. If a solution could be found, naturally it would affect the importation of foreign coal. My suggestion is that a study be made and possibly a scientific research centre set up in some part of Nova Scotia, with a pilot plant, to look into the possibilities of developing the by-products of our coal industry. If that were done I believe it would have a marked effect on the future of our coal operations.
I am throwing out that suggestion to the cabinet, at the same time hoping the hon. member for Cape Breton South, with his



IS, 1947

[Stage Direction]
Emergency Powers
knowledge of the coal industry of his own native province, will cooperate and offer some constructive suggestion which will help solve the difficulty which now exists, and which we do not want to develop to such a point that our population will have to move to other parts of Canada. We need those 1,300 men, heads of families, in our province, and I want to see them stay there.
Clarence Gillis: May I just say this to the senior and only member for Halifax. I am surprised to hear him say I have not offered any constructive suggestions in regard to the question of employment and this matter of fuel. If he will check the records back to 1940 with the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply and the fuel control board he will find that at least two small briefs have been filed, and in addition many times in this house I have made recommendations with respect to the development of that industry. I am reasonably sure that if they had been carried out we would not have the mess that exists today. As to employment, the hon. member was himself a member of the reconstruction committee-


Mr. LAPOINTE:: Order.


Clarence Gillis: I am answering the suggestion made by the hon. member. If the strait of Canso project had been developed, as we recommended in 1842, it would have absorbed the unemployed in that end of the country. Then you should not have closed that plate mill at Sydney, which was established during the war. These are things I suggested in the house by way of a solution to the problem, but they were not carried out.


Gordon Benjamin Isnor: Mr. Chairman-


William Henry Golding: Order.


Gordon Benjamin Isnor: Am I not permitted to reply to the hon. member.


William Henry Golding: I do hope hon. members will cooperate in regard to these items. The committee is now considering only the matter of the importation of anthracite coal into Canada and a continuation of its exemption from customs duty. We can get through these items in an orderly fashion if we deal with them one at a time.


Mr. BROOKS:: I do not think this is a very serious item as far as the situation in the maritime provinces is concerned. Frankly I had hoped that this afternoon there might be a discussion of the coal situation in the maritime provinces, and that we might hear something from the government as to the action it intended to take to solve that serious difficulty. This item is only a matter of reducing the cost of a ton of coal by about 50 cents, and as I say, I do not think that is very serious. But we have a very serious situation in the maritimes.


William Henry Golding: Order.


Alfred Johnson Brooks: Well, now, Mr. Chairman, so far this afternoon everyone has discussed this question to some extent.


William Henry Golding: Order. It is a well known rule that speeches in committee must be relevant to the item under discussion. Anything the hon. member has to say in connection with this particular item is quite in order, but it is not in order to discuss other matters.


Alfred Johnson Brooks: I have listened to those who have spoken so far this afternoon, and I do not think one hon. member has made a speech strictly relevant to this particular item. I am simply claiming the right other hon. members have exercised.


William Henry Golding: Then I want to appeal to the hon. member to set a good example and keep his remarks relevant to the item.


Alfred Johnson Brooks: Well, Mr. Chairman, I have something to say on this which I can reserve until another occasion.


Mr. FULTON:: I should like to ask a question on a different matter, since I think this question is bound to arouse discussion every time it comes up. Would it not be more appropriate if this item were made an amendment to the customs tariff rather than left under an emergency order in council? Is that not the proper way to deal with a question of this kind; and is it contemplated that an amendment will be made in this year's budget to take care of the situation?


Clarence Decatur Howe: We are discussing emergency legislation; it is not the purpose to determine permanent policy. The proper place to deal with that


Edmund Davie Fulton: But this has been the policy since 1942. If it is to be continued in future, as would appear to be likely, I am only asking whether it would not be necessary to continue it by way of amendment to the customs tariff. .


Clarence Decatur Howe: Quite so. If any permanent change is contemplated in the duty, it should be made by an item in the tariff. This policy has been in operation for the past several years, and it is not intended to remove this exemption at the moment. I should not like
Emergency Powers

anyone to infer that it will be continued throughout the full year; it may be taken off a.t any time, like any other emergency legislation. It is being continued as emergency legislation because no decision has been reached as to its permanency.
Mr. BLACK (Cumberland); I am sorry this discussion has been unduly curtailed, Mr. Chairman, but as far as I can I want to comply ' with your ruling on this very important subject. In the main I am in agreement with the hon. member for Cape Breton South. I am in favour of the retention of this order in council, which is applicable to a limited importation of anthracite coal, at least until the termination of the strike. In any case it is not a very important item. The question of a fuel policy for this country was raised some years ago, and at that time a duty was placed upon imported anthracite. Under this order in council that duty has been cancelled, and I presume that policy will remain operative until this order in council is terminated. There is also the question of subventions, and the matter of subsidies on coke. In that connection I agree with the hon. member for Cape Breton South and to some extent disagree with the hon. member for St. John-Albert. I believe our native fuel and the coke made therefrom to some extent is in competition with anthracite coal imported into this country. Some years ago the federal government gave assistance by way of subsidy on the production of coke containing a percentage of Nova Scotia coal, and to a certain extent that coke replaced anthracite coal imported into this country. I am going to agree to the retention of this order in council on behalf of the consumers, householders and industries, who are the forgotten factors, in the maritime provinces, though it affects them to only a limited extent.
There are three parties concerned in the production and use of coal, and one of these is the miner. I am in sympathy with the desire of the miners to obtain the wage recommended by the Carroll report but I regret that they did not take my advice, go back to work and sit around a table to see whether production could not be increased. I am in disagreement with the hon. member for Cape Breton South because he advocated that they do not go back to work.


William Henry Golding: Order. I think the hon. member for Royal appreciated the fact that he did not keep to the point at issue, and I would appeal to the hon. member who now has the floor to follow the lead set by the hon. member for Royal and deal with the specific item before the committee.


Clarence Gillis: The hon. member just stated that I recommended in the present dispute that the men do not go back to work.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Clarence Gillis: That statement is absolutely incorrect, and I have the right to correct it. There is no place, either on or off the record, where I made any recommendation either for or against that. That is not my business.


William Henry Golding: Is the hon. member speaking on a question of privilege?


Clarence Gillis: Yes, I am speaking on a question of privilege with respect to the statement that has been made. That is not my business; that is the business of the union and the industry. I spoke merely on the merits or demerits of the dispute, and I stated my opinion. I never have believed in strikes and I did everything I could to solve this one, but what they do is entirely their business.


Percy Chapman Black: On a question of privilege and replying to the hon. member, I should like to quote a few lines from his speech.


Clarence Gillis: Quote at least a sentence.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Percy Chapman Black: Surely I have the right to answer the hon. member. Here is what the hon. member said on February 19, as reported on page 581 of Hansard:
I am convinced that the $1.40 a day will have to be provided by subsidy from the federal government. I say that because I believe the mine workers were well advised to refuse to accept $1 a day contingent upon increased production.
That is where I disagree with the hon. member, and I wish to go on record as a matter of privilege. This matter of coal production and the stoppage of work in the maritime provinces is of such importance that a discussion regarding it should not be curtailed as it is being curtailed.


Clarence Gillis: Should the men work for nothing?


Percy Chapman Black: I am in favour of their getting an increase and I believe they would have got an increase if they had gone back to work and showed a sense of responsibility with regard to production. I was in Springhill, the second largest coal mining field over the week-end and every man I met and their leaders said that they believe that they could give the desired production to warrant ' the increase. They would send representatives for the men in to confer-

Emergency Powers


William Henry Golding: Order. I would remind hon. members of the committee that Monday is set apart for the discussion of such matters. Let us deal with this item.


John George Diefenbaker: On a point of order, is this discussion not perfectly proper? The reason for amending the statute in question, the customs tariff, is the existence of an emergency. Otherwise this legislation could not be justified. The discussion has to do with the question of the emergency, and as such I suggest that the widest possible latitude should be allowed under this section. In order to justify the continuance of this order in council the government relies upon that portion of the preamble which states that there is an emergency which necessitates the continuance of this order in council. The discussion that has taken place has to do with that emergency, as to whether or not there is in fact an emergency and as to what course should be followed as an alternative to the order in council. Such a discussion, particularly at a time when apparently it is of very great moment because it affects the people not only the maritimes but of Canada in general, should not be unnecessarily curtailed.


William Henry Golding: In answer to the hon. member I would say that I would much rather be fair to every member of the committee than rigidly to enforce the rule. I think every member of this committee expects the Chair to give direction and to try to enforce the rules of the house. After that the chairman is in the hands of the committee. I believe if you want to make progress with these items, and there are a great number of them, if you want to get on with the other business of this session we should try to deal specifically with the items.


Mr. HACKETT:: Just a word. It has been contended that there is an emergency. The government has held that view throughout and has put the house into that position by a majority vote of its followers. It is either one of two things: if there be an emergency, it would seem to me that the discussion is eminently relevant ; if there be no emergency, and that is our contention, then the order in council should not endure further.


Benoît Michaud: From the remarks that have just been made it would appear that the question we have to decide here is whether or not there is an emergency to warrant, the retention of this order in council. There are only two things to do. Either we should approve this order in council and agree to continue it, or, as an alternative, an amendment should be moved to have it deleted.


Mr. FLEMING:: It would not be in order.


John Thomas Hackett: You would lose your bill if you did that.


Benoît Michaud: If any hon. gentlemen are opposed to it, I submit that they should move an amendment, and then we can proceed to deal with another one.
P.C. 394 agreed to on division.
P.C. 8042 and P.C. 9058 agreed to.
On P.C. 9781.


Mr. HARKNESS:: I am wholly in accord with the purpose of this order in council, which is to retain on the free tariff list certain well drilling machinery and pipe. My only regret is that this provision is not included in the regular tariff schedule. I should like to ask the minister if there is any reason why it should not be included in the regular tariff schedule and whether that might be done when we are considering the budget this year, rather than continuing it on a temporary basis with the result that the people engaged in oil well drilling are never sure of where they stand.
The second question I should like to ask the minister is whether the definition of machinery, apparatus and so forth is wide enough to include a piece of apparatus known as a heater treater. This piece of apparatus is used in the plains area of Alberta and Saskatchewan to treat low gravity oils secured from the wells in that area. When these oils come from the wells they are mixed with water and sand and in order to ship the oil, particularly in the winter time, it is necessary to run it through this heater treater which removes the water and sand. This piece of apparatus is essential to the profitable operation of the plains area oil wells.


Mr. ILSLEY:: The hon. member's first
question was whether there is any reason why this should not go into the general tariff. I am not able to answer that question. All I can say is that I shall draw his representations to the attention of the Minister of Finance. Unless it is affected by this bill it will lapse. I presume the Minister of Finance would have no objection to giving consideration at the appropriate time to its inclusion in the tariff. Further than that I can give the hon. gentleman no information. His second question is one which can only be answered by the appropriate officials of the Department of National Revenue. The matter is one of interpretation. Whether the language used includes heater treaters I am unable to say.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I think we should get that interpretation from the officials before we
Emergency Powers

dispose of this item. If this particular piece of apparatus is not included in this provision I should like to move an amendment to add the words "heater treater" after "drilling mud". I see that the order in council has been amended by adding "drilling mud" after "All machinery and apparatus" and so forth. Apparently under the interpretation which had been placed on this paragraph, drilling mud was not included and it was recognized that it should be included, therefore those words were added. If heater treater is not included in the interpretation we should specifically put it in. I would therefore ask that this order in council stand until we get that interpretation.


Mr. JAENICKE:: My observations will be somewhat different from those made by the hon. member for Calgary East. I note that the order in council when first issued in February, 1943, provided for the entry duty free of this machinery and apparatus to be used exclusively in exploratory or discovery work in connection with the production of oil and oil wells or water wells; also that we could import duty free pipes, piping, casing and tubing in connection with such wells including water wells. In December, 1943, the order in council was amended and the provision for the importation of duty free apparatus used in connection with water wells was taken out. The apparatus and piping and tubing used for water wells is as important as that used for oil wells, specially in my constituency where there is a large area of excellent grain growing land but without water, which can only be got by digging wells hundreds of feet down into the ground. As the order stands it discriminates against water wells. I would ask the minister who made the representations resulting in the change. The order in council says:
The Minister of Finance reports that it has been represented to him that the words "or water wells" and the words "with water" should be deleted.
How much was imported duty free under this order? I should like both the quantities and the values. By whom were the importations made, and is the material imported duty free available in Canada from Canadian manufacturers. What methods are followed by the department officials to make sure that machinery and apparatus for exploratory or discovery work is used for exploratory or discovery work alone? I suggest that as this order seems to discriminate against water wells, the order in council as promulgated in February, 1943, be restored.
fMr. HarknessJ


James Lorimer Ilsley: The item will stand, and I will get as much of the information asked for as I can and give it to the hon. gentleman and the committee later.
Item stands.
On P.C. 8528.


Mr. SINNOTT:: I have here a form headed "Retail Licence Investigation" which has to be filled out and returned to the wartime prices and trade board. It is the application form that a man has to fill out who wants to go into business, but the form is so complicated that many men who want to go into business do not know whether they are coming or going or whether they will ever get into business. I tried to get a dozen of these forms to pass around among the leaders of the different parties so they would know what I was talking about, but the board sent me only one copy. I guess paper must be short there. Here are some of the questions asked on this form:
Will you kindly forward this report to the local office of the W.P.T.B. under whose jurisdiction the above firm is located . . .
And so forth. The first thing they want to know is whether the applicant has been issued a wartime prices and trade board number. This man's answer to that would be no. Then the questionnaire goes on:
Is retail lumber business to be carried on at above address?
His answer to that would be yes. Next:
Is property where the retail lumber business is to be carried on owned outright or leased?
His answer to that would be, owned.
If leased state number of years property is leased for?
His answer would be no. Next:
State size of property.
Then it goes on with a lot of other questions.
Have storage sheds for dry lumber been erected? If so, state floor space in number of square feet.
Has office space properly equipped been provided for?
Is there a sales staff and telephone service available to the public during all business hours ?
Is the office and sales service outlined under No. 6 located at the above address?
How many employees will be on the company payroll?
Is the following machinery to be operated, and has it been purchased? Indicate under proper heading: Ripsaw, resaw, planer, edger, sticker.
How- many trucks to be used in giving delivery service to the public?
Have arrangements been made with suppliers for stocks as follows:	Dressed lumber, finishing lumber, kiln dried lumber, hardwood flooring, mouldings, cedar shingles.

Emergency Powers
And so on. This man's application had been turned down because he did not have a licence. He thought the proper way to get into business was to write to Ottawa to get his licence. The information I got today was that he did not have the proper equipment to start up in business. If a man starting in business has to have all these things before he can start up I imagine that the small fellow will never be able to get into business. It is time that the little fellow who wants to start up in business should be given consideration and given it right away, because as I see it these restrictions are curtailing production and curtailing services which could be rendered to the people. I would ask the minister in charge of this department to take this matter into consideration and make the restrictions much less stringent than they now are.


Benoît Michaud: May I ask the hon. member a question?


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: Yes.


Benoît Michaud: What particular clause or section is the hon. member objecting to?


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: I am not objecting to the order; I am objecting to the retail licence investigation; I am objecting to the reason why this man's application was turned down, which was that in the first place he did not have four or five acres of land on -which to store lumber, did not have a planing shop and a truck, did not have all these things. But he could get all these things provided he received a licence. It is like a man building a hotel. If he did not get a licence to build a lotel he could not build it; he would just have ;o sit around. This man wanted a licence, and he went about to try to get a licence to put his business in shape. I might also say that this man was not competing with any other business. He is in the little town of Whitemouth, about sixty miles from Winnipeg. He is within thirty miles of Beausejour. His stock of lumber would not come from British Columbia but mostly from the eastern fart of Manitoba, where supplies of lumber are plentiful at the present time. I cannot see any reason why he should not have his licence right away.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I will see that this case is looked into by the wartime prices and trade board. Perhaps I might say a word about the necessity for what appears to be extensive requirements. As hon. members of the committee know, the price of lumber is under ceilings. There is a wholesale price ceiling and a retail price ceiling. It is important that wholesalers do not operate as retailers, because then they would have the privilege of selling up to the retail price ceiling. Consequently
it is necessary to obtain a considerable amount of information about persons who are applying for retail licences.
The hon. gentleman seemed to be under the impression that all the questions would have to be answered in the affirmative before this man would be entitled to a retailer's licence.
I am informed that is not so. Ordinarily there must be at least sufficient information to give reasonable assurance that he really is in business as a retailer. I will see that the question as put before the committee is examined and given prompt consideration. I will also bring to the attention of the officials the consideration presented by the hon. gentleman, namely, that there may be instances in which the licence should precede the acquisition of the necessary equipment.


Mr. CASTLEDEN:: The timber controller may have something to say about that.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Order in council 8528 is perhaps one of the most important of the orders in council to be dealt with under the schedule, as upon it depends the whole machinery of price control, not only price control but also rent control.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Will the hon. gentleman permit me to say something before he begins the remarks he intends to make with regard to this order?


Edmund Davie Fulton: Yes.


James Lorimer Ilsley: The other day the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre moved an amendment to section 4. Section 4 was allowed to stand so that consideration might be given to the amendment. I did not receive a copy of the amendment, and unfortunately I did not read Hansard to see the exact wording, but I got the sense of the amendment and I thought that probably it should be reworded to give effect to the hon. gentleman's intentions. It seemed to me that if the amendment were to be accepted the wording should be something like this:
Provided that notwithstanding anything in this section no provision of any order or regulation of the governor in council specified in the part of the schedule to this act entitled "wartime prices and trade board" shall be revoked by the governor in council unless addresses have been presented to the governor general by the Senate and the House of Commons praying that such provision be revoked.
The hon. gentleman's language was something like this: Provided that no order listed in the schedule to this act under the section headed wartime prices and trade board shall be revoked without the consent of parliament.


Stanley Howard Knowles: That is right.
Emergency Powers


James Lorimer Ilsley: This is a little more precise, and I am advised by the legal officers that it is preferable.


Stanley Howard Knowles: It has the same effect.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes. Consent in this amendment is to be given by addresses of both houses, which is a reasonable way in which consent may be granted.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I will accept that; I hope the minister will do likewise.


James Lorimer Ilsley: The attitude of the government to this amendment is this: We are not asking for the amendment because we expect that the orders will remain for the time that the act is in force anyway. As the law stands now the governor in council has the power to revoke them. Possibly some of them would be revoked before very long, but we have no specific intentions with regard to them. I think the proper position for us to take-and this is the position we are taking-is for hon. members to vote freely so far as the attitude of the government is concerned on the amendment if the hon. gentleman wishes to press it, and we shall take the sense of the house on it. If hon. members of the committee want that provision put in the act we have no objections; if they want it left out we have no objections. The effect will be substantially the same, we think. I should point out what the hon. gentleman himself pointed out. Even if that provision be inserted in the act, the board, of course, must be free to make such changes in the orders as they see fit. They must be free to alter maximum prices and distribution orders, revoke them and cancel them and amend them, and so on, and the policy which has been laid down will be carried on substantially as stated to the committee. So far as the proviso is concerned, if the committee would like to have it inserted in the act I am willing, but I am not proposing it, and I am not opposing it.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Before the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre begins his remarks may I ask if it is the intention to dispose of section 4 now and return to the discussion-


James Lorimer Ilsley: No. My intention was to do what I have stated, so that the possibility of that proviso being added would be kept in mind by hon. members in anything they had to say upon the provisions of the order.


Stanley Howard Knowles: May I suggest this as a matter of procedure? In view of the importance of this amendment, as I see it, and in view of the position which the minister has 
taken, that the government is prepared to have a free vote on it, it might be well to fix a time at which we would revert to section 4 so that hon. members generally will know.


James Lorimer Ilsley: No, we cannot do that.


Stanley Howard Knowles: It could be done on Monday or Tuesday.


James Lorimer Ilsley: No, I cannot make an appointment with my friend on that matter. We may be a week or two or three days getting through the orders. When we get through the schedule we shall come back to the bill.


Stanley Howard Knowles: That is satisfactory. I say now, Mr. Chairman, that if the minister does decide that he would be prepared to present the amendment I shall be glad to let him do it. If not, when the time comes, I shall withdraw the amendment that I made yesterday and move instead the one which the minister has now suggested.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I do not expect to put myself in the position of asking this house by legislation to keep all these boards in existence after the lifetime of the act. I am not going to ask the house to do that. If the house wants to do it, it will be a tribute to the work of the board, and it will be all right with me, but I am not going to ask the house to do it.


Stanley Howard Knowles: This is not the place to continue the discussion, and I will not do so, but I thank the minister for the suggested change and will move it at the proper time.


Mr. REID:: Does it mean that the amendment just read, if passed by the house, provides that no regulations at present in effect under the wartime prices and trade board shall be changed until parliament meets again? Some of us are not clear on the point and I would like to know exactly what I am voting on, because there are some regulations that I would like to see done away with. I want to know whether we are to be tied up, until parliament comes back, on every regulation whether it is obnoxious or not.
Mr. ILS-LEY: If this proviso is enacted, the contents of this schedule, as it is eventually passed, will remain unchanged and unchangeable until the house decided otherwise, or until the expiration of the act, whichever takes place first. But the orders made under the orders and regulations in this appendix will be subject to change if change is authorized by the orders and regulations in the appendix;

Emergency Powers
otherwise the board would not be free to raise a price ceiling or remove an article from the price ceiling-


Stanley Howard Knowles: Or put one back on.


James Lorimer Ilsley: -or impose a price ceiling or make any one of the thousands of orders which will be necessary for the board to make in that interval.


Thomas Reid: That is clear.


Stanley Howard Knowles: That was clearly the intention of my amendment.


James Lorimer Ilsley: This proviso relates only to the wartime prices and trade board orders, to the ones under the heading "wartime prices and trade board." It does not apply to the others and I could not consent to a similar one with respect to the others.


Stanley Howard Knowles: It applies to the wartime prices and trade board and leasehold regulations, all nine in that section, but to those only.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes.


Benoît Michaud: If this amendment carries it means that, with regard to P.C. 8528, the government could not delete any of the sections in this order, but if the amendment does not carry it means they may at any time delete some of these sections.


James Lorimer Ilsley: They may revoke them in whole or in part.


Mr. ADAMSON:: Would not the acceptance of this by the government cramp its activities?


James Lorimer Ilsley: No, I do not think so. That is why I asked for a delay, and I am satisfied that it does not cramp the government in its plans.


Stanley Howard Knowles: It indicates the feeling of the house.


Mr. LOW:: Does the minister see any advantage in having such an amendment?


James Lorimer Ilsley: It is a matter of indifference; I do not think I do. I do not see any advantage in it. It is an affirmation of the principle that the house is insisting really that the wartime prices and trade board and certain other organizations here be authorized to remain in existence for the lifetime of the act or until parliament decides otherwise.


Mr. IRVINE:: Does it not mean that the final authority is in this parliament and not in the government?


Stanley Howard Knowles: With regard to the revoking of the orders.


James Lorimer Ilsley: With regard to revoking the orders, yes.


Mr. BROWN:: Does it mean that if we. wanted to remove the ration on sugar it could not be done until the next parliament was convened?


James Lorimer Ilsley: No. It does not mean that, because under the order in council the wartime prices and trade board has power to make orders with reference to the distribution of any commodity. They may make these orders or improve, cancel or amend these orders, and that will go on. That is not affected by this, but the government could not revoke the section which authorizes the wartime prices and trade board to take that action.


Mr. BOUCHER:: I am not quite sure that I appreciate the position the minister puts us in, judging from the statement he has made today. It appears that he is reserving to the wartime prices and trade board the right to change, extend or modify any regulations in regard to price control covered by these orders in council. As a minister of the crown he states that he does not wish to accept governmental responsibility in administering the policy and he is prepared to look askance at the result if this amendment is carried, restricting the power of the government but not the power of the board. If government policy stands for anything it stands, I suggest, for the government taking a definite position with regard to price control and accepting responsibility in this house. I do not think it is very good government procedure for the minister to say that the house is free, that he will hear the sentiment of the house and will accept no responsibility, that we can move an amendment if we like and he will not oppose it but that we must leave the board under these orders in council with untrammelled power. I do not think that is the procedure we should adopt in this house. The minister should either accept responsibility for the administration of wartime control, to rescind or modify any order in council, or he should say, "We are going to go the whole way and take the responsibility of getting rid of the control."


Mr. ZAPLITNY:: I had not intended to say anything at this stage but I cannot sit silent any longer in view of the statements that have been made. Members of the Progressive Conservative party have been shouting for weeks about too much power being granted the government. They have made speech after speech deploring the wide powers the government wants, and today they are asking that we hand over power to the government to wash out the board whenever it feels like it. We are trying to keep that power in
Emergency Powers

.parliament where it belongs. I would ask my hon. friends to preserve a sense of proportion.


Gordon Graydon: You are more confused
than ever.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Presumably the discussion
takes place now on P.C. 8528, and with respect to what the minister has said, as to being prepared neither to accept nor to oppose an amendment but to let it go through on a free vote, I do not think it alters what 1 have to say touching this particular order because it does not, at the moment at any rate, detract from or add to the powers of control given the wartime' prices and trade board. That is the point I wish to deal with.
I begin by saying that this is perhaps the most important order in the whole schedule. What I have in mind is that it is the one order upon which depend the powers given the wartime prices and trade board to control prices and make rental control regulations. If this order is amended substantially or is cancelled, then not only do all the price ceilings fall by the board but rent control would go too, because it is the wartime prices and trade board that administers rental control. I think therefore that in suggesting, as I intend to do shortly, an amendment to this particular order, it is important that I should indicate first the attitude which I think we should take to this question of control, and the extent to which the amendment I shall propose will go in interfering with or suspending or perhaps removing the power of control.
Briefly I propose to move an amendment to take one step in the direction of restoring freedom without, as I shall try to point out, cutting away altogether the power of com.rol during the period of emergency. For the purpose of this argument I think we must accept the position that the house by its vote on the second reading has adopted the principle of the bill and suggested that there is an emergency and that therefore a measure of control is necessary.
I do not intend to go back and open up that whole ground again. On the other hand, itr what I have to say, I should like it to be clearly understood that personally I do not accept the doctrine of emergency or the idea that we should continue these controls. My own inclination would be not to go that far. But I shall try to make my argument and my amendment in the light of the fact that the house as a whole has accepted that proposition. In rising to move this amendment and therefore to say a word or two about controls, the position which I take is that controls are and must be a restriction of freedom, that what we should do and what I hope to do

by this amendment, is to restore, not only to parliament but to the individual within the country, some measure of freedom and of the basis of his freedom which, as I see it, is the rule of law; in other words, to cut down upon autocratic rule or to use a word which I do not use very often, bureaucratic rule, and to restore the rule of law, because it seems to me that not only do controls limit economic freedom but they must inevitably limit personal freedom.
Dealing with the question of economic freedom and the effect of controls on the economic life of the individual, I should like here to refer to something which was said in this house in 1945 by a member of the C.C.F. party. Speaking of the effect of controls upon, not big business, but little business- the individual man-the hon. member for Skeena in the course of a lengthy speech had this to say as reported at page 698 of Hansard on October 2, 1945:
The process that we see will end up with the state ultimately becoming the sole capitalist . . . The government recognizes that a crisis is still with us and this crisis will continue with us as the jears go by; therefore we are going to see the absolute continuation of government control within private industry.
The reason I refer to this speech is that it was significant because it was made by a member of the C.C.F., a party which advocates the continuation of controls, and yet the party which says, when we speak of the removal of controls, that we are adopting a position favourable exclusively to big business, a. party which represents itself as advocating the interests of the small man as against big business. And yet this member of the party talking about the effect of controls, went on to say:
It is interesting to me to see what is happening to the social groupings because of those price controls.
I am here omitting a portion of his speech but it can be found in Hansard, and I submit that I am not distorting his speech. He said:
Consequently we are seeing the liquidation of the small trading class . . . Such groups as can be seen to the left, the C.C.F. and the Social Credit party, are an expression of protest from the small middle class, such as the small working class . . . From the point of view of a socialist I would say, more power to the government, because it is hoisting itself with its own petard.
What he meant there, taken from the context, is that the government by these controls is driving the little man out of operation, is oppressing him, favouring the big man, and that all these little men, in his view of the situation, come into the C.C.F., the socialist party. That is a member of the C.C.F. speaking about the effect of controls.

Emergency Powers


George Hugh Castleden: You are doing a lot of your own interpreting.


Edmund Davie Fulton: I said that any members who wanted to could read the speech in Hansard. If they can get any other meaning from it they are welcome to do so and perhaps to answer; because the confusion brought into this debate by the C.C.F. perhaps does need a good deal of clearing up. In advocating the elimination of controls or now the lessening of controls, in spite of what was said about us as favouring big business- and that, of course, is not true-we are trying to do what we think will enable the small man, the man trying to get into business for himself now, better to do so. That is on the economic side. I said, when I last spoke on this subject, that I was not one who advocated going back to the economic imperialism of the pre-thirties, and we have a well reasoned policy which would prevent that economic imperialism from coming back.


An hon. MEMBER:: What is it?


Edmund Davie Fulton: We shall be glad to deal with the question later. I do not wish at the moment to deal with it because, as I said, I wish to confine myself to the picture as we have it at the moment.


Benoît Michaud: Will the hon. member permit a question?


Edmund Davie Fulton: Yes.


Benoît Michaud: In order to ascertain whether or not he is speaking out of turn, will the hon. member give us the substance of his amendment? That would help a great deal in the discussion. He says he is proposing an amendment. I suppose he should have considerable latitude; but the other day, under similar circumstances, the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre was asked to give the substance of his amendment in order to enable the other members of the house to follow the discussion more intelligently.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Mr. Chairman, I sometimes doubt whether anything one said would enable certain members to follow the discussion intelligently.


Benoît Michaud: Speak for yourself.


Edmund Davie Fulton: I will give the substance of my amendment. My amendment has to do with the lessening of what I may call the bureaucratic powers at the moment possessed by the wartime prices and trade board under this order in council; and I am coming to that part of my speech immediately. I wanted to give what I felt was the economic 83166-140
background of the thing. I wish to speak of the political background. I shall come to that eventually and then move my amendment. The point in my mind here is that the administration of controls, the enforcement of controls, inevitably involves the cutting down of democratic freedom, the lessening of political democracy, in my submission, as well as economic democracy.
Having dealt with the economic side of it, I wish now to come to the political side, and that is the point I wish to make here. Again we find confusion. We find the C.C.F. and ourselves saying that we believe in democracy; yet one says that democracy can best be served by controls and the other says that democracy can best be served by freedom, by eliminating controls. It seems to me then that we must be in disagreement as to what we mean by democracy, because certainly we both know what we mean by controls. We find that under controls-and this is the point which the C.C.F. party I think agrees with-inevitably the right of the individual to have recourse to the courts, to assert his freedom, is denied; because if, as a part of the plan, the individual must be forced to do this or that economic or personal action, then of course he cannot be free to go to the court and say, "I should not be forced to do this or that, or to take this or that step." If your plan is to work, you must curtail the rights of the individual. It seems to me that controls cannot work otherwise. Indeed it seems to me that at the moment the trouble with the control policy of the government, or the stage at which it has arrived, is that it is only half a plan. It is half control and half decontrol and neither half is working. That is why we say the sooner you get rid of it, the better.
But, to revert again to the question of political democracy and its abrogation by controls, I should like to read what they said in Great Britain on March 3, when they were dealing with the passage of two important bills over there, two important planning measures introduced by the Labour government. The government found it necessary, in order to get those measures through the house, to make a vast change in the procedure of the House of Commons in Great Britain.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I rise to a point of order, Mr. Chairman. My point relates to the ruling you have quoted a good number of times, as to whether or not discussion in committee must be strictly relevant to the item before us. I want to make it perfectly clear that we of this group are not opposed to this kind

Emergency Powers

of argument; we like it, but I want to make it clear also that if it is allowed by one group it will have to be permitted to others, and we shall expect to be able to reply. I have no objection to discussing the whole philosophy of controls, and the whole question of political and economic democracy; I should be glad to go into it for days on end; but if the rule is to be applied at some point and wre are to be required to make our remarks relevant to the wartime prices and trade board, then it seems to me that this would be a good place to start.


Edmund Davie Fulton: If I may speak to the point of order, the section of the order I wish to amend is paragraph 15, to be found at page 28 of the consolidated orders in council. The subsections of this paragraph restrict the right of the individual to appeal to the courts against actions taken by the board and officials thereof. At the moment I am trying to develop a case in support of my amendment, to show that, unless this section is deleted, the rights of the individual are abrogated, and that in order to restore them it is necessary to delete this section. That, I think, involves a good deal of argument as to whether or not this kind of democratic freedom should be preserved. Undoubtedly members of the C.C.F. party would say it is more important that controls be maintained and that this freedom be suspended for the time being. That would be their answer to that argument; therefore they would not support my amendment. My argument at the moment is directed toward showing that it is more important that this type of freedom be preserved than that it be taken away. In illustrating my argument, I am referring to the sort of thing that goes on in Great Britain, to show that if you make controls the thing to follow you do interfere with personal and political freedom, whereas if you put personal and political freedom first you would be willing to accept a limitation upon controls. That is what my argument is directed to.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I would ask your ruling, Mr. Chairman, on whether or not we are to range over the whole field of philosophy or stick to the point before us.


William Henry Golding: In my
opinion the point raised by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre is quite correct and proper. I rather hesitated to interrupt the hon. member; but, after all, I think he was discussing the principle of this bill, which was decided on second reading. If the hon. gentleman would state or move his amend-

ment and then deal with it, perhaps he would be more in order; but I think the point of order is well taken.


Edmund Davie Fulton: I suppose it is immaterial whether one moves an amendment first and deals with it afterwards or deals with it first and then moves it, but I should be glad to move the amendment now, or to read it to you. It is as follows:
That order in council No. 8528, as specified at page 3 in the schedule with amendments, be further amended by deleting therefrom sections (1) and (2) of paragraph 15.
I move that amendment because, as I have said, the house has accepted the principle that there should be controls. I do not believe this amendment in any way conflicts with that principle, though I may have my own personal reservations on that point. The amendment goes only to the methods of enforcing the controls. The hon. member for Lake Centre has dealt with that question in far more eloquent and effective terms than I could possibly use, so that I need not repeat his arguments. I should like to read the two subsections in question, however, so that the committee itself can make up its mind as to their effect. Section 15(1) reads:
No member of the board and no administrator or other person employed or appointed by the board or acting on behalf of or under authority of the board shall be or become liable to any person for or in respect of any act or omission of himself or any other person in the exercise or purported exercise of any power, discretion or authority or in the performance or purported performance of any duty conferred or imposed by or under these regulations or any regulations for which these regulations are substituted or otherwise conferred or imposed by the governor in council.
Therefore this subsection preserves a member of the board absolutely inviolate from any action brought against him by any individual who feels himself aggrieved by some action by that member of the board in the purported exercise of his power. Then, as though the restriction of action were not sufficiently complete, subsection 2 puts it the other way around. Subsection 1 says that the member of the board shall not be liable for any wrongful conduct in the exercise of his authority. Subsection 2 goes at it the other way and says that in any event no individual shall have any right to bring an action against any member of the board. It reads:
No proceedings by way of injunction, mandatory order, mandamus, prohibition, certiorari or otherwise shall be instituted against any member of the board, administrator or other person for or in respect of any act or omission of himself or any other person in the exercise or purported exercise of any power, discretion or authority or in the performance or purported

Emergency Powers
performance of any duty conferred or imposed by or under these regulations or any regulations for which these regulations are substituted or otherwise conferred or imposed by the governor in council.
There, under these two clauses, you have the most complete preservation of the officials of the board against action in the courts at the instance of a person who feels himself to be aggrieved by their actions.


John Thomas Hackett: Complete immunity.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Complete immunity is perhaps an inadequate description. It is putting the members of this board in a position in which, as far as I know, no one except the king himself has been placed in this country, under the legal fiction that the king can do no wrong. But even the king, under the procedure in the exchequer court, usually grants his subjects permission to sue him. The wartime prices and trade board does not grant the Canadian people that right. This amendment does not take away any actual power to control or make regulations or to impose price ceilings or rental ceilings. All it does is to restore to the Canadian citizen, if he is aggrieved in his .person or in his property by those ceilings or by any administrator's order made thereunder, the right to appeal to the courts to preserve his right.
It may be said that,- if he is given that right, they might perhaps upset the whole effect the board is trying to get at. I do not think that necessarily follow's, because if you give the board the power to impose ceilings, then the courts must interpret the regulation, which is now to have the force of a statute, as the desire of the people of Canada to give the board power to make ceilings; and provided that is all it does, the courts wall not question it. But if, in the imposing of those ceilings, such imposition and the regulations thereunder by some wrongful action damage a person in his property or in his individual person, then it is only proper that he should have the right of recourse against the board, and against the official of the board. Particularly it is proper that the individual Canadian citizen should have the right to bring action against a member of the board who is abusing his power. At the moment, apart from any question of expediency or right or wrong, or whether it is right or wrong to have controls, a member of the board could abuse his power, because the section says "in the exercise or purported exercise of any power" he is immune from action. That permits a tremendous abuse and, in my view, there can be no justification for the continuation of that power two years after the war.
83166-140J
I think we have here an example of bureaucratic power. It may be said, and probably with justification, that the majority of the members of the wartime prices and trade board are hardworking, honest and efficient officials. Personally I have never questioned that; but, since they are bureaucratic powers, I do not see how anyone reading this section can deny that they are powers which are not necessary. They are powers which a minor official of the board, one not subject to the control or at least immediate check by (the minister or by the chairman of the board, can easily abuse. It is not fair to the Canadian people to put them in the position where they have no recourse against, not only the chairman of the board and the board itself, but also local officials to whom power is delegated.
I do not want to cover the whole field, particularly in view of your ruling, Mr. Chairman, and I did not intend to do so at the outset. I think this is a most important question in connection with the whole general matter of control. I should like to read what the Prime Minister had to say with regard to the creation of a bureaucracy and the dangers of exercising a bureaucracy and the limitations which should be imposed on it. Speaking on April 19, 1934, as reported on page 2334 of Hansard, in connection with another control measure, the Prime Minister directed the following remarks against the members of the C.C.F. party:
My hon. friend all the time, even in his speech this afternoon, argues for the extension of state functions. How can you have an extension of state functions, let me ask him, without the creation of a bureaucracy? That is of the very essence of it. How can you possibly extend the functions of the state without creating a bureaucracy, and how can this bureaucracy carry out its functions except by the power of might, which is force, and which is always the power behind government and authority when it attempts to administer public affairs by a large extension of state functions? That is the answer I make to my hon. friend and to the members of his party.
He went on to say:
But the whole essence of the socialist state is founded on that, and my hon. friend knows it.
No one knows it better than he does.
And again:
... he knows that Cole has said that the socialistic state will have to have a bureaucracy and be maintained by force.
The decision of the house has been that we shall continue controls, and it seems to me that the only method by which they can be continued is by a bureaucracy. Call it anything you will, it is an extension of state functions or an extension of state planning and control which the Prime Minister himself
Emergency Powers

has said is an undesirable thing. If we are to have it even for a period of one year would it not be desirable to limit the undesirable aspects of that state functioning, of that bureaucracy, in so far as it is possible to do so without rendering the thing ineffective? I suggest that the amendment proposed this afternoon to give the individual who is wronged bjr abuse of the power of the board the right of recourse to the courts cannot be objected to.


Donald Ferguson Brown: The hon. member has
referred to the provisions of section 15, subsections 1 and 2, which prohibit the right of action against members of the board, administrators, et cetera, but would he state whether he believes that other government officials and civil servants should be liable for acts which they perform in the usual course of their duties?


Edmund Davie Fulton: Not personally. My hon. friend knows perfectly well that if a member of the civil service, in the course of his bona fide administrative duty injures anyone, he is not personally liable. But what we have here is an entirely different situation. You can bring an action in court to restrain that official from proceeding with the abuse of his power or to restrain him from carrying on a proceeding, but under this section the members of the board and their officials are given immunities which ordinary civil servants do not have. The individual is prevented from going to court to ask the court to issue an injunction preventing the carrying out or the continuance of the abuse of these powers. The ordinary civil servant is not protected in the abuse of his powers, but the members of the wartime prices and trade board and the officials to whom powers are delegated are protected even though they abuse their powers.


Donald Ferguson Brown: Where does it say that?


Edmund Davie Fulton: I have read the sections and I am not going to read them again. The particular words are "in the exercise or purported exercise of any power."


Humphrey Mitchell: Does the hon. member not think the chairman of the board or the minister involved w.ould correct any flagrant abuse of power?


Edmund Davie Fulton: He might, and then again he might never find out about it. The point is that the immunity is there; it is not necessary and it is an undesirable thing to have. The other night the Secretary of State for External Affairs told us how benevolent, how almost paternalistic this government was, but not all governments may be that good.

The Minister of Labour may not always be there, and I sincerely hope he will not always be there. I have reason to believe that that will be the case.


Humphrey Mitchell: I will be here longer
than you will be.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Not unless you join this
party. This party is going over there in the next two or three years, so that if you want to stay there you will have to change your mind. However it is not my desire to be sidetracked. I said at the outset that I would try to present my argument in a short space of time. I have been interrupted to some extent by the points of order that have been raised, but I hope I have made my position clear. I go back once more to what the Minister of Justice said in 1934 when he was dealing with a somewhat similar matter. He said that he did not think that we as members of parliament should entrust to the government powers which were wider than were necessary to carry out a desirable purpose. If he is of the same mind today-and I hope he is-I trust he will see no reason why he should not accept this amendment.


William Henry Golding: Before the
minister speaks, may I say that it would be wise for any member of the committee who is moving an amendment to have copies for the minister and for the leaders of the other groups.


James Lorimer Ilsley: This section has been
referred to, not only by the hon. member for Kamloops but by the hon. member for Lake Centre, during the debate on this measure. I have made some inquiry about the section, the reason for it, and what the experience has been under it, and I should like to say something to the committee. This section was written into the order in council at an early stage in the war, at a time when it was sought to get as good men as possible in the employ of the wartime prices and trade board, men who would be called upon to discharge disagreeable duties which would cause immense resentment and which would interfere with the ordinary established course of the conduct of business. Naturally they considered a situation such as this where they would be or might be exposed to a large number of vexatious actions, both because their reputations would suffer somewhat and because of the interruption there would be in their duties. So this section, against which a strong theoretical case can be made, and has been made, was written into the order. I have made inquiries whether this section has been abused and I am informed that there is no evidence of any abuse of the

Emergency Powers
section. There has been no complaint from business or from persons who have seen the section in operation. Notwithstanding that fact, it is pretty hard to deny that the section goes too far, and I am going to suggest for the consideration of the committee some alterations in this section. It will undoubtedly be contended by the hon. member for Kamloops and others that the section should be deleted entirely.


Edmund Davie Fulton: The first two sections.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Section 15 (1) and (2). But if the section is deleted entirely the officers of the board will be exposed' to proceedings by way of injunction or other proceedings of the type mentioned in section 15 (2). That is a consequence of the deletion of the section which they fear would be serious, more serious than changes to section 15 (1). Certain actions have been brought by way of injunction, and under the practice in the common law provinces at least-I do not know what the practice is in the province of Quebec-it is not too difficult to obtain an injunction for a few days. An injunction is applied for ex parte and the plaintiff takes in an affidavit and gets a restraining order for a while; four or five days it used to be in Nova Scotia. Notice is given to the other side and the question arises whether the injunction should be continued until the trial. But that period of a few days is extremely serious in some situations with which the board has to deal. It would mean that the thing that must be done from the point of view of law enforcement cannot be done if those few days of breathing space are given. Regardless of the merits of the case, and the board may have had the very best case in the world-


Edmund Davie Fulton: If the minister can show that that is so, I think it would be an unanswerable argument, but I cannot visualize circumstances in which some serious consequences would follow through the board's not being able to take action for four or five days. Can the minister give us an illustration of the sort of serious situation that might arise through that delay?


James Lorimer Ilsley: Let me take this case, and I hope my facts will be accurate; they will be nearly so at any rate. In July, 1946, the price ceiling was suspended on jute bags, among a number of other articles. As soon as the price ceiling was suspended, hoarded supplies of jute bags emerged and were placed on the market under conditions of an acute shortage at an extremely high price, a fifty per cent increase at least over the ceiling price that had been in effect. The persons who use those
bags in their business immediately descended on the board and said that this profiteering, the result of speculation and guessing that the ceiling would be removed one of these days when a condition of scarcity could be taken advantage of, must end. Jute bags, although it does not sound imposing, are an important article of commerce, so that the ceiling was reimposed and the price put back to where it was before.


John Thomas Hackett: And the source of supply dried up.


James Lorimer Ilsley: The bags were out at that time. Had it been possible for the dealers to have tied up the board by an action for just a few days those bags would have disappeared in every direction at fifty per cent or more above the ceiling price. That is one instance of what might happen.
An injunction was applied for in one case in British Columbia. It was alleged that the legislation was ultra vires or something of that kind and that, notwithstanding this provision, an injunction lay. That was an injunction to prevent any interference with the disposition of used cars at prices above the ceiling price. That action failed because the validity of the legislation was upheld. I have not traced the consequences. The consequences may not have been so serious in that case, because used cars would be such a commodity that not very much might happen in that interim, but we may have to deal with not just an interim period but up to the time of trial.
The officials feel that the remedy of injunction is an inappropriate remedy because the consequences may be serious. That does not mean that there should not be an action for damages in proper cases. There is no doubt that there should not be complete immunity for the officers of the board, and I agree to that extent with hon. gentlemen who have raised this point.
The question I have to try to answer is how far we can go in this system, which is not our normal system, in applying all the normal rules without destroying the effectiveness of the system. I am going to suggest an amendment to section 15 (1) for the consideration of the committee and invite their views upon it. I am not moving it at the moment. I am just putting it before the committee for their consideration:
That section 15 (1) be deleted and the following substituted therefor:
"15(1) No member of the board, administrator or other person employed or appointed by the board or acting on behalf of or under the authority of the board shall be liable for any act or omission in the exercise or performance or purported exercise or performance, in good
Emergency Powers

faith and on reasonable grounds, of any power, discretion, authority or duty conferred or imposed by or under these regulations."
That leaves the word "purported" in there. If we take that out entirely it means that there may be actions where these officials, in the discharge of very difficult obligations, may go over the line a little in the interpretation of the regulations. But if we provide that, so long as they do it in good faith and on reasonable grounds it would be for the court to decide whether they have a good defence. At the moment it seems to me that they are not getting more protection than the law should give them for the period of this act. Under the criminal law I understand, although I have not the section before me, that protection very similar to this is given to certain police officers who may make an arrest which they have not the right to make; but so long as they proceed on the reasonable and probable ground of good faith they are protected against action, even, though they make an arrest without warrant. That is what I propose with regard to that section.
With regard to subsection 2, I do not want to give up the prohibition against injunction unless the overwhelming feeling of the committee is that we should do so, because the officials attach very much importance to it. There are certain changes which should be made in that subsection. I would suggest that it be altered to read in this way:
No proceedings by way of injunction, mandatory order, mandamus, prohibition or certiorari, shall be instituted against any member of the board, administrator or other person employed or .appointed by the board or acting on behalf of or under the authority of the board for or in respect of any act or omission of himself or any other person in the exercise or purported exercise of any power, discretion or authority or in the performance or purported performance of any duty conferred or imposed by or under these' regulations or otherwise heretofore _ conferred or imposed by the governor in council.
Two or three changes have been made in the section. I think more by inadvertence than anything else the section was drafted in unreasonable terms. The words "or otherwise" in the second line of the subsection clearly should come out, and it should be made clear that there is no power vested in the governor in council to confer further duties upon the board; that it is solely the duties which have been heretofore imposed by the board.


John Thomas Hackett: Does that mean anything more than there have been the prerogative writs in this particular case?


James Lorimer Ilsley: No, it does not.


John Thomas Hackett: That is the gist of it?


James Lorimer Ilsley: That is what we should like to see from the point of view of enforcement. Many of these sections would not remain in any permanent legislation. I would not ask that they be put in permanent legislation, but this legislation is not going to last very long. I think that to a large extent we are entitled to rely upon the record of the wartime prices and trade board and its staff. They know very well that nothing would be more shortsighted than for them to rely upon arbitrary sections as a basis for the unwarranted exercise of authority, and they have not done so. If they have done so, it has not been brought to my attention, at any rate. I think they have been most responsible in the way in which they have discharged their duties; but this is a job which peculiarly exposes them to vexatious action by disgruntled persons unless they have some protection. I would suggest that they have the degree of protection which I have proposed here, and that it is not an unreasonable degree of protection.


Frank Eric Jaenicke: 
John George Diefenbaker: How times do
change. The other day I dealt with this particular section and the Secretary of State for External Affairs, in lachrymose tones and with much breast beating, indicated that all was well; that there was no ground whatever for the objections which I raised to this particular section. Naturally it is a matter of satisfaction to find that when the Minister of Justice spoke-and both ministers spoke in my absence since I unfortunately had to leave the house at that time-he said, referring to myself, that some of my points may be very good, but he also said that he did not know whether they were or not.


James Lorimer Ilsley: That is correct.


John George Diefenbaker: Apparently he has reviewed the points which I raised at that time and has concluded that, so far as this section was concerned, my objections were well founded, because the point which I was endeavouring to make the other day was that in this country the right to justice should not depend on the status of the individual; that the master should enjoy no advantage at the expense of the servant, nor should the servants of the Canadian people enjoy advantage over the people as a whole, their employers.
I am quite interested to learn of the attitude taken by the hon. member for Kin-dersley, because, until the amendment was suggested by the Minister of Justice, there was no suggestion on his part that he would take that attitude. This is the first time there has ever been a suggestion on the part of those to my left-


Frank Eric Jaenicke: I rise to a point of order. The hon. member knows, that I rose before the Minister of Justice rose, and I was prepared to make my statement before the minister spoke.


John George Diefenbaker: Deathbed repentances are acceptable and appreciated.


Mr. MARTIN:: And are always good for salvation.


John George Diefenbaker: What did the minister say?


Paul Joseph James Martin: They help in the matter of salvation.


John George Diefenbaker: They do, and with the assistance of my theological friend across the way may I pass that information on to the hon. member for Kindersley?


Mr. MacINNIS:: Self-congratulation.


John George Diefenbaker: I am glad to hear of the attitude taken by the hon. member for Kindersley, because this is one of the things that the opposition in Saskatchewan has been contending for with no little difficulty.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I rise to a point of order. Before this starts, I want to know if one will be permitted to answer-
The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN; Order.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Are we discussing Saskatchewan or the wartime prices and trade board?


William Henry Golding: I suggest to the hon. member for Lake Centre that he deal with the matter before us.


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Chairman, I am just referring-I will not continue if you do not want me to-to the wonderful change of attitude on the part of my hon. friends to the left who, for the first time, on this occasion have stated that they would in any way support measures for the protection of the subject against the autocracy of a bureaucrat.


Angus MacInnis: Baloney.


John George Diefenbaker: My hon. friend speaks with authority on that. I will not argue with him there.


Angus MacInnis: You are an expert on it right now.


John George Diefenbaker: I cannot, Mr. Chairman, argue with so much garrulous gabbling going on. I am glad the minister has gone as far as he has. As regards the suggested amendment, I think it does in large measure remove the objections that I raised here the other day. No one wants to stifle or to strangle the operation of the law by placing the administrative officials in a position where they cannot act, and the addition of the words "bona fide" exercise go a long way toward removing my objections to the section in question; for, as the section stood before, the officials, the administrators and the employees could do as they pleased, could act as they chose, could exceed their authority and yet be entirely immune from being brought before the courts of law. But when my right hon. friend says, of the board's operations. "Rely upon their record", that is where I disagree.
I know that in my own province certain officials of the wartime prices and trade board -and it is a fact generally across the dominion-have harried and hounded honest business men, and have acted most unfairly in catechiz-
Emergency Powers

ing and interrogating individuals honestly endeavouring to carry out the law. These officials have exceeded their authority on many occasions. It is impossible for the head officials to control these employees unless the individual has the right, where excessive authority has been taken by the sub-official, to proceed against the employee. I know in the administration of ceiling prices where agents of the wartime prices and trade board have provoked the commission of offences and, having induced and provoked them, have proceeded afterwards with prosecutions.
I might refer to one particular case though it is past now. In that case-and there are many of them-an honest man was induced, as a result of solicitation over a long period of time, to break the law. The person who solicited him to sell a car over the price ceiling went to the wartime prices and trade board and advised them of the fact that this man had a car for sale, but that he was afraid to pay over the ceiling because he did not know whether he could get the excess back. The official in Saskatoon-I refer to the Kimbley case, which is known to the minister-


James Lorimer Ilsley: No, I do not know of it.


John George Diefenbaker: -and the wartime prices and trade board told this investigator, self-appointed, because he was not one of the officials, that they were with him, and if the sale was effected they would see to it that if he purchased the car over the price ceiling he would get back the excess, and in order to assist him marked the purchase money in advance so that if the vendor yielded to the solicitations of the purchaser, the purchaser would get back the excess. This man was afterwards proceeded against, and the conviction was upheld in the court of appeal of Saskatchewan, the judges in that court offering the sternest objection to that type of thing, the inducing of the commission of an offence and, after having induced its commission, the punishment of the wrongdoer, but having no alternative but to find the seller guilty.
That was a case where an individual who induced the commission of the offence should have been liable in the courts of law to a charge of conspiracy for the commission of an offence against the wartime prices and trade regulations.
Under the amendment proposed, I take it that any person finding himself the victim of a conspiracy may now take proceedings against these individuals, operatives if you

will, who, inducing the commission of the offence by conspiracy, finally secure their desired purposes.
There is no need, in the enforcement of law, and no justification for agents provocateurs to be appointed, whose work consists in endeavouring to secure the commission of offences. Investigators, yes. But the men in the Kimbley case who operated for the wartime prices and trade board were not investigators, and the man from whom the car was purchased had never before been suspected. He was an honourable man; but, as a result of provocation, as a result, if you will, of greed induced by continuous solicitation he finally committed an offence.
That sort of thing cannot be justified, and I am pleased to find that the minister, realizing the necessity, on the one hand, of the board having necessary powers, is prepared at the same time to go as far as he is going in placing individual citizens in this country on a footing of equality before the law with the representatives of the board. Up to the present time that equality has not existed.
The Secretary of State for External Affairs seemed the other day to be under the impression that, while the conduct of the wartime prices and trade board officials may have been harsh on occasion,. and unfair, nevertheless it had been good for the Canadian people. Sir, however beneficial the results may have been, there can be no justification for wrongdoing on the part of officials and investigators. I think, too, that consideration should be given to reducing the army of investigators in this countiy today. The latest figures I have been able to secure show that there are 766 investigators operating with a view to ascertaining the commission of offences. I do not think there is any necessity for that army of investigators, having regard to the fact that throughout this country we have the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who, in a matter of a few days, can do more effective work than any such investigators.
I think, too, while I have not the latest figures, that the numbers employed today in connection with the prices board having regard to the diminution in the work consequent on decontrol, might very well be reduced. The latest figures I have give the number as 4,418.
As far as I am concerned-I do not know what the hon. member for Kamloops thinks- the amendment of the minister fairly well covers the situation, although I join with the hon. member for Kindersley in suggesting that the word "purported" should be removed, the purported exercise of authority. I agree that

Emergency Powers
no proceedings by way of injunction, mandatory order, mandamus, prohibition, certiorari should be instituted against any member of the board for or in respect of any act or omission of himself in the exercise of any power, discretion or authority under the act. The use of the word "purported" makes it unnecessarily wide. It may well grant to the individual wrongdoer a protection which I am sure the minister does not want to grant. There can be no doubt today about the exercise of powers. They are set forth in the regulations. The official is either acting under those regulations or he is not. There cannot be a halfway house, that while he was not acting under them, he was purporting so to act.


Mr. BRUNELLE:: Cases are not all alike.
There may be different cases.


John George Diefenbaker: Obviously that is
so.


Hervé-Edgar Brunelle: That would justify this word.


John George Diefenbaker: That is obviously
so. If what the minister has in mind is that when an officer goes out to investigate one type of offence and during the course of the investigation ascertains another type of offence being committed, he should be protected in a case such as that, I believe that he should; because in a recent judgment in the court of appeal in England the court held that if a police officer arrested an individual for one offence, and while he was in custody took it upon himself to charge him with another offence without formal discharge and another arrest, that policeman became open to an action for false imprisonment. Up to the present time police officers have often arrested a man on a charge of vagrancy, kept him in custody for a few days and, while he was in custody, charged him with murder. The court of appeal in England has held that that no longer can be done and that a police officer is subject to damages if he arrests a man on one charge and holds him in custody, then later on changes his mind and charges another offence. If that is what the use of the word "purported" is endeavouring to get around, I am prepared to accept that. But if the word "purported" is interpreted in its ordinary sense, I think the minister is asking for too wide powers for the officials administering the regulations.


James Lorimer Ilsley: The reason for the necessity of the word "purported" or some similar word is this, and I should like to have the hon. member for Kindersley direct his attention to what I am going to submit. I submit 83166-141
that if the word "purported" is taken out, there is no protection; because if an officer is acting in the exercise of his authority, there is no action against him. At least, that would be argued. That may not be completely so, but I think it is, that if he is acting in the exercise of his authority there is no action against him at all. This is merely to cover cases when, honestly and on reasonable grounds, an official of the board transgresses a little, goes a little beyond his authority and a case arises against him. This section gives him protection. That is subsection 1. That is the reason why, unless some word like "purported" is in there, protection is not really given; because once he got outside the bounds of the exercise of his authority he would not get any protection at all under the section if we took the word "purported" out, and that is the very case in which it is desired to give him some protection.


John George Diefenbaker: Would this cover
the situation, "purported in good faith"?


James Lorimer Ilsley: That is what it does do.


John George Diefenbaker: It does not say that.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Subsection 2 that is spoken of by the minister does not say "in good faith".


James Lorimer Ilsley: I am talking about subsection 1. When I come to subsection 2, I shall deal with it. But not only the words "in good faith" but the words "in good faith and on reasonable grounds" are used in subsection 1.


John George Diefenbaker: Yes.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I think that is as far as we should be asked to go. With regard to this removal of the remedy by prerogative writs, as I think they are called, or writs of certiorari or applications for injunction-


Frank Eric Jaenicke: I do not mean "injunction"; just prerogative writs, mandamus, prohibition and certiorari.


James Lorimer Ilsley: With regard to those writs, what was the hon. gentleman's submission?


Frank Eric Jaenicke: An injunction is an ordinary writ. The others are prerogative writs.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Nothing turns on the phraseology. What this section does is say that these proceedings will not lie at all against members of the board or other persons employed or appointed by the board when they are doing or purporting to do their duties; that is all. The other remedy is the remedy of damages which is preserved by subsection 1.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Might I ask the minister a question with regard to subsection 2, in order

Emergency Powers

to help us see the way clearly if we can, if I may put it in that way? We have said that we are trying to get at the best way to go about this thing, and he was kind enough to give us an illustration of why, in his opinion, it was necessary to keep subsection 2 in something like its present form. Would this meet the type of case the minister has in mind? If a ceiling is removed and a hidden supply comes on the market, then, as I see it, there would be nothing to prevent the board from reirn-posing the ceiling. Then all the penal clauses for selling above the ceiling would apply. There might be an injunction against seizing the goods, which would prevent that aspect of it from being enforced. Nevertheless, if the goods were sold at a price above the reimposed ceiling price, contrary to the order, if an action is brought in the court against the board and the board is upheld, then the penalty against the sale will apply and the wrongdoer can be fined and is subject to the heavy penalties that exist. I do not think it would be worth anybody's while to sell goods above the reimposed ceiling price until the action in court was disposed of, so I think that part of the minister's objection might be met. Might I suggest this solution? Since we attach considerable importance to subsection 2 as well as subsection 1 of paragraph 15, and since subsection 1 appears to have gone a long way, if I may put it in this way, toward meeting what we have in mind, could we ask that the whole thing be allowed to stand? Perhaps that will give us more time to consider whether the minister's suggestion, with perhaps some modification, would meet what we have in mind before we continue talking?


James Lorimer Ilsley: All right; we will let it stand; but when my hon. friend considers it I think he will realize that to put the words "in good faith" in subsection 2 would be inappropriate, because good faith is a dtefence which is raised by the defendant, and would have to be proved by the defendant. What does it mean to get an injunction only in a case where there is not good faith? Does that mean the plaintiff has to produce some evidence of lack of good faith?


Edmund Davie Fulton: What I would rather do is cut out the word "purported", which would confine him strictly to the exercise of his power, and that is the thing we are trying to do.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: I think removal of the word "purported" would take away the whole effect of the subsection. Here the allegation would be, and it must be in order to obtain
an injunction, that the officer is acting illegally,

is not in the proper exercise of his powers, there would be room for the injunction. This is only to say that this matter will not be tried summarily by injunction, and will not be stopped by an interim injunction; but if anyone thinks anything is wrong, the officer will be responsible for it under subsection 1 unless he can prove that he did it in good faith and on reasonable grounds. So I think we have improperly. If there is an allegation that he to leave the word "purported" in this second paragraph in order to keep it operative at all.


James Lorimer Ilsley: May I just add that these provisions are not peculiar to this order. They are of more importance, perhaps, in the emergency shelter order and in one or two others. These provisions are in three or four orders, and probably the language on which we agree here will go in the others as well, so that we have to think of the significance in reference to those others. I have in mind the importance of protection in the field of emergency housing, for example, where there is danger of actions for trespass on slight provocation, because people get very angry-at least in my province they do-when matters of land or possession are involved. That is a case where we must be careful about the language we use.
There is another point I want to offer hon. members for their consideration. That is, no action against the crown is taken away by this section. This merely removes the right of action against the individual, the member or officer of the board. The crown is not ordinarily liable in tort, except under the Exchequer Court Act.


John Thomas Hackett: And there you have to have a fiat.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I will recommend a fiat; I can say that right now.


John George Diefenbaker: I do not think there is any action against the crown if there is no right against the servant of the crown. If section 15 remains in its present form there is no right of action against the servant. He cannot do wrong; and if the servant can do no wrong, certainly the master can do no wrong. I think, on reconsideration, the minister will conclude that if the individual operating on behalf of the crown commits no offence, whether he trespasses on the rights of the individual or not then certainly there could be no right of action arising therefrom against the crown, even though the Minister of Justice might grant a fiat.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: I think the hon. member is going too far there. This does not say the agent of the crown does no wrong. It says

National Wild Life Week
though he does wrong, if he does it in good faith and on probable cause, he will not be liable for damages; but the Exchequer Court Act provides that if damages are caused by an agent of the crown, the crown shall be liable for them.


Frank Eric Jaenicke: Would the minister consider, during the dinner recess, a suggestion to take out the words "mandatory order, mandamus, prohibition, certiorari" and leave in the word "injunction"? That would make it read, "No proceeding by way of injunction shall be instituted against any member of the board."


James Lorimer Ilsley: I will consider that, but I think there is the same objection to the liability to a mandamus, for example, as there is to an injunction.


Frank Eric Jaenicke: It is hardly likely a writ of mandamus would ever be taken out against a member of the board. I cannot imagine a circumstance under which that would be done.


Hervé-Edgar Brunelle: What about the issuance of licences?
At six o'clock the Speaker resumed the chair and the house took recess.
After Recess
The house resumed at eight o'clock.



WILD LIFE


[Stage Direction]
Mr. J. R. MacNICOL (Davenport) moved the second reading of Bill No. 2, respecting a Jack Miner national wild life week.
He said: Mr. Speaker, as an advocate of the conservation of Canada's natural resources and an opponent of their useless and needless destruction, I look upon this wild life bill as being a step in the direction of conservation because it will promote a programme of conservation in a field which has been largely neglected, that of wild life conservation, and particularly that of wild fowl such as geese, ducks and insectivorous birds. I am convinced that when the bill is in operation, as I believe it soon will be, the same results will accrue in Canada that have accrued in the United States from a similar wild life conservation programme. *
Commencing on March 16 last and continuing up to and including March 22, the United States observed a national wild life week. This was the tenth anniversary week of the national wild life programme in the United States. During that week, over the 83166-141J
radio, through the press and on a thousand and one platforms throughout the United States the people of the United States were informed by various wild life organizations, wild fowl organizations, game and fish organizations and so on, of the tremendous and beneficial results which had accrued to the nation as a result of their wild life programme. The society in the United States which promotes and which inaugurated the programme is the United States wild life federation. I am assured that in this country the Jack Miner foundation will promote and inaugurate a similar programme.
Those who are familiar with the wild life problem will remember that toward the end of the last century and the beginning of this century both the United States and Canada were greatly alarmed over the trend toward extinction of wild life. I remember when I was a young lad I read many times that the Canada goose was on its way out, that in fact it was very rare. However, thanks to the wild life federation of the United States andi the programme they have carried out, which included the sending out of literature prepared by themselves and by various United States government bodies such as the wild life bureau, the insectivorous birds bureau, the wild game and fish bureau, the downward trend toward extinction of wild life in the United States was stopped, and it began to move upward until today their wild life resources are of tremendous value. I shall not weary the house with figures. Today I received from the capital of Pennsylvania a telegram signed by Seth Gordon, executive director of the Pennsylvania game commission. It is addressed to myself and reads:
Conservationists generally throughout the United States are greatly heartened to learn that you are sponsoring a proposal to establish a wild life week in recognition of the wonderful work done by Jack Miner. We "wish you every success in this worthy recognition of one of North America's pioneer conservationists.
During the course of my travels in the United States, I inquired in the different state capitals about wild life conservation measures, and I was heartened to hear everywhere that they accorded to Canada's pioneer conservationist, the late Jack Miner, a preeminent position as the originator of the whole continental wild life conservation programme. The late Jack Miner in the early days of this century made two great announcements outlining the means of stopping the downward trend toward wild life extinction. First, he said that it would be necessary to build or create sanctuaries along the lines of flight of wild fowl from their winter habitat in the south to the breed-
National Wild Life Week
[Stage Direction]
ing places in the north. Second, he said that the habitats themselves should be preserved and extended.
In connection with the first, he set up his continental example. On his own farm in the beautiful county of Essex he created in the township of Gosfield, some four miles from lake Erie, the first wild life sanctuary, I am informed, created anywhere in America, and that sanctuary has been expanded until today it covers some four hundred acres of land. People come there from all over the United States to learn how to start sanctuaries, and Jack Miner lived to see the day when a line of sanctuaries stretched: along the flight of the birds from the gulf of Mexico right to the Arctic ocean.
I am happy to say, Your Honour, that one of the best wild life sanctuaries in our own north country, not the far north, but still well to the north, was built by a member of this house, the hon. member who seconds this bill, himself a great conservationist of whose work this country should be proud. I refer to the hon. member for Cochrane (Mr. Bradette).
Jack Miner travelled extensively, inquiring into the natural habitats of the birds in the south and to the north, and to complete his information he started tagging the wild fowl, which when he commenced that work would not amount to more than perhaps half a dozen to two dozen birds; but I venture to say that on this very night there are no fewer than thirty thousand to fifty thousand wild geese flying out from Jack Miner's sanctuary to the lake, and tomorrow they will return. It is one of the greatest spectacles the eye of man can see, forty or fifty thousand geese in the sky, flying in new formations every second, truly an entrancing spectacle. It is no wonder that the national tourist bureau here in Ottawa has said that that sanctuary attracts more tourists than any other single tourist attraction in Canada. That is a credit to Canada's great naturalist, to the man who was preeminently the greatest conservator of wild life on this continent. The information he gathered through tagging the birds, putting bands on the legs of the geese, smaller bands on the ducks and still smaller band® on the insectivorous birds is most valuable, and on many occasions the United States has sent its wild life directors to gather first-hand information from Jack Miner. That was a most valuable work he did and he did it, as we all know, at his own expense. He devoted his whole lifetime to the cause of wild life conservation. It is a wonderful thing to me to see men devote their lives to building up their country as Jack Miner did as a great conservator of wild

life, and in doing what he did to develop one of Canada's great resources he did a valuable work for Canada.
The United States has had some difficulty in arriving at a date on which a national wild life week shall be observed. They have had several different dates in March and in April. I believe one of the latest ones was the 14th of April, but finally they settled on the first day of spring. I am convinced, however, that when we pass this bill the great republic in due course, because of the suitability of the 10th day of April, will fall into line with us and adopt that date, so that the whole continent will be observing the same week as wild life week. I shall do my best to promote the week in which April 10 falls, the anniversary of the birthday of Jack Miner, as the week to be celebrated by all America as national wild life week.
I have received thousands of letters supporting this bill, and occasionally some people would ask me why I did not name some other prominent man, that there were other naturalists. It is true that there were. Audubon was a great naturalist. He was born in France and lived in Louisiana. I read all about him when I was in New Orleans in Audubon park, which is one of the greatest parks in the world. But his conservation was not along the same lines as Jack Miner's. Audubon was a great painter and a great promoter of preserving birds, dead birds, stuffed by taxidermists and kept in museums. Some have asked me why I did not use the name of Ernest Thompson Seton. He too is a great man, still living, I believe, and famous as a writer of stories for children on animals and birds. But Jack Miner was a conservator and in that field he was first and preeminent and has never been surpassed.
Others have asked me why I did not choose some great surgeon or scientist or theologian! It is true that these men deserve everything that we can do to commemorate their work. Take the great work of Doctor Banting, for example, which has been of untold benefit to humanity. He has been highly honoured by his native province and his country. He was granted a large donation and pension by the province of Ontario, and his country was instrumental in bestowing knighthood upon him. These men are all entitled to the honours that have come to them. They -were nearly all educated in universities, but this preeminent conservator in the county of Essex attended no university. His school was in the back woods of Gosfield township; his rifle was his pen, and his traps were his books. From his youth he was in contact with the

[Stage Direction]
National Wild Life Week
wild life of Essex county. He was a crack shot. He could hit a half-dollar five times out of five at a much greater distance than most people. It was in Essex county that he learned to love wild life. The woods and swamps of the beautiful county of Essex inspired in him a love of wild life and to do what he has done for this country and for the rest of this continent. Today his name is known and his memory respected throughout the world, and I am happy indeed to have the honour of moving this bill in his memory and to his honour for what he has done.
I believe that the government is going to permit the bill to pass with some slight amendments with which I am quite in accord, and so in closing, Your Honour, I should just like to say that Canada must have a wild life week. The letters which I have received, and which I am sure the minister has received, from departments of government in our provinces and from the premiers of our provinces are almost unanimous in endorsing that Canada should have a wild life week. That is No. 1- almost unanimous endorsation of a wild life week. I find, secondly, almost unanimous endorsation that the week should be the one in which the 10th day of April occurs, the anniversary of Jack Miner's birthday.
I am satisfied that if we pass this bill the result will be great so far as wild life conservation in this country is concerned. I have had a stupendous number of endorsations but I shall not take up the time of the house to read them tonight. They have come from all across America, from London, England, and from every state in the American union. I shall give the names of a few of the bodies that have written me and, I presume, have also written to the department, for I have found the minister very cooperative in endorsing Canada's having a national wild life week. Contained within that week should be the birthday of Jack Miner, which is April 10. I have received endorsations from great companies like the Ford Motor Company, which is the greatest of its kind in the world; the Chrysler corporation, which is almost as great, and Detroit Street Railway Company. I have received communications from a multitude of associations. Among them are found the following: The Alberta Motor Association; the Outdoor Writers' Association of Ohio; the National Wild Life Federation of Washington, D.C.; the Maryland Fish and Game Association, U.S.A.; the AVild Life Management Institute, Washington; the Canadian National Parks Association, Calgary. At this point I should like to pay a word of tribute to the secretary of that
association, Mr. W. J. Selby Walker, who is an enthusiastic naturalist and a man of whom the country may well be proud because of the work he has done toward wild life conservation.
I have had a multitude of endorsations from towns and cities throughout Canada: Montreal, Ottawa, Hamilton, London, Toronto, and from societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals. They have professed their words of endorsation. Finally, I have received endorsations from boards of education and chambers of commerce. It would take me all the rest of the evening to mention them all. As I say, I have received endorsations from chambers of commerce, or boards of trade and county councils and city councils such as AVindsor and Wiarton, Kingsville, Sandwich, AA7aterloo, Kitchener, Brantford, Sarnia, AATnnipeg, Regina, Kamloops, Edmonton. I have received endorsations from provincial authorities, to whom I referred a moment or two ago. Eight of the nine provinces endorsed this legislation and the ninth reported that they would support whatever we did here. Therefore it adds up to almost unanimous endorsation.
In moving the second reading of this bill, I have set an example in that I have taken only about fifteen minutes, and if those who follow me do not take too long, and if it does not get through by nine o'clock, perhaps the minister and the house will consent to an extension of time so that we may try to get the bill through tonight.
Mr. J. A. BRADETTE (Cochrane):: I appreciate highly the privilege which was extended to me by the hon. member for Davenport (Mr. MacNicol) in permitting me to second this bill. Before I proceed with my remarks, I wish to pay a word of tribute to the hon. member for Davenport who well deserves it. He is a well qualified man to speak on this subject. Pie has followed a straight line so far as conservation and preservation are concerned. We have listened to him on many occasions giving lectures and talks on irrigation and conservation of soil and so forth. Therefore it is a pleasant duty for me to spend a few minutes of the time of the house on a matter which is very important and absolutely above party lines.
To some extent I am a little disappointed because it was not possible to make this national wild life bill a Jack Miner bill. Perhaps I am somewhat of a provincialist in that regard; but I am convinced that no man living in Canada has done so much for conservation and preservation of our wild life as has Jack Miner. Being a citizen of
National Wild Lije Week

Ontario, naturally I have thought that the name "Jack Miner Week" would be acceptable, but we must also consider other sections of Canada. I presume that is one of the main reasons why the title of the bill had to be changed. But this is the occasion and the place for northern Ontario more particularly to say to Manly Miner how much we appreciate the work of his father in the newer sections of Canada, and also the work that the son is doing at the present time in old Ontario. We must realize this.	We
have been bountifully blessed with the great gifts of nature; yet we are great wasters;' we are wasters of our soil, of some of our rural establishments, of our forests and also of our wild fowl and wild animal life. We should bring vividly and forcibly to the attention of our Canadian people that the time has surely come when every man and woman in the country should be a conservationist to the fullest extent. I speak feelingly on this matter, because only forty short years ago when we went into our new sections of northern Ontario, in the wonderful clay belt, as settlers, we knew to some extent that we had to destroy the forest. But I do not think it ever came to the minds of the pioneers that it would be necessary to slaughter the fine herds of moose that were there and the wild life which was then in the northern sections of northern Ontario. In that section, as in every other section of Canada, we have been wasteful to a very large extent indeed. Of necessity these days are gone. That should be one of the finest reminders to our Canadian people in establishing a week of this kind, so well propounded in the present bill.
If it were possible I should like every citizen of Canada to go into the southern section of Hudson bay and the James bay region in the fall of the year, the latter part of October or the first part of November, where they would see wild geese and wild ducks not by the hundreds of thousands but by the millions. Hon. members may not believe that but it is absolutely true. At the moment we feel more secure, because we know they will be well protected when they reach the southern sections of the United States by the fine organizations which have been set up there to protect these birds. We know what Ducks Unlimited has accomplished in the northern and western sections of the western provinces, and also what it has accomplished in every section of Canada. At one time we were fearful that the wild duck life would be so depleted that it might disappear as have some of the birds which our

fathers knew as part of the wild life population of this country. For that reason I wish to be brief because we hope and expect that this bill will pass with as little deliberation as possible.
I wish to mention again what has been accomplished by Jack Miner. What he has done will always be to us a great lesson in what can be done, and it is being well propagated at the present time by his son. I trust that national wild life week will be taught in our schools, because at the present time there are very few schools which do not include in their curriculum something on con-servationism and preservation of our wild life and also of our natural resources. Without elaborating any further, may I say that it is with the greatest pleasure that I second this bill in the hope that it will receive unanimous support from every section of the house.


Donald Ferguson Brown: Mr. Speaker, in rising to support this bill, I do so not merely personally, but at the request of the mayor of the city of Windsor, and on behalf of the Essex county tourist association and the Essex county sportsmen's association and, I feel sure, on behalf of all citizens of Essex county and western Ontario.
You have heard, during the course of this debate, that the late Jack Miner was a farmer and operator of a tile yard in the county of Essex at Kingsville near the city of Windsor. In his early years, in his desire to protect the wild fowl migrating to the north and south in the spring and fall, he created a sanctuary where, at his own expense, these fowl were fed grain and provided a landing and resting place in a small secluded pond. In order to note the habits of the migrating birds, and to encourage the preservation of wild life, he employed a novel scheme which was destined, in time to come, to make him a world figure.
There are many points throughout the North and South American continents which have been set aside as game sanctuaries, none of which has attained the prominence of that maintained by the late Jack Miner. It is true that the migrating habits at such other sanctuaries have been able to determine the habits of migrating birds in a cold, impersonal, statistical manner usually by the affixing of a band on a captured bird on which a certain serial number is engraved. Jack Miner, however, had a great respect for his fellow man. He had a great love for mankind. His life expressed a love for children and flowers and nature. This desire to be of help to mankind found expression in his scheme of attaching to the leg of a captured bird a little metal

National Wild Life Week
band on which was impressed a short verse of scripture and the name "Jack Miner, Kingsville, Ontario, Canada."
It was not long after instituting his scheme until reports came to him from many parts of Canada, United States and South America of the capture of birds on which bands had been placed. Thus valuable information was obtained for the governments of Canada and the United States; but, in addition thereto, the good will of Canada was spread from Kingsville not only to different parts of northern Canada, but to the eastern part of the United States and to the northern part of South America, including Central America. Indians in northern Canada, upon shooting a bird with one of these bands, would take it to the missionary near them to find out what it was, and the missionary, upon explaining it, would have an opportunity in his work of expounding Christian doctrine. In Central and South America many natives learned their first English words by taking these bands to their parish priests or missionaries for translation and explanation.
Thus it was that the name "Jack Miner, Kingsville, Ontario, Canada," with the comforting and regenerating message, was spread throughout the American continents. But this was not all, for it attracted many of the leading educationalists, politicians, laymen and businessmen throughout the world. It was not uncommon for Jack Miner to have, as guests at his farm, persons from European countries, especially England, some of whom, to my personal knowledge, made the trip specially to visit him.
In time, partly through his geographical location but mostly because of the haven provided by Jack Miner, the birds came to regard the Miner sanctuary as a haven of refuge in their migration and a place where they might find food and rest. Usually the birds, during the daylight hours, remained close to the shores of lake Erie where it is not an uncommon sight, during the migrating seasons, to see tens of thousands of ducks, geese and white swans. Toward twilight the wild geese and ducks and sometimes the swans fly in from the lake to the Miner sanctuary where they receive food and then depart early in the morning. To say that Jack Miner was a local character is not correct, for he was an international figure with friends all over the world who had duplications of his sanctuary in many foreign countries.
The War Cry, the publication of the Salvation Army, in the April 5, 1947, issue says;
Mr. Miner's life was not lived in just his home town of Kingsville, which he made famous throughout the world; but his name was so
much a household word throughout the dominion that when one thinks of birds, the subject is inescapably linked up with the bird sanctuary.
Let it be granted that other great ornithologists lived before Jack Miner, and live today; but their lives centred each around one locality, and what they left behind were, in a good many cases, dead specimens of birds, very rare bird skins for scientific study in schools, or exhibits in glass eases in museums.
Miner's life-work, however, was very different to this. He left behind him living creatures, the actual living birds which our children and our children's children may see in their customary haunts and natural environment, and but for the famous naturalist's foresight and energy might today be extinct.
To-day, because of the fact that Jack Miner lived, Canada possesses millions of living birds because he gave protection to their kind-a sanctuary from slaughter, a haven of rest on their long flight, and food. This heritage of bird life we owe to him, not only because of the well maintained sanctuary at Kingsville, but also because of the hundreds of bird refuges which his influence helped to create.
Jack Miller was, and is, even today probably the best advertising agent that Canada has ever had, for the advertising which he has obtained has been that which no money could buy. Practically every worth-while publication in the United States and other parts of the world has, at one time or another, carried news items and feature articles repeating the kindness, joy and gospel of conservation in the protection of wild fowl as expressed by Jack Miner.
On another occasion, I have had the privilege of referring to feature stories in the Saturday Evening Post, depicting the story of Jack Miner and telling of the attractions, people and privileges of the Dominion of Canada. I need not tell you, Mr. Speaker, of the tremendous circulation of this publication and of the value in dollars and cents to the Dominion of Canada.
The Christian Science Monitor, the great international daily newspaper, has also featured the story of Jack Miner which has been of advertising value for Canada throughout the world. The Canadian Churchman, the national Church of England news review, together with radio station CKLW at Windsor and other leading stations, many leading daily newspapers, weekly publications, magazines, have publicized the work of Jack Miner and the Dominion of Canada throughout the universe.
As I came into the house tonight I received a telegram advising me that in a recent radio broadcast were carried over C.B.C. by Claire Wallace there were 500,000 listeners in Canada -it was heard in 300,000 homes in this country
National Wild Lije Week

over twenty-nine stations. This says nothing about the millions who hear 'her in the United States which they have no way of estimating.
I think, however, that Jack Miner's greatest contribution to Canada from not only a social but a monetary point of view has been his assistance to and interest in the tourist industry in Canada. Last year I am informed that 20,875,701 tourists entered Canada from all ports. Of this number, 5,191,009 tourists entered by the port of Windsor, Ontario. I could quote at this point from the Windsor Daily Star, since this publication is read by the members of the house more than any other publication and is quoted more often, but I will give what others say. I will, therefore, read from a journal published some distance from Windsor and which perhaps is not as widely knowTn. The reference is made from the November 28, 1946, issue of Watson, Sask., Witness'.
Windsor, Ontario.'-With the fall (November) migration of waterfowl at its peak at the world famous Jack Miner bird sanctuary twenty-five miles from here, the custom officers and immigration officers at this port of entry today said that "more people coming into Canada ask the way to Jack Miner's than any other place."
All United States and Canada has copied his bird sanctuary idea for conservation of bird life which is a national asset to this country. Although the late Jack Miner passed on two years ago it is good to know that his sons are carrying on the work more energetically than ever. Before Jack Miner died he said "What made my bird sanctuary such a success was because I took God in partnership with me." He started to put verses of scripture on his bird bands and in this way he secured the cooperation of the Jesuit priest and Anglican missionaries in Hudson and James bay, who acted as his agents in collecting them from the Indians and Eskimos. The verse of scripture on the band gave him the wholehearted cooperation of every church in North America; the banding of birds gave him the support of every sportsman, and thus the place has become so popular in attracting tourists from all over the world.
It is not an uncommon sight to see at the Miner sanctuary 500 motor cars, most of which have come from the United States; and, from a purely mercenary point of view, they leave many valuable dollars in the Dominion of Canada, and you can be sure that a dollar made in the tourist industry is worth every bit as much as a dollar made by growing wheat in western Canada.
Jack Miner passed on at his home and bird sanctuary, at Kingsville, Ontario, on November 3, 1944; but Jack Miner did not die, for the work that he accomplished has carried on and the human endea vour has been propagated in his three sons wl a have been doing the work instituted by the father, and Jack Miner's "Peace on earth, good will toward men" is

still being spread all over the globe through the feathered friends which he made and protected.
Just recently I attended a gathering in Kingsville -which -was the twenty-fifth wedding anniversary of one of the sons, and there, leading businessmen of the United States, educationalists, professional people, radio commentators, editors, and the rest of us common folk, had an opportunity of again paying tribute to Jack Miner through his son. It is therefore my recommendation, Mr. Speaker, that this bill be given favourable consideration by the house.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Mr. Speaker,
I rise to speak for a few minutes, not only because of my own interest in this matter, but also because of the unavoidable absence of the hon. member for Essex South (Mr. Clark) in whose riding the Jack Miner bird sanctuary is situated. I am sure that the mover of this resolution would agree that the hon. member for Essex South has, throughout the years, displayed great interest in Jack Miner and his work. The hon. member for Essex South unfortunately found himself unable to be here tonight to add his voice in support of those who have already spoken. As the speaker preceding me has stated, Jack Miner was not only a citizen of Canada and a well known and useful citizen of the county of Essex, but by virtue of his great work in the field of conservation of wild life he may be said to have been almost a citizen of the world.
Those of us who live in Essex county look upon the Jack Miner foundation and the sanctuary as one of our most important possessions and one in which we have a great and legitimate pride, not only because of its attraction to tourists, but also because of the lesson it teaches to all of us, particularly to the children, of the importance of wild life. Not only did Jack Miner do much for the conservation of wild life; but his fine character, known particularly to those of us who live in Essex. county, was such as to urge us, if for no other reason, to give our support to this bill in the form in which I understand it is to be placed later by the minister under whose department this matter comes. The government, through the Minister of Mines and Resources (Mr. Glen), has not failed to show its continued concern and interest in the great work of Jack Miner. Under the present Minister of Mines and Resources (Mr. Glen), the grant of $2,500 was increased, and the contribution now made annually by this govern-

National Wild Life Week
ment, and through it, by parliament, to the Jack Miner foundation is in the amount of $5,000.
Speaking for those in our county, I may say that we are grateful to the members of this house for that grant and for their interest in this matter. So, Mr. Speaker, in order to give the minister time to speak on behalf of his department tonight, and in order that the bill may possibly be facilitated in its passage, I wish to join with those who have thus far spoken in commending to this house this commemorative week at a time to coincide with the birthday of Jack Miner, a great lover of nature; a great lover of the birds who make our life happier and more interesting; one who by his character was and is a great example, not only to those who knew him but also to those who will read about him in the years to come; the kind of man who made this world a better place in which to live.


Mr. M. J. COLDWELL (Rosetown-Biggar):: May I just say one word. I do not wish to delay the passage of this bill, because I think we all want to allow the minister make his statement and get into committee tonight.
All I wish to say is that I am heartily in support of this bill and of the idea behind it. In these days when the wild life has been depleted in the country, one's mind goes back over the years and one regrets that there was not such a figure as Jack Miner a century ago. Had there been we might still have had the North American pigeon, and the buffalo might have been in greater numbers across the western plains of Canada. Today we have an opportunity of teaching our boys and girls, as they grow up, the value of wild life, through the example of a man who devoted his life to the conservation of the wild life of Canada. On behalf of those around1 me, I have great pleasure in supporting the second reading of the bill.


Thomas Langton Church: Mr. Speaker, I wish to support the principle of the bill introduced by the hon. member for Davenport (Mr. MacNieol). His zeal and diligence as a member have been most gratifying to those who have known him for many years in our city. He has been a leader in many spheres of public life in our city and has continuously risen in the esteem of his fellow citizens.
The purpose of the bill which the hon. member proposes is to proclaim the week of April 10 in each and every year as the Jack Miner national wild life week, April 10 being the anniversary of the birthday of the late Jack Miner, the great Canadian naturalist who
devoted a lifetime to the cause of wild life conservation. For that reason it is most commendable. However I wish to point out that I think a week is too much. Perhaps there should be a day set aside.
There are educational features to this particular bill. I wish to call the attention of the house and the country to the fact that there has been wilful destruction of our forests. I think of the old country and what has been done to preserve the countryside in many ways. When I visit the summer resorts, I am almost appalled to see the wilful destruction around the countryside of the forests that we used to have years ago in this dominion. There is an educational feature to this bill, because in all the public and high schools and, I know, in the separate schools, considerable time has been devoted to the conservation of this particular kind of life.
I am sorry that more attention has not been given by the chairman and his committee on Indian and Eskimo affairs, and some action taken long ago, instead of talk. If we devoted more of our time to the Indians and Eskimos who devoted all their lives to the conservation of wild life in the forests, rivers and streams of this country, it would be much better. Here we have wasted two years in deciding whether they are citizens or not. They are the very people who saved the wild life in the forests and streams in the days of Frobisher, Jacques Cartier and John Cabot, and of the discovery of Hudson bay, the discovery of the Mackenzie, the Fraser, and the other great rivers that lead to the oceans. While I support the principle of the bill, I believe the time has come when we should really set aside about a day or two to give consideration to these people who have conserved the wild life of the country, who were the original settlers and who were here 180 years before your great race, Mr. Speaker, came to this country, the great French people. Nothing has been done for them to make them citizens and give them the rights of citizens.
I support the principle of the bill. I believe it will have a great educational effect in this country. I wish to commend the hon. gentleman who introduced it-one of the most indefatigable and beloved members of the House of Commons-for what he has done in this country not only for forest conservation and power development but in advancing many of the features of our public life.


James Allison Glen: Mr. Speaker, I am sorry the time is getting on towards nine o'clock because I should like to have seen this bill go through. As the house will remember, last year we
National Wild Lije Week

had a similar bill, and I was forced to take exception to it on the ground that a precedent would have been established in regard to the setting apart of a national holiday named' for an individual in the country. What I said then I would repeat now. I do not intend in any way to detract from the stature, reputation or prestige of Jack Miner, who was a national figure throughout Canada; but I did think at that time, and I suggested to the hon. gentleman who is sponsoring the bill, that the provinces should be consulted in this matter before we took it upon ourselves to pass such a bill. At that time I promised I would communicate with the provinces to get their reaction, and that I did. I sent a letter to the provincial ministers of mines and resources, and from them I received replies in which they expressed their unanimous opinion that it would be unwise to name a bill after an individual citizen of our country and identify his name with it. They were all in favour of having a national wild life week in Canada, in order that the people of this country might come to know just what our wild life means. I am not going to read all the communications, but will ask the house to accept my word that each provincial minister indicated to me that he did not think the bill should be associated with the name of an individual but that there should be a national wild life week.
I have consulted the sponsor of the bill, who in season and out of season has expressed the point of view that this should be considered the Jack Miner bill. I have suggested to him amendments which would eliminate the name of Jack Miner; and, as he said in his address, he has agreed to this suggestion. So I have no objection to the bill passing, on the understanding that I will move these amendments deleting the name of Jack Miner from the four clauses in which it appears, and setting up a national wild life week.
Motion agreed, bill read the second time and the house went into committee thereon, Mr. Golding in the chair.
On section 1-Short title.


James Allison Glen: I move that section 1 be amended by striking out the -words "Jack Miner" in the first line thereof.


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
Section as amended agreed to.
On section 2-Jack Miner national wild life week.
James Allison Glen: I move that section 2 be amended by striking out the words "Jack Miner" in the fourth line thereof.


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
Thomas Reid: In the first amendment the minister moved the deletion of only two words. Does that not leave in the words "the Canadian internationally recognized bird
lover"?


John Ritchie MacNicol: That is not in section 1.
Section as amended agreed to.
On the preamble.


James Allison Glen: I move that the following be deleted from the preamble:
Whereas the late Jack Miner, the Canadian internationally recognized bird lover and wild life conservationist, devoted a lifetime to the cause of -wild life conservation; and whereas it is fitting that his outstanding service in this field can be commemorated; therefore


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
Preamble as amended agreed to.
On the title.
James Allison Glen: I move that the title be amended by deleting therefrom the words "Jack Miner."


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
Title as amended agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.


[Stage Direction]
On the order:
Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion of Mr. Church for the second reading of Bill No. 12, an act to amend the Penitentiary Act, 1939.
Some hon. MEMBERS:: Stand.


Thomas Langton Church: I should like to hear from the Minister of Justice with respect to this bill, the next evening we have private and public bills.


Mr. SPEAKER:: Stand. The hour for private and public bills having been exhausted, the house will revert to the business under consideration at six o'clock.



EMERGENCY POWERS


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed consideration in committee of Bill No. 104, to provide for the continuation of certain orders and regulations of the governor in council for a limited period during the national emergency arising out of the war-Mr. Ilsley-Mr. Golding in the chair.
[Stage Direction]
Emergency Powers
William Henry Golding: When the committee rose at six o'clock we were dealing with order in council 8528 on page 3 of the schedule.


James Lorimer Ilsley: If another column is not provided we shall not be able to amend the schedule. Therefore I move that the schedule to the act be amended by inserting therein immediately after the column entitled "Amending orders in council" a column entitled "Amendments."


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
Edmund Davie Fulton: Before six o'clock the minister had given notice, as I understand it, that he would be prepared to move an amendment to section 15, subsections 1 and 2, of which he was kind enough to furnish us with copies. In the discussion which followed, the Minister of Justice and the Secretary of State for External Affairs pointed out that, as they read the suggestion put forward by the minister, if a person felt himself aggrieved by any act of a member of the board which that person felt was in excess of the authority of that member, then under section 15(1) he could bring an action in damages against that member. The onus would then be upon the member of the board to prove that he acted in good faith. That is my understanding. If that is correct, I feel that it goes practically all the way to meet the point which I had in mind this afternoon when I moved the amendment which is now before the committee. I would be happier if the words "by way of injunction" could be stricken out of the proposed section 15(2) but, as the minister has made what I might call a great concession toward meeting our views, I am not going to insist on that. Therefore, if it is the will of the committee I would ask permission to withdraw my amendment provided that the minister will move his.


William Henry Golding: Has the hon. member permission to withdraw his amendment?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Agreed.
Amendment (Mr. Fulton) withdrawn.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I move:
That the following be inserted in the schedule to the act in the column entitled "amendments" so as to pertain to order in council P.C. 8528 of 1st November, 1941, as amended:
"15(1) No member of the board, administrator or other person employed or appointed by the board or acting on behalf of or under the authority of the board shall be liable for any act or omission in the exercise or performance or purported exercise or performance, in good
faith and on reasonable grounds, of any power, discretion, authority or duty conferred or imposed by or under these regulations."


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
James Lorimer Ilsley: I move:
That the following be inserted in the schedule to the act in the column entitled "amendments" so as to pertain to order in council P.C. 8528 of November 1, 1941, as amended:
"Section 15(2) is deleted and the following substituted therefor:
"15(2) No proceedings by way of injunction, mandatory order, mandamus, prohibition or certiorari, shall be instituted against any member of the board, administrator or other person employed or appointed by the board or acting on behalf of or under the authority of the board for or in respect of any act or omission of himself or any other person in the exercise or purported exercise of any power, discretion or authority or in the performance or purported performance of any duty conferred or imposed by or under these regulations or otherwise heretofore conferred or imposed by the governor in council."


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
Stanley Howard Knowles: I feel that the moral of this discussion should be pointed out to the minister and the government. We have been discussing for no longer than an hour the wartime prices and trade board. As the minister has said, this is a body which, through the years, has been subject to a great deal of abuse. Earlier in this session it was suggested, by my hon. friends to my right in particular, that something pretty drastic had to be done with this board, and there was even the suggestion that maybe this was one of the orders in council they were opposed to.
I hope my hon. friends to the right will realize that at this particular moment I am not picking a quarrel with them, although I am not above doing it on other occasions. At this particular moment I am drawing the moral from the fact that they have not fought the wartime prices and trade board as we expected they would to indicate that there is far more sentiment in the country against the speedy decontrol of prices than I think the government has yet realized. We were led to believe that this was a pretty awful aggregation-


An hon. MEMBER:: Only by you.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Oh, no. Yet the only
discussion we have had has been on the point of recourse to the courts and so on, on which we have been able to reach an agreement. I suggest earnestly to the minister and the government that they should consider seriously the result of this discussion and slow down in their policy of price decontrol. I think the members of the wartime prices and trade board who have been restive under the abuse
Emergency Powers

they have received should read Hansard and be encouraged as a result of this debate and realize that, after all, perhaps there is more appreciation of what they have been doing than is generally recognized. Perhaps one of the reasons there has been so little criticism today of the wartime prices and trade board is that the afternoon paper which comes to our desks predicts sixty cent butter on May 1. One can imagine the effect that will have upon the housewives, the consumers and the working people of Canada generally.
As I said, I rose just to urge the government to reconsider its policy with respect to price decontrol and to pay some attention to remarks such as those which have been addressed to the government by the hon. member for Spadina.


Mr. MERRITT:: We have just had a short lecture from the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, and I in turn would like to point out to the minister the danger of following any conclusions the hon. member may draw from this or any other discussion.
I really rose to make a request of the minister. Later on, we shall be dealing with the order in council which has to do with timber control. That order in council cannot be discussed intelligently except in relation to prices. I should like to get the minister's consent that the passing of this particular item will not preclude the discussion of prices when we reach the timber control order.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes, I agree that prices can be discussed under P.C. 1997 which relates to timber regulations.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: Merchants in my riding and in other ridings have objected to the way in which inspectors of the wartime prices and trade board check up on them. One butcher said to me, "Look out there; you will see in that car a man who used to be a bus driver. He comes in here and tells me how to run my butcher business". I was in a clothing store and the merchant said, "Look at that man. He is a butcher and he comes in here and tells me how to run my clothing business, I object to that; I do not think it is right. I think the wartime prices and trade board should have inspectors who are trained in their own business". The minister and his department should check on that.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Was the hon. member referring to the number of investigators?


Gordon Knapman Fraser: I was stating that in one place a butcher pointed out two men in a car.
I understand that these inspectors generally go around in twos.


An hon. MEMBER:: For protection.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: "For protection", somebody says. The butcher was objecting to a bus driver telling him how to run his business and the clothing merchant was objecting to a butcher coming and telling him how to run his clothing business.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I do not think they tell them how to run their business. Perhaps they tell them what the regulations are and check up to see whether they are complying with them. For the information of the hon. member the total number of investigators is 599.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: That is about 200 fewer than there were before?


James Lorimer Ilsley: The number was 750 last year.


Mr. NICHOLSON:: I should like to support what has been said by my deskmate, the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre. Members in this section of the house protested at the sniping that went on during the war against public-spirited servants of the Canadian people who were unable to defend themselves in this parliament and who were doing, as the minister said this afternoon, a pretty thankless job in arguing with people all along the line. But it was in the public interest to have price control and some supervision over the distribution of goods in the country.
After I spoke last night, I was sent a clipping from the Toronto Globe and Mail of March 15, which reports that a survey had been made of Toronto homes in the lower income brackets, and forty-three per cent of the families interviewed intimated that there had been a decrease in their consumption of milk since the price of milk increased. I was also informed by a Canadian, who was living in Washington at the time of the disorderly retreat from price control there last summer, that he had been in the habit of lunching at one of the well-known restaurants in Washington where a meal cost $1.25, but that, after the lid had been taken off prices, the very same meal cost $2, and of course a ten per cent tip was expected on $2 instead of on S1.25. All along the line rising prices in the United States make it more difficult for people on fixed incomes to get by.
Before the Easter recess, members of the Progressive Conservative party were active in urging the government to retreat much more rapidly from price control. I notice that they were echoing the sentiments of the president of the Robert Simpson Company. I have a copy of his address to the shareholders of the company.

Emergency Powers


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: Is he public enemy No. 1 now?


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: I am not going to enter into a discussion of his shortcomings, but in this speech he recommends-


William Henry Golding: I think the member should speak to the item. He is now going back to the principle of the bill.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: I was merely saying that a well-known Canadian outside this house was recommending the very same policy that had been recommended in this house by members of the Progressive Conservative party. But the fact remains that, while this discussion has been going on this afternoon and this evening, the Progressive Conservative party has not proposed that a single item should be taken out of the field of price control or pressed the government to abandon the whole price control policy. I urge the minister who is piloting this bill through the house and the government to take into consideration the sentiments that have been expressed in so many parts of Canada that they continue to try to keep prices in line with the spending ability of the Canadian people. The Minister of Justice was able to enlist the cooperation of housewives in all parts of Canada for the common good of all during the war, and it is not too late to expect a similar response if the government will give leadership in this critical period such as was given when a large number of our citizens were in the armed forces and when such a large percentage of our production was going into war. It does not make sense that we should now have runaway prices which work a great hardship on people with fixed incomes who are compelled to decrease their consumption of food and pay fabulous prices for inferior goods, as seems to be the trend in the United States and certainly will be the trend in Canada if we have any more rapid retreat from price control.
Mr. HARIvNESS: The hon. member seems to have based his entire argument that, if a few controls were taken off, prices would go to astronomical heights in this country, on the price of meals in Washington. I was there myself during the parliamentary recess, and I can assure him that the price of meals in restaurants in Washington is very little different from what you pay in the city of Ottawa in comparable places. As a matter of fact you could get breakfast at a restaurant in Washington that would compare with Murray's here for ten or fifteen cents less than you would pay in Ottawa.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: Where can you do that in Washington?


Douglas Scott Harkness: I deliberately went to various kinds of places to get a cross-section and see what conditions were actually like, and I was agreeably surprised to find that prices there for comparable quality of meals and service were very little different from here. So that if the hon. member is going to base his argument on such premises he had better go down to Washington and eat a few meals there and find out the facts. Further, in my opinion, his logic and method of arguing has no better basis generally than it has in this case and that applies to his party generally. Did the hon. member want to ask a question?


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: Name two restaurants where you ate in Washington?


Douglas Scott Harkness: I ate two or three meals in places called the Hot Shoppe. It is a place very similar to Murray's.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: Tell that to Murray's.


Douglas Scott Harkness: As I say the prices were a little cheaper in Washington. I cannot recall the names of all the restaurants I went to, but I can assure the hon. member that what I have said is correct. He will find very little difference in the prices of meals in Washington if he cares to make the trip.


Mr. HANSELL:: I followed with some interest the remarks of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, and in respect of them I say that, just so long as the principle of controls is maintained by the government, somebody must have the responsibility for control. Price controls were brought into existence for the specific purpose of avoiding the inflationary spiral that would take place if prices were not controlled. I think that is the reason why the wartime prices and trade board was brought into existence. I have always said that, so far as that is concerned, the wartime prices and trade board has done a pretty good job. If there has been any criticism of a harsh nature perhaps it has been with some of the, shall I say, minor officials, inspectors, whose duty it is to go around and perhaps act as shock absorbers, and, who, in the discharge of their duties, have become extremely unpopular. But from the point of view of controlling inflation the board has done a pretty good job.
The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre suggested that, since there had been a recent decontrol of prices, a wave of resentment had arisen against these decontrols. Of course that is quite natural, because there will
Emergency Powers

be resentment the very moment any action touches the pockets of the people. I would point out, Mr. Chairman, something that is rather significant and singular. I do not know whether this has occurred to other hon. members or not, but the lifting of recent price ceilings has been done at the time during which this bill has been under discussion in this house. Whether that was purposely designed or not I do not know. The minister will perhaps say, "No; it is just done in the interests of the country"; but it did have the effect at least of a clever and strategic political manoeuvre, because naturally people are going to resent a rise in the price of consumer goods, especially goods such as my hon. friend referred to, butter for instance, which all people need and must buy, and the recent jump of $2 a ton on coal, something that is essential to the life of our Canadian people. This was all done during the time the bill was being discussed in the house, and during the time when hon. members had to take a stand. Would the effect have been the same-


William Henry Golding: Order. I again draw the hon. member's attention to the fact that he is discussing the principle of the bill which was decided on second reading. We should not spend our time now in dealing with the principle. The principle was accepted by the house. We are now dealing with the items. Again I ask for the support of every hon. member in this regard. If we deal with the items we shall make more progress.


Ernest George Hansell: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for reminding me of that. Perhaps I used the wrong language. I shall speak now in terms of the direct action which has been taken by the wartime prices and trade board and which we are now discussing. I say that action was taken during the time we have been discussing the measure in respect to decontrol. I do not know that I need to add anything further to my remarks, but I believe that the effect would perhaps have been entirely different had the action of the wartime prices and trade board in its recent decontrol measure been left until this bill had been disposed of.


Percy Chapman Black: Will the minister tell the committee where the authority was secured for the payment of subsidies on coal? I asked this question before the dinner recess, but he was not in a position to tell the committee at that time. He said he would make inquiries. I wish to point out that, while the subsidies on coal have lapsed, an undertaking was given by the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply on April 1 as set out on page 1956 of Hansard as follows:

But I should like it understood that the government is willing to reexamine the needs of the production of coal in the Cape Breton area and to reintroduce subsidies in that area, provided that there can be a settlement of the present labour dispute on a basis that promises that the industry will ultimately be restored to a healthy condition.
Then further down:
But I do want to say that the government is ready at any time to sit down with the union and with the operators and work out a form of subsidy which will permit that section of the country to resume the production of coal on a healthy basis.
Where will the authority be secured for carrying out the undertaking given by the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply when he was discussing this emergency powers bill on second reading?


Clarence Decatur Howe: The authority is found in the Munitions and Supply Act. The funds used will be funds appropriated by parliament for that purpose. There is an item in the present appropriation to cover coal subsidies.


Percy Chapman Black: From where have they been paid in recent months?


Clarence Decatur Howe: The funds have been paid from the war appropriations.


Mr. BENTLEY:: We have just finished with the section setting up the wartime prices and trade board regulations once again, continuing their authority to carry on the work which they have done and which they have been so well complimented on by others. At supper time tonight a lady who is the mother of two growing boys came to me. Her husband earns $90 a month, which is a government pay cheque. They pay $30 a month rent. It takes all their family allowances of the two children to buy milk for the children.


John Thomas Hackett: That is what they get it for.


Thomas John Bentley: All right, but $90 a month is the pay cheque. Of that amount $30 has to go for rent. Butter will now cost them sixty cents a pound, according to the press. I am asking-


James Lorimer Ilsley: What is the position which pays $90 a month?


Thomas John Bentley: He is in the army.


John Thomas Hackett: He gets subsistence, and other things.


James Lorimer Ilsley: No one in the army gets only $90 a month. Is that $90 a month in cash? That is just the start.

Emergency Powers


Thomas John Bentley: I do not want to deal with anyone's personal affairs. I will tell the minister about the matter in private.


John Thomas Hackett: Do not make the statement that he is getting only S90 a month.


Thomas John Bentley: He is getting S90 a month because of certain circumstances which I am not going to disclose here.


John Thomas Hackett: Do not talk about them then.


Thomas John Bentley: I shall, because he has to keep a family. I am making my statement to the minister and not to the hon. member for Stanstead.


John Thomas Hackett: If you cannot speak about it openly do not talk about it.


Thomas John Bentley: I am talking to the minister, and not to the hon. member for Stanstead. When he is the minister I shall talk to him.


John Thomas Hackett: Then the hon. member will have to wait a long time.


Thomas John Bentley: Will the wartime prices and trade board, under the instructions and authority they have received from this committee tonight, be prepared to take some action to protect these people? This is not the only one. There are other families like this in Canada.


An hon. MEMBER:: Does he get old age pension?


Thomas John Bentley: He is not old enough to get old age pension and will not be for a little while. This is going to be a severe hardship on this man and on other people. I am asking that the government try to see that this kind of people are protected from further increases.


John Thomas Hackett: What kind of people?


Thomas John Bentley: The kind of people that I am talking about tonight.


John Thomas Hackett: The kind of people you cannot talk about because you do not know about them or you will not tell.


Thomas John Bentley: Yes, I do know about them. Why should I tell you about them? If the minister insists on my telling him I shall tell him. The hon. member for Stanstead does not know what he is talking about because he has his nose in a book. I am presenting this case to the government. My hon. friends the Tories who like to make funny remarks should read the funny papers.
P C. 8528 as amended agreed to.
On P.C. 9029.


Thomas John Bentley: Just a minute.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I certainly cannot add any useful statement to the price control policy of the government. Perhaps I should not add anything at all to what I have already said. The hon. gentleman may have in mind that the government should go into a subsidy policy in order to keep down the price of food. But remember that the government is attacked from three positions: 1, by farmers who want higher prices; 2, by the consumers, who want lower prices; and 3, by the taxpayer, who wants lower taxes. A balance has to be struck between these conflicting claims.


Thomas John Bentley: I appreciate the minister's position. He reminds me of the fellow who described the statesman as a politician held upright by equal pressure from all sides. I do not know whether that exactly describes his position but I can see his difficulty. Even his difficulty, however, is not as great as that of the families I have described, and the government should consider defying one or two sides of the pressure to make the weaker members of society a little more secure than they are at the present time.


Mr. BRACKEN:: Can the minister say how many employees of the government receive $90 a month or less?


James Lorimer Ilsley: I cannot say. I believe some grade 1 stenographers and grade 1 typists do, but there are not many of those if my recollection serves me correctly. Most of them are grade 2 now, and the pay of the grade 2 stenographer and grade 2 typist is, as I recollect, between $105 and S110.


John Thomas Hackett: What benefits does the soldier receive in excess of his pay?


James Lorimer Ilsley: The private gets $95-$50 when he goes in and $45 for ration if he is not living in barracks, or alternatively, if he lives in barracks, the value placed on that is $45. That makes S95, and he gets hospitalization. He gets clothing and important pension privileges, and if he is married he gets the married allowance and so on. I cannot say what it is exactly, but I am sure I am justified in saying that the Canadian soldiers are well paid, and I would emphasize the "well paid". About a year ago there was fixed a scale which was quite satisfactory to everybody.


John Thomas Hackett: It is a fact that soldiers receive substantially more than $95.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Oh, yes. The private starts with $95, in addition to pension privileges, medical attention and so on.
Emergency Powers


John Thomas Hackett: Clothing and marriage allowance.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes.


John Thomas Hackett: And family allowance if he has children.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: The leader of the
opposition and the hon. member for Stan-stead as well as the minister are creating the impression that there are very few people who get as low as $95, but the facts given by the dominion bureau of statistics show that a great many heads of households in Canada get $95 and less, and the hon. member for Swift Current is certainly not discussing an unusual case. He is speaking for a very large number of people and he makes a point that should be considered. What is to be done in the case of those getting S95 and less when butter goes to sixty cents? What is happening when they do not get milk for their children and when shoes are out of line and they have to buy inferior clothing? Something should be done to see that people in that category are enabled to look forward to the future with greater confidence than they now can.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Will the hon. member tell us the type of employment that pays less than $95? What would a man be doing to earn less than that?


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: Anyone in my constituency who is clerking in a store or looking after His Majesty's mail, for example. I venture to say that ninety-five per cent of the postmasters in my constituency are getting less than $95 a month for a full-time job.


John Thomas Hackett: That is not their sole occupation.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: It is the only income they have, and they have to keep open from eight o'clock in the morning till six o'clock at night.


Benoît Michaud: The housewife does that.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: It is not the housewife's job.


Stanley Howard Knowles: There are caretakers, night watchmen and people doing manual labour at minimum wage rates. I could show my hon. friend-


Clarence Decatur Howe: What people doing manual labour can be employed for less than $95 a month?


Stanley Howard Knowles: When I was home during the Easter recess there came to see me a man and his wife who were getting less than

that. The man combined the jobs of night watchman and caretaker. He was a man of sixty-seven or sixty-eight years of age, not old enough to get the pension, and he got $S5 a month for that kind of work. The point which the hon. member for Mackenzie tried to make was that we are getting away from the basic fact that there are many people whose income, even if it be $125 or $150, is not sufficient to meet the rising cost of living, to say nothing of old age pensioners who are trying to get along. The issue is price control.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I can understand my hon. friend's point when he talks about $125 and $150, but the list of people who are fully employed, able-bodied men getting less than $95, is small.


Thomas John Bentley: But all the people employed are not able-bodied people. Let the minister consult his own bureau of statistics and council of welfare. The facts are there for him to read. They are not on tap all the time in this chamber, but he knows the answers as well as we do.


Mr. KNIGHT:: About a week ago I attended one of the most depressing meetings at which I have ever been present.


An hon. MEMBER:: A C.C.F. meeting?


Robert Ross (Roy) Knight: I shall tell you about it.


William Henry Golding: Order.


Robert Ross (Roy) Knight: Mr. Chairman, this subject has been freely discussed and I should like to say something about it.


William Henry Golding: We have called P.C. 9029, wartime leasehold regulations, and an hon. member has been trying to get up several times to discuss it.


Robert Ross (Roy) Knight: I think this question should be disposed of. Other hon. gentlemen have expressed their views and I want just five minutes to state mine. As I say, I was at a meeting in Saskatoon. It was called by officials of this government, officials of the Department of Veterans Affairs. They called together the businessmen of Saskatoon, the board of trade and other citizens and their effort was to get the Saskatoon businessmen to employ old soldiers forty-five years of age, fifty years of age plus. They wanted to get some sort of jobs for these men to keep them alive. Some people suggested various low-paid jobs, and I contrasted to myself the picture of the boys going out in 1914 and coming back, and the boys going out in 1939 and coming back. These old sweats have to face competition from twenty-one year old boys, and I thought

Emergency Powers
to myself, what a hope! In this competitive world today you cannot get business firms to hire people of that kind when you can get men of twenty-one years of age with the potential ability they possess. It was suggested by one person that these men might be able to get jobs paying as much as $30 a month, but the officials of the department did not know that we have in Saskatchewan, through provincial legislation, a minimum wage amounting to something like $83. I am proud that we have that.


Mr. SMITH (Calgary West):: When was
that statute passed?


Donald Methuen Fleming: The order that has been lately under discussion is the general order setting up the wartime prices and trade board and giving it its general powers. Order 9029 is the one which clothes the board with certain specific powers in relation to leaseholds. As the committee is aware, the regulations that have been imposed from time to time, starting in 1940, have affected two main aspects of normal leasehold contracts, namely rents and the matter of possession.
I do not propose to dwell on this subject at any great length. It seems to me that we can, with little discussion or questioning, find in this respect the emergency which must be found in order to justify the dominion occupying a field which falls within the ambit of the provinces by virtue of their jurisdiction over property and civil rights within the province. I do not propose to discuss the first aspect of control. I propose to confine myself in some very brief remarks tonight to the second aspect, namely the possession of properties which are under lease or are tenanted.
The general attitude of the government with reference to decontrol in this field was defined by the Minister of Finance on March 25 when he indicated that the policy of the government was for gradual decontrol. I asked him some questions with reference to the policy of the government in regard to decontrol on a horizontal basis, assuming that conditions might improve. They are not improving now; it may be sometime before they will improve in the housing field at the rate the government is proceeding, but let us hope that in the course of time they will improve. When that time comes I asked, what is the basis on which the government proposes to approach the problem of decontrol? The minister indicated that his remarks must be general. If you examine the answers that he gave on that occasion you will find that his remarks were very general, and there is very little indication of the line which the government proposes to follow with reference to decontrol.
The time may come-and let us hope that improvement will come soon; there is little indication of it as yet-when the conditions which constitute the emergency in the housing field will be confined to the urban centres where conditions have been most acute. It may be that in the course of time it will be possible to confine these regulations within a narrower compass. But the steps which the government has taken to date have been in a particular direction. I refer in particular to the step recently taken by the government which is, I think, the first step taken toward decontrol since the freezing order was passed on July 25, 1945. That recent step was announced by the Minister of Finance in this house on February 24. His announcement will be found at page 702 of Hansard. The order of the wartime prices and trade board which he announced at that time is No. 688, dated February 17 of this year. I do not propose to read the whole order; but in essence it has this effect, that in the case of purchases made by the owners of tenanted properties from October 31, 1944, until July 25, 1945-the date of the freezing order-application might be made by such purchasers to the court of rental appeals for an order for possession of the property. and for dispossession of the tenant where it can be established that, having regard to the relative needs of the landlord and tenant for the accommodation and the relative hardship resulting from any order made by them, an order should be made granting the landlord possession of his own property. Then followed this safeguard with reference to time, to be found in section 6 of the order. It provided that any notice to vacate given to recover such possession shall be given in accordance with the law of the province but that in no event shall any such notice be shorter than three months. That was the first step in the direction of permitting owners of tenanted property to recover possession for their own occupancy.
I suggest that a second step is warranted, and the second step will fit in with the announced policy of the government with reference to gradual decontrol in this field. There is a special reason applicable in the case which I am about to propose. I am speaking of veterans who have purchased houses and who are not assisted by the first step of the government in this direction embodied in order 688, to which I have referred. Let us bear in mind that the freezing order was made between V-E day and V-J day, when the great majority of the men and women in the armed forces who were on overseas service had not returned. They were not here to
Emergency Powers

protect themselves during the war up to the day when the freezing order took effect. They were not in a position to compete with other persons at that time in protecting themselves in the possession of property by purchase of it before the freezing regulations came into effect and at a time when they could, on notice, have taken possession for their personal occupancy or that of their immediate families. The notice prevailing generally prior to the period of the freezing order was a six months' notice, accompanied by an undertaking on the part of the owner to occupy the premises by himself or his immediate family for a period of not less than twelve months; and that undertaking had to be given to the rental authorities under the wartime prices and trade board.
I am suggesting that an exception ought now to be made in favour of veterans who have	purchased houses	in	which	to maketheir	homes, regardless	of	date,	and whorequire them for their personal use and occupancy in the same way as owners were permitted to do prior to the freezing order, or in	a similar way, at	any	rate.	I do notneed to go into detail, I	trust, on this subject.
If there is any case which, without further discussion and without lengthy argument, ought to appeal to the fairness of all hon. members, it is the case of the veteran who, returning from service, finds that he has no housing accommodation adequate for the needs of his family and himself, purchases a property and is unable to obtain occupancy of it for himself and his family.
In case any hon. member should raise the question of administrative difficulties in connection with this matter, I suggest that if it was possible to overcome whatever administrative difficulties were created by the promulgation of order 688, any administrative difficulties inherent in the type of amendment that I am now proposing, can be met with equal, if not greater, facility. I would put it to the sense of fair play of all hon. members as to whether an exception ought not to be made from the present freezing regulation in favour of the man or the woman who has served this country overseas in time of war and who has returned to make a purchase after the date of the freezing order of July 25, 1945. As that order now exists, I suggest that it imposes an invidious and unjustifiable discrimination against the veteran. That is one proposal which I make and to which I propose to refer further in a moment.
There is one other suggestion that I should like to offer, though I do not make it now
[>Mr. Fleming.]
for the first time. As a matter of fact, I hesitate to remind you, Mr. Chairman, that I have already made this suggestion, I think, on no fewer than three previous occasions in this house. It is a suggestion which, if put into effect, would, I am sure, provide a greatly increased amount of housing accommodation on a shared basis, particularly in the urban centres. I refer to the necessity for lifting the freezing regulations in the case of tenancies of shared accommodation where such tenancies are created hereafter.
I made this suggestion first in the 1945 session. At that time I made it directly to the present Minister of Justice, who was then Minister of Finance. It will be found at page 3465 of Hansard for that session, on December 13, 1945. May I just read one or two sentences from what I said on that occasion:
May I offer a suggestion to the minister, in the hope that lie may think it constructive. On October 25, introducing certain legislation in respect of housing, the minister said something about the present freezing of tenancies. We know the freezing is necessary in the present situation, but we also know that the drastic freezing order has had the effect of discouraging many people from renting surplus accommodation. One can find many cases, some even in the city of Ottawa, where, to meet the needs of the situation, people would be prepared to rent some of their own housing space, if they did not feel that if they brought someone in they might not be able to get him out, no matter whether he proved difficult or not.
After some further discussion, the minister said:
I will give consideration to that suggestion.
There is no subsequent record in Hansard of any indication on the part of the administration as to its attitude in reference to this suggestion. That proposal was renewed, I venture to remind the minister, on March 25 of this year, to the present Minister of Finance. He took some note of it, but nothing has as yet been done. I would urge upon the Minister of Justice, who is in charge of this bill, that he will make a substantial contribution to the provision of more shared accommodation and more rooms for rent in urban centres if he will introduce an amendment or accept the amendment I am prepared to offer, which will have the effect of providing that the present freezing order shall not apply to tenancies of shared accommodation hereafter created. I can see the difficulties in the way of applying such an order to tenancies at present existing. What I am proposing, as I did in December, 1945, is that for the present this be confined to tenancies hereafter created.
Anyone who has had experience in the administration of the present order well knows that people are not satisfied with it as far as

Emergency Powers
the quite inadequate rights reserved to the landlord are concerned to evict a tenant of shared accommodation.
The minister may say that the order makes provision for the eviction of a tenant who proves obnoxious, but I repeat that anyone who has had experience in the administration of that order knows that provision is virtually a dead letter. It is not simply that it ia exceedingly difficult to get orders under that section of the present regulations, though that is very difficult, to say the least. You have to prove a very strong case, such a case as is most difficult to prove, in order to get an order. It is not only that fact; it is also the fact that the very much restricted rights in that respect reserved to the landlord at the present time have the effect of creating in the minds of people who have surplus accommodation to rent, and who are willing to rent it, the fear that, if they take people into their homes and those people prove undesirable, they will not be able to evict them. That fact alone undoubtedly is having the effect of dissuading many people, particularly in the larger urban centres, from renting space they do not themselves require. I know that in many areas of my own city considerable housing accommodation is available on a shared basis which the landlords would be willing to rent if they were not faced with this bogey that, if they took in people who proved difficult, they would not be able to evict them. I make the suggestion to the minister with confidence that, if he will introduce such an amendment, not applying it under present conditions to tenancies at present existing but to tenancies hereafter created, he will take a long step toward increasing the housing accommodation available on a shared basis. By that one step alone he will increase available housing accommodation, when under present conditions he cannot increase it in any other way on anything like a comparable scale.
I do not ask the minister to take my word alone for this. I am not a voice crying in the wilderness, nor am I offering a novel idea in this respect. I would remind the committee that this proposal has been supported by labour and veterans' organizations, and I am going to recall to the minister two quotations I gave the house on March 22, 1946. which will be found at page 183 of Hansard for that day. These quotations were taken from a Toronto newspaper containing remarks by leaders of veterans' and labour organizations meeting to discuss the critical housing situation which existed in Toronto at that time and which exists today in even more critical form. The first statement was by Major Edwin
Meredith, a leading official of the Canadian Corps Association, who advanced the suggestion I have advanced to the committee this evening because-
-he said he was seriously alarmed about the housing situation in general and the problem of veterans' families in particular.
At the same meeting a prominent Toronto 'abour leader is quoted as having made remarks along the same line. I refer to Mr. Russell Harvey, a leading official and organizer of the American federation of labour in Toronto and a member of the Ontario labour relations board. This is what he is quoted as having said:
"There would be many thousands of additional rooms made available if some assurance were given," contended Russell Harvey of the Toronto district labour council. "The greatest fear of home owners is that they won't be able to get rid of objectionable tenants if they rent rooms that are now vacant."
It seems to me that is a pretty clear case for amendment in order to increase the available supply of housing accommodation. I am prepared to offer separate amendments, Mr. Chairman, in the hope that it may facilitate discussion of these two questions. If the minister is not prepared to accept amendments but prefers to offer his own after consultation with his officials, I should be very happy to put my amendments aside and welcome his. This afternoon I think the minister indicated a desire to meet halfway constructive suggestions for the improvement of these orders, and I hope he will see, in the suggestions I am putting forward, proposals that he may well endeavour to meet halfway. I might just read the amendments I am suggesting as suitable, without offering them at the moment. I realize that if they are to be offered they will have to go in separately, but I suggest to the minister that these are amendments which might well be worthy of his acceptance. As to the first suggestion, namely in favour of veteran purchasers of houses requiring to obtain possession for their own personal occupancy and that of their families, I suggest this:
That P.C. 9029, as amended to date, be further amended by the addition thereto of the following clause:
"Nothing in this order in council or in any order or regulation made thereunder contained shall apply to prevent the recovery of possession of housing accommodation, in accordance with the law of the province, by the owner thereof, where required for his personal occupation and that of his family, where such owner was a member of the forces, as defined in the War Service Grants Act, 1944; provided that any notice given to recover such possession shall be given in accordance with such law, but in no event shall such notice be shorter than three months."
Emergency Powers

May I make just two comments on that proposal. The first has to do with the definition of "veteran". I have taken that from the War Service Grants Act which defines "veteran" in these terms in section 2(f):
"member" and "member of the forces" mean any person who has been on service in the force* during the war which commenced on the tenth day of. September, one thousand nine hundred and thirty-nine.
"Service" is defined as follows in paragraph (i):
"service" means time served on active service in the forces while enlisted or obligated to serve without territorial limitations, or time served on active service in the Aleutian islands.
I am putting this proposal forward for the benefit of those who were absent from the country in the service of the country' and were not here to protect themselves and their families when other people were in a position to buy homes and obtain occupancy before the freezing order came into effect.
The other proposal I have to put forward is in these terms:
That P.C. 9029, as amended to date be further amended by the addition thereto of the following clause:
"Nothing in this order in council or in any order or regulation made thereunder contained shall apply to prevent the recovery of possession of housing accommodation, in accordance with the law of the province, by the landlord thereof in the case of shared accommodation, as defined in the orders made under this order in council, where the tenancy thereof is created after the date of coming into force of this act."
I think that will give sufficient time for the necessary administrative steps to be taken. In order to put the matter on record, unless the minister desires to move an amendment himself, I will move the first of these as an amendment. I do not wish to be dogmatic about the form and I do not intend to hold to my precise wording. If the minister desires to give further consideration to these proposals in consultation with the officials administering these orders I shall be very happy if he will so indicate. I urge, with all the earnestness at my command, that these are matters that are deserving of amendment under the present structure of rent and tenancy control.


James Lorimer Ilsley: As I understand it, the hon. member has moved only one amendment?


Donald Methuen Fleming: Yes, although I have circulated the other. In order to keep within the rules, I have offered simply the one for the moment.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I think it is more systematic to deal with one at a time. I have not the War Service Grants Act, 1944, before me,

but do I understand that the definition of "member of the forces" in that act would include only those who served overseas?


Donald Methuen Fleming: The definition given in section 1 (f) of the War Service Grants Act refers to service, and "service" is defined in paragraph (i) in these words:
. "service" means time served on actual service in the forces while enlisted or obligated to serve without territorial limitation, or time served on active service in the Aleutian islands.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Unless my ears deceive me and my understanding is defective, that definition would include all members of the forces where they enlisted to serve without territorial limitation. It would not include members of the N.R.M.A.; but it would include everybody else; it would include the two or three hundred thousand men who did not leave Canada.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I want to make it clear to the minister that the suggestion I make is for the benefit of those who were absent from the country and unable to protect themselves. If the minister is prepared to take it the other way I shall be very happy to accept his view.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I am not prepared at all; I just wanted to permit myself the luxury of asking two or three questions. The second question I want to ask is this: Does it apply to members of the forces who purchase houses in the future?


Donald Methuen Fleming: No. I drafted this to mean that nothing in the present order or regulations made thereunder contained shall prevent the application of the law of the province in the case of recovery of possession by a veteran owner, provided that he complies with the law of the province in regard to giving notice of not less than three months.


James Lorimer Ilsley: The answer to my question is undoubtedly in the affirmative, but I just wanted to have it clear. According to that, the amendment would mean that a veteran could buy a house next week and the law of the province would apply to his recovering possession of that house. There is no limitation to purchases in the past- as was suggested by one of the hon. gentleman's colleagues the other day.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Taking the converse luxury of answering the minister's question, may I say that if it is the view of the wartime prices and trade board, having regard to existing conditions, that they are not prepared to go that far, I would be quite content. It was my intention that the amendment should apply to purchases made hitherto in good faith. However I did purposely emphasize the fact that I am

Emergency Powers
not being dogmatic about the language used. I am urging the minister to make these suggestions a matter of consultation with his officials. I do not pretend that the draft I have given to him is the last word.


James Lorimer Ilsley: I am not trying to embarrass my hon. friend; I am just trying to find out what he had in mind and just what was meant by the language of his amendment. It certainly means that if a veteran got possession of a house he could sell it the next day.


Donald Methuen Fleming: No. There is nothing here to prevent the wartime prices and trade board requiring the filing of an undertaking to occupy for twelve months, which was the term of the order prior to July 25, 1945. Under that order the purchaser of a property intending to recover possession filed with the wartime prices and trade board his signed undertaking to occupy for a period of twelve months. There is nothing in my amendment that would preclude a similar regulation being applied now by the wartime prices and trade board. I think it would be a reasonable condition, because there is no thought of opening the door to allowing veterans to make brokers of themselves. It is intended simply as a means of relief to the veterans who have made bona fide purchases of homes and cannot get into them for the occupation of themselves and their families.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I wonder if I might
support what the hon. member for Eglinton is seeking to achieve, although I am not too sure about the wording of the amendment he has offered. I think he has been exceedingly fair and constructive in suggesting that the matter be considered by the minister and his officials. He has also indicated that he is prepared to accept any other way of dealing with the matter. I would suggest that it could be done by amending board order 511 or by issuing still another board order in connection with this matter. The hon. member for Eglinton made it clear that certain veterans who had purchased homes when they were overseas and did not have the opportunity to take possession of them, as was the ease with civilians at home, were thereby discriminated against as compared with rivilians.
If reference is made to board order 511 I think a further point of discrimination will be noticed. Order 511 of the wartime prices and trade board contains three special provisions under which a veteran may obtain possession of housing accommodation, and perhaps the hon. member for Eglinton will follow me since I am trying to support his
case. I will read the first only of these provisions because the other two are ancillary. This is from board order 511 passed by the board under the provisions of the order we are discussing:
Where he owned the accommodation at the time of his induction into one of His Majesty's services and is now a discharged member entitled to the war service gratuity under the War Grants Act.
Incidentally that is where the way of defending these people came from.


Mr. MUTCH:: Anyone with over eighteen months' service.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Yes. The point is that if a veteran owned the accommodation before he was inducted, whether he went into the service in 1939, 1944 or 1945, he can, provided that he meets the other qualifications, get possession of the house he owns. But the veteran who may have joined up in 1939 and purchased a home when he was overseas in 1942 or 1943, thinking that when he got home he would be able to do what civilians at home were then able to do, namely, get possession of his home, finds that he cannot get possession. So that there is discrimination there not only between the veteran overseas and the civilian at home but as between veteran and veteran.
While the minister has made a point regarding purchases now being made, and it is a point that will have to be considered carefully so far as the amendment is concerned, I think he will agree with the reasonableness of the case made for the veteran overseas. I know the hon. member for Winnipeg South supports that case. Perhaps the object could be achieved more easily if it were taken up by the board and a board order were issued. I imagine, if that assurance were given to the committee, the hon. member for Eglinton would be satisfied, as I know I would be so far as this point were concerned.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I have an interest in this discussion from the fact that the department of which I am minister is responsible for providing emergency shelter. I point out that if the amendment proposed tonight were adopted the veteran would be able to take possession of the house he has acquired within the last two years as against the occupant, who might very well be a civilian, and it would be my job to provide emergency shelter accommodation for that civilian.
The veteran today has all the priorities that the state can give him. He has priorities in the rental of wartime housing and priorities in purchasing houses built under the integrated plan. Those two plans are providing the
Emergency Powers

greater portion of low cost housing. He has other priorities on new construction, and he has priorities in the case of apartments that are built under certain government priority plans. Therefore the veteran has first call on low-cost government sponsored new construction. The civilian has none of these priorities.
I point out to the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre that the veteran to whom, he refers has been taken care of. The veteran who bought a house in 1942 or owned a house prior to the war is taken care of by an order recently issued, which entitles the veteran who had purchased a house before July, 1945, to make application to the court of rental appeals for repossession of his house and, if he has a case that will convince the court that he is entitled to the house he gains possession of it. That is causing many eviction notices to be given, and I am well aware of those evictions because it is my duty to anticipate the evictions by providing emergency shelter. I could have given the figures hadi I been prepared to speak on the point tonight, but I shall be glad to give them on another day. Many evictions under that order have been passed recently.
But there is a limit to the amount of emergency shelter that can be provided at this time. Buildings of the type we have been converting to emergency shelter are no longer available. For example in the city of Toronto every building that I know of that could be converted to emergency shelter has been converted and the city has extended its activities to far outside the boundaries of the city. If my memory serves me correctly, there are about 800 evictions pending in the city of Toronto as a result of the board's order to which I have referred. I believe they will be taken care of, but almost every eviction today means an equivalent amount of emergency shelter. Usually the returned soldier is living in shared quarters, and the possession of his house therefore means one less housing unit available to the population as a whole. The family formation rate at the present time is away in excess of anything this country has known before, and it is that family formation rate which is causing the lack of housing quarters at the present time. The wartime prices and trade board1, which administers eviction control, and my own department, which administers emergency shelter, are working together to advance this problem of providing shelter for evicted families as rapidly as we can.
I assure the committee that eviction control must be the most difficult control of all to administer. I assure hon. gentlemen that the problem of emergency shelter is perhaps

the most difficult problem that is associated with housing. We are working together. I am happy to say that at the moment we have a roof over the heads of every family in this dominion. There was a time when we could not make that assertion. There was a time, before eviction control was instituted, when we had the papers flooded with photographs of families evicted on the street with no shelter available. Fortunately, through eviction control we have prevented that from happening. That is one disaster that no government can face with equanimity, the possibility of a family, whether a veteran or a civilian having no shelter available, because, after all, human suffering is human suffering. We cannot advance the decontrol of evictions to the point where we have Canadian families evicted on the street without suitable accommodation to go to. That is the practical difficulty in carrying out the desirable proposal of my hon. friend. I can assure him that the officers of the wartime prices and trade board and all the officers having to do with housing are putting forth their best efforts to hasten the day when the step which he proposes can be taken; but I can assure him that, after the most exhaustive study of the problem and from recent discussion of it with my own officers and with the officers of the wartime prices and trade board, the step which has been taken recently is one, the full consequences of which will be felt only over the next four or five months. I can say that it is the considered opinion of everyone closely connected with this problem that that step must be absorbed before any further step can be taken which will increase the number of evictions of families in this country.


Benoît Michaud: I should like to say a few words very much along the same line. The remarks I intend to make are of a general nature and they will apply to civilians as well as to returned men. It is in connection with the termination of leases. I quite realize that the amendment suggested would cover cases, and perhaps an undertaking by the minister that board orders would be amended along the same line would have the same result. I have in mind civilians who have purchased houses after July 25, 1945. The necessity for these regulations is not nearly so great in the country and in small towns as in congested areas. As a matter of fact, when these regulations were first introduced they affected only the more congested areas in Canada. Eventually they were extended to the whole of the country. I live in a small town of about 7,000 population. I

Emergency Powers
believe that if a certain amount of decontrol were effected along the lines which I am about to suggest it would not create a situation such as that described by the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply.
My suggestion would be that the order passed recently-I do not remember the date of it or the number of the order-to which the minister and the two last speakers have referred, whereby people who purchased houses between the fall of 1944 and July 25, 1945, could apply to the court or to the rentals administrator to show cause why they should be given possession, should be extended to purchases made after July 25, 1945. There are a number of people who purchased houses after that date without realizing what the law was and who were unawrare of the change which had taken place. Prior to that date, they could purchase a house and obtain possession after six months' notice. I have in mind the case of a young man with five or six children who has been living in the second story of a large building. He purchased his house shortly after July 25. It is a self-contained house. It just happens that the gentleman who occupies the house has two grown-up children who are in boarding school. He and his wife both have a business. They sit very comfortably in this little house. They refuse to give possession to this good neighbour who has six young children and who is occupying a second-story flat. My suggestion is that the order be extended to self-contained homes of a limited value, let us say under $5,000. It could be limited also to rural sections and to small towns. In such cases it would relieve a number of people affected such as the gentleman I have in mind, and it would not cause any serious disruption. It would not mean many evictions, but it would give a certain amount of relief to these people who bought, houses in good faith, thinking that-in the near future they would be in a position to obtain possession.


Agar Rodney Adamson: I have a case which I wish to bring to the attention of the minister. It is an important case affecting a veteran who had a house prior to the war. On his return from the war he was unable to gain possession. I think this case is of general importance. It went through the courts in Toronto, and I have had considerable discussion with the Minister of Veterans Affairs and the Minister of Finance concerning it. It shows the sort of difficulties that we are running into. Here is a veteran, I shall call him Mr. M, who rented this house, say, from the evidence I have here, prior to the war. On his return from the war in 1945 he received an agreement
from the tenant to the effect that the tenant would be prepared to vacate the premises on such and such a date or after a period of so many months from the signing of the agreement. What happened? The veteran asked the tenant to vacate. The tenant said, "No, I cannot vacate because I have no other place in which to live". He took the matter to the court and the court judged that the owner had no right to evict. I shall read the judgment because I think it is important. I took the matter up with the Minister of Veterans Affairs because this man is a veteran. Incidentally I shall send the complete file to the minister when I have finished with it. The Minister of Veterans Affairs said:
So far as this department is concerned, this is not a matter over which our officials have any jurisdiction. I attach for your information a copy of memorandum recently prepared by the director general of rehabilitation in regard to rental control regulations. As I have no information as to when Mr. M purchased the property in question, I do not know whether this order would apply in his ease. However, I shall forward your letter under acknowledgment to the Minister of Finance.
The Minister of Finance took it up and said this:
Mr. M attached to his letter two photostatic copies of a notice his tenant had given him that he would vacate the accommodation. The latest photostatic copy reveals that on April 18, 1946, Mr. R gave notice that he would vacate on or before the 31st of May, 1946. It appears to me that Mr. M should have exercised his civil rights at that time as rental regulations provide that dispossession is under provincial law if the tenant
"has given to the landlord, after the making of the lease for the accommodation, but not as a term of the lease or a condition of obtaining it, a written notice of his intention to vacate the accommodation on a stated date, and has failed to so vacate."
That is the end of the legal quotation. Then the minister says:
However, there is a possibility that Mr. M may have, after May 31, 1946, again created the relationship of landlord and tenant. If so, in my opinion, he would then come under rental regulations.
They took the matter to the court in Toronto and judgment w7as given against the landlord in the following terms; I think it is rather interesting:
Like most of these cases, both parties are urgently in need of the accommodation, and it will be a hardship if the case is decided against either of them, but of course, I have to decide the case according to the law.
The tenant is a monthly tenant of the landlord and on December 7, 1945, signed a notice addressed to the landlord in these words:	"I
hereby submit notice to vacate and give up the premises of such and such an address, Toronto 9, Ontario on or before the thirtieth of April, 1946, A.D., signed-
Emergency Powers

That is signed by the tenant. If this is a valid notice of intention to vacate, the landlord is entitled to possession. There was, however, a considerable conversation on the occasion when this notice was signed. To begin with, the notice was prepared by the landlord at the dictation, apparently over the telephone, of his lawyer; therefore it should be construed strictly as against the landlord. It does not say he gives notice he is going to vacate, he says he submits notice to vacate, but I am inclined to think that taking the words with the meaning which is closest and most sensible that it should be construed as a notice of intention to vacate. However, it was given under the following circumstances as I find the facts. The landlord said he wanted to get married, and he intended to get married in the month of April, and he wanted possession of the premises. He said he was entitled to a veterans' allowance, through the war, and he could not obtain this allowance unless it was spent on this house, and he needed to have something to show the veterans' authorities that he owned the house and had a right to possession. The discussion was a friendly one, and in a previous discussion the tenant told the landlord that if he -wanted to get married, he would try and vacate the premises for him, and I think on that occasion he meant to, and said he would get out in April, if he were able to do so. In other words, if he were able to find other accommodation. The landlord replied that he would not put him on the street, but asked if he would sign the paper, as he needed it, which the tenant did. That is the evidence, and I do not think it was ever intended or ever understood that that notice should be used as a basis of an eviction application. If the tenant had understood by signing the notice he was waiving his right and protection under the wartime rental regulations, I am quite certain he would never have signed it. Perhaps his unfamiliarity with the law does not help, but I think what does protect him is the fact the notice was given for a particular purpose, and it was not intended by either one of them that it should be used as a waiver of the tenant's rights and as the basis for an application. The situation created by the improper use of this notice was the cause of the tenant giving the second notice, and therefore I find it must not be regarded as a notice of intention to vacate. For these reasons the application will be dismissed.
That, Mr. Chairman, is an involved case but it shows, I believe, the length to which veteran owners are put in the effort to regain possession of their own houses. Here apparently was a man owning a house before he enlisted. He is unknown to me, but I give the facts as I read them on the file. He went overseas and came back and got married and wanted to get possession of his house. Apparently, from the evidence, he gets an agreement from his tenant that the tenant is willing to vacate. His tenant then refuses to vacate because he cannot find other accommodation, and the court rules that under the wartime rental regulations the signed agreement by the tenant is not a valid agreement.
I would not bring this particular case to the attention of the committee if it were not one

of many that have come to my notice. In fact I have received a great many more of these cases than of any other types of complaint about housing and rental regulations, and I suggest that serious consideration be given to the amending of these regulations to allow a veteran who has had overseas service if you like-I would prefer to leave it at service overseas, men who were out of the country-to regain possession of his own premises.
I realize the difficulty of evictions. My riding is one of the most congested in the whole dominion. No one know's better than the minister of reconstruction and myself the difficulty we have had about emergency shelter along the lake shore area in the three municipalities outside the city of Toronto. I know the situation and I know what we are up against. Here is the case of a veteran- this man happens to be a fit veteran, but I have several cases of veterans who have a disability-who cannot get possession of his own house, even though the tenant is willing to vacate if he can find other accommodation.
1 realize that the question is a difficult one. I realize, as the hon. member for Eglinton does, that you cannot be dogmatic about it, but I feel there should be some amendment to or alteration in these regulations whereby it may become easier for a veteran with overseas service, or a veteran suffering disability, to regain possession of his own house. I will not make any specific amendment, but I wish to put the matter up to the minister most sincerely, because in my opinion it is causing a great hardship. In judging these matters we realize that we cannot have perfection. We are bound to base our judgment on the greatest good for the greatest number, and I submit that the minister and the department should give the most serious consideration to seeing that some amendment is made in these regulations to meet the type of cases that I have brought to the attention of the committee.


Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt: 
Leslie Alexander Mutch: I do not take second place to anyone in the house in my consideration for the problem of the veteran who seeks to reestablish himself in a home. But I think there is something inherent in this whole problem which touches the veteran and all others who seek homes at this particular time.
I am one of those who consider that the continuation of the legislation protecting against evictions and controlling rents is not only advisable but is an absolute necessity at this particular time. But I have come to the conclusion that we have now reached a point where general blanket legislation covering the whole country is no longer able to meet individual conditions. Beyond question, there are in this country people who are taking advantage of the protection of tie anti-eviction legislation in order to keep themselves comfortable at the expense of other Canadians and who could not under ordinary conditions do that, and do not need to do it.
I should like to suggest to the minister that now is the time to consider seriously placing in the hands of someone the authority to deal with conditions where they arise. I am aware of the difficulties of leaving the matter to the local administrator of rental controls. Perhaps it should go to the county court judge. Perhaps it should go to an independent commission. I shall not suggest to whom it should go, but I suggest to the minister and to the committee that the time has come to decentralize authority with respect to this matter and to allow some-

Emergency Powers

one or some body to consider the specific conditions in the locality where the situation arises. May I give one concrete instance, and then I am through.
In the city from which I come, I know of a man who owns a six-roomed house and who is now renting and living in a five-roomed bungalow; there are the man, his wife, three children and his wife's mother. He has on several occasions suggested to his tenants, who are a man and his wife with no children, that it would be possible to trade; and he has arranged with his landlord for them to move into the bungalow and permit him to move into the house which he owns where he would have adequate accommodation. The landlord of the bungalow is in agreement. The houses are both in the same district. There is no difficulty beyond this, that the house which he owns has central heating and no one has to carry out ashes; the other house has a modern furnace.


John Ritchie MacNicol: Which house had the furnace?


Leslie Alexander Mutch: The furnace is in the bungalow which he is renting; the central heating is in the house that he owns. I suggest to the minister that the individual who takes advantage of the protection which is in the legislation at the present moment is not worthy of the protection which is afforded. That legislation was not intended to take care of people of that sort. The legislation was intended to provide the maximum of accommodation, with comfort, for everybody in this country. I have cited a specific case. Those people are reputable people who are just being, perhaps I should say, intelligently selfish because the law permits it. But I suggest that we should give serious consideration at this time to some measure of decentralization which would permit the decision, as to whether or not an eviction should be permitted, to be made by a local authority that would be able to view the circumstances as they actually exist. I think we are past the state of emergency when we can simply afford to say, "Because you have been in a house for a certain length of time you may stay there, no matter who else is inconvenienced."


Mr. TIMMINS:: I should like to align myself behind the amendment proposed by the hon. member for Eglinton, because in my municipality there is a great deal of difficulty on the part of returned men who want to fit themselves back into home life. I have had to do with three types of cases in which veterans have been discriminated against. The first are cases where the veterans come back

and want to settle down in civilian life, and go out and buy homes without having obtained any legal advice. There are a good many cases of that kind. In the second case the veteran receives his gratuity or credit and wants to get himself a stake in the community, so he buys himself a home. In the third case the veteran, through no fault of his own, has become the owner of a home, and finds he cannot get possession. He is perhaps living with his parents or in some shared accommodation for the time being; a child comes along, or a second child, and still he cannot get possession of his home. I have taken up cases of this kind with the rental administration in Toronto, and they tell me that, while there are not too many of these cases, there are some. I personally know of four or five returned men who, by reason of the freezing order are not able to fit themselves back into civilian life with their families.
I quite appreciate what the minister of reconstruction says in regard to the problem, but I do not think that problem with respect to civilians is so severe that these veterans cannot be given some relief. The original order in council came into force on October 11, 1941. We have had it now for more than five and a half years, and it seems to me that by this time we should be able to do something for the veteran who finds himself in this position through no fault of his own.
Then the hon. member for Eglinton proposed a second amendment with respect to shared accommodation, that as of the date the amendment might become effective the law of the province should prevail in respect to shared accommodation. In other words, under that amendment a landlord would be able to take people into his home and, after a certain length of time, get rid of them if they did not fit into the surroundings of that home. If that were done I feel that it would not be very long until landlords would be making way for people in their homes, which would help meet the problem to which the minister of reconstruction referred, and I believe a start should be made in that direction.
In dealing with this order in council, we find that it has been amended nine times; but the order in council and the amendments do not contain the meat of this problem. That problem is contained in the orders which have have passed under the order in council, the residential order, No. 294 and the commercial order, No. 315. In addition, there is order No. 511, about which I had forgotten but which was referred to by another hon. member, and the further order referred to by the minister. So I suggest that something should

Princess Elizabeth
be done to have these orders compiled in some form that would let us understand' what we are talking about when dealing with them. I believe the time has come when these orders, which really form the basis of the problem before us, and which as a matter of fact are not before us at all, should be dealt with and screened, so that what is best in the orders might be retained and what has become outdated and outmoded might be discarded. I am suggesting that these orders and regulations made under the original order in council and amendments be not now passed; that they stand and be referred to some committee in order that they may be reviewed for the purpose I have indicated.
The hon. member for Winnipeg South mentioned one or two points I thought were very good. His way of going at it is a little different from mine, but this is the first time the house has ever dealt with these orders, so that I think he should find some means of getting at the best that is in them. In the past these orders have been like the laws of the Medes and Persians; no discretion whatever has been allowed. In cases which I am not going to take time to recite there have been anomalies and hardships; the judges have admitted this to be the fact, but they have been unable to deal with them by reason of the terms of the orders. In some cases people have given their word to vacate at a certain time or to pay a certain rental for a property. Those promises have not been kept, but the courts have not been able to deal with the situation.
I was very glad to see that section 2 of order 707, passed on April 7, 1947, made some provision for levelling up rents as between landlords and tenants. That matter had been dealt with in the commercial rental order for a number of years, but had been left out of the residential order, I presume purposely. I cannot think of any reason why it should have been left out, except that apparently the administration felt they did not have the staff to deal with the matter. In that respect a great number of anomalies occurred, but apparently nothing could be done about them.
I am suggesting that a good deal of the discretion which should and might have been exercised under section 36 of order 294 by the rental administrator, or the deputy rental administrator in each jurisdiction, should be extended so that, where these anomalies occur, there would be some way of rectifying them.
I agree with the hon. member for Winnipeg South that legally no emergency exists today under which these orders in council can be continued. However, we are permitting them to go on the statute books, and it seems to 83166-142i
me that, where any discretion should be permitted in order to meet these anomalies, that ought to be done at this time.
Progress reported.


[Stage Direction]
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
Monday, April 21, 1947