1948-05-06

[Stage Direction]
Mr. GORDON B. ISNOR (Halifax): Mr. Speaker, I rise. to a question of privilege in regard to a return, sessional paper 119E, to an order of the House of Commons dated April 26, 1948, which reads in part as follows:
Based on the volume of freight traffic and the cost of operations in 1947, what percentage increase in freight rates was necessary to bring about an even balance sheet- (a) to the Canadian National Railways; (b) to the Canadian Pacific Railway?
The Minister of Transport (Mr. Chevrier) in his statement on May 4, when tabling the return, said that he would include the exhibits covering the operations of both railways. I draw your attention, Mr. Speaker, to the fact that the exhibits cover only the years up to
1946.	Since the return is incomplete, it is not satisfactory. I would ask that a return for
1947,	on which the increased freight rates were based, be supplied in connection with this return.


[Stage Direction]
Third report of the special joint committee on the Indian Act-Mr. Brown.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. W. E. HARRIS (Grey-Bruce) presented the first report of the special committee on the Dominion Elections Act, 1938, and moved that the report be concurred in.
Motion agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
Mr. L. R. BEAUDOIN (Vaudreuil-Soulanges) presented the first and second reports of the standing committee on railways, canals and telegraph lines, and moved that the second report be concurred in.
Motion agreed to.


[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 230, for the relief of Hazel Violet Camp Mace.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 231, for the relief of Ada Elizabeth Jeffries Heinz.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 232, for the relief of Mabel Findlay Turner Rollo.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 233, for the relief of Anna Dagmar Dahl.-Mr. Timmins.
Bill No. 234, for the relief of Florence Evelyn White Marshall.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 235, for the relief of Kathryn Mae Richardson Rowe.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 236, for the relief of Margaret Dawson Jamieson Turnbull McKay.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 237, for the relief of Margaret Elizabeth Dunn Vezina.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 238, for the relief of Elizabeth Craig Blair.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 239, for the relief of Charles Henry Kennell.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 240, for the relief of Muriel Frances Pratt Fiddes.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 241, for the relief of Leah Zeiger Rudenko.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 242, for the relief of Ruth Harris. -Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 243, for the relief of Eva Booth Morrison McCormick.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 244, for the relief of Naomi Evelyn Masterangelo Rosenstein.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 245, for the relief of Jean Lauder Rutledge.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 246, for the relief of Henry George Chartier.-Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 247, for the relief of Francis Russell Stone.-Mr. Maybank.

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

Mr. FLEMING:: 1.	What were the results of operations of war assets corporation for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1948, under the following headings:
(a)	gross sales; (b) direct costs; (c) net sales; (d) administrative expenses; (e) net proceeds from sales; (f) miscellaneous revenue; (g) total
Questions

net return; (h) number of employees at commencement of the fiscal year; (i) number of employees at the close of the fiscal year?
2.	What were the total results of operations of war assets corporation for the years 1944 to 1948 under the same headings?


Mr. McILRAITH:: 1.	The corporation, is not in a position to answer this question as the information has not yet been compiled for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1948.
2.	July 12, 1944 to March 31, 1947:
(a) Cross sales	 $353,200,032.12
(b) Direct costs	 43,957,219.86
(c)	Net sales	 $309,242,812.26
Id) Administrative expenses..	14,408,945.49
(e)	Net proceeds from sales. $294,833,866.77
(f)	Miscellaneous revenue ..	8,622.05(g)	Total net return	
$294,842,488.82(h)	Number of employees at commencement
of the fiscal years:
April 1, 1944	 Nil.
(Corporation commenced operations July 12, 1944.)
April 1, 1945	 944
April 1, 1946	 5,416
April 1, 1947	 8,803
(i)	Number of employees at the close of the
fiscal years:
March 31, 1945	 944
March 31, 1946	 5,416
March 31, 1947	 8,803
March 31, 1948	 3,217
Note: Figures do not include guards supplied by Canadian corps of commissionaires.


DOMINION COAL BOARD
Mr. McCULLOUGH (Assiniboia):: 1.	What are the names of the personnel of the dominion coal board?
2.	What were their former business connections, if any (a) in Canada; (b) in the United States?
3.	What are their present business connections, if any (a) in Canada; (b) in the United States?


Mr. McILRAITH:: 1.	Mr. W. E. Uren, Chairman; Members- Ian MacLaren, D. W. Morrison, Major-General E. J. Renaud, C.B., C.B.E., Percival Streeter, G. A. Vissac, W. C. Whittaker.
2.	(a) Mr. W. E. Uren-Steel controller; timber controller; priorities officer; coordinator of building materials, Department of Reconstruction and Supply.

Ian MacLaren-President of Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company (Canada) Limited, T oronto.
D. W. Morrison-Mayor of Glace Bay, Nova Scotia.
Major-General E. J. Renaud, C.B., C.B.E.,- Headquarters Quebec command.
Percival Streeter-President and manager of Avon Coal Company, Limited, Saint John, New Brunswick.
G. A. Vissac-Consulting Engineer, Vancouver, British Columbia.
W. C. Whittaker-Secretary-Commissioner, Western Canada Bituminous Coal Operators' Association, Calgary.
2.	(b) No business connections in the United
States.
3.	(a) Mr. W. E. Uren-Co-ordinator of controls; timber controller, Department of Reconstruction and Supply.
Ian MacLaren-President of Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company (Canada) Limited, Toronto.
D. W. Morrison-Mayor of Glace Bay, Nova Scotia.
Major-General E. J. Renaud, C.B., C.B.E.- Retired.
Percival Streeter-President and manager of Avon Coal Company, Limited, Saint John, New Brunswick.
G. A. Vissac-Consulting Engineer, Vancouver, British Columbia.
W. C. Whittaker-Secretary-Commissioner, Western Canada Bituminous Coal Operators' Association, Calgary.
3.	(b) No business connections in the United States.


QUESTION PASSED AS ORDER FOR RETURN
Mr. FAIR:: 1.	In each of the years 1930 to 1947, inclusive, how many farmers were operating in each province of Canada?
2.	During the same period, what was the net farm income in each province each year?


Mr. McILRAITH:: The answer to part 1 of
this question is not available by years, but it is available for each year in which a census was taken. The answer to part 2 is not available for the years prior to 1938, but is available from that year on. Subject to that qualification, I would ask that the question be passed as an order for return, and I now table the return.

Inquiries oj the Ministry


QUESTION AS TO CANADA JOINING IN PROTEST AGAINST MASS EXECUTIONS
[Stage Direction]
On the orders oi the day:
Mr. M. J. COLDWELL (Rosetown-Biggar):: May I direct a question to the Secretary of States for External Affairs? Has the government of Canada instructed our ambassador to Greece to join the United Kingdom in protest against mass executions, intimating that if it wishes to be considered a democratic government it should adopt civilized behaviour appropriate to a democracy?
Right Hon. L. S. ST. LAURENT (Secretary of State for External Affairs): The government has received no information from any official sources whatsoever about the matter referred to in the hon. member's question, nor taken any action about it.


Major James William Coldwell: The British government took action yesterday on the matter.
Mr. ST. LAURENT: We have received no such information.


Major James William Coldwell: Will inquiry be made by our ambassador?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: I inquired from the office just before I came into the house and was assured that no information had been received from any official source whatsoever about this matter.


Major James William Coldwell: Will the minister make inquiries about it from our ambassador?
Mr. ST. LAURENT: I will inquire whether any communication is on its way to us. I know of none.


Major James William Coldwell: I had hoped that the government might seek to get the information.


Mr. SPEAKER:: Order.


INQUIRY AS TO EQUALIZATION OF ONTARIO AND WESTERN PRICES
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. H. 0. WHITE (Middlesex East): I wish to direct a question to the hon. member for Middlesex West (Mr. McCubbin). It arises out of a newspaper article of Wednesday. Will the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Agriculture confirm the statement he made in a speech at Mount Brydges to the effect that Ontario wheat prices will equal western prices, or that the ceiling will be removed?
James Horace King: Order.


Mr. FRASER:: That ought to be answered.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Answer.


Mr. ROBERT McCUBBIN (Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, in due course the Minister of Trade and Commerce will make an announcement, and the house can rest assured that the Ontario wheat farmer will be well taken care of.


TRANS-CANADA AIR LINES AIR SERVICE TO AUSTRALIA-CANADIAN-AUSTRALIAN AGREEMENT
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. STANLEY KNOWLES (Winnipeg North Centre):: May I direct a question to the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply? I believe this matter still comes under his department, despite the transfers announced the other day. Can the minister indicate what progress is being made by Trans-Canada Air Lines in implementing the Canadian-Australian agreement respecting air service from Canada to Australia? Is it still government policy that when this service is put into effect by Canada it will be by the government-owned air line, and not by any private company?


Right Hon. C. D. HOWE (Minister of Reconstruction and Supply):: Mr. Speaker, owing to the fact that the management of the Trans-Canada Air Lines have been fully occupied in establishing a transatlantic operation, as well as an operation to South America, it has not been possible to give attention to the Australian service. So far as government policy is concerned, I dare say when the matter is considered the government will be able to announce its policy.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Has there been any change?


TARIFFS AND TRADE
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. W. ROSS THATCHER (Moose Jaw):: Three days ago I directed a question to the Minister of Trade and Commerce. He referred me to the Minister of Finance. My question was as follows:
Has the Canadian government recently made any representations to the government of the United States asking for a new trade treaty to reduce the tariffs between the two nations, this apart from the Geneva or the Havana agreements? If so, has the American government made any response?
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Now that the minister has returned from the United States, can he make a statement?


Hon. DOUGLAS ABBOTT (Minister of Finance):: My hon. friend's question was
brought to my attention, and I should like to reply as follows. Discussions are constantly taking place between the officials of the two countries on all phases of our economic relations with the United States, including, of course, our trade relations. However, the Canadian government have not made representations recently to the government of the United States for a new trade treaty to reduce tariffs. For reasons which must be well known to the hon. member, it is considered that circumstances in the United States at present are not propitious for specific tariff negotiations. I can assure the hon. member that as soon as the circumstances are more propitious the Canadian government will take the earliest opportunity to propose further negotiations for reductions in tariff barriers between the two countries.



NATIONAL HOUSING ACT


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from Wednesday, May 5, consideration of the motion of Mr. Howe that the house go into committee to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to present a measure to amend the National Housing Act, 1944, and in particular to authorize approved lending institutions to purchase from Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation mortgages held by the said corporation and to make loans to owners of rental housing projects not exceeding in amount 85 per cent of the estimated cost thereof; to authorize Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation to guarantee an annual return of an amount to be determined by the corporation of rentals from rental housing projects for a period not exceeding thirty years, to make loans to owners of rental housing projects if such loans are not being made available by approved lend>-ing institutions; to authorize the governor in council to transfer lands vested in His Majesty to the corporation; and to make provision for the winding-up and dissolution of Wartime Housing Limited and to vest in Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation power to provide rental housing out of moneys which may be appropriated by parliament for the purpose.
Mr. J. 0. PROBE (Regina City): Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply introduced his annual resolution on the subject of amendments to the National Housing Act, and made a statement as to activities in the past year and proposed government policy for the ensuing year. I wish to conclude the remarks I began yesterday by referring to the following points.

It is a matter of definite knowledge that the sharply increased construction costs which are hamstringing the building industry of this country, so far as home ownership and rental projects are concerned, are definitely tied up with the continuing decontrol policy of the government. As well as on the rental projects this has had a serious effect on persons who had small amounts of money saved up for the purpose of buying housing accommodation for their family needs. I want to emphasize that in view of the minister's continuing policy to protect vested capital and to ignore the needs of the home owner for protection, we are reaching the stage where these high construction costs will result in loss of investments to thousands of small and middle income owners who have managed to secure a small equity in property which they were forced to buy in order to find a place in which to live, and the high amortization costs with which they are undoubtedly faced in reducing their indebtedness will have the effect of wiping out their equity should there be any recession in the near future. In view of the fact that the government has seen fit to introduce with this resolution a further degree of protection for invested capital, I feel that the government should also work out a plan of equity insurance which would protect the investment of the home owner. The rental insurance clause which the minister referred to in his speech yesterday is of value only to the builder and the landlord in cases where there are eight or more family units. To indicate the extent to which the policy of the government with respect to past and present housing schemes has resulted in hardship, even where contracts have been signed, I want to give an example of what happens when costs rise to astronomical proportions as they are rising now in the building field.
I have here correspondence from a veteran who, to secure a home for his family, entered into what he thought was an ironclad contract with a construction company in the city of Regina, building under the integrated housing agreement last year, in 1947.
In his letter to me this veteran says:
An advertisement appeared in the Regina Leader-Post indicating that houses for veterans would be built at certain stated prices.
His statement in that regard is true, as my correspondence with Mr. Mansur, the president of Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, indicates. Mr. Mansur in his letter to me stated that the original maximum sale price of the house I speak of was fixed at 86,050, although subsequently it turned out that this veteran

National Housing Act
had to pay $7,160 for it. Continuing from the letter of this veteran:
Under ordinary circumstances, I am sure I would have gone very carefully into the matter of contract and the provisions for its completion being secured at the price indicated. However, being a veteran, and inasmuch as the proposition apparently was to be guaranteed by the dominion government and financed by a reliable and reputable mortgage company, the precautions that ordinarily would be taken were not taken by myself. I felt, and I am sure that most of the other veterans felt that, regardless of their political belief, in view of the fact that the scheme was sponsored by the dominion government and was being handled by a mortgage company as indicated, ordinary precautions could be waived and that a reasonable degree of trust and confidence could be placed in a scheme that was so advertised and so sponsored. Apparently our confidence was entirely misplaced.
Here is the situation. The construction company, finding that the costs, which the company itself was incurring, were rising, had protected itself by having an escalator clause put in the contract with the unsuspecting veteran, the effect of which was that the veteran had to increase his payment beyond what he thought he would be paying, from $6,050 to $7,160. The point I make is this. The construction company is protected completely by funds of the people of Canada, but the man who has to pay the bill has no protection under our legislation or by the regulations of the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation. He was left to the caprice of changing conditions and the government's decontrol policy. Having caused these prices to rise, even after the contract was let for the construction of these houses, the government was morally obligated to meet that advancing cost.
The minister spoke of an improved supply situation and I must say, to be as kind to him as I can, that he is anything but realistic. Reference was made, yesterday and previously, to a subsidy to Crane Limited. Again, they are protected, but there is no protection for the buyer of plumbing to ensure that he will get fixtures at a reasonable cost. The minister spoke of arrangements with the steel companies to produce nails, but builders still have not sufficient nails. In my city of Regina no one is able to make sure of a supply of nails. The export of the best timber from this country continues, with no guarantee of fair prices to the domestic user. Rising freight rates of 21 per cent, authorized by the cabinet, have had the effect of adding from seven per cent to ten per cent to the cost of houses which are currently going up. It has been mentioned in this house that building labour is high in cost and also inefficient. May I tell the house that when workmen are on a job and there are certain materials in short supply, and when
you get dribs and drabs of those materials, you cannot expect labour to be anything but wasteful of time and inefficient in the use of that time, and through no fault of their own.
The whole emphasis in the government's program, except for wartime housing, is the protection of the investment company, and I say that, even here, public housing authorities of a community nature, municipal or co-operative, are not given equal consideration with private enterprise when it comes to guarantees of equity such as are normally given by legislation to investment companies.
The minister said yesterday that the proposals of the Canadian federation of mayors regarding the low-rental portion of their program on housing had merit, and then he went on to say that they were not acceptable in their present form chiefly because they contemplate full financing by the dominion government, both in respect of capital costs and in respect of operating deficits. Now the government is willing to guarantee the operating deficits and profits of investment companies but is not willing to give the same consideration to public housing authorities.
George James McIlraith: Guarantees in return for a consideration.


Mr. PROBE:: They have their money
invested in the mortgages and in the bonds, but they are protected with respect to their equity in full. There is no protection in the other case.


George James McIlraith: What do they undertake to do in return?


John Oliver Probe: They undertake simply to build houses, and as a matter of fact they did not build them. They went out of the picture and the government is guaranteeing them full costs with a fair return on their investment.
I suggest to the minister in conclusion that he put building products once more under price control, set all necessary export embargoes, through the cabinet of course, and go into the production business on short items if necessary, either in his own capacity or by way of crown corporations.
The second thing, which unhappily he is unable to get through that skull of his, is this. He will not resign himself to the absolute necessity of capital subsidies to low-rental projects, a thing that has been recognized for half a century in practically all countries which are interested in social wellbeing; and in addition to resigning himself to the need for capital subsidies for low-rental projects, he should make arrangements through public authorities who are interested in the economies that may
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be secured rather than through private investment companies who get cost plus at every stage.
Further, I suggest that he expand rather than diminish the activities of Wartime Housing, which apparently, by the terms of this bill, are to be taken over by the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Wartime Housing has done a useful job and comes closest to providing housing at a rental that low-income families can pay. In the minister's statement to the house yesterday we see that the activities of Wartime Housing are to be restricted.
I suggest further that the minister set up a special branch of Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation to build or to buy houses for veteran owners who may wish them in urban or rural areas, the Department of Veterans Affairs to be asked to contribute as they are now doing with regard to small holdings. The small holding feature is an excellent thing, but there are too many veterans who cannot take advantage of it because of one restriction or another, or because they find that the project is not suitable. Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation therefore should make a special effort to meet the needs of veteran housing in whatever districts the veterans want their houses placed.
A high priority should be given to the rental accommodation needs of families now occupying homes which were bought a year or more ago for bona fide occupation by purchasers with families. It seems to me that they are entitled to the enjoyment and use of the house they bought for themselves, and it is up to the minister's department to find alternative occupation for those who, as a result of government policy, are kept in possession, while other people who have the same need are kept out.
Finally, it seems to me it is time the minister studied and applied the lesson that other countries have learned, namely, that private enterprise cannot build low-rental housing, because of the nature of our competitive economy. Whether the government consider themselves as socialists or capitalists, they must learn, as other countries have, that public housing for low-income families is the only solution to the problem and the only method of achieving the objective of a decently housed Canadian people.


Mr. C. E. JOHNSTON (Bow River):: Mr. Speaker, one of the things we can remember quite well is that during the war everybody in Canada was told that when those who were in uniform came back from the war they

would have a Canada worth living in, and that everybody would have a house in which to live. Not only was that stated, but emphasis was given to the prophecy that costs would be coming down in view of the fact that our productive ability had so greatly increased. It was argued that that fact of itself would bring prices down. We find that is not quite so, particularly in the field of housing.
In his speech the other day the minister went to great lengths to show the need for housing. I am not so sure that it was necessary for him to go to such length to prove that point, because everyone is aware of it. It will be noticed that the minister made the following statement as reported at page 3639 of Hansard-and I commend him for having done so:
In spite of the resulting higher sale prices, the effective demand for home ownership continues. The number of completed but unsold houses is relatively small. For instance, in the city of Vancouver, where proportionately there is more new housing than in any other place in the dominion, completed but unsold houses amount to less than one week's supply of new houses. The same situation pertains generally throughout the country.
I think that is an accurate picture, that there is not even one week's supply of new houses in excess of demand.


Mr. SINCLAIR:: All this Alberta and Saskatchewan immigration into British Columbia is taking up the supply of houses.


Charles Edward Johnston: That may be true. I am pointing out one particular thing. But if there is to be an immigration plan, housing accommodation must be found for the immigrants.


Mr. LOW:: They will be back when they see what treatment they get in British Columbia.


Mrs. STRUM:: Wait until they see that sales tax.


John Ewen Sinclair: They are taking a leaf out of Saskatchewan's book.


James Horace King: Order.


Charles Edward Johnston: I think the building concerns across Canada have the ability to cope with this problem. Private enterprise could cope with it if a little encouragement were given to them, despite what the hon. member for Regina City (Mr. Probe) has said-and I shall refer to that in a moment.
The minister pointed out that these houses were in greater demand, but he pointed out further, and rightly so, that the type of house

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which is in greater demand now is the rental house. The reason is obvious. Under the present increasing prices; the ordinary person cannot afford to build; the only recourse he has, therefore, is to rent. The situation is now becoming so acute that even those who desire to rent a house cannot do so, because of their limited financial position.
The minister spoke about the cost of houses, and he said, if I recall it correctly, that a five-room house could be built for about $6,800 and would rent at $37.50. That might be true if Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation are building the houses, or if Housing Enterprises Limited are building them. But I do not think it is true if a private person is trying to build a house for rent. Certainly the private individual cannot build a five-room house, on his own behalf, for $6,800.
About two weeks ago I had occasion to assist a veteran to get some property under the Veterans Land Act on which to build a house. This man is complying with all the regulations, and is building a four-room house, without lath or plaster. It is costing him over $6,000. If you intend to build a five-room house and have it lathed and plastered, which I think it should be, I do not think you can do it for another $500 or $600. It is becoming particularly difficult now for the private individual to finance his own house.' The minister in his speech said that every encouragement should be given to individuals to build their own houses. I agree with that idea one hundred per cent. But unless there is some other means of assisting them to do so, I do not think they will be able to build them. I mentioned a moment ago that some of the large corporations, such as Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, may be able to do that. When building is being done on a large scale, and when there is access to all the materials, and where there is no shortage coming in to cause a holdup, houses may be built; but the individual builder is not in that position, because of the scarcity of materials.
The minister went on to point out that there was an adequate supply of most materials. If I remember correctly the minister said there was a fair supply of lumber; and he even went so far as to say there was a fair supply of nails. That is not so in the west. It is true that there is an ample supply of rough construction material for studding, roofing and things of that kind, for roughing-in the building. but certainly there is a lack of finished material. There is a definite shortage of plumbing and of soil pipe, and there is a terrific shortage of nails. That question is so important it was mentioned the other day in
the prices committee, to see if something could not be done to alleviate the great distress that is occasioned through this nail shortage.


Mr. SINNOTT:: Central housing have them all tied up.


Charles Edward Johnston: There is another point I want to emphasize along the line of the hon. gentleman's interjection. There does not seem to be any shortage of nails as far as these large contractors are concerned, particularly Central Mortgage and Housing and Building Enterprises; but when it comes to the ordinary man he just cannot get nails. That situation has not been remedied in the last six months or so, either. When I was home at Easter, contractors came to me asking what was the matter with the supply of nails. I had to tell them I did not see how there could be a shortage, because the minister of reconstruction said there were plenty of them. I will not attempt to put on Hansard what they called the minister, because I am sure the Speaker would say it was out of order. It might be appropriate, but still it would be out of order.
In his speech the minister said these $6,800 five-room houses could be rented for $37.50. That may be true, as far as Central Mortgage and Housing is concerned, or Wartime Housing, but I do not know of a single $7,000 house that can be rented for $37.50. They just do not exist except under those two corporations; and there are so many people within the low income brackets who cannot afford $37.50 and in addition supply heat, light and water. I do not see how we are going to have low rental housing, Mr. Speaker, other than by subsidization. Certainly under present conditions it cannot be done. In his speech even the minister pointed out that they were going out of house building because of increased costs. But it makes no difference whether costs are increasing, as they are for one reason and another; people must have places in which to live, and you cannot just say you are going to wash your hands of the whole problem because of increased costs.
The minister went on to point out emphatically that they could not continue in this field unless they could build a five-room house which would rent for a nominal amount such as $37.50. I can see the point, because taking the increased cost factor into consideration they would go behind. But I suggest that it is much better for the government to go behind than for the individual, who has not the money; and believe me, there are plenty of people in this country, including returned soldiers, earning only $35 a week. The person
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to whom I was referring a short time ago is a returned soldier with a family, living on $35 a week. Can anyone tell me how he is going to be able to pay even $37.50 for a house, then heat it and pay for the light and water, and in addition take care of his family? How are you going to meet a situation such as that unless you do subsidize housing?
I want to mention a matter which I have not discussed with the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply but which I have taken up with the Minister of Veterans Affairs, who I must say was very considerate and took action to remedy the situation. I have in mind the speculation that is going on in these wartime and veterans' houses. I have had some experience with that of late. There are instances- how many I do not know-such as this. A veteran of the first war, who is in an excellent financial position, with a good job, because of his priority, has held land under the Veterans Land Act for as long as two and three years, while other veterans right in the same locality cannot get land on which to build the houses they so greatly need. I do not think this act and the Veterans Land Act were ever intended to be used for speculation, though in fairness I must say that when I brought the matter to the attention of the Minister of Veterans Affairs he acted immediately and the particular difficulty was solved. I have other cases I am going to bring to his attention as well, and I am sure they will receive the same consideration. But I want to tell the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply that in the city of Calgary there are men living in wartime houses who own one or two other houses in the same city. I do not think that is right. I often wonder how many men who have these veterans' holdings or wartime houses, for which they pay a nominal rental of perhaps $22.50 per month, at the same time have property in their own name which they are renting for anywhere from $50 to $75 a month, and probably some property in the names of their wives which is being rented for a similar amount. I believe that is something the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply should look into a little more fully. If that situation exists in one city I am sure it must exist in others, and I believe there should be a thorough investigation right across Canada.
I must say that I have come across these cases by accident. The first inkling I had of this situation was in connection with the Veterans Land Act, the matter I said had been cleared up by the minister. I want to bring it to the attention of the minister of reconstruction, however, so that he may look into the whole problem. When he went to the
fMr. Johnston.]
Veterans Land Act administration there was not a piece of land in Calgary that had not been taken; that is what I was told by the officials. After a little discussion, however, we found that there were seven or eight veterans who had priority claims on these lots and who had not done anything about them for a long time. The officials were going to take the matter into consideration, and when I asked how long they would require to consider it they mentioned three or four months. When I came to Ottawa and discussed it with the minister, however, it was only a matter of days until the matter was settled. Here were veterans, not only one but dozens, trying to get property on which to build and being held up because other veterans were holding the land for speculation; and as I have indicated, the same thing is going on under wartime housing, where men who have good positions and who have city property of their own, are living in these wartime houses at low rentals.
I do not want to say any more than I have said on this question, Mr. Speaker, but when we get into committee I think of necessity it will have to be gone into in greater detail.


Mr. H. W. TIMMINS (Parkdale):: Mr. Speaker, when this resolution was presented to the house by the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply (Mr. Howe) yesterday, we of this party felt that'we could expect the "new look" in housing for 1948 to come out of the resolution. However, after looking at it with some care and analysing it I will say there does not appear to be any "new look" in the housing plan for 1948. Perhaps a little new fringe has been added, but that is about all.


Mr. GIBSON (Comox-Alberni):: Still a short skirt.


Harold Aberdeen Watson Timmins: 
Stanley Howard Knowles: It is a boner, not a bone.


Harold Aberdeen Watson Timmins: My hon. friend says it is a boner; we shall see why.
One of the first things done by the minister about housing was in connection with a system of building priorities. I do not intend to go into that in any detail. It was a means of regulating and channelling building materials into the hands of those who were conducting building projects approved or sponsored by the government. This process of priority worked, up to a point. It did stifle private builders to a very great extent, but it also provided the kind of housing the government was sponsoring. That, however, has now reached the point where there are only one or two building items actually affected by priorities.
We come now to the matter of integrated housing. As hon. members know, integrated housing is a means whereby certain builders agree to build houses and to obtain in respect of them certain limited profits as set by Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation. At the same time they get priorities in building materials. That system has worked, to a point; but there could not be enough builders, and there have not been enough builders interested in the project to the extent of making it national in scope.
I hold in my hand a return I received in 1947. Up to May 14 of that year only 1,691 housing units had been started under agreement. The number last year was not extensive. Although a great many first-class builders have taken part in this project, it does not begin to solve our housing problem in Canada.
Last year the minister brought in another expedient by way of amendment to the National Housing Act under which approved lending corporations and insurance companies were allowed to enter the field of developing land in order that housing projects might be built on that land. As we know, the subdividing of land and its servicing with water, sewer and sidewalk facilities, and the making of provision to see that they are close to schools, and the like, is an expensive business.
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This was an important step forward. May I say, however, that I received a return in February last from the Department of Trade and Commerce in which I had asked how many of these subdivision projects had been started. The reply was that there were only six throughout the whole of Canada, two of which were in Ontario, one at Burlington and one in North York, adjoining Toronto. I am not competent to speak for all of these projects, but upon investigation I found that in connection with the one in North York the lots were being sold for from $2,250 to $2,400 each. That was not my understanding of the purpose of the project, nor was it my idea of the work the project was to do. I was under the impression that this was something to help the builder to go ahead with low-cost housing, which would be suitable for the average citizen, on lots at perhaps $600 or $800. But when the cost of the lot gets up to $2,250 or $2,400, in my opinion no purpose is being served by the plan.
I am disappointed in that plan, which I commended the minister for adopting. He is our leader in matters of housing, and if he cannot do the job himself, somebody in his department should take over this thing and make it work. It is most important that land be provided in cities or closely adjacent thereto for housing purposes. The minister himself has said on more than one occasion that lack of land was one of the big obstacles. We have the lending institutions and the big insurance companies with ability to make this very project a success, but it is making no progress at all. That is the kind of building program which we thought would serve a useful purpose, but it has not, and we are forced to the conclusion that these expedients must give place to an efficient building program.
Next came Housing Enterprises Limited which was going to take its share of responsibility for providing rental housing units. But what happened? They folded up in about a year and a half and disposed of all their assets to Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation. They found they could not compete economically with the class of houses being built by private enterprise. As a matter of fact their costs ran so high in overhead and accessories that they could not provide economic rental housing. Recognizing its futility, the department ended that project. It was a temporary expedient which has gone the way of a lot of others of its kind. Housing Enterprises Limited is no longer in existence.
[Hr. Timmins.]
Last year another attempt was made to do something about rental housing. The minister, by P.C. 1095 of March 25, 1945, provided for double depreciation to builders in respect of rental housing projects. That was an attempt on the part of the department to induce builders to go into the business of providing rental housing, but I understand that application for double depreciation has been made in the case of only 370 units. As a matter of fact provision is made for building up to January 1, 1949, only. I presume that any rental housing project started after that date is out. But it makes no difference whether it goes beyond January 1, 1949, or not, because it is just another temporary expedient in this game of trial and error which has been found wanting; it has not succeeded.
Wartime Housing is one of the crown companies which has succeeded up to a point. The minister has used it to provide rental housing for veterans, and it has succeeded in providing that kind of housing. Wartime Housing, however, is to be wound up under this resolution, and I presume that Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation will take its place. I do hope that this does not mean that the question of housing is to be handled now at the administrative level by a crown company instead of at the executive level. Perhaps the minister will explain just what the position is to be, because we as members of parliament cannot afford to have housing in Canada dealt with at the administrative level. It must be dealt with at the executive level.
I come now to the new feature in this resolution which the minister has called rental insurance. It is an involved proposal, by which apparently the builder is left in a secondary position, because the minister says, at page 3641 of Hansard:
The proposal before the house is designed to make rental housing more attractive to professional landlords and investors.
I do not believe that the average builder will be able to fit himself into the minister's plan in respect to rental housing. First of all, the minimum requirement is that the project shall consist of eight or more family housing units. That is not a project into which the average builder can go. He might build one or two units, but not the minimum of eight or more. He would not have sufficient capital to build more than one or two of these family housing units before his money would be tied up. It would be fatal to Canada if the small builder went into a project such as this and found that he had tied up all his money and

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had to sit down and wait for thirty years, which is the life of this project, for it to develop. I do not believe there is any place in this rental insurance plan for the private builder, and if there is no place in it for him, what class of citizen will be interested in it? The minister says, professional landlords and investors. I have had twenty-five years' experience in house management, and having regard to this rigorous climate of ours, I do not believe many people will be interested in building under this plan, hoping over a period of years to make a profit out of the venture. I think it is a step in the dark. The minister himself says that he is not so sure it is going to succeed. He says at page 3642 of Hansard:
We are not sure of the amount of new rental housing which will result from this proposal. We hope it will be substantial, and every effort will be made to encourage builders to operate under its provisions. It is likely, however, that most of the new housing will be in the moderate rental field because that is the type of housing in which landlords and builders are interested.
My own feeling is that it is not likely to succeed. It is another temporary expedient in the game of trial and error, and the only new matter which the government is bringing forward in respect to housing in 1948. I do not think it is sufficient. Cycles occur when unorthodox methods which were never before used have to be adopted. Great Britain in 1920 had to provide housing, whether they liked it or not, and they started a housing plan at that time. We in Canada are faced with the same problem today, and I want to emphasize some of the factors that are known to every one of us.
First of ail there is overcrowding. Our people are living together under conditions which are not healthy, and are sometimes unsanitary, and as a result there has been and continues to be a breakdown in the moral fibre of our people living under those conditions. I am sure that every member of the house knows something of the vicious consequences to our family life that come from people being forced to live together under conditions that are not proper. A short time ago we read in the papers of a shooting in the province of Quebec. I can myself remember at least three or four cases which have been brought up in the police court because of differences of opinion, fights and brawls, which have occurred between landlord and tenant, in which the landlord was asserting everything within the law and outside the law in order to get his tenant out. People are living in physical fear of assault, and assaults are taking place. That is one of the conditions for which we as members of parliament have to take some responsibility.
The second matter I want to mention is emergency housing. The minister was good enough to say that in his opinion we were over the peak in the matter of emergency housing. That may be so. However, people are being shifted into emergency housing in the city from which I come, every day in the week. I have had occasion recently to deal with people who felt that the municipality was responsible for them, for their housing and for their future maintenance. I have had them say to me, "I wish you would put the bailiff in here, because I cannot do this and that; I cannot get any housing accommodation until the sheriff comes in and puts me out. The welfare department will not do anything about it until the sheriff actually comes in and starts to move my stuff." These people have lost all sense of responsibility; they are just shifting about, and are being placed hither and thither by the welfare department. They have become charges upon the city because of the present housing situation. It is a state of mind that they have got themselves into.
Then, of course, there is another serious side to it. A sort of race suicide has developed. Young couples are getting married but they cannot have children for the simple reason that they have no place in which to put them. This is not a joke; it is a fact. The National Housing Act people have been working on this act for seven or eight years. They have got the thing down to the point where they seem to fix their attention upon a small house for the parents and two children. It has to be two boys or two girls. There is no room for a boy and a girl because there are just two bedrooms. If you look at the plans you will see that there is no provision for extensions or additions to the house. I have seen some of the worst looking messes made of houses because the occupant tried to make an addition to it to provide for his growing family. It is a serious matter that those who are planning our future in this country so far as housing is concerned are not looking further ahead on this, but are constructing houses for a man, his wife and two children. If that is not race suicide, I do not know what it is. Fifty thousand houses have been put up under that plan, and nobody seems to take it into account. I say now that that is one more reason why this government has to dc something about the matter of housing.
I come now to immigration. This is one place where we can all get together. The provinces and the federal government can get together on immigration. As we know, the Ontario government has brought out more

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than seven thousand people, and they are all settled. They have found places for themselves, but when they squeezed in, somebody else had to squeeze out. There is no question about that. Alberta has a plan on hand. They are not only bringing immigrants to the province but they are bringing out industry as well. Saskatchewan has a plan, and the federal government say that they have a plan to bring in some 20,000 immigrants by next June. Where will these people go? Is it any responsibility of the provinces? Is it any responsibility of the municipality? Is it any responsibility of the federal government? I say it is a joint responsibility, but for the most part the responsibility rests right here on the department which is responsible for these people coming to this country.
If the Minister of Trade and Commerce is not now handling the Department of Mines and Resources, which has to do with immigration, then there must be co-ordination within the executive council so that the problem can be solved.
We are not going through a passing phase in this matter of housing. We are in a national emergency. We must have these immigrants in Canada. The Prime Minister himself said that we cannot hope to hold this country with a population of twelve and a half million people. We appreciate that a large number of our problems, such as freight rates, can be solved if we have the population here. We know perfectly well that we are getting into a horrible economic position in the matter of trade abroad, and that if we do not have the people here to consume our own domestic products we may have economic chaos before we are through; therefore we must admit that we must have immigration. If we are to have immigration, then we must have housing, and now is the time to provide it.
At page 3642 of Hansard the minister said:
However, the dominion does not take a dogmatic stand in this matter, and we are willing to discuss with the provinces and municipalities a course of action which would lay a sound foundation for a long term national housing program. The Canadian federation of mayors has already sent us a brief concerning low-rental housing.
As I remember it, the mayors met here some time last year, I think it was in June. I received a copy of the brief that they sent in. They sent a brief in February of this year as well. If the minister is serious about this business of a conference and willingness to taka a share in a long term national housing plan, why does he not call a meeting of the municipalities and provinces so that the matter

can be dealt with? The Ontario government brought in a housing plan in 1948. Some of the features of it are to provide for the reduction of down payments on newly-built houses. It is a plan to fit in with the provisions of the National Housing Act, to make it easier for those who have not sufficient money to get part of the down payment in order that they may have houses. It is an attempt on the part of the Ontario government to co-ordinate its efforts with those of the federal government, and the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply was good enough to say that it was a helpful measure. In addition to that, they say they hope to participate wTith the municipalities in financing a redevelopment where there appears to be a sound policy. This is another matter which engages the attention of the federal government. The Ontario government has provided funds so that projects may be handled at all levels of government.
Another feature of the Ontario act is that they say they wish to participate with municipalities that desire to take advantage of the federal low-rental housing plan. Some $30,000,000 has been set aside so that progress may be made in housing in Ontario. But Ontario is not alone in that respect. A similar act, containing different features, has been passed in Quebec under which the province provided for the sale of lots at one dollar to citizens intending to build private dwellings, and guaranteed them tax concessions for a twenty-five year period in order to assist them to obtain houses.
I suggest to the minister that if he is serious about paying some attention to the brief of the federation of mayors, and to the desire of the various provinces to see their problems solved, in so far as the provinces have a responsibility, now is the time to call a conference. After all, there is an election coming on in Ontario and there will be one in Quebec this year. Saskatchewan will have an election, and there may be one in Alberta. This is a good time to get the ministers together.


Mr. MacNICOL:: New Brunswick too.


Harold Aberdeen Watson Timmins: Yes, and New Brunswick.


Clarence Decatur Howe: We will deal with the new governments.


Harold Aberdeen Watson Timmins: The minister is just putting off again; he has another temporary expedient there. He is going to deal with the new governments. I say to him in all kindness that I hope to put him on the spot this afternoon. I think we have been temporizing with the thing long enough. Let me say this to him without any rancour at all. The minister may

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object when we say it, but the fact is, that he has too many jobs. He does a good job with anything he tackles, but he cannot do a good job when he undertakes too many. I suggest to him that he hand over to someone else these powers he has under the National Housing Act.
A few years ago the minister was putting a lot of efficiency and drive into housing, but I think he is starting to slow down, and the business of import controls from the United States is now taking up his attention. Rightly so. I suggest therefore that unless he is serious about this proposal of his to discuss with the provinces and the municipalities a course of action which would lay a sound foundation for a long-term national housing program, he had better move over in the bed and let some other minister start this, because in all seriousness I feel that this is our No. 1 problem in Canada.
We have the various provinces in a cooperative mood. The minister can be quite persuasive wrhen he wishes to bring any matter to a head, and I think that in matters of public housing, in the promotion of these limited dividend corporations, in matters of slum clearance, this is the time to get started. We should make a start on them now.
If you look at all this legislation on housing you will find a guarantee running through them all. There is a guarantee under the National Housing Act, a guarantee under the insurance rental project, a guarantee all the way through. We are like the ostrich, sticking our head in the sand-at least the department is-and saying that we may never have to pay these things. The fact of the matter is that the government, we the people, will have to pay them some day.
Since we have a surplus of $800 million estimated for this year, let us make a start and deal with the matter in a businesslike way. Let us start on some of these projects. I do not put very much confidence in what the minister said yesterday, that we cannot proceed with these matters because building costs are too high. The member for Bow River (Mr. Johnston) who has just sat down, suggested that was not a factor. Who knows whether building costs will come down, or when? After all, housing is not something that can be put off. If we need a roof over our head we need it now, not after building costs have come down.
I suggest to the minister that this is the time when these things must be brought to a head. What we need right now is leadership. We have co-operation, plenty of co-operation all across Canada. We have the co-operation
of the people, the co-operation of the municipalities. In Toronto last year one of the controllers, a Liberal on the city council, Mr. Balfour, announced to the press that in only a matter of a few days there would be a conference with respect to these matters. He seemed to be confident even in those days that a conference would be called and that this question of housing would be dealt with at the three levels of government.
Leadership rests with the government, and the people will not be satisfied until it is exercised-not in 1949, not after we find out whether the rental insurance plan will work, but now.
(Translation):


Mr. RENE HAMEL (St, Maurice-Lafleche) :: Mr. Speaker, I wish to say a few words on the resolution for two reasons. First, I represent a constituency where 75 per cent of the population live in urban centres, such as Shawinigan, Grand'Mere, La Tuque, and Almaville. Second, I wish to repeat in the house the warning sounded in the province of Quebec by both Protestant and Catholic religious authorities, in connection with the housing problem.
Yesterday, the right hon. the minister of reconstruction (Mr. Howe) said that 77,000 housing units had been built in 1947. In my opinion, last year's building program is inadequate to provide the minimum number of houses required to prevent the housing shortage from increasing, and it is barely half sufficient for normal needs. In 1944, the government appointed an advisory committee to inquire into the housing situation; the said committee submitted what is known as the Curtis report. According to that report, Canada should have built 77,700 dwellings per year for a period of ten years. It is easy to understand that the above is a minimum figure, but it is inadequate. Here is what the report says in that connection: (Text):
The figures reproduced in the present summary are those made on a minimum and restricted basis. In general, throughout the report, when alternative assumptions present themselves the lower one has been adopted. (Translation):
Obviously, Mr. Speaker, the 77,700 housing units required to prevent the situation from growing worse represent but a minimum figure. It is inadequate for the following reasons: first, it tends only to the needs of city dwellers, who make up no more than 60 per cent of the population, and ignores the require-

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meats of the farming classes who are none the less of some importance. Second, this figure does not include childless couples. It deals only with families and not with those homemakers whom statisticians call:	"Household
non family". Yet, hundreds of thousands of requests for housing accommodation come from these people. Finally, it provides for the replacement of only 1 per cent of homes in need of repair or falling apart; houses are seemingly supposed to last one hundred years. However, two sources of information which differ substantially from the Curtis report, are, to my mind far more accurate: during its February convention of 1943, the Toronto Architects' Association showed that at the present time Canada needs from 110,000 to 150,000 houses per year. Another publication, The Letter Review of March 31, 1947 stated:
(Text):
It is entirely reasonable to argue from that single fact that, in present circumstances, anything less than 150,000 houses a year is wholly inadequate.
(Translation):
Mr. Speaker, what the government has accomplished during 1947 is barely half of what is required to solve the housing problem. What are the underlying causes of our difficulties in solving the housing problem? Shortage of labour was mentioned and it has also been said that the primary cause of the lack of progress in the building of houses could be ascribed to the paralysing effect of the strikes on production. I submit, Mr. Speaker, that labour does not account for the complete and total failure of the government in the building field. The causes are as follows: In 1941,
500,000	of our men were in the forces with roughly the same number employed in munition plants, producing shells and other war materials. At that time, construction in our country reached a total of $640,000,000. In 1942, our forces numbered 625,000 men and probably the same number were engaged in production of munitions and in other war duties. Nevertheless, construction reached a total of $635,000,000. In 1945, during the demobilization period, construction reached only $409,000,000. In 1946, when I assume that demobilization had been completed, and production of munitions and war equipment had ceased, construction amounted to only $450,000,000. Another reason which prevents me from accepting labour shortage as a reason for
the difficulties in which we find ourselves in regard to housing is that we pay more unemployment benefits than ever before. The Labour Gazette of February, 1947, indicates that there were 488,667 applications for unemployment insurance benefits in 1946. Any builder, prospective home-owner or supplier of building materials will tell you that it is not so much the shortage of man-power that is the cause of delays, but the shortage of building materials. Among these we might mention nails; electrical appliances, plumbing supplies and ready-to-use lumber of good quality. It might be well to ask where these supplies have gone, while the necessity for them at home is still so pressing as to create an extremely serious situation which has been forcibly called to our attention by all our sociologists. We need only to examine our exports of building materials or of materials needed for the production of same. The following figures are taken from the Canada Year Book for the years 1943-1944, and 1946, pages 491 to 553.
Exports
Index No.: 109 for the 1935-1939 period.
1940	1942	1945Wood and paper 	127-5	221-2Iron and iron products..	185-8	801	951-8Non-ferrous metals ....	120-6	191-3	218-3
While there is a greater need than ever for building materials on the home market, exports are still being made. Two reasons are given for this.
The first is the fact that our economy requires exports to maintain a high level of employment.
I respectfully suggest that our present export trade is made up of temporary exports which cannot help to stabilize our economy in any way. Besides here is what the dominion statistician says about our export trade:
(Text):
Actually about 75 to 80 per cent of Canada's enormous export business since 1940 belongs in the category of temporary, abnormal, wartime trade, with only about 20 to 25 per cent in the category of normal and permanent trade.
(Translation):
Mr. Speaker, how can we expect to stabilize our economy by means of a type of export trade which statisticians themselves hold to be of au essentially temporary nature? I suggest that the exports which we are making at this time, and especially those which are meant for the United Kingdom, have absolutely no stabilizing effect on our economy, but serve

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only to favour Great Britain in such a way that she will eventually become the most dangerous competitor on world markets.
The second reason: Pity and sentiment. We are told that the people of Europe have suffered great difficulties, that they are in dire straits and that we must help them. I respectfully submit-even though in doing so I might offend some people-that the housing situation in Great Britain is less critical than in Canada.
I say, in the first place, that the situation is less serious in Great Britain, for the following reasons; first, from 1939 to 1945, the population of Britain decreased by about 600,000 while the population of Canada increased by nearly 800,000; second, throughout the war, huge numbers of troops were quartered in the United Kingdom and when they left, their shelters could lessen the seriousness of the housing problem; third, from 1930 to 1940, the almost complete efforts of the British nation were devoted to the building of houses.
Here is what I find on page 33 of the Curtis report:
(Text):
While at the beginning of the thirities residential construction was drastically curtailed in the United States and Canada, more houses were built in England aud Wales than ever before. In 1934 about 267,000 housing units were built in England and Wales or about 28,000 more than were built during the peak year of the twenties. Since 1934 the volume of residential construction in that country has increased steadily, only to be interrupted with the outbreak of the war in 1939.
(Translation):
Therefore, the situation is less serious in Great Britain than in Canada, and we are sacrificing the interests of the Canadian people in order to save, once again, the British people. Besides, the rumours which depict the entire population of Europe as suffering hardships are not all concordant. As a matter of fact, I have here an item from La Nouvelliste quoting a Canadian Press dispatch dated March 11, 1947, in which Lord Inverchapel is reported as having stated, at a banquet of the New York law school graduates:
The British envoy enumerated the factors which prove that Great Britain is not prostrate. At the end of 1946, she was exporting from 110 to 115 per cent more than in 1938. She is building houses at the rate of 250,000 a year.
I shall now read what the Gazette said on May 5, 1948, in quoting a dispatch sent from London by Ernest Chisholm Thomson:
(Text):
. . . Britain's first target of 750.000 "units of accommodation" will be achieved by the end
of the year ... in spite of adversities and vicissitudes. Britain was putting up more houses than any other country.
(Translation):
I respectfully submit, Mr. Speaker, that our export trade policy is a primary cause of our housing difficulties.
For the past year, ever since the matter was bungled, attempts have been made to place the burden of the housing problem upon provincial and municipal authorities. In theory, Mr. Speaker, I agree that the housing problem should be the responsibility of provincial or municipal authorities. But how can the provincial authorities be expected to do an adequate job when the federal government, through its export trade policy, is creating a disastrous condition with respect to building materials at home? Furthermore, how can the provincial governments be expected to carry out a satisfactory housing scheme when they are deprived of their main source of revenues by the federal government?
Mr. Speaker, to stress the importance of the housing problem, may I recall that the first Labour-Progressive member to appear in the house was elected in Cartier during 1945 or 1946, after taking advantage of the housing situation before his electors?
Every now and then I receive resolutions from all sorts of associations begging me to show more sympathy for Great Britain. Mr. Speaker, in 1945 I was elected under the banner of nationalism, and I challenge anyone to state that he has ever heard me say an unkind word about Great Britain. However, I believe that my first duty as member for St. Maurice-Lafleche is to work not in the interest of a foreign country-however much sympathy I may feel for that country-but to work for the Canadian people. And if it so happens that other countries suffer indirectly by it, or share less in our liberalities, I cannot do anything about it, I feel that my duty is to the Canadian people.


Mr. GAGNON:: Hear, hear.
(Text):


Mr. E. B. McKAY (Weyburn):: Mr. Speaker, yesterday I listened with considerable interest to the comprehensive statement of the minister with respect to the construction of housing units in 1947 and the plans for 1948. I particularly noted that the minister was inclined to take the risk from lending capital in housing enterprises, no doubt with the hope
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housing program to meet one of Canada's most urgent problems. Because of the urgency of this problem, I wish to move, seconded by the hon. member for Mackenzie (Mr. Nicholson), the following amendment to the resolution:
That all the words after the word "that" he struck out and the following be substituted therefor:
"Mr. Speaker do not now leave the chair but that it be resolved1 that in the opinion of this house the government should give consideration to providing subsidized low-rental housing."


John Ritchie MacNicol: Mr. Speaker, when I was last home about two weeks ago a family I have known for quite a few years asked me to call and see them. I found them living on the second floor of a small home on a street not far from where I live. This man and woman are getting on in years and are doubtless just an example of a multitude of others living under similar conditions. Their living room, dining room and kitchen was the same room, and I am sure it was not twelve feet square. They had a small bedroom adjoining, and they used the same toilet and bath as the other occupants of the house. I have known this gentleman for quite a few years. He worked for quite a long time for the Farmers' Dairy in Toronto and never at any time had a wage of any consequence. He was always subject to being laid off and, to my knowledge, was laid off on numerous occasions, and so he never had a chance to earn a competence with which to provide a home of his own. On the occasion of my visit he told me that he did not expect to live very long, that he could not endure the conditions under which he was living. As a matter of fact, he died two days ago. All I wish to say in connection with this matter is that doubtless thousands of men and women throughout Canada have gone to their graves through the inadequacy of the housing accommodation in Canada. I know of so many cases like the one I have just mentioned.
I had a good deal to do with building in my day and was more or less conversant with the whole building problem. I know the minister himself knows a great deal about building. I doubt whether any member of the House of Commons has had as much actual experience in building of one kind and another as the minister himself, and when he was appointed to take charge of housing I for one looked forward to his doing a big job. Why he has not been able to do it I do not know. I should like him to tell us whether he was obstructed in any way in carrying out what he was charged to do and certainly had the capacity to do. There must have been some reason.

When he took charge of housing I thought he would initiate some program of prefabricated housing. Maybe it could not be done under his department; I do not know. It has, however, been done in Great Britain and in France, and perhaps elsewhere, but I do know that it has been done in both those countries. Many of the prefabricated houses which have been erected in France were put together in Canada. For quite some time there was a very nice confortable prefabricated house on one of the main docks in Quebec city. I forget the name of the dock but I am sure the minister knows all about it. That prefabricated house was a model of what was being shipped to France. Speaking from memory, I think approximately 1,500 to 2,000 of these prefabricated houses have been shipped from Canada to France. The minister nods his head; I am glad to know that. It was a frame house, neatly constructed, and made somewhere in Quebec I believe, out of Canadian materials. My memory is that the price either on the dock at Quebec City or in France-I am not sure which-was approximately $2,000.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I think that is right.


John Ritchie MacNicol: That goes to show that a very good frame' house could be built for that money. My memory is that the walls of the house were papered in Canada, but perhaps the papering would need some touching up after the house was erected in France. That struck me as a mighty fine program, whoever in Canada promoted it. Perhaps the department did; at least they must have been told about it. I wondered then, and I have wondered since, why we could not have prefabricated houses in Canada. Most of the basements could have been made out of cement blocks They are easily made. While cement is not just a glut on the market, perhaps it can be obtained today in sufficient quantities to meet the demand for cement blocks for basements of houses.
When the minister closes the debate I should like him to tell the house why we cannot have prefabricated houses here in large quantities as they have them in England and France. A few moments ago an hon. member to my left said that England built a large number of houses in a certain length of time. I have forgotten the time, but I have given the figure before myself. At the moment I have not the figure in my mind. I do not just remember the length of time it took them to build their program of 750,000 houses.

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Knowing as I do that all the material used in the English houses and the French houses must come from outside these countries, because they have not the raw product supply, I ask myself why we are and have been in the position as to housing that we are in, in Canada today. The situation is nothing short of appalling. The part of the city of Toronto that I represent is thickly congested. I am proud to live in that part of the city. It is one of the largest workingmen's areas in the city. Quite a number of them work in the plant that I worked in for many years. I know that many, many of these houses are congested, with a large number of people in each one of them, far beyond what they were built for. Houses that were built to accommodate a family of five have at least ten people crowded into them today. It therefore looks to me as if, in the future, hundreds of thousands of new houses will have to be built for the people now living under such congested conditions.
A short time ago an hon. member referred to Quarrels among families, between landlords and tenants and so on, because of the congestion. Is it any wonder? I have been in many houses. I am going home tonight. On Saturday I hope to pay visits to various parts of the riding I represent. I love going among the ordinary folks and seeing the conditions under which they live. I have seen conditions that I just cannot describe. From what I have seen I know that for a long time to come in Canada there will be a great demand for houses.
I hope that the minister who did such a good job in making munitions during the war, turning out guns and tanks, ammunition and ten thousand and one different things that entered into the prosecution of the war, can do a good job in this respect as well. We all know he did a good job during the war. I for one hope that he will take hold of this big problem, turn over a new leaf altogether and go to work, because this problem is too big to be solved by ordinary methods. I ask him to start in again as he did when he took over the job of building guns, tanks and other war weapons, and construct houses in Canada, not by the thousands but by the tens of thousands, because there must be a market for 150,000 or
200,000	houses in Canada. I believe the minister can do it, if he would only carry on in the same manner as he did during the war.
I do not believe in censuring the minister. He has had a big job to do, and he has done a big job. I am one of those who believe he can do a gigantic job of building houses. If they can build 750,000 houses in England in two or three years, why cannot we do the
same thing in Canada? We do not have to go out of Canada to get the material; it is all here. Lumber and cement are here in quantities sufficient to build houses, and that is the immediate job to be done. I for one am going to look to the minister to overcome the difficulty, to surmount the obstacles. The situation is bad.
I listened to the minister yesterday and when he finished I said to myself-and this is no reflection on him-there is not a thing in the program for the average man and woman whom' I represent. There may be something in it for those who can pay $80 a month rent. I do not know many of these in my riding. In my riding, generally from 350 to 500 people live in a block. They are not living there at $80 a month. The couple to whom I referred on a street in my riding could only pay $22 a month rent. Therefore, when the minister suggested yesterday that folks could pay $80 a month or that a house costing $6,800 would be let for $37.50 a month, he was not speaking of the people in my riding. I would not name the streets, but A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N streets in my area in Toronto have on the average 350 and more people living in one block. Of that number, five out of twenty-five could pay $37.50 a month; the others just cannot do so. It cannot be done today on the wages they are getting, because wages are not anything like what some folks think they are. Too many of them are out of work; too many of them are unwell; too many of them have been getting sick; too many of them have a thousand and one troubles, and they just cannot pay $37.50 a month.
What is the average man and woman going to do? He can pay rent for a house that could be built for $2,500. These lovely houses I saw on the docks in Quebec City being shipped to France, and the picture I saw the other day of houses being erected in England are the houses I have in mind. The pictures showed a dozen giant lorries going along some road in England, and each lorry carried a full prefabricated house. If they can do it over there we can surely do it here. We should do it in defence of the health of our people. The health of the people today is deteriorating. That is indicated by the poor man I spoke of a few minutes ago who died a couple of days ago. He was quite hale and hearty when I saw him two weeks ago, but not just in the best of health, because his spirit had broken down owing to the conditions under which he was living.
I am sure that the country will support the minister in some gigantic housing program if he will bring forward a bill to have houses
National Homing Act

built for not more than $2,500 to $3,000 apiece. It can be done, but the way we are doing it today it takes too 'long to erect the ordinary house. I visited two or three areas around Toronto in which quite a large number of houses are being erected. At the speed at which they are being erected, Your Honour, they cannot be built for less than $5,000 or $6,000. The average workingman cannot finance a house at that price. It cannot be done. I know too many of them,; I worked with too many of them, and therefore I say it cannot be done. I am satisfied that if the minister will take the bit in his teeth and bring in a program to build houses by the countless thousands on some new program such as he organized for the building of guns and tanks and so forth, houses can be built on a prefabricated basis for the ordinary workingman for not more than $3,000 apiece. The average workingman can finance that.
When the minister finished his remarks yesterday I said to myself, this bill does not give any hope to the renter. The renter cannot pay $80 a month, and the average workingman cannot pay $37.50 a month. It does not give any hope to the owner, because the average workingman cannot afford to buy a house at $6,800. He would lose his house. I remember very well that in my part of the city a multitude of people lost their homes during the depression, homes which did not cost over $2,500 to erect in that area.
I should like to see the minister revise the whole program and bring in something such as he did during the war. We did a gigantic job then and we have as big a job now, because this is worse than war to the average working man whose family are being scattered all over the city. We should begin a real program to provide homes for the people.
Something was said yesterday about guaranteeing two per cent on the investment in the building of houses. I do not know of anyone who would build houses on two per cent return. I own a number of houses myself and I know of the trials and tribulations I have with some of them. Indeed I would be glad to sell every one of them now if I could and get rid of the worry. I cannot dream of anyone undertaking to build a house with two per cent on the investment, certainly not a house costing $6,800. It cannot be done.
The last few days, I received two or three letters from people who use a good deal of gyproc, and they told me that the regulations of last November-I suppose they referred to what was done by the Minister of Finance- had seriously interfered with their importations of this material. It is most unfortunate that we have to import gyproc, because it can

be made in huge quantities in Canada. Every province in Canada can make gyproc, and it is important in the construction of prefabricated houses, so that if we do go into the business of building houses on a large scale there should be some provision for keeping up a supply of gyproc.
I know the minister can do this. During the war he did a spiendid job, as I have said. He did a good job in producing guns. I see my hon. friend the member for Hamilton East (Mr. Ross) looking at me. In his own city there was a gigantic plant built, the Westing-house establishment, I believe. I went to see it myself. I should like to have the minister tell us, when he speaks in reply, why he cannot do the same job today in the production of houses in a large way.
If it is authority the minister wants, I for one would vote him that authority so that our people can have a chance to live. I would not undertake to describe their living conditions today. The people I come in contact with, the people I am talking about now, are not the rich class of people represented by the hon. member for Rosedale (Mr. Jackman) or the hon. member for St. Paul's (Mr. Ross). The people in those districts have fine homes. The men and women I am thinking about are the multitudes living in Davenport riding, in West Toronto, Trinity and Spadina. There they are in countless thousands packed in close together, many wanting homes. The conditions under which too many have to live are such as no human being ought to be asked to put up with.
I am not going to say much more. As I said at the beginning, I was one of those who felt, when the minister was appointed, knowing his capacity and his experience as a builder, that he would do a big job. Something has prevented him. What it is I do not know and I should like him to tell us. I believe he can do the job. I will not censure him in any way, because there is some reason why he has not done it, but the program now before us will not go very far in solving the housing problem.
The rent rate is too high. The cost of building is too high. We have to get down to a program such as they have in France and England. The minister nodded his head a few moments ago when I referred to houses that I had seen on the dock at Quebec City. Those were smart houses. I went through one and was well pleased. They were well built, well put together. It is a credit to France, and I am sure the French people are taking advantage of it.
The program announced by the minister yesterday will not be satisfactory. I appeal

Speaker's. Ruling
to him to do whatever has to be done to promote a genuine housing program. I believe he is capable of doing a job of the proportions of the job he did during the war. At that time he produced all that was necessary for the men to fight, which resulted in winning the war. Let us win the peace by providing homes at a reasonable rent and homes at low cost to the average working man, not men who can pay $6,800, which is beyond the vast majority of the people I represent, but men who want houses costing $3,000 and no more. I am one who believes the minister can do the job.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, I rise to a point of order. I realize that it may seem a bit unusual for one to rise on a point of order with respect to an amendment moved by a colleague, but I feebthat the house would like to have a ruling fairly soon as to whether or not the amendment proposed by my colleague the hon. member for Weyburn (Mr. McKay) is in order.


James Horace King: Order. As the hon. member knows, it is the privilege of any member to rise on a point of order, but he must state the point of order. A point of order is for the purpose of calling the attention of the Speaker to something done in the house which is out of order. I do not see the point of order to which the hon. member now rises when he seeks to prove to the house that the amendment is in order.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, I will state the point of order briefly and if you ask me to resume my seat I will do so. I was going to ask Your Honour to rule, either now or at eight o'clock tonight, whether or not this amendment is in order, and having asked you to give a ruling, I was going to state the reasons for my conviction that the amendment is in order. If you feel that I cannot do that-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


James Horace King: I am sure the hon. member realizes perfectly well what rising to a point of order means. He has no point of order. The hon. member for Weyburn, Mr. McKay, moved, seconded by Mr. Nicholson:
That all the words after the word "that" be struck out and the following be substituted cherefor:
"Mr. Speaker do not now leave the chair but that it be resolved that in the opinion of this house the government should give consideration to providing subsidized low-rental housing."
This amendment is out of order because-


Stanley Howard Knowles: Oh, Mr. Speaker!


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


James Horace King: -it is in the form of a declaration of principle which can be moved on the second reading of a bill but not on a motion that the Speaker leave the chair for the house to go into committee of the whole on a money resolution. Moreover, until the resolution is in committee of the whole, its terms cannot be changed. It must be referred in the terms expressed by His Excellency the Governor General in submitting it for the consideration of the house. The house must also consider standing order 50:
A motion to refer a bill, resolution or any question to the committee of the whole, or any standing or special committee, shall preclude all amendments of the main question.
For these two reasons, I regret that I have to declare the amendment out of order.


Stanley Howard Knowles: With equal regret, Mr. Speaker, but because of the citations I have before me, which convince me that the amendment is in order, I must appeal your decision.


James Horace King: Those who are in favour of Mr. Speaker's ruling will say "Yea".


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Yea.


James Horace King: Those against will say "Nay".


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Nay.


James Horace King: In my opinion the "yeas" have it. Call in the members.
Mr. Speaker put the question as follows:
The question before the house is an appeal from the decision given by the Speaker with regard to the amendment moved by the hon. member for Weyburn (Mr. McKay) and seconded by the hon. member for Mackenzie (Mr. Nicholson):
That all the words after the word "that" be struck out and and the following be substituted therefor:
"Mr. Speaker do not now leave the chair but that it be resolved that in the opinion of this house the government should give consideration to providing subsidized low-rental housing."
I declared this amendment out of order on two grounds. The first was because it is in the form of a declaration of principle which can be moved on the second reading of a bill but not on a motion that the Speaker leave the chair for the house to go into committee of the whole on a money resolution. Moreover, until the resolution is in committee of the whole, its terms cannot be changed; it must be referred to the committee in the terms expressed by His Excellency the Governor General in submitting it to the consideration of the house.
3672
Speaker's. Ruling

The second ground on which I declared the amendment out of order was standing order 50, to which I would call the attention of the house, and which reads as follows:
A motion to refer a bill, resolution or any question to the committee of the whole or any standing or special committee shall preclude all amendment of the main question.
On those two grounds I declared the amendment out of order. From that decision the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) appeals.


Mr. MARTIN:: Mr. Speaker, I was paired with the hon. member for Cape Breton South (Mr. Gillis). Had I voted, I would have voted to sustain your decision.


Mr. BLACK (Cumberland):: Mr. Speaker, I was paired with the hon. member for Queens-Lunenburg (Mr. Winters). Had I voted, I would have voted to sustain your ruling.


Mr. HERRIDGE:: Mr. Speaker, I was paired with the hon. member for Algoma East (Mr. Farquhar). Had I voted, I would have voted against sustaining your decision.
( Translation ):


René Hamel: I was paired with the hon. member for Champlain (Mr. Brunelle).
( Text)'


Mr. ANGUS MacINNIS (Vancouver East):: Mr. Speaker, I do not often take part in a debate on housing, but coming from a city where there has been a housing crisis for years I feel that I must speak in this debate.
In so far as this resolution is an outline of the government's housing policy for 1948, I want to tell the minister that it does not come anywhere near meeting the housing needs of this country. Moreover, in my opinion this outline of policy will come as a shocking disappointment to those people who have clung to the hope that the federal government would assume its responsibility in the matter of housing. Instead of this being an indication that the government is going to assume its responsibilities in that regard, it is the final act of abdication of government responsibility for housing. It is done on the assumption that by various guarantees home building can be made attractive to what I think the minister

National Housing Act
called yesterday professional landlords and investors. If the minister expects private enterprise to provide homes for the people of Canada, he is leaning on a broken reed.
The housing situation in Canada today is not something that developed either during or since the war. There was a housing shortage in Canada before the war began. What has happened since is that the housing shortage has become worse, and it still is becoming worse every day. Private enterprise cannot today and will not today provide homes for the people who need them most. If there is anything clear in the housing picture, that is it.
Let me draw the minister's attention to a few facts. In 1943 a committee, known as the Curtis advisory committee on reconstruction, was appointed to look into the housing situation. That committee reported on March 24, 1944. After outlining the housing situation in Canada, it made certain recommendations. For instance, at page 12 of the report it recommended the building of 606,000 urban units and
125.000	rural units in the first ten years following the war. That is, it proposed that, in order to meet the national requirements in housing, 731,000 units would be required in the first ten years following the war. In addition to that, I believe the report said that some 60,000 units would be necessary every year to meet the accumulating housing needs.
Then at page 13 the committee pointed out that there were many houses requiring substantial improvements and repairs. Of these there were 355,000 in the urban centres and
188.000	in rural areas, or a total of 543,000
homes in need of substantial improvements or repairs. That was the situation as it was found in 1943 and reported upon in 1944, at a time when the war had been in progress for about four years.	[DOT]
The minister said yesterday that in 1947 there were 77,000 units completed. I imagine that also some improvements have been made and some repairing has been done. In another -portion of his speech the minister said that building was catching up with housing needs. He did not say, however, how many houses had been demolished in the last year. Going around Vancouver and Ottawa, I can see that great numbers have been torn down because of their becoming obsolete or being unfit for human habitation.
At page 14 the Curtis report says that tenants in the lowest income group, which constitutes one-third of the population, should not pay more than $12 a month. I realize that since 1944 there has been some increase in wages and in the cost of living, so that if we increase that figure by, say 50 per cent, we 5849-233i
would have today a rent of $18 a month. Where in this measure is provision made for that third of the population who cannot pay more than $18 a month in rentals? What authority is providing homes for that part of the population?
Let me point out that that is the segment of the population which needs to be provided for. Once we get above that, we get closer to the people who are able to provide housing accommodation for themselves.
Perhaps you would call it six o'clock, Mr. Speaker.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, I rise to a point of order. Beauchesne, second edition, citation 67, reads as follows:
If a member was not present in the house when the question was put by the Speaker, he cannot have his vote recorded.
That is taken from Bourinot, page 381. I find it is in precisely those words in Bourinot, and that later, on the same page of Bourinot it is stated:
If a question is raised after a division as to the right of a member to vote under the condition stated, the Speaker will inquire if the hon. member was present in the house and heard the question put. If he replied in the negative, his name will be struck off the list, and the clerk will again declare the numbers.
I call Your Honour's attention to the fact that when you put the question the hon. member for Quebec West and South (Mr. Parent) was not in the house. He came in later and took his seat-not seat No. 41, as has been indicated to be his, but rather seat No. 132.


An hon. MEMBER:: That does not matter.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I am not quarreling: about the seat number he was in; I am just indicating what happened-that he was not in the house when the question was put.
This of course, could make no difference to1 the outcome of the vote, but I do think that particular rule should be adhered to, and I would appreciate it if Your Honour would consider the matter over the supper recess.


James Horace King: I must say to my hon. friend that I have nothing to consider. I accept what the hon. member has said. But I would ask him to read again, and he may see a little farther on that if he had anything to complain about in connection with the division, the right time to do so was immediately after the division had been taken.
At six o'clock the house took recess.
National Housing Act

After Recess
The house resumed at eight o'clock.
Mr. Mac.INNIS: Mr. Speaker, when the house rose at six o'clock I was pointing out that what is needed at the present time in the way of a housing policy is a low-rental housing program and that such a program demands federal subsidies of one kind or another. But there is very little in the statement made by the minister yesterday to indicate that there is any intention on the part of the government to go ahead with a low-rental housing program. Unless we do that, we shall never have a housing program in Canada that will meet the needs of the people. That was the finding of the Curtis committee, and I should like to read three or four paragraphs from its report. At page 18 of the report the Curtis committee says:
Low-Rental Housing
A complete revision of part II of the National Housing Act should be undertaken with a view to the inauguration of a comprehensive low-rental housing program.
Again:
Local housing authorities should be established as the agencies for the operation of low-rental housing projects in the areas concerned.
Again:
Loans for capital costs for low-rental undertakings should be provided directly by the dominion government, at the lowest possible interest rates, desirably the current rate for long-term government bonds plus a small charge for administration.
Again at page 19:
The subsidies required for the purpose of permitting rentals to be set lower than the economic or commercial level should be provided by the dominion government in the form of annual grants. These would be made to local housing authorities for projects defined by reference to the income limits of the tenants and the construction costs of the projects.
The Canadian federation of mayors and municipalities in their last report make somewhat the same proposals, and the minister yesterday, at page 3642 of Hansard, had this to say in regard to those proposals:
The Canadian federation of mayors has already sent us a brief concerning low-rental housing. Their proposals have merit but are not acceptable in their present form chiefly because they contemplate full financing by the dominion government both in respect to capital costs and operating deficits.
In his statement yesterday, the minister said that an assisted national housing program should be in concert with the three levels of government. With that I absolutely agree because administration and other factors make

such co-operation desirable. But under their present system of raising money the municipalities cannot provide funds for that kind of social work; I insist that housing is not only an economic question but a social one as well. If the funds are not provided, the people as a whole, who ultimately pay for everything, will have to pay for the lack of proper housing in other ways. I quote further from page 193 of the Curtis report:
One of the blind spots in thinking of housing policy is the belief that low rents mean rents of the order of $20-25 or even more, when considerably lower figures are necessary, for unskilled and low-wage workers, workers whose employment is irregular, or families with more than the average number of children. Until this perspective is righted, progress in catering for the needs of this section of the population, some of which is rural as well as urban, can hardly be expected.
What the Curtis report said in that regard is just as true today, if not more so, as it was when the report was made in 1944. It would be expected that the government, having set up this committee, which made a comprehensive report, would pay some attention to it and that the National Housing Act would, over the years, be amended accordingly; but so far as any amendments have been made since to the National Housing Act, they have been in a direction away from, rather than toward, the recommendations of the Curtis report.
In 1946 or 1947, I am not sure which, the minister made a statement in the house in regard to Housing Enterprises Limited, a group of insurance companies made proposals for building houses that could be rented for from S32.50 to $35 a month. On May 29, 1947, at page 3596 of Hansard the minister said this:
It (Housing Enterprises) was formed to build low-cost housing. The government has never been happy about that phase of the project. Even in its early stages it seemed doubtful whether it was building a class of * housing that this government should endorse as being in the low-rental area.
That is, at the beginning when the units were to be let for $32.50 to $35 a month.
However, the insurance companies had for years been bringing pressure on the government to end government construction. It was claimed that this was a field which should be left to private enterprise. The government has always countered with the answer: if that is your field, why not take some direct part in it? Housing Enterprises was started as a private venture with the support of the federal government and by invitation of the federal government. The results have been becoming less and less satisfactory. When the decision was made by the insurance companies-not by the government- that activity in this field should be ended, the government had no objection.

National Housing Act
The insurance companies, which have been providing some of the money for this sort of building, had been urging the government to get out of the housing business and let them do the job, and when the government let them do it, and gave them a loan of some $45,000,000 to boot, in a very short time they threw up their hands.
Speaking in the house on May 14, 1947, at page 3070 of Hansard the minister said:
Last fall Housing Enterprises accumulated land for their 1947 program. The unsatisfactory nature of many of their 1946 cost-plus contracts made it prudent for Housing Enterprises to require that their 1947 program be carried out on the basis of firm bids. A firm bid has been received for some 400 units in Hamilton at a price which would result in rentals of $55, $65 and $75 for three-, four- and five-roomed units respectively. Housing Enterprises feel that the purpose for which they entered the field is not being fulfilled, and that rentals which result from such high cost are far in excess of those which the scheme envisaged. Unless it is possible for Housing Enterprises to secure considerably lower prices on other projects, they do not intend to proceed with their 1947 program.
With that experience of private enterprise in home building, we find the minister saying yesterday that it was the intention of the government to get out of the home construction business as quickly as possible and to encourage private enterprise to take over. He said, as reported on page 3641 of yesterday's Hansard:
The dominion government is in the direct rental housing field because neither private enterprise nor other levels of government is providing greatly needed rental housing accommodation. I look forward to the day when the dominion may withdraw from the field of direct house building. Therefore we are anxious to do everything we can to encourage more private house building. The proposal before the house is designed to make rental housing more attractive to professional landlords and investors.
With the experience that my right lion, friend has had with private enterprise since 1945 in the building of houses and the results that have been achieved, and particularly with the results that have been achieved so far as low-rental housing is concerned, does he now expect that private enterprise can provide homes for the people in this country who need low-rental housing?


An hon. MEMBER:: Of course not.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: They can do it much better than the C.C.F.


Angus MacInnis: I do not see that my Conservative friends are doing very much either, but it is neither a Conservative nor a C.C.F. housing plan that we are now discussing. We
have a government housing plan, and I am not hopeful that the plan will produce houses for people in the low-income groups. Let me repeat that those in the upper income brackets will be able to provide houses for themselves without assistance. Therefore, so far as the bill is concerned what it does is this: it provides guaranteed income for private money lending institutions and the public takes the risk.


Mr. MacLEAN:: What is your solution?


Angus MacInnis: My hon. friend seldom speaks in the house; therefore I shall take the time to reply to him and tell him that if he will listen carefully he will hear my solution. My solution is that the government, as has been recommended in the various reports which have been made to it by its own committees, must provide the means to build the houses which the people cannot build for themselves. If the hon. member for Cape Breton North-Victoria does not believe in that policy, then he must believe in the policy of leaving these people without shelter.


George James McIlraith: That does not follow. That is not a good argument.


Stanley Howard Knowles: What does he believe in?


Angus MacInnis: The housing situation throughout the whole of Canada is most deplorable. I hold in my hand a report made by a committee on housing in Vancouver under date of January, 1948, and I wish to quote a short paragraph from it, namely, the statement of the social service administrator for the city of Vancouver. He said, in regard to housing:
' The situation has greatly deteriorated during the past year (that is 1947). Low-rental housing is not available and social allowances and pensions are so far below the level of economic rentals that it is useless to hope that private landlords will rent quarters at the rates our clients are able to pay. In. one instance a woman with two children, whose normal social allowance is $50 monthly, was persuaded to move from a shack which resembled a discarded packing case, and the only accommodation she could find was two rooms at a rental of $35 a month. To the normal shelter rate of $13 the department added $22. monthly. This ease and many others like it indicate the need for subsidized housing units where adequate accommodation could be provided at lower costs than is now paid for the maintenance of slums.
I would urge not only the minister and the government but this house to see to it that provision is made to house the people of this country properly. If such provisions are not made we shall pay for the lack of them in other ways that will be much more expensive in the long run than if we provided decent homes.
National Housing Act

The minister mentioned yesterday that we were catching up somewhat on the housing program. I quote again from this report:
Taking the city of Vancouver alone, the population increased last year (summer 1946 to summer 1947), by 14,800 persons, requiring, on the basis of 3-2 persons per family, some 4,600 additional housing units. New dwellings completed during the year ended December, 1947, totalled 2,669, showing a deficit of nearly 2,000 units. This figure takes no account of deterioration or demolition of existing dwellings. It is evident therefore that the enormous backlog of building, estimated at over 20,000 houses for the city alone in 1945, is not merely" not being reduced, but is steadily increasing.
In the face of conditions of that kind, what effect will this program have? What effect will the government's policy have?


Clarence Decatur Howe: May I ask the hon. member a question? As a prominent citizen of Vancouver, can he explain why Vancouver does not ask the government to build more wartime houses?


Angus MacInnis: I cannot explain that, except I suppose the fear of the authorities of Vancouver to incur expenses which, in a few years, might become a financial burden. I quite appreciate the efforts the minister has made during the past few years to get the city of Vancouver to take even a small part of the responsibility" for housing, and I have criticized the city for not doing its share. I mentioned a moment ago that I did agree with the minister that a proper national housing scheme must be, because of conditions in Canada, on the three government levels.
The minister referred to the recommendations of the Canadian federation of mayors and municipalities. I have their program before me and I should like to quote three short paragraphs from the report:
The inescapable fact about low-rent housing is that, no matter what economies may be effected or how low-cost the project may be, there will be some families who are unable to afford the economic rent which such accommodation requires in order to support its capital costs and carrying charges.
And the next paragraph:
An annual rental subsidy (of one form or another) has come to be almost universally" recognized as the best and most practicable technique for overcoming the problem. It is the basic principle now incorporated in the low-rent housing legislation of the United Kingdom, the United States. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden.
"A rental subsidy has the merit of being flexible and subject to variation if circumstances or experience demand. It is straightforward in effect, and understandable as a rent-reduction fund applied to a clear-cut social welfare purpose."

That is the statement of the Canadian federation of mayors and municipalities:
The last paragraph is from the Curtis report and is included in the recommendations of the Canadian federation of may'ors and municipalities.
I ask the house to look at this matter, not only as a housing problem but also as a social problem, and in that connection I wish to quote one further statement, this time from the report of the community chest and council of greater Vancouver for May, 1947. With reference to housing, there is the following statement:
Inadequate housing leads to breakdown in physical and mental health, strained family *relationships, behaviour difficulties, both of a minor and serious nature, and juvenile delinquency. When placement of children has to be made away from parents there is a loosening of family ties and damage to the normal development of the child's personality. This is particularly .true of the pre-school child ... In cases where the parents have had the problems of inadequate housing, high rent and low income, their sense of responsibility must be strong to overcome their problems and reunite the family. It appears obvious that provision of adequate housing is a cheaper measure than having to maintain citizens in hospitals, jails, detention homes, foster homes and mental hospitals. We all know that the cost in money of such curative and palliative measures is great. The cost in human values and human happiness is much greater and cannot be measured in terms of dollars and cents.
In conclusion I wish to say that I endorse everything that the hon. member for Davenport (Mr. MacNieol) said this afternoon about the minister's abilities in handling measures of the kind we are now discussing. I would say to the minister and to the house that, in view of the desperate need of the people of Canada for housing, in view of the evidence already" available that private enterprise cannot and will not provide homes for the great bulk of the Canadian population who need it most, the resolution now before us is not worthy of the minister who introduced it. It is not the way' in which he set out to provide the sinews of war for many of those who now find themselves without homes. It should, in my opinion, be withdrawn and a more adequate program introduced.
( T mnslation):


Mr. PIERRE GAUTHIER (Portneuf):: Mr. Speaker, Samuel Johnson yvrote that praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. As I have but little praise to offer this evening, I shall keep that precept in mind. Nor have I any inconsiderate or bitter reproaches to direct to anyone. I rise only to

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complete certain statistics, to correct one or two points in the speech made this afternoon by the hon. member for St. Maurice-Lafleche (Mr. Hamel). I recall the Cartier election, when the labour progressive party candidate was opposing two other candidates.
I took part in this fight which took place, I believe, in 1943. In the matter of demobilization, referred to by the hon. member, I must say that it ended in fact on September 1, 1947, because of the fact that the non-permanent service was then in effect.
I shall not indulge in particularly bitter reproach, Mr. Speaker. However, in seeking to excuse the provincial or municipal governments which prefer not to handle the housing problem, the hon. member said that the federal government had made a mess of the situation and that it is rather difficult now for these other governments to solve this problem, or to have their autonomy respected.
I believe, Mr. Speaker, that autonomy can apply both ways. I know that during the war the dominion government took a special and direct interest in the building of houses. Since the war is over, normally the provincial and municipal governments should immediately have claimed their autonomy and should have set to work. However, the dominion agreed to build houses, not to favour any province in particular, but the country as a whole. If my memory serves me right, the hon. member quoted statistics to show that building had decreased. In my opinion, if building appears to have slowed down, it is because the figures he quoted included not only dwellings, but various war plants erected during the last war, a fact that the hon. member forgot to mention. That is why his statistics are not entirely fair to those who build houses. I have here a table showing the number of houses built during the war compared to the total number built during the period from 1945 to 1947. In 1941, during the war, 48,000 houses were built while 40,000 were completed in 1942,
36,000	in 1943 and 39,000 in 1944 which comes to 163,000 dwellings for the war years, .this figure not including war plants. On the other hand, here are approximate though fairly accurate figures on Canada's post-war housing achievement: 48.000 dwellings were built in 1945, 67,000 in 1946, and, according to the latest statistics, 78,000 in 1947, so that almost 190.000 houses were completed in this period. From 1941 to 1947, the Wartime Housing Limited, a crown corporation, put up 31,192 houses. You will grant, Mr. Speaker,
that if failure there is, it is a failure from which those concerned have obtained a rather nice cut. However, and this happens very often, there are some who pocket no more than 10 per cent to 15 per cent. I realize that it is quite a problem but one must keep in mind various factors such as time, place and even climate. I heard the hon. member compare our housing program with home-building in England. When my hon. friend reaches LaTuque at 2 o'clock in the morning at forty below zero weather to tour the northern part of his constituency, I am sure that he would not want to leave a coach that had been built for the English climate, nor would he like to put up at a hotel.
So I say that the construction of Canadian houses cannot be compared to that of English houses. The construction of Canadian houses requires more care; walls and foundations have to be much thicker and more damp-proof. That type of construction therefore calls for a lot more building materials, and greater care on the part of the builders. Besides, it must not be assumed that a country with a budget like ours and a population like ours can build as many houses as a country with a budget much higher than ours and where the housebuilders show only half the care of our own builders. Comparisons are odious. My hon. friend will remember that saying which he often heard while he attended the seminary. The hon. member has perhaps been in Europe. Houses over there are quite unlike ours. In Italy houses seem to be built to stand anything. When the weather is damp, they do not feel it over there as we do in our Canadian houses. One advantage is that they do not need a heating system. Sometimes they have a fire-place, but that is all. But they do not build with the same care as we do here. So there is no comparison.
We must not forget either that during the war, and especially towards the end, from 1944 to 1947, numerous strikes broke out in this country. My hon. friend knows that. These strikes paralysed production, especially that of building materials, including steel. What with strikes on the one hand, and a rush of builders on the other, the building industry was bound to feel the effects of this shortage. No country could expect to solve this difficulty faster than we have. My hon.
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friend who is well-read, is undoubtedly aware that there is not another country in Europe or indeed in the wrorld, whose post-war reconstruction has progressed further than Belgium's. In order to arrive at the point where it finds itself now, Belgium was obliged to impose almost irritating restrictions on its people. Belgium has always wished to restore itself-too often had it acted as a shock absorber between two hostile nations-and has imposed sacrifices on itself to achieve that end. There was much criticism of course, but Belgium did, in fact, set the world an example which Canada has never ceased following to a certain extent. I can understand the hon. member claiming that the shortage of building materials was due to an excess of exports. I cannot blame him when he mentions England. I myself have often spoken of England and I have frequently stated that she was costing us a lot of money. On the other hand, he knows that I have changed my position regarding the two billion dollar loan. I looked upon the spreading of the communist tentacles over Europe as very disquieting. I could not let another country fall, another country which could prevent the spread of communism. Like a man who fears danger,
I had to change my position; however, that does not mean that I have modified my personal feelings towards imperialism. In view of those circumstances, I vote in exactly the opposite way that I had voted when the famous gifts to Britain were approved.
As regards the export of lumber, here is a table prepared by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics. With your permission, Mr. Speaker,
I shall first give the value of our exports to all countries:
1946
1942
1944
1946


Paul-Edmond Gagnon: May I direct a question to the hon. member?


Pierre Gauthier: Yes.


Paul-Edmond Gagnon: Would the hon. member kindly tell me whether the lumber shipped to England from 1940 to 1945 was sold at the
same price as that -which was exported to the United States?


Pierre Gauthier: Quite possibly it was not, but I do not see why there should be a substantial difference between the price of the lumber sold to the United States and that sold to Great Britain.


Paul-Edmond Gagnon: Will the hon. member permit a further question?


Pierre Gauthier: Hear! heart


Paul-Edmond Gagnon: If we sold our lumber at a lower price in England than in the United States, the quantity shipped to the United Kingdom might be greater, although the amount received would be less.


Pierre Gauthier: Eor my
hon. friend's information the hon. member for Gaspe (Mr. Langlois), who is well informed on the matter, tells me that we were selling our lumber at a better price in England than in the United States.


Paul-Edmond Gagnon: Very well. I thank you.


Pierre Gauthier: As for building materials, I shall mention only a few, for I do not wish to drag on the debate. It will suffice, however, to show that in addition to our exports we have imported a large amount of the materials required to build houses.
Let us take cement, for instance. The following table is in thousands of barrels:
Exports Imports
1945	
282-5	32-71946	
114-4	350-11947	
88-0	1.248-6
If we imported we also exported and our imports were much greater than our exports. That should surely enable us to build houses in Canada.
Then, as far as bricks are concerned, the excess of our exports over our imports amounted to 2,559-7 thousands from 1945 to 1947. During the same period our brick production was more than adequate for the needs of our building program. That is why we exported such a large quantity.
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Now, how much rock wool did we export? From 1945 to 1947, none at all, but as this building material is widely used we imported, and the figures quoted are in thousands of square feet, 5,993-3 in 1945, 7,822-3 in 1948 and 5,775-4 in 1947.
Take plaster, for instance. In 1945, we exported 447 tons and imported 2,884 while in 1946, we sent abroad 969 tons and brought in 7,663; then, in 1947, our exports amounted to 1,423 tons and our imports, to 10,071. The difference of 17,749 tons shows the extent to which imports exceed exports.
My hon. friend will notice that we bring in far more building materials than we send abroad.
Take glass, for instance. In 1945 our exports in thousands of square feet, came to 15-3, while our imports, for the same year, amounted to 39,803-8.
A while ago, I spoke of the steel industry. Take nails, wire and so forth. In 1945, we brought in 814 tons and sent abroad 71 tons while in 1946, we exported 1,270 tons and imported 680.
In 1947 our exports amounted to 32 tons and our imports to 4,147 tons. Thus, our imports exceeded our imports by 2,782 tons.
Now here are the pre-war figures relative to our exports of certain items, as compared with the 1945, 1946 and 1947 figures. In 1939 we exported 8,054 tons of nails; in 1945, 814 tons; 1946, 1270 tons, and in 1947, 32 tons. Exports have decreased because we planned to assist the builders.


René Hamel: May I ask the hon. member a question?


Pierre Gauthier: Yes.


René Hamel: Would the hon. member say where he obtained those figures?


Pierre Gauthier: All this was given before. The hon. member's question reminds me of v'hat Boileau has said in his Art Poetique: "Travaillez, prenez de la peine, c'est le fond qui manque le moins." Should the hon. member abide by this principle . . .


Paul-Edmond Gagnon: Here in Ottawa, statistics are what we have the most of.


Pierre Gauthier: If my hon. friend had gone to some trouble he would have come across the table quoted in another debate
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by the hon. member for Gaspe (Mr. Langlois). These tables were never challenged.
I am sure that the hon. member for Gaspe got his figures either from the Canada Year Book or from the Department of Trade and Commerce. And I am certain that he is ready to vouch with me for their accuracy.
Mr. LANGLOIS-: That is where they come from.


Pierre Gauthier: The hon. member knows that during the war the federal government encouraged the production, of building materials. To increase the production of these materials they went so far as to grant manufacturers rather large premiums.
I shall quote a whole table of figures, also provided by the hon. member for Gaspe, an industrious man, and I would advise my hon. friend to re-read the speech that the hon. member for Gaspe made during another debate.


René Hamel: Is it the one mentioned by Le Devoir?


Pierre Gauthier: Possibly. And that is why I want to read the table supplied to me by my hon. friend, regarding our lumber export trade. He had been asked to supply those figures. I have asked him to lend me this table so that I might answer the hon. member and set at ease the minds of our friends at Le Devoir.


Mr. LANGLOIS:: That has even been much criticized by Shields.


Pierre Gauthier: I shall read the table on lumber; the figures are in thousand million feet. For the year 1939, 4 billion;
1945,	4 and three-quarter billion; 1946, 4 and three-quarter billion; 1947, 5 billion. Hot air furnaces, per unit: 1939, 25,000; 1945, 35,000;
1946,	43,000; 1947, 56,000. Surely that item has not prevented the building of houses. In order to teach a lesson to those who claim that the federal government, through its ill-advised policies, is preventing the construction of a greater number of houses, I should like to have comparable figures for other countries, including Great Britain. I have not been able to get them. My hon. friend can look them up so as to get a better idea of the work done in our country, not only by the government, but by private builders as well. These figures indicate that much has been done in order to provide housing for our people. I might quote any number of figures concerning other prod-
(Mr. Hamel.]
ucts, but I do not wish to detain the house longer than is necessary. The hon. members do me the honour of listening quite attentively to what I have to say, for which I thank them.
I now wish to criticize all those who build houses nowadays, the government and Wartime Housing Limited among others. The situation in Quebec is somewhat peculiar. It is, in fact, intolerable, since the houses that are being built there are too small. Whether we like it or not, the population of Quebec is certainly going to continue increasing. Our good Canadians of French descent, as well as those of Irish and Scottish stock, will continue to people the province of Quebec because they believe in it. I must say that the present government in Quebec may lose power at any time, but let it be. I contend that the houses built are not big enough. One way of preventing the spread of communism and satisfying the people is to give them good dwellings. We must be able to house the father, the mother and their ten or fifteen children, without compelling them to sleep two or three per bed. as I have often seen when I gave them medical assistance. It is imperative that we build bigger houses. Again I say-and I speak particularly to the youngest among us-that we have no intention of reducing the number of children in our families, because we have faith in this good old Canadian soil and wish to preserve the tradition of the province of Quebec, which has always overcome the difficulties it has found in its path.
I spoke a moment ago of provincial autonomy. In concluding, Mr. Speaker, I hope you will permit me to repeat some of the words spoken by the hon. member for St. Maurice-Lafleche (Mr. Hamel). Now that the dominion government has made a mess of things-and this is about what he said- how do you expect provincial and municipal authorities to plunge in and take over a sphere that rightly belongs to them? It is always dangerous to play with the principle of provincial autonomy. Like the butterfly, one always ends with wings singed. As I do not wish to be called to order, I shall make only passing reference to this subject of provincial autonomy. I voted against the [DOT] motion dealing with milk because I wanted the province of Quebec to keep its autonomy in this respect. Was the price of milk

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reduced? When the dominion government surrendered its rights on gasoline, was the price of this commodity lowered? May I quote a few words spoken by Mr. Eugene l'Heureux. My friend knows him and thinks very highly of him; he also realizes that this gentleman does not often talk through his hat.
According to many people, the provincial government feels that in doing nothing to settle the strike which is exceedingly disastrous for the country, it maintains a state of things that will compel the dominion authorities to interfere under dual pressure from Canadian consumers who require meat and from European buyers who expect delivery of goods promised by Canada.
I beg the hon. member for Chicoutimi to listen carefully.


Paul-Edmond Gagnon: I can hardly follow you.


Pierre Gauthier: It is always possible to secure information.


Paul-Edmond Gagnon: Especially on this side of the house.


Pierre Gauthier: I do not say that my hon. friend from St. Mauriee-Uafleche had that in mind, far from it, but I think someone must- have thought of it. Mr. 1'Heureux concludes by quoting the words of a good Canadian who said:	"Give me
your autonomy, since you do not know what to do with it."


Paul-Edmond Gagnon: Will the hon. member permit me a question?


Pierre Gauthier: Certainly.


Paul-Edmond Gagnon: If I have understood correctly, the hon. member has a personal and well-informed statistician in the person of the hon. member for Gaspe.


Pierre Gauthier: I am glad
of it, and I pride myself on that.


Paul-Edmond Gagnon: I concur with you.


Mr. BEAUDOIN:: You would do well to do it more often.


Paul-Edmond Gagnon: You should do so yourself; it would stand you in good stead.


Louis-René Beaudoin: It would also be helpful to you.


Paul-Edmond Gagnon: Possibly.
You were referring just now to large families in the province of Quebec and you
said that the houses built by the contractors did not meet those families' requirements. Could you tell us how many suitable houses for these families have been built in the province of Quebec?


Pierre Gauthier: I told you a few minutes ago that I was expecting further statistics. I was unable to secure them before this debate. However, as soon as they reach me, I shall gladly send them to the hon. member for Chicoutimi.


Paul-Edmond Gagnon: Hear, hear!
( Text):


Mr. A. M. NICHOLSON (Mackenzie):: Mr. Speaker, when Bill No. 176, to amend the National Housing Act, was before parliament a year ago, I stated on the 29th of May:
Indeed if it were not for the outstanding contribution the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply made during the war I would be pressing for his resignation on account of the housing conditions in Canada.
Nearly a year has passed since then, and relatively the housing situation is much worse today than it was a year ago. I do not think I have ever heard the minister make as weak an address to parliament as the one he made yesterday in streaking to this resolution. I have before me several reports published by the authority of the minister who is sponsoring this resolution. One is the story of Polymer ; another is the T.C.A. annual report; another the Canadian Mutual Aid report; and the annual report to the Minister of Reconstruction. of Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
The minister risked his reputation and $50,000,000 of the taxpayers' money when he sanctioned the construction of the Polymer corporation. I was among the members of parliament privileged during the war to visit this project. Previously I have paid tribute to the minister for his courage and ingenuity in being responsible for the construction of what I understand is one of the most efficient synthetic rubber plants in the whole world. It is hard to exaggerate the part played by this industry in achieving the allied victory.
The annual report of the T.C.A. contains some interesting pictures. There is a picture of one of the North Stars bought by the minister for $600,000. There is a picture of the minister and the previous president of T.C.A. and party,
5849-234J
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after completing a record non-stop flight from Vancouver to Montreal in the space of six hours and fifty-two minutes.
The Canadian Mutual Aid board, of which the minister was chairman, tells something in its report of Canada's contribution to the allied victory by the distribution of mutual aid during the war. I find that contributions were made to Australia, totalling $91,000 000; the British West Indies, $5,000,000; China, $39,000,000; France, $25,000,000; India, $18,000,000; New Zealand, $15,000,000; U.S.S.R., $167,000,000; the United Kingdom, $2,112,000,000, and other contributions to UNRRA and others, making a total of $2,482,000,000.
When you compare those contributions made by the department under the supervision of the minister with the contributions made in the field of housing I am sure that the minister is not proud of this department which comes under his supervision.
I find that there are no pictures in the annual report of Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation. The minister is not proud of the slum-like houses built during the war by Wartime Housing. I criticized the construction of those houses at the time, pointing out that, since this was the first major entry of the dominion government into the field of housing, it seemed a pity that potential slums should be built by the federal authority. The minister promised that these houses would be torn down within two or five years' time at the most after the ending of hostilities, but I contended what has proved to be a fact, that they would never be torn down so long as less desirable houses were being occupied in the various centres. Unfortunately, in every centre where wartime houses were built there will be for a very long time many less desirable houses occupied. So I repeat that wartime houses are potential slum dwellings.
The report has an interesting section dealing with the construction of rural housing. It mentions that section 14 of the National Housing Act, providing for loans to assist in the construction of rural housing, *was proclaimed by order in council on June 24, 1947. I might mention that the act was passed in 1944, so that it took four long years to get the government to pass an order in council finally to make this section of the act effective. Later on they were running out of material and you have a repetition of very much the same material. A couple of pages later, on page 9,

they go into quite a long discussion pointing out that, because of the Saskatchewan farm security act and its application to National Housing Act farm loans, no such farm loans will be made in Saskatchewan. It goes on;
Until satisfactory arrangements can be concluded with each of the governments of the prairie provinces to permit the use of a flexible payment plan for repayment of loans by farmers operating farms primarily grain-growing in character, the corporation is not willing to approve applications from this type of farm.
No loans in Saskatchewan, no loans in the prairie provinces. Nearly a whole page in the annual report tells of what the government is doing in the field of rural housing, and then at the last, at the bottom of page 9 I find this:
No applications for farm loans were received in 1947.
And so, after years and years, not a single five-cent piece is being made available by the federal government with a view to dealing with the urgent rural housing problems that I shall mention before I am through.
The speech delivered by the minister yesterday should be studied very carefully by everyone who looks for a solution of this problem of housing. At page 3639 of Hansard he points out;
I rvould point out, however, that the greatest demand and need is for rental housing. Many people buying houses are only doing so because they cannot secure rented accommodation.
That has been perfectly obvious for a long time. The housing situation is so acute that people have been obliged to pay two prices for houses to get some place to live. It is unfortunate that the young men who went from Canada and risked their lives during the war years and fought to save their homes should find, when they come back, that the government, which made such fine promises, has made no adequate provision to find them homes, and so they have had to go into debt, sell their chattels, mortgage their future and pay two prices for houses.


John Ritchie MacNicol: And they will never be able to pay for them.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: As the hon. member for Davenport points out, it will be physically impossible for many of these veterans to pay for them. I am told that there is quite a racket in Canada by organizations which are dealing in second mortgages. The demand for housing has been so great that in order to get a roof over their heads people will pay any price. They are able to get first mortgages at fairly low rates, but they must pay high rates to get second mortgages.

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36S3
On page 3640 of Hansard an interesting paragraph appears. The minister said:
In 1947 it became evident that Housing Enterprises could not produce housing at satisfactory cost levels. Housing Enterprises decided to abandon new projects in 1947 and limit their activities to the completion of the 3,313 units under construction.
I might suggest in passing, Mr. Speaker, that the minister should try to get Mr. Mansur, president of Central Mortgage and Housing, to use more original language in his annual reports rather than copy the words of the minister word for word. I am not going to take time to compare the paragraphs, but I think Mr. Mansur uses words almost identical with those of the minister. Let me remind the house that on July 22, 1946, the minister told the house of the wonderful plans that had been made to have rental housing built. He said as reported at page 3686 of Hansard:
hjext I would like to deal with the activities of Housing Enterprises of Canada, Limited. Hon. members will remember that at the last session of the house amendments were made to sections 9 and 11 of the National Housing Act whereby an institutional holding company could proceed with rental housing. Shortly after these amendments were passed, all life insurance companies operating in Canada joined together and formed a mutual institutional holding company in the name of Housing Enterprises of Canada, Limited. Housing Enterprises contemplated a two-year program of about 10,*900 units and planned to distribute the much-needed rental housing throughout the iirban communities from coast to coast. The financial arrangement is that loans are made to Housing Enterprises under section 9, as I have previously described, and the 10 per cent equity of Housing Enterprises comes under the provision of section 11 of this act.
On the next page the minister said:
I would like to express my appreciation, as well as that of the government, for the cooperation ^ of the life insurance companies in entering into the rental housing field at this time when conditions are so difficult.
The hon. member for Vancouver East (Mr. Maclnnis) referred to the minister's reference to Housing Enterprises a year ago when it was fairly obvious that the set-up was on the way out. The minister said yesterday:
In August, 1947, the life insurance companies which owned Housing Enterprises, approached us to request that the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation take over their operations. In light of all circumstances the government accepted this proposal. The corporation has taken over Housing Enterprises Limited and has completed and rented the 3,313 units in the thirty-two projects.
Two years ago the minister promised that the solution for rental housing had been proposed by the insurance companies who were so anxious to get into this field. Two years later Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation come to the government and asked the government to bail them out and take over the uncompleted projects. The hon. member for Vancouver East also referred to another part of the minister's speech which appears on page 3641 of Hansard.
The dominion government is in the direct rental housing field because neither private enterprise nor other levels of government is providing greatly needed rental housing accommodation.
Some of the United States magazines, Mr. Speaker, offer handsome prizes every month for the funniest articles that appear in print each month. I plan to send the paragraph which I have just read, and I offer to share proceeds with the minister if it is selected. The dominion government is now in this housing field, because no other government would do anything about it and private enterprise would not do anything about it, and the minister now looks forward to the day when the dominion can withdraw from the field. He is going to withdraw by guaranteeing that people who lend money will have their loans guaranteed for a long period, and I submit that that is a most amazing statement for any cabinet minister to make.
I argued all through the years that there was no reason why a government which could spend $50,000,000 on the Polymer Corporation or on organizing the transcontinental and the trans-Atlantic air service could not take the responsibility of going into slum clearing and low-rental housing projects. The amount of money that was spent by Canada on our mutual aid program, nearly $2,500,000,000, as compared with the amount of money we have lost on housing, is of interest. In the annual report of the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, we find that at the end of the year the net. losses paid out under the housing act amounted to $2,147. I submit, Mr. Speaker, that with Canada's housing situation as critical as it is, the government cannot be very proud of having lost less than $3,000 in trying to provide adequate housing for the people of the dominion.
I have spoken on this question of housing frequently in parliament, but I cannot claim to be an authority on the subject. Tonight I should like to call to witness important organizations in Canada and in the United States-I will not get across to Europe-to support the point of view that we have made from time
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to time that housing is Canada's No. 1 problem. The citizens of this country must be divided roughly into three groups: first, the group of people who can provide housing for themselves without any assistance at all; second, the group that will provide adequate housing if loans can be made available at reasonable rates of interest, such as has been done through the National Housing Act, and the third and largest group of all, as large as the other two groups put together, the people whose incomes, unfortunately, have been fixed at such low levels that it is phj'sically impossible for them to pay an economic rent for decent housing.
I should like to start with Halifax, Nova Scotia. Halifax had its citizens' local committee which presented its report some time ago, and this is the significant paragraph:
It is not a question whether we shall pay or shall not pay, it is a question of whether we shall pay blindly or intelligently, whether we 71av for better housing or for the damage done by that which is worse. Housing of the poor we are going to provide, let us make no mistake about that. It is only a question whether we shall house them in hospitals, mental institutions. reformatories and jails; or whether we shall house them in cleanly, light and sanitary surroundings where both body and soul will have a chance. Which shall it be?
The housing position in Vancouver has been carefully studied by a representative group of citizens in that city. I am not selecting these cities because they have unusual conditions. Every city in Canada has its blighted and slum areas. Some cities have been more courageous in examining the situation and placing the facts out in broad daylight, and some people in these cities have been agitating with a view to getting something done. The Vancouver group have prepared an interesting report, and the section on the cost of slums is significant. It reads as follows:
Health. While it is rarely possible to isolate completely the damage to health caused by housing from that which is attributable to other social evils connected wdth poverty, such as malnutrition. the sum total of statistical and medical evidence which has been accumulated in Tecent years is so overwhelming that the cardinal importance of bad housing as a source of ill health is now generally recognized.
It mentions that a great many people, because of the housing situation, have been forced to supplement their housing allowances by cutting down on food consumption, and goes on to say:
The vicious circle thus created can only be broken by a determined effort on the part of the community as a whole to raise the conditions of those who have fallen below a minimum standard of healthful living.

This report refers to the city of Cleveland where 12] per cent of the deaths from tuberculosis occurred in the slum area containing only 2-4 per cent of the population. In one of the poorer areas of Vancouver the death-rate from tuberculosis was 102 per 100,000 as compared with 35 in the remaining part of the city. That, I submit, is a matter of concern not only to the people in Vancouver but to Canadians in all parts of the country. Three times as many died from tuberculosis in the blighted areas of Vancouver as died in the rest of the city. In the Chinese section 285 died, twice as many as in the slum area. Infant mortality was 73 per 1,000 as compared with 30 in the rest of the city. This report deals with the death rate in Liverpool and in other British cities and throughout the world, and the evidence is that wherever you have slum areas you have an added cost in fire prevention, you have sickness and juvenile delinquency, all of which costs have to be borne by the rest of the people.
I urge that the minister instruct his officers to give careful consideration to this report on housing in Vancouver. For a number of years the chief inspector of the division of sanitation and housing of the city of Winnipeg has made interesting reports. Mr. Officer, when he was in charge of this division, made this statement in his report in 1942:
It is surely not too much to say that when our men on active service return to civil life they have a right to expect that decent living quarters for their future family life is available, or at least in process of construction.
Now, after many of the men are home, the situation is worse than ever. I have the last two reports here, and the report for 1947
states:
We say that the housing situation is somewhat worse than it was a year ago . . . With all the clamour and publicity that has attended this amount of construction, it still leaves untouched the basic need of decent housing accommodation for thousands of our citizens . . . It is impossible for the majority of comfortably established individuals to sympathize adequately with the appalling housing conditions of today, under which a considerable section of the population lives. Were it otherwise, the general complacency of the public would vanish in a manner bodeful of much, to the comfortably encysted traditionalists in public and private life.
I suggest that members of parliament and members of the cabinet should try for a year coming into Ottawa, limiting themselves to the average income of the average citizen of Canada. Let them try to find living accommodations, spending one-fifth of the average Canadian income for the housing. Let them

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try coming here, if they have children, to find living quarters where children are permitted.
I submit that if the minister of reeonstruc-' tion and the members of the cabinet were in closer contact with people who have been house hunting in this and other cities of Canada we would be taking more vigorous action to solve the problem.
Let me now refer to Toronto for a moment. Sometimes that city is called Toronto the good. I should like to refer to the report of the lieutenant governor's committee on housing in Toronto in 1934. The then lieutenant-governor of Ontario, who was one of our colleagues here for many years, the Hon. Doctor Bruce, was responsible for convening a representative committee, and in his remarks at a banquet he made this statement:
These areas of misery and degradation exert an unhappy environmental influence upon many of our citizens.
I was interested to know that the present hon. member for Muskoka-Ontario (Mr. Mac-donnell) was then president of the board of trade in Toronto and was one of the group of responsible citizens in Toronto who took an active part in preparing this report. A survey was made of some of the worst areas in the city, and it was found:
Of the 1,332 dwellings and 1,421 households covered by the survey,
Ninety-six per cent of the dwellings fell below minimum standard of amenities,
Seventy-five per cent of the dwellings fell below the minimum health standard, Forty-three per cent had no cellars. Twenty-eight per cent were in a bad state of repair and a further 53 per cent definitely in need of repairs,
Eight-two per cent had no method of central heating and depended on stoves,
Fifty-eight per cent were damp and 20 per cent of these dwellings were subject to flood. Nine per cent had no electricity,
Forty per cent had smells inside or out, Fifty-five per cent were verminous,
Fifty-nine per cent had no bath,
Twenty per cent had outside toilets and a further 19 per cent had unsatisfactory inside toilets.
And so on. That was in 1934 and these units which were examined in that year are still being occupied.
The board of trade recently entertained members of the House of Commons in Toronto, and I should like publicly to express my appreciation of their wonderful hospitality. They were to be commended for taking us on a comprehensive tour of the city, including not only Rosedale and the Forest Hill village but some of the slum areas. I wish to put in a word for my Toronto friends and to express the hope that the federal government will take
an interest in the slum-clearing program that Toronto has been discussing since 1934. It is not good enough to say that the government of Ontario and the city of Toronto have not made the necessary representations. The fact is that the government of Canada must take official responsibility for slum clearing and low-rental housing in Canada. It must take the initiative and Toronto the good would be an ideal place in which to start.
Time is moving on and I shall not be able to refer to some of the American cities which I should like to discuss-New York, Green Belt, New Haven, and some of the other cities there which I have visited. I visited those cities in order to see what they were doing in the matter of housing. The report from Los Angeles states:
The housing authority of the city of Los Angeles is a public body, corporate and political. It was created by the enactment of the California housing authorities law in 1938. It is not a department of the city government, but is a political subdivision of the state of California. It has direct lines to three governmental bodies, the city, the state, and the federal government. The housing authority was officially established in Los Angeles on June 2, 1938, by a resolution adopted by the mayor and the city council. The basic objectives of the housing authority are twofold:
First, to clear the sub-standard dwellings existing in the city of Los Angeles and second, to provide decent, safe and sanitary homes for the lowest income families living in sub-standard dwellings who are unable to afford decent accommodations at rents required by private enterprise.
In this report they satisfy the private builders, whom the minister is so anxious not to offend. They say:
The housing authority has established its maximum entrance rental in the public low-rent housing developments thirty-one per cent below the lowest rent at which private enterprise can profitably provide standard housing. By law it can only provide housing for those low income families living in sub-standard housing. For these two reasons competition with privately owned standard property is impossible.
I think it should be prefectly obvious that if Canada undertook a major low-rental subsidies housing program such as was proposed in the report of the advisory committee on reconstruction during the war, it would have a stabilizing effect on our whole economy. I might mention that back in 1934-35, when we had more than 1.000,000 unemployed, a group of businessmen took the trouble to come to Ottawa to appear before a parliamentary committee to outline plans they had to solve the unemployment problem by means of low-cost housing. They suggested that the government borrow money from the Bank of Canada and
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make it available for housing at 2 or 2i per cent, suggesting that the money that would be saved by undertaking a building program to produce 130,000 or 140,000 housing units in three years would take every able-bodied man's family off relief.
Before my time expires I would point out to the minister that there are a great many constructive proposals which have been made and which in my opinion should have been acted upon before now. I have here an article by Professor Arthur of the University of Toronto, who was a member of the committee responsible for drawing up this so-called Curtis report. In this article he says:
The desire for better housing, and better living standards generally is a post-war objective which is firmly rooted in the minds of people in all ranks of life. Construction work in the housing field can be of particular importance, both in providing employment opportunities for men demobilized from the armed forces, and for men released by war industries.
In his article he estimates the savings that would be effected if a large project could be undertaken rather than the building of individual houses. He suggests that if 100 dwellings were built, there would be a minimum saving of 10 per cent, a probable saving of 18 per cent and a maximum saving of 27 per cent; whereas if 1,000 dwelling units were built, there would be a minimum saving of 6 per cent, a probable saving of 20 per cent and a maximum saving of 35 per cent. But the government is not travelling in that direction. I received a letter from a builder in Edmonton who was complaining about the obsolete ideas that are still prevailing. He says:
The government is practically forcing old-fashioned methods on the building industry. If you choose to prefabricate parts of houses in a plant in order to achieve economies with machinery and production line techniques you are liable to federal sales tax of 8 per cent on some at least of the operations on the grounds that it is a manufacturing operation.
In this day and age I think it should be obvious that tremendous savings could be effected by building cupboards and a great many parts of houses inside in the wintertime, increasing the off-site work.
Professor Arthur has an interesting section on farm housing, in which he says:
We are inclined to assume too readily that the farmer and his family are happy with their outhouse, their oil lamps, lack of refrigeration and lack of bathing facilities, except where provided by a galvanized basin. Of the total farm dwellings in Canada (730,060), 677,100 or 92 - 7 per cent were without bathing facilities and 92 per cent lacked flush toilets.

That was when the last census was taken in 1941. The breakdown according to provinces is here. I will not take the time now to give it to the house. But'with over 90 per cent of the farm homes in this dominion without bathing facilities or flush toilets, one does not need to have much imagination to visualize what a tremendous stimulus would be given to the whole building trade if Canada would face up to solving its rural housing problem.
I have in my hand one of the reports from the Department of Reconstruction and Supply, entitled "Manpower and Material Requirements for a Housing Program in Canada." I should like to say to hon. members that this is an excellent study, showing what it would cost to undertake and complete 80,000 houses in Canada. The figures are as follows:
Materials	 $280,317,000
On-site labour	 200,227,000
Overhead and profits	 53,394,000
Total	 $533,938,000
That is for desirable standards. But if actual standards that we now use were employed, that amount could be written down to $440 million.
Then, over at page 66 of the book is given the amount of cement and the value in dollars that would be needed for this sort of project. I hope that businessmen across Canada will take a more active interest in trying to press the federal and provincial governments to enter this low-cost housing field in order to provide houses for people in the lower income brackets. The figures are as follows:
Cement, gravel and Sand	 $ 21,344,000
Brick, tile and stone	 13,920,000
Lumber and its products	 119,527,000
Lath, plaster and insulation materials	 31,693,000
Roofing materials	 8,109,000
Paint and glass	 8,978,000
Plumbing and heating equipment
[DOT]and fixtures	 52,050,000
Electrical equipment and fixtures 10,805,000 Other materials	 13,891,000
Total	 $280,317,000
The fact is that we have no shortage of any of these materials. For the minister to come to parliament and suggest that we are going to make it easier to get into the rental housing field, to provide rental housing that will be available at $75 and $80, is an insult to 75 per cent, yes, 85 per cent of the Canadian people. The only people who can take advantage of rentals of $75 and $80 a month are those who, somehow or another, would be able to find housing.

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In concluding my remarks, Mr. Speaker, I want to urge that the minister withdraw his proposed legislation and bring in a bill outlining comprehensive planning of our resources and manpower, taking into account the needs for housing. When, during the war, a flying Catalina was required, the fact that it cost $250,000 did not cause the minister to hesitate. Why does he get up in parliament and say that $6,800 per unit is the maximum limit that Canada will go for housing? Who knows that $6,800 is the limit our resources will provide? We do not want housing again where it is possible to get men on relief to supplement their incomes by working for twenty cents an hour. We do not want painters to supplement their incomes while on relief by painting houses for a song. We want those who are engaged in the housing industry to be paid union wages so that they, too, can look forward, on their incomes, to having houses.
As the minister in charge of housing in New Zealand told us when he was here during the war, when he took over the responsibility for housing, his objective was to see that every family in New Zealand would have a house, that every family would have a garden, that every individual in New Zealand would have a room in the house that he could call his own. So I submit that the minister cannot wait until we have a depression and until prices go down before facing up to the job of providing houses. Without any further delay the minister should convene a conference of representatives of government on the dominion, provincial and municipal levels, to work out the techniques in connection with the administration and managing, with a view to getting a start in slum clearance, low-rental housing and farm housing.


Mr. W. A. McMASTER (High Park):: I rise at this time in the debate, Mr. Speaker, to offer a few observations. I hope to say something constructive to the minister in charge of housing. As has already been said this afternoon by the hon. member for Parkdale (Mr. Timmins), the type of house that was being built, the five-room or four-room house, is uneconomical and is one that would last a family for only a short time. By the very nature of things, young families ultimately require larger houses. I spoke some time ago on this question, and I suggested to the minister that if the government wanted to produce homes for people, perhaps the semi-detached brick house which could be erected quickly, easily and cheaply would be a far better home than the type of house that has been built.
If you happen to fly over the city of Toronto, you will find some small houses; they look like playhouses, built here and there. They look fine from the air, but I suggest to the minister that the reason for the shortage of houses in the city of Toronto today is the fact that this type of house has been built. I do not know why it has been built. I assume it is being built by private builders as well as by government agencies, but for some reason or another this type of house has become popular. I believe one of these houses is shown in the literature which is given out by the national housing administration. Everybody buys it simply because he cannot get anything else. If the type of house with six rooms could be built, I suggest that the extra room in this house would largely provide for the people who are now without homes in Toronto. I believe that the situation is probably somewhat better today than it was a year or two years ago, but there is still a great deal of distress in the city of Toronto because of the housing shortage. From my own experience, I know of a case where a man who is at the present time in a tubercular sanitarium, cannot come home because his wife and child are living in one room alone. They need a house badly; yet they can neither get into their own house nor rent another one at a reasonable figure.
In Toronto, according to statistics which I believe to be correct, the number of persons per unit of housing is no greater now than it was in 1940, and probably no greater than during the worst of the depression. In greater Toronto in 1939, with a population of 868,000, some 200,000 housing units were available. In 1947, with an increase of 14-5 per cent in population to 993,000, there were 232,000 housing units, so that really the number of persons per unit has not increased. It is the distribution that is bad.
In this house I have called upon the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe), then Minister of Reconstruction and Supply, to put into effect the emergency legislation and compel people to share their a-ccommodation. I know it is not very nice for a person with a large house and a small family to have to share it, but if that legislation were put into operation I do not believe it would have to be used very much, because the situation would right itself by the very force of circumstances. Arrangements would be made by owners of large houses to bring people into their homes, which would mean that other accommodation would become available. A government that prevents a man from getting into his own home, which he has bought and paid for and badly needs* could just as easily use the emergency legisla-
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tion that is still in force to make available surplus accommodation in cities like Toronto.
I have said that the five-room house is not an economical design; indeed it is the most expensive. In the first place, a five-room house all on one floor is most uneconomical because it requires a large roof and large foundation, two expensive parts of a house. A six-room house requires no more public utilities. The same water main will do for six rooms as well as for four or five rooms. The same plumbing will do, and the same furnace, so that the actual cost of a six-room house as compared with a five-room house is not much greater, even if it were all on one floor. After all, to make a house four feet wider only means eight feet more of wall, and a very small amount of plastering, flooring and all the other things that go into a house. Every room has a door, and that door will do for a large room as well for a small one. So, from the point of view of economical building, the cost does not increase proportionately with the size of the house.
That is true of a one storey building. When you come to a two-storey home you have a smaller roof and a smaller foundation, and you have a house which can be subdivided more conveniently. In Toronto these five-room houses are all they can buy, unless they find an older house; and often when people buy one of these five-room houses they have to leave some of their relatives behind, because there is no place for them. As the hon. member for Parkdale pointed out this afternoon, a five-room house is meant for a family of only three, or at the most four; the couple themselves and a boy or a girl, or two boys or two girls. It is uneconomical in every respect; and even at that these houses cost so much that the poorer people of Toronto cannot afford to buy them.


Clarence Decatur Howe: If I may interrupt, our experience has been quite the reverse. We did build six-room houses at one time. In the early days we gave preference to four-room and six-room houses, and the four-room houses were by far the most popular. In many places six-room houses were difficult to rent. The five-room house was a compromise, which seems to have the most popular appeal. That is the reality of the situation.


William Alexander McMaster: My experience would be entirely different.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I think my hon. friend is theorizing, is he not?


William Alexander McMaster: No, I am not; I know what I am talking about. I know how the old six-room houses sold, and that people who bought them were able to obtain some

revenue by renting the upstairs. It is impossible to sublet part of a five-room house which is all on one floor. I should like to know where in Toronto six-room houses were built by Wartime Housing.


Clarence Decatur Howe: They were not built in Toronto. Toronto has built fewer houses in proportion than any city in Canada. The reason is that there is practically no land in Toronto on which to build houses.


William Alexander McMaster: If you speak of Toronto itself that may be true, but if you speak of greater'Toronto, while we have the lake on one side, there is unlimited land on the other.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Try to build houses there. Your experience may be better than mine.


William Alexander McMaster: I know something about building in Toronto. I know that in the township of York, close to the city, where they have water mains and sewers and all the utilities, and where land is available, they refused to allow the dominion to erect these houses because they would not conform to their fire by-laws. The dominion wanted to build frame houses.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Then your theory is that the dominion must meet the views of the municipality, rather than the municipality meeting the views of the dominion?


William Alexander McMaster: I am trying to answer the minister's statement that six-room houses were not popular, and that there was no land available in Toronto. There is plenty of good land, but the dominion did not buy good land. Wherever there was a little valley between a couple of hills, that was the land the dominion bought. The people are out there in mud during the spring and fall, and it will never be a really good residential district. I can tell you where one of those places is. It is just north of Weston. The dominion bought the worst land they could find. They went miles from good transportation when there was plenty of land available close to the city of Toronto, with all the public utilities necessary to make livable homes.


Clarence Decatur Howe: If my hon. friend would make some of that land available to Wartime Housing we would like to put some houses on it.


William Alexander McMaster: If Wartime Housing will come to me in Toronto I can give them a great deal of help.


Clarence Decatur Howe: But perhaps my hon. friend prefers just to talk about the matter.


William Alexander McMaster: I should know something about it. I have been in Toronto for forty-six

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years; I have practised law there. I have some idea not only of housing at the present time but of housing following the first great war, of housing following the boom which burst in 1913, and some idea of the housing situation in Toronto following the 1890 boom.
Mr. HOWE; I have built only forty thousand of them in the last five or six years.


William Alexander McMaster: You mean acting on
behalf of the Dominion of Canada?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes.


William Alexander McMaster: That is what I complain about; in my opinion you have not made a good job of it.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I would like the benefit of your broad experience, just the same.


William Alexander McMaster: I am only interested in behalf of the people who want houses.


Clarence Decatur Howe: What would be my interest, do you think?


William Alexander McMaster: Perhaps we are both interested in the same thing and are going at it in different ways. I am making suggestions which I believe are absolutely correct. The minister thinks differently, but I am sure he is wrong, because I know people want homes. At times in Toronto today when they want to get into homes they have bought they will say to the tenant, "Keep four rooms and give me two." I will admit that these are mainly the older houses, which have at least six rooms. You will find very few five-room cottages in older Toronto. In my own riding of High Park I suppose there must be twenty thousand houses, but I do not believe there are five hundred one-storey five-room houses among them. The houses are principally of the semi-detached type, with good people living in them.
After all, as the last speaker said, it is the people in the very low income brackets who want these homes in the worst way, and how can they pay 86,500, 87,500 or 88,500 for a little box of a house which would not be big enough for a family of any size? They do not want hardwood floors; they do not want all these fine things. They want a home to go to live in. I can say to the minister, who built 40,000 houses since then, that after every other depression there were always houses built, not completely finished. People went out and built their own homes. Perhaps they did not always have foundations under them. I think they made a mistake in that respect, because it costs more to do that after the house is built thrn before.
However, they built their own homes of five or six rooms, and started with those homes. It was a place to live in.
Today those homes will sell for almost anything, to people who can buy them. They are places to live in-and today they want places to which they can go. Unfortunately, the government in this building crusade upon which it has entered has tried to build small finely finished houses. They have waited for months to get plumbing for those houses. A person can, on the outskirts of Toronto, be without plumbing for a short time, so long as he has a place to sleep. They want places to which they can go, so that they will have something over their heads.
For this reason I say the government has made a tremendous mistake in building that type of house. These are frame houses, by the way. Frame houses, as a rule, use lumber which should be used in other parts of the house. There has been a shortage of material, in spite of what anybody says. There is a shortage of material and there has been a tremendous increase in the price of building materials.
What has been the cause of this increase in prices? I can give the answer to that. A booklet has been sent out by the Department of Reconstruction and Supply, dated January,
1948.	It goes on, with a great deal of pride, to tell what they have done for business people. It tells of the millions of dollars spent to build factories and other commercial places. They take it as a matter of pride that they have allowed 81,400,000,000 in depreciation to help in connection with the building of those factories and commercial houses.
The minister may say that is a good thing. It is; but not a good thing when you have competition with the building of private homes. The people have to have houses to live in; that is absolutely necessary. The building of factories, et cetera, should have been postponed until a later date, when the people had their homes provided for them. At that time the building of these factories could have been provided as, in fact, the minister indicated was the intention, so as to take up the slack at the time when there might be a recession. Unfortunately, however, he has gone ahead, and he has guessed wrongly. He thought the recession was coming sooner, and he allowed these factories to go ahead and to use up all the available materials for that type of building.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I am the only one who guessed right. I am the only man in this house who predicted that there would not be a depression after the war. Every Tory stood
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up and talked about the depression which would follow the war. My hon. friend knows that as well as I do.
Mr. MeMASTER: I did not hear what the minister said, but I did understand him to say that he predicted a depression.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I say that I was the only man in the house who has not predicted a depression.
Mr. MeMASTER: If you have not, then you have taken the very best means to see that, when a depression does come, it will be a very bad one; because you have spent the money, in a time like this.


Clarence Decatur Howe: You are predicting one now, are you? May I ask my hon. friend a question?
Mr. MeMASTER: Yes.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Does he say that when the war ended we should not have permitted any industrial construction at all in Canada, and that we should turn all hands to work at building houses? I would like him to answer that question yes or no. He is, in my opinion, making a very absurd speech.
Mr. MeMASTER: I cannot say yes or no, because there may have been some that were absolutely necessary.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I see.
Mr. MeMASTER: But I venture to say there was very little of it that was absolutely necessary. I say that people who had gone on manufacturing in a plant for many years could have continued without difficulty for several years longer without a new building, and it would have affected nobody's health. In the meantime these homes could have been built for people to live in.


Clarence Decatur Howe: No trouble about employing the million of people then engaged in war work?
Mr. MeMASTER: I am talking about something I know a little about.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Well, I have been carrying the responsibility for employment in this country for several years. I don't know the first thing about it!
Mr. MeMASTER: The minister said there was something he did not know a thing about. Well, it is interesting to know that. I should like him to say now what it is, because I do not think I could sleep without knowing what it was that he did not know anything about.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I said that I had been carrying the responsibility for seven or eight years, 
and I did not know the first thing about it. My hon. friend can tell me all about it at this stage.
Mr. MeMASTER: Well-


Clarence Decatur Howe: And he is glad to do it.
Mr. MeMASTER: The responsibility for carrying on during seven or eight years has not been the responsibility of building houses. After all, a man can have so much responsibility that he cannot look after everything. I got on my feet to offer some constructive criticism because-


Clarence Decatur Howe: And in my opinion you are offering something very silly.
Mr. MeMASTER: -it is my duty as a member of parliament to do it.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Very silly.
Mr. MeMASTER: With regard to the minister's program concerning housing, commercial building and other types of building, may I say I have seen a report made by the building commissioner for the city of Toronto in which he says that very few houses-only some few hundred-are being built in Toronto proper, as distinct from the suburbs. But up to May 1, or about May 1, 1947, $21,000,000 worth of permits had been taken out for commercial and other buildings, other than houses. With that competition between the building of factories and the building of houses, what is the inevitable result? Prices have gone up. Materials have been scarce. As a result, the houses which people are going to buy today are at prices which are simply ridiculous. They will lose those houses, as sure as your life. The government, after all, will take losses-and perhaps they can stand it. But the people will lose those houses, and all the money they have put into them.
I see them buying these new houses at around $8,500-five-roomed houses in districts which, to say the least, are not particularly high class. That is, they are being built among other houses which have been up for many years, and are more or less inferior so far as the type of construction is concerned. That is what the government is doing for these people. And when I say this-


Clarence Decatur Howe: The government is not doing it. The government have not built houses in Toronto.
Mr. MeMASTER: Well, the government takes a great deal of credit for building 77,000 of them. Perhaps they did not do it. I do not know. They did not do it all, because private enterprise is still doing-its part. But it is doing that part, despite the difficulties

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which have been made by the government of Canada in allowing this other building to go on.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Tory mentality is beyond me!


William Alexander McMaster: Is it not a fact that if materials were scarce at any time, and those materials are used up for something else, they are bound to be more scarce? The result is that labour was used up, in the building trades. Prices have gone up to such an extent that, while the builders themselves may have high wages, temporarily, a considerable portion of that goes back to the government by way of taxation. They will suffer from the results of a depression which will come, just the same as any other persons in the community. Everyone will suffer-not only those who cause them, but those who will be the unwitting victims.
I have referred to this accelerated depreciation. I did not intend to go into that tonight. It was just a statement of fact. However, perhaps we should examine it and see what is the result. We see that $1,400,000,000 of accelerated depreciation was given to people who have factories and other commercial building enterprises, for the purpose of helping them to build1. That may not be all they spent; I do not suppose it is. But that $1,400,000,000 would build 175,000 houses at $8,000 each. And you ought to build a pretty fair six-room house for $8,000.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Whose money is that accelerated depreciation? It is not government money.


William Alexander McMaster: That is what I am thinking about. I do not care; they have to get it from the government.


Clarence Decatur Howe: You cannot spend money you never had.


William Alexander McMaster: The government could have had it right in their mitt, if they had wanted it.


Clarence Decatur Howe: How?


William Alexander McMaster: By collecting it, the same as they collected on incomes from me and from other people.


Clarence Decatur Howe: To my knowledge we are collecting it just as fast, if it is accelerated.


William Alexander McMaster: I did not catch the minister's interruption. I could not get what he said.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Make your speech.


William Alexander McMaster: No. When I got to my feet I said I was going to speak for only a
few moments. I wanted to give the minister some help.


Clarence Decatur Howe: You would not let me choose where I think I could get help, would you?


William Alexander McMaster: I could not catch what the minister said, but I think I have the answer. Apparently the minister, who is a great man for undertaking great work, is going to persist in his bad ways and will not take the advice of others who perhaps know something about this problem, so we shall have to let him go ahead and do the best he can. But I suggest that something should be done as quickly as possible to relieve the situation which does exist in Toronto, and it is true of every other city. I can say to the minister I did not think the situation would last this long. I thought that, through the inevitable results of death and people moving, the situation would be relieved, but it has not been relieved to any extent. It is not quite as bad as it was, but it is still bad and I hope the minister will do his best to relieve it.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: Mr. Speaker, I am sorry the minister is upset, but I can assure him that he is not half as upset as people who have bought houses and cannot get into them. Pick up the paper any morning and read the cases that have come into court of people who have suffered nervous breakdowns and developed other conditions of bad health as a result of not being able to get into the houses they have purchased in good faith. I think rental regulations are absolutely imperative. We cannot permit people to start wholesale moving, even if they have bought houses. It would merely add to the confusion and congestion.
I have in my hand a page from a Winnipeg newspaper which is undertaking to inform the public as to the actual conditions under which people are forced to live. It is not only the person on a low income or without wages who is now finding himself in this terrible and distressing position, but there just are not enough living units for our population, and while I think the immigration policy of the government is perfectly justified-no one will say that we could not use immigrants and no one will say that we have not the responsibility to take immigrants-yet no one can deny that by admitting immigrants we are just adding to the demand for more housing and our situation will thereby become much worse instead of better.
I have in this paper pictures of families huddled in one room, under the most trying sort of family arrangements. If the minister
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would only set up housekeeping and try to live with three or four people in one room, do the dishes, dry the baby's laundry, and try to look after the children doing their homework, with someone in the household perhaps working on a night shift, he would know what these conditions mean to family life. It is a wonder that there are not more families breaking up and more mothers in mental hospitals and more fathers running away and deserting their families. I do not wonder that fathers leave home and mothers go crazy under such conditions. I am surprised that there are not more cases of that kind when one considers the strain we put on human beings by forcing them to accept this sort of living conditions.
I am holding in my hand a picture of one family. Their residence consists of one room, measuring nine by twelve feet. Five persons-a couple and their three children- live in that one room. The father, who was evicted from another home two months ago, has been searching for a suite since he first brought his family to this room, but cannot find anything within his ability to pay, which is $25.
The three children in this family, aged six, four and two, use the muddy, junk-strewn, half-lane shown in the photo as a playground. Beyond it is a busy street screaming with continuous traffic. That single door is the entrance to their room where the two-year old youngster, on account of lack of room, must sleep in a baby carriage. Three administrations-civic, provincial and federal-have faced the problem of Winnipeg's shocking housing conditions, but the problem still remains unsolved.
The newspaper goes on to point out that there are places where there are empty houses, but they are not being used because the cost of occupancy is beyond the means of the people who should be occupying a home.
I want to suggest to the minister that, although many thousands of homes have been built under various schemes, there is no use in considering this housing situation as a temporary emergency. Old and well-developed democracies like Great Britain, the United States and Sweden, and any civilized country that attempts to care for the needs of its population, have been forced to enter the field of subsidized low-rental housing. There is nothing new about it; there is nothing risky about it; there is no debate about it. Every country with any regard for human decency undertakes it as a permanent feature of modern civilization. It is as simple and basic as that, and it is time we accepted that as a principle

and quit thinking in terms merely of the financial angle of it, as we do at present.
The National Housing Act has built many houses and will build many more, but it is designed to give the greatest assistance to those who need it the least. It is designed to make a very profitable investment outlet for the life insurance companies, which get five per cent on their money with no risk. It is a life insurance housing scheme which is completely beyond the reach of the people who need it most, the people who are living under the conditions described and pictured in this paper. I should like to send it over to the minister.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Are you sure it is safe for me to read it?


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: 
Clarence Decatur Howe: What has that- to do with wages in 1948?


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: What has the cost of living to do with it? The cost of living today far more than cancels out any gain in wages.
I think most people agree with me. They are not on cabinet ministers' salaries, and they are trying to live within their incomes. According to the Canada Year Book for 1947, approximately 80 per cent of the total labour force made less than $2,000 in 1946. Our own figures indicate that at least a third of our people will never be able to own their own homes because they have large families and small incomes. I wish to point out to the minister that it is the people with small incomes who have the large families. It has always been so.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Is that so?


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: Yes, and the minister only needs to look at his own figures.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I do not agree.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: I am not going to argue biology with the minister, but I am suggesting what the statistics seem to indicate. We find that some countries have undertaken to meet the needs of these families. For instance, we find that Sweden has undertaken to reduce the rent as the family goes up. That is a very useful and sensible thing to do and it should be supported. Under the Swedish housing plan, we find that a family with one child receives a 10 per cent rebate from the city; a family with two children receives a 20 per cent rebate, and so on up to as high as 70 per cent, on the initial rent. Thus, a family with three children would pay $250 rent a year for a smart three-roomed flat with kitchen and bath, instead of $360, while a family with five children would pay only $180 for the same flat.
I do not think the private home owner can afford to subsidize children. Canada is investing quite considerable sums in her children. The biggest payment in our social security
expenditure is our family allowances, and I think it is the soundest expenditure made. This year it will cost us $267 million to help to see that our children get such things as milk, oranges and shoes. If we are to spend $267 million on family allowances we should spend something on subsidized housing to make sure that these families have enough sleeping accommodation, a decent area in which to play, planned residential areas where there are parks and playgrounds and where traffic does not come. We have to begin to plan for people in this country instead of planning for life insurance and investment companies. Our utter contempt of human beings is abominable, and it is time that we began to see the human factor in this housing need, and arrange our finances accordingly.
There is not much more that I want to say, except to repeat that every civilized country in the world is doing something about a permanent long-term plan for subsidized low-rental housing. I have seen them in Washington; I have seen them around New York;
I have seen them in many places. New Zealand has done wonderful work. I saw their houses. They imported Canadian lumber to build them. We have not an excuse in this country. The fact that after the war we began to build cocktail bars, bowling alleys and theatres is a reflection-


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: The government?


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: We permitted these people to go into that kind of thing. The government did it. These things absorbed our building supplies, and I do not think we should ever have denied the children of this country and permitted these people to build these luxury and unnecessary things which could have waited. The families of this country should come first. When you see that New York is going to pour $325 million into housing in three categories, not only subsidized housing but other kinds as well, it makes you stop and think. New York is going into non-subsidized housing, paying economic rent, because they see that there are people who can afford to pay rent but are not getting places because private enterprise cannot begin to meet the needs of construction.
In the March 22 issue of the Christian Science Monitor an excellent survey of New York's plans appears. It covers veterans housing, non-subsidized housing and subsidized housing for the low-rental group. Therefore I would urge the minister to bring Canada back to the level of other civilized countries and as a permanent plan, to embark on a provision for this kind of assistance to people who
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will not otherwise be housed decently. Surely we have some responsibility to see that every Canadian has a good home and a good environment in which to raise healthy children.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who has just taken her seat has given a good illustration of running down Canada.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker-


Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER:: Order.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: I should like to ask the hon. member how I ran down Canada when I quoted figures from our own reports to show something for which Canada should be ashamed. Is that running down Canada?


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: Read it in Hansard
tomorrow.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: Is telling the truth about Canada running her down?


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: If the hon. member does not remember what she said she may read it in Hansard tomorrow.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: Well, stick to the facts.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: In following the speeches which have been delivered from the other side of the house, I do not want to be critical of any party or of any person who has taken part in the debate.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: Be critical of the right things.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: I believe they try to put things as plain as they can, but I do not take the attitude that I should run down Canada or compare it with any other country. I believe that Canada takes first place amongst the countries of the world.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: Are you defending her slums?


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: I do not intend to place all the blame on the government; I do not intend to take newspaper clippings and send them to the minister.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: You should.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: I do not intend to do that, because these conditions will prevail, and it does not make any difference what you do. If families will not look after themselves it does not matter what the government does; they will still be the same. The example that was brought before the house tonight was that of a family which had become dissolved. The man had left and the woman had to get along as best she could. These people had been responsible for their own condition, and no blame whatsoever rests on the government.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: That was your illustration. It was not mine.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: I saw that picture in the Free Press some two months ago.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: It is not the same one. The illustration the hon. member used is not the one I used. Mine was since May 1.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: Some hon. members have blamed the government for the shortage of houses. That is not true, because during wartime a good many people moved from the country into the city. They took up houses near manufacturing plants and war plants and they are still there. They do not wish to go back to the farms, and'one cannot blame them, because the accommodation on most farms is not nearly as good as it is in the city. However, most of the speakers who have taken part on the opposition side have laid all the blame on the government's doorstep. Such is not the case.


Charles Edward Johnston: Where else would you put it?


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: I will put it where it belongs, if you give me time.


Charles Edward Johnston: You will be kicked out of the party if you do.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: The hon. member who has made the interjection has been very helpful, because if many people in Canada today were to do what he has done, use their ten fingers and get. busy with a hammer and do some work, they would have homes. Ihe hon. member has had the good fortune to see his own home completed, and if many other people would do the same there would not be the trouble we have today.


Solon Earl Low: He apologized.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: In fairness I must say that I refer to the hardworking gentleman representing Bow River (Mr. Johnston). There is one thing that I do not like to see continuing, and that is the rise in the cost of housing. While the opposition has been steadily pounding at the continued rise in the cost of housing, no solution has yet been proposed. We all know that in 1939 we could build a house for approximately half what we have to pay today. I built a twelve-roomed house in 1943 and it cost me S5,900. Anyone who wishes to see a picture of it can come up to my room and I will show him one. It is all stuccoed, has electric lights and every convenience. Since that time, labour costs have risen from sixty cents an hour to $1.60.

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In Windsor at the present time carpenters are on strike holding up construction; bricklayers were on strike a while ago holding up construction; electricians have been on strike holding up construction. They will not work for less than $1.65 an hour and they do not do half a day's work compared with what they used to do.
The ordinary man who wants to have a plumbing job done for $5 or $10 cannot get an ordinary plumber but a man who has joined a union and who is paid $2 an hour for fiddling around the pipe. By the time he gets the job done his bill is approximately $50. I do not care what anyone says; I will say here and now that labour has to be told when the end is reached. When a man works eight hours a day and gets $20 he is not getting what should be coming to him. The people who work in order to provide food for the nation, producing it from the sea and the land, have to work also. People must be told that if they are to survive they have to work for what they get.
We have been debating freight rates at considerable length in this house. I am off the subject at the moment, but as soon as things are ironed out and there is enough money so that the railways can balance things, there is another threatened strike for a 25 per cent or 30 per cent increase. I know there was a time when I worked for thirty cents an hour and got $2.40 a day. Now they are asking for an increase of thirty cents an hour all at once. These things have to stop, or we shall have a serious depression and labour will be the first to suffer.


Mr. CAMPBELL:: Are you speaking for the government?


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: As I said before, the cost of housing is too high for the average man; unless we can find some way of building a house for the average man, it will cost between $4,000 and $5,000, and in my honest opinion he will never be able to pay for it. But there are many people who are looking for high-class houses and are driving $2,000 automobiles. The luxuries come first.
We might as well face the facts right now. We have to cut our coat according to our cloth, and if there were more people who had that frame of mind the situation would be greatly relieved.


Mr. BRYCE:: May I ask the hon. gentleman a question? After his disparaging remarks about labour unions, does he remember when he and I were taking $1 a hundred for milk and formed a milk producers' association to enable us to get a better price for our
product? Through the efforts of that union that he and I formed, we get $4.05 today. Why object to the other fellow protecting himself?


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: The hon. member's question is very helpful. At that time we were producing milk, but the labourers are not producing labour.


William Ross Macdonald: Shall the
motion carry?


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, just one minute. Coming as I do from a city where the housing problem is a serious one, I felt that I should be taking part in this debate; but when I consider the seriousness of the housing problem and the complete failure of the government to give leadership, the emptiness of this legislation is so apparent that, so far as I am concerned, it is not worth talking about.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Mr. Speaker, I wish to say a few words in closing the debate.


William Ross Macdonald: With unanimous consent the minister may speak again.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I am entitled to close the debate.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, no.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Go ahead.
Mr. 1IOYE: I thought I had the privilege of closing the debate.


William Ross Macdonald: The house has given unanimous consent.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I wish to say just a few words.


Mr. ROSS (Souris):: Make it snappy.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I shall not be long. I would judge from the remarks which have been made that Canada is doing very little in housing. It has been pointed out that we have a report, the Curtis report, made in 1943, and it has been quoted by every member who has risen to speak. The problem of Canada was to build 750,000 houses in the first ten years after the war. That is the Curtis report. The war ended on September 1, 1945, and it is now 1948, about two and a half years having elapsed. In the two and a half years we have completed well over 200,000 houses. In fact, we are moving at an accelerated rate, and it should be well over 450,000 houses at the end of five years. By the end of ten years it should be at least 1,000,000
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houses, so that we are building at a rate which should be satisfactory according to the Curtis report.
Anyone familiar with statistics knows that Canada has completed, since the end of the war, more houses per capita than any other country in the world. You have only to read tonight's paper in which you will find that the vice-president of Queen's university, speaking in Ottawa last night to the mortgage association, made the statement that Canada had built more houses per capita than any country in the world since the war.


John Ritchie MacNicol: Per capita?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes. People like to talk about distant places. Well, it so happens that I have the report on New Zealand's housing before and since the war, and it makes the statement that New Zealand, since the war, has built fifty-three houses per 10,000 of population, while in Canada we have built seventy-five houses per 10,000.
There is one point I wish to make. Everyone talks about the need of ho'uses for Canada and talks about subsidized housing as a means of getting these houses built. May I point out that the two questions are absolutely different. The need of Canada at the moment is for roofs over families. That is, the need is for houses; and houses are being built as rapidly as they can be built. It has been suggested here that the government is being niggardly in the matter. The government have not failed to build any houses because the money has not been available. Last year the government built practically every house that every city in Canada would ask us or permit us to build. We were sorry that we could not carry out the program which we planned last year because we could not persuade cities to make the lands available for us to build. This year we have built every house that any city would permit us to build. As I stated, we wanted to build
12,000	houses. At the rate we are going, in closing off the program at June 1 as has been our custom, we shall not succeed in having 12.000 started for the reason that people will not invite us to build houses.
As far as mortgage money is concerned, there has been no limit on it. Any one who wants to borrow under the National Housing Act is free to do so. There is no limitation there. I just want to point out that fact, because everyone who gets up says that the government is being niggard!}7, that it is stingy about this and stingy about that.
What about subsidized housing? Subsidized housing does not build one more house, and

it would not build one more house. It would just change the economic level of the people who occupy the houses that are built. Every house that is built is occupied. My hon. friend has stated that in Winnipeg there are houses which are unoccupied. I venture to say that there are no more than one week's construction of houses that are unoccupied in Winnipeg. We are constantly getting demands from there for more houses, and we are building more houses. I was out there last summer when we had 2,300 houses under construction in Winnipeg. It was an eye-opener to me to see how many houses 2,300 actually are. I went up one street and down another for all of one day to see the construction that Wartime Housing was doing in that city.
The point is this. Canada needs houses. These houses are occupied by people who are able to pay the rent. I say that because they are paying the rent. The arrears in rent in all Canada are less than one week's rent; there are practically no arrears in rent in all Canada. There may be people who cannot pay the minimum rent. But those people are under cover and I think it will be agreed that, as long as people who are able to pay economic rent cannot get houses, they are the first people entitled to obtain them.
The day may come when subsidizing rentals or subsidizing houses may enable houses to be found by people who do not have them today. But that is not today. It is absolute nonsense to talk about Canada's housing problem being due to lack of subsidization. It has nothing at all to do with the number of houses being built. I simply want to make that point. Since I am speaking by unanimous consent, I should not speak too long.
Having made the first point, I will make my other remarks in committee. Before sitting down, I should like to make a few remarks about the speech delivered by the hon. member for High Park (Mr. McMaster). I dare say he is an eminent lawyer, and I claim some little fame in building. But I must say that if he knows anything about building, I will admit that I know nothing about law. However, Mr. Speaker, I will finish my remarks in committee.
Motion (Mr. Howe) agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Golding in the chair.


Mr. HANSELL:: I did not speak in the debate on the motion to go into committee, Mr. Chairman, and I do not intend to speak now. I want to ask the minister just one question. I have always been under the impression that some sort of subsidization plan would help the people of Canada in a house

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building program, particularly those in the lower income brackets. I am not overly critical of what the government have tried to do with respect to housing. When I go into various cities and find the vast building program that has been going on over the years, I am quite confident that something at least has been done. But that does not render the situation any less important when there is still a housing crisis.
As I see it, the picture is that the people in the lower income brackets apparently cannot afford to build under present conditions. That is a serious matter. A person with a fair income, provided that he can scrape together $1,000 or $2,000, after passing or complying with all sorts of rules and regulations, eventually may be able to purchase on some long-term payment plan. But all people are not in the fair-size income brackets. Some people are in the small income brackets, and when it comes to renting any place today they are required to pay a larger rent than I believe they can afford with their incomes. The question I want to ask is this. The minister has just said that a subsidization plan would not help the housing situation today. Does he mean to say that if there were a subsidization plan, no more houses would be built than are being built today? Is that what he means to say?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes, that is exactly what I mean to say. I may say that the province of Ontario have started a subsidization plan. They are willing to pay up to $1,200 a house after the government gets through lending money. I venture the opinion that the plan will not put one additional roof over one additional family in this countiy over the next year or two.


Ernest George Hansell: To me that does not seem to be reasonable. What reason has the minister to believe that? If there were a subsidization plan, it simply means that money would be available in larger quantities than it is today. Or if you want to put it in another way, if there were a subsidization plan, the cost of building would be reduced. It must help somewhere if there is a subsidization plan. What reason is there, then, for saying that there would not be more building than there is now.


Clarence Decatur Howe: May I answer that by saying that the reason is that houses at any prices sell today. They all sell. The fact that they sell for $4,000 instead of $8,000 would not build any more houses. All houses that can be built today can be sold for their economic price,


Ernest George Hansell: Even that does not make it plain to me. It may be plain to the minister. but not to me. Suppose I wanted to build
a house and I was able to get money through some sort of subsidization plan, it seems to me I would likely start building, if I could not get a house any other way. That would be another house being built; and if several thousand people were in a similar financial position, then it would amount to several thousand homes. It seems to me that the answer must be that either material or labour is not available, or perhaps both; and if that is the case that may be the answer.


Clarence Decatur Howe: It is the answer.


Ernest George Hansell: But in that case my suggestion would be that it must be somebody's responsibility to see that the production of building material is speeded up; and I do not think anyone is more capable of seeing to that than the government in power. That is my way of looking at the situation.
There is another matter in connection with low-rental housing. Has the government considered at all the building of small apartment blocks for the housing of perhaps four to eight families at really low rentals? When I say "low rentals" I do not mean $40 or $50. I think the figure of $38 was mentioned the other day. I do not call $38 a low rental. I call a low rental something like $18 or $20 or $25, which is about as much as the average wage earner can afford to pay. Has the government considered that? It seems to me that such apartments, not cheaply built but perhaps frame structures, or of the stucco type-not of brick and with a lot of fancy things that are unnecessary-built at reasonable cost to house four to eight families, with the same heating unit for all, could be rented at reasonable rates. I am not a businessman, and I am speaking only from my own common sense in the matter, but has the government considered anything of that kind?


Clarence Decatur Howe: My hon. friend is describing a popular type of rental unit in Montreal, which is the cold-water flat. It is a building with from four to eight apartments, built at as low a cost as apartments can be built; but the rentals for those apartments are not in the range mentioned by my hon. friend. The cheapest unit than can be built is the five-room bungalow, and that is the popular house today.


Charles Edward Johnston: What does that rent for?


Clarence Decatur Howe: In 1946 we were renting those five-room bungalows for about $23 a month. Today new houses rent for from $35 to $37.50.


Angus MacInnis: The first provision of this resolution authorizes approved lending institutions to purchase from the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation mortgages held by
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that corporation. How did the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation acquire those mortgages, and what is the reason for selling them?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Well, the central mortgage
corporation has been selling wartime houses, taking a down payment and a mortgage and giving title to the house. It holds those mortgages, and we are now being authorized to sell them to the insurance companies if it seems wise to do so at any stage. We have not that power today.
In this connection I want to say just one thing. Everybody is sneering at the insurance companies and saying we are protecting them. What is an insurance company? It represents the savings of the Canadian people. This is not some great corporation that is making huge profits out of this business; it is a company that is looking after your savings and mine. I hope there is not a man in this house who has not life insurance. W'hen we say we are protecting the insurance companies, we are protecting the savings of the Canadian people invested in life insurance, the greatest pool of investment money in this country. My C.C.F. friends can sneer at people who buy insurance and try to protect their old age, but I offer this house no apology for sponsoring legislation that will prevent the insurance funds of this country from being lost in a government housing venture.
Mr. MaeINNIS: I object to the minister referring to the C.C.F. as sneering at this. I am not sneering at the minister or at anything he does.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I realize that. I was referring to other speeches.
Mr. MaeINNIS: The minister says the insurance companies are using his money and mine. Well, the government is collecting my money and his, and if a profit can be made out of these mortgages-and I cannot see the insurance companies buying them if a profit cannot be made-there is no reason why the government should not act in that capacity and save that amount of taxation. The question I asked is perfectly reasonable. Now the government has to go into the housing business to guarantee, by this measure, the money the insurance companies invest in housing. If the government itself is investing in housing at a profitable rate, why should the government have to sell these mortgages to the insurance companies?


Clarence Decatur Howe: So that the money recovered from the mortgages can be used to build more houses.
Mr. MaeINNIS: Can it not be used to build more houses if the government has the mortgages? Cannot the government handle a revolving housing fund just as an insurance company does?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Not if it keeps the money frozen in mortgages.
Mr. MaeINNIS: The insurance companies are not building houses. The only effective low-rental housing is that which has been built by the government itself.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes, but I am pointing out to my hon. friend that the government may wish to build houses, that it may want to use the money recovered from the sale of those houses to build still more. It cannot do so if all that money is tied up in mortgages. You cannot spend a mortgage in building a house. We are only taking power to do this in the event that we may want liquid funds. To have a revolving fund we must keep it liquid; and the only way we can keep the fund liquid is to sell the mortgages.
Mr. MaeINNIS: My hon. friend cannot have it both ways. If the insurance companies buy these mortgages they wrill not have the funds to invest in further house building, any more than the government would. I am using the minister's own argument now. The argument the minister has presented is not sensible, and is not the kind I think he can put up if he wishes.


Clarence Decatur Howe: It is perfectly logical. Suppose the government has $500 million invested in houses, and it sells perhaps $50,000,000 worth. It would like to replace those houses it has sold by building another $50,000,000 worth of houses. You may say it has $50,000,000 because it has just sold houses worth that much, but it has not that money in a spendable form. It has an investment in mortgages for the most part. The insurance companies have free money because they have premium income which requires to be invested. You cannot invest money and spend it too.
Mr. MaeINNIS: Is the government going to build more houses with the money it will get from the sale of these mortgages?


Clarence Decatur Howe: I do not know. We are simply taking this power that we want, so that we shall not have to borrow from the treasury.

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Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: The minister cannot expect us to accept that sort of explanation. During the war, when emergency housing was needed, the government did not have to go to the insurance companies to get the necessary capital to build wartime housing. The job was done without that. The minister should give us some more sensible explanation as to why this time it is proposed to turn the job over to the insurance companies. The other day the minister's speech indicated that the relationship with Housing Enterprises, a subsidiary of the insurance companies, was quite unsatisfactory. For him now to propose, as this resolution sets out-
... to authorize approved lending institutions to purchase from Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation mortgages held by the said corporation and to make loans to owners of rental housing . . .
-is not a satisfactory explanation. He should indicate what the plans are. Does the government propose to reinvest in additional wartime housing, if certain securities are sold to the insurance companies?


Clarence Decatur Howe: We may do that.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: If the minister does not wish to answer at this stage, possibly tomorrow he can give us the information. I would ask him to explain the difference between rental insurance and subsidized housing. The hon. member for Vancouver-Burrard referred to a speech made by the Secretary of State for External Affairs some time ago, in which the minister said, "No government of which I form a part will ever pass legislation for subsidized housing."
It would appear to me that, while this is not. called subsidized housing, it is doing the thing which the Secretary of State for External Affairs said that no government of which he formed a part would do. The only difference is that this is guaranteeing that certain lending institutions will have a fixed income which will cover taxes, services, operating expenses, repairs, renewals, replacements, and a reasonable return on investments.
According to this, public funds will be taken from the consolidated revenue fund of our country to subsidize one group. Would the minister explain to the committee the difference between rental insurance and subsidized housing?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Rental insurance is like any other insurance in that a fund is set up. It will be understood that this rental insurance is not given free. The government charges a rate which it believes, on the average, will keep the fund solvent. However, the consolidated revenue fund is behind that insurance fund. If a terrible depression were to come upon us, such as my hon. friend loves to predict, and has done, ever since the war, the fund might become insolvent, and the revenue fund would have to get behind it. On the other hand, we might keep a Liberal government in power for a long time, and have prosperous times, in which event the fund would make a great deal of money.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: I do not think a depression is necessary. But I would remind the minister that in 1945 he brought in a white paper anticipating that a depression would come, and outlining the course Canada should follow.


Clarence Decatur Howe: No-taking steps to prevent a depression.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: Well, the minister's own words then were that a depression was coming, and that these were proposals. But would the minister give us more details as to the nature of this rental insurance, and to what extent the treasury is committed to expenditures under it? We should have more details.


Clarence Decatur Howe: This is all quite out of order. We are speaking on the resolution. Discussion as to details would be proper when we reach the bill. But the bill has not yet been introduced.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: I suggest that members are entitled to information regarding the speech the minister made earlier, and that we might have that on the resolution stage. I refer particularly to page 3641 of Hansard. I suggest that he should at least explain what he meant in his speech, and to what extent people are to meet expenditures.


Clarence Decatur Howe: The hon. member is asking about what will be in the bill. He will find that out when the bill is brought down.


Mr. JACKMAN:: Will the minister say whether or not, in computing the various charges against rental property-and he has mentioned taxes, services and operating expenses, repairs, renewals, replacements and a reasonable return-he is including any sum for depreciation of the property?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes.


Harry Rutherford Jackman: That will be there, too.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes.


Harry Rutherford Jackman: I do not wish to see the resolution passed this evening, because there are other questions I should like to ask.
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Coming from a riding such as Rosedale, in the city of Toronto, where the Regent Park development is taking place, I believe the minister will be well aware of conditions in certain sections of my constituency. May I point out to him that, while he said a short time ago that if we had subsidization or some other form of government assistance there would not be any more houses built, I do not think that statement is fully warranted from all aspects.
I would point out to the committee that, while in Toronto there is not much land available for large-scale developments, there is plenty of land for apartment houses and the building of duplexes. A year ago the total amount of construction which went into housing development was 15 per cent. The report of the building commissioner of that city was made available recently. That report is for last year, and it shows that the amount of building construction in 1947 which went into the construction of houses was 6-6 per cent. The reason for that is that the other 93-4 per cent went into commercial and industrial construction-moving picture palaces, of which there were a considerable number, warehouses, branches of factories and additions to various other forms of construction where a profit could be obtained.
The reason that type of development is not restrained in any way is that the cost of construction of a property for business purposes is a relatively small element in the affairs of the business. On the other hand, when a man builds a house it involves a very large
portion of his total budget. He cannot afford the high material costs and high wage rates which go into the building.
I suggest to the minister that if we had had some form of control-and it would have to be in this instance some form of federal control, because the municipalities were competing with each other in the matter of building -we would have had more houses available for veterans and other people who are in dire need at the present time.
For that reason I suggest to the minister that his department and the government have not carried out the housing program as they should have. There should have been some form of direction of these matters, so that more houses could have been built-not necessarily within the political confines of a ci1y like Toronto, but in the suburbs around the city where a limited amount of housing construction is going on.
Progress reported.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. BRACKEN:: What is the business for tomorrow?


Mr. ILSLEY:: Agriculture estimates all day, with the exception of the hour for private bills between eight and nine o'clock.


[Stage Direction]
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
[Stage Direction]
Friday, May 7, 1948