1948-02-05

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. G. K. FRASER (Peterborough West):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask a question of the Minister of Trade and Commerce. What steps have been taken by the dominion travel bureau and other agencies of the government to inform the American people that entry into Canada and travel regulations are the same now as they have been for some years, and that citizens of the United States are very welcome to Canada and will receive the most courteous treatment?


Right Hon. C. D. HOWE (Minister of Trade and Commerce):: I have not been able to get in touch with the travel bureau since receipt of the notice in question, so I shall reserve my detailed answer until later. I might say, however, that I have consulted with the director of the bureau about advertising along the lines indicated, and I am sure considerable work has been accomplished.



AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS ACT


[Stage Direction]
Right Hon. J. G. GARDINER (Minister of Agriculture) moved that the house go into committee at the next sitting to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to bring in a measure to amend the Agricultural Products Act by providing that the act shall be continued in force until the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and forty-nine.
He said: His Excellency the Governor General, having been made acquainted with the subject matter of this resolution, recommends it to the consideration of the house.
Motion agreed to.


[Stage Direction]
Hon. DOUGLAS ABBOTT (Minister of Finance) moved that the house go into committee at the next sitting to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to bring in a measure to amend the Farm Improvement Loans Act, 1944, to extend its operation for a further period of three years and the guarantee for the said period on the same terms as for the original three-year period.
He said:	His Excellency the Governor
General, having been made acquainted with the subject matter of this resolution, recommends it to the consideration of the house.
Motion agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from' Wednesday, February 4, consideration of the motion of Mr. Mackenzie King that a select committee be appointed to examine and report on the causes of the recent rise in the cost of living, and matters pertaining thereto.
Mr. LOW:: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, before consideration of this motion is proceeded with I should like to suggest that to discuss it today will be completely out of order. According to the rules of the house unanimous consent is necessary if the prescribed order as it is set out on the order paper is to be deviated from. No consent has been asked for or granted. I submit it would be a breach of the privileges of members of this house if consent were not asked for and obtained.


Mr. MACKENZIE KING:: Hon. members who were present in the house just before the adjournment last evening must have heard me announce that today we continue with the debate on this particular motion. There was
Prices Committee

no exception taken at the time to that notice. Where exception is not taken to a course of procedure it is generally assumed that the house is giving its consent.
May I point out to my hon. friend that last week I indicated that for three days this week we would take up matters relating to the emergency measures and for two days we would take up the debate on the address. However, hon. gentlemen opposite, professing to be very anxious to have progress made in the inquiry into the rise in prices, asked that we give precedence to the motion to establish a committee for that purpose. I obtained the unanimous consent of the house to that and on Monday and Tuesday we went ahead1 with the debate on that motion. When Wednesday came I asked the three leaders opposite as to whether there would be any objection to our continuing the debate on the motion.


Solon Earl Low: On Wednesday.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: If my hon. friend- wishes to narrow the issue down to that point, well and good. I know what was in my mind and I am not so sure that I did not express it to all.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I think hon. gentlemen will find that it is to their interest to know what was in my mind and that they will agree that it was sound judgment that we continue this debate until it is finished. That is what I understood was being agreed to. The same reasons that would apply in regard to giving precedence to the motion for a committee on Monday and Tuesday should govern in regard to Wednesday, and if they governed in regard to Wednesday they should govern also in regard to Thursday. May I say to hon. gentlemen that I am at a loss to understand what is in their minds in regard to the tactics they are pursuing, but I had thought that they were anxious that progress should be made in regard to the setting up of a committee to investigate the rise in prices. If they wish not to expedite the work of appointing a committee for this purpose; if they wish to hold to technicalities in something that has been said with respect to progress or business in other directions and not give their consent to this priority, I am not going to object, but the responsibility will rest on them if days pass before this committee is appointed.


Solon Earl Low: May I make it clear that I have no objection whatever to priority being granted, but I do think that the rules should

be observed and the rights of members protected. It is only because of that that I wished to raise the point.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The rules have been observed.


Mr. GRAYDON:: The rules have not been observed; that is the difficulty.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: May I say to my bon. friend that in order to oblige his party I asked this house to give its unanimous consent to having a measure which they professed to be interested in on the order paper given precedence over all else, and obtained that consent. If objection is to be raised1 to pursuing a course when it is taken at their request, we have made the endeavour to meet that kind of request for the last time so far as I am concerned.


Gordon Graydon: There is no reason for losing one's temper over it.


Mr. J. H. MATTHEWS (Kootenay East):: Mr. Speaker, when the house adjourned last evening I was speaking on the resolution moved by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) to institute a parliamentary investigation. I was expressing my firm conviction that at this critical time the Canadian people do not want a parliamentary committee, that what they want is immediate government action, action quite within the scope of the powers which the government possesses. I was referring to the serious coal strike which is now in progress in Alberta and British Columbia. I assert again that that strike is directly attributable to the fact that the coal miners' take-home pay has shrunk so greatly in purchasing power.
Unfortunately this is not the end. I am informed that the loggers and woodworkers of British Columbia are becoming increasingly restive and that they are contemplating new wage demands. In addition many thousands of unorganized workers all across the dominion are longing and praying for some immediate relief from the strain. I do not profess to believe for one moment that operating costs have no bearing on prices. Of course they have. When increases in wages are granted they are always followed by higher prices for the goods produced, whether it be coal, lumber or any other product. But increased wages are only one factor in increased prices. Wages never do catch up with prices in that kind of race. What I want to know is where this thing is going to end. There simply has to be a limit somewhere. By and large the Canadian people are patient and understanding. They follow the trend of national and

Prices Committee
international affairs, and they know that their government is bound to be faced at times with circumstances not of their own making and beyond their control. This is definitely not one of those peculiar circumstances. This is a situation which the government can and must correct. It has the power to do it but it seems to lack the will.
What are the Prime Minister and his cabinet afraid of? Are they afraid to admit that their decontrol policy was wrongly timed? The country believes that it was. Let the Prime Minister frankly and courageously admit that he and his ministers were in error in their estimation of the times; let him take drastic and immediate steps to rectify that error, and I can assure him that he need have no fear of the people of this country. I want to warn the Prime Minister and the government that if something is not done, and done quickly, the cry of the Canadian people for the control of their cost of living will develop into a tidal roar demanding the resignation of the government on the grounds of inefficiency and irresponsibility.
Before I take my seat I want to refer to the speech made by the Prime Minister when he introduced this resolution on Monday, February 2. I listened as carefully as I could to what he had to say, but I admit I was hampered by the bad acoustics of this chamber. Comparing this particular speech with others he has delivered in the house it seemed to me that the right hon. gentleman was altogether on the defensive. He was trying to make a bad situation look good, and personally I think he failed. Perhaps he will permit me to tell him that I think he is at his best when he is leading an attack. The particular part of his speech to which I wish to refer is to be found in Hansard, of Monday, February 2, at page 751, where he said:
Let me add this one word in conclusion. Hon. gentlemen opposite will doubtless continue to criticize, will doubtless belittle, wall doubtless question the motives of the government in respect of this matter. But what will tell in the end as to what they really believe will be seen when they show where they stand, not by their words, but by their votes on the appointment of this committee. I will venture to say that the numbers who will vote against the appointment of a committee to investigate this important question of rising prices and the cost of living will be mighty few indeed, if indeed there be any at all.
If the Prime Minister meant that in any way as a threat, or if he thinks that we of the opposition can be intimidated or dragooned into submission, let me say this. Speaking for myself, of course, after seeing amendment after amendment ruled out of order which would have made the committee acceptable to
a far greater degree than it is in its present form, I am quite prepared in my mind to vote against this resolution and I am also prepared to go before the electors of my constituency and tell them why I voted against it. I question whether the Prime Minister or any other member on the other side of the house is prepared to do that. I know what the electors of my constituency think about this question. They know the stand I take on it, and I know the stand they take, and I am content to abide by their judgment. I for one want no part in an emasculated, hog-tied committee. I shall vote against it. I can do no other and be true to my constituents and to my conscience.


Mr. E. G. HANSELL (Macleod):: Mr. Speaker, there was a time when I thought that almost everything that could be said on this resolution had already been said, but on analysing the speeches that have been made and after watching the attitude of the government with respect to amendments that have been moved, I have concluded that there are still a few loose ends that should be picked up and a few more facts stated.
I am very much pleased, as I think we all are, to see the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) so constant in his attendance in this house. During the war we recognized that there was considerable excuse for him and his colleagues being absent from the house, and we graciously excused their absence, knowing that they had important matters to attend to. The war is over, and this session has started out very well with the Prime Minister in his seat every moment of the day. We are pleased with that, but I do just have the suspicion that he is not sitting there merely for the benefit of his health.
The Prime Minister in introducing the motion said, at page 745 of Hansard'.
Today I am asking hon. members to appoint a select committee of this house to examine and report on matters pertaining to the recent rise in prices and in the increase in the cost of living.
If we had not seen the Prime Minister's name at the head of that resolution but had simply been scanning Hansard as an outside observer, we should have thought that such a statement and resolution was made by one of the leaders on the opposition side of the house, because it is the sort of thing that a leader of any opposition party would ask when an emergency arises.
Surely the government has some responsibility in respect to the rise in the cost of living. Surely the government has confidence in its own administration. But really it would
Prices Committee

appear that they have not, because they come to parliament and are now asking that a select committee of the house be brought into existence to do the work which we are certain their own administration could do.
There is really not much difference in principle between fluctuations in the prices of commodities and fluctuations in the value of the dollar. When there are fluctuations in the value of the dollar the government never thinks of coming to parliament and asking it to set up a committee to find out why the value of the dollar should fluctuate. Why do they not? They do not, needless to say. Yet when prices fluctuate-and the principle is the same as with fluctuations in the dollar, the only difference being that in the one case the figures appear on a bill and in the other on a price tag, the value of the dollar fluctuating with price fluctuations-the government asks parliament to appoint a committee to look into the reason for the fluctuations or upward trend in prices. Would any responsible government ask another body, particularly its opponents, to help them understand why the dollar had depreciated or fluctuated in value? I do not think they would.
If the government wants to know one reason for the increase in the cost of living, if it wants the light to shine in, I will say this: One reason why there is an increase in the cost of living is that government policy has been such as to permit the cost of living to rise. That may be quite a general statement, but surely when government policy in the past has permitted the cost of living to rise, the government must take some responsibility for it. The fact of the matter is that government policy has led us definitely into this condition. Government players in the ball field have not been able to bring in the home runs and keep ahead of the price score. Now the government wants a parliamentary committee set up to discover who muffed the ball. Further, Mr. Speaker, they want us to find out these facts, but they refuse to let us suggest to them the remedies that should be applied.
Who is it, anyway, who has steered our ship of state into these troubled waters? Surely somebody has done it. Who has been at the helm of the nation's business? Well, none other than the man who makes this motion.
If the government denies that government policy has led to these conditions, then surely they would have no objection to recommendations as to the action that should be taken to remedy them. A committee is to be set up. Much has been said about the work of the committee; that perhaps it w'ould be hog-tied.

Well, I do not like to say these things about parliamentary committees, but one is not here very long before he recognizes that parliamentary committees are not entirely free. A committee of this kind must not be set up to protect government policy. Let me just refer to the committee itself. I notice that it is composed of sixteen members. Out of that number eight are lawyers, two are manufacturers, two are farmers, one is an engineer, one a journalist, one a teacher, and one a preacher. I am glad the preacher is there. I have no desire to belittle the ability of these men. They are good men, and given a task to do and a free hand to do it they will attempt to do a good job; but since the government wants tc know the facts I do have to ask myself this question: can this committee secure the facts any better than the well-trained and reputable men who are already in the government administration?


An hon. MEMBER:: Bureaucrats.


Ernest George Hansell: We can call them bureaucrats if we wish. Sometimes I have used that w'ord, and I must confess that perhaps I have bounced it around a little bit too liberally at times; nevertheless I personally do not question the ability of some of the men that the government has in its administration. Before leaving that I should like to point out- I do not know how many hon. members have noticed this-that among the members of the proposed committee there is one minister of the crown, which is quite usual. In addition to the minister there are four parliamentary assistants. I wonder whether that was by accident or design. The warning I give is that this committee must not be set up in order to protect government policy. Let the light shine, and let the sparks fall where they will.
The government say they want to know the facts. Are we to believe that the government do not know the facts?


Mr. BENTLEY:: That is right; they
don't know anything.


Ernest George Hansell: Well, they claim to know everything else. Are we to believe that the government is not able to get all the facts that a parliamentary committee can get? I say that with the able officials that the government has in some of the departments the government can get the facts. I will go further and say this, that the government knows today more facts about the situation than a parliamentary committee could find out if it sat all year.

Prices Committee
I represent what is largely a farming constituency. Many farmers have come to me and complained because some inspector from the income tax branch has come round and wanted to know all the details of his business. Of course he is only a farmer; but what I am saying is they will track down the farmer, they will track down the person who, they think they have cause to believe, is not paying all his income tax. Is the government going to tell us that it has not already the facts concerning large corporations and institutions? If it says it has not these facts, I would almost suggest it has been remiss in its duty.
In his speech on February 2, as reported at page 747 of Hansard the Prime Minister said:
In regard to this class of social wrong I believe that if there are people today in Canada who are hoarding where they should be selling, and if there are others who are profiteering where they should be glad to do what is fair, just and reasonable in the matter of prices, such people will quickly take notice of the fact that this House of Commons has appointed a committee which can. go into any single phase of this problem and bring individuals from any part of the country to -answer for situations in which they may be involved.
I have sometimes criticized officials within government departments because I have not agreed with their policies, but it is their policies that I have not agreed with; I have never once said that deputy ministers, and deputies to deputies, and deputies to them, are inefficient. I believe the government has some very efficient men within its administration. Are hon. gentlemen opposite going to tell me that they are not efficient enough to be able to search out all the facts and find out who is the profiteer?
They say they want the light to shine in. Surely the government is close enough to a million dollar corporation to know whether they are profiteering at the expense of the people. If it is not, then it is remiss in its duty. Hon. gentlemen opposite say they want light to be shed on the situation. Since they have a preacher on the committee, perhaps he could lead the singing:
Clear the darkened windows, open wide the door;
Let the blessed light shine in.
That might be a good theme song for the committee. But thinking of theme songs, I have a pretty good one that the Prime Minister might sing. This situation is growing bigger and fatter every day, and perhaps he could sing:
I dorft -wan-t her; you can have her;
She's too fat for me.
Then the Prime Minister went on to suggest what the committee was not. He outlined
what the committee was, but he had to take great pains to tell us what the committee was not. At page 747 of Hansard he said:
Now just a word as to what this committee is not. The government has no desire or intention that the committee should be used in what might be described as a witch hunt, to see what persons, what firms, or what corporations may be brought into difficulties, or to have individuals, firms or corporations unnecessarily embarrassed by a public inquiry.
All he wants of the committee is to have it play bogey man to say "boo!" to the profiteers. The Prime Minister says in one breath that these individuals should be brought to time and exposed by a public inquiry, and in the next breath he says, "When you are exposing them don't cause them to blush." That is a riddle I would ask him to answer. As youngsters we used to ask riddles at our parties. Well, the riddle I want him to answer is this: How can you expose a profiteer without embarrassing him?


Mr. ROSS (Souris):: The $64 question.


Ernest George Hansell: I believe in private enterprise, as I have said in this house a good many times. I believe that most businessmen want to do legitimate business; they want to be fair in their business. I believe that boards of trade throughout the country are brought into existence not merely to protect the interests of the businessman but for ethical purposes, to protect business in its right to do business on legitimate grounds. I am not one who is going around branding every man as a profiteer. I have never thought of the present system as being merely a profit system. It is that, but it is also a profit and loss system, and I believe the average businessman in Canada wants to do an honest business. But any who are unfair, any who are taking advantage of others are meanies, the sort the Prime Minister referred to. These mean evildoers should be exposed if they are making profits at the expense of the public. Their faces should be red, but they should be so spanked that not only their faces would be red.
I know there are huge corporations in this country and when, perhaps more or less superficially I read of their profits it does occur to me that some people, some corporations are making huge profits. I cannot help believing they are. At the same time when I begin to analyse a modern financial statement by a a huge industrial corporation, my head goes around in figures. I swim in them and I cannot swim out. I get in too deep. I doubt very much whether the average person can read intelligently and arrive at a proper conclusion in respect to all that is involved in
Prices Committee

profits, when reading the average financial statement. If that is a weakness on my part, then I shall have to admit it.
I do not know what the committee will do. They may go into all the ramifications of these statements. In the present discussion we have heard that living costs have jumped so many points; this thing has jumped so many points and something else has stepped down so many points, and all that. If you were to try to examine that and to arrive at the conclusion presented to you, your head might swim too. I do not do that.
Once upon a time I took a smattering of law when I thought I was going to be a big lawyer, but I never made the grade. I recall a certain case about which I read; I believe it was one in which Webster and Choate were concerned. Choate was examining a witness in court. A wagon wheel was brought in which was supposed to have been on a certain wagon. Experts, with all their figures, tried to prove that it was not the wheel off this particular wagon because it did not look like the other three wheels. They discussed the matter for a long time, and after Choate got through Webster got up and said, "Now, gentlemen of the jury, there is the wheel; take a good look at it". That was all, and he won his case.
I might go into all these price structures and not be able to arrive at a conclusion. When the housewife gets her husband's cheque she does not know anything about what causes the rise in the cost of living; she does not know how the corporations make out their financial statements. She goes to the grocery store, spends the cheque, and brings home her bag perhaps half filled with groceries and she says to her husband, "Husband, look at it". That is all; that is evidence enough for her.
If this committee in its work is going to expose the profiteers, this is the opportunity that is given any man who thinks there are huge profits made at the expense of the people. This is his opportunity to expose the profiteers. But is it his opportunity? I wonder. It has all the appearances of being the opportunity, but I wonder how many profiteers will be spanked. I wonder how many profiteers will go back home with red faces.
What is going to be the attitude if, when the committee has finished its work, no profiteers have been exposed? Are we then to assume that no profiteers exist? Are we then to assume that no one in Canada is taking advantage of a bad situation? These are some of the things that may give us some thought.
I am going to recommend seriously that the committee should put the first foot forward. I do not know what procedure the government has in mind. I know the government

has a majority on the committee, as it has on all committees. I know it has a minister and four parliamentary assistants on the committee. Perhaps it is all mapped out as to what should be done or what procedure should be taken. But they should put the first foot forward and take the first step before they attempt to take the last one. What is the most important thing to do in inquiring into the cost of living? It is to examine into those things that touch the small purses of the country, those things that touch the small wage earner. Man cannot live except by bread. Man's bread and butter is his first concern. The first thing the committee should attempt to do is to find the reasons for the increase in the cost of bread, milk, butter and meat. Let those things come in their proper order.
Much has been said about International Nickel, the Aluminum Company of Canada and other corporations as making huge profits. That has been brought into the picture in days gone by. Do not misunderstand me; if these men have been making huge profits at the expense of the people they should be exposed, if the committee sits all year to do it. Speaking about aluminum, I am anxious that the price of what goes into the pot should be examined before we examine the price of the pot. As I say, the committee should start first on flour, bread, butter, then meat; perhaps they will get to clothing. But I doubt Whether they will get much farther than flour and bread.
There is another thing I am going to say, Mr. Speaker, and I want an answer from the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) or a responsible official from the government. There is no question in my mind that this is a move on the part of the government to shift their own responsibility to another body. They have steered the ship of state into these troubled waters and are now asking us to discover why we are there, without giving us the opportunity of telling them how to steer the ship out again. They *want to shift that responsibility to another body, and they are playing for time. I want the Prime Minister to answer this question and give us an assurance: If this committee is set up, will parliament as a whole be given the opportunity of discussing the reports of the committee, and, in discussion of these reports in the house, will it be given the opportunity of making suggestions as to what should be done? I anticipate the Prime Minister's answer, and it is one that I do not want, namely, "Well, my hon. friend knows the rules of the house. It is entirely in the hands of the committee. If they do not move concurrence in the report,

Prices Committee
we can always discuss it on the estimates." I imagine that will be his answer. Will he give us the assurance now that every time this committee reports, within twenty-four hours or forty-eight hours afterwards-whatever the rules may say-a motion for concurrence will be made? There should be no objection to that, since the committee is not making any recommendations. Will the Prime Minister give us that assurance?


Mr. KNOWLES:: He will find a rule which will prohibit that.


Ernest George Hansell: If he does not give us that assurance, then I will suggest that the government cannot be sincere in wanting this committee to shine the light into dark places. I will almost bet my old hat that no real opportunity, by motion, will be given this house to discuss the reports of the committee.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Look up citation 560 of Beaucliesne.


Mr. JOHNSTON:: If that is not it, look up citation 561.


Ernest George Hansell: And if that is not it, we may be able to go back to 1877 and find one there.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: We shall get the run-around, anyway.


Ernest George Hansell: I said that the government is playing for time. I believe there is strategy behind the move. I believe there is an attempt to hurdle the present issue until more favourable political winds begin to blow.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I am going to make four guarantees. Not that I myself as an individual private member sitting away back here and looking so small, and I must look exceedingly small to you, Mr. Speaker-


An hon. MEMBER:: You and the Minister of Agriculture.


Mr. MICHAUD:: You make a lot of noise, though. We can hear you.


Ernest George Hansell: The Minister of Agriculture has one advantage over me, and that is that he sits quite close to Your Honour, whereas I am so far away. But I will make four guarantees.


Mr. GIBSON (Comox-Alberni):: They will be in Hansard.


Ernest George Hansell: I will guarantee that no person, corporation or institution will be embarrassed through this inquiry. I will guarantee that no light will be permitted to penetrate government policies. I will guarantee that no real opportunity will be given to discuss the committee's reports. And my fourth guarantee is-


An hon. MEMBER:: That nothing will come of it.


Ernest George Hansell: -that by no government action at least will living costs be brought down; so as the hon. member for Kootenay East (Mr. Matthews) says, what is the good of the whole business?


Right Hon. J. L. ILSLEY (Minister of Justice):: The debate is stretching out to quite a length, Mr. Speaker, and I do not expect to make a long speech this afternoon; perhaps I shall not take my full time. But there are a few observations I should like to make on the resolution and on some of the statements which have been made in the course of the debate on this resolution.
It seems to me that the issues here are simple, and that they are two in number. The first is whether there should be a parliamentary committee to examine into and report on the causes of the recent rise in the cost of living, which is paragraph (a) of the motion. Paragraphs (b) and (c) are, in a sense, subordinate to paragraph (a), because what is proposed is a fact-finding inquiry into the recent rise in the cost of living. The first point is whether it is worthwhile, whether it is advisable, to have a parliamentary committee examine into those causes. Then, assuming that a parliamentary inquiry is desirable, the second question is whether the terms of reference should be limited as they are in the resolution, or whether they should be virtually unlimited as has been proposed by various members of this house.
Perhaps I cannot answer these two questions conclusively or convincingly, but I can express my own views on them.
In the first place it seems to me that many members of the house are on record as advocating, in a situation of this kind, a parliamentary inquiry instead of an official or governmental inquiry into a matter of this importance. I remember an occasion when I was minister of finance and the wartime prices and trade board had authorized an increase to the extent of 12J per cent in the prices of agricultural implements. As soon as members could get to the house to attack me, the government and the board, they did so-and in numbers. Some thirty-five or forty speeches were made one Monday afternoon and evening attacking the wartime prices and trade board, myself and the government for this authorized increase in the price of agricultural implements.
Prices Committee

One of the most thoughtful and moderate members of the house-and I am' not speaking of the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefenbaker) but rather of his colleague who sits immediately behind him-used this language in regard to that incident. On that occasion the hon. member for Muskoka-Ontario (Mr. Macdonnell) said this, as reported at page 897 of Hansard for April 15, 1946:
So that I sulbmit for the consideration, of the minister and the government whether it would not be possible to have some body, I do not know whether it should be the agriculture committee, the banking and commerce committee or a combination of the two if you wish, which would ask to appear before it people who are supposed to have competent opinions on these important questions, which I recognize as very difficult, and to ask also representatives of labour, of the farmers, of the manufacturers and of all the other people interested. The minister may say, "Oh, well, you would just have a kind of debate which would lead to nothing." I am not suggesting that this body could proceed to decide on this and this and this decontrol in gatling-igim fashion, but I suggest that at the present time there is a great deal of misapprehension in the public mind, and that if we are to have merely one announcement after another that this and this and this has been decontrolled, it is not the best way of trying to get across to the public mind what, it seems to me, it is so enormously important that we should get into the public mind.
And then later on he said this:
I believe the debate we have had today shows that the problem is not being met, when once there is this widespread measure of protest. I realize that the protests come from farming constituencies. I represent one myself, though it will be observed that I have not made a protest. Nevertheless I feel there are basic principles here which might well be discussed in open forum, so that the citizens of Canada might have a better understanding than they vow have of the problems and the basic principles which are to be followed in dealing with the matter.
Although I was not in the house at the time -I believe I was away-the hon. member for Calgary West (Mr. Smith) reasoned in much the same way in respect of the industrial disputes which arose in Hamilton in 1946. And the hon. member for Lake Centre has gone so far along this line, that of advocating action by parliamentary committees, and hearings by such committees, that he, forsooth, advocated a while ago the summoning of deputy ministers and senior civil servants before a parliamentary committee to quiz them as to the advice they were giving their ministers. No stranger proposal was ever made in any British parliamentary institution. Nevertheless this is an indication of the fondness held by the leader of the opposition (Mr. Bracken) and hon. members of the opposition for parliamentary

committees. So I say this is an occasion or a situation of sufficient importance to merit having the matter examined by a parliamentary committee.
In his speech the leader of the opposition Said, "Oh well, after all, what do parliamentary committees amount to? What do they ever accomplish?" And he names a whole group of parliamentary committees the proceedings of which, so he said, did not come to anything much. He said, "You have the machinery now. You have all the laws there that you need now."
One in particular he mentioned was that which I shall call the profiteering section of the wartime prices and trade board regulations. It is the section which provides that no person shall, in selling goods, charge a price which exceeds that which is just and reasonable. He said, "Why dio you not use that? Why does not the government use that regulation?"
During the course of the debate there has been considerable reference to the Combines Investigation Act, and I pause at this stage to say something about that act, because I think there is a tendency on the part of hon. members to misapprehend just what the possibilities are of investigating and remedying under the Combines Investigation Act. The purpose of that act is not to examine the reasonableness of prices; that is not the primary purpose of the Combines Investigation Act. It is to ascertain, inquire and investigate. The purpose of the act is to provide for investigation of trade combinations, trusts, mergers or monopolies which are alleged to have operated to the detriment of the public by restraining trade unduly. And in the administration of that act each case must be carefully and fully examined, not only with respect to a particular incident, but in many instances over a period of years.
The element of combination in itself greatly adds to the problem of investigation, because it is necessary to deal not only with the actions of a particular firm, but the relation of such actions to the practices followed by others alleged1 to be members of the combination. In practically all cases there must be careful examination of the business records of those alleged to be parties to the offence. This requires work by those who are trained to make such examinations over a considerable period, when a group of companies is involved.
It is not at all unusual for one hundred man-days or more to be spent on this phase of the investigation. This must be followed by careful analysis of the evidence so obtained, and then a period of hearings where those involved in the investigation are given an

Prices Committee
opportunity to offer further evidence and to reply to any allegations which may have been made against them. The right of those against whom any misconduct is alleged, to be given notice of such allegation, and reply thereto if they so desire, is carefully guarded in all investigations under the act. And the commissioner avoids anything in the nature of summary findings without giving those who may be affected adequate opportunity to make explanations or replies. This care to avoid any unfairness to those who may be involved in an investigation underlies the general practice not to make any disclosures as to firms which may be under investigation, except when a report is published.
Suspicion would be easily aroused if the other course were followed, that firms being investigated were guilty of misconduct, even though when the investigation was concluded there was no such finding.
As I have been asked to say something about what is 'being done under the Combines Investigation Act, I think I can tell the house that at the present time six major inquiries are being proceeded with, that the report in one case is expected before long and that t'he others should be made during the next few months.
During the past year the combines commissioner himself has been absent from Canada for altogether about six months attending various international conferences devoted to the preparation and discussion of a charter for an international trade organization. As a member of the Canadian delegation the commissioner attended the sessions in London, New York and Geneva, and has only recently returned from the conference at Havana. I may say that his services in connection with the preparation of that section of the charter dealing with international cartels have been most highly regarded by representatives of other countries, and I feel that he has made a substantial contribution to the development of the arrangements proposed to deal with the abuses of cartels.
His work in this field is directly related to the recommendations in the cartel report which was tabled in the House of Commons and which has been referred to 'by several members. His work in this field has not proceeded as rapidly as he would have liked. I have mentioned the six major inquiries which are now proceeding and1 which I understand involve more than fifty companies, large and small, in various fields. In addition, a number of other matters are subject to less intensive investigation or are under consideration.
So that hon. members may understand the administration of the Combines Investigation Act, and I think they should be interested, may I say that the activities are carried on by the commissioner with the assistance of a staff of only ten investigators. Of course counsel are engaged when required. This staff is not considered by the commissioner to be sufficient. The government has given the commissioner full support in any request he has made for an increase in staff but it is very difficult to get investigators who are qualified for this kind of work. It is not easy to secure persons who possess the full qualifications for investigation into the complex problems of trade restraints. Even when appointments are made it is necessary to undertake careful training before such persons are fully equipped to assist in investigations.
The combines investigation staff has also undertaken a preliminary study of the trend in amalgamations and mergers in Canada and is bringing together the available information on such developments. Attention is also being given to general questions affecting patents and trademarks in so far as they are related to amendments made to the act in 1946. I believe that the outline I have given indicates a full measure of activity on the part of the commissioner in relation to domestic combinations as well as international cartels.


Mr. McMASTER:: They would have a lot of information at the present time?


James Lorimer Ilsley: They have a lot of information at the present time. I have tried to outline carefully the necessity for great care in this type of investigation, the time it takes and the caution that should be observed.


Mr. DIEFENBAKER:: Is there not provision in the law for the appointment of a deputy commissioner to exercise powers while the commissioner is out of Canada?


James Lorimer Ilsley: That is right.


John George Diefenbaker: Has he been appointed?


James Lorimer Ilsley: There are two deputy commissioners. Deputy Commissioner Whiteley is authorized to exercise the powers of Commissioner McGregor when he is out of Canada.
There is something I want to say about this Combines Investigation Act. A completely new phase of this act set in on August 31, 1946, with the passage of the amendments of that year. Since that date, which is something like twenty months ago, there have been three ways in which an inquiry may be initiated under the Combines Investigation Act. One is by formal application by six persons under section
Prices Committee

11.	There has not been one such formal application since August 31, 1946. We hear a lot from members of parliament and a little from the public, although not very much, about combines that are being formed, about monopolies, about imperfect competition, about quasi-monopolies and so on, but, as I say, from August 31, 1946, during this phase of the administration of the Combines Investigation Act, there has not been one formal application made for the investigation of a combine. That is point number one.
The second way in which an inquiry may be initiated is by the commissioner moving of his own motion, if he has reason to believe that a combine exists or is being formed. His activities are going on all the time and I have done something to describe them here.
The third way is on direction of the minister. For the nine years previous to 1946 there had to be either a direction by the minister or a formal application; the commissioner could not move of his own motion. I think there was some direction by the minister during that time. Now that the commissioner can proceed of his own motion there is very little occasion for the minister to give any direction. The minister does not have sent to him any evidence on which he can act. I have had just a handful of letters. They have suggested that a combine might exist in connection with certain things. I have handed such letters on at once to the commissioner with instructions that the matter be investigated. But that is a different thing from instituting formal inquiry.


Mr. FLEMING:: Would that include complaints or information sent to the minister by members of this house?


James Lorimer Ilsley: My statement included
everything that I received, and I have received only a few letters.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I wanted to know if the minister's statement applied to any information or complaints he has received from members of the house as well as from the public.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Absolutely. There is a
popular impression, and it may be true, that one of the major causes for the recent rise in prices in this county is the existence of monopolies, the existence of combines and the existence of imperfect competition. One of the duties, one of the responsibilities and one of the powers at any rate of this parliamentary committee will be to ascertain how far that is true. The committee is not being set up to go after persons who are alleged to be operating combines, but if the evidence before the committee shows that that is the case,

that evidence will be of assistance in the administration of the Combines Investigation Act.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Will the minister permit a question before he leaves that particular phase?


James Lorimer Ilsley: I am afraid you are spoiling my speech. I think the same observation would apply to what I have called the profiteering section of the wartime prices and trade regulations. I am not charged with the administration of those regulations, although the hon. member for Lake Centre appeared to think yesterday that I was, because he was calling upon me to give all sorts of facts and statements and rulings about the administration of that section.
I thoroughly understand why the wartime prices and trade board has not had many prosecutions under that section. There is nothing definite about the offence of charging prices which are greater than those which are just and reasonable. It is very hard to get something definite upon which to proceed. When there were ceilings and established prices those persons charging in excess of those prices could be prosecuted. I think some years ago there were successful prosecutions under that section and in certain cases you can get such prosecutions. This committee is not being set up as a prosecuting body. However, if the evidence before the committee discloses that prices have been charged which are clearly greater than those which are reasonable and proper, it would appear to me that the administration of that section of the wartime prices and trade regulations would be easier and more effective.
As the hon. member for Macleod (Mr. Hansell) says, the parliamentary committee will let in the light and create public understanding and do away with misapprehensions and illusions as to the causes of the rise1 in prices. It will get the truth into the public mind and into the government's mind, into the mind of the House of Commons and into the mind of the opposition. We certainly do not pretend to be in possession of all the knowledge and all the wisdom, and I think nobody in the house is. But here is an opportunity for getting at the truth by investigation. That is one thing the committee can do.
Another thing is this. It perhaps may lead to legislative proposals by the government to meet certain situations. I do not know about that; I have nothing in mind. Thirdly it will assist in the ways I have mentioned, administratively, in what the government is now doing.

Prices Committee
Perhaps it will be of interest for me to say while on the Combines Investigation Act, that the policy of the government has been to support the administration of the act. I took occasion in speaking to a gathering in Quebec city last June to outline our policy in that regard, and with the indulgence of the house I will read two paragraphs of what I said on that occasion:
The success of the program of orderly decontrol depends upon healthy competition among business firms being at the same time restored. Some businessmen appear to have welcomed the absence of price competition during the period of extreme shortages under price control and to be reluctant to return to the system of a free market. It is important, however, that the expanding freedom permitted by decontrol be not used to make private restrictive arrangements which would deprive the public of the benefits produced by independent competitive enterprise.
The maintenance of a competitive economy in Canada as a matter of public policy was reaffirmed by parliament in amendments made to the Combines Investigation Act at the last session. This action was taken in recognition of the fact that as the emergency controls are removed, the public must look to active price competition rather than to any government control agency for its protection. I am, of course, not now referring to those segments of our economy such as public utilities and so forth, where government regulation or government ownership is substituted for competition as the regulating factor.
The very interesting speech made yesterday by the hon. member for Lake Centre did not make clear to me what his views were with regard to the Combines Investigation -Act. I do not think, upon reflection, that he expressed any. Certainly the tone and manner of his speech was one of accusation against the government, but I must say I never heard anyone speak so. accusingly and at the same time remain so uncommitted as the hon. member for Lake Centre did yesterday. I was interested because there is not a member of this house who has used more violent language over a period of years than he has about a subject very close to this. I have run through some of his speeches and I find that he has been complaining of the catechizing and interrogating of individuals by the government, the harrying and hounding of honest businessmen, interference with private lives, private property and private industry, snooping and having an army of snoopers-these are the things we have been attacked for during the last three years by the hon. member for Lake Centre.


Mr. DIEFE  NTSAKER@: Is that the reason why you are not acting that way now?


James Lorimer Ilsley: We certainly are not. But yesterday the hon. member left himself in such a position that, he could say to one section of the public that he sailed into the government for not enforcing the Combines Investigation Act, and could say to another section of the public, a section which, I think, is far more influential with his party, that he did nothing but ask a few questions.
I do not propose to discuss price policy in any detail today because I anticipate there will be a better opportunity in the future, and it is not the question before us. The questions before us are the two I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks. I may say, in passing, that the policy of the government with regard to prices is, I think, the most reasonable policy to pursue having in mind the steadily accelerating impact of world events. There comes a time when a country can do only so much. Certainly proposals have been made with regard to the reduction of prices by the leader of the opposition and we have anticipated the budget debate by getting into a discussion of taxation. I understood the leader of the opposition the other night to say that he thought the time had come for indirect taxes to be removed. I do not think he would advocate the removal of all indirect taxes; that would be too much, and so the hon. member for Lake Centre tried to set the matter right yesterday by saying that the official opposition is mow in favour of the removal of the sales tax. I do not need to give my hon. friend the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) any advice as to how seriously concerned he should be over the advice he gets from the opposition. Some of it will be good, some of it will be bad, none of it will be disinterested, and very little of it will be given to help him. But the worst feature of it will be that it will vary from month to month and year to year.
Prior to the time the hon. member for Muskoka-Ontario (Mr. Maedonnell) came into the house, the leading financial critic of the opposition was the hon. member for Rosedale (Mr. Jackman). The hon. member for Rosedale made a speech when I was minister of finance and I remember it very clearly. He argued what? For the abolition of the sales tax? No; he argued for an increase in the sales tax. His remarks will be found at page 3299 of Hansard of July 9, 1946, and to the present Minister of Finance I suggest this may be their position next year. The hon. member for Rosedale said:
While there are some arguments against the extension of the sales tax, there are few when food, which bulks so largely ,in the average housewife's expenditure, is exempted as I recommend. Very few of our people today-know there is already a sales tax imposed at the wholesale level. Such a tax does not discourage *the worker from working, and there is fairness in. a tax policy based on the principle that the
Prices Committee

more one spends, the more one pays. There is nothing obligatory about paying a tax if one does not purchase; but unfortunately the great growth in instalment sales in normal times is a clear indication that most people will spend if they have the money and even when they have not. Let the worker have more take-home pay if we are to encourage production. Other indirect or non-incentive destroying taxes must be found if we are to keep our economy in high gear. I may be asked, how does it help in what *way we pay our taxes, when they have to come out of the same pocket anyway. The answer is that under the present system the pocket is only half full because the high individual tax rates discourage work, enterprise and production. Under a system such as I propose the same amount of taxes would have to be paid, but we would have fuller pocketbooks out of which to pay them.
I bring that to the attention of my colleague the Minister of Finance, to take into account along with the proposals that were made yesterday-in correction of the proposals that were made the day before.
I want to say something about the complaint I have against the C.C.F. The C.C.F. is talking about subsidies. The great policy of the C.C.F. is subsidies. They want to get the government back into a policy of subsidizing the articles that the people of the country buy. I think that if they will talk to some of their friends in the Labour party of Great Britain, to some of the more responsible ones, they will find that that government wishes it could get rid of subsidies. They feel they have got a tiger by the tail; they do not dare let go, and they hate to hang on. It is building up an elaborate system of subsidization- I am not talking about England; I should not be talking about England; I am talking about this country. I think it was extremely sound for this government to disentangle itself from that insidious subsidy system. It has got all kinds of things against it as a system in time of peace.


Mr. SKEY:: What about the tariff system?
Mr. COLD WELL; That is a subsidy.
Mr. ILSLEY; Let me deal with these subsidies at the moment.
Mr. COLD WELL; You are trying to pick the one to suit your purpose.
Mr. ILSLEY; The complaint I wish to make is of a tendency on the part of the C.C.F. speakers to misuse a part of a speech which I made last year with regard to the value and use of subsidies. I shall quote from my hon. friend the leader of the C.C.F. party (Mr. Coldwell). I have also the same complaint to make with regard to a speech made by the hon. member for Qu'Appelle (Mrs. Strum),

and I made it the other day. The leader of the C.C.F. opposition, said, as reported at page 763 of Hansard:
Hon. members will recall that last April the present Minister of Justice (Mr. Ilsley) pointed out that the taxpayers and consumers of Canada had been saved enormous sums of money through subsidies. He computed those savings as in the neighbourhood of $2,500 million a year, on an expenditure of $200 million. In other words, for every dollar we spent we saved ourselves, either as taxpayers or consumers, twelve and a half dollars.
Now, I should like to point out the highly tentative and extremely guarded nature of the estimate.


Mr. COLDWELL:: It was your statement.
Mr. ILSLEY; Well, I will read my statement. What I complain about is that the statement is cited and used as if I were making a weighty and carefully computed estimate. I remember so distinctly the occasion in the house. I was pressed by the hon. gentleman who sits behind the leader of the C.C.F. party. I was pressed repeatedly, "Make an estimate; make an estimate." I knew if I made an estimate-I knew no estimate was possible- it would be nothing more than a guess, and therefore I guarded it so I thought it would not be thrown back as what I said was saved to the country. This is what I said, as reported at page 1926 of the daily edition of Hansard of April 1, 1947:
The .following estimate gives some indication of the strain and difficulty which would have developed in the Canadian economy without price control. It is based on the assumption that in the absence of price control prices would have risen in recent years to the same extent that they rose in world war I and its aftermath. Nobody knows whether they would or would not, or would have risen higher.
Later I said:
If we assume, I say, that prices have risen, without control, just to the same extent proportionately, year by year, as they did in the period from 1914 to 1919, then these are the results you get: the consumers would have had to spend an average of nearly $8 billion between 1942 and 1946.
But it was a very theoretical assumption. Understand, I believe that the subsidy system during the war was an excellent system. I am glad we resorted to that system during the war; but under these conditions I think it is a bad peacetime system and I would hate to see this country get entangled into a subsidy system again. I would hate it for various reasons. I can give those reasons on a later occasion, but this is what I feel about that subsidy system.

Prices Committee


Mr. COLD  WELL@: Will the minister not say that it is a good system in the face of the emergency which confronts us now?


James Lorimer Ilsley: No, I would not regard it as a good system in the present emergency.


Major James William Coldwell: Over twenty-one points in a year.
Mr. ILSLEYr: Yes, but I do not know when you would ever get out, and what happens is that you keep your tax level up higher than it ought to be by reason of that growing snowball of subsidies, whereby all the citizens pay for the supplies to some of the citizens. It effects a certain type of redistribution of wealth which is far less scientific, far less equitable and far less just than the type of redistribution of wealth effected by the graduated income tax. And electorally it is dangerous; because when a great many of the consumer goods are subsidized by the state you inevitably get candidates vying with one another as to who will favour the higher subsidies, who will buy the largest share of the loaf of bread.
Coming back to the matter before the house, I shall conclude by saying I believe this inquiry, while it will be a very difficult one to conduct, can prove of great value for the reasons which I have mentioned. The feature of the proposal that gives me most concern is the extent of the field covered in the terms of reference. It is not going to be easy; it is not going to be an enviable task to select certain parts of the field for concentrated attention and effective investigation, but if we want to destroy the value of the committee, rob it of all prestige and make its task impossible, the surest way to do it is to give it still further studies, still greater powers, still larger responsibilities and more elaborate and detailed subjects for investigation.
The scope of this committee should be kept within practical limits, otherwise we shall lose the substance by grasping at the shadow. I hope that the house will, without too much additional debate, assent to the appointment of the committee and to the terms of reference which are contained in the notice of motion. Later some compelling urgency may require extension of the terms of reference, but to increase enormously the responsibilities of a committee, which, as now proposed, will be great, will bring the committee and its activities into disrepute.
There has been some suggestion that some parties in this house may boycott the committee and refuse to appoint members. That, of course, was what the Soviet union did at the last general assembly of the united nations
in respect of three very important matters, but I should hate to see this tactic adopted here. I hope also that no members of the committee will prejudge the issues, as the hon. member for Waterloo South (Mr. Homuth) indicated the other night he had already done.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Before the minister takes his seat may I ask him the question I sought to ask him earlier? I apologize for asking it at that time. A committee has to stick to its terms of reference. Will the minister say wherein the terms of reference show authority for the committee to examine monopolistic practises?


James Lorimer Ilsley: It is contained in the words: "Examination of the causes of the recent increase in the cost of living." My hon. friends use the term "monopoly capitalism." That is a term which has become current recently, and they attribute to monopoly capitalism exploitation of the consumers. They attribute that to monopoly capitalism, and the causes in the recent increase in the cost of living are to be examined into by this committee.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Is not that limited by clause (c) ?


Mr. BRACKEN:: Will the minister permit one question? It has to do with what he had to say about subsidies. He said he was glad he had gone out of the policy of subsidies.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Yes; that is right.


John Bracken: Do we take it from that that the government is going to remove the remaining subsidies it is now paying on different things?


James Lorimer Ilsley: I do not know, but I would assume that sooner or later the type of subsidies that have been paid in the past will be removed. But those were not removed all at once. It is a program that lasts over a period of years. It is the removal of the price controlling subsidies.


John Bracken: I was thinking more particularly of the freight subsidy on feed grains.


James Lorimer Ilsley: Freight subsidies are
altogether different.


James Arthur Ross: Mr. Speaker,
the resolution proposed by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) reads:
That a select committee of this house be appointed to examine and to report from time to time as to (a)_ the causes of the recent rise in the cost of living; (b) prices which have been raised above levels justified by increased costs; (c) rises in prices due to the acquiring, accumulating or withholding from sale by any persons,
Prices Committee

firms or corporations of any goods beyond amounts reasonably required for the ordinary purposes of their businesses.
That the committee shall have power to appoint from among its members such subcommittees as may be deemed advisable or necessary to deal with specific phases of the enquiry, and power to send for persons, papers and records, to examine witnesses under oath and to print such papers and evidence from day to day as may be ordered by the committee.
That the committee shall have leave to sit while the house is sitting;	,
That seven members of the committee shall constitute a quorum;
That the committee shall have power to engage the services of counsel, accountants and other necessary assistants who shall be paid out of the appropriation for parliament.
The resolution then names the members of the committee. There are sixteen, nine being members of the government, and of those nine there are one minister of the cabinet and four parliamentary assistants. There are four members of the Progressive Conservative party, two members of the C.C.F. and one member of the Social Credit party. The house will realize therefore, that the cabinet has complete control of the committee.
Immediately after the introduction of the motion by the Prime Minister, on February 2, an amendment was proposed by the leader of this party asking that the committee be empowered to make recommendations and that it be given certain other powers. A subamendment wa3 moved by the C.C.F. The debate continued that afternoon and evening and the following afternoon and into the evening, and the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre (Mr. Maybank) rose and argued against the amendments being in order. He was supported in his arguments by the Prime Minister, and in due course the Speaker ruled the amendments out of order.
That to me seems strange because on the previous evening I had heard the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. St. Laurent) discussing constitutional questions, and in his argument he contended that this amendment would be restricting the work of the committee. There was certainly a difference of opinion on the other side.
When we read the remarks of the Prime Minister at the time he was leader of the opposition in 1934, at which time Mr. Bennett was prime minister, on the occasion of the introduction of the proposal for the price spreads committee, and when we listen now to the right hon. gentleman's observations in proposing this resolution, and, later, his objection to having the scope of the present committee enlarged, as was proposed, to enable

the committee to do the work expected of it, it is most difficult to understand his line of reasoning at his time.
One hon. member has asked him to answer certain questions when he replies; and I should like him to say, if this committee is set up, whether we shall have an opportunity of discussing on the floor of the house dur-: ing this session reports of the committee as and when submitted.
As has been pointed out, we have the Combines Investigation Act, which provides all the machinery necessary for the fullest possible kind, of inquiry into any matter preventing or lessening production, or any matter respecting trade; and clause (c) of the first paragraph of the resolution before us seems to have given rise to some doubt, as between the Minister of Justice (Mr. Ilsley), and some other members, as to whether that would be restricting clause (c) in the resolution as it stands.
We have ample legislation under the wartime prices and trade board regulations to prosecute for profiteering and the like. The people of Canada today want action and not a delaying method' as is proposed in the setting up of this futile committee. We have in Canada the eight per cent sales tax, collected, with few exceptions, on processed commodities of all kinds. As one of my party points out, this tax applies to bacon and other processed agricultural commodities which are quite essential. We have in these hidden taxes a pyramiding incubus on every member of the consuming public in the dominion today.
Federal taxes, direct and indirect, amounted per capita to $22.41 in 1913, and in 1939 the per capita had risen to $38.67. In 1947, the year just past, that per capita tax was $192.97. The tax has multiplied over five times since the beginning of the second world war; and it has greatly added to the cost of production and the cost of living in Canada, a fact which government officials have ignored in compiling the cost of living index and of production for this nation.
Up to the present time in this debate we have heard from five ministers of the crown. I have referred to the minister of external affairs. As the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefenbaker) so well pointed' out yesterday, the minister spoke rather from the point of view of a private citizen than as one assuming his responsibility as a member of the cabinet. He professed that he did not know how this situation had been brought about or how we could come out of this chaos.

Prices Committee
Then the Minister	of Labour	(Mr. Mitchell), in his usual breezy fashion, gave us a lecture; and this afternoon we have just heard the	Minister	of	Justice,	who
throughout most of the war years was Minister of Finance and was responsible for the cost of living legislation during that period. I have always admired the Minister of Justice for his conscientious and serious attitude *toward the problems of the day, but as I followed him this afternoon I could not tell whether he personally favoured this resolution. I have worked in committees with the minister before, when he was doing things he would rather not have had a hand in, because it was the will of the government. What I wish to refer to more particularly, however, is the speech delivered by the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner), which in my opinion, was inaccurate and certainly misleading. It reminded me of a chap who in distress with his particular office, was whistling in the dark for the time being.
The Minister of Agriculture said that the farmer was now receiving more for agricultural products than at any other time in the history of the country. I said, during his i emarks, that was not a statement of fact, and I still believe it to be untrue. He then took the year 1918, immediately on the close of the first world war, and the year 1947, two years after the end of the second world war, and he based a comparison on these two periods. He put the following figures on the record:
1918	1947
Oats	 $0.82 $0.87-7
Barley	
1.37	.93Wheat	
2.22	1.58Cattle	
13.29	13.51Hogs	
18.00	17.00Butter	40	.60
The figures for 1920, two years after the first world war, would furnish a comparison with 1947. That would be a fair comparison and these are the figures for 1920:
Oats . .. Barley .		 2 74
Oat tie .		 14.72
Hogs ...	
Butter ..		70
There is	quite a difference in those figures
at that time. Then may I remind this house that, according to government statistics, in a pamphlet put out by themselves, in the war period 1914-18 the farmers received 29 per cent of the national income, whereas in the recent war, 1939-45, the farmers received 18 per cent of the national income. All those figures and percentages are from government statistics.
Then, during that speech he referred to January, and he says that at the present time -that is, January, 1918-wheat is $2 for the latter part of the year and $1.55 for the first part of the year. I wish to say that under existing federal legislation on wheat the farmer-producer is paid only SI .35, basis Fort William, which means an average of $1.17 initial payment at the elevator and participation certificates. True enough, the minister announced at Brockville that legislation would be brought in to make the basic payment $1.55, basis Fort William, which would be approximately $1.37 at the elevator. So even that statement was misleading.
Then the right hon. gentleman, in answer to a question about the cost of farm implements said, as reported in Hansard at page 805:
When one starts to talk about the cost of production, everything must be considered. And everything is taken into consideration, the cost of production in Canada is 77-7 per cent of what it is in the United States.
If that be true, it is strange that farm implements of Canadian manufacture have been selling at a much higher figure than have farm implements of United States manufacture. While I have no quotation for the present day, I want to refer to some figures as of the spring of 1947 and to put them on record.
As of March 1, 1947, to purchase a Farmall M. tractor, International company tractor, in Canada required 1,225 bushels of wheat; in the United States, 710 bushels of wheat. To purchase a 3-furrow International tractor plow in Canada required 151 bushels of Wheat; in the United States, 82 bushels. To purchase a 24-run International double disc seeder in Canada required 270 bushels of wheat; in the United States, 146 bushels. To purchase a 10-foot International binder in Canada required 333 bushels of wheat; in the United States, 184 bushels. To purchase the same tractor in Canada would require slightly over the price of eleven finished 1,000-pound steers that I have spoken of, while in the United States the same type of tractor would require the proceeds of only slightly over six such animals. In the matter of hogs it would require forty-six select hogs weighing 210 pounds in Canada or twenty-six such hogs in the United States to purchase the same type of tractor. After all, what you can purchase with the goods that the farmer produces is what he is interested in.
Then I have a report of the remarks made by the right hon. gentleman at Brockville to t'he Canadian Federation of Agriculture, and he made reference to that- meeting in his

Prices Committee

speech the other day. He told those people that price ceilings on meat would be announced in the near future, to cover the price of meat in accordance with the price of beef announced under the United Kingdom contract of January 2. Then he made a peculiar statement with respect to butter, as reported in the paper. It is hard to follow, when compared with his remarks in this house the other day on this resolution. As reported here, he told those people that he thought they would be better off if this ceiling had been only fifty-five cents on butter rather than seventy and some cents. It is hard to reconcile those two statements and to follow his reasoning. He says:
I personally feel that the floor price of fifty-five cents per pound on this commodity would have been much better as it would have then sold at approximately fifty-eight cents per pound to the customer and farmers would be receiving as much as they are now getting for this item . . .


Mr. ROWE:: What about the letters?


James Arthur Ross: He told us about the letters he has received from people. I have always admired the Minister of Agriculture as a great organizer. As somebody said here in the debate the other day, you have not heard the last of him at conventions that may take place during this calendar year. At those various agricultural meetings it is well known that he has friends. He is smart enough to have some of bis followers present at those meetings.


William Earl Rowe: Always.


James Arthur Ross: There is always at
least one and sometimes more, and they certainly can write these letters. But they are not in accordance with the views of the five hundred beef producers that he talked to at Lethbridge, and he had courage to talk to those people as he did, or to some hundreds of the C.F.A. that he talked to at Brockville. He did not have the sympathy or support of the majority of those who attended either one of those meetings.


Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER:: Order. I do
not think the hon. member should suggest that the Minister of Agriculture inspired the writing of certain letters.


James Arthur Ross: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I did not say that they were inspired by the Minister of Agriculture. I said that the letters were there, and that he was popular enough in Canada. I am not berating the minister one bit. Do not. misunderstand me. I thought I was complimenting him in

this respect. That was my intention, anyway. The report in the Rural Co-operator is as follows:
Mr. Gardiner says that the United States beef cattle embargo and the British price for beef constitute a price control measure. The less than 10 per cent of Canada's beef which went to Britain last year determined the price of the 90 per cent sold in the domestic market.
Similarly, the embargo on the export to the United. States of bacon, eggs and cheese is a price control measure ...	. .
Aside from the absurdity of the proposition, does Mr. Gardiner think that a cheap food policy could give Canadian manufacturers lower costs than United States manufacturers with ten times as great a home market?
And so on. Certainly there is not much support for him in the entire report of the meeting contained in this publication.
While the cost of living index used by the government is now within approximately two points of the all-time high in Canada, and that was in the middle of 1920, that does not portray the true picture, because the actual cost of living in Canada is much higher than that set out by this index which is used by the government. On the other hand, the farmer-producer is not receiving in return for cereals, meat and dairy products net payments as high as those he did at this stage following the first world war. Throughout the recent war years, and as they are doing today, the government forced the agricultural producers to subsidize the consumers of Canada and the United Kingdom with regard to their cost o*f living. If they should be subsidized, it should be done out of the federal treasury by all the taxpayers of Canada, not by one section of the people.
I know that the Minister of Justice said he did not believe in subsidies at all, and he was probably the one outstanding minister who was not worried about saddling this entire cost on the farmer-producers throughout the war years. However, production is being lessened by these policies at the present time. May I say that the world population in 1947 was nearly 2,000,000,000, or eight per cent above 1939, and food production during 1947 has been appreciably lower. The supply situation for bread grains is particularly serious. There is certainly a world market for all the foodstuffs that can be produced in any nation today. Canada has the resources, the machinery and the manpower to produce sufficient goods and services to provide a high standard of living for the Canadian people, and at the same time be able to contribute generously toward the needs of those countries which have been ravaged and disrupted by war.

Prices Committee
The policies of this government are directly responsible for the present chaos and the continuing rising cost of living. It will be most startling when we get the index for the end of January, having in view what is happening in these days in connection with the cost of living. It will then have exceeded the all-time-high cost of living index in the history of Canada.
Canadians today want action from the government, not the setting up of a futile committee so that the government may hedge further on its rightful responsibilities.


Mr. DAVID CROLL (Spadina):: Mr. Speaker, I want to relate the present problem to my own constituency, and perhaps be helpful to the house. My constituency is of a special nature in that it is the very essence of urban, industrial Canada. In my constituency is an important branch of manufacturing, known as the needle trades. I have a great number of white-collar workers and well-to-do business men. I have people who were born and still live on the wrong side of the tracks, and some who were born on the right side of the tracks. I have a considerable silkstocking district and, in one portion, what one might refer to as a nylon-stocking district.
However, I want to talk about the southern portion of my riding, which is highly industrialized. The people in my riding are fully employed. The average weekly wage in Canada for industrial workers is $37.37. The average weekly wage in the city of Toronto is $38.16. My constituents, in the main, earn an average of $40 a week. That is pretty good money, compared with 1938 and 1939.
Working conditions in my constituency are certainly good. It is highly unionized, and the sweatshop has virtually disappeared. The five-day week is so common that it is almost the rule. While I am on this point and the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) is in the house, I might tell hon. members that almost fifty years ago the Prime Minister, who was then a reporter on one of the Toronto newspapers, made a report dealing with sweatshops in the city of Toronto, as a result of which conditions have improved not only in my riding, but in other portions of Toronto; and many people as a result have enjoyed a better living.
In view of what I say one might well conclude that I have a contented and happy riding. The 115,000 people in my riding have shared in the general prosperity of Canadians, and have drawn nearer to the sense of security that is the goal of all the people of Canada. But my reply has to be at the present time 5849-571
that large-scale hardship has returned to my constituency, and the standard of living is declining. Insecurity and fear of the future constitute again a dominant factor in my constituency, and many of my constituents walk in the shadow of economic uncertainty, and are living from week to week. The main reason for this has been the violent rise in prices of essential goods.
The increase in living costs has so progressively eliminated the small comforts - yes, even the little luxuries-that the result has been that these people have exhausted their wartime savings and are now precariously balancing their budgets with their day-to-day earnings. The result has been that there has been a painful and necessary reduction in expenditures for food.
I know that in the house there will be a certain amount of cynicism when I say that a man who earns $40 a week cannot adequately today provide for his family. I know that when I was earning that amount I felt I was almost approaching the well-to-do level. A dollar an hour-that is what this amount represents in my riding; and it is pretty good money.
I am going to work out a budget, and relate it to that $40, in current Toronto prices, for a family of four consisting of a man, his wife and two children, for both of whom family allowances are drawn. We will get down to bare essentials-and I have some experience with bare essentials. During the depression years in the thirties-1934 and up to 1937- I was minister of welfare in a provincial government and, in common with the rest of the country, we laid down what were bare essentials. That is what we then called direct relief, and it was related to the five items of food, fuel, shelter, clothing and medical attention.
Let us apply that to this family of four. I find that in Toronto $10 is the weekly minimum for shelter, $5 for light and heat, $3 for clothing, $3 for household furnishings and replacements, and $2 for medical and dental attention. And it is impossible to get by on less than $15 a week for food. Those items total $38, leaving $2 to finance carfare, drugs, unemployment insurance, life insurance, fire insurance, donations, miscellaneous unpredict-ables and security for the future. In addition to that, the family allowances bring in $120 net, which is another $2.25 a week. So that this man has $4.25 to do all these things I have mentioned, in addition to other things of which we all know in our everyday lives. It is my conclusion that it cannot be done.

Prices Committee
I believe the result will be a reduction in the food that the $15 can buy. Some may think that $15 is a generous amount. I believe it was the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) who gave the figure of $18 a few days ago. If anyone believes he can pare it down, let me mention the following chain-store prices in Toronto as of yesterday: bread, 14 cents; hamburger, 29 cents a pound; round steak, 49 cents a pound; eggs, 51 cents a dozen; butter, 71 cents a pound; potatoes, 50 cents a peck; turnips, 5 cents a pound; onions, 25 cents for three pounds; oranges, 32 cents a dozen for smalls; sugar, 9 cents a pound; coffee, about 50 cents a pound; and tea, $1 a pound.
When the time comes in this country when a dollar buys a pound of butter, a quart of milk and a loaf of bread it is time we gave the situation most serious consideration, such as we ai *>
attempting to do at the present time.
A few .minutes ago I mentioned unemployment relief, and spoke about essentials. But this is not a family on relief; this is a family making what was once considered pretty good money. And they would not be human if they did not strive to keep their children dressed at a standard they can no longer afford.
I am sure the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. St. Laurent) will forgive me if I suggest that the husband is entitled to the comfort of tobacco and the wife to a little make-up, although I am allowing her very little for that. Together they are entitled to visit the occasional movie and even to drop something into the collection plate. These people whom I have talked about earn above the average. If there are many who have more to spend, there are a great many who have less to spend. These families to which I have referred are living on the very fringe of hardship. Some have gone over the edge and others will follow if prices are permitted to rise.
One of the causes was the removal of controls, particularly on foodstuffs. I can see no end to the rises until controls are fully employed and subsidies, if necessary, because this is an emergency situation. If we can find a more adequate solution I am prepared to toss subsidies overboard, but until then I know of no better solution. On April 15 of last year I took the time of this house to warn hon. members that they should not take off controls prematurely. Prophets are not very popular people. If our wives kept on saying, "I told you so," they would not be very popular in the home, so I shall not discuss that part of it.
I know that controls were applied during the war, with the express understanding that they 
would be lifted when peace permitted their removal. Economists in the house, those in the house who said they were economists, and economists outside the house told us that decontrol would expand production, that in time it would satisfy demand and so level off prices. Things have not worked out that way. There is no satisfying the demand that exists today, because the source of that demand is not in our community, it is in a hungry world laid waste by war. In my opinion production can rise indefinitely and there still will not be any automatic levelling off of prices unless we want to be less civilized than we are at the present time, unless we want to cut off our help to Europe. I do not think there is anyone in this house or in the country who is prepared to do that, or who should be prepared to do that.
My fear is that prices can go still higher and that they will draw with them not only a train of poverty and under-nourishment but labour conflict beyond anything we have yet experienced. Can any hon. member say that the end of inflation is in sight. Will anyone say that the last price rises occasioned by our necessary import restrictions and the consequent shortage of consumer goods are in sight? We .have already seen in this house and in the country the effect of the additional rise in prices induced by our agreements with the United Kingdom. We have seen the results of the export-import bill. I ask hon. members, what will be the results of the larger purchases of our produce which are expected under the Marshall plan?
We know where the burden will fall. It will fall on those people who are less able to bear it, upon the industrial workers and the white-collar workers. I exclude farmers because they can use their own produce to stock their own larders. The well-to-do can get by. They can adjust their family budgets or draw on their savings. Some way or another they get by. But the only adjustment the worker can make is by a further reduction in the amount and quality of the food which he needs.
I ask this house in approaching this problem to try to preserve its sense of values as earnestly as we are trying to preserve our United States dollars. The fact that it is said ad nauseam in no way detracts from the truth of the statement that strong and healthy children are a nation's most precious asset. We shall not continue to have that if we continue to price the necessities of life beyond their reach. New additions to that asset will be fewer than ever if young couples are made painfully aware of the fact that they cannot afford to have another child.
I have groped for an answer and I know of no other answer in this emergency of try-

Prices Committee
ing to hold the line than to restore necessary controls on essential foods. If subsidies are necessary-we have restored some-and I assume they are, to protect the producer whose costs have risen, then we must have them for the time being. It is significant that we live in a land of plenty; we are still one of the few countries in that condition. Our problem is not the problem of three-quarters of the world. Our problem is not to produce enough to feed our people; it is simply how to deliver an adequate share of our produce into the larders of our people at prices they can still afford to pay.
I think, and I have always thought, that the sales tax is bad. It levies on the poorest purse in the same way as it levies on the richest purse. It increases the cost of living. It is not just an eight per cent tax because it is now compounded into ten per cent, twelve per cent and sometimes fifteen per cent. I think it has long overstayed its welcome. If we cannot immediately get rid of all of it, because that may be too inflationary, we should at least do away with most of it.
One of the things that we ought to do is to reimpose the excess profits tax as quickly as we can. The people who make excessive profits should pay more than those who make reasonable profits. The excess profits tax would bring in much revenue and I think it would stop some profiteering. We drew a line during the war and said, "Beyond this is excess profits," and yet industry prospered. I know of no justification, moral or economic, for the spree of profit taking which has occurred since the excess profits tax was taken off. It would be unjust to let business take all it can get from the public without giving a substantial part of it back to the government. I do not think any principle of non-interference with business or the determination to pile up a surplus of public funds is of great importance compared with the health and welfare of our people. These are being undermined by the runaway prices of today.
I think we have a solution within our grasp. I would not have tried to interpose myself into this debate if I thought there was any anxiety to get at that solution. But this debate has been going on for three days and I thought it was about time I had something to say too.
On January 14 last, speaking before the Trades and Labour Congress in Toronto, I suggested a four-point program to halt runaway costs. At that time I suggested that we have selective price controls on meat, vegetables, milk, bread and other commodities necessary for the Canadian family; (2) use of
the Combines Investigation Act, and of the criminal code to crack down on profiteers;
(3)	permit under the Export-Import Act the importation of vegetables at fixed prices; and
(4)	a complete, open, and thorough investigation into today's high prices, let the chips fall where they may.
I merely bring that to the attention of the house because the minister has told us today that some investigations have taken place under the Combines Investigation Act. I think it would have been well if more publicity had been given to those investigations because I agree with the Prime Minister that publicity is a factor in keeping down prices.
I have often heard it said that the C.C.F. were the conscience of the Liberal party. Today I thought perhaps I should act as their conscience because I was very much distressed when they spoke yesterday of taking a walk on the committee, and already today there have been some references to it in the house.
Recently, I think last month, a little man in the form of a L.P.P. image who had no future and a veiy doubtful past, and could no longer walk alone, climbed up on the back of the C.C.F. I know how unwelcome he was there and will be. It seems to me, though, that the C.C.F. is losing sight of something that is very important. This little fellow does not weigh much at the present time, but if you examine the hug he is giving the C.C.F. you will find that he hugs like a bear.


Mr. GILLIS:: You should know over there.


David Arnold Croll: And if that does not finish you, when you become more tired from carrying him, you will find that he will fling his arms around you and choke you if he can.


Mr. MacINNIS:: Thanks for telling us of yc-ur experience.


David Arnold Croll: I am trying to help you out because I told you he means no good to you. I know how anxious you are to get rid of him. If you know that, you will know that taking a walk on parliamentary institutions is exactly what the Minister of Justice (Mr. Ilsley) said it was today. That is not the democratic way o? doing things. Committees are recognized institutions of government, time-honoured and cherished. You do not have to agree with them. We have changed them in this house.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: I will say you have.


David Arnold Croll: Of course we have. It is within our power to make whatever changes we like.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: To suit yourselves.
Prices Committee


David Arnold Croll: You wish you were over here; that, is your trouble. We have the office and the responsibility, and we are taking it.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: You are taking everything you can get.


David Arnold Croll: To take a walk on the committee would be a fatal mistake. By refusing to co-operate you will be doing one thing. You will be adding fuel -to the fires of misrepresentation, and even worse, by men of the type of Gladstone Murray and the Trestrails, who are even now getting ready to do that sort of thing. I think it is a mistake because you will have ample opportunity to discuss controls and subsidies in the committee. I know the members of the committee well enough to know they will not possibly discuss just one item, and the chairman is going to feel very tired tiying to rule you out of order.


Angus MacInnis: He will try, and the committee will support	him-this	Liberal
committee.


David Arnold Croll: All committees are Liberal committees when you first start, and my hon. friend knows that best of all. I am suggesting to the C.C.F., as one who has a good deal of respect for them, that if they boycott this committee they are giving democratic institutions a resounding slap that will be heard across this country. I am sure they do not want to do that. What I fear more is that they will do themselves more damage than they will do to this committee.
Mr. DONALD M. FLEMING (Eglinton): Mr. Speaker, some have deplored the fact that this debate has already reached its third day. I should like to express the view that the debate becomes more interesting as it proceeds. We have had a very interesting exhibition this afternoon. We have just heard from the Minister of Justice (Mr. Ilsley) at long last a condemnation of controls, and he just wiped subsidies off the government's slate. Now comes along the hon. member for Spadina (Mr. 'Croll), one of the ablest members on the government side, and he runs right slap-bang counter to the government's policy. He has advocated the reimposition of controls. He has advocated the provision once more of subsidies on all the staple necessities of life. This variety of voices in the Liberal party is by no means new.
I am sure that the socialist members of the house appreciated the advice given to them by the hon. member for Spadina. He warned them of the dangers of entertaining the support of the Labour Progressive party.
I am not so sure where the hon. member for

Spadina belongs in this house. It sounds to me very much as though he was trying to climb on the back of the C.C.F. in this debate. It may be, Mr. Speaker, that the hon. member for Spadina no longer feels 'happy sitting to your right. Nevertheless his advice to the C.C.F. was, I have no doubt, sincere and will carry the more weight as coming from one who has shown himself this afternoon to be at heart a member of the C.C.F., and not at home with his colleagues sitting around him.
Another interesting development in the debate today has been the participation in it by the Minister of Justice. From remarks made by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) at the adjournment of the debate on Tuesday evening, it was quite clear that he hoped/ to see the debate concluded yesterday, obviously without any participation in it by the Minister of Justice. I will tell hon. members why the Minister of Justice spoke in debate this afternoon. I do not believe he had any intention of participating in it until after the speech made in this house yesterday by the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefenbaker). In other words, the Minister of Justice was smoked out. He came forward and explained that within his department falls the responsibility for administering the Combines Investigation Act. He was careful to put himself on record as having no responsibility for the order which set up the wartime prices and trade board and gives it its wide powers, including those which the minister called the profiteering section. He shifted that load on to the shoulders of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott), and it will be interesting to see whether the Minister of Finance will also be smoked1 out and forced to participate in this debate.
Before I leave the interesting subject of this afternoon's proceeding, may I just offer this suggestion. When we see such an interesting debate as that which occurred1 this afternoon between the Minister of Justice on the one hand and the hon. member for Spadina on the other, between two members whose views are apparently poles apart, it is a pity to see it confined merely to the chamber. I think it is the kind of debate which ought to take place on a public platform, in a great big theatre. It could be repeated in different public halls across the country, because it is one of the most interesting we have had in a long time.


An hon. MEMBER:: On the radio forum.


Donald Methuen Fleming: The radio forum would be a very suitable place for a repetition of the debate this afternoon, because in it there were views which are poles apart. Somehow

Prices Committee
or another the Prime Minister is supposed to stand over them and gather these warring chickens under his wing.


Mr. CRUICKSHANK:: He has done it for twenty-five years.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Yes. I am not going to say anything about the feathers, but I am going to say this. It will take even the political ingenuity and wiles of the Prime Minister to keep these two warring chickens at peace under his wing much longer. He will have to make up his mind sooner or later which of these chickens really belongs to him, because I think one or the other of them will have to be disowned shortly as a duckling.
I do not know why it should have required so much elaboration on the part of some hon. members who participated in this debate to demonstrate that there is a rising cost of living. Surely we do not need to take up the time of the House or Commons to demonstrate a fact that everyone of us must be confronted with in his own life, in his own riding, in his every contact, namely, that we are faced right now with a rise in the cost of living which has reached alarming proportions. It is bearing very heavily on people of small means, and more especially, I think, on people on small fixed incomes than on anybody else, because there are a great many people in this country whose incomes have not increased perceptibly, certainly far from being in fair proportion to this vaulting cost of living.
In the debate yesterday mention was made of the fact that in the month of December the cost of living increased 2-3 points. But that is not the whole story. There are two other features in the report issued yesterday by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics which are equally worthy of note. The first is that the increase in the cost of living in 1947 was 21-3 points. The other factor worthy of note is that, while the general cost of living increased 2-3 points in the month of December, the factor of food costs increased three and a half points, and it has now reached the figure of 182-2. I should like to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that the reason for that last shocking increase in the cost of food is attributable to government policy, to what the business community has come to regard as the equivalent of sabotage, and I refer to "Abbotage". What I mean by that is precisely this: the responsibility for that increase in the cost of living rests squarely on the shoulders of this government, because this increase in the cost of food in the past two months is directly attributable to the policies announced by this government late in November and put into force without any reference whatsoever to parliament.
That is factor No. 1, the existence of this soaring increase in the cost of living. The second is the relationship of that increase to government policy. We cannot dissociate the two. It simply cannot be done. To ask this committee to go to work and to investigate the cost of living, and to say to it at the same time, you may not consider questions of government policy, or the extent to which government policy is responsible for reduced production in Canada, particularly of foodstuffs, or for high prices, is to make a mockery and a sham of the appointment of the committee at all; that is what the government have done deliberately. If they had meant this committee to be really effective, to accomplish something, they would not have trimmed its wings before it was even appointed; they would have welcomed the amendment put forward from this side of the house. If there was any hope at all of bringing any constructive and effective end to the labours of this committee it rested solely on the addition of the amendment moved by my leader. The government have succeeded in taking objection to that on the ground of order, and it has gone by the boards. This poor committee is left now with a very narrow field in which it cannot hope to do anything effective.
The blunders of the government in its control policy, and the equal blunders of the government in its decontrol policy, along with the facts I have mentioned, are responsible for the mess which exists today, a deliberate government creation.
In his remarks on Monday, the Prime Minister was very careful to exclude entirely any attempt to deal with the causes of the rise in the cost of living. He said that he was not going to deal with them at that time. Why not? The house is entitled to know from the lips of the leader of the government just why, in his opinion, the cost of living is reaching its present shocking proportions. But no; that was a subject taboo as far as the Prime Minister was concerned, and, I think, for obvious reasons.
The third factor in the situation I should like to refer to is this. The people of this country are aroused to the fact that the cost of living is running away from them and they are looking in the direction of Ottawa at the present time for some action to halt it. Why? This is the same government that told them all during the war what a wonderful job they were doing in holding
Prices Committee

down the cost of living. They did not make so much noise of the fact that they were holding ceilings on wages and on salaries at the same time; but they used the funds of the countiy to broadcast the boast that they were doing such a wonderful job in holding down the cost of living. Is it any wonder today that the Canadian people, faced with the most rapid increase in the cost of living ever recorded in Canadian history, are looking to the same government and saying, "Why, you bragged about holding down the cost of living before? Here is the runaway cost of living today. You are the people responsible. What are you going to do about it now?" Yes, Mr. Speaker, the chickens are coming home to roost. Right -now the sky over Ottawa is black with the chickens coming home to roost on this government.
I said something about the hopelessness of the task of the committee, trimmed as it now is by the deliberate intent of the government. The committee is, of course, not to be permitted to make a single recommendation. Sixteen members of the house, who are expected to have some sense of responsibility, are being asked to serve on the committee, and the government is saying to them, "Well, gentlemen, we will permit you to make an inquiry into the situation. We will not let you go very far; we will confine you within a very narrow groove; you can make a report on what you find out; you can report certain facts-if you can come to an agreement on what the facts are-but don't you dare say *what you think ought to be done to meet the situation disclosed by the facts. We don't trust you to do that." Oh, no; only the government is permitted apparently to deal with questions of that kind, because the government is hiding behind the silly assertion that that must be government policy. Well, if they have a policy, and this is within the realm of government policy, then why on earth does the government not -bring some policy before us? We have not had any policy brought before us by the government in this debate. The field is a vacuum at the present time. It is about time somebody got into it. The government will not open its mouth on the subject of its own policy; and now it says it will not permit a committee of the house, a responsible committee presumably, to open their mouths on the subject of what ought to be done to meet a situation which is rapidly reaching critical proportions.
Here is the test of the good faith of the government in this matter. If the government really means this committee to be effective; if the government really intends that light 
shall be shed in dark places, then the course open to the government is perfectly clear, the course it ought to follow, and that is to say to that committee: "No holds barred, no clipping of your wings. Go in there and get to the bottom of the whole situation"-the sort of thing the hon. member for Spadina (Mr. Croll) would like to see done by a parliamentary committee if he were spokesman for the government and not simply the mouthpiece of his own views and those of the C.C.F.
By what was done, in the objection to the amendment of my leader, the government has not simply emasculated the committee, as was suggested by one hon. member yesterday. It has gone the whole way and completely eviscerated the committee. Why should questions of policy be excluded? I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that what is needed right now is a courageous approach to the question of the cost of living, and it must be made a matter of policy, and made so immediately.
Let us have some policy. There is no government policy at the present time. The government is acting like a dog in the manger. It has no policy of its own and it will not allow anyone to devise or declare a policy. The Prime Minister closes his lips on the subject; and yet the government says to the committee, "You shall not occupy the field of government policy. That must remain a vacuum," even though the government boasts a majority of members on the committee. It has nine members to seven, and a member of the cabinet and four parliamentary assistants are among the nine.
I wondered at the speech made by the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) in this house the day before yesterday. He made a great parade of what he considered to be the accomplishments of the government in the field of food production and in ministering to the lot of the farmers; and yet he and the administration of which he is a member were not prepared to let this committee review that subject. Oh, no. It will be left to the Minister of Agriculture and the ministers in the house to make a great parade of what the government thinks it has accomplished. The government will not allow a committee to review such questions. They say, "Oh, no. We are quite confident in our policy and the success of what we have done." But when you suggest that the question of policy should be referred to a committee on which the government has a majority of members, the answer is, "No. We cannot risk this tender plant in the hands of any committee of the house." This shibboleth of government policy has now become a sacred cow and it is inviolable.

Prices Committee
The Minister of Justice this afternoon took great pains to suggest that somehow or other there are powers available to the committee that are not available to the government today. He laboured long but he did not convince even himself. What about the Combines Investigation Act? I do not need to go over the story again. It has been told time and again in this debate, but never more clearly or more eloquently than by my leader on Monday or by the hon. member for Lake Centre yesterday afternoon.
Everything in the way of power that the committee has, or will have, is possessed today by the government and by government boards. Everything in the way of power which the committee will have, the government and its boards have had all along. The combines investigation branch have had these powers for years. The wartime prices and trade board, with a substantial enforcement branch, has had all the powers for the last half dozen years. And what is the sorry record that the Minister of Justice has to come into this house this afternoon and confess to? It was a pretty sad tale we heard from him. No wonder he looked so sad this afternoon as he made his confession.
Here is the record of the government, presided over by the Prime Minister who claims the parentage of the Combines Investigation Act, and who said in this house on Monday that it was the policy of the government to give vigilant enforcement to the act. What is the record? Six major investigations are being proceeded with at the present time. If the minor investigations amounted to anything the Minister of Justice would have told us about them, but he did not mention them. There are these six major inquiries being proceeded with at the present time and, believe it or not, the government expects to have one finished soon. Others may be started, but where will they start and when? What have they done with information, the kind of information the Minister of Justice has been passing on to them, the kind of information which the hon. member for New Westminster (Mr. Reid) said he had done his duty in passing on to the Minister of Justice, and which the Minister of Justice apparently has passed on to the combines investigation branch?
Let us take what comfort we can from the fact that one investigation is likely to be completed shortly. By way of extenuation of this sorry tale, the Minister of Justice gets up and says in effect, "Well, it is not much of a showing, I admit; but, after all, the combines 5849-58
investigation commissioner was out of the country most of the year". It is to be hoped that the commissioner will not have to be sent away very often or very soon, because this government apparently will be helpless without him.
I recall to you, Mr. Speaker, that in 1946 the government asked for power to appoint assistant commissioners, deputy commissioners who were to be clothed with the same powers as theretofore had been enjoyed by the commissioner himself, and the house gladly acceded to the proposal. You will find it embodied in chapter 44 of the statutes of 1946. Power is given there in the most express terms to the government to appoint one or more persons as deputy commissioners, and they are to have the powers and duties of the commissioner whenever he is absent or unable to act. It is provided in section 3:
The commissioner may authorize a deputy commissioner to make inquiry regarding any. matter into which the commissioner has power to inquire, and when so authorized a deputy commissioner shall perform such of the duties of the commissioner and may exercise such of the powers of the commissioner as such deputy commissioner is, by this act or any regulations made thereunder, required or authorized to perform or exercise.
Is it not a pity that we have to sit in this house and listen to the Minister of Justice making such a feeble excuse for the fact that he has so sorry a record to report in the enforcement of the Combines Investigation Act?
The other source of power which the government has enjoyed for the last half dozen years is contained in the general order in council which establishes the wartime prices and trade board, P.C. 8528, with a number of amendments, under the sections dealing with offences, penalties and prosecutions. These sections have been there all these years.
The Minister of Justice this afternoon called these the profiteering sections. Apparently they are, and they will be profiteering sections until the government puts iron into its soul and gets busy and enforces these sections and makes them anti-profiteering sections. The Minister of Justice did not deny that they have the power. As a matter of fact, it would be difficult to conceive of language broader than the language to be found in section 8 of the general order. I do not wish to dwell on this because the subject was referred to earlier in the debate. But let me give one or two short quotations. Section 8 (1) reads:
No person shall sell or offer for sale or supply any goods or services at a price that is higher than is reasonable and just . . .
Prices Committee

And again:
(3) No person shall
(a) acquire, accumulate or withhold from sale any goods beyond an amount which is reasonably required . . .
And so on. You will find that followed, Mr. Speaker, by a number of other similar provisions buttressing the general powers of the board and leading on to section 9 which provides as follows:
Any person who contravenes or fails to observe any regulation or order shall be guilty of an offence and liable upon summary conviction under part XV of the criminal code or, if the Attorney General of Canada-
And that is the Minister of Justice, let me remind you.
-or of any province so directs, upon indictment, to a penalty not exceeding five thousand dollars or to imprisonment for any term not exceeding two years or to both such fine and such imprisonment; . . .
The courts have the same penal power with respect to any director or officer of any company or corporation who is guilty of a similar offence.
Now the Minister of Justice has the temerity to come before the house this afternoon and say, "The reason we have had so few convictions under these sections is that the terms are so vague and indefinite." Can you devise any terms which are more clear and definite than those, Mr. Speaker? They would certainly be clear and definite enough in the hands of an administration that really meant business in the enforcement of this order; and if they are not clear and definite, whose responsibility is it but that of the Minister of Justice and the government of which he is still a member? If these terms were not clear and definite enough to enable the government successfully to prosecute those who were breaking the spirit and the letter of the law, then why did the government not, long since, amend this order in council? It was not for lack of power. It must have been for lack of will.
I take it that everybody in this house is in favour of the prosecution of profiteers. They certainly should be prosecuted. But I cannot see much evidence of a determination on the part of the present administration to use the powers it now has to prosecute those who may be profiteering at the public expense.
Let me now deal for a moment with the straw man which the Minister of Justice set up this afternoon in trying to leave with us the impression that somehow this proposed committee would have powers which are not enjoyed by the wartime prices and trade board or the combines investigation branch. Where does he find those broader powers? They do

not exist in the resolution. What is this committee authorized to do? It may inquire into and make findings of fact on:
(a)	the causes of the recent rise in the cost of living;
(b)	prices which have been raised above levels justified by increased costs.
(e)	rises in prices due to the acquiring, accumulating or withholding from sale by any persons, firms or corporations of any goods beyond amounts reasonably required for the ordinary purposes of their businesses.
The committee will certainly have no more power than has the wartime prices and trade board or the combines investigation branch to inquire and make findings of fact or reports.
In the second place, the committee will not have the facilities or the personnel to do the work of inquiry as well as it could be done today by the combines investigation branch or the wartime prices and trade board. We heard the Minister of Justice this afternoon say that difficulty was experienced in getting investigators who were competent to do the work of investigation under the Combines Investigation Act. If it is so difficult to get investigators for that purpose, how is it to be expected that this committee will find it any easier to get the kind of investigators that are needed? Here are people who are making it a lifetime task, applying to it the training extending over years to qualify them to do the work of investigation. Yet the government says, "So far as doing anything in the present situation is concerned, we will close up shop as far as the combines investigation branch and the wartime prices and trade board are concerned: they have trouble in getting investigators". But somehow or another this committee is expected to find it possible to do the work of investigation that these other permanent bodies, with their qualified staff, somehow are not able to do. The whole thing just makes utter nonsense.
In the third place, I contend that the committee will not be able to work as fast and as expeditiously as either the wartime prices and trade board or the combines investigation branch can. When the government has any information, whether it be from the hon. member from New Westminster, the hon. member for Spadina or anybody else with regard to cases where profiteering is going on, all that either of those bodies has to do today is to say to a member of the investigation branch, "Get on your horse and go right into that business; take their books in hand and make a report". Compare that with the inevitable procedure in the committee. The committee has to meet. It has to set up its organization. Where is it to start? When is

Prices Committee
it to get around to the task of making the appointment of investigators, andi finding these people whom the Minister of Justice is finding it so difficult to get to do the work of investigation in the combines investigation branch, and then, start those people to work? We do not know how soon they will be able to start; andi when on earth, Mr. Speaker, do you think they will bring in a report? These investigators are going to take some time. These are not people whose task it is to be busy at investigation work all the time. And when do you think you will get the report discussing the findings of fact that the resolution now contemplates? The committee cannot possibly do as effective or as expeditious work as can be done today by the wartime prices and trade board or the combines investigation branch, if either or both of those bodies are set to work by the government to do the task that the people of Canada expect them to do.
At six o'clock the house took recess.
After Recess
The house resumed at eight o'clock.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Speaker, motions
drawn by the hand of the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) must naturally invite scrutiny, and a little study of the actual text of this resolution is, I think, warranted.
The first of the three items assigned to the committee for examination and report is:
(a) the causes of the recent rise in the cost of living.
The Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. St. Laurent) was at some pains the other evening to explain how this curious word "recent" found its way into the motion. He explained, for instance, that the committee had to have some starting point, and that, therefore, the word "recent" was inserted.
What does the word "recent" mean? We are dealing with the rise in the cost of living which did not begin within the last month, because figures I cited this afternoon show that for the past twelve months the cost of living has risen more than 21 points.
What does the word "recent" mean as applied to these facts? It is the kind of word which, I have no doubt, will invite discussion. But taking it on the basis offered by the Secretary of State for External Affairs, we find he says that it will provide a starting point. I say it will also provide a stopping point; because, if the committee is confined in its inquiry into the causes of the recent rise in the cost of living, what will happen to the rise 5849-58J
which is going to continue from this point on, as the government sits back in its blundering, inefficient way, because the cost of living will continue to rise, in the face of the government's inaction. And anything in the way of further increase after the date of the passing of this motion-if it passes-does not fall within the scope of the inquiry of the committee.
The government has been wrong so often in its prognostications about increases in the cost of living that perhaps it is not necessary to remind the house that when the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) returned from England last October he undertook to unburden himself of the prophecy that the cost of living index would go up another couple of points, and that it might settle somewhere between 140 and 145. Think of that! That was only three months ago-and already the cost of living has reached 14S-3. So we know just about how much to expect from this government in the way of accurate prognostications as to movement in the cost of living. But these further increases are outside the scope of the inquiry.
Then, let us look at the language in paragraph (c) which says:
Rises in prices due to the acquiring, accumulating or withholding from sale by any persons, firms or corporations of any goods beyond amounts reasonably required for the ordinary purposes of their businesses.
I -was curious to find where that language came from; and it was with considerable interest I discovered that this clause is taken word for word from section 8 (3) (a) of the order establishing the wartime prices and trade board, the "profiteering" section. It is the same, word for word.
What does that mean? It means this, that there you have a provision which is the law of the land. The Prime Minister comes to the House of Commons and says, "appoint a select committee of the house to examine and report as to whether the law has been carried out," when the enforcement of the law is in the hands of the government, and is the government's responsibility.
Look at those three provisions. Every one of them is within the scope of the wartime prices and trade board order. Everyone of them has its full counterpart in the anti-profiteering section of the order. And, Mr. Speaker, what the government asks us to do is to inquire into the question whether or not the law has been observed. That is a fine example of respect for law and order! What can you expect from others, when the government itself does not know whether the law has been enforced by itself and its officers.
Prices Committee

One further comment with respect to the language of the resolution. It will be noted that paragraph (b) in the resolution refers to:
Prices which have been raised above levels justified by increased costs.
There was a curious commentary on the last word "costs" by the Secretary of State for External Affairs the other evening when, as reported at page 776 of Hansard, he said:
There may be a million things which are cost factors.
I can see that the committee has quite a task before it.
How is this committee to go about its work? I think that is worthy of consideration by the house. Well, first of all, the committee will have to be organized, and we expect a sonorous speech from the learned and honourable chairman of the committee, dripping with professions as to the noble purposes of the committee. That, of course, will take some time. It will be full of adulation of the Prime Minister. And may I interject here that if the present Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Martin) does not succeed to the Liberal leadership it will not be for lack of adulation of the Prime Minister.
Then there will be the question of choosing counsel. There will be the further question of choosing investigators. The Minister of Justice (Mr. Ilsley) says it is hard to get investigators. I do not know where on earth he will get all the investigators needed. There are in this country, I believe, something like
18,000	businesses which make returns to the government. I suppose it will take quite a few investigators to cover that field. Where are they to start? Are they to start with John Jones, or are they going to the Winnipeg grain exchange, or are they going to look into the livestock markets somewhere, or into the cabbage market? Where are they to start? There has not been the slightest indication, and I doubt if the chairman-designate of the committee knows, himself.
We are told it is not a fishing expedition. But where on earth are they to start? One expects that if there is any reason at all they will start with the complaints which have already been placed in the lap of the wartime prices and trade board. But then, that naturally invites the question. Well, if there is any basis at all for these complaints, why have they not been sifted through and action taken on them, if action is warranted?
So I do not know where the committee is going to go. However, we are told it is to be a fact-finding committee. That naturally raises the question:	Are they to find on the

facts of individual cases, or seek to make a general finding? Are they to look into the price of fresh vegetables and say, after due investigation, that John Jones bought cabbage at five cents a pound and sold it at eight cents a pound with a profit of three cents a pound and that, while the committee has diverging views on the facts, the majority think that two cents a pound would have been ample, and that three cents was too much? Are we to have about 10,000 or 20,000 cases of that kind; or is the committee to be invited to say that the increase in the cost of living has been due in some part to profiteering? How do they draw inferences of that kind? They cannot draw inferences of that kind without having made an investigation of a great many cases, because it would be most unfair to draw sweeping conclusions of that kind after reviewing only a few cases. So that I can imagine there is a tidy job of work to be done.
If they sit until doomsday they will not complete the whole task. And in the meantime the evidence is growing staler and staler every day. We shall have gone through two or three booms and a depression or two before the committee can possibly finish or possibly review all the business that is involved in the increase in the cost of living.
There is another point with which I should like to deal. Where complaints have been made to the present enforcement bodies and where the enforcement officers have actually reached the point where they are ready to take action, what will happen? Is prosecution to be delayed in order that this committee may further review the evidence? If these matters once get into court and the committee wants to review cases of that kind it will be told that they are sub judice and their hands will be tied.
What will this accomplish? A tide of public opinion has been raised over the rising cost of living because the public have heard the government's professions and have seen how they have not been kept. Instead of trying to meet the trainload of protests by the public, the Prime Minister is trying to turn the switch and send the train up a side spur so that it can never get back on the main track. He is hoping to see these protests stalled somewhere on the spur track far off the main line.
Undoubtedly he hopes to get some benefit from delay. He is hoping that something will turn up. Therefore he is practising 'his characteristic Fabian tactics of just sitting back and hoping that something will turn up.
He talks about the government wanting action. In the face of this resolution, can one

Prices Committee
imagine any greater casuistry than is contained in his words when he talks about action, when he asks the house to appoint a committee?
What is to come out of the findings of this committee? No one knows. Will they ever be debated in the house? Nobody knows. If the Prime Minister wants that action I submit that he is running away from action right now. Action should come from the government. This is simply a scheme to avoid facing the responsibility which belongs to the government. Obviously it hopes that the public will be fooled into thinking that the government is doing something when, in fact, its actions constitute nothing more than pretence and sham.
Parliament will be stifled by this resolution. You may be sure, Mr. Speaker, that when the occasion arises in the house objection will be taken to discussion of the cost of living, just as abjection was taken in 1946 when attempts were made to ask questions with regard to matters before the war expenditures and economies committee, and in 1947 in connection with matters before the public accounts committee. The whole resolution is simply a scheme on the part of the government to shirk its responsibilities.


Mr. A. M. NICHOLSON (Mackenzie):: Mr. Speaker, this is the first time since I came to parliament in 1940 that I recall the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) and four of the senior members of the cabinet participating in a debate. I think it is equally significant that very few private members on the government side have had anything to say. I must conclude from the comments of the ministers that they are completely out of touch with public opinion in Canada today. We understand that cabinet ministers are busy men and that they carried great responsibilities during the war, but I think they should get out on the back concessions from time to time and talk to our farmers and fishermen and industrial workers to find out what the rise in the cost of living is doing to the people of Canada.
On many occasions during the war, both in parliament and throughout the country, I went out of my way to pay tribute to Canada's wartime Minister of Finance, who is now Minister of Justice (Mr. Ilsley). I do not think the minister did himself credit today with the speech he made in the debate. He dismissed quite lightly a carefully considered statement which was given previously in parliament when he estimated that the cost of subsidies to the wartime prices and trade board would be around $200 million a year
but that they saved the Canadian people over $2,500 million a year. I do not think the Minister of Finance pulled those figures out of the air. He had his advisers from the wartime prices and trade board before him. If he feels that he should state publicly now that he gave the people of Canada wrong advice, why does he not do so? I do not think it is becoming to a Minister of Justice to treat a carefully given statement as he did today.
He said today that those estimates were based on the assumption that we would have the same developments in Canada after world war II that we had after world war I. Perhaps he was wrong; perhaps we would have had an even more drastic increase in the cost of living had it not been for controls.
Then the minister had something to say about subsidies. During the supper recess I looked up Hansard and I found some comments which the minister made when he was justifying the payment of subsidies. As reported on pages 1882 and 1883 of Hansard of April 23, 1942, the minister dealt with this controversial problem. The government had been criticized because of the cost of the subsidies and he dismissed that criticism by saying that the proposed cost was not very much. He answered the criticism that the wartime prices and trade board could not estimate the cost of subsidies for a given period by saying that criticism was invalid. He answered the charge that dealers and producers were making fortunes out of the subsidies and he also answered the criticism that the subsidies were inflationary.
The minister gave the house a long list of items on which subsidies were paid, such as milk, footwear, leather garments and so on, as well as commodities which were being imported into Canada, such as cocoa, dried and evaporated fruits and so on down the line. Quite correctly the minister reminded the house that it was in the public interest that those commodities should be imported or supplied to our people and that price ceilings should be maintained. In concluding his remarks the minister enlisted the cooperation of the Canadian people by saying:
This policy is a test of the capacity of this democracy to organize and discipline itself in such a way as to wage total war on the economic front. I had many misgivings at the outset as to whether we could succeed. I now believe that we can: and will. We can only do so, however, if this parliament approaches its task of criticism in the proper spirit.
I should like to say a word about the remarks of the hon. member for Spadina (Mr. Croll). I think those of us who listened to him felt that he made a most valuable con-
. Prices Committee

tribution to this debate. I am sure it takes a good deal of courage to be the only voice on the government side speaking out as he did. I hope that before the debate is over we shall hear from the hon. member for Fraser Valley (Mr. Cruickshank) and the hon. member for Vancouver North (Mr. Sinclair), who have on previous occasions expressed their views when they were in conflict with the administration. I thank the hon. member for Spadina for the free advice which he gave to the members of this party. We accept his wisdom in the spirit in which it is given. I should like to ask him, if he were sitting over with us and if he knew that the people of Canada did not need a committee to tell them the cause of the recent rise in the cost of living, to tell them that prices have been raised to levels beyond their pocketbooks, what he would say.
Following the views expressed by -the hon. member for Eglinton (Mr. Fleming), I wish to say that I do not think there is any doubt that this committee will not have -an opportunity to report to parliament and have its report discussed. Hon. members on this side have been frustrated in every move they have made to get some teeth put into the resolution so that the committee may make recommendations. I should like to draw to the attention of the hon. member for Spadina and all hon. members citation 560 in Beauchesne's, third edition, which reads:
When the report does not contain any resolutions, recommendations or other propositions for consideration of the house, it does not appear that any further proceedings in reference to it as a report are necessary. Every session, select committees make reports of this description, containing a statement of facts, or of the evidence on the subject of inquiry; but as they do not contain any proposition which can be agreed to by the house, they are simply printed for the information of the members. I
I ask the hon. member for Spadina, does he think this parliament would be performing any useful public service if at this stage we set up a committee to investigate in accordance with the terms of reference and bring in a report a year from now? While cabinet ministers and all members of parliament are besieged with protests from the people of this country about the rising costs of living, it is proposed to set up a committee, and in the meantime nothing can be done. The experience we have had with committees and commissions is not reassuring to those who still have the hope that a committee of this sort might accomplish something.	.
The leader of this party yesterday made reference to the select committee on price spreads appointed in 1934 and reminded the

house that parliament passed a resolution setting up a committee on February 2, 1934. The committee quickly got to work, had its first meeting on February 22 and its last on June 22, then reported that its work had not been completed and recommended that it be continued by a royal commission. The royal commission had its first meeting on October 30, 1934, and its last on February 1, 1935. Its report was brought in on April 9, 1935. During that long period 270 witnesses were called and 440 exhibits were put in, and now one has to wade through 8,277 pages to find the kernels that are available among what is, in my opinion, a great deal of chaff. I submit that the people of Canada do not want any 8,277 page report at this stage.
An hon. MEMBER; Will you settle for less?


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: Someone suggests it may be done in less. I submit that the situation is much more critical today than the situation which confronted Canada then.
Let me refer to two other investigating bodies that were set up. In 1937 a committee of the house was appointed to investigate the price of farm implements. That committee made recommendations and pointed out that the companies engaged in this business had over a period of years made substantial profits on the capital invested in each company. There were thirty-six recommendations in all.
In 1939 another investigation was made in Saskatchewan under a Liberal government. This Saskatchewan committee felt that nothing very much had resulted from the investigation in Ottawa, and it made some very useful recommendations. But I would remind the house that farm implements are still selling at prices away out of line with prices the farmers receive for their products. A twelve-foot combine in 1946 sold at Sturgis, Saskatchewan, where I live, for $3,421.35. The factory price was $2,308.25, a difference of $1,113.10; and if you deduct freight, the difference was $988.10. So that the government certainly does not require any further information on the farm implement situation.
The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) had a sessional paper brought down yesterday showing the special and accelerated depreciation allowances granted to the Massey-Harris Company and Cockshutt Plow, covering -each of the years 1939, 1940, and so on. This return shows that the Massey-Harris Company had- special depreciation over that period- amounting to $1,367,525.35 and Cockshutt Plow $1,936,943.99. So I submit, Mr. Speaker, that there is no need in February, 1948, for the parliament of Canada to set up any more committees to

Prices Committee
find out why farm implements are selling so high and why the people of Canada are complaining about the cost of living.
I looked over a speech which the Prime Minister delivered to the Canadian people on October 18, 1941, and I would remind the house that the situation which confronted us then was not, in my opinion, as serious as the situation today. There was no suggestion then that a parliamentary committee should be set up to investigate. The cost of living from the beginning of the war until October 1, 1941, had increased by only 14-6 points, whereas in the last twelve months the cost of living has increased by 21 points. On the first of January last the index stood at 148-3, and I venture to say at the present time the cost of living is up 50 points from the beginning of the war.
Listen to what the Prime Minister said in inviting the Canadian people to play ball with his administration on October 18, 1941:
We have heard much in recent weeks about rising prices. They have affected the budget of every family in Canada. We have heard and seen something of the dangers of inflation. But comparatively few of us, I imagine, understand those dangers fully, and what their effect may be upon our lives and our labours. By inflation we mean a rise in prices and costs brought about by abnormal conditions whereby our money is able to buy less of the things we need.
Rising prices unless controlled will make it more costly and therefore more difficult to finance the war. Rising prices, unchecked, will spread confusion and uncertainty in industry and trade. They will hinder production luul the proper distribution of supplies. They will make the cost of living rise more rapidly than wages and salaries. The value of savings -will be materially lessened. The result would- be hardship to nearly every one, and hardship in very unequal measure.
It is scarcely necessary for me to say that a rising cost of living is a source of acute personal anxiety to all and, particularly, to those with small incomes. And it is -this very anxiety which is the danger to our war effort. For in the making of war no weapon is more powerful than peace of mind. We all know -that we cannot do our best work and put forth our utmost effort if we are beset by personal fears and anxieties. And we know- that a maximum war effort for Canada depends upon each and all working together in conditions that are just to all. That is why the government which is responsible for the direction of Canada's war effort is deeply concerned about the effect of rapidly rising prices upon the prosecution of the war. That is why the government has decided that hereafter prices must be controlled more rigorously than they have been during the first two years of war. The needs- of today demand it.
I submit that if the situation in Canada in October, 1941, warranted that sort of speech, the situation in Canada in February, 194S, deserves action far different from the appointment of a parliamentary committee-simplytrying to transfer the responsibility to sixteen members of this house who are in no way responsible for formulating policy and are denied the power of making recommendations after they have discovered the facts. The Prime Minister in that speech emphasized the danger of inflation, and I submit that if the government was serious about inflation in those days it should certainly- be facing up to the problem now. I have here a pamphlet, "I lived through an inflation", by- Hans Habe, issued by the wartime prices and trade board. The writer tells of his experiences in Germany and says:
In December, 1921, wholesale prices were on the average thirty-five times higher than the year before the war. One year later, prices were 1.500 times as high. Two years later, at Christmas. 1923, they were 1,262,000,000 times higher than pre-war prices.
The writer goes -on to give some of his personal experiences. He mentions that Arthur Edel, who owned a good stock of German and French wines, instead of selling them wholesale began to sell them by the bottle when inflation came. In 1921 the price of a bottle of Veuve Clicquot-I shall have to get some of my friends to help me with the pronunciation-was 40 marks. In December, 1923, Arthur Edel got 3,000,000,000 marks for the same bottle of champagne.


Mr. FERGUSON:: It was a lot older then.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: This German dealer had a fairly good supply. But he gave up selling those bottles at three billion marks each because three billion marks would not buy him a loaf of bread. He made a trip across to Holland and found that a bottle brought $4 in good United States money in Rotterdam. He came back across the line with his dollars in his shoes and could have disposed of his S4 for a few billion marks, but he did not. He kept his dollars safely until he had 250 of them altogether. Then he went out and bought the finest house in Berlin, with a very expensive Rembrandt thrown in.


John Lambert Gibson: Does the hon. member advocate trafficking in wine?


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: If the hon. member would listen to me he would know that I am not advocating trafficking in wine. I am talking about inflation. Here is the story of Rudolf Bauer. Rudolf and his brother inherited the equivalent of about $10,000 each when their father died. Rudolf was an accountant and was very thrifty. Like thrifty people, he put his money away in safe-keeping. The brother was not so thrifty. He enjoyed wine, beer, and other strong drinks and his money- was soon spent. When Rudolf realized finally- what inflation was doing to his country
Prices Committee

he decided he had better get his $10,000 and have a little fun with it. When he got his money he was not able to buy a postage stamp to send a letter to his brother. But the brother who was so reckless with his money had a hobby of collecting wine bottles. He disposed1 of his empty wine bottles for several billion marks. These are stories published] by the government of Canada to enlist the co-operation of the citizens of this country when we were fighting for our very lives. The Minister of Labour (Mr. Mitchell) and I happened to be in Europe during those chaotic times, and we know something of the demoralizing effect it has on a community when the savings of a lifetime will not purchase a postage stamp. The writer says:
When inflation suddenly came to an end, everyone frantically sought a way back to normal life, but the way was barred. The moral chaos which had been created proved an insurmountable obstacle. During the period of madness rapid enrichment and sudden impoverishment became common phenomena. Hard work, achievement, effort, lost their good name. The poor became rich and the rich poor.
It was these chaotic conditions in Germany that made it possible for a madman like Hitler to capture the imagination of people who were committing suicide by the thousands. According to the writer of this article, four million people in Germany died of starvation or suicide during this critical period. I submit to the government of Canada that if this pamphlet was worth printing in 1942 it is worth paying some attention to by the people who are responsible for the affairs of Canada now.
I want to go back to what I said earlier, that the cabinet of Canada is completely out of touch with public opinion in the country at the present time. On the front page of today's Toronto Daily Star we find the following :
Crash inevitable if price rise not halted-* Truman.
President Truman said today prices are rising so alarmingly that a crash is inevitable unless something is done to halt them.
Poor President Truman is in the position of having no legislation, no power to act. Here in Canada we have the legislation on our statute books; we have public support for action. Instead of action the government of Canada is recommending a committee that will meet for weeks and months and then will not have an opportunity to report.
Again in the Toronto Daily Star of Tuesday, February 3, there appears a picture at the top of which appears the following:
These are hungry jobless lined up for meal in Toronto.

Toronto the good; not China; not India; not Africa; in Toronto in February, 1948. Underneath the picture appears the following:
Free meal tickets donated by an unknown Bay street financier were the target of almost five hundred unemployed Toronto men who lined up at King and Market streets yesterday. Three hundred pasteboards entitling holders to a meal were given out and this will be duplicated every day until end of March. Scene recalls days of 1933 when hunger lines were common.
The following appears in the Ottawa Journal of January 31;
Lack of funds forces veterans to leave Carle-ton college.
At least two student veterans have been forced to leave Carleton college for lack of funds to carry on their courses. Four others who left at Christmas are believed to have given up for the same reason.
I am glad the Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. Gregg) is listening. I am sure he is in sympathy with these young men who have been forced to discontinue their studies. Here is the case of Lome. Ruddy as told to the Journal. Hon. members may laugh at a student veteran in Carleton college being denied the right to complete his education, but I wrant to tell my hon. friends that this young man served as a navigator in Canada during the war. He was trained at the expense of the Canadian people to the extent of $28,000. I think it is disgraceful that any man, who served his country as gallantly as the men in the army, air force and navy did, should be told that because of the rising cost of living, because this government fails to act, he cannot complete his education.
Mr. GIBSON (Comox-Alberni); I think the minister is going to do something about it.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: The article goes on to say:
Representatives of student veterans in universities across Canada met during the Christmas holidays and prepared a brief asking for a cost of living bonus to supplement the basic $60 a month education allowances. The brief will be presented to the veterans affairs parliamentary committee this session.
What the brief asks for is a five per cent increase for every six points rise in the cost of living index from October, 1944. At the December index this would give the single veteran, now receiving $60 about $73.50, and the married veteran without children, now receiving $80, about $98.
I am sure that the Minister of Veterans Affairs cannot be satisfied with the treatment that Canada is giving to her student veterans.
In the last edition of Veterans Affairs, published at Ottawa twice monthly by authority

Prices Committee
of the Minister of Veterans Affairs, we find a picture on page 4 with the following underneath :
Melbourne W. Prime, VLA full-time farmer on 124 acres at Rossway, Digb.v county, Nova Scotia, is here shown posing with his team of young oxen outside his barn. Fine teams of oxen are quite common in the Digby area, and they do a lot of work for their owners. They are later sold for beef at a good profit.
I submit that the buying of oxen for our Canadian veterans is not just good enough in the year 1948. The nation that could spend $25,000 to train pilots, $27,000 to train observers, and 828,000 to train navigators can certainly do something to see that these young people are permitted to complete their university education. Many of them went into the forces right out of high school. Who can estimate what the contribution that this young chap, whose name is mentioned in the paper, might make to us in ten years time? He wanted to be a chemist. Others want to be architects, engineers, and so on. They want to enter into our Canadian economy and make some useful contribution.
I have other clippings from the newspapers. One says:
One hundred per cent butter profit.
Price paid farmers from 35 to 37 cents.
Butter which cost 40 cents last July is now being retailed at 73 cents.
Another clipping says:
Cabbage ceiling set at nine cents by prices board.
Well, we are having rationing now. It is not the customary coupon rationing we had during the war. We are having rationing so that those who have money can buy cabbage at nine cents a pound, while those who are depending on a worker's cheque just have to go without.
From the Montreal Gazette of Thursday, January 29, 1948, I read:
A C.C.F. government resolution calling for reimposition of price controls on all goods of primary necessity and the re-establishment of subsidies was passed by a substantial majority at the Model parliament held at McGill university last night with national and provincial figures leading the various parties.
The hon. member for Vancouver East (Mr. Maclnnis), the hon. member for Eglinton (Mr. Fleming) and the hon. member for Montmagny-L'Islet (Mr. Lesage) were three speakers from parliament. I think it is significant that in Montreal a majority, out of 500 students of McGill, would support a resolution of that sort, in a province where there is not supposed to be much support for such views.
During debates on problems of this kind there have been references to the claim that members of the C.C.F. are out for controls because we want to push people around. There is no truth in that claim. We have no desire to pry into other people's business and to ask them to do what is unreasonable. Our reason for supporting controls and subsidies is that they have worked. The majority of the Canadian people know that there were some irregularities and some hardships, but we were able during the war years to distribute the goods available in Canada more fairly than ever before in the history of the country. I represent a very large constituency spread over an area of 112 miles east and west and 500 miles north and south, and my opinion is that if it had not been for rationing and controls the storekeepers throughout the constituency would have found it impossible to get their supplies of sugar, overalls, stockings, cereals and other commodities which were in short supply. While there were difficulties, most fair-minded people will, I believe, agree that the wartime prices and trade board did a reasonably good job, and I submit that in modern civilization we shall have to accept more and more controls. When my grandfather built his log house in Bruce county there were no building restrictions that determined how he should build; but if he were to build in Ottawa today he could not object to having civic regulations stipulating that the house should be built according to certain standards, so that if the fire brigade were called a fireman would not lose his life by falling through a roof that had not been built to support him. In a well organized society we accept building restrictions because they are for the common good.
In one of the Ottawa papers of January 23 I read of a winter hotel at Ste. Marguerite, Quebec, having been destroyed by fire, a hotel that cost over $600,000. What was that hotel for? Was it for veterans of the war? Was it for old people in Quebec who have worked so hard to produce food and other commodities? No; it was for the skiers.


An hon. MEMBER:: It was for everybody.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: No. It was for people who want to go into that beautiful part of the world for a holiday, and in normal times it is all right for people to have holidays in such lodges. But it is not in the interests of the public, when building materials are short, when carpenters are in demand everywhere, to put up a building of this kind costing $600,000 in the Laurentians for a few rich people who want to have holidays there, win-
Prices Committee

ter and summer, especially when there are so many veterans in Canada who have not yet been able to get homes for themselves.
In concluding my remarks I wish to say as emphatically as I can that the problem facing Canada is not a problem for fifteen private members of the house and the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Martin) to undertake. If the government of Canada do not know what is causing the rise in prices, and are not prepared to take the necessary action to deal with it, let them say so and resign.
I realize that at the moment the leader of this party would not be able to get a majority of the house to support the views which he and members of this group have submitted from time to time. We accept that as democracy. But I wish to say that if our views are not acceptable it is the responsibility of the government to pull a trick out of the bag and demonstrate that it can work.
The leader of this party outlined the solutions as we understand them:
1.	The reimposition at the earliest possible date of price controls on all basic necessities of life: food, clothing and fuel.
2.	The renewal of subsidies on milk, butter, bread, feed grains, cotton and wool.
3.	The closing of the Winnipeg grain exchange and the elimination of all speculation in foods.
4.	The reconstruction of the wartime prices and trade board in such a manner that it can adequately administer price controls.
5.	The continuation of the excess profits tax after December 31, 1947.
6.	Rationing, if necessary, of any essential commodity which is in short supply, so that all Canadians may get their reasonable share.


Mr. NORMAN JAQUES (Wetaskiwin):: I have listened to this debate and I wish to make a few remarks. I have taken some notes. First of all, let me say that I am in favour of this committee, not because I necessarily agree with the policy of the government or otherwise; but if it is to be a fact-finding committee, and I take it there is a genuine desire that it shall be a fact-finding committee, then I am in favour of it because I think, if there is one thing we are all in need of, it is facts. That applies to the members of the house just as much as it does to the general public.
While I am, of course, perfectly willing to grant that every member is anxious to improve the standard of living in this country, I cannot avoid coming to the conclusion, after

listening to some of the speeches, especially from the C.C.F., that some do not want facts, and that is why they do not want a committee.
We hear that price control is the cure-all. We are told that everybody wants control. I do not believe it. What people want is a lower cost of Living, and that is not the same thing as control. I know it has been argued that present high prices are due to the removal of controls. It seems to me that is the sort of argument which might be used when, after the waterpipes are frozen, when the thaw comes, one gets the flood, and people who do not stop to think might assume that the thaw is the cause of the burst pipes; whereas we all know that the freezing burst the pipes and we get the result of it only when the thaw comes. I think that analogy can be used with regard to these controls. I think the freezing of our economy under control was the real cause of what we are suffering from today, but we might not notice t'he evil results of it until the controls are unfrozen.
As I said before, I assume, of course, that a genuine use will be made of the committee for the purpose of arriving at the facts and that nothing will 'be hidden that could possibly be of use. First of all, I should like to say that price control must include wage control. 'When the people to. whom I have talked demand control, it is always the control of other people and of what the other people have to sell. The person who wants control does not want control of his own products or labour. As I say, labour will have to realize that, in. order to control prices, wages must be controlled; for, in order that prices may be lowered, wages must be lowered. I can see no argument against that.
When we talk about high prices, we mean that they are high in relation to what-in relation to prices in the depression of fifteen years ago? Do we not really mean that prices are high in. relation to income? That is what people mean when they say that prices are high; they mean that they are too high for people's income. So, instead of imposing controls, it might be argued, why not raise the income of the people to meet the higher prices? Why must we deflate and go through all the misery of deflation? Is it a fact that reducing prices will bring about the results that we all desire? I very well remember the situation fifteen years ago during the deflation when, prices were lower than they had ever before been known to be. Surely nobody in this house will contradict me when I say that at that time, with the lowest prices in history, we had the greatest amount of misery in the

Prices Committee
country that we had ever known, far greater than we know today. That is one argument against the idea that, by lowering prices the living standards of the people will automatically be increased.
When people say they want control, what do they really mean? Day in and day out, over the radio and by speakers everywhere there has been dinned into their heads the idea that what they want is control, control, control. Why do we not tell them that what they really want is to be enabled to buy the things they want to buy. That is what they really want. They do not want controls. They did not want them during the war. I had plenty of people tell me that and tell me to do what I could to remove the controls we had; because, as I shall show later, the fact that we are suffering from high prices today is not fundamentally a condition brought about by the removal of controls; at least, in my opinion it is not. There are many causes for it.
Of course the buyers want lower prices, but the sellers want higher prices. For instance, this week I have had some petitions with regard to margarine. I am told to use all the pressure I can bring to bear to prevent the manufacture and importation of margarine. What is the purpose of that policy if it is not to keep up the price of butter? I do not know what other reason there could be for it. Margarine is not unwholesome; I am not saying that it is as good as butter, but it is not unwholesome. Why, then, should people demand that the sale of margarine be prohibited? The only reason I can think of is that those who are interested in the dairy business want to keep up the price of butter and they are afraid that with the removal of the prohibition against margarine, the price of butter would fall. I do not know of any other reason.
Labour, of course, now wants higher wages, but higher wages mean higher prices while lower prices mean lower wages. I do not think there should be any dispute about those statements. If you are to have control of prices you must have control of wages, and one control leads on to another until you have nothing but control. That, I think, is the aim and end of Marxian socialism.


Mr. PROBE:: You have applied it in Alberta in controlling the press.


Norman Jaques: I cannot see that those
countries which are under Marxian socialism furnish any useful pattern for us to follow. I myself believe, as I think everyone else does who is willing to admit it, that, as far as living conditions go, we in Canada are as well
off as, and probably better off than, any other people on earth. I think that is a commonplace. I cannot see any country under control that can be put forward by anybody as an example for us to follow. Rather I think it should be an example for us to avoid.
We in this group have been here for thirteen years. It is a long time, and we have consistently advocated an economic policy which has, so far, fallen on deaf ears. But before sitting down I should like to quote a report made by the Southampton chamber of commerce in Great Britain. They held an inquiry into the economic conditions which existed in 1932, and appointed a committee which went to the root of the matter. It was a fact-finding committee, as I hope this one will be. That is why I am voting for it. If I thought otherwise I would vote against it.
They issued their report, and that report has now run into thirteen editions. I shall quote briefly from it because I believe it goes to the root of the trouble. This is the statement of the president of the Southampton chamber of commerce in October, 1947. In the course of his remarks he said:
From January of 1933 to June of the same year this special committee of ours pursued its trying and onerous task, and eventually published a report, known as the economic crisis committee's report. Fifteen editions of this report have been published in this country alone, and it still enjoys a worldwide circulation.
It constitutes a searching analysis of the existing financial and economic system, and discloses the flaw which for over 100 years has denied to the population the fulfilment of their natural desires. It further reveals that ever since the advent of the machine age the old money-making mechanism has been unable to eject sufficient purchasing power to enable the public to acquire the goods which the machine can so freely produce.
That was the Southampton chamber of commerce. Then he goes on to say:
Significantly enough, the London chamber of commerce working as I have already said, quite independently, arrived at a conclusion similar to our own.
And later on:
Let me add this. In the spring of 1942, the Association of British Chambers of Commerce itself appointed a special committee to consider post-war economic reconstruction, the findings of this committee coinciding, in effect, with those of the London and Southampton chambers. The aim, said the Association of British Chambers of Commerce report, must be to equate production with consumption, and not, as in the past, to restrict production to the consuming power available.
To crown all, one of the major declarations at the Hot Springs conference was to the following effect:	"Never in the world's history has
Prices Committee

a sufficiency of purchasing power been issued to the people of the world to enable them to consume what they can produce."
And finally he said:
Thus I am brought 'to my first point which is: that the paramount and primary duty which devolved upon the government was, and is, that of adjusting the money system as advocated in the three reports I have mentioned. Only by so doing can effect be given to the economic law: "Consumption is the sole end, the crown, of production."
There you have the opinion, not only of the Southampton chamber of commerce, whose report has stood the test of time for fifteen years, but that of the London chamber of commerce, the British Association of Chambers of Commerce and the Hot Springs conference of the United States. All are agreed that the fundamental trouble is to be found with the existing financial system.
I have no hesitation in saying that we must make the choice now between an adjustment in the financial system, so that we may retain all the benefits we enjoy, and submitting to an ever-increasing control which will end up in one frozen hell of controls.
Before we find a permanent solution we must have the facts, and it is my hope that the facts will be found; that they will be examined, and not hidden. That is why I shall vote for the committee.
Meantime for many people in the country there is what may be described as a state of emergency. People in low-income brackets, people on fixed incomes, pensioners of all kinds, those who are living on past savings and, of course, the lower paid people such as stenographers, are vitally affected. Girls are working faithfully today for $80 a month; how can they possibly live on salaries such as that and keep themselves looking smart, as they have to do, and at the same time enjoy a reasonable standard of living? For those people something has to be done, and done immediately. For them it is an emergency. There is no reason in the world why we cannot bonus those people; and I do not care what it is called, if you do not like the word "bonus". Call it a cost of living allowance, if you wish. But I say we in the House of Commons have the responsibility of putting an end to their suffering; because it is suffering, and cannot be called anything else under existing conditions.
Therefore, while I vote for the committee, in the hope that it will be a genuine factfinding committee, at the same time I implore the government to do something; indeed, to do more than something, to do the right thing by these unfortunate people who are caught by this rise in the cost of living.

(Translation):


Mr. LIONEL BERTRAND (Terrebonne):: Mr. Speaker, it is not my habit to deliver lengthy speeches, and no one can take me to task for having unduly prolonged the debates.
Besides, as a career newspaperman, I do not like to follow beaten tracks, and instead of repeating what others have already said, I prefer to confine myself to a few comments which, if not altogether new, seem to have the merit, at least in my own opinion, of not being trite.
The cost of living, which has reached a fantastic level, is causing deep concern to governments and individuals. The statements made in good faith, the predictions voiced time and again, the hopes entertained that the cost of living, after reaching a certain level, would remain stationary, have been an utter disappointment. In the United States, prices have risen in a most alarming way; the situation there, involving a threat of inflation which will soon materialize, has repercussions in this country. Even admitting that the cost of living is perhaps lower here than anywhere else, we must however acknowledge that it cannot continue to rise without causing violent reactions within Canada.
During the war, I have sometimes criticized controls in this house. It was not so much because of their underlying principle, for they have prevented a repetition of the glaring abuses of the first world war, but because of the bureaucracy which they brought into being, and whose zeal, often exaggerated, and in certain cases smacking of petty politics, lowered the prestige not only of the Board but also of the government which, standing above petty politics, aimed solely at serving the people.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Lionel Bertrand: War came to an end. The public demanded the abolition of controls-which had been established only for the duration of the war-because the conflict was over, because they were, it was said, encouraging the black market. Controls, we might as well frankly admit it, had had the direct and beneficial effect of ensuring the proper distribution of food and the necessaries of life, making them available to all members of the community whatever might have been their calling and their station in life, and at prices which, without being necessarily low, were at least reasonable. The black market was then in existence; it operated with prices

Prices Committee
that gave rise to justified grumblings and complaints. However, its dealings were conducted secretly with many precautions, a prudent hesitation and on a rather small scale. Today, we have the "white market" which operates openly with a disconcerting impudence and a boldness which goes so far as to challenge the law.
In my case, I have received hundreds upon hundreds of letters, cards or circulars demanding the burial of controls. After the war, the government, which had received thousands of them, saw fit to abolish controls gradually, to preserve freedom of trade, and democratic laws regarding competition. For a few months, prices hardly rose, then did rise in a normal and even legitimate way considering the difficulties of production, the scarcity of shipping, the lack of raw materials, increased manufacturing costs and the rise in salaries. But after removal of all or nearly all rationing measures, many speculators enforced their own controls upon the market.
Personally, I am against all peacetime controls. For the co-ordination of common efforts, I accept them in war time although war has often been an excuse for originating and multiplying them. If, normally, control should only exist in a democratic country, to play its part properly, democracy must nevertheless protect the weak against the greed of the strong, give the weak a fighting chance and curb the immoderate ambition of the strong. Let me say again that personally I am not in favour of peacetime controls, but if in peace time, certain cartels profiteer on the necessities of life, I feel the government has the right and more than the right to control. Profiteering must not be tolerated in Canada. In my opinion, there is, for example, in the agricultural field, too high a margin between the prices farmers receive for their products and those charged consumers after the product has passed through a series of middlemen and finally through some great concerns whose assets dominate and control.
We have laws enabling the government to investigate companies' business, scrutinize their books, apportion legitimate profits and extravagant revenues. The hon. the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) has specified that, if necessary, he would act in that sense. We can only approve this stand. It is proposed to set up a parliamentary committee to investigate into the rise in prices and to bring to light the combines of certain trusts. I approve of this committee. But if necessary
and if it is proven, even before the committee's report is tabled, that there have been or that there are now abuses let us at once apply the branding-iron. During the war, certain trusts, long known for their greed and inhumanity-a trust is soulless-could not make as much money as they wanted to. Cornered by controls, they were waiting for better circumstances. They want to make up for "lost" years, to take advantage of the scarcity of certain goods or raw materials, first to hoard them, then to control market prices according to their whims and wishes.
I repeat that, for my part, I shall support in this house all the legislation aimed directly at shielding the lower classes from the snares of big money and profiteering business concerns. If, because of circumstances beyond our control, price ceilings on various commodities must remain high, I think it would be fitting to inquire, through a parliamentary committee or otherwise, into the advisability of adjusting, on a fair basis, those salaries that are still way out of line with the cost of living, or even to reconsider the policy of granting subsidies temporarily, where required, and more especially in some particular cases. To my mind, on the other hand, just because of the increased cost of living, and more particularly if the government feels that it would be dangerous to return to a subsidizing policy even in a few restricted fields, it would be fitting to curtail substantially various hidden taxes, such as those on soft drinks and tobacco, to lower the postal rate, the sales tax on many daily needs, etc. Such reductions would slightly offset the increased cost of living. but for the same reason, let us not forget to effect a substantial cut with respect to income tax.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear!


Lionel Bertrand: Indeed, it will be stated that the government needs all its revenue to meet its obligations. Granted, but I also recognize that the citizen must face his responsibilities and those of his family and that, at present, the burden is too heavy for the small taxpayer.
During the war, the government floated loams to finance Canada's war effort. In the past two years, it has issued loans in the form of so-called savings bonds, and the public responded unhesitatingly to this undertaking that is developing such widespread civic spirit on a national scale. The all-roun 1 state of
Prices Committee


Mr. LALONDE:: Hear, hear.


Lionel Bertrand: Yet we are still paying seventy-five per cent of these pensions. Furthermore, old people between 65 and 70 years of age without sufficient means would have received and would be receiving a pension the cost of which would have been shared equally by the dominion and the provinces. The conference was scuttled. The

responsibility for the straitened circumstances now prevailing in many homes where, for reasons of security or on other grounds, the breadwinner is turned out of the labour market when he reaches 65, rests on two provinces.
Mr. Speaker, this is what I intended to say on the subject of the present debate. Let the government take the necessary steps, drastic as they may seem, in order to curb any profiteering. Let the regulations provide for severe penalties and even imprisonment. Under our laws, the poor fellow who, out of hunger and to keep his family from starving, steals a loaf of bread is sent to jail. But a minimum of comfort is required for decent living. How can we keep on allowing certain combines to rob the people deliberately, day after day, and pile up profits at the expense of men, women and children who need every cent they earn to ward off starvation? Fines are not enough. Heavy as they may be, once paid they still leave the trust with a substantial margin of ill-gotten profits. Business and industry should not be allowed to profiteer. The government should take over concerns, if necessary, and make an example of them. Government control is a hundred times better than control by monopolies. I would much rather see the government control certain goods and necessaries of life than sustain with total helplessness the dictatorial control of cartels and combines. During the war, the government stirred, in more ways than one, the admiration of the whole population and obtained the renewal of its confidence during the 1945 election. They can do as well now. In wartime, the government had to cope with tragic and serious circumstances, in peacetime they can again protect and safeguard the people. If controls, regulations, emergency measures are needed to protect our people, the government can count on my support and on my vote. I represent the constituents of Terrebonne and I am their spokesman. I am confident of fulfilling my duty towards them in calling for drastic measures to stop profiteering and other measures to check the increasing cost of living.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear!
(Text):


William Earl Rowe: Mr. Speaker, the reasons that would warrant this house in setting up a committee to investigate the high cost of living would surely warrant empowering that committee to bring

Prices Committee
in recommendations. If we cannot assume that, the whole proceeding is a farce from beginning to end. The cost of living is a vital issue at the present time, and I quite appreciate why the hon. member for Spadina (Mr. Croll), speaking this afternoon in his usual eloquent fashion, found it difficult to follow the party he loves so much. I realize that he probably has, of course, a still greater love for Spadina than for the Liberal policies of today. It was amusing to hear him giving his reasons why he opposed the ex-minister of finance, the present Minister of Justice (Mr. Ilsley), who had just told the house that the Liberal party was through with subsidies, and then to hear such a stalwart supporter of the party as the hon. member for Spadina embrace subsidies as the solution of the high cost of living.
There are important factors which might well have been brought to the attention of the committee and which have some bearing on the high cost of living if the scope of the committee had been made as wide as is usual with investigating committees. I am as sympathetic as anyone toward those on whom the burden of the present high cost of living falls most heavily. I know a great many industrial workers just as the hon. member for Spadina does in the industrial sections of his riding, and I know it is difficult for these men who are working on hourly rates, despite any increase there may have been in those rates, to meet the present costs of living. I know it is difficult too for the white-collared men, the clerks and the girls working in offices and stores, and people generally who live on small incomes.
Similar difficulties, though not to the same degree, were experienced by those living on small incomes following world war I. I can well remember at that time, when I first had anything to do with politics, how the present Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) in 1920 and 1921 on every platform from which he spoke from coast to coast denounced the high cost of living which he said had been brought about by the government that had been in power during the war. That was his main topic, and it was one topic on which he made the same speech in the west as he did in the east. He emphasized that the cost of living was a vital factor in the welfare and happiness of the lives of the common people and that unless we eased this terrific burden on those living on small incomes we should strangle trade. I remember how he said that one of the chief reasons for the high cost of living was high taxation and he urged that certain taxes be removed. He criticized the
party which now sits to your left, Mr. Speaker, for having had a protective policy and for having imposed tariffs on the tools of production and promised that if his party was elected that protection would be removed. He also cited excise taxes as another vicious type of taxation which increased the cost of living. Yet only a few weeks ago his government by order in council increased excise taxes by twenty-five per cent.
The ex-minister of finance this afternoon twitted those of us on this side of the house with having different opinions. He said that one of our members believed that the sales tax was justified, while another member was not so sure that it was. That indicates that there is independence of thought on this side of the house.
When the sales tax was one per cent I remember the present Prime Minister raising his voice in holy horror at that tax and demanding its removal because, he said, it was increasing the cost of living. I remember when the sales tax in the days of the Bennett government had, over the years, been gradually raised from one per cent to two,, three, four and finally six per cent; and in 1935, during the election campaign the present Prime Minister and his cohorts, some of them now in the cabinet, declared that they would remove the sales tax if they were returned to power. But what happened? They were returned to power, and the very first year they were in power, in 1936, they raised the sales tax to eight per cent. Similarly the Prime Minister denounced the high protection policies of the previous government. Today we find that the Liberal government has not only increased the sales tax to the highest point it has ever been but has introduced protective and well-nigh prohibitive policies in many respects.
There are other factors that enter into the cost of living. I have listened with sympathy to hon. members to my left just as I did to the hon. member for Spadina this afternoon. There is no one in the world who is not concerned about the high cost of living and also about the shortages of foodstuffs, which are at the root of the increased cost of living. When one realizes that children overseas are starving for the want of food it is obvious that something must be done. I believe all hon. members read the speech made by that delightful Canadian girl, Miss Mary Pickford. In that speech she asked for assistance for the children of Europe. What are we doing in Canada? What has been the policy of this government? What have they done to create the surplus that is needed?
Prices Committee

I have every sympathy for what was said this afternoon by an hon. member. It was difficult for him to say it; it took some courage to say it, especially when he was surrounded by those with whom he finds himself associated. If he believes that the way to do it is by controls he is welcome to his opinion. I believe it is his honest opinion; but we find that we have had a government that has started in with controls, and it has made one error in one control. Then it created another error in bringing on another control to control the first control or to decontrol.
We find that the United States of America has been criticized repeatedly by those who sit to your right, Mr. Speaker. They were criticized by the ex-minister of finance a year or so ago because of inflation, inflation that might be brought about by the relinquishing of control. We have a government that has built up such a bureaucracy they want to hang on to all the controls necessary in time of war so that they can enjoy them in time of peace. What has happened? If these champions of the control system could show you tonight that we had increased production all along the line and that the reason for the high cost of living was that we were sending so much to Europe to feed the starving people who must be taken care of, there might be some justification for it. That is not so. We find ourselves in the position tonight of having in Canada today scarcely more than one-third of the number of hogs on the farms that we had in the midst of the war when our boys were overseas and the farmers could not get enough labour to carry on. Today we find the lumber camps filling up. Today construction men are more plentiful. Today there are some signs of unemployment in certain places; yet we find there is only about one-third of the hogs to look after in the wintertime when such seasonal work is not so plentiful.
What does that mean to the children of Europe? What does it mean to the British housewife who has four or five children between fourteen and twenty years of age, that growing age when they need more meat? Today in Great Britain we find the bacon is so thin that one would think it was cut with a safety razor blade. That is done in order to string it out. I just forget at the moment what the ration is, but I believe it has been an ounce or two a week for a long time.
Not long ago I was in England, but I did not suffer very much. I met the former Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. MacKinnon) over there and I think he felt the same way as I did. He did not seem to be suffering much more than I did. He must have
[Mr. Rowe.)
felt guilty, as I did, in eating plentifully as we did at some of the hotels and observing such shortages at other places that we visited. What will it mean to the people of Great Britain? Hon. members may ask, why is it that our production has fallen off? Check back on the Canada Year Books and find out what happened in 1918, 1919 and 1920. To the champions of control and those who state that the government of that day had raised the cost of living, I say that they received their answer this afternoon in the speech delivered by the hon. member for Souris (Mr. Ross). I am not going to burden the house further with a repetition of it. I think the hon. member for Souris this afternoon showed quite clearly that the cost of living, percentagewise, is almost fifty per cent higher now than it was in 1920.
I can well remember being in stockyards out in the rural districts of the county that I now represent and seeing farmers coming in to market with loads of hogs. I can well remember their taking back a load that was not quite finished. If the farmer was short of grain and had no money to buy grain the hogs never went to market. They were taken out of his load, put on another man's load and taken home. One dealer told me that during the whole year of 1921 or 1922-I just cannot recall which year following the last war-he had not shipped one hog to the market in six months that did not weigh over 200 pounds, because the price was high enough to warrant feeding them. Conditions were such that there was sufficient profit to encourage the farmer to take the hogs home and put another fifty pounds on them. Fifty pounds more on a hog would feed a lot of people. If you put fifty pounds each on a million hogs today it would amount to a lot of meat.
Is it realized that the meat production of this country last year was scarcely over fifty per cent what it was in the mid-war years with all the shortage of labour? These are some of the fundamental reasons for our difficulties, and it is time we stopped, looked and listened. It is time we called a halt. Is it a case of not enough controls, or it is because of this control system and this new socialized agricultural policy that is falling down around our ears, that we have a shortage in our midst? Can you tell me, Mr. Speaker, that you can take from one class of people in this dominion and gamble with their products in that greatest, most hectic and largest gamble ever made with our products in the history of our country, which has been done by the Department of Agriculture? I am not going to go into that at the present time. I see the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) is in the chamber. I heard him speak the other evening. I was

Prices Committee
delighted, because I like the Minister of Agriculture; but my heart almost bled for him the other night when I read that in one of these agricultural meetings the farmers booed such a little champion of agricultural interests as he is. They booed him in one place; they booed him in another place; but he fought gallantly, as he is capable of doing. I was delighted, and I know everyone in this House of Commons was pleased to note that he has still one friend at each conference who can write him a letter to read in the house.


Mr. GARDINER:: Good things are usually small.


William Earl Rowe: 'Now that the minister has interrupted, may I say to him that I was trying to tell him that a great compliment was paid to him this afternoon by the hon. member for Souris. He said anyone who can organize as well as that would be a real aspirant for the leadership of the Liberal party in the not far distant future. I am not so sure that he might not do as well as some of the others.
I know there has bpen a lot of criticism of the United States decontrolling too fast. They have probably not been as well advised as the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) may think he has been. He has some great advisers around him, those who tell us what the Canadian dollar is worth, and tell us how to get an ordered economy, and perhaps can do it even without much basis for the money except their wise economical brain. However, I find that percentagewise during the last year the cost of living in Canada has increased twice as much as it has in the United States of America.
I have made general references to our meat situation. The same is true with reference to eggs. Everybody knows that. The Minister of Agriculture knows the story, if nobody else does. I think he knows it better than most people. I know I have lost some money on a thousand laying hens. Cheese is in just about the same plight. No one has worried more about it than the Minister of Agriculture; at least no one should worry more about it. It is half as much as it was in the mid-war years. I hope I am not over-emphasizing this, Mr. Speaker, but I trust you are grasping the significance of it. In the midst of the war, with the shortage of help, equipment rationed, young men overseas, and so on, it was difficult to produce. Today our young men have come back and are trying to start farming. Munitions factories in the district took young men who, in time of peace, would have been at home to look after the livestock. The old folks had to work long into the night. The
boys were down at the Malton airport or in the factories around Toronto. Today as I have said in the house repeatedly-and I know the Minister of Agriculture agrees with me in this; I know he has the same purpose in mind as I have, although he has such devious means to achieve it; he knows as well as I do; we have both said it in the house repeatedly -that food won the war. Food will win the peace. There is nothing more important than food today.
The greatest feature of the present economic crisis is the worldwide shortage of food. The hon. member for Spadina said this glibly this afternoon when warning my hon. friends to the left about being too closely associated with those who are sympathetic with other powers. If we are to maintain our place in the sun; if we are to maintain our place in this war that is still going on, whether a cold war or a hot war, we must see that food is provided. Many of us are thinking in common in that respect, andi for the next three years food) will be the most vital factor in peace, more vital than bullets were in the war. Yet what are we in Canada, with the greatest wealth per capita of any country, with magnificent agricultural	lands-this
country is known as the bread-basket of the world-with greater resources than any similar number of people in the worldl have ever enjoyed-doing with all our wealth and our resources?
If we continue to reduce production steadily as we have been doing in the last year or two we shall have a sorry story to tell our children and our children's children of the part that we have played in this most crucial time in our history. To me it is amazing that some of these things are not to be brought before the committee. I repeat, the very factors that warrant this house in appointing a committee are factors which are strong enough to warrant- that committee in bringing a recommendation to- parliament, and if the committee does not do that, then it will be a farce.
The whole situation is bleak and barren in many ways; and I have never seen a more bleak, more barren and empty proposal submitted to parliament than the proposal for the setting up of the committee in this way. Will this committee be empowered to bring before it officials of the combines investigation commission? Will it be empowered to bring before it the enforcement branch of the wartime prices and trade board? No one says, yes. I wish someone would. Even if the Minister of Agriculture, from where he is at present sitting at the back, would say yes, or even nod his head, I would be satisfied. But
Prices Committee

no. There is nothing but silence. As the government study the error of their ways they have nothing but silent remorse and regret for the mess they have created.
What happened on September 19? That is five months ago. What did the Toronto Star have to say? I know the Minister of Agriculture never doubts them because they rarely doubt him; and I see an item, which is a special to the Star, stating that Ottawa will keep prices down by exposing profiteers. This is stated to be Ottawa's program. I quote:
Government rearguard action-
It has been mostly rearguard.
-against undue price increases in the wake of decontrol is being launched here through the wartime prices and trade board, and the combines investigation commission, official sources disclosed today.
The program is designed to "scare" business against unjustified price boosts by two methods:	threat of investigation and exposure
where a combine in restraint of trade is suspected, and the release of information to the public indicating just what price increases are justifiable.
Those are the two techniques that are to be used and they believe this will work. Well, bread was raised only three cents in Montreal, but it was raised five cents in Winnipeg. Of course they may not have secured the news out there. The western people seem to be brave.
Will any member of the government rise in his place and tell me that this committee will take action to deal with these matters? That is five months ago. We had a short session last fall but we did not hear about this. This was government policy. The Toronto Star had printed the story; and men were shaking and shivering in Toronto because they were fearful of the cracking down of the wartime prices and trade board, fearful of the combines investigation commission, fearful of the hand of the King government, even so long before an election. They were afraid that something might be done, but not a thing was done.
Will someone tell us that this committee will be given further powers to carry out this scare policy? Will anyone tell me that they will be allowed to go as far as that?
In the mellowness of his years, the Prime Minister said the other day that there are greedy men, mean men, men who will do terrible things, who will almost take the food away from crying children whose parents have to pay so much. He knows all that, and so does the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. St. Laurent), another heir-apparent, though perhaps by the time the leadership becomes an issue, no one will want that crown

so badly. The minister of external affairs, speaking in Montreal not long ago, had this to say:
The repercussions of the efforts of everyone to maintain or improve his standard in the distribution of the nation's aggregate revenue lights a new trend of the same powder. . . . But this provides the greedy-and unfortunately they exist everywhere and always-the opportunity to find exorbitant profit cuts. It is necessary to find means to bring them to reason . . . We know it and we are working on it.
The other day the Prime Minister said he was aware that there were these greedy people, these profiteers, and the Minister of Labour (Mr. Mitchell) declared that profiteering would end. He knows them and the minister of external affairs knows them.


Gordon Graydon: Must be friends of theirs.


William Earl Rowe: What publicity has been given, because it was by publicity that they were to be frightened, to scare these greedy men?


Gordon Graydon: Where is the Canadian information service?


William Earl Rowe: We have the wartime prices and trade board; and all I am asking is that some member of the cabinet will rise or even nod his head to indicate that the government will consider asking these men from the wartime prices and trade board and from the combines investigation commission, who have been running around the country frightening these people for a long time, to tell us now how they frighten them. There are many things that happen that we do not know about. There are orders in council that we do not see except when we read of them in the Toronto Star. That has a large circulation and the news looks the same in it as in the Globe and Mail. But we see it there first, and it is not surprising that some cabinet ministers come here and learn about orders in council that they did not know had been passed.
This order went out on September 19. The cost of living was rising faster than at any previous time in the history of the country, and we had a short session of parliament, but we did not hear about these greedy fellows. The Prime Minister says now that the greedy fellows are around. Were they not around last summer? Have they just come into the country? Let me quote what the Prime Minister said, as reported at page 747 of Hansard'.
The people of this country want to have their representatives in this parliament proceed to discover the causes underlying what they have experienced thus far of what they believe to be an unwarranted rise in prices, whether due to profiteering, hoarding, or any other cause.

Prices Committee
But in clause (c) he makes sure that the committee does not go too far. First, the committee is to inquire into the causes of the recent rise in the cost of living. -It must be recent. He would not even remove the word "recent", because apparently it has started only recently. The committee is to investigate rises in prices due to the acquiring, accumulating or withholding from sale by any persons, firms or corporations of any goods beyond amounts reasonably required for the ordinary purposes of their businesses. That is all the power that the committee will have. If there are greedy people and the government knew about them all along, why n.ot widen the terms of the investigation? The right hon. gentleman said further down on the same page of Hansard:
The committee is not intended to be a prosecuting tribunal; it is hoped it may save the need for prosecutions. The committee is a fact-finding body. Its purpose is the publicizing of facts, not the prosecution of offenders.
He says further that, once the facts are known, he has every confidence in the supremacy of parliament, that parliament may some day do something. He believes there is no way of combating crime like publicizing it; publicize it and let the people know, and the fellow will feel ashamed of himself. If that does not do it, he has confidence that parliament will some day do something. It must be a wonderful thing to be such a close follower of public sentiment that people almost assume that you are leading it.
What would happen if we set up every committee like this? Why all this scheming? Why not make it clear? Why do some of the cabinet not come out from under the table and tell us something of what they are thinking? I know the Minister of Trade and Commerce and how it must hurt him terribly to see a restraint like this, when the people are suffering-


Mr. HARTT:: He is crying.


William Earl Rowe: He is not minister of trade and commerce now, I know; he is Minister of Fisheries (Mr. MacKinnon). I am glad that my genial friend is relieved of that burden. I shall not comment on how he fulfilled his position, but I must say that he is probably the happiest-looking man under difficulties in the present government.
The committee on banking and commerce have been sitting for many years. If they never recommended anything, why would they sit? As hon. members know, every ten years that committee amended the Bank Act. They brought in recommendations. We have other committees such as the radio committee. I well remember when, in 1935, I think it was,
the radio committee was set up. If it had
been so strangled and stifled and made barren before it started, what would have happened then? No, Mr. Speaker, the radio committee had some teeth in it. It changed the whole system. It recommended that there should be the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It did more than that. It kicked out all the other fellows who were on the board for fear that some of them might not have the right knowledge of radio, or of what should go over the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, or that some of them might have been friends of the Bennett government. So they were removed.
There were many other committees. We have the veterans affairs committee; and how well I can remember-and I know you will recall it too, Mr. Speaker-how the genial Scotch ex-minister of veterans affairs spoke of it. We miss him in this house, and I hope he has long years of enjoyment in the other house; I know that his genial personality and his Scotch wit will amuse that house as it often entertained this one. I know he will be missed by the government, because in many respects he had better judgment than those he left. I well recall how, on repeated occasions, when he was telling what the members of the veterans affairs committee did, he praised all those men, such as the hon. member for Vancouver South (Mr. Green) and others who were veterans, for the grand work they did. I could not help but admire his attitude when he mentioned that matter in the house, and said that the government could not claim all the credit for this veterans charter which was drawn up. He said he wanted to give credit where it was due, and the credit was due to those excellent veterans who sat on that committee and brought into being this veterans charter. What a contrast is this committee! Now we have this proposal, which is an insult to this house.
We also have the Indian affairs committee. Will that committee be restrained and restricted like this one. or will they bring in recommendation? Or will it be just a matter of publicity? We have the industrial relations committee also. What is the real reason underneath it all?
I could read what was said from 1920 on, but I have listened to it for so many years that I have not the heart to read it again. The present Prime Minister, back in 1920 and 1921, spoke about how the government should take the responsibility, that they had no policy with reference to the high cost of living; that it was their responsibility to remove the excise tax, to remove duties, remove taxes all along the line and cut out profiteering-the very thing that it is now his responsibility to do. But the reason that this committee is as barren
Prices Committee

as it is tonight is that this government has no policy on prices and no cost-of-living policy; it wants to restrain, restrict, gag and stifle the committee to make sure that nobody on it will give the government a lead as to how to find a policy. The government will flounder around; and, as was so well said this afternoon, this can go on for months. There are not many issues that, by the order of reference, can be discussed; but we do not know yet whether we can discuss, while parliament is sitting, the issues which are being discussed on this committee. Probably the Minister of Agriculture would nod his head, yes, to that. I imagine he does not know either.


James Garfield Gardiner: The hon. member cannot see properly. Let him put his glasses on.


William Earl Rowe: I can see the minister. He is not as large as some hon. members are, but I can see him even without my glasses.
I urge upon the government to reconsider the matter, to widen the scope of this inquiry and not make this look completely ridiculous. I would say to them that you can fool part of the people part of the time but you cannot fool all the people all the time.


Maurice Hartt: You ought to know.


William Earl Rowe: The hon. member might have difficulty in fooling even part of them nart of the time.


Maurice Hartt: This is Barnum and Bailey stuff.


William Earl Rowe: You should understand it
very well.


Maurice Hartt: Of course I do.


William Earl Rowe: The hon. member for Cartier
should be a singularly good judge of it.


Maurice Hartt: Of course I am.


Mr. GRANT:: Tell us about the Farmers'
Creditors Arrangement Act.


William Earl Rowe: My hon. friend does not make many speeches himself, so I will leave the floor to him on any of these issues. I know he would like to divert me from the one I am trying to speak about. I should like the Prime Minister to explain to the house, when he summarizes this innocuous proposal, if he is afraid of this investigation studying the subsidy issue. I see my friend the hon. member for Spadina is smiling.


Thomas Vincent Grant: We need someone to do
that.


William Earl Rowe: He has had more experience
than has my hon. friend, and he smiles at things which my hon. friend does not unde'

[Mr. Rowe.l
stand. I know he is wondering, when he mentioned subsidies this afternoon, if this perhaps is not a trick in a game so that we shall not have to talk about subsidies because we cannot be sure yet in Canada whether we are to have them. I should like some of these wise men in the government to tell me if they made commitments in the Geneva conference which will fix and fashion the subsidy policy of this country in the future. When the Prime Minister summarizes in this debate, I should like him to tell the house and the country what the situation is to be. While he has talked about subsidies here and there throughout the country, with one member saying we are to have them and his exminister of finance saying that we are not to have them, I should like him to say whether we are to have them or whether we can have them and keep our obligations and commitments which were made at the Geneva conference. Somebody nods that that is not right. Well, probably.


An hon. MEMBER:: He did not want to
interrupt.


William Earl Rowe: He certainly is not interrupting. I realize that it is always easier for some men to have their mental faculties handier when they are sitting down than if they are on their feet.
I am not going to detain the house longer, because I think my hon. friends down here in Little Chicago want to catch the train to Montreal. I notice that even the leading papers in the country do not announce their absence as they announce ours; and I take that as a compliment, because when we are out of the house even the press misses us.
I should like to know if this is to be continued as government policy. It has not been government policy all through the years in the matter of setting up committees. The Prime Minister will probably tell us when he summarizes at the close of debate. I am sorry that he has entered the house just as I am about to resume my seat, because I would rather have spoken while he was here. I know that he is busier than I am, and he usually honours me by his presence. I may say to him that I would have even relieved him from listening to me at all, if some of his followers had not interrupted me so much. If they had followed that splendid parliamentary style he has practised for so many years they probably would not have interrupted so much today.
But I say in all seriousness that the Prime Minister might, when summarizing, tell us: Why all this discretion? Why all this fear?

Prices Committee
What is there to hide? Why not bring this issue out in the open and let us take a real look at it? Why so restrain us, and make this committee a mockery? The members of the committee will cease to function as members of parliament. They can do nothing but go out and find publicity, as the Prime 'Minister has said. It is nothing more or less than a sight-seeing expedition.


An hon. MEMBER:: Good.


William Earl Rowe: Just a sight-seeing expedition. Someone says, "Good." Some people like to go on sight-seeing expeditions; but I never have gone on any sight-seeing trips which ever made me any money, or anything else. There are no recommendations to come from the committee, and I say that the Prime Minister should broaden the scope so that members from this side of the house may feel that they are sitting on a committee for some purpose.
I realize what was said this afternoon regarding boycotting the committee. I know the terrible furore which will go up from the Minister of Justice (Mr. Usley) and the Prime Minister with respect to the supremacy of parliament. And he knows how to keep it supreme, and knows how to use it. It is supremely governed by his own party. I know he would say that we were breaking parliamentary rules if we did not sit on the committee. So, from the point of view of mockery it may be better to go in and sit on it. Certainly; maintain the dignity of this great House of Parliament.


An hon. MEMBER:: The Tories are good at that.


William Earl Rowe: Better than your party is. And when you criticized us some years ago for passing orders in council, those orders in council did not hold parliament in the same contempt as yours have in the past few years. You talk about parliament today and compare it with what it was when we were in office. You criticize orders in council. The passing of orders in council has become almost a mockery, for in the quiet hours in the east block this government does more legislating than it does in parliament. And usually the press gets the report first.
I repeat that unless the powers of this committee are broadened so that they mean something, it will be of little use. I am not saying that members should not sit on it. I have not been asked to sit on it, but if I were I would feel I could not refuse. I know there are many others who could serve better than I could. But there is no use in anyone serving.
This is just a sight-seeing expedition started within the last five months from a statement in the Star, to frighten the people of this country, to publicize the government's own problem, and then to appoint a committee so that a solution could not be found. It might wind up like many other committees which had wider powers and which did not do much. However, no committee with such limited powers can do anything, but members will have to sit on it to preserve the dignity of parliament. But their effect and their status will be no more than gelded, fact-finding robots.
Mr. J. 0. PROBE (Regina City): Mr. Speaker, I feel I should be transgressing the rules as an elected' representative from my constituency, and in some measure as a representative of other electors in Canada, if I failed to rise this evening to add my voice to those who have spoken from all sides of the house against the ineffective form the present resolution has taken, so far as its impact on the cost of living is concerned. Were I not to speak, I would have failed to pay heed to the many communications, letters, telegrams and delegations I have received in the last few months. I know all other hon. members must have had a similar experience.
There is an overwhelming feeling in the country that the government will not do a job with respect to the important matter of living costs by investigating their causes in the manner suggested by the resolution of the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King). The fact that up to this moment five cabinet ministers have spoken in defence of the government's policy is added evidence of the fact that they, too, are aware of the storm of public opinion, and that they are trying to adhere to the policy pronounced by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) a year or so ago when he said that the policy of decontrol would be continued. The government is, of course, not so big in spirit that it will dare to admit it is wrong. Just today in the Ottawa Journal we read a press dispatch from Washington quoting no less a person than the President of the republic to the south of us, in which he admitted that the government there had made a mistake in connection with decontrol. The article is headed, "Prices too high, must be halted, President says". The American press of February 5, from Washington, has this to say in part:
President Truman said today prices are rising so alarmingly that a crash is inevitable unless something is done to halt them. For his part, Truman said, he will keep telling congress he needs authority to impose price controls.
Prices Committee

We intend1 to keep telling the Liberal government that it is high time they used the authority they now have to reimpose controls. There is no greater group of persons than those who, having made a mistake, will admit they have made it. I know pressure was on, immediately the war ended, to go on a rampage of collecting shekels which were available from those people who had thriftily done their duty during the war and had refrained from buying things they needed in their homes so that munitions of war could be bought instead.
I have here a little clipping which I presume has been paid for because it is published by the Canadian retail federation. It is a report on inflation and decontrol made to the Canadian retail federation oy J. L. McDougaM, associate professor of economics at Queen's university, on January 10, 1946. When I read this two years after it was delivered I do not doubt that the students of this associate professor of economics will seriously consider cutting his classes and going to some other fount of wisdom that comes nearer to being prophetic. I quote one short paragraph from page 15 as follows:
Nothing would do more today to increase production. and stabilize prices than a definite announcement from the government that it is intended) to remove price control completely, in the near future, and that, commencing at this moment, price control will be removed where-ever this is possible.
He predicted that with increased production we would stabilize prices. I have no doubt that production has been increased; but it has been hoarded, as the government seems to suspect by its announcement setting up this committee, or it has been disposed of in such a way that the consuming public have to use more and more of its dollars to get less and less of the commodities produced. I imagine that his prognostication as to the stabilization of prices under decontrol was fondly accepted by the Conservative party as well as by many members of the Liberal party just a year or two ago, but he was away off the beam there too.
This evening I intend to quote from a succession of clippings which give the views of the people I represent. I do not feel that the Canadian Manufacturers' Association is particularly interested in my point of view or that it would support the things that I stand for, but I do not support the things that it officially stands for. For example, some time ago the association lobbied us with some briefs dealing with prices. This was a statement of the executive council of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association dated November 26,

1947, in regard to the recently announced dominion government policies. It says in part:
These new measures are renewing the public questioning as to the cause of rising prices and who is to blame for them. The greatest factor in prices is wages . . .
That is what the Canadian Manufacturers' Association has to say. However, I find that in direct contradiction of that statement no less a person than R. C. Vaughan, chairman and president of the Canadian National Railways, is quoted in the January-February issue of the Canadian National Magazine. He gives the percentages of increase of the cost of various commodities which enter into the expenses of operation of the Canadian National Railways for 1947 over 1939. General materials show an increase of 75 per cent in eight years; steel, 50-6 per cent; rails, 50-2 per cent, and fuel, 125 per cent. The hon. member for Comox-Alberni (Mr. Gibson) will be interested to know that track ties have gone up 121-4 per cent, while other forest products have increased 225 per cent. Labour has increased only 44 per cent during that time.


John Lambert Gibson: How many dollars?


John Oliver Probe: I shall tell you a little about dollars. As I said, I am going to quote extensively tonight. I have here a clipping from the Vancouver Daily Province of January 16; in fact I have several clippings from that issue of this paper. This clipping shows that the H. R. MacMillan Export Company made a profit of $7,128,000 in 1947.


John Lambert Gibson: How much did they pay in taxes?


John Oliver Probe: The taxes are referred to in the editorial which I shall quote, as follows:
While the company paid 24 cents per share in dividends, plowing nearly 90 per cent of its -winnings back into the business . . .
That would suggest about $2.40 per share net profit, $2.57 per share in taxes and $2.90 per share in wages. In other words, the profits of the MacMillan gang who clipped the coupons were within fifty cents per share of the men who went out to the fields and the forests and the mills to do the work; S2.40 per share for the coupon clippers and $2.90 per share for the men who did the work.


John Lambert Gibson: The government got as much as the men. Let us be fair.


John Oliver Probe: There is no reason why the government should not get a goodly portion of what this company made. Remember that the forests belong to us, to the people of Canada. When the people of British Columbia

Prices Committee
are looking at the profits and the taxes and the wages and all other allied things they might look also at the depleted forest areas which the profits and taxes and wages and other things represent. How does the balance sheet work out there? They have taken resources which took centuries to accumulate and have turned them into cash profits, taxes and wages, one-third for each.


John Lambert Gibson: What about the Minister of Finance?


John Oliver Probe: I have no doubt that the hon. member for Comox-Albemi was one of those who was very' much interested when the Minister of Finance removed the excess profits taxes so that the poor H. R. MacMillan Company might make $7,000,000 net this year, whereas in 1946 they made a mere $2,310,000.


John Lambert Gibson: How large a share did the shareholders get?


An hon. MEMBER:: Go and find out.


John Lambert Gibson: I know, but do yrou?


John Oliver Probe: Then, when pressure from aroused public opinion became so great a short time ago the Minister of Finance announced that certain price ceilings would go on again. Hon. members will remember how a couple of weeks ago he made an announcement about price ceilings being reimposed on meat and butter.


John Lambert Gibson: Better stick to lumber; yrou are an expert on that. Keep away from butter.


John Oliver Probe: I quote from the Rural Cooperator of January 27, 1948, as follows:
Mr. Abbott did not announce details of the ceilings but said that "this will mean that Canadian wholesale and retail prices for pork products will be considerably above those prevailing a month ago, but less than many of the prices which have been reported during the past two weeks.
My constituents were not asking for ceilings above those that we had two months ago. The article continues:
Mr. Abbott said that the price of butter would be fixed on the basis of 67 cents per pound for wholesale solids at Montreal.
Mark this carefully:
The result of the ceilings when announced was to reduce the price to the producer for butterfat by two cents a pound (effective this week) and to set a retail ceiling two cents a pound above the current price.
So when the Minister of Finance, driven to do so, makes a gesture of reimposing some ceilings, he puts the retail ceiling on butter
two cents higher than it was before and the producer receives two cents a pound less.
The citizens of this country who have followed events sufficiently to pass comment on them have made representations to all members of the House of Commons, some of which I wish to put on the record. This is one from the Canadian Congress of Labour, dated December 12, 1947, addressed to all members of the House of Commons:
Dear Sir:
As a member of parliament, and as a Canadian citizen you are no doubt very seriously concerned with the present upward trend of prices. Conditions have now reached a point where a large proportion of our membership of 369,006 workers are being forced to curtail their purchases of food and other essentials to meet their family budget. This condition applies to your constituents, many of whom are probably members of our organization, as to all other Canadians.
For many months now, Our organization has been repeatedly' urging the government to take action to check increasing living costs and protect living standards. Our representations have been completely ignored, and the government has continued a reckless policy of wiping out controls and subsidies, and wiping out with them the hopes which Canadians have had of a better standard of living. As Canadians, our membership is convinced that we are entitled to a better standard of living, and that such a standard is quite within the realms of possibility7.
We strongly urge that you support the following program:
1-Reimposition of price controls. It is essential that prices be stabilized now at a reasonable level.
They go on to suggest the reimposition of the excess profits tax, the removal of the new excise tax on Canadian goods, and raising the income tax exemptions. But nowhere in this brief is there any reference to setting up a parliamentary committee which will have the effect of delaying action. They say:	Give
us action now.
Here is still another one. This is from the United Mine Workers of America, addressed to the Right Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King, Prime Minister:
Dear Sir:
When the session of the commons opens early next month your government, in the opinion of this organization, has at least one vital duty to perform. If nothing else is done price controls and consumer subsidies must be restored.
We are perfectly familiar with some of the difficulties involved in using price control and consumer subsidies as barriers to inflation. But these difficulties are no greater than those successfully surmounted during world war II.
As in wartime, so now, the overwhelming majority of the Canadian people demand protection for their already meagre living standards by the use of controlled prices, consumer subsidies and the suppression of profiteering.
Prices Committee

Only an infinitesimal, though admittedly a powerful, section of the nation profits from the present inflationary rise of prices, reduction in real earnings and upsurge of profits.
* Then, because the government was aware that housewives, consumer leagues and other people who are concerned with doing their daily shopping were raising a clamour against the government, it subsidized the Canadian Association of Consumers. Hon. members might expect that this body would be somewhat friendly to the government which had, as it were, set them up in business. This association, on January 20 last, sent to the members of the House of Commons certain recommendations, of which I shall read only the first paragraph. The following recommendations are made:
1. That an immediate emergency program be put into effect at once to halt the inflationary trend, and that this be done in the following ways:
(a)	That selective price controls on essential foods be applied immediately where unreasonable price rises exist; and
(b)	That the embargo on essential nutritional fresh vegetables such as cabbages and carrots, be lifted, and that steps be taken to safeguard the prices at which they will be sold.
There is in my city an association of working people called the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool Employees' Association. They sent to me a copy of a letter which was addressed to the Right Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King, Prime Minister, on January 15, 1948, and I shall quote part of this too:
As a group of some 2,090 employees in the province of Saskatchewan, with members in Manitoba and Ontario, we are gravely concerned with the increasing cost of living and its disastrous effect upon the people.
Further on, they say:
We would respectfully suggest the reimposition of the excess profits tax. This suggestion is not idly made with the intention of shifting a burden from one section to another, but we believe that there is a good reason for the reimposition of this tax, inasmuch as it is now apparent a great many of the business people of Canada have blatantly ignored their responsibility to the national welfare and have concerned themselves only with exploiting the situation for their own individual or collective gain. There is the undeniable responsibility on our business leaders to realize that it is not always in the best interests to charge all the traffic will bear. As this factor has been ignored, it appears that the reimposition of the excess profits tax would be the most effective way of bringing these people into line.
Third, if and when it is obvious that commodities are increasing in their cost to the consumer out of all proportion to the production factors involved, it is our opinion that the government should impose price controls.
In answer to my hon. friend who interjected, they do not ask for a committee of parliament to do any investigating.

The Trades and Labour Congress of Canada, over the signature of a gentleman whom I often hear spoken of as being a future candidate for high office in the government of this country-


An hon. MEMBER:: Who is that?


John Oliver Probe: Percy Bengough. He writes this letter under date of December 5, addressed to:
Officers and members of all organizations and local unions affiliated to the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada;
Greetings:
On April 4, 19413, the executive council of this congress, along with an accompanying delegation, met with the dominion government and stressed the need of the wartime prices and control board being reconstituted to include representatives of labour. Foreseeing the ceasing of controls, we wanted some protection for the consumer. No attention was paid to our request.
On March 28, 1947, we met again with the government. In dealing with the question of price control, we stated:
"We view with alarm the manner in which the government has weakened its effort in the direction of controlling prices. It must be recognized that every rise in costs is a corresponding reduction in the standard of living of most Canadian citizens and while on the one hand we see plenty of evidence of a desire to control labour, we see little or nothing being done in curtailing the activities of business in the direction of excess profits."
In the interests of most Canadian people, we urged our dominion government 'to reconsider the lifting of price controls and return to the able and efficient methods demonstrated in actual operation (during the war periods) to be fully possible and workable.
What the government did on this was ignore the requests of labour and go over "hook, line and sinker" to the side of big business for bigger profits. Since then, we. and very many others, have many times protested the rising prices. No need to fool ourselves. Big business is in the saddle in the department of government that should control prices just as strong as it is in the Department of Transport. The fact that it takes one dollar to buy 50 cents worth of food is not worrying the government. What are we going to do about it? What are you going to do about it? What are we all going to do about it?
I did not read these extracts with the object of killing some moments in this House of Commons. These are letters from the men and women of this country who produce, who toil. They are not coupon clippers, lilies of the field. They work. This is a compendium of opinion of the workers of Canada. I want to say to the Prime Minister with all humility that he is ending a long illustrious career in this House of Commons by flaunting the will of the people who elected him, as they did me, if he does not act now.

Prices Committee
(Translation):


Mr. PIERRE GAUTHIER (Portneuf):: Mr. Speaker, it is not my intention to delay unduly the business of the house or the appointment of this urgent and necessary committee. However, I wish to place on record what I would call a protest from a group of workers from my constituency. Before the Christmas recess, I spoke on behalf of the farmers of my county; it is now the turn of the workers. For the past three days, we have heard countless speeches which have only delayed the setting up of the committee proposed by the government to investigate the cost of living. Our farmers and workers are urgently asking that steps be taken to enquire into the causes of the unduly high cost of living, and especially the increases which occurred during the past few months. I am aware that most of the speeches delivered in the house are for publicity reasons rather than for the purpose of criticizing the present action of the government.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear!


Pierre Gauthier: I want the workers of my constituency to know that members on this side of the house are not the ones who are delaying the business of the house and the appointment of this much needed committee.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear!


Pierre Gauthier: I shall therefore be brief and be content with placing on record the following resolution which I recently received from the stone-workers of St. Marc. I quote:
Saint Marc, January 19, 1948. Mr. Pierre Gauthier, M.P.,
Sir,
At its last regular meeting held on January 14, it was unanimously resolved by the members of our union to beg that you put before the government our united plea for an immediate check on the startling increase in the cost of living.
We know what an energetic and determined stand you take when upholding the -welfare of your constituents who are now the victims of grave injustice. You are no doubt aware that our association, some 725 strong, whose members are all stone-workers, has signed a joint year-long contract with our employers. As we intend to respect our signature, we must therefore stretch our small earnings to cope with these increases. Needless to say, our families' standard of living is too low. We therefore trust that you will co-operate fully with us in helping us fight this dreadful scourge that is swooping down on our working class.
We hope to congratulate you when your endeavours meet with the success to which we look forward most eagerly.
Yours sincerely.
The Stone Workers' Union
Raymond Dussault, President Herve Naud, Secretary
I am just trying to show our workers that the cause of the delay is not to be found on our side but rather on the opposition side of the house. While I am on my feet, may I make a suggestion to the committee who will be appointed soon, I hope. They should pay special attention to the spread between the prices received by the producers and the prices paid by the consumers. In other words, let them investigate more particularly the difference between the cost of production and the selling price which goes to the middleman. There they may find producers who are asking too much, unscrupulous jobbers and others who are responsible for the increased cost of living. I sincerely hope that the committee will inquire more particularly into the spread between prices paid by the consumer and prices received by the producer.
(Text):


Clarence Gillis: Mr. Speaker, at the risk of offending a lot of people on the other side of the house who, no doubt, would like to see this measure go through tonight, I consider it incumbent on me to say something on it. There is no doubt that when the Prime Minister (Mr. Mackenzie King) speaks he will castigate the house for wasting time. He will tell the people of the country that we have wasted a week debating the setting up of this committee when the committee might have been doing something with regard to the problem that we are discussing. My answer to that kind of argument is that we have not wasted any time. In my opinion, the time of the house has been spent very' well in the last few days in trying to get the government to accept its responsibility, because it is not the responsibility of any particular committee.
During the short time the hon. member for Regina City (Mr. Probe) spoke, the hon. member for Comox-Alberni (Mr. Gibson) interjected something, and in case it got on the record I am going to straighten it out. I did not like it. The hon. member for Regina City was quoting from the United Mine Workers of America, and the hon. member for Comox-Alberni interjected, "They are all communists." I resent that remark very much. I am a member of the united mine workers myself and have been for the last thirty years, and
Prices Committee

I draw his attention to the fact that, during the war and after, there were no coal miners picked up for subversive activities. The ones who were picked up for subversive activities and tried for espionage were all government employees and not coal miners. I want to make that clear. The coal miners of the country did a very good job during the war and are still doing it, and I think an interjection of that kind from the hon. member for Comox-Alberni is uncalled for. As a rule he shows pretty good common sense, but tonight I do not think he did in some of the interjections he was chucking across the floor.
Looking at this motion from a common-sense point of view, I do not think there is any necessity for setting up any committee to determine why the cost of living is as it is in Canada today. That should be quite clear to everyone in this house. I remember distinctly my reaction to the first two or three steps that wrecked the price structure in this country and started the spiral of inflation we have today, and those steps were taken by-the government and argued and fought for in this house by government members.
The Minister of Justice (Mr. Ilsley), who was minister of finance at the time I refer to, stated this afternoon that when they allowed the increase in basic steel and the increase in the price of farm machinery there was a lot of discussion and a lot of abuse and recriminations across the floor. That is quite true. I believe that anyone who realized the situation at that time will recognize that these were the steps that were going to set up the condition we have in this country today.
I do not think there is any necessity for setting up a committee to determine what is wrong today. My mind goes back to a time just prior to the 1945 election when the luxury tax of twenty-five per cent was removed and an order issued to the manufacturers of the country making it mandatory to retain the price as it was to the consumer. That was number one. Number two was this. When the steel companies-


Mr. ABBOTT:: There were not any of these taxes taken off in 1945.


Mr. MITCHELL:: The luxury tax is still on.


Clarence Gillis: You took that twenty-five per cent tax off just before the federal election in 1945. That was argued before and the Minister of Labour went and checked and came back and said it was right.


Humphrey Mitchell: I did not.


Clarence Gillis: The records have it. The second step that was taken was this. The steel companies of the country came and

asked for a $5 a ton increase in basic steel, which meant a $9 a ton increase in fabricated steel. Now steel ramifies all through the economy of the country. We argued against that increase; nevertheless the government permitted it, and in an examination of the balance sheets of the steel companies of Canada before the industrial relations committee, it was proven to us that there was no justification for that increase in basic steel at that time. The steel companies were in a financial position to look after any additional cost that might accrue because of the five or ten cent increase for which the steel workers were looking.
In my opinion, that increase in basic steel set off the spiral of inflation that we have today. You increased the cost in practically all your fabricated materials into which steel enters, and steel is used largely throughout our whole economy. Second, wThen the farm machine companies came in, and they' came in because there was an increase granted in the price of steel, they were granted a 12J per cent increase in the price of farm machinery, and immediately that increased the cost of farm products. That increase entered into the farmer's cost of production and he began looking for a compensating increase in farm commodities.
These are the steps that started the whole mess that we are in today in price increases, and I do not think there is any necessity' for setting up a committee to determine how to get out of that mess. The way to get out of it is the way we got into it. These increases at that time were authorized by the wartime prices and trade board; and in an examination of the balance sheets of the farm machine companies and the steel companies, and a questioning of Mr. Donald Gordon in the reconstruction committee, it was proved to the satisfaction of every member of the committee that there was no justification for the increase. And' there was no examination of the books of either the steel companies or the farm machine companies before the increases were granted.
That is what started the whole business, with the result that we have the upward trend we see today. The Minister of Justice this afternoon tried to justify the position the government is now taking by pointing out that the hon. member for Muskoka-Ontario (Mr. Macdonnell) had suggested that a. factfinding committee should be set up for the purpose of easing the mind of the public and finding out what the actual situation was and so forth. He pointed out also that the hon. member for Calgary' West (Mr. Smith), in another emergency, in the steel strike, had

Prices Committee
suggested1 the setting up of a committee. I would point out to the government and to the Minister of Justice that the same group advocated the removal of controls, the removal of subsidies, and getting back to free enterprise, and I believe that most of the trouble over there today is, that too much Tory advice has been taken. In my opinion, there is no solution in this committee.
The committee on industrial relations was set up at the suggestion of the hon. member for Calgary West and I was a member of that committee. I went into the committee fully intending to do something and I think something could have been done, but when you got into the committee you found yourself on the outside looking in-a government-dominated committee. Motions were made; suggestions were offered that would have cured the situation we were confronted with at that time, but none of them was taken. It was pointed out to us definitely that that committee had no legal status and could not recommend anything that might mean an expenditure of money. That committee could Dot do anything and it came back and reported nothing. Evidence was taken; the recommendations made were shelved, and the matter was settled later by ordeF in council.
To go into another committee on this particular matter is something I am not very much concerned about. In my opinion, the hon. member for Spadina (Mr. Croll) this afternoon talked common sense and was honest in trying to get something done. I believe he honestly meant that something should be done, and it is just too bad that there were not more men on that side of the house who took the same position.
My conception of this whole situation, and of many other things we have discussed in this house, is that there is no honest will to do something. There is not one of these things that could not be headed off, checked, cured and fixed up if we really wanted to do it. If we honestly went after the problem and applied the authority that this House of Commons has in a given situation that may arise in this country it could be cured, and this is one such situation. There is no reason in the world why this house cannot cure the situation at the present time.
The Minister of National Revenue (Mr. McCann) yesterday made a statement at which I was amazed, in the face of what we have now, with demands from all over the country, with the labour unrest that prevails, with the two congresses of labour preparing new wage demands, which can mean new stoppages of work across the country and all the rest of it.
The Minister of National Revenue rose in his place yesterday, in answer to the hon. member for Swift Current (Mr. Bentley) and said, "Yes, we are holding the compulsory savings portion of the income tax and are applying it to back taxes that may have accrued."


Mr. McCANN:: We have had many demands for that across the country.


Clarence Gillis: That is just what I am going to talk about. For two years in this house I myself raised that question, and I wrote to the department and asked if that could not be done where there were difficulties in an industry.


James Joseph McCann: Then why were you
surprised?


Clarence Gillis: Just a minute and I will
tell you why I was surprised. You have now reached the point where you are going to pay that money out anyway. That is point number one. Point number two is this. While you had that money, there was two per cent interest accruing on it. But eight per cent interest is charged on back taxes. So that, instead of paying the money out now, when you are legitimately entitled to pay it out, you are holding it. The man who owns it got two per cent, and you are going to extract eight per cent as a penalty because of back taxes. That is why I was amazed at it. When people were in distress, and when they wanted to apply that tax to liquidate any indebtedness they had to the department, you were not going to pay it out then. You were still holding it. You were still using it. It was quite all right. You were not concerned about the circumstances or condition of a person who had to enter hospital, for example, to undergo a serious operation. Many pleas were made along those lines, where there were extenuating circumstances, asking if it could not be paid. In my opinion, the government are today taking six per cent interest out of the compulsory savings which legitimately belong to the taxpayer, while they gave him only two per cent interest on the money. Perhaps the minister or the experts behind the scenes never really thought about this. But do not forget that the man in the street will think about it, because that struck me in the face as soon as the minister made that statement. I see it as a means of getting, by a back-door move, six per cent of the money that belongs to somebody else, and I do not think it does any credit to anyone in the department who may have had that brain wave.
Prices Committee

I have considerable to say on this matter, Mr. Speaker, and I wonder if we cannot call it eleven o'clock.


An hon. MEMBER:: You still have five
minutes.


Mr. SPEAKER:: Mr. Gillis moves, seconded by Mr. Knowles, that this debate be now adjourned. Is it the pleasure of the house to adopt the motion?


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Yes.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


Mr. SINNOTT:: The hon. member is killing time.


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


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Yes.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Call a division.


An hon. MEMBER:: Filibuster.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: We have been sitting here for five days on this-


Clarence Gillis: I have been sitting here for five days too, and: I have heard some silly speeches.


An hon. MEMBER:: And now you are making one.


Clarence Gillis: I do not think there is any harm in my making one when so many who were extremely loud talked1 a lot of nonsense. As I was pointing out to the minister, I still suggest that he might have a consultation with his departmental officials and at least waive any interest charges there may be on those back taxes. I will explain why I am so greatly interested in that. In the Nova Scotia mining industry within the last few months some fifteen hundred miners, sixty-five years of age, were laid off, with pensions ranging from $16 a month to about $30. Many of these miners have an indebtedness in back taxes as a result of the methods used in deducting taxes at the source. There is ten per cent or fifteen per cent of a backlog andl it accumulates. With regard to many of these men, when they got their first pension cheque of $15, $20 or $25, the first thing that was taken off them was $4, $5 or $6 for back income tax. Many of them have these compulsory savings. Prior to coming here, I talked to many of them, and I have also written to the minister on the subject asking if there was not a possibility of having those back taxes waived. After forty years in an industry, breaking your back, without any pension

or anything whatsoever-despite the fact that they fought for many years and tried to get some kind of superannuation arrangement but were not successful-to find yourself in the position of being chucked in the street is a most unfortunate thing. For sympathetic reasons, if for no others, I think the minister might consider the proposition of making it as easy as possible for the men who find themselves in that position, with regard to the collection of back taxes accumulated because of the system of collecting taxes and through no fault of their own. At least the interest should be waived.


John Bracken: Eleven o'clock.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: I rise to a point of
privilege-a point of order.


An hon. MEMBER:: What is the difference?


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: On a point of order, we have listened to these speeches for the last three days. What has this to do with the setting up of this committee?


Clarence Gillis: The hon. member would not know.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Eleven o'clock.


Mr. SINCLAIR:: And nobody knows it better than the hon. member for Cape Breton South (Mr. Gillis).


Clarence Gillis: I move the adjournment of the debate.


James Horace King: Mr. Gillis moves that the debate be now adjourned.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: No, no.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Call a division.


James Horace King: Carried.
Motion agreed to and debate adjourned.


Clarence Gillis: I am prepared to carry on until twelve o'clock if hon. members wish to finish. Before we adjourn the debate, I want it understood that I am not through speaking. I am taking this up tomorrow.


James Horace King: I have already put the motion for the adjournment of the debate. The hon. member has adjourned the debate.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

[Stage Direction]
Mr. MACKENZIE KING moved the adjournment of the house.
John Bracken: Will the Prime Minister say what the work is to be tomorrow.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Yes. My hon. friend inquired of me earlier in the evening

Business of the House
as to what the particular business to be taken up tomorrow would be. I sent a reply to him saying that the government would be pleased to take up tomorrow whatever the opposition can agree upon. The question is as to whether we shall go on with this debate or whether we shall go on with the debate on the address in reply to the speech from the throne. It is quite true that, earlier in the week, my hon. friend asked me this question, as reported at page 840 of Hansard:
Mr. Bracken:	Mr. Speaker, in view of
the proposed change by the Prime Minister, I should' like to ask if, in view of the fact that the debate on the speech from the throne will not go on tomorrow, therefore, under the original plan only one day this week will be allowed for that debate. If we proceed now as he suggests, will he be willing to continue the debate on the speech from the throne on Friday as well as on Thursday?
Mr. Mackenzie King:	I would see no objection to that, I hope very much that we can get a division tomorrow'; then we may have Thursday and Friday to continue with the debate on the address.
I have no doubt that some hon. gentlemen opposite will say that this meant we would go on with the debate on the address tomorrow, and that that is the interpretation which should be put upon it. In all that I have said I have assumed that we would be carrying out the wishes of hon. gentlemen opposite if we continued with this debate until we concluded it, so as to get the committee formed as quickly as possible. It. is for hon. gentlemen opposite to say what they want with respect to tomorrow's proceedings and the government will be prepared to agree with it. If my hon. friend can tell me what he wants to go on with, I will let him know immediately.


John Bracken: I may say quite frankly that, after the heat shown by the Prime Minister at three o'clock this afternoon with respect to the program since this house met ten days ago, I have no intention whatever of proposing what work should be done tomorrow.
The understanding at the beginning, the program advanced by the Prime Minister, was that three days a week would be devoted to government business and two days to the speech from the throne. On Tuesday evening, when the next two days had been set aside by himself for discussing the speech from the throne, he came over here and asked if it was agreeable to go on with this measure on Wednesday. As he said himself tonight, that was accepted. That was his wish. There was no suggestion as to what should be done after Wednesday.
I do not question what the Prime Minister hoped for, and I am not criticizing what was done. But in view of the attitude taken by
the Prime Minister at three o'clock this afternoon, in which he criticized the opposition because somebody had raised a point of order -properly raised, I think; we did not raise it, but it was properly raised; then we were censured-I do not propose to put myself in that position again. Whatever the Prime Minister wishes to do tomorrow, I leave it to the government. He can announce it, and we will follow it.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: Mr. Speaker, I have been in this house for a good many years, and I think I am pretty well known to all members of the house. I think I can say that if anyone will give his expression of view honestly he will have to admit that I have done my best to try to have the work of this house carried on with as much in the way of co-operation as possible between both sides.
I intend to hold to that.
But it takes two to co-operate. And if, when I agree with the opposition that I will give precedence to certain measures at their request, and then I am told later that I am violating some understanding or agreement when I try to continue what has been requested, it becomes difficult indeed to proceed.


John Bracken: There was no suggestion from here that you were violating anything.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: The trouble with this House of Commons is that we have three parties sitting opposite. When one agrees, one of the others does not agree; and it is a very difficult situation. My view is that we ought to have a government and an opposition, and those who are not for us ought to be against us. I wish everybody on the other side would just constitute themselves one opposition, and allow the government to go on with its business, instead of having three oppositions taking different views on different questions which come up; then, as soon as one comes to an understanding, the other taking; exception to it and saying they have not come' to that understanding.
May I say about this effort to say that there was heat on the part of the Prime Minister today, that it is very easy to put that sort of thing in Hansard. I have not any worry about what my hon. friend wishes to say. Hon. members opposite cannot say more now than they have said against me in the years which have passed. If they like to have Hansard record these expressions, well and good. Let them make them, and the country can judge whether or not I have tried to do my duty in this house.
I wish to point this fact out to hon. gentlemen opposite that if I were to say tonight that tomorrow we will go on with the debate
Business oj the Howe

on the address, which I presume will be said is what we ought to have done, it would be pointed out that the leader of the opposition had said:
If vre proceed now, as he suggests, will he be willing .to continue the debate on the speech from the throne on Friday as well as on Thursday?
To which I replied:
I would see no objection to that.
I am prepared to go on with the debate on the address tomorrow. But I wish hon. gentlemen opposite to answer this question if they will: What about Monday? Am I to hold to what I said to the house at the beginning? If we have three days a week on the emergency measufes and two days on the address, what is to become of this motion? It has had the precedence it had in order to oblige hon. gentlemen opposite.
I see this kind of situation arise, and it cannot be solved in any way other than by co-operation between the different parties in the house. That kind of co-operation is arranged in the old country between the whips. In the old country, at Westminster, they adopt the policy of setting aside a certain number of days, and try to close up a debate within that time. Hon. gentlemen opposite could follow that splendid example. I think if they do we shall make headway with the work of parliament. But if they do not, I cannot see how the business is to be conducted from week to week in other than a fashion in which no one can say what will take place from one day to another.
In order not to have it said that I am blocking any undertaking in regard to Friday, I will say now that the business for tomorrow will be the debate on the address. When Monday comes I should hope hon. gentlemen opposite will agree to continue with this debate on the motion to set up the committee. But it requires unanimous consent of the house; and if that unanimous consent is not given we shall have to continue with emergency measures until we reach a time when we can get unanimous consent.


Solon Earl Low: Perhaps the lecture we have just been read was the result of a question on the point of order which I raised this afternoon. If the Prime Minister had been as considerate of the house yesterday at six o'clock as he has been tonight, that question would never have arisen. If he had said last night, "Now, I propose to continue tomorrow with the debate on this motion to set up a committee; I presume that will be all right for members on the opposition side", I am satisfied everyone would have given the Prime Minister every

co-operation. Now he thinks we are in a position to read his mind, and that was said this afternoon.
I want the Prime Minister to understand that any reasonable person reading what he said to the leader of the opposition the other day with regard to procedure, and the priority of this particular job in which we have been engaged for several days, could not possibly determine whether that was to continue today, in spite of the printed routine proceedings on the order paper. I challenge anyone, who has an unbiased view, to pick it up and look it over, and also to look over Hansard, and to answer it any better than I answered it.
I want it definitely known that the only reason I rose to a point of order this afternoon was to secure and to preserve the rights of members in this house

and for no other reason. I want to say that nobody has given the government more co-operation by way of agreement-and stayed with it-than we have. I will go further and say that whenever a reasonable request is made of members on this side of the house by the Prime Minister or the government in order to facilitate the business of the house, he will find me and my group ready to co-operate with him. But we want it definitely known that he has to make a request, and has to make it, not in a testy manner, but in a pleasant manner.


William Lyon Mackenzie King: I do not wish to continue this discussion unnecessarily, but my hon. friend has said two things tonight to which I must refer. He said if I had been as considerate last night as I am tonight that there would have been no occasion for any difficulty. Then he began his remarks tonight by saying that I had been reading a lecture to the house. That is not being considerate. I must say that I am anxious in every way to be as considerate to all sides of the house as possible. I never for one moment thought there would be the slightest exception taken to going on with the debate on this motion to set up a committee. The whole purpose of giving precedence to that motion was that we might get through with it as quickly as possible.
Looking tonight at what I said last night, I find that the hon. member for Kootenay East (Mr. Matthews) who was speaking said:
May I, Mr. Speaker, have the privilege of moving the adjournment of the debate.
And then:
Mr. Mackenzie King: We shall continue this debate tomorrow.
I cannot see wherein that was not treating the house with courtesy. My duty is, as the

Business oj the House
leader of the opposition said tonight, to indicate the business for tomorrow. I indicated it. If hon. gentlemen wish to co-operate they will find that I am doing everything in my power-indeed I will go beyond what the ordinary person would expect-in trying to make arrangements which will be satisfactory. But if they are determined to misconstrue everything I say, I shall have to allow matters to take the best course that they can take.
But I will say to hon. members that there is a heavy program ahead of parliament at this session. I think hon. members will find it to their advantage to endeavour to co-operate as much as they can with each other and with the different parties in the house.


Stanley Howard Knowles: May I just say a word
on behalf of our group. I do not intend to participate in the disputes that have arisen, but I want to say a word about the business of the house tomorrow. By virtue of the motion passed last Monday, the order paper tomorrow will have government orders first. So far as we are concerned, if the government prefers to go ahead with the government order of its choice, namely, the motion we have been discussing today, that will be quite satisfactory to us. If the Prime Minister decides that we go on to debate the address in reply, that is all right with us, but we are not asking for it.
When Monday comes, again by reason of the motion passed last Monday the order
paper will have government orders first and there will be no problem. No unanimous consent will be required. If today's motion has not been completed the government can call it and we can go on with it then.


John Bracken: So far as the Prime
Minister's announcement about tomorrow's business is concerned, that is quite acceptable. As to Monday, I wish to assure him that there will be no objection on this side of the house if he proceeds, as he suggests, with the measure that was being discussed today.


Stanley Howard Knowles: There could not be any
objection.


John Bracken: Whether there could or
could not, we will raise none. I would say this one other thing. The Prime Minister has given us tonight what someone has referred to as a lecture. I refused to take the responsibility for tomorrow's work only because of the comment which he directed to this party at three o'clock. We had raised no objection to the procedure, but the Prime Minister said that if a certain attitude was to be adopted he would not be prepared to co-operate, or words to that effect. That is the reason why I answered the Prime Minister as I did tonight.
Mr, GILLIS: Is there any reason why we could not go on with this motion tomorrow?
Motion agreed to and the house adjourned at 11.15 p.m.

Friday, February 6, 1948