1949-03-25

PRIVILEGE


Hon. Brooke Claxton (Minister of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege. Yesterday the leader of the opposition (Mr. Drew), as reported on page 1947 of Hansard, quoted a press report of November 22 last stating that I had referred to the-
-creation of a defence commitments authority, an entirely new and unprecedented government agency whose function is to enable the military authorities to enter without delay into future contracts for material and equipment which otherwise would have to wait for parliamentary approval next midwinter. Already contracts in excess of $29 million have been placed by this agency.
I think the leader of the opposition expressed some surprise that I should have said that. Of course I said nothing of the kind. There is no new agency. Authority to expend funds is given by parliament, and only by parliament. What happened was this. A representative of British United Press telephoned me and began by asking what was the amount of the defence appropriations for the current year. I told him that there was a cash appropriation and an additional commitment authority. I remember getting the estimate book and referring him expressly to item 243 on page 32. In order to explain to him the difference between cash appropriation and commitment authority, I read the following passage:
-to authorize total commitments for this purpose of $255,514,584, including authority, notwithstanding section 29 of the Consolidated Revenue and Audit Act, to make commitments for the current year of $227,082,515, and commitments for future years of $28,432,069, against which commitments it is estimated that actual expenditures in 1948-49 will not exceed $207,082,515.
That was the authority conferred by parliament, and the only authority conferred by parliament. When the report to which the leader of the opposition referred appeared, I at once telephoned the representative of the B.U.P. who had spoken to me, and pointed out the mistake. He had confused "commitment authority" conferred by parliament with some new authority or agency to make future commitments. That was the
reason for the error in the report. When I pointed this out to him he said that of course I was right, that he remembered what I had said and that he would send out a correction. Whether the correction was sent out or printed, I do not know.


Mr. George A. Drew (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, I would point out to the Minister of National Defence that when I was quoting that report there was no question of my expressing surprise. I asked the minister if that was a correct statement, and he indicated that it was not. I would not have expressed surprise, because I would not have been surprised at any statement made by the Minister of National Defence.



PRICE $2 PER BUSHEL BOTH DOMESTIC AND UNDER CANADA-UNITED KINGDOM AGREEMENT

Right Hon. C. D. Howe (Minister of Trade and Commerce):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the domestic price of western wheat. The Canadian wheat board is now under instructions to sell wheat for domestic use on the same basis as wheat is sold under the Canada-United Kingdom wheat agreement, namely, $2 per bushel basis No. 1 northern in store Fort William-Port Arthur or Vancouver, plus a carrying charge of five cents per bushel.
As already announced, it is the policy of the government that returns to the producer in respect of domestic sales of western wheat shall be the same as under the British contract. This means that during the remainder of the present crop year and throughout the next crop year, western farmers, through the wheat board, are assured of a price of $2 per bushel basis No. 1 northern in store Fort William-Port Arthur or Vancouver, plus carrying charges, in respect of both domestic sales and sales under the British contract.
I am making this statement now so that there may be no misunderstanding about the effects of any subsequent decline in world wheat prices or domestic wheat prices below the British contract price.


Mr. Wright:: Will this $2 price also apply to wheat being sold in Canada next year for feed purposes?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes, Mr. Speaker; that price will apply to all wheat sold for domestic purposes.

Inquiries of the Ministry



DISCONTINUANCE OF SUBSIDY ON WHEAT FOR FLOUR PRODUCTION-QUESTION AS TO PRICE OF BREAD

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. E. G. McCullough (Assiniboia):: I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Trade and Commerce, or to the Minister of Finance, to both of whom I have sent notice. As the result of the discontinuance of the government subsidy on wheat going into the production of flour, is it expected that there will be a general increase in the price of bread throughout Canada?


Hon. Douglas Abbott (Minister of Finance):: The discontinuance of the subsidy of 46| cents a bushel will of course result in an increase in the price of flour. There may be some items entering into the making of bread, the cost of which is down. The competitive situation in the baking industry is quite good in most parts of Canada-


Some hon. Members:: Where?


Douglas Charles Abbott: -and I would not care to hazard a guess whether the discontinuance of the subsidy will result in any general increase in the price of bread.


Mr. Coldwell:: What about the McGregor report?



INTERNATIONAL WHEAT AGREEMENT


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. T. J. Bentley (Swift Current):: Will the
Minister of Trade and Commerce at an early day table a report showing the number of nations who have signed the international wheat agreement, and their obligation to accept or sell wheat under that agreement?


Clarence Decatur Howe: I received the report only this morning. I will table it early next week.



COMMITTEES OF THE HOUSE


Hon. Alphonse Fournier (Minister of Public Works) moved:: That the name of Mr. Benidickson be substituted for that of Mr. Howe; and that the name of Mr. Robinson (Simcoe East) be substituted for that of Mr. Hartt; and that the name of Mr. Gauthier (Portneuf) be substituted for that of Mr. Arsenault; and that the name of Mr. Jutras be substituted for that of Mr. Dionne (Beauce) on the select standing committee on public accounts.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.


[Stage Direction]
Mr. S. M. Clark (Essex South) presented the first report of the sessional committee on railways and shipping owned, operated 
and controlled by the government, and moved that the report be concurred in.
Motion agreed to.


[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 124, to incorporate The North West Commercial Travelers Association of Canada. -Mr. Maybank.
Bill No. 125, to incorporate The Sisters of Saint Elizabeth Hospital.-Mr. Burton.


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. R. R. Knight (Saskatoon City):: I should like to address a question to the Minister of Veterans Affairs. In view of the report that patients of the temporary veterans hospital at the airport at Saskatoon are to be moved to other quarters, is the minister prepared to make a statement on the whole subject?


Hon. Milton F. Gregg (Minister of Veterans Affairs):: I am in touch with the situation referred to by the hon. member. I can assure him that the interests of the veteran patients are being safeguarded. I will take his question as notice and give an answer early next week.



NEWFOUNDLAND


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Gordon Graydon (Peel):: In view of the fact that the formalities necessary to the union of Newfoundland and Canada have been practically completed, can the Prime Minister tell the house when the government intends to call by-elections in Newfoundland in order that the people may have representation in this house as soon as possible?


Right Hon. L. S. St. Laurent (Prime Minister):: In spite of the statement made by the hon. member for Peel, the government of Canada has not yet any jurisdiction over Newfoundland.


Gordon Graydon: If that be so, under what authority are civil servants of Canada now working in Newfoundland and setting up governmental machinery there?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: In view of the certainty now that some of the laws of Canada will be proclaimed in Newfoundland on the expiration of the last minute of the 31st of March, preparations are being made to the end that

those laws may be administered as soon as they are proclaimed.


Gordon Graydon: Is there any reason why you should not prepare for the by-elections too?



ACCIDENTS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. T. L. Church (Broadview):: Will the government give consideration to allowing part of a morning, afternoon or evening for consideration of the question of the huge loss of life and the economic loss in Canada resulting from accidents involving motorcars, level crossing accidents, fires in homes, drownings and other fatal accidents?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: No doubt there will be opportunity to discuss these very important subjects, but there are on the order paper already matters of considerable urgency which will have to be dealt with first.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Stanley Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre):: I should like to direct a question to the Prime Minister with respect to a matter of procedure. If perchance we conclude this afternoon, let us say, the debate on the agricultural measure which is now before us, would that not mean that the orders of the house passed on March 11 and March 17 would lapse and we would then come back to the terms of standing order 15? If so, would private and public bills not be taken up from eight until nine o'clock this evening?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: That would be my interpretation of the rules, Mr. Speaker, but of course it is Your Honour and not the leader of the house who has the final say in interpreting them. My interpretation would be that the orders to which the hon. member has referred would lapse, and that the standing order would then come into play.



AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS ACT


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed from Thursday, March 24, consideration of the motion of Mr. Gardiner for the second reading of Bill No. 126, to amend the Agricultural Products Act.
Agricultural Products Act
Mr. Gardiner:: Last night I agreed to lav on the table copies of three food contracts with the United Kingdom. I should like to do so now; they have just come to hand.


Mr. John Bracken (Neepawa):: Mr. Speaker, at the outset I wish to thank hon. members for the courtesy extended to me by permitting the adjournment of this debate last night.
I am afraid my thanks may tax the patience of the house this morning, because in what I have to say I may not be brief. The subject of export markets for agricultural products is very important, but I shall try not to delay the house unduly.
The measure before us is called an act to amend the Agricultural Products Act. It proposes the extension for another year of the present act, which we first passed in 1947. That act of 1947, however, was the continuation of a policy started in Canada not in 1947 but ten years ago, in 1939. That policy was one of state trading between the government of this country and, mainly, the government of the United Kingdom. In order to carry out that policy the Minister of Agriculture, on behalf of the government, was given dictatorial powers, which were spoken of by some at the time as blank cheque powers. It is that legislation we are now asked to extend for another year. As it stands at present the legislation terminates at the end of this month. The bill now before us is designed to prolong its life till March 31, 1950.
I have listened with interest to the debate thus far. I wish to compliment those who have spoken on the way in which they brought forward their points of view with respect to the measure before us. I must confess to some surprise, however, that the major aspect of the problem, namely, agricultural export markets, has not been emphasized to the extent I think it should have been. I refer particularly to the preservation of the market in the United Kingdom for our surplus agricultural products.
In my judgment this country is facing the most serious economic problem it has ever been called upon to face. It is the problem of the steadily worsening position of all our export markets for all our agricultural products. I was going to say "with the exception of wheat", but since the announcement of the international wheat agreement I question whether that commodity should be excepted from that statement, because even with wheat the government is agreeing to provide 30 million bushels less per year than was suggested in a previous draft agreement. It is to the export markets aspect of the Canadian agricultural problem that I wish to devote my time this morning.
1994	HOUSE OF
Agricultural Products Act
I hold strong views with respect to the importance of the British market, and I trust those views will receive sympathetic support in every section of this house. I know they receive that support on the part of those among whom I sit, and I feel confident that they have the same support in every section of the house, including even the government itself.
My purpose this morning will be to show three things: first, that the export market for agricultural products has continued to deteriorate day by day during recent months and even during recent years; second, that this bill, which will terminate in a year, and which does not carry forward a permanent policy, does not touch the edge of that problem; and third, that unless something more substantial is done, agriculture will soon be brought face to face with a major crisis, accompanied by a very serious price recession.
The legislation with which we are now dealing has been before us many times in recent years. Its purpose in wartime was to aid Britain by assuring her of a stated supply of certain agricultural commodities. I have heard no one on the government side state its purposes in peacetime. No one has suggested to me that the purpose of this measure is to aid Britain. With a bill such as this, if that were suggested, it would be laughed out of court. No one has suggested it is for the purpose of aiding Canada. To do that would be to admit that we have substantially lost our great British market, and that this was necessary to save some of it.
This legislation, Mr. Speaker, is not brought in at this time to help Britain. Whether so intended or not, it emphasizes the fact that our markets in Great Britain have been gradually disappearing and are now substantially gone as a permanent factor in dealing with our surplus agricultural products. On its surface, the bill appears very innocent, and I am not suggesting there was any intention of representing it as anything else. But it is not what appears on its surface that matters-it is what is not shown by the bill that is important, namely, that the British market, which has been the main basis of the development of the Canadian economy, particularly its agricultural economy, has in large part disappeared.
Last night the minister told us that on behalf of the government he has entered into three contracts with Britain; one for bacon, one for cheese, and one for eggs. He told us what we of course knew-that this legislation is needed in order to carry out those contracts. It is needed so that the minister can be sure he will get those commodities and have them delivered to Britain in the quantities specified. In order to accomplish all this, he has to ask for dictatorial powers.


We should not forget the history of this legislation, Mr. Speaker. It covers two periods, the period of the war and the period subsequent to the war. As I said a moment ago, the recent history covers only two years, but the earlier history goes back ten years. In its recent history this act has been before us on four different occasions. It was first passed in March, 1947, to expire in December of that year. We heard of it next in December, 1947, when it was extended to March, 1948. The third time it came before us was in March, 1948, at which time it was extended to March, 1949. Under this bill we are now dealing with it a fourth time, to extend it until March, 1950.
The genesis of this legislation, then, goes back ten years. It goes back to the wartime food contracts with Britain. This fact is outlined in the preamble of the act we are asked to extend. That preamble was read in full by my leader last night, so I do not propose to read it again. It indicated that the legislation was first prompted by the grave distress in Britain. It purported to be based on the need for the more efficient prosecution of the war and what the government termed a national emergency. Now, in 1949, we are asked to approve that same act with the same preamble.
With all deference to the government and to the minister, Mr. Speaker, those are not the reasons for the introduction of this bill at this time. The reason is not the relief of Britain. I have not heard it expressed, but one reason must be to ensure the fulfilment of these contracts. But I believe the real reason for this bill is to relieve the government of the criticism that would otherwise ensue for having lost that great market upon which our economy has depended for so many years.
What is the situation today? In my judgment the government has been losing the British market for the last four years, perhaps longer. This government is losing it more rapidly today than ever before. In my judgment our share of that market would have completely disappeared by now except for the fact that the government of Britain feels that if it did not purchase these products it might be denied some of what to it are favourable terms of the present wheat agreement.
What I am saying here this morning will be critical of the government's basic policy, but I trust it will not be a partisan criticism. I want to lay before the house certain evidence to show that the great British market is slipping from our grasp, and slipping rapidly.

The first bit of evidence is the number of contracts into which the government has entered. A few years ago the government had twenty-two or twenty-three contracts, but this year it has only three. A second item of evidence is the amount of the products we are asked to deliver under each of these contracts. It has been lessening from year to year. In recent years our contract with Britain has been up to 690 million pounds. This year it is only 160 million pounds, or less than one-quarter of what it was five years ago. With respect to cheese, it is only two years since we were supplying 142 million pounds. This year the contract is for 50 million pounds. A few years ago the contract for eggs amounted to 89 million pounds. This year the contract is for 46 million pounds. According to the statement of the minister, we once supplied beef to Great Britain to the extent of 184 million pounds, but this year we are supplying none.
A third item of evidence that this market is disappearing is that the export of certain commodities has completely disappeared. I do not need to tell this house what has occurred in connection with apples. Instead of having a market in Great Britain for apples, this government is paying the people in Nova Scotia to cut down the apple trees. It is reported that it is paying $4 per tree for this purpose, and that it is costing the government $1,500,000 a year. Another commodity for which we have no sale over there is one of our coarse grains -oats. Another is poultry. Others are beets, potatoes, and canned tomatoes. Some of these products we never sent over there in large quantities, but they all helped to make up the huge total of our export trade in agricultural products.
A fourth item of evidence of our vanishing market is that Britain is now hunting all over the world for new sources of supply of these and other food commodities. We have the evidence of Mr. Strachey, who is Minister of Food over there, that Britain now has forty long-term contracts under which she is seeking to get food and other commodities from other parts of the world.
A fifth item of evidence is that Britain is developing new sources of supply wherever she can find suitable opportunities. One might mention the continent of Africa, where she is spending scores of millions of dollars in development for the production of food for Britain. All hon. members will have read about the ground nuts projects. Many will have heard also about the expenditures Britain is making in research in an effort to make Africa a great livestock continent, and the progress that has been made in that regard. To the extent that Britain finds other markets and other sources
Agricultural Products Act of supply elsewhere than in Canada, to that extent we lose our markets.
Another item of evidence I take from some of those who have visited Britain recently. One of them is the premier of British Columbia, Hon. Byron I. Johnson. On his return a few weeks ago, he is reported in the Canada's Weekly as having made this statement:
I have been discouraged by the picture of the British market which I have brought back with me on a recent trip. It is rather discouraging to see the United Kingdom sending to European countries goods which are thus not available to Canadians who want them . . . British Columbians must be prepared to buy more British goods or be faced with the loss of one of the main markets for their produce.
One of his associates, the minister of lands and forests in the British Columbia government, Hon. E. T. Kenney, had this to say:
The waning market in the United Kingdom for British Columbia lumber and the piling up of lower grade lumber stocks is causing concern to the industry and the government. Out of a 21 billion feet annual average cut for the last five years the United Kingdom has taken 40 per cent, the domestic market 37 per cent and the United States and the empire the rest. Now that the United Kingdom market has been largely lost as a result of world-wide conditions, the industry is faced with serious problems . . .
Still further evidence comes from another source, one whom most hon. members of this or any other house will not question. I refer to Sir Stafford Cripps, chancellor of the exchequer in the United Kingdom government. A dispatch in the Ottawa Journal of February 22 reads as follows:
Britain will buy less food from Canada unless Canada buys more from Britain, Sir Stafford Cripps, Chancellor of the Exchequer, said today.
I will quote one or two brief extracts from his words which are in quotation marks.


Mr. Mayhew:: Would the hon. gentleman mind putting on Hansard the dates of the articles from which he is quoting? He was quoting from Mr. Johnson, the premier of British Columbia. I think he will find that article was published in September of last year, six months ago, not a few weeks ago. He was also quoting the remarks of Sir Stafford Cripps.


John Bracken: The quotation from Mr. Johnson is found in the February 18 issue of Canada's Weekly.


Robert Wellington Mayhew: What about the Cripps quotation?


John Bracken: I am dealing with the
remarks of Sir Stafford Cripps as reported in the Ottawa Journal of February 22, 1949, just a month ago. To continue with what Sir Stafford Cripps says as reported there:
It would be rash to hope for any increase in our total purchases in the near future. Indeed, it is
1996

Agricultural Products Act only by means of a great expansion in our exports to Canada that we can maintain our imports.
The report goes on to say:
But Sir Stafford said that while the United Kingdom's policy was to reduce food imports, it was anticipated that Canada would be able to provide greater supplies of the raw materials needed for Britain's industrial drive.
That will not help our food producers at all. Further on the report reads:
The Chancellor of the Exchequer recalled that the United Kingdom had signed reduced contracts with Canada for further quantities of bacon, cheese and eggs for 1949, but-
And these words are in quotation marks. -"if, as at present looks possible, we are obliged gradually to limit our imports of these foods somewhat further, it will of course only be after the fullest consultation with your government."
I do not know what consolation it will be to have consultations if we are not to have better results than we have been having recently.
I now come to another authority, one who I think is also unprejudiced, namely, the economist writing in the monthly review of the Bank of Nova Scotia. I quote from the October issue:
The truth is that, though the world food shortage is still acute, the market outlook is clouded with uncertainties. The system of selling our major agricultural products through long-term contracts with Britain, which was built up in wartime, is obviously under considerable pressure. Even the wheat contract, though it has proved the most stable part of the long-term-contract policy and the most desired by Britain, has been placed under serious strain by the developments of the post-war period. As for the animal-product contracts, it is now well known-
I hope that hon. members will note this.
-that the British last winter-
This is speaking of the winter of 1947-48. -extended some of them with reluctance and as a condition of continuing to get wheat at the moderate contract price.
That is a wholly nonpartisan view.
Again this fall the question of payment is serious,-
That is, last fall.
-and the size of the bacon and egg contracts now being negotiated will depend on what financial arrangements can be made.
They have since been determined, and the minister has announced what the amounts are.
Under present circumstances, Britain is of necessity turning more and more to countries of supply where payment can be more easily arranged, and recent contracts with Denmark, Australia and New Zealand indicate a further decline from Canada's wartime share of the British market. Further curtailment of the British market for Canadian bacon is the possibility with the most serious implications for Canada since the increased production in this field has been largely dependent on that market.
fMr. Bracken.]
As a matter of fact, the development of large sections of this country is largely dependent on that market, and we must strive to retain it for these particular commodities and for others, because to the extent that it is denied us, to that extent are we driven back into types of agriculture such as continuous wheat growing, which is exhaustive of soil fertility and which for some areas is not the best type of agriculture. That is not any criticism of wheat growing, or of those who are engaged in it-I am engaged in it myself; but to the extent that this country is driven away from livestock farming and into straight grain growing, particularly for export, to that extent is our economy driven backward instead of forward. I mention this simply to emphasize the importance of preserving markets at all costs for these livestock commodities.
I shall read two other brief extracts from this document:
Thus Canada is faced with problems of readjustment-of finding other markets, and of adjusting her agricultural structure to meet the changed demand situation. The European recovery program is of course cushioning the transition.
It is fortunate that a wealthy and prosperous nation has entered into one of the greatest philanthropic schemes ever entered into by any nation in the history of the world. As a result, their money is being used to purchase some of our commodities to be sold or otherwise disposed of in Britain and in other parts of Europe. Otherwise our situation would be far worse than it is today.
There is one other comment in this review that I should like to read. It is as follows:
Moreover, the United States now has large exportable surpluses of grain which are proving a restrictive influence on sales of some Canadian grains and grain products to Europe. For instance, early in the season the United States Department of Agriculture declared oats surplus, and therefore ERP funds cannot be used for purchases of oats in other countries.
The Minister of Agriculture has referred to the regulations under this project in Europe. He told us how, under certain circumstances, it works to our disadvantage. On the whole that great philanthropic scheme works to our advantage as well as to the advantage of the world. But when in some respects the United States has a surplus of its own commodities, it does not permit the import of similar commodities from other countries. That is what will make it difficult for this country to find an adequate market in the United States.
I now come to another set of facts which were tabled in the House of Commons in Great Britain nearly two months ago. These were referred to by at least one hon. member in the debate, namely, the hon. member for Durham (Mr. Stephenson). I hold in my hand

a summarized statement of the reduction of imports to Britain from Canada, as tabled in the British House of Commons on January 26, 1949. I have abbreviated these comments as much as I could, but I think their importance warrants my taking the time to give them to the house. It is an unprejudiced statement by British government officials as to what has happened, without attributing blame or any criticism to anyone. I shall give only round figures.
Wheat flour. Reduction in imports of 494,334 hundredweight from Canada and 2,628,150 hundredweight from the United States in 1948. This reduction was made up by an increase of 1,466,046 hundredweight from Australia. We lost and Australia gained.
Barley. Barley imports by Britain increased from 2,256,800 hundredweight in 1947 to 15,618,248 hundredweight in 1948. Argentina supplied 5,872,273 hundredweight and European countries 8,603,452 hundredweight in 1948. None came from Canada in 1948.
Oats. While Canada supplied about 93 per cent of the outside oats imported into Britain in 1947, sterling countries supplied 65 per cent in 1948, with the other 35 per cent coming from European countries, including Russia. None came from Canada in 1948.
Beans. Purchases from the United States and Canada were reduced to almost nothing in 1948. Purchases from European countries increased from 31,140 hundredweight in 1947 to 313,145 hundredweight in 1948.
Bacon. While British bacon imports from Canada decreased in 1948 by 90,960 hundredweight in 1947, imports from eastern European countries increased from 341 hundredweight in 1947 to 231,011 hundredweight in 1948.
I am not giving the minister any information that he does not have already. He is familiar with these things. We are selling over there only about one-quarter of the bacon we once did.
Cheese. Canada, the United States and Denmark supplied less in 1948 than in 1947, while imports from Australia, New Zealand, and particularly The Netherlands and France increased.
Poultry. Imports from Canada and the United States decreased to practically nil, while imports from sterling countries and central Europe increased.
Shell eggs. Our Canadian exports of shell eggs dropped to nine and a half million dozen in 1948. Imports from sterling countries, Denmark, The Netherlands and eastern European countries increased. The total imports increased in 1948 by 38,908,000 dozen. Ours is being reduced this year to about half of what it was last year.
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Agricultural Products Act
Frozen eggs. British imports increased from 268,723 hundredweight in 1947, to 598,471 hundredweight in 1948. Canada supplied 20-2 per cent of the total imports in 1948 as against 5-2 per cent in 1947. That is one item in connection with which there was some advantage to us, but we lost on some of the higher quality eggs as well as other commodities.
The British imports of apples in 1948 increased to nearly 1,956,525 hundredweight from 1,490,346 hundredweight in 1947. Imports from Canada and the United States, which were 663,145 hundredweight and 610,843 hundredweight respectively in 1947, were cut off entirely. This is evidence that the British government is buying less from this side of the Atlantic ocean and more from the sterling areas and parts of Europe.
British imports of potatoes increased from 2,662,041 hundredweight in 1947 to 5,346,958 hundredweight in 1948, but none came from Canada. British imports of canned tomatoes increased from 311,097 hundredweight in 1947 to 621,261 hundredweight in 1948, practically double. Italy and other foreign countries supplied 515,537 hundredweight; imports from sterling countries increased, but none were purchased from Canada. The same thing can be said with respect to canned salmon.
When such a statement is tabled in the House of Commons it ought to shock the people of Canada and this parliament and this government into doing something to try to save that great market.


Mr. Burton:: Before the hon. gentleman's time expires, will he tell the house how he suggests that that situation can be rectified?


John Bracken: I shall be glad to do that. If the hon. member is suggesting that my time is up, I shall not keep the house any longer, although I have a great deal more to say. I do not want to ask any favours from hon. members. Perhaps it would be better for me to stop now, if I have spoken forty minutes and let others take part in the debate. If I do that, I will wish to say something on the motion for third reading.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Or in committee.


John Bracken: Or in committee. I wish to complete this summary, because I think this is an important matter.


James Garfield Gardiner: I do not think it would shorten the discussion to deny the hon. member additional time now, if, in any event, he intends to take time later to place this information on the record. I think the house would agree to his placing it on the record now.

Agricultural Products Act


Joseph William Burton: I had no intention of suggesting that the hon. member's time should be cut off or that he should be held to his time. I was interested in hearing his statement as to what could be done to rectify the situation.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Golding):: I do
not think the hon. member's time has expired, but has he unanimous consent to proceed?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


John Bracken: I have tried to point out that the government is in the process of losing, if it has not already lost, the British market as a permanent market for our surplus agricultural products. Some say that it can be picked up afterwards, but in my judgment that market, once it is lost, will be hard to regain. Once Britain finds her supplies elsewhere, it is going to be difficult in the future to get back that market.
I wish now to point out the seriousness of the situation that has developed. It is serious in two respects. It is serious to Canada and it is serious to Canadian farmers. It is serious to Canada because the British market has been the mainstay of Canadian agriculture during the whole history of this dominion. In seventy-nine years out of the eighty-two years since confederation our sales to the United States have been $10,000 million short of what was necessary to pay for our purchases from that country.
Perhaps I do not need to say to hon. members that we have two great export markets, the United States and the United Kingdom. All others dwindle into insignificance when compared with these. I have mentioned the unfavourable trade balances that we have had with the United States during the whole period of our history. If we go back over the last twenty or thirty years it will show substantially the same thing. There have been unfavourable balances year after year, which means that we have not been selling enough in that market to pay for what we buy.
In seventy-nine years out of the eighty-two since confederation, our sales to the United Kingdom have been $12,000 million in excess of what we bought. If we lose the United Kingdom market it will be a tremendous loss to make up. We would be hurt in two respects. We would be losing the market, and we would be losing the exchange, whatever value it would have, to help to pay our deficit to the United States. In my judgment if we lose that market now, it will never be completely regained.
Let me emphasize what hon. members know very well, namely, that four out of

every twelve jobs in Canada come from export enterprises. Four jobs in every twelve exist because of Canadian exports. And one-quarter of Canada's exports are made up of agricultural commodities; three-quarters of the exports of agricultural commodities are to the United Kingdom or the sterling area, and that is the market we are now in process of losing.
As I have said, that market is gradually slipping away from us. It has been kept this year only to the extent of three contracts. We must not make light of them, although they are but three, and for lessened amounts, and only for a year. As I have indicated already, and as I will be indicating later, they were kept only through urgings on the part of this government and through some fear on the part of the British that the favourable terms they now have under the wheat contract might not otherwise be forthcoming.
From what I have said it will be clear that I regard the British market as the best market we have ever had. I said the prospect of its loss was serious to Canada. It is particularly serious to Canadian farmers. They are the first to be hit in a loss of this kind; other sections of the economy suffer afterwards.
I say it is a serious situation facing Canadian farmers. Canadian farmers produce more food products than the Canadian people consume. Taking one year at random, in 1947 Canadian farmers produced fifty per cent more agricultural commodities than the Canadian people consumed; $1,300 million in agricultural products were consumed here, and $700 million had to find a market outside Canada. Ordinarily we export about one-third of our agricultural production.
As I have already said, about three-quarters of those exports have found a market previously in the sterling countries. That market is gradually slipping away from us. In seventy-nine years of our history the United Kingdom took $19,000 million of our exports, and the United States $18,000 million. Hon. members can thus see how any major loss in the British market will touch the Canadian economy in its most vulnerable spot, its export markets. How vulnerable that is can best be appreciated when I tell you that in seventy-nine of the eighty-two years since confederation we bought $28,000 million worth of products from the United States, and they bought only $18,000 million from us. In that same seventy-nine years the United Kingdom bought $19,000 million from us, and we bought only $7,000 million from them. The last comparison indicates why the British people are in the position in which they find themselves today. The immediately preceding statement showing our deficit with the

United States indicates why we are in a difficult position with respect to that country. How we are to find a large enough market for our goods to pay for the huge annual deficit in the United States is a major problem, one that I know the government appreciate, but I do not think they realize it is as serious as it is.
In my judgment the further loss of the British market may easily lead to an economic crisis in Canada. Let me emphasize again that one-third of our total volume of agricultural products is surplus. We must find a market for it outside our. boundaries. That market has been found largely in the United Kingdom and the commonwealth countries. If Great Britain does not continue to buy it, what other country will? Some people have suggested that the United States will. I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that judging from past experience, and perhaps judging from the United States common-sense reaction to these problems, when that country finds that she has a surplus of certain commodities she will not welcome similar commodities from another country. She has demonstrated that several times in the past. Seventy or more years ago she discontinued a reciprocity arrangement with this country; again in 1921 and 1928, as I recall it, she raised her tariffs, and even now under her price support legislation, when she has certain goods in excess, other goods of the same kind from other countries will not be welcomed.
Can anyone imagine United States, with a great surplus, welcoming our wheat? Of course it is a bigger country. But it produces three or four times as much wheat as we do, and its exports now are nearly as large as ours. Can anyone imagine that country taking our wheat or our bacon on a permanent arrangement? The United States produces
3,000	million bushels of corn, half the com in the world. Its bacon production is always likely to be high. Unfortunately those products that we have in excess the United States will often have in excess also.
Let me now ask this question: if Great Britain does not buy our surpluses, what country will? If some country does not buy our surpluses, which increased greatly in quantity during the war, there will be a curtailment of business in the country, a lessening of employment, a lessening of national income, and our tax burden will become more oppressive because it will be the same amount with a smaller income to draw from. And if some countries do not buy our surpluses in the quantities in which they were produced before the war, we are in for a deflation. It is important therefore that the country, as well as the government and the house, know what policies we are to follow to meet the situation.
Agricultural Products Act
I do not want to detain the house unnecessarily, but frankly I feel that this is the most important economic problem that the government or the country has to deal with.


Joseph William Burton: What do you suggest that we do about it?


John Bracken: Just have a little patience.


Joseph William Burton: I have had patience.


Mr. Jutras:: What did you propose?


Thomas John Bentley: We propose a change of government.


John Bracken: Most members of the house occasionally read the Toronto Financial Post and the articles therein written by Kenneth R. Wilson. There is one dated February 19, 1949, in which he refers to the problem we are now facing as to wheat. I do not take as serious a view of the United States attitude to that situation as some do, but even in this case there is a question whether our export market is going to be held.
I have in my hand the report of the Empire Industries Association of February of this year, in which they quote one who is well known to some members of the house, George V. Ferguson, editor of the Montreal Star, in an article in the Daily Telegraph. This is what Mr. Ferguson is reported as having said:
Canadian disquiet is not lessened by the repeated statements of British leaders that the long-run objective is to find markets outside the dollar bloc.
. If this trend is continued it is obvious that Canada will have to take whatever steps it can to create new markets for itself. ... If continued long enough it would be bound to lead to political developments of a kind which would prove distasteful to Canadians and British alike.
What that means, I suppose, is that to the extent that we become economically dependent upon and tied into the affairs of the United States, we run the risk of losing in some degree, if not to a large extent, our political independence. Then they quote Mr. Ferguson further:
If we are driven to close our lives inside the dollar bloc it is equally clear that our position and function as an independent North American state will be gravely threatened. . . . The British should not ignore the long-term benefits of having a Canada more than an economic satrapy of the United States. . . . the ultimate state involves the independence of this country within the British commonwealth of nations.
Since it is in the same document, I quote another statement along the same line from one of the great Canadian daily newspapers, the Vancouver Sun, which says:
It is galling to note that Britain's purchasing business is going elsewhere. The London reply to Canadian protests is that Britain has not the dollars to buy in Canada. . . . We could send tremendous quantities of lumber, bacon and other products in exchange for machinery and other manufactured goods. . . . Apparently Britain prefers to exchange her manufactured goods elsewhere.

Agricultural Products Act I am still reading the views o 1 this newspaper.
It was from Canada, particularly British Columbia, that Britain drew her supplies of timber during wartime when no others were available. . . . The British government prefers to set up new trade arrangements with Russia, Poland and other European countries. ... If Britain is going to get most of her wheat from Russia, and her softwood from Poland, and her cheese and bacon from Denmark, and is going to refuse offers of a few million dollars' worth of Fraser valley poultry products each year, then the Canadian economy is going to be heavily affected.
Then I quote one other statement by Mr. Ferguson in the Daily Telegraph:
The division of the main world trading area into dollar and sterling blocs leaves Canada hopelessly straddled between the two.
Then in the words of the Times:
A gloomy feeling persists that Anglo-Canadian trade is being sacrificed to an international exchange problem.
I have one other authority, who has often been quoted in this house. I refer to Mr. Strachey, who pointed out that the United Kingdom has forty long-term contracts with different countries, and then had this to say as to the effect of this situation on prices: "The prices of essentials are lower under the bulk-purchase system used by the government than if they are left to private dealers," he said.
Then he is reported also as follows:
But "moderate and steady decline" in primary producers' food prices is above all of "great interest" to Britain, he continued. It is important that her long-term agreements now being made should not prevent such a decline.
I mention these as the views of the Minister of Food over there with respect to the effect of such policies on prices.


James Garfield Gardiner: He is speaking of a decline in the cost to the consumer in Britain.


John Bracken: That is right; but if Britain buys her supplies here at lower prices that will be reflected in lower prices to producers in this country.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is not what he says. He says that government buying cuts down the cost, as compared with private buying.
I am not saying I agree with him, but that is what he says.


Mr. Gillis:: He is absolutely right.


John Bracken: Well, I will just read again what I have here as to what Mr. Strachey is reported to have said:
There are forty long-term contracts in force, ranging from one to ten years in length. He added that it could be shown that long-term contracts had "prevented this country from having to pay prices for essential foods over the past three years which would have been ruinous to have paid."
What he is saying, in my judgment, is that long-term contracts enabled them to get their food at lower prices.


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, lower prices to Britain.


John Bracken: The report continues:
"The prices of essentials are lower under the bulk-purchase system used by the government than if they are left to private dealers," he said.
And further:
But "moderate and steady decline" in primary producers' food prices is above all of "great interest to Britain."
I am glad the minister interrupted me, because this statement is even stronger than I thought. In Mr. Strachey's view that method of purchasing-


James Garfield Gardiner: If you will follow that through you will find he says they are subsidizing the producers in their own country to avoid that.


John Bracken: He is probably correct in that statement. But the report goes on:
But "moderate and steady decline" in primary producers' food prices is above all of "great interest to Britain." It is important that her long-term agreements now being made should not prevent such a decline.
I do not know what could be clearer than that.
From what I have said I think it is clear that the loss of the British market may easily bring about a reduction of prices in Canada, if not a collapse. Britain has taken nearly half our exports, more than the United States has taken, but she is taking less and less each year. No other country is yet willing to take our surpluses. If no other country takes them, prices will fall; and if all other countries take less, the problem will be how to use our surpluses, or how to prevent them from damaging our economy.
In my judgment the government is failing to keep the British market. In my judgment the government is responsible for the situation we are now facing. It chose its course; it took all the wide powers it desired. It has failed to hold our wartime markets. Perhaps it was too much to expect that we would hold them all, but certainly we were led to hope that we would hold many of them. It is likely to lose at least a part of our pre-war markets. In the days ahead this country will pay a high price for this failure.


Joseph William Burton: In your judgment, then, what should be done about it?


John Bracken: My hon. friend is a little impatient. If he would like to complete his education in this respect I suggest that he come around to room 561 and I will prescribe for him. But since the hon. member has raised the question of what to do, I want to refer to one other authority before I attempt to answer. I shall quote from a speech delivered

by the Minister of Agriculture. In doing so I do not mean to be critical of what he said;
I simply wish to put certain views before the house. In a speech delivered in London on December 17 the minister had this to say:
. . . it was desired that because of shortage of dollars with which to buy from us it was expected that we would as soon as possible get our quantities of beef, bacon and eggs down to zero. . . .
I do not want to put words into the minister's mouth, but presumably he was expressing what he thought was the wish of someone over there.
When the U.K. traders came over this year, 1948, they intimated that they could not find dollars with which to buy food, together with other purchases they desired to make, excepting wheat and cheese. They were, after much discussion, prevailed upon to find dollars with which to buy 160 million pounds of bacon and 46 million dozen of dried and storage eggs.
The minister went on to say:
I am not making these statements to be critical of the United Kingdom government or its agents. I am making them to impress upon you the fact that the British people want our bacon, want our eggs, want our beef, want our wheat. I am making them to impress upon you that if dollar requirements had not intervened we would have been in a position to send you in 1949 over 300 million pounds of bacon, nearly 200 million pounds of beef,-
Now we are sending none.
-80 million dozen eggs,-
The government is now proposing to send 46 million dozen.
-several hundred thousand barrels of apples, thousands of bushels of beans and much jam, none of which your traders feel you can afford to have from us because of the dollar shortage. We cannot sell the apples, beans, jam and salmon to anyone at any price under the present dollar arrangements and for the moment we are finding it impossible to dispose of millions of bushels of linseed at 30 per cent less than you are paying others for it.
They are taking 140 million bushels of wheat and 50 million pounds of cheese from us because they must have them, and we appear willing to provide them for fewer dollars than any other will supply them.
Then the minister deals with what he appears to regard as a major problem:
... I am convinced that the world is not in any state of mind where it can expect to agree that the manipulation of any system or systems of currency is going to be allowed to interfere with the will of those who have empty stomachs when it is preventing surpluses of food to get to them. It might be a good thing for everybody if they close down the United Nations meetings long enough to permit of the United Kingdom and United States experts getting together and settling some basis upon which dollars and sterling can be converted-
The minister suggested that Great Britain and the United States get together about this matter. I am wondering why Canada was not suggested as well. Why should not the United Kingdom and Canada get together
Agricultural Products Act on these matters? We are losing that market, and either someone in Canada or someone in Britain is to blame.


James Garfield Gardiner: Just to keep the record straight, I have been following the speech that I read in London, and that sentence reads as follows:
It might be a good thing for everybody if the United Nations meetings were closed down long enough to permit of the United Kingdom, United States and Canadian experts getting together and settling some basis upon which dollars and sterling can be converted to allow nations like Canada to produce and distribute food to feed the starving millions.


John Bracken: I am glad the minister has interjected, Mr. Speaker, because it answers one of my criticisms. The report of the address from which I have read did not include the words "Canadian experts".


James Garfield Gardiner: This is the document.


John Bracken: I accept the minister's statement, but the statement from which I read is one that was published.
I come now to the issue raised by the minister. In that connection I should like to quote one who is known to many of us here-Mr. Eggleston-and who, writing in Toronto Saturday Night in January of this year about the United Kingdom contracts, had this to say:
We know perfectly well why the food negotiations have rim into an impasse . . .
I shall not quote the whole of the article, but only the pertinent parts.
There are at least two schools of thought on this subject at Ottawa, and their advice to the ministry is at certain points in direct conflict.
He is referring to the experts in the Department of Agriculture and the experts in the Department of Finance. The following is said to be the view of the agricultural experts:
Britain has always been our key customer for Canadian surplus foods; our agricultural production has been geared to supply that market, and if that market should be lost, the long-term view is depressing. The current demand in the United States, which promises to skim off our surpluses of beef, some cheese, and even quantities of bacon and eggs, should not be permitted to blind us to the limited long-term value of the U.S. market.
The writer continues at another point as follows:
Advisers in the Department of Finance and the Bank of Canada apparently dismiss such a policy as unrealistic. They see no early prospect of sterling becoming convertible; they are convinced that the British famine in hard currency will continue, and that (a) Britain will have to make herself as selfsufficient in foods as possible and then (b) buy most of her requirements in food from within the sterling bloc. For Canada to sell Britain large quantities of food and accept sterling in exchange will be, in effect, a further loan to Britain which can probably never be repaid.
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Agricultural Products Act
According to Mr. Eggleston, this is the point of view of those advisers to the Minister of Agriculture on the one hand and the Department of Finance on the other.


Joseph William Burton: What is your advice?


John Bracken: The hon. member has not shown such impatience in this respect over the last few years. As I have stated, I shall be glad to talk to him any time he wishes to come around to room 561. To continue:
These advisers urge a cold-blooded and objective appraisal of the situation. The years can't be rolled back; Humpty-Dumpty can't be restored to his perch; Canadian external trade, including food exports, must be reoriented, at whatever cost-our economic future, say some experts, is now intimately tied up with the U.S., and we should act accordingly.
Is it true, Mr. Speaker, that there are divergent views in the government on this matter? The problem is of pressing importance; yet the government is not taking the proper or necessary steps to save the British market for us.
An economist in one of our agricultural institutions has pointed out what is happening. I refer to David MacFarlane of Macdonald College. Writing in the Canadian Countryman of October 16, 1948, this is what he said:
Since May 5 of this year Canadian trade policy, and with it Canadian farm policy, has been brought into the United States orbit of influence. From that date until September 20 Canada sold $263 million worth of supplies to the United States for delivery to western European countries receiving aid under the Marshall plan or the ERP (European recovery program).
In the next six months the rate of Canada's sales to the United States for this purpose will increase. More than two-thirds of these funds have been and will continue to be spent on farm products. Essentially what is happening is that the United States is financing the Canada-United Kingdom food contracts. Thus sales to the ERP have come to represent by far Canada's most important export outlet for farm products.
Then Mr. MacFarlane goes on to show to what extent United States funds are helping us and the way in which that great nation is helping to restore the world to a sound economic basis. Mr. MacFarlane ends his treatise in this way:
Canada is not now giving or lending a dime toward European or world recovery. That is not to the credit of a rich country with incomes at the highest level in history. If European recovery is worth $15 billion to $20 billion to the United States, it must be worth something to us! Many Canadians think so. The United States Department of State thinks so. The recent visit of Mr. Cripps to Ottawa indicates that the United Kingdom thinks so. Canada cannot afford to miss the present opportunity to serve in the cause of world peace. Independent Canadian action to aid world recovery is necessary if we are to maintain the high place we hold in the councils of the United Nations.
With respect to the question asked by the hon. member for Humboldt (Mr. Burton), I


will read to him a statement from the report of the foreign exchange control board which I think, as to this narrow phase of our problem, expresses a point of view that ought to have widespread support. I quote from page 7 of the 1948 report of the board as follows:
The situation outlined in the preceding paragraphs can hardly fail to have unsatisfactory repercussions on all countries which have an important stake in world trade and in the development of nondiscriminatory trade relationships among nations. It is therefore important that the risks involved should be recognized at an early stage. In addition to greater efforts being required on the part of ERP coimtries to develop and maintain dollar markets, it is also important that the dollar countries-
That is, ours, among others.
-should give as much encouragement as possible to imports from these countries.
That is the major constructive way in which this problem can be met. This statement comes from and I believe is an unprejudiced and an informed source. The paragraph concludes with this sentence:
The general objective should clearly be to maintain international transactions at a high level rather than to achieve a balance in dollar accounts through a network of restrictions and discriminations.
That statement comes from one of our own government publications. I think it is extremely wise. When asked the other day how to meet this problem the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) said in effect: It is a difficult matter. If we make further loans or gifts we may not get them paid back. It may not be the best way. If I may paraphrase his words, he said that the answer is for the sterling countries, or the United Kingdom or western Europe to produce more and to sell their surpluses at competitive prices. To me, Mr. Speaker, that means that he is only telling those countries to worker harder and to eat less. I do not think a policy of that kind will accomplish a solution of this problem. I think it is just a state of defeatism.
While we are waiting for something to happen, our markets are being lost. Britain is trading more and more with other places. Once she gets trading with them, even supposing she gets relatively strong in the next three or four years, will it be easy for us to get back those markets? I suggest it will not.
The question asked by the hon. member cannot be dealt with by one narrow approach.
I have referred to one approach; there are many others. One might indicate some of them. I shall not pretend now to answer fully a question of such major importance without careful thought. But I would say first of all that this government should get out of the business of making food contracts and let those who produce the food make their own contracts. Then I would say that we should help the producers to organize their own marketing machinery. We have been saying

that for the last fifteen years, and now at last the government is bringing in a marketing act which appears to carry out that principle. When we see the bill, I trust that we shall be able to support it.
As I have said, we should try to increase our purchases from countries purchasing from us. In that respect we must do more than we have done to hold the British markets. And we must lessen our purchase from countries that do not buy freely from us. One could take a long time and go into these matters in more detail. We must try to keep the price level reasonably high; otherwise the burden of government costs and the burden of debt become unbearable.
(One other thing we must do. If there is any degree of economic recession, we must try to see that it is equitably borne. It should not be left, as it has been all too often throughout the centuries, to unorganized groups of working people and farm people to carry the burden of breakdowns in the economy. We know better how to deal with such problems today. In the old days the farmers shared the major burden first; then those who lost their jobs; then those whose pay was decreased. We do not have to do things in that way from now on. In the last decade or two the world has not failed to learn. No matter how serious the situation becomes, I am sure that any government in office in this country will see to it that we no longer have the old extremes of prosperity and depression. It may be that we cannot control these things perfectly, but we can prevent the wide extremes.
By way of conclusion, Mr. Speaker, let me say that my criticism is this. The government in the matter of markets is facing great responsibilities, and in my judgment it has not measured up to them. In my judgment it has not been as frank as it should have been with the Canadian people in letting them know the seriousness of this situation. In my judgment the government has no adequate policy to meet the need.
As to the details of the food contract, I imagine few people will object to them. The criticism is that the sales are not large enough. With regard to the method of marketing, namely, state marketing, many will be critical. I personally am critical. We favour letting farmers organize to market their own products, and doing whatever is necessary on the part of the government to give them power to meet their own problems and to deal particularly with their surpluses. It is these surpluses which gives us the major part of our difficulties.
With respect to the constitutional aspect of this measure, that was thoroughly dealt
Agricultural Products Act with by my leader last night. It now must be clear, if it was not before, that the government is exceeding its jurisdiction in continuing this kind of legislation in peacetime.
As to the over-all policy with regard to retaining the British market, as I have said, the government has no adequate policy, and for that reason we think that it deserves censure. The three contracts which the minister has made will be carried out. The government supporters will support the bill. This party accepts the situation with respect to these particular contracts for this year.
For the reasons I have given, we believe that the producers should have been put in a position to make their own marketing deals long before this. We believe that the failure to retain our export markets in Britain and in the sterling countries, and the failure to appreciate the serious effects of not retaining them, deserve the censure of this house, and we expressed that censure last night by voting against the resolution upon which this measure is based.
At one o'clock the house took recess.
The house resumed at three o'clock.


Mr. Victor Quelch (Acadia):: Mr. Speaker, when the hon. member for Battle River (Mr. Fair) spoke during the resolution stage he stated that we would support this measure in order to facilitate the carrying out of our food contracts with Britain. This bill may be said to be supplementary to the Agricultural Prices Support Act, but an interesting point is that both this measure and that act are temporary measures. This bill is for one year, and the Agricultural Prices Support Act expires next year unless it is continued in operation by the governor in council. Therefore the whole agricultural situation is both uncertain and unsatisfactory. When I say that, I am not criticizing the price level, either today or in the immediate past, but I am criticizing the fact that there is no longterm legislation on the statute book to take care of agricultural prices in the future. Our farmers have absolutely no guarantee for more than one year in the future.
When I said that I was not criticizing present prices or prices in the immediate past I do not want that to be interpreted as meaning that I think that agriculture is in a prosperous condition today. Unfortunately that is not so. Professor MacFarlane, of Macdonald College, in an article in the Country Guide of October, 1948, states:
No published data reveal how small a proportion of Canadian farms have total capital values of $15,000 or more. There is, however, good evidence that the figure does not exceed twelve per cent.

Agricultural Products Act
Thus few of Canada's farms are really capitalusing in a business sense.
This situation doubtless helps to explain the unfavourable income position of Canadian farms. Net farm income per farm last year amounted to less than $2,000 or less than $1,250 per gainfully employed farm worker. This included net cash income, plus use of the farm home, value of farm products used in the home, inventory changes, etc. The figure is somewhat more than half the return of workers in manufacturing industries.
This 1947 picture of workers in farming is not attractive. But operators or other workers on the lower third of our farms had net incomes which did not exceed $800 per man last year-and this at the height of an inflationary period.
This third of our farmers coincides fairly well with what the census calls subsistence and parttime farmers. Almost none of them have tractors or power machinery. In fact they have little machinery of any kind. They have small farms. Generally they have farms on unproductive land. These farmers feel it is possible to inhabit the ranks of the poor a bit more comfortably in farming than in city life.
If that is the situation today, when we have a high level of income, production and employment, one might well ask what will be the condition of agriculture when conditions are less prosperous. On several occasions the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) has stated in this house that as a result of government policies since 1942 our farmers have had to accept less for their products than they might otherwise have received. That was done in the name of stabilization, but so far that program of stabilization has resulted invariably in the farmers getting less for their products than they would have received if the program had not been in operation.
I think all people must agree today that the farmers are justified in demanding that the program of stabilization shall be continued in the future in order to assure the farmer a price that will recover the cost of production and will be commensurate with what has to be paid for other commodities.
My point is that as the farmers have been accepting lower than world market prices for the past eight years, they have already paid the premium for that type of insurance. The cost has been paid, in view of the fact that the farmers have paid the premium by accepting reduced prices for eight years in order to get insurance. It will be a breach of faith on the part of the government if they do not bring down at this session longterm legislation that will assure the farmers a price that will cover their costs.
I do not doubt for one moment that at the next election, which may not be far distant, the government will announce a long-term policy for agriculture. But it was this government that required the farmers to take less than world market prices during the last eight years and it is this government that should bring down legislation to guarantee them a stabilized income in the future. If the govern-

ment fail to do that before the election, what likelihood is there that they will do it afterwards? It is approximately four years since the end of the war and there is still plenty of time this session to bring down legislation of that kind.
I was interested in an address made by Dr. Barton before the United Nations Society on January 18. In that address he emphasized the danger of food shortages throughout the world in the near future. He referred to statements made by Vogt, Sir John Boyd Orr and Sir Henry Tizard. In the face of that kind of evidence can anyone deny that there is an emergency in Canada today? Not only is there an emergency in Canada today; it is an emergency of world proportions, an emergency that may very well develop into a world crisis. Can anyone deny that Canada, as one of the great world producers of food, has an important part to play in solving that problem? The food and agricultural organization warns that production will have to be expanded by twenty-five per cent in the next eleven years-that is, by 1960-if we are to maintain the health standards of people throughout the world. This is a challenge to the people of all food-producing nations, a challenge that should be taken up as quickly as possible.
I wonder if we in Canada are prepared to accept that challenge? Judging by some of the statements I have read recently I doubt whether we are prepared to accept it. In the first place we cannot meet a challenge of that kind unless we bring down long-term legislation to guarantee our farmers a fair price in the future. How can you expect any farmer to go ahead and expand his production in any one line, or to lay plans for increasing his herds and capital equipment, when he has no assurance as to what markets there may be in the future and as to what price he will receive for the product he does put on the market?
There is no question that uncertainty is greatly handicapping the expansion of production, and even the maintenance of production at the present level. Statements that have been made with regard to surpluses are increasing the uncertainty in the minds of the people. Several prominent economists in the United States have said that shortly we are to be faced with food surpluses. Those food surpluses will exist not because the people did not need them but because the people could not buy them. Everybody realizes that in the world today and in the future there are and will be many countries needing food but unable to purchase it. Because they will be unable to purchase food,

surpluses will pile up in nations that are able to produce large quantities of food.
In the real sense it is not a surplus of food so far as the world is concerned; it is merely that our distribution system has broken down and is unable to distribute the food that is available to the people who need it.
Unfortunately statements have been made by the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) which have perhaps added to the uncertainty and confusion. I quite realize that the minister probably had the situation clearly in his own mind, but the press have taken extracts from his speeches and given them a great deal of publicity with the result that people have been confused as to what the situation really is. A good deal of publicity was given to the speech that he made before the Canadian chamber of commerce in England in December last. According to that speech, the minister stated that he was disappointed over the food contracts, that he was disappointed that Great Britain had had to reduce the amount of food she was willing to take from us owing to a scarcity of dollars.
The point that I criticize most severely in his speech is the reference that he made to our financial system. Judging by the way it reads, I doubt very much whether it was in the text of his speech. I think perhaps as a result of a good luncheon, and being in a state of exhilaration, he got a brain wave, something flashed across his mind, and he gave voice to it. This is what he stated:
All this is bringing me to wonder if an unknown economist, or was it an Abraham Lincoln or some such individual as Churchill-
Evidently he did not have that in his text or he would have found out who the individual was.
-was not right when he said "that he would rather have the money in his pocket tied to the unthinking inanimate substance called gold, which cannot change its mind, than to the manipulations of some small group of crackpots who fancy themselves as economists or statesmen."
I am satisfied, Mr. Speaker, that if that were brought into operation, in other words, if we adopted the gold standard, conditions would become very much worse than they are today. Personally I do not think there is danger of any government bringing the gold standard into operation, because I do not believe that the people of any country are willing to have their way of life dominated by an unthinking, inanimate lump of gold. If you have economists trying to do something they at least have a chance to try to change their policies to meet changing conditions, but if you are going to have your policies dominated by an inanimate lump of
Agricultural Products Act gold, then what possibility is there of policies being changed to meet changing conditions?
It is true that under the Bretton Woods agreement the currencies of the world are valued in terms of the United States dollar, which in turn is valued in terms of gold. But that is merely on an international basis. The suggestion of the Minister of Agriculture goes far beyond that. He is referring to the money in our pockets, that is, he is referring to a gold standard on a national basis. Would that help the present situation confronting Great Britain? The great difficulty there is that the people are not able to pay for their imports with United States dollars, and they are not allowed to pay for them in full with their own products. Would it help to make it mandatory that they should be prepared to meet their unbalance of trade with gold? Mark you, if we were on a gold standard, countries would also have to maintain a gold reserve behind their internal currency with the result that, if England was unable to meet its unfavourable balance of trade, she would have to export gold. That might mean reducing their reserves of gold which, if those reserves were being held as a backing for their currency, would require that the nation withdraw a certain amount of currency from circulation. Hence the nation would be forced into a depression, or at least a very deflationary influence would be exerted upon the people.
That is why I say I do not think there is very much danger of any government adopting a policy of that kind, because the people are not going to allow their policies to be dominated by any automatic feaure of a gold standard. In criticizing certain economists as crackpots the minister, by making a declaration of that kind, has earned for himself the Canadian title of crackpot No. 1 for the year 1948.
In view of the fact that the minister expressed disappointment over the British contracts, I was somewhat surprised that on the 18th of March he stated that the present contracts are satisfactory. I realize, of course, that he meant satisfactory only in that we have been finding temporary markets elsewhere. To establish long-term contracts with Great Britain, however, will require a willingness on our part to accept payment in goods or services instead of demanding payment in gold or dollars. I quite appreciate that the Minister of Agriculture is in a somewhat hopeless position in trying to carry out his policies within the existing framework in which international trade and international financial policies are confined at the present time. On the other hand, he is certainly not helping the situation by suggesting

Agricultural Products Act that it might be better to return to the gold standard.
I suggest that our international trade policies must make possible the exchange of goods and services on a basis of mutual advantage. I suggest furthermore that the home market must be supplied with sufficient purchasing power to enable the people to secure an adequate supply of the goods that are available within the nation.
When I spoke on the foreign exchange control bill, I suggested that it might be wise to adopt a plan similar to the food allotment plan in the United States. Such a measure would help to expand the home market to take care of any surpluses of food that might accumulate in the country, and at the same time it would help to fill the needs of people in the low income groups. In order to encourage the production of food by maintaining a fair price in the future, we suggest that the Agricultural Prices Support Act should be converted into a long-term program of stabilizing prices at a fair level.
Then I think there is a great need for a program of conservation of land. During the war we had what was known as W.A.R., the wheat acreage reduction program. I always thought it was a pity that that name was utilized, because many people jumped to the conclusion that the program was merely for the purpose of reducing the acreage of wheat. As a matter of fact, the program was not only to reduce the acreage of wheat but also to expand the acreage of other cereals such as oats and barley, and also to conserve the land by increasing the acreage in summer fallow, and the amount of land sown down to grass. I supported the program at that time. I refused to criticize it on the ground that it would mean a reduction in production because, as I stated then, I thought a plan of that kind would actually increase production over a period of years. Therefore I suggest to the minister that it might be a good thing at this time to introduce a scheme that we might call P.C.R., prairie crop rotation. That could be conducted along similar lines to the way W.A.R. was carried on; in other words steps might be taken to encourage farmers to indulge in crop rotation. But realizing that the cash return from such a program in the first instance would not be as great as from growing wheat, payments might be made as they were under W.A.R., in order to accomplish that result. It may be said that farmers can use fertilizer. Well, I use fertilizer, but it will help increase the yield only during the one year; it does not improve the land over a period of time. The benefit is very short-lived, and it does not in any way help restore fertility to the soil. In order 
to do that, it is necessary to have some sort of crop rotation scheme under which the land can be sown down to grass, clover and so on; and I think the government might very well introduce a program of that kind.
In closing I would say, as the hon. member for Battle River (Mr. Fair) pointed out, that we are supporting this bill in order to facilitate the carrying out of the food contracts. But we do deplore the fact that up to the present no legislation has been brought down to introduce a long-term program of stabilization.


Mrs. Gladys Strum (Qu'Appelle):: Mr. Speaker, any visitor to this house during the last week or so, since we began to deal with the emergency measures and the legislation that must be disposed of before the end of the month, would think we were confining our thoughts and attention to a revision of the constitution. Ever since this session opened the constitution has been dragged in and exhibited in a very narrow sense, in one section of its provisions. Members of this house and in fact the people of the country are very suspicious of the people who re-hash this ancient stew and insist on serving it on every occasion. In fact this constitutional dish was pretty thin to begin with, and it has been warmed up and served in this chamber so often that it has become an offence to the nostrils of hon. members.
Unlike the cowboy from Carleton, the homesteader from Eglinton and the rancher from Stanstead, I hope at this time to talk about agriculture, about bacon, cheese and eggs; but in passing I am also going to talk about some aspects of the constitution that have not been mentioned so far. In doing so the point I wish to make is that there are a few other people in this chamber who can read and write; there are a few books on Canadian history in the libraries of this country, all of which would lead me to conclude that the constitution is not a rigid, inflexible, static document but rather that it is constantly in a state of growth and that the laws of this country are continually developing in their application to it and in their interpretation in relation to this document. And in addition to my hon. friends who have wearied the house with their interminable arguments, which vary little from day to day, there are other authorities such as Dawson, for instance. He has written the story of the growth and development of Canada, and he has a few refreshing things to say about the constitution and the form of government under which we operate. In chapter 9 he says:
The most striking feature of the Canadian form of government is undoubtedly the superficial ab-

surdity of the dual nature of the executive power. The governor general, as the king's representative, is the official head of the state, but the active head ... is the Prime Minister. Appointments are made, acts of parliament are proclaimed, mails are carried, criminal prosecutions are instituted, war is declared, ... in the name of the king or of the governor general, although the Prime Minister and the cabinet are in fact the ones who make the selections and decide the policies which lie behind all these activities," and yet, the words "Prime Minister," and "cabinet" do not occur in the constitution at any point.
In considering the development of our constitution and the growth of this nation Dawson has this to say:
Cabinet government was the product of a series of historical accidents, experiments, and temporary expedients, so haphazard in its origin and development that no one could have planned it in advance, or, even if this had been possible, would have been so rash as to suggest that it could ever have been made to work. There can be little cause for wonder that foreigners are frequently bewildered and exasperated by the curious mentality of a people who can remain satisfied with so preposterous and illogical an institution.
Then here is a quotation from a man who is speaking of the British parliament, which we copy in this house:
"These miserable islanders do not know," exclaimed the father of Mirabeau, "and will probably not know till their wretched system has exploded, whether they are living under a monarchy or a republic, a democracy or an oligarchy."
We have an exceedingly flexible and extremely fortunate kind of constitution; and to take one section and hammer at it to the exclusion of every other aspect of its development is, I think, to be exceedingly narrow and limited in our outlook. There are other eccentricities, other characteristics of our form of government that Dawson talks about, which few people ever consider. One of these is that our constitution, the British North America Act, as I said earlier, does not mention the Prime Minister or the cabinet at any point; and furthermore it does not mention how we shall bridge the gap between the governor in council and the cabinet, which had not been in existence at the time of the writing of the British North America Act, and which is the real authority. To get around that we invented a sort of constitutional fiction by making privy councillors of our cabinet ministers; and this is what he has to say about that:
The cabinet, lacking any legal status of its own, masquerades as the privy council when it desires to assume formal powers; it speaks and acts in the name of the entire council.
Then I shall conclude my reference to this book with this quotation:
Even these few illustrations make it abundantly clear that the unwritten constitution is every whit as important as the British North America Act, and, indeed, that much of the latter is transformed
Agricultural Products Act
and made almost unrecognizable by the operation
of the former, which in all these instances consists of established customs and usages which have grown up over a long period of years. But the unwritten or non-documentary constitution includes very much more than these conventions. The term also embraces principles of the common law as defined by the courts; British and Canadian acts of parliament and orders in council; judicial interpretations of the written constitution and other laws; the rules and privileges of parliament, and many other habitual and informal methods of government in addition to those noted above. All these, many of them (despite the misleading term "unwritten") committed to writing, others in much more intangible and elusive form, exert a powerful influence on constitutional practice.
These people who claim to be the only ones in this country who can read and the only ones who know anything about the constitution, who claim to be the great defenders of our constitution and the saviours of democracy, actually are not so much interested in the constitution. They are interested in creating an impression in certain parts of the country which they hope will pay off in seats in the next election. I think it is about time they knew we know that, too.
What is before the house at this moment is an agricultural products bill, and I wish to make a few statements concerning it. The subject matter of the bill is the contracts that we have with Great Britain for the delivery of certain agricultural products. Like other bills having to do with controls, this is a tapering-off bill. Originally it covered a great many items. It consolidated all the orders in council having to do with specific items of food. These orders in council were passed during the war to move food supplies to the mother country. As I have stated, it originally dealt with a great many items but now the government has dropped from these contracts the beans, the apples, the milk, and is left with only bacon, cheese and eggs.
My quarrel with the government is not that it is still in the business of signing food contracts and arranging for the sale of Canadian bacon, eggs and cheese, but rather that it has evaded its responsibility and delivered the farmers of this country once again into the hands of the private traders in agricultural products. I believe the government has a responsibility in peacetime as well as in wartime to plan for production at home, for consumption at home, and, indirectly, for an adequate family income so that the health of the people of this country shall be protected. We need to think in terms of production and in terms of nutrition. We hear now about a shelf of public works. How about a pantry shelf for the Canadian people? How about an adequate program of nutrition? How about seeing to it that the family income shall not drop below a certain level? How about a floor under every family income in

Agricultural Products Act every Canadian home from the newest honey-mooners down to the oldest pioneers? If every family in Canada had a full and adequate diet, it would provide a home market for many of the things that are going to cause this government a headache. There are the apples, the berries, butter, fluid milk, cheese, beef, pork, mutton, poultry products, vegetables, fresh and frozen, and fruit. This "pantry shelf" would help to cure the export dilemma; would give employment and promote the well-being of the Canadian people generally.
The plan of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture to move surpluses and make provision for consumption does not appeal to me. I do not like any plan that segregates the people with low incomes and provides them with tickets. Just think what that would mean. It would mean a means test; it would mean that everyone would have to account for his income to some sort of authority; it would mean that no one could have these goods unless his need were established; it would mean subsidies. The difference between what these people paid and what the farmer received would have to be made up.
Here you have a social segregation. Here you have the means test and you still have subsidies. You would have a humiliating and uneconomic method because administrative machinery would be necessary. You would have to have all your inspectors, your forms and the things that we dislike so much. I believe it is far better to have an adequate system covering all pensions, an adequate system of contributory retirement pensions for all of the Canadian people. If we must make food cheap, let us do as we did in wartime. Let us do for food what we do for gold and if we must, let us have a subsidy, and put it at the production level. Then we could see that food was properly distributed to all the Canadian people.
If we were to plan for full production and full consumption of all these things other than wheat, it would take a great deal of the land out of the production of wheat. It would diversify our production. It would help us with the problem of finding room for an international wheat contract which is now such a headache and which means a lot of our wheat will still have to be sold outside the international agreement. It would help us plan for diversified agriculture and for soil conservation. It would give us a balance, variety and stability which we are not going to have if we refuse to plan for anything but wheat.
If we leave production to the whim of the individual; if we only stabilize one product; if we divert production into that channel [Mrs. Strum.l
as we are now doing, we are going to aggravate this marketing problem which has now become an international dilemma. This is what is happening. Wheat is the only product that is really stabilized for a year and it is only stabilized for one year. The land that was in flax, the land that was in rye and the land that was in rape is going to be diverted to wheat. I am not saying that wheat is too high. I am saying that by doing this we are aggravating a problem that is already unwieldy. It is uneconomic. It is destructive of the soil and the resources which we should try to conserve.
We know that western Canada can grow more than wheat. We know that that part of the country can grow cereal grains and can produce tremendous quantities of meat. This is borne out by the figures contained in a pamphlet issued by the Department of Agriculture. In this current review of agricultural conditions, the February issue, page 6, the report has this to say:
The inspected slaughtering of hogs in Canada in 1948 amounted to 4-5 million head, the same as in 1947. Slaughterings in eastern Canada in 1948 show an increase of 2-4 per cent over the previous year, while a decline occurred in western Canada.
The decrease for the whole of Canada amounted to 49 per cent, almost half. The comparison made is with 1944. In western Canada the decrease was greater than that. As compared with 1944, the decrease was 68-4 per cent, and only 13-3 per cent in eastern Canada. The origin of inspected slaughterings in Canada in 1944 was 65 per cent for western Canada and only 35 per cent for eastern Canada. In 1938, only 39 per cent originated in western Canada, with 61 per cent of the total slaughterings in eastern Canada. In 1944, western Canada produced 65 per cent of the hogs produced in Canada.
I think that is only reasonable, Mr. Speaker, because it is in western Canada that the feed originates. It is logical to produce the hog and ship it from the place where you grow the grain most easily. As an all-Canadian production proposition, western Canada can produce and ship hogs much more cheaply than you can ship six pounds of grain to produce one pound of finished pork. You have to do that when you move grain from Saskatchewan or Manitoba and produce the pig in Ontario, Quebec or the maritimes. And so we could add to the production of meat and we could take land out of wheat by seeing to it that the members of every Canadian family had bacon for breakfast, that they should have roast pork when they wanted it, and that we consumed our full quota of meat products in this country. But we cannot do that unless we pay some

attention to the family incomes of the people of this country. I emphasize again that it is a mistake to allow the farmers of western Canada to go out of livestock and to put the premium on wheat; not that wheat is too high, for the farmer's costs have gone up even faster than his wheat-but we are developing an unbalance that is aggravating our export problem and is helping to upset even our domestic equilibrium.
The farmer's costs have gone up far more than have his returns. At page 586 of Hansard of February 16 of this year there is a table that I would commend to the attention of hon. members. That table gives the gross farm income for the years from 1928 to 1948, and the net income. The difference of course represents the farmer's costs. These are the simple production fixed charges against agriculture. These costs are the taxes, the interest on the mortgage, the farm rent, the feed and seed. This does not include the farmer's food, his family's clothing or any improvements to his home. These are simply the fixed charges, the operating costs of agriculture. For instance, in 1943 the gross farm income was $1,610 million, the net farm income was $969 million, and the cost was $641 million. In the years following, the cost greatly increased, and the price index for tractors, for fuel and for all of those things that go to make up farm costs jumped faster than the farmer's return.
There is another factor that has discouraged the farmer from raising livestock, and that is the income tax structure. The first year I was here, I remember, the hon. member for Selkirk (Mr. Bryce) told a long story about the farmer going home from the income tax inspector's office. In that office he had accounted for every cream cheque, for every bit of fluid milk and for everything he had sold. And as he drove home he said to himself, "I'll no milk cows for Ilsley." There is a new Minister of Finance, but the same thing is true.
The farmer has not been permitted the proper exemptions in order that he may run his business. In this speech I do not intend to discuss the budget, but I am glad that some consideration was given to the small businessman who, with the aid of his family, conducts his own business. I am glad that up to $10,000 the income tax rate does not jump; it is held even. It is only after $10,000 has been attained that the rate goes up. I suggest that the farmer in his business is in the same category as the man in the small manufacturing business for instance. The farmer has been compared to the wage earner, and improperly so. The farmer more closely resembles the small businessman because they both must buy the tools with which they work.
Agricultural Products Act They both must buy the plant; they both must own and pay for the buildings, the equipment and the place in which they work. The farmer and the small business corporation have much in common. I think we should do for the farmer what we have done for the small corporation, namely, hold the tax rate to the same level until net income exceeds the $10,000 level.


Mr. Hackelt:: The small businessman is not exempt. It is the company.


Gladys Grace Mae Strum: I have not heard any remarks addressed through you, Mr. Speaker, but I would say to my friend, the hon. member for Stanstead (Mr. Hackett), that I know the small businessman is not exempt; but the rate of his business tax does not go up until after the $10,000 mark. The rate is retained. If he will look at the table, he will see that the man pays a smaller tax on the first $10,000 of his business, but it is not jumped until after he reaches $10,000. The first $10,000 is not exempt, but the rate at which he pays does not increase until after he has reached $10,000. I looked the matter up this morning, and I recommend that the hon. memoer do the same.
We come now to the export market. A great deal has been said about that market. This morning I was interested to observe the patience with which the house listened for about two hours to all the criticism made by the hon. member for Neepawa (Mr. Bracken) when he bludgeoned the Minister of Agriculture with all the problems of the export market. I do not intend either to analyse the export market or to give a cure-all. But there are a few things that I want to point out.
The report I have in my hand is from the United Kingdom information office. It contains the report of a speech that Sir Stafford Cripps made recently in an interview with the Canadian Press. In it he made a few statements that I think should be put on the record here. In relation to trade he said:
We will gladly buy from you all we can but naturally you want to be paid and paid in dollars. These are provided either by our exports, by other sterling area exports, or else by your credits or by ERP offshore purchases.
Then further on he goes on to say:
Both during the war and since we have been importing much more from across the Atlantic than we could pay for out of current earnings or than we could ever afford to do before the war. However vigorous and resourceful British exporters may be in expanding their share of the Canadian market (at present just over one-tenth of Canada's imports are supplied by the United Kingdom), it is quite unrealistic to imagine that we can in the foreseeable future earn enough Canadian dollars with which to buy supplies from Canada on a wartime scale.
There is no mystery about this. From the United Kingdom we accept only one-tenth of
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Agricultural Products Act all the goods that we bring into this country. We permit them to give us one-tenth of our imports. They have been supplementing that return with ERP credits and with the other arrangements that have been made to loan them money. He then goes on to explain the thing that does not need explaining in this house, namely, the fact that the British people were forced to part with their investments in Canada which used to earn them a great deal of interest, and against that interest we balanced the things that we shipped them. That is, the interest we owed them was paid for with goods. He has this to say:
Before the war the United Kingdom had a substantial income from dollar investments; from Canada alone it was sufficient in 1938 to pay for nearly one-quarter of our imports of Canadian goods. Many of these assets had to be disposed of to pay for the war, while what is left can buy much less than it did before the war because prices have gone up much more than the rates of interest.
So the few remaining investments that they have do not buy much in relation to the cost of goods. They do not see any rapid easing of this dollar shortage. I hold in my hand a copy of the journal of the parliaments of the empire. In the debate in the British House of Commons on the economic situation Sir Stafford Cripps had this to say:
Though the problem might be especially acute just now, the need for dollar exports would be with them for the next fifty years.
Therefore I do not think there is much hope of this thing blowing over if we just ignore it. We shall have to do our part in trying to find a market for Canadian goods outside the British isles or the traditional markets which have meant so much to us in the past, because the whole structure has changed. I want to make a suggestion in relation to trade. We shall have to face up to it. Are we to base our trade on the exchange of commodities? If we are, where are we to find the people with the commodities that we want? The people who have the greatest need in the world are usually the people with the least money. The people who have huge unsatisfied demands, who could take our goods, in the main have not the goods to spare to trade with us. Take India and China, these areas of almost permanent famine. Can they spare enough goods? They have never had enough goods. Can they spare enough goods to trade dollar for dollar, or whatever unit you use to value your goods? Even under the barter system you must use something as a unit of measurement. Even if you have a barter arrangement it is really nothing but bilateral trade, and you must use something to measure the value of your wheat as against the coffee, the sugar, the oranges, or whatever it is you


are trading. Are we then to limit ourselves to these countries which have goods to spare, or United States dollars to spare, which we may use to buy the great bulk of imports which we now bring in from the United States? That is a very serious thing to consider.
That poses another question which is a corollary to the Atlantic pact which we are to discuss next week. There is a great deal of apprehension in the minds of many people about this Atlantic pact. They are afraid that it will just be another military deal. They are afraid of it. It need not be that kind of a pact. It can be a peace pact, but it will be a peace pact only if we take these economic safeguards which will help to organize the production in the area, which will help to distribute the goods, which will help to stimulate a flow of goods and credits, of consumption and expansion, throughout that area, and indeed from that area spread through other parts of the world. If we use the Atlantic pact as a basis for economic recovery and trade, and use it as an experimental unit, it can well be the beginning of a new chapter in the history of mankind. It might be the basis of a program for nutrition; it might break through the restrictions of currency; it might lead to international banking and monetary arrangements which would advance credits, exchange goods and deliver us from the fear of another depression caused by abundance. The fear on this continent is the fear of abundance, the fear of surpluses, the fear of unconsumed commodities which bring about congestion, falling prices and ruin to the producer. In a hungry world, if we have the intelligence and the imagination, this can be the beginning of a new era of prosperity and abundance for mankind.


Mr. D. S. Harkness (Calgary East):: I should first like to comment on some of the remarks which have been made in this debate by other speakers. The hon. member for New Westminster (Mr. Reid) was one of the first three speakers in this debate. Usually he is fair in his remarks and I enjoy listening to him. However, I am sorry I cannot say that in regard to his contribution to this particular debate. I do not think he was doing a service to agriculture, or to the feeling of unity which we all should like to see prevail in this country, by stirring up animosities between the poultry growers of British Columbia and the wheat producers of the prairie provinces. I particularly object to his bringing up this old canard so far as the prairie farmers are concerned, which runs along the line that they spend four or five months in the summertime working on the farms and spend the rest of

the year in California or British Columbia or in this particular case, I think the hon member for New Westminster said, in Regina. Why anybody should spend the winter there I do not know. However, that is a remark which I have heard on numerous occasions, particularly in the eastern part of this country, and one which i? well designed, and properly so, to annoy the farmers on the prairies.
I should like to remind the hon. member for New Westminster, and all other hon. members who have that idea of the life of the prairie farmer, that in the western part of Canada we produce large amounts of livestock, poultry, milk, butter and so on. Nobody who is feeding hogs or milking cows is able to spend the winter in British Columbia or any place else. He has great difficulty in even getting away from his chores for one day. I hope that the hon; member for New Westminster, who is a parliamentary assistant, and as such should assume a little more responsibility in his utterances than he has shown on this particular occasion, will keep that fact in mind.
In the course of his remarks the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Zaplitny) said something along this line, that marketing is not an ideological matter; it is a practical matter. With the truth of that remark I thoroughly agree. It should be a practical matter. Unfortunately it has become an ideal which we on this side of the house would like to see established, but in actual fact to some extent it has become an ideological matter, because the C.C.F. party advocate economic policies, marketing and otherwise, which would fasten a socialistic, bureaucratic type of economy on this country. They advocate a system which we, at least, believe will bring, over a period of years, lower prices to farmers and higher prices to consumers than the free economy under which we have functioned in the past.


Mr. Nicholson:: Whoever said that nonsense?


Mr. Gibson (Comox-Alberni):: That is how it would work.


Douglas Scott Harkness: They also advocate a system which, in our opinion, will destroy initiative and in so doing of course will decrease production and thus eventually raise prices.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Tell us what you advocate.


Douglas Scott Harkness: As a result, the policies which they advocate in marketing are not practical matters; they are ideological matters, and they strike at the very root of the free enterprise system which we in this party advocate.
The constitutional aspects of this particular matter have been thoroughly covered. That is an important phase and one which should
25. 1949	2011
Agricultural Products Act receive attention. However, because of the great number of arguments that have been put forward already I do not propose to say anything further on that angle. One reason is that I am not a constitutional lawyer, but after listening yesterday to the Minister of Justice (Mr. Garson) I suspect that neither is he. Therefore, I should not let that deter me.
The hon. member for Swift Current (Mr. Bentley) had his speech cut short by the chair, but he was attempting to make out that this party had no position as far as coarse grains were concerned, that nobody knew what our position was, that we were trying to ride two horses on the matter, and so forth. There could not be a greater misrepresentation of the facts. Let me tell the hon. member for Swift Current and other members of his party that they should read the speeches during the debate last year on coarse grains. They will find that I and several other members of this party made our position absolutely clear. We are opposed to placing coarse grains under the marketing board and making it the sole marketing agency.
We believed at that time, and we still believe, that the result would be a political price which would be to the detriment of the producers of coarse grains in western Canada. I hope there will be no further attempts by the group to our immediate left to misrepresent our position on that particular question.
I must pause to congratulate the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) on the terrific forensic effort he made yesterday. If I ever heard a spate of words delivered with a terrific amount of determination, it was on that occasion.


James Garfield Gardiner: I do not feed as many hogs as the hon. member.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Unfortunately I think the minister is much better at producing a lot of words in a hurry than he is at producing a lot of hogs. However, after a closer examination and analysis, the minister's speech is not nearly as formidable as it sounded. For one thing the minister made some surprising arguments, almost the most amazing arguments I have ever heard. He said that there was an emergency as far as agriculture is concerned because of the controls which have existed in the past on agriculture. If that is his argument, that an emergency exists and that controls should be continued to meet that emergency, then I cannot follow his reasoning. I was quite surprised to hear the minister make a statement along that line because I really expect more sense from him on most occasions.
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Agricultural Products Act
Yesterday the minister seemed happy to tell us about the higher prices the Canadian farmers are getting for hogs, cheese and a number of other commodities, prices that are higher than those being paid in the United States. The minister grew quite lyrical on that subject. Of course we are all glad that that is the situation, but I think that that is the situation in spite of the minister and his efforts and not because of them.
It appeared to me to be extremely illogical that the minister should, on the one hand, be boasting of the high prices the farmers of Canada are getting and the fact that last year they had the highest income they ever had-he attributed to himself a great deal of credit for that-and then say, on the other hand, that there is an emergency in agriculture. Surely the minister cannot have it both ways. If, as he says, agriculture is in the best position it has ever been in, surely he cannot turn around a few minutes afterward and say that there is an emergency. There may be an emergency looming in the future, but that certainly is not an argument that an emergency exists at the moment. I put it up to you, Mr. Speaker, that the Minister of Agriculture must take one course or the other. He cannot say, on the one hand, that agriculture was never in better shape, that the farmers never received a larger total income, and then, on the other hand, say that agriculture is in an emergency and therefore we must pass these controls. It just does not stand up.
The minister also stated that the provincial marketing acts contain just as many arbitrary powers as the act we are considering. I take exception to that statement. These provincial boards are producer boards which are run by the farmers themselves. Furthermore, the controls are not put into effect until at least two-thirds of the farmers producing the commodity have voted for them. It is entirely different when you have a group of farmers banding together to market their products, to impose certain regulations on themselves, by themselves, than when you have the Minister of Agriculture imposing regulations on the whole agriculture of the Dominion of Canada.
I was amazed at hearing the minister talk about the distribution of barley. I was getting a little sleepy about that time but I suddenly woke up and thought I was listening to him address a temperance meeting. However, I found that that was not what he had in mind when he was talking about distribution as between beer and livestock.
A number of the members of the C.C.F. have brought out their old favourite prop-


aganda in connection with agricultural subjects-the speculative markets. As far as I am concerned as a farmer, I am not the slightest bit interested in whether I sell my grain on a speculative market or any other market. I do not care how many people are gambling with my grain as long as I get more money for it under those circumstances that I would get if it were sold under government control.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The hon. member does not mind gambling as long as he is winning.


Mr. Zapliiny:: Is the hon. member speaking for the whole party or is that his personal
view?


Douglas Scott Harkness: I am giving, as I always do, my personal opinions. But I think I am expressing fairly well the opinions of a majority of the people in this party.


Edward George McCullough: Would the hon. member permit a question?


Douglas Scott Harkness: Let me answer this question first and then the hon. member can have his turn. I should like to repeat that the thing that interests me as a farmer is to get the biggest return I can for the grain and livestock I produce, to market them in the way that will give me the greatest return. I am not interested, as the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Zaplitny) is, in the ideological end of it. I am interested in how well I am going to do in my farming operations; and the type of marketing which will give me the greatest return is the type of marketing which I am going to favour.


Edward George McCullough: May I ask
that question now?


Douglas Scott Harkness: Yes.


Edward George McCullough: The hon. member stated he was not interested in whether or not his grain was marketed on a gambling basis at speculative prices. Is he not concerned that his product reaches the consumer as cheaply as possible?


Douglas Scott Harkness: There is a very good answer to that. I believe that under a relatively free system of marketing, as I said earlier in my remarks, the farmer will get a better price for his product, and the consumer will pay less than he will under government control. ,1 was rather surprised that the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) put up quite an argument not very long ago in favour of the control system of marketing wheat-and do not be afraid; I am not going to talk about wheat. As a horrible example he took rye. He said, "Look at the poor farmer. At the present moment he is getting $1.15 for his rye, and the wheat farmer is going to get

$1.75 a bushel for his wheat. See how much better we have done with our government wheat board, and how much superior it is to the open system of marketing."
I happened to grow some rye last year, and therefore it is a subject in which I am interested. I went to work and secured the figures-


James Garfield Gardiner: Was that the first year?


Douglas Scott Harkness: Yes, that was the first year.


James Garfield Gardiner: You got badly soaked with that speculation.


Douglas Scott Harkness: As a matter of fact, I am not a bit dissatisfied with what I received for rye last year, the very year on which the Minister of Agriculture was offering the farmers so much commiseration. I actually got $1.49| a bushel for my rye in Calgary. That was my return.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: What was your seed worth?


Edward George McCullough: You will be less satisfied this year.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I think that is about as much as I would have got in my part of the country if I had been growing wheat and received $1.75 a bushel, basis Fort William, No. 1 northern. Of course, as the minister knows, there are certain advantages in growing rye over growing wheat, but I will not go into them now. In order to have the whole picture, I took the monthly average prices for rye from August, 1945, up to February of this year. The price rose from $1.53f in August, 1945, to a high in 1948 of $4.47f, and then dropped down to its present level. If you add those figures together and divide by the number of months you arrive at the average price that farmers received for rye during the period of the wheat agreement. The wheat growers are going to get $1.75 a bushel, while the average price for rye during that period is $2.72 a bushel; in other words, just about $1 a bushel more than the wheat farmer received for his wheat marketed by a government-controlled board.
As I say, quite frankly I am in the farming business in order to make a living out of it, and if I can get $2.72 a bushel through one system of marketing, and a similar product which ordinarily sells at a higher price will only bring me $1.75 a bushel, about $1 a bushel less, through another type of marketing, then I am not in favour of that other type of marketing.


James Garfield Gardiner: Is my hon. friend aware of the fact that the only time wheat was ever higher than it was in the last five years was during the period when we had controls at the end of the first great war?
Agricultural Products Act


Douglas Scott Harkness: I have been following the price of wheat fairly closely all my life.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is correct.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I am quite aware of what the price of wheat was, but that has nothing to do with this particular matter.


James Garfield Gardiner: My hon. friend says that he is in favour of the system which will bring the farmer the most money. The system that has brought him the most money up to the present time is the control system of those two periods.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Of course that is where the minister and I differ radically in our opinions. I do not think that the control system brought the farmer the most money. In fact I am absolutely certain, as are a very large number of other people, that if farmers had been able to sell their wheat freely, as they wished, during the last four years, in other words, since the present wheat agreement came into effect in 1945, they would have had several hundred millions more in their pockets than they have at the present time. If the minister had done the same thing with rye as he did with wheat, and put it under some sort of restrictions and regulations, there is no doubt in the world that farmers who grew rye would have received an average of about $1.50 a bushel in the last four-year period instead of actually getting $2.72 a bushel.
I find that whenever one speaks on the subject of marketing grain it is necessary to make it quite clear that one is not speaking on behalf of the Winnipeg grain exchange. I have said that on several occasions in the house, and I should like to repeat it now. I do not care if the Winnipeg grain exchange is closed tomorrow, but I care very much that my grain, and particularly my coarse grains, are not put under the complete control of a government-operated board. I want to be in the position to sell them otherwise if I wish to do so. I want especially to be in the position where I can sell them to my neighbours and they can sell them to me.
As far as the general economic situation is concerned, as it affects agriculture, it was covered very thoroughly this morning by the hon. member for Neepawa (Mr. Bracken). Therefore I shall not go into that phase of the question. I should like to address myself more particularly to an examination of the reasons why the act was passed in the beginning, the grounds on which the Minister of Agriculture tried to sell it to the country at that time, and the present situation in which we find ourselves. The act was passed in 1947. At that time the purpose of the act was stated very clearly by the Minister of Agri-
2014	HOUSE OF
Agricultural Products Act culture. His statement is found in Hansard of February 28, 1947, at page 929, and reads:
The objective of the resolution and of the legislation based upon it would be to continue in effect the powers we had been given during the war under the War Measures Act, through the different orders in council.
In other words, Mr. Speaker, the purpose of the act was to continue-and that is the principle of it-the orders in council which were in force during the war. In passing the act again the principle, of course, is the same, to carry forward these wartime orders in council. At the time the act was first passed there was a long discussion as to the necessity for it. The minister argued very strongly that the farmers of Canada wanted the act, that they were very much in favour of it, and furthermore that it would give them stability in their markets. I shall return to the question of stability later. At that time we in this party opposed the act on the ground that it gave the minister more or less complete control over the marketing of all farm products, except wheat, which was already controlled by the wheat board act. It puts him in the position where he could state the price a farmer was to receive for any product, the time and manner of delivery, and anything else along that line.
I maintained at that time and still maintain that the farmers should have the right to determine these things for themselves, particularly through producer boards. I objected then, and I object now, to the dictatorial powers of compulsion vested in the minister by this act. When this bill was first introduced the minister attempted to play down that angle of it, as he is doing at the present time. He said he was only going to exercise those powers to the extent necessary to fill our contracts with Great Britain. However, he did admit the powers of compulsion given to him, and that is shown in his remarks at page 1388 of Hansard for March 14, 1947, where he said:
Why were these orders in council brought in, in the first instance? They were brought in so as to make it possible for the government, by compulsion-
Note those words.
-by compulsion to take farm products and to send them to Great Britain for the purpose of assisting in the prosecution of the war . . .
That is quite correct; that is why they were brought in. That reason, however-to permit the government to take the food and send it to Great Britain to enable her to continue the prosecution of the war-no longer exists and has not existed for some years. Nevertheless the minister still wants to exercise these powers, and he now' advances a different reason. Actually, Mr. Speaker, the powers


given the government, under this and other so-called emergency legislation with which we have been dealing for the past week or so, have been used by the government to bedevil and entirely confuse the economic situation in this country, particularly in regard to agriculture. The result is that farmers are now angry and bewildered over the way their products have been handled and the prices they have received for them. To put it shortly, they resent the manner in which they have been pushed around, and I do not wonder at it. At the present time prices are falling, and they see the threat of a return to the desperate situation they were in during the thirties, when their products could not be sold at all. For that reason they are particularly alarmed over the future, and are looking for some assurance that as far as their markets are concerned that future will be secured in some way. The farmers of this country believe, and correctly, that the government has botched their affairs in a frightful manner. They accepted much less than world prices for many of their products, on the promise given by this government that there would be stability both in regard to markets and in regard to prices. Stability is just what the farmers have not obtained, in spite of the sacrifices they made to secure it.
In 1947 the minister tried to sell this bill to the house and the country on the argument of stability. Hon. members will notice that we do not hear nearly so much about stability at the present time. The minister no longer makes that his chief argument, as he did in 1947. At that time he made quite definite promises to the farmers of this country as to what this bill would do in the way of stability, and how it would help keep the British market for them. At page 1393 of Hansard for 1947 the minister had this to say:
One of the ways in which we hope to be able to do it-
That is, secure stability, and so on.
-is to retain, for so long as it is essential to do so, the agreements with Britain which we have covering the marketing of farm products which we can see will be surplus for the years that are ahead of us that will assure to us the British market for the surplus production of farms in this country.
Then, on the next page:
-we have been supplying food to Britain at a lower cost

as every member in this house has been saying, some of them agreeing with it and some of them disagreeing-than other people in the world have been supplying it up to the present time. And I say quite candidly that we expect that over the entire period of the three or four years during which these contracts last we shall have a reasonable return as compared with other peoples in the world from that market which we believe to be our best market, our most secure market, and the one in which we have the best chance over a long period of time of being paid for our commodities.

A little further down on the same page the minister said this:
. . . for five years we are told that we can have a market in Britain for all the beef w$ desire to send them.
At that time, only two years ago, the minister was trying to sell this bill to the country on the argument of stability. He was going to give the farmers markets for their bacon, cheese, eggs, beef, apples and so forth for years ahead. He even mentioned apples specifically, as a matter of fact. We were going to have a stable market in Britain for these things; we were going to get higher prices in that market than the rest of the world was getting. That is what the minister said would be happening during this very period, but look at the present situation. The minister assured the farmers they had a stable market for their beef for at least five years. Why, Mr. Speaker, we did not have it for two years. Actually we did not have it for one year.


James Garfield Gardiner: Surely my hon. friend does not mean that.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Yes, I do.


James Garfield Gardiner: You stood up in this house and declared-and probably you were right- that everyone in Alberta wanted the market changed from Great Britain to the United States; and we changed it in order to get you a better price, which unfortunately you did not get.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I did not invite the minister to make a speech. If he wants to ask a question that is a different matter; if he does not I think he should remain in his seat as the rest of us do. I am just coming to the matter of the embargo, and later on he may ask any questions he likes. At that time, as I say, he assured the farmers that they would have a stable market for beef for five years, as well as a stable market for all these other products, but that market just disappeared. It evaporated; it is gone. We tried to tell the minister then that this would be the case. He has just reminded me that I and several other people urged him to take off the embargo on beef cattle going into the United States. Certainly we did, because we pointed out that the market he thought he had in Great Britain was not a stable or long-term market, that it was not economic for them to buy their cattle from us and they would not continue to do so. The minister pooh-poohed that and said, "Oh, no. There is no need to take off the embargo. We have the market in England, which is our best market at the present time." That is the way he continued to talk right up to the time when, by force of circumstances, because Britain would not
Agricultural Products Act take any more beef, and because of other factors he was finally compelled to take off the embargo.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is not correct; Britain did sign a contract to take beef.


Douglas Scott Harkness: They were not in a position to take it, as the minister knows.


James Garfield Gardiner: They could have, but you wanted to sell in the United States.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Eventually, last year, the minister was forced to remove this embargo, after the beef producers of this country had lost millions of dollars under his direction in trying to maintain in the old country a stable market which was not there and never would be there.


James Garfield Gardiner: Even after you got into the United States market you never got your 40 cents for beef.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I wish the minister would remain in his seat until he gets permission to ask a question. I do not mind the odd interjection, but I do not like to have him make a speech in the middle of mine.
That is what happened to the stability the minister was promising us in 1947. Not only did the market for beef cattle totally disappear, but our markets for many other things, including apples, dried up as well. And our markets for the things we are still sending to Britain have been reduced considerably. That is the stability which was to be maintained by this legislation. There is no maintenance about it whatever. If that is the reason the bill was passed at that time, I would say it should be done away with now because it has not accomplished its purpose.
As has been stated, we on this side of the house, particularly myself and the member for Calgary West (Mr. Smith), urged the minister from the time we came into the house in 1945 to remove this embargo on beef cattle to the United States. Until last year, when he was forced to act, he stubbornly refused to do it. I think everyone will admit that the removal of that embargo was of great help to the whole economy of this country. It has put a great deal more money into the hands of the farmers and it is one of the important reasons why farm income this year is at an all-time high. This move was of considerable help in solving the exchange difficulties we have had with the United States. When he was in Calgary in January of this year, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) stated that it would account for $100 million in United States currency this year. We would not have received this amount if the embargo had not been removed.
2016	<	HOUSE OF
Agricultural Products Act
By its exercise of these extraordinary powers and by its adventures in state trading, the government has not given stability of markets or prices to the farmer. The question then arises, what good purpose is being served by continuing these powers? I should like to ask, would it not be better to return control to the farmers themselves? Certainly they could not possibly make a worse mess of affairs than the government has done.
During the war compulsion was used on our farmers and on the whole population of Canada to deliver quantities of bacon, cheese and these other products to Great Britain. This was done as part of our war effort and, at that time, it needed to be done. The Canadian population was rationed. We were told we could only have so much cheese, so much bacon, so much of this and that. As a result of that rationing, as well as the efforts made to increase production, sufficient bacon and other food products were available to send to Britain in large quantities. After these commodities were rationed, the surplus was shipped abroad.
Back in 1947, the minister admitted we would have to go back to taking what was surplus to our own needs in order to fill our overseas contracts. I think I have a quotation to show that-


James Garfield Gardiner: You do not need to look it up, I will agree.


Douglas Scott Harkness: On February 28, 1947, at page 935 of Hansard, the minister said:
-everyone anticipates that in due course we shall need to go back to taking what is surplus, over and above what is utilized, and fill our contracts with that, and we shall have to make our contracts conform to the quantity that we can obtain in that way.
I submit, Mr. Speaker, we have reached that time. As a matter of fact, with the end of rationing we were no longer able to meet our commitments to Great Britain. The minister well knows he has not been able to get enough bacon, cheese or any of the other commodities during the past year. The reason for this was that the products were going into the home market. The powers the minister has under this act are ineffective today. This is another reason why the whole thing should be thrown out the window. Without rationing it can no longer be effective.
From what the minister said the other day it is clear that he considers these great powers he has now under the act are really a big club he holds in his hand with which he can threaten the processors and producers of agricultural products in this country. He says he has been able to get enough of these products to send overseas. He has not been able to get enough and, so far as I can see, if he attempted to exercise these powers and 

requisition bacon and other products to meet these contracts it would cause complete chaos in our price structure. If he took enough bacon to complete our contracts it would leave the home market short. He knows as well as I do what would happen then.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Golding):: Order. May I remind the hon. member that his time has expired.


Mr. E. B. McKay (Weyburn):: Mr. Speaker, we have been hearing a great deal lately from our Progressive Conservative friends about the constitutionality of the measure before the house. In fact, for weeks we have been listening to the arguments advanced by them to the effect that the war emergency is over and these acts are no longer needed. They have stated this measure was flouting the constitution. Whether or not that is true, Mr. Speaker, I doubt very much if the man on the street cares a great deal.


Mr. Diefenbaker:: Is that the C.C.F. doctrine?


Eric Bowness McKay: We are wasting time discussing this matter and I do not think it is justified. I do not think the man on the street cares whether the act is intra vires or ultra vires. He is concerned with the effect the act is going to have on his livelihood and that of his family. I do not think the veteran would care very much if an act flouted the constitution, if it gave him a larger pension for himself and family. I do not think the wage earner on the street would care very much if the act flouted the constitution, so long as it provided him with a decent job and a full dinner pail.
I do not think the farmer is concerned very much about it, either. When the market declines, he is very much concerned and he holds the government responsible for that situation. He would take the same attitude as was expressed in the bible, if I can remember it correctly, that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. In other words, the constitution was made for Canadians, and not Canadians for the constitution. I think the constitution is important and I do not want anyone to go away with the idea that I do not. It should not, however, stand in the way of progressive legislation when the welfare of large sections of our population is at stake.
Even at that, Mr. Speaker, I cannot see that the legislation before the house is unconstitutional. This bill only extends the life of the Agricultural Products Act for one year; that is all it does. The act gives the government authority to make contracts for the sale of agricultural products other than wheat during the transitional period from war to

peace. There are those who argue that the bill is no longer necessary and is not justified because we have obtained a complete recovery since the war. It is argued that the emergency no longer exists. I hardly believe that is the case, especially in agriculture.
Agriculture here is still reaping the benefit of the devastation of the war in Europe. So far as I can see, the agriculture of this country is not yet on a peacetime basis. I do not think any of the farmers believe it is on a normal peacetime basis. I am satisfied that, when agriculture does return to normal conditions as we knew them in pre-war days, this act or one similar to it will be even more necessary than it is today. The act before the house will enable the government to continue to negotiate long-term agreements for agricultural products other than wheat. As I said before, such a practice will tend to stabilize agricultural prices and that is what the farmers of this country have been requesting for many years. These agreements can of course only stabilize agriculture in so far as they are for a long enough period and the prices are satisfactory to the producer. There is no reason why agreements cannot be negotiated on that basis because the world needs our agricultural products in an increasing quantity. Most farmers in the east and in the west have a fear of the speculative market and of what surpluses in agricultural products may do to the market when they occur. The farmers do not want to return to the depressed prices from which they suffered in the mid-thirties.
During the war farmers accepted ceilings for their products and a lower than world market price in many cases largely because assurance was given to them that prices would not be allowed to collapse once the war was over. Nothing is more important to the Canadian economy than stability in agriculture. This was dinned into the ears of western farmers throughout the five years of the war. It was the fundamental argument used by the government and its advisers to justify the ceilings placed upon farm prices during the years of war when agricultural products were in great demand. It was more than an argument, as a matter of fact. It was a solemn pledge to the primary producers of this country, and they have a right to expect that this pledge be redeemed.
Western farmers-and I think this is fairly true of the farmers everywhere in Canada- have not demanded the highest possible prices for their produce in a world of famine. They have been more than reasonable. In all things they were willing to forgo immediate high prices and the profits that went with those high prices for the sake of stabilizing their industry on a peacetime
Agricultural Products Act basis which would be more satisfactory to agriculture than in pre-war days. I would suggest to the minister that the present contracts in eggs, cheese and bacon are totally inadequate to provide for that stabilization for which the farmer is asking. There should be contracts for other agricultural products including fruit, flax and many others as well. Farm income cannot be stabilized over a long period without large contracts through a wide range of primary products. I think business generally will recognize that it is important to do that, for a low farm income and unstable markets always reflect themselves in a lower buying power on the part of the farmer and resulting poor business for the small businessman. The solution to the farmer's problem, as I see it-the problem of providing the farmer with an adequate income-is not a return to the days of boom and bust, or of feast today arid famine tomorrow. We do not want such a marketing system again. It is rather to lay the foundation now so that when and if agricultural surpluses develop, such a condition will not again disable our farm economy.
The principle embodied in this act ought to be made a permanent feature of government policy. Associated with the power to make agreements and contracts, the government should give immediate consideration to the setting up of permanent import and export boards. These could serve as instruments for the successful handling of Canadian exports and also for the acceptance of imports from abroad. I believe that barter trade-which is known by the term "bilateral agreements" -will have to become a part of government policy of the near future. I believe that, despite the fact that the government may not consider that barter trade is a wholly orthodox trading system. I say that because of a statement made by the governor of the Bank of Canada, Mr. Graham Towers, which I have here, and which has been in all of the leading newspapers of Canada. The clipping I have is taken from the Toronto Star and it is under the dateline "Vancouver, March 18." I shall read only part of this statement; there is no need to read it all. Mr. Towers is reported to have said:
"Restoration of Europe might well be the task of a generation or more . . ."
He then goes on to say that European recipients of aid have been forced by dollar shortages to form trading arrangements among themselves and with countries outside the dollar area. If we are to trade with Europe on an increasing scale or to keep up the markets we now have, it seems to me that we must evolve a system different from that under which we are now operating, which involves the dollar as the monetary standard.

Agricultural Products Act
I cannot see how we can stabilize agriculture without long-term agreements at prices satisfactory to the producer; and I cannot see how agriculture can be stabilized without some effort being made to reform our trading program. I repeat that during the war the stabilization of agriculture was recognized by the farmers as a goal only to be realized by long-term agreements and long-term contracts which make up a part of those agreements, for the products which they produce in quantity. The government must now redeem the pledge made during those years by setting up machinery to assure our farm population of markets at adequate prices for the future.
I believe that through the sacrifices made by the farmers in the past-particularly during the war years when they could have capitalized, as we all know, on the shortages which then prevailed-they have earned the right to demand and obtaiii long-term agreements which will permit of satisfactory floor prices for their products. I believe they have earned as a right from the state the enactment of legislation which will guarantee them in the future against the disaster which often comes with prevailing surpluses. We do not want to return to the prices of the mid-thirties-I do not think anyone wants that-and the Canadian people as a whole owe such legislation to the farmer as a debt of honour because of the farmer's acceptance of low prices during those war years. They owe it because of the importance of stabilizing this great industry, and the effect that would have upon the welfare of our whole Canadian economy.


Mr. E. D. Fulton (Kamloops):: This bill now before the house, Mr. Speaker, seeks to continue for the third year the Agricultural Products Act which was passed in 1947. Such study as I gave it at that time and have been able to give it since convinces me that it is not an act which can properly be called a marketing act. That is the first feature to which I desire to draw attention. Further than that, in my opinion it is unconstitutional, unnecessary and undesirable; and I propose, as indicated by the leader of this party, to vote against it.
It is unconstitutional, Mr. Speaker, because it is based upon the existence of an emergency which does not in fact exist and which has not been established. I am not going to dwell on this phase of the matter beyond saying that there are certain members in the house, particularly in the socialist party, who would have us believe that the constitutionality or otherwise of such legislation is of no importance, and that farmers are not interested in whether or not it is constitutional. That is not a correct statement and it cannot be supported. Every occupational group, every person in the country is concerned with (Mr. McKay.]
whether or not legislation is constitutional, and everyone is hurt as much as his neighbour by legislation when it is not constitutional.
Farmers want constitutional legislation which gives them control over the marketing of their own produce. This act does exactly the opposite. It could not do the opposite if it were not unconstitutional, because it could not take away, it could not interfere with the rights of the provincial boards which the farmers have set up. It does that, and it does it because, amongst other things, it is not constitutional. Perhaps I should put it this way. Because it is unconstitutional it does things in that respect which it otherwise could not do, and therefore because it is unconstitutional it is opposed to the best interests of the farmers. They have a definite interest in seeing that the constitution is preserved in this, as they have in every other respect.
Secondly, the act is unnecessary. What is desired, and what could be given, is a producer marketing act. As the house knows, Mr. Speaker, such an act was placed on our statute books in 1934. The dominion Natural Products Marketing Act was passed in 1934. That was an act which the agricultural producers of this country wanted. It was an act which they welcomed, and as they welcomed it so, most of the provinces passed complementary legislation. So far it is only under that legislation that the producers' boards which have been set up can exist, because when it came to office the present government had the dominion act submitted to the courts for a declaration that it was ultra vires. That declaration was given and the dominion marketing act was void. Therefore the only producers' boards we have at the present time are those which were set up under the provincial legislation passed at or about the same time as the old dominion legislation.
It should be observed in passing that this party has consistently and persistently advocated the re-enactment of dominion marketing legislation, which would give the producers control of the marketing of their own produce. That stand has been reiterated through the years and was again enunciated in the clearest possible terms at the national convention held last fall. It is still our stand, and it will be our stand. Because that is our position we shall support in principle, as was indicated by the leader of our party, Bill No. 82, which is on the order paper, and which to a degree at any rate does give the producers control over their own produce. Because that bill is on the order paper and will be introduced into the house, the arguments against this bill are reinforced.

Bill No. 32 will enable producers to control their own marketing. The minister could use the provincial producers' boards to obtain the produce to fill his contract with the United Kingdom. He does not need an extension of the present Agricultural Products Act, which is a control act, not a marketing act. As soon as this house enacts marketing legislation such as is contemplated in Bill No. 82, the need for this act will have disappeared, if it ever existed. The proper course for the government to have followed would have been to introduce and proceed with Bill No. 82 and drop this bill altogether. That is one more reason why we should vote against this bill and refuse to give the minister the power for which he asks. The bill which we are now considering, and which would continue the Agricultural Products Act for another year, merely gives the minister power to confiscate, power to set prices, power to negotiate on behalf of the federal government and the governments of other countries. In short, it gives him and him alone absolute control over every aspect of the agricultural economy of Canada. It gives him arbitrary powers which are entirely unnecessary.
The minister has based his support of this bill on a number of arguments. As was pointed out earlier, originally he based it on the fact that it assured stability to the agricultural economy. Lately, however, he has been basing it on the fact that it is necessary to him to fulfil his contracts with the United Kingdom. As was said at the beginning in 1947, and as remains the fact today, the bill is not necessary to fulfil our contracts with the United Kingdom. The minister can enter the market in Canada and buy the produce which he desires to fill his contracts. That again is another reason why this act should not be continued in force. In fact what the minister has been doing in respect to some of the commodities is to take possession of them under the arbitrary powers which he has at less than the fair market price, or else to use the bill and his arbitrary powers as a threat over the heads of farmers to induce them to part with their produce at less than fair market prices in order that he could supply the goods to the United Kingdom. No one objects to supplying the goods to the United Kingdom in their difficulty, but we repeat here, as we did in the case of the wheat contract, that if that is to be national policy, then the nation as a whole should bear the cost, and that cost should not be borne by the farmers alone.
If the minister were willing to take the trouble, and if he wished that the farmers should get a fair price for their produce, he would not use his powers under this bill; he 29087-128
Agricultural Products Act would enter the market and buy the produce to fulfil his contracts, and the farmers would get a fair price for the produce which was taken. Instead of that, what happens? The minister introduces, and now asks to have continued, a bill giving him arbitrary and irresponsible control over every feature of the agricultural economy of this country. He introduces a socialist bill into this house. The farmers of this country do not wish to be subjected to socialist control. They want to have control over their own affairs through their own producers' boards.
When the bill was first introduced the minister was careful to say that he would be very cautious in the exercise of those powers. He does not deny now that he has those arbitrary powers. In fact he has here a socialist measure.


James Garfield Gardiner: He never did deny it.


Edmund Davie Fulton: He cannot deny it because he himself said it was a socialist bill when he introduced it in 1947. In speaking in the house on March 14, 1947, the minister used the following words in describing the powers which he has in the bill as reported at page 1389 of Hansard:
In other words, the orders in council covered by this legislation-
That is, the Agricultural Products Act by which the orders were continued in force.
-have in them powers which I doubt very much even members of the socialist party would desire to have in legislation which is to be passed for the purpose of dealing with a situation which will arise in peacetime.
That was in 1947, only two years after the end of the war when there was still some doubt as to whether we were in peacetime. But there can be no doubt four years after the end of the war that we are no longer in a state of war emergency, particularly with regard to agriculture. Just to make it perfectly clear that what the minister was asking for was a continuation of wartime control powers, powers of a socialistic or absolute nature, he went on to say, as reported on page 1389 of Hansard:
We are suggesting in this legislation that for one year we be given authority to continue to do what we were doing in wartime. We are not saying that everything we did during wartime will be done: but we are saying, or suggesting, that the authority we had during wartime should be allowed to us for one more year.
There you have it, the authority that they had in wartime was to be continued. But I point out that it was asked for for one more year. That was in 1947. It was continued for one more year, which brought it up to 1948. What happened then? We were asked to continue it for one more year. Now we

Agricultural Products Act are in 1949 and we are being asked to continue for one more year powers which go farther than any socialist would want to go in peacetime, as the minister himself said, powers which are arbitrary and absolute, powers which are unnecessary.
In view of the minister's own description of the bill when he introduced it in 1947, in view of the fact that during this discussion it has been brought out that the bill is unconstitutional, it is difficult to understand why a responsible minister and a reputedly responsible government would ask this house to vote for the continuation of such a measure. The measure is unconstitutional; the measure is unnecessary; the measure is undesirable.
Under this legislation as it has been administered in the past, agricultural production has been declining. Estimates given before the food and agricultural organization of the United Nations recently indicate that a serious situation with respect to the availability of foodstuffs will face the world within the next five or ten years. According to the experts it is doubtful whether we can avoid a famine. We should, then, be taking every possible step to increase production. The fact is that in Canada our farmers are faced with great uncertainty through the loss of markets in the United Kingdom-one example is the apple market-and this has resulted in a decline of agricultural production in many important commodities. I have figures here which were supplied by the bureau of statistics covering the production of beef, pork and cheese.
The figures for beef show that in 1946 the production was 1,053,390,000 pounds and in
1947,	962,801,000 pounds. The figures for 1948 are not available. There was a drop in production between 1946 and 1947 of practically 43 million pounds. With respect to pork, the 1946 production was 993,471,000 pounds and 1947, 972,089,000 pounds. The 1948 figures are not available. There was a drop of roughly 21 million pounds between 1946 and 1947. It might be noted that these figures are unofficial and the bureau will not accept responsibility for them, but there is no reason to suppose that they are inaccurate. The 1946 production of cheese was 148,884,000 pounds; in 1947, 124 million pounds; and in
1948,	89 million pounds. There was a drop in the first year of roughly 25 million pounds; in the second year of roughly 35 million pounds; or a total drop of 60 million pounds in the two years.
Those are three of the important foodstuffs produced in Canada today, foodstuffs


which would make a great contribution to feeding not only the United Kingdom and Europe but other countries in the world. As a result of the administration of the minister's department, as a result very largely of the dislike of the farmers of Canada of arbitrary controls over their production and their marketing which have been exercised under this act, the production of foodstuffs in Canada has been falling.
If one gives thought to the matter one can easily appreciate that the farmers could hardly be expected to go out and increase their production, increase their acreage, increase their cattle and swine herds when they have these powers hanging over their heads, when they have no certainty that they will be able through their own organizations to fix prices and determine their own marketing policies. As a result of that uncertainty and the dislike on their part, there has been a substantial decline in the production of agricultural commodities.
In conclusion I should like to repeat the points I have made. The fact that this measure is unconstitutional is of vital concern to the farmers. They do not want to have powers taken away from their own boards by unconstitutional legislation. It is unconstitutional in that under constitutional legislation it would be possible to give powers to the producers to regulate their own marketing and production. There would thus be given to the producers the ability to provide for themselves an assured stability.
It is undesirable because of the features which I have described. Above all, it is undesirable because through the administrative failures of the department in the past few years our agricultural production has been declining. For these three reasons I shall vote against the bill.



THE ROYAL ASSENT

Mr. Speaker:: 

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS ACT


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Gardiner for the second reading of Bill No. 126, to amend the Agricultural Products Act.
Thomas Langton Church: I want to say a few words this afternoon. I have not spoken so far in this debate, which has been largely taken up by lawyers talking on the constitutional side of the question. I have yet to hear any constructive suggestion as to how we are to remedy the present state of affairs in the marketing of the agricultural products of the country. We seem to have fallen into a national rut on the problem, and it is the most important problem that the farmers of the country face today. The solution of it does not lie in the law courts.
We have had two bills presented in the house having to do with agriculture, Bill No. 82, which was given first reading on March 14, followed by a shorter bill of two or three lines, Bill No. 126, which was given first reading on March 24. These bills speak for themselves. The Minister of Justice (Mr. Garson) tells us that the law courts are supreme, that the executive has nothing to do with marketing, that parliament has nothing to do with it. He is willing to leave it to the courts of the country to decide whether or not the bill presently under discussion is within our powers.
Where are we to find markets? The people at home in the constituencies are the forgotten people today, and are probably suffering more than anybody else. The problem was very largely solved by the Ottawa agreements, but I think the imbroglio that has caused all the trouble has been brought about by the Bretton Woods agreement, the Dumbarton Oaks agreement, the Geneva agreement, the Havana agreement, and many other things of a similar nature. I have no doubt that is correct because when you inject such things into the problem you run into trouble.
In Norfolk county they are tearing up orchards to grow tobacco. In the apple region of the maritimes they are ripping up trees. That should not take place in Canada. How many of these acts are they going to pass? The Minister of Justice says that we ought to pass this short bill of three or four lines at once. He says that it is not an executive matter or a legislative matter, and that it should be left to the law courts to decide the question of validity. I should like to point out to him that the court of last resort is
Agricultural Products Act the only court that can give a final decision. There is only one of these particular acts which has ever come before the Supreme Court of Canada. By a vote of four to three it was decided that the federal legislative provisions as to margarine were intra vires. That is the only act of parliament that has ever come before the court of last resort.
If we adopt the view of the Minister of Justice, then we are going to leave this new bill to the law courts to construe. If the house is not in session at that time you will have a worse state of affairs than you had before. In speaking the other day I referred to the 11th chapter of St. Luke, verse 46, where it says "Woe unto you also, ye lawyers", and so on. I mentioned that in an address I gave recently on law reform.
If we continue the present state of affairs we are going to have a very serious situation. Look at the trouble we have had in this regard. So far in the debate no one that I have heard has offered a constructive suggestion to the government of Canada. Speaking as a private member of the House of Commons, I believe that oppositions should offer constructive suggestions to meet the trouble in which the government of Canada finds itself. As far as I understand the law, that is the function and duty of an opposition. Constitutional lawyers do not agree on the question.
This type of legislation was fathered by an agricultural products marketing act passed in Great Britain in 1932, and by the new deal in the United States. In 1934 the-dominion Natural Products Marketing Act was passed by the Bennett administration, based largely on the British marketing act passed two years earlier. Under that act,, some twenty-two marketing schemes were established affecting the marketing of natural products in practically every province. Then British Columbia passed a marketing act similar to the federal act.
The validity of the dominion Natural Products Marketing Act was then questioned in a privy council judgment of the 28th of January, 1937, and was declared to be unconstitutional on the ground that it was a question of provincial jurisdiction over matters of property and civil rights within the provinces. Subsequently the British Columbia natural products act of 1934 was upheld by the privy council. This very important decision established the right of each province to provide for the effective regulation and control of the marketing of natural products within its confines. The authority to regulate and control the marketing of natural products in interprovincial and export trade
2022

Agricultural Products Act rested with the dominion, whose authority furthermore was strictly limited to this field.
That is a summary of the decision. Dealing with the principle enunciated by the Minister of Justice, he has forgotten that one of the cardinal principles of the British constitution is that the courts are subservient to the legislature, and that any decision of a court can be changed by legislation. If that is so, the minister has forgotten that any reference to the courts is not the way to approach the problem. I might say to the minister as to this particular matter that there is no reason why the government should not pass an order in council to test the validity of the legislation. Under the Supreme Court Act an order in council can be passed by the cabinet to refer the proposed legislation to the supreme court for a decision. The government knew that the situation in which we now find ourselves was coming on when the minister visited England last fall. He saw what the situation was in England. He saw what the abrogation of preferential trade had done to this country in bringing about the loss of our markets and our best customers. He might have had an order in council passed last fall under the Supreme Court Act asking the supreme court for a decision whether this little bill of three or four lines was ultra vires, or within the power of parliament. That was not done.
I said last session that there were 180,000 orders in council, but there is only one matter that has ever been before the Supreme Court of Canada, the question of margarine, and there was a four to three decision holding that it was partially intra vires. In 1946, 1947 and 1948 I asked that a reference should be made to the supreme court under the Supreme Court Act. I requested that on many occasions, but the government would not acquiesce.
I agree that no one has a better knowledge of agricultural matters than my former leader, who spoke this morning. He has given his whole lifetime of public service to agricultural problems. Nevertheless, I think it is one of the functions and duties of the opposition as far as possible to offer the government some constructive solution for this very vexing problem. I have not heard anyone so far suggest any solution. There is a more important policy to decide than the legal side of it, and on grounds of public policy some solution should be offered. Under the Right Hon. R. B. Bennett, after the Ottawa agreements were brought into operation, we passed a marketing act which hon. gentlemen opposite did nothing officially to support. Had they supported it at that time I doubt whether the privy council would have given the deeis-IMr. Church.]
ion they did give in that case. Hon. gentlemen opposite opposed it, and right in this house declared that it was ultra vires. No doubt the present bill will be construed as an omnibus measure when it goes to the courts, as the Minister of Justice (Mr. Garson) suggested the other day, under which the government will be able to take power over all agricultural products with the possible exception of wheat.
The minister may be correct in his statement that parliament should not be used in the manner indicated, and that we should not turn ourselves simply into a shadow House of Commons to justify every action of the government. For many sessions I have introduced motions calling for constitutional, parliamentary, cabinet and law reform, and here we have all these matters dealt with in this bill which contains only four or five lines. As I see these things, it is up to all parties in this house to contribute to a reasonable solution of these vexing problems with which the government has to contend. On the ground of public policy I suggest that solving these involved questions is more important than some small advantage we as an opposition may gain.
However, as a private member I am suggesting that we should not forget two principles I have always supported. The first is that we should tell the people the truth, not just the official truth but the whole truth about whatever we are doing. As a private member I believe that if you have made a mistake you should not be afraid to tell the people at home, because they do not expect their rulers to be gods. I was one of those who opposed any departure from these principles, for reasons I have given on other occasions. We had the Geneva agreement, signed by thirty-two countries; and when it was considered in this house we were told that not a line in it could be changed, though it meant departing from the economic policies we have followed since confederation. We should have taken the position that preferential trade within the commonwealth was a family matter, which was not to be disturbed or destroyed in order to please other countries.
I want to refer to only one or two other matters in conclusion. As I see it this bill is a political device having to do with marketing, as against Britain and the empire and with a United States tinge, to aid the Bretton Woods and Dumbarton Oaks principles. It seems that we have lost all hope of retaining our best customer, though the minister himself went to England last fall to see what could be done. We had the austerity program in 1947, though from February to November

of that year not a word was said about the situation which was developing. So much was that the case that a prominent United States magazine, which I quoted at the time, said Canada had become in an economic way the forty-ninth state of the union.
If, as the Minister of Justice has said, questions such as these are neither executive nor legislative matters but rather for the courts to determine, then by a majority vote in this house we should decide what this bill is, and have it declared valid. If we did that, however, some court would come along and declare it ultra vires. The minister used some language which I do not think was very appropriate, when he said arguments against the legislation were childish, kindergarten nonsense, and so on. He should not forget the Manitoba case of 1896, in which the privy council decided that under section 91, the same section to which the minister was referring the other night, the dominion had power to declare within a year and a day that any act of a provincial legislature should be disallowed. That was declared to be the function of the federal parliament; following that there was an election, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier came into office.
In conclusion may I say that I believe a better day is dawning for marketing in this country, and I also think the time has come when some constructive suggestions should be put forward instead of the opposition simply saying certain matters should be tested before the courts, and so on.


Mr. Ronald Moore (Churchill):: Mr. Speaker, when the house rose the other evening we were engaged in a constitutional argument concerning this bill. When the hon. member for Kamloops (Mr. Fulton) spoke today he also dealt with the constitutional issue. The farmers of Canada, particularly those of western Canada, are not very much interested in the constitution as far as it applies to agricultural products marketing acts. The constitutional argument with respect to legislation such as this goes back to 1934. I well remember when the Conservative government of that day introduced an agricultural products marketing act and the Liberals, who were the official opposition, took very much the same stand against that legislation that the official opposition is taking today. I think it should be pointed out that the C.C.F. party at that time supported the bill before the house, just as they are supporting this legislation today.
In dealing with a constitutional issue I think we should always keep in mind that the people of Canada are much more interested in having the constitution of this
Agricultural Products Act country serve our people than in having the people serve the constitution. A great deal of our agricultural development in the past ten or fifteen years has been due to the use of more and more machines. I can remember when western farmers turned to the combine from the old binder method of cutting their crops. How much progress would western farmers have made if the technicians designing farm machinery had simply stood around the first binder and said, "We cannot make any change in this design. We must not build such a thing as a combine"? Yet that is the attitude this house is taking toward changes in the constitution. I submit that such changes as may be required in the constitution to legalize agricultural products marketing legislation should be concurred in forthwith, as such changes are necessary to the welfare of agriculture. I intend to support this legislation.
When the Minister of Agriculture introduced this measure on February 11, he explained that it would be limited to those products for which we have contracts with Britain. The British people, and particularly the British government, are interested in the continuation of the contract method of obtaining their food products. I believe it is also true that the farmers of Canada are anxious that we continue this system of selling our products abroad. During the war a greater degree of stability was given to Canadian agriculture than at any other time in our history.
Under the contract method of selling agricultural products, the farmers are permitted to ascertain in advance how much of each product they should produce in one year and what price they can obtain for that product. By knowing those two things, the farmers know how much they can get for any one product in any one year. The farmers of Canada and the farm organizations are very anxious that we should have a renewal of the present contract, but they want the contract to be longer than the present one. If the contract is to be of much use to the farmers of Canada, if it is going to be of much use to the British government, it must extend over a period of four, five or six years.
The members of the house have noticed that during the past two months our exports to the British market have been gradually dropping. I shall not deal with the reasons for that situation because they have already been mentioned. I believe steps should be taken to secure as much of the British market as possible for the future delivery of our agricultural products. If steps of that nature are to be taken we must develop the method of contract marketing to a greater degree. It might also be possible to arrange barter

Agricultural Products Act deals with the British government, either on a bilateral basis or on a blocked credit basis. By "blocked credit" I mean that we would take payment in British sterling which might be converted later on.
The government is anxious to get this measure through second reading. There are a number of other points I should like to mention, but they have been mentioned by other members who have spoken from this group. I think the subject has been rather well covered so I shall not detain the house any longer at this time.


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, I will not detain the house for long. The statement made by the hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat, to the effect that the constitution must serve the people rather than the people serving the constitution, is a fine-sounding aphorism. It is one that embodies the attitude taken by the leader of the C.C.F. in the province of British Columbia approximately two years ago when he said, in effect, that if the constitution gets in our way we will know what to do with the constitution.
That was the attitude taken in the province of Saskatchewan too.


Mr. Maclnnis:: You had better quote your
authority.


John George Diefenbaker: Legislation was introduced in that province which was highly desirable in its terms, and when it was declared beyond the powers of the legislature the premier of the province of Saskatchewan made some very scathing remarks about the judiciary that had decided the question of the constitutionality of the measure. The question of the constitutionality of this bill has, however, been dealt with at length and I shall say no more at this time.
There are a few observations I intend to make on this matter with a view to securing a statement from the Minister of Agriculture concerning the loss of the British market to so large an extent within the last two years. The hon. gentleman who just took his seat said that he hoped something would be done to provide for an increase in the exports of agricultural products to the United Kingdom. He indicated that it was necessary to maintain that market. I am in agreement with him. I know the Minister of Agriculture agrees with that, too, for in speaking on March 14, 1947, at page 1394 of Hansard, he said that the British market was our best : market-
-our most secure market, and the one in which we have the best chance over a long period of time of being paid for our commodities.
While all of us can look back and see where mistakes are made, foresight does not

come so easily to us. However, the Minister of Agriculture will have to agree that, as a prophet-


James Garfield Gardiner: It is still correct; I did not make prophecies.


John George Diefenbaker: 
James Garfield Gardiner: That is what your party arranged for in 1932.


John George Diefenbaker: Oh, no.


James Garfield Gardiner: It certainly is.


John George Diefenbaker: This has nothing to do with it.


James Garfield Gardiner: She arranged for food supplies under this agreement.


John George Diefenbaker: To continue:
-particularly of bacon and eggs, to the needs of the United kingdom, and the United Kingdom was for its part assured of supplies of bacon and eggs, including winter eggs.


James Garfield Gardiner: Britain is not going to starve under the agreement.


John George Diefenbaker: The minister can answer that when he makes his speech.


James Garfield Gardiner: I will put it in now.


John George Diefenbaker: The Canadian people want to know why it is that even under the legislation in effect today, the renewal of which is being asked for, Canada cannot even live up to the agreements she made. They want to know whether it is because of her failure in that regard that the United Kingdom has found it necessary to go elsewhere, to the countries on the continent.
My right hon. friend answered glibly. I asked the question for the benefit of the Canadian people.


James Garfield Gardiner: I have answered it a dozen times. You do not listen to my answers.


John George Diefenbaker: There is no one I know of, Mr. Speaker, who, with facility of language, can becloud an answer more capably than can my hon. friend.


James Garfield Gardiner: And there is no one who can understand it better than my hon. friend,


John George Diefenbaker: Indeed, if he were to read his speech of March 14, 1947, he would see how far astray he was in the "guesstimates" that he made at that time. I am placing this before the minister so that the people in this country as a whole can under-
Agricultural Products Act stand the situation that places our agricultural products in a position where we face surpluses because of no markets and that demands that something be done by the government to assure markets.


James Garfield Gardiner: You have been prophesying that for ten years, but it has never happened.


John George Diefenbaker: Now it is coming true.


James Garfield Gardiner: Oh, no.


John George Diefenbaker: That is exactly the position.


James Garfield Gardiner: All our surpluses are sold, except apples.


John George Diefenbaker: No. What we prophesied is now in fact coming true. We find ourselves in this position.
... at a time of abundant food . . . the ghost at the feast is the imminent return of big surpluses in basic crops . . . Such surpluses usually mean skidding farm prices, a disruption of the economy.
I am reading at the moment from the United States News and World Report.
In an editorial in the Financial Post, to which I wish to make reference, some questions are asked arising out of an address delivered in the city of Toronto by the Right Hon. Anthony Eden. The editorial reads as follows:
In a typically British understatement, Right Hon. Anthony Eden summarized the present position in his Toronto address this week when he said: "You in North America and we in Britain are in an uncomfortable currency jam."
Remove the artificial and temporary prop of ERP and the situation is frankly alarming.
And indeed it is. I am not allowed to refer to wheat on this occasion; but the statement that we on this side have so often made, that Canada's wheat was selling far below the world price, was corroborated the other day. In a press dispatch-


James Garfield Gardiner: It is not now.


John George Diefenbaker: -it is stated that under the British-Canadian agreement Britain could buy her wheat at prices "from 43 cents to $1.20 a bushel below prices in the United States"-thereby saving the United States $50 million in ERP funds. This editorial goes on to say:
Particularly is this true in manufactured and processed goods.
Then it refers to canned goods, timber, bacon, cheese, tobacco and fruit and goes on to say:
For our present predicament, the framers of our own bilateral trade deals with the United Kingdom must take considerable responsibility. Instead of giving us the much promised stability these have antagonized former good customers of Canada and have not even assured us a minimum market for our staple exports to Britain. . . .

Agricultural Products Act
Alarming as the present situation is, the immediate future looks blacker still. Recently London concluded an enormous barter deal with Poland whereby the latter country will ship to Britain huge quantities of bacon, timber and eggs. In all these items Canada has a vital interest.
Then it proceeds:
It is high time we learned how we fit into this new policy of barter deals and colonial food development. Literally hundreds of thousands of Canadian jobs, and scores of Canadian communities, are dependent on our overseas trade, not to mention millions of dollars in land, plant and equipment.



THE ROYAL ASSENT

[Stage Direction]
A message was delivered by Major C. R. Lamoureux, Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, as follows:
Mr. Speaker, the right honourable the Deputy of His Excellency the Governor General desires the immediate attendance of this honourable house in the chamber of the honourable the Senate.
Accordingly, the house went up to the Senate.
And having returned.
Mr. Speaker informed the house that the Deputy of the Governor General had been pleased to give, in His Majesty's name, the royal assent to the following bills:
An act to amend the Statute Law.
An act to amend the National Parks Act.
An act to amend the Foreign Exchange Control Act.
An act to amend the Continuation of Transitional Measures Act, 1947.
An act to amend the Canadian Commercial Corporation Act.
At six o'clock the house took recess.

AFTER RECESS

The house resumed at seven-thirty o'clock.


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Gardiner for the second reading of Bill No. 126, to amend the Agricultural Products Act.
John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, at adjournment time I had referred to the large agreement entered into by the United Kingdom with Poland. According to Harold Wilson, president of the board of trade, the United Kingdom has entered into bilateral agreements with forty countries during the past year. These are agreements with the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Rou-mania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands, in respect of ever-increasing amounts of farm products. One hears the argument frequently that the proper policy to pursue in view of the exchange situation between the United Kingdom and


Canada is one of barter agreements. That argument was answered by Sir Stafford Cripps in an interview with the Canadian Press some weeks ago when he said:
Anglo-Canadian trade was not, and never could be, a matter of bilateral swaps of this commodity against that. He had seen it suggested that this was what we had been doing with foreign countries, when we might have done it with Canada to the greater advantage of us both. These suggestions were misconceived.
And again:
It was a mistake to speak of our bartering steel for timber or capital goods for wheat: what we had done was to include quantities of these items as part only of comprehensive agreements, the object of which was to establish a rough balance of overall trade in sterling.
Some of my hon. friends to the left suggest that the proper course to adopt is that of barter agreements, but the chancellor of the exchequer of the government of Great Britain has indicated that such a plan would not be operative. I have referred in a general way to the difficult situation in which Canadian agriculture finds itself. I stated yesterday that this bill was not a marketing bill and I find support for that statement in the remarks of the Minister of Agriculture to be found on page 1392 of Hansard, March 14, 1947. In case there might be some misconception in this regard I would quote the minister's words, as follows:
Hon. members have been discussing whether we should have a marketing bill for all time in the dominion of Canada. I submit that that is not the question which is before the house and that all the discussion in regard to it is entirely out of order. There is no motion before the house with regard to a marketing bill for farm products.
What is before the house is a bill continuing certain powers asked for by the minister. The experience of the last two years has been that, even with the agreements that were in effect between the two countries, state trading has proved to be unsuccessful and a dangerous reef upon which the agriculture of this nation could founder.
We have lost a large trade in agricultural products; it is gone for a number of years because these agreements to which I have referred provide for the delivery of agricultural products for extended periods of time. The Canadian farmer cannot wait until the European market is again available. The time has come when action to secure further markets should be taken in the interests of the Canadian farmer.
Heed should be given to the recommendations made by the hon. member for Calgary East (Mr. Harkness). The time has come when Canada should take the fullest advantage of the enlarged United States markets provided under the Geneva trade agreements. Embargoes and restrictions now in effect,

preventing the export of such items as hogs, pork and dairy products to the United States, should be removed. There is a market there made available by the provisions of the Geneva trade treaties which should be taken advantage of now instead of having it barred to our producers by artificial embargoes which have been placed on trade by the government of this country.
The problem facing Canada is a long-term problem. Even if the exchange situation is settled or a solution is found for that problem in the near future it will not help the Canadian farmers materially because many of the agreements which the United Kingdom has entered into run from two to six and seven years. As an example, agreement with Great Britain places Polish agriculture in a position where it can plan for the future as it will run for several years.
The market in Great Britain for our agricultural products is but a shadow of its former self. The importance of the British market is shown in an article which appeared in Foreign Trade of January 1948, a publication published by the Department of Trade and Commerce.
This article, which deals with trade with Great Britain, says:
Trade with Great Britain has dominated the development of Canada in recent years, the flow of exports from this country during the eleven years ending with the conclusion of hostilities having followed closely the fluctuations in commodity production. This similarity would indicate that the prosperity of Canada depended to a large extent on the sale of our products in the British market.
As the hon. member for Neepawa (Mr. Bracken) said today, while between 1939 and 1949 we negotiated with the United Kingdom over 125 contracts for foodstuffs, having as many as 22 in force in one year, today we have only 4. One contract covers wheat and another covers cheese, but this latter contract is for an amount less than our total shipments of cheese in any one year during the past thirty years. The bacon contract is lower than any bacon contract we have had in the past several years.
This is a grave and serious situation, so serious that on December 7 last the Minister of Agriculture, when speaking before the dominion-provincial agricultural conference, used these words:
The Canadian government can no longer assure farmers a market in Britain for all the hogs they can produce.
In connection with eggs, our contract this year has been reduced by 62 per cent over that of last year. The stark truth that we must face is that the United Kingdom, because of a shortage of dollars, finds herself in the position where she must drastic-29087-129
Agricultural Products Act ally cut her purchases of salmon, abandon her purchases of poultry and apples and reduce her purchases of timber to only a fraction of the pre-war quantities. She has reduced her bacon purchases to one-quarter and her purchases of cheese have been reduced in the manner I have indicated. When the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) returned from Great Britain in December last he used words that were most definite and challenging. He stated that the problem of interchangeability of exchange was one of the problems that had to be solved before the United Kingdom could increase her importations of Canadian farm products. There is no indication that it will be solved shortly. Therefore I contend that, to aid our agricultural production, the agricultural products which Canada can, under the Geneva agreement, export into the United States and that are now denied export in that country, should be allowed to be exported to the United States to the end that Canadian agricultural production will be able to maintain and increase itself instead of having to be reduced because of the loss of the United Kingdom market.


Mr. H. W. Herridge (Kootenay West):: do not intend to detain the house much longer, but I wish to make a few observations from the point of view of the interior British Columbia fruit growers concerning this act. When I consider an act such as this I do not visualize members of the legal profession sitting in plush chairs going through dusty tomes looking for niceties concerning the constitutional position of the act. I consider the opinion of the men who work the soil and till the land because I think, Mr. Speaker, that if you look through history you will find that if you base your judgment upon the opinion of those who till the soil of any country you will not be wrong as often as lawyers are.


John Lambert Gibson: The man on
the soil; that is right.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I am going to present the point of view of the fruit growers and poultrymen of the interior of British Columbia, and of the farmers whom I have the honour to represent. Before proceeding I wish to read briefly from a statement the minister made in the house on May 28, 1946, in reply to a speech I made on agricultural marketing on that date. At that time the minister had this to say, at page 1964 of Hansard:
We have these boards, operated by the government it is true, but operated on behalf of all the people of Canada, to handle the exportation of our surplus farm products whether they come from a private

Agricultural Products Act organization, a co-operative organization or a province so highly organized under marketing legislation as British Columbia is. These farm products going into international trade are taken over by these boards and delivered to some other organization in some other country.
The point is that a good number of people whom I have the honour to represent were quite optimistic when they read that statement a few days later. They were of the opinion that the minister was considering developing his marketing technique, and possibly as the result of this act, establishing permanent export and import boards.
The question of marketing has many related factors. It is not only a question of selling a commodity. Many other factors govern the marketing of any commodity. I want to deal with a few of them very briefly this evening, and to refer to certain resolutions which have been passed by the fruit growers of British Columbia this year, and which, if adopted by the minister into his policy, would we believe, in conjunction with this act, do a great deal towards solving the problem of marketing our fruit. I understand that the minister's department has made arrangements for the pulling out of some 200,000 fruit trees in the maritimes. I think that is a wise policy. If these trees are out of date, and the varieties are not suitable for modern marketing conditions and modern consumer demands, it is a sound policy. I freely admit that in British Columbia we shall have to face the same situation and do something similar. Even the growers' organization realize that they have got to play their part in the marketing of their fruits, and that if they are going to play their part in co-operation with government they must be willing to eliminate varieties which have now been proven unsuitable for modern consumer demand at home and abroad.


John Lambert Gibson: Taste like turnips.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I have no hesitation in supporting the minister in this matter although there are people who do not know all the facts, who criticize it as a waste of natural resources, labour, time, money and so on. Personally I think his policy in this respect will be endorsed by all persons who have any considerable knowledge of the tree-fruit industry in Canada.
When speaking on May 28, 1946, the minister suggested that possibly there were opportunities for our using a considerable quantity of our apples in British Columbia, by having them evaporated. There has been a considerable quantity of apples evaporated, 
but I think the minister realizes that at the present time the market is about saturated. We can evaporate some of the lower grades of apples, but we still have the problem of marketing the greater quantity of the crop.
The question of marketing is related to the cost of production, quality, varieties, transportation, freight costs, regulation of imports from other countries, guaranteed prices, regulations in effect against our fruit in other countries, and financial arrangements by this government in connection with commodity agreements. I want to deal briefly with two or three aspects of these related problems which are understood by the fruit growers of British Columbia, and upon which they expressed an opinion at their annual convention held at Penticton on the 18th, 19th and 21st of January of this year.


Mr. Sinclair:: These are all the fruit
growers?


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: These are all the fruit growers of the interior. The British Columbia Fruit Growers Association is the official organization representing all fruits growers in the interior of British Columbia, and is the parent organization out of which springs the tree-fruit board, Tree Fruits Limited, and our whole marketing organization. It is the parent body, the official body, and unquestionably speaks for the tree-fruit growers of the interior of British Columbia. Before proceeding, I may say that the fruit growers of British Columbia realize the benefit that this act has been to agriculture in the past, and particularly during the war period.


John Ewen Sinclair: Hear, hear.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I must say, however, that they are very much concerned about the possibilities of the future. In this house a large number of speakers have placed the case for the wheat growers before us, but there are not many of us in the house who present the fruit growers' opinions and suggestions. I think also it may be some indication of the position of the fruit grower in the economy to say that I have observed at various conventions that I have attended-such as cattle producers and wheat growers conventions-that those who were there were usually all rotund well-fed looking people, whereas the people attending the British Columbia fruit growers conventions were all more or less of my build, that is of somewhat slender build.


John Ewen Sinclair: Thirty-one million dollars last year.


John Lambert Gibson: Hear, hear.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I am surprised at the member for Comox-AIberni interrupting in view

of the very good times that the lumber industry has enjoyed.


John Ewen Sinclair: You cannot log apple trees.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I should like to read one of the resolutions passed at the convention to which I have referred:
Whereas it has been shown during the period of austerity restrictions that the fruit growing areas of Canada are capable of supplying the domestic market, and
Whereas production of fruit is increasing, and
Whereas the dominion government has the power of regulating imports where these are harmful to the economy of the country;
Therefore be it resolved that this 1949 B.C.F.G.A. convention requests that the dominion government regulate the importation of fruit when Canadian production is in adequate supply.
That resolution was passed unanimously, and I think it is fair. It does not ask for a tariff for purposes of protection in the ordinary sense of the word. It simply requests that, when Canadian production is sufficient to supply the demand in Canada, importation be regulated. The tree-fruit organization of British Columbia has been co-operating very well in the past year with United States fruit organizations, and has been working out a technique which can be adopted in the future with benefit to all concerned. They have not been talking about protective tariffs, as such, but have been discussing the distribution of fruit on an international basis through quotas by agreement within the industry. Where they have been short in a certain market our commodities have been sent to that point. Where we have been short of certain commodities, their commodities have been shipped into this country. I do hope the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) will give consideration to this resolution; if he does, we think it will assist in the marketing of fruits in this country.
Now I am going to deal briefly with a resolution which concerns th,e cherry growers, who carry on an important industry in British Columbia, which is facing a difficult future. I am mentioning this to the Minister of Agriculture because I believe if something along this line were adopted it would assist the cherry producers of Canada. The resolution reads:
Whereas a processed cherry industry of considerable importance has been established in Canada during the past seven or eight years, and
Whereas growers have been encouraged to produce cherries suitable for this industry, and
Whereas our market for these cherries is seriously threatened by the importation of similar cherries from Italy, packed in brine and subject only to a tariff of 175 per cent ad valorem,
Therefore be it resolved by this 1949 B.C.F.G.A. convention that representations be made through the proper channels, prior to the forthcoming trade discussions between Canada and Italy, with a view to increasing this tariff to an amount equal to that
29087-129I
Agricultural Products Act imposed by United States on similar products, viz: Cherries with pits, 55 cents per pound; cherries pitted, 95 cents per pound.
I ask the minister to seriously consider this as a resolution coming from the growers of British Columbia, which was adopted unanimously at their annual convention. Now I come to apples, and I have a resolution which was discussed fully and considered in great detail by various organizations within the fruit industry. This has to do with guaranteed prices for unmarketed apples, and reads:
Whereas the loss of the British and other overseas markets may endanger the welfare of the apple industry, and
Whereas reduced returns to the growers resulting from lack of markets would seriously affect the economic situation in British Columbia, and
Whereas apple growers have at present no security from reduced revenues resulting from lack of markets,
Therefore be it resolved that this 1949 B.C.F.G.A. convention goes on record as recommending to the provincial and federal governments that they guarantee a minimum price to the growers for unmarketed apples of desirable varieties, sizes and grades.
I am glad to say the government has done something in this connection; I understand it has guaranteed 200,000 boxes at $2 a box. I believe, however, this request from the fruit industry of British Columbia should receive further consideration by the government, with a view to establishing some permanent floor policy and protection, in this respect, for the industry.
Now I have just two more matters to present, and I am trying to be as brief as possible. The next resolution concerns the marketing of Canadian apples in Australia, and reads:
Whereas for many years the government of Australia has imposed an embargo against the import of Canadian apples on the ground that fire blight might be carried to Australian orchards, and
Whereas horticulturists agree that it would be impossible to transmit fire blight through shipments of packed apples.
Therefore be it resolved by this 1949 B.C.F.G.A. convention that the dominion government be urged to open negotiations with Australia with a view to having this inexcusable embargo removed so that when the financial situation permits, Canadian apples may be marketed in Australia.
In connection with that resolution I wish to make this observation. We have trade commissioners in all parts of the world. I am sometimes of the opinion that these trade commissioners are often well acquainted with commercial or industrial products that companies may have to sell, but that when it comes to looking after the products the farmers have to sell they are not so concerned or so well informed. In my view any trade commissioner operating in Australia who discovered that Canadian apples were being denied entry to the Australian market as a protection against fire blight should have



'2030 HOUSE OF COMMONS

[Stage Direction]
Agricultural Products Act ascertained the facts and communicated them to this government. It should not have been left to the growers of British Columbia to pass a resolution informing this government that fire blight cannot be transmitted in boxed apples. I hope the minister will give consideration to this matter, so that when it is possible to export apples there will be no embargo against British Columbia apples entering Australia on this account.
Now I come to my concluding resolution, which I am rather proud to say was sponsored by a local of the British Columbia Fruit Growers Association in my district, an organization of which I happen to be a member. It was discussed thoroughly by some extremely capable people who have given a great deal of thought to this question; then it was forwarded to the annual convention, where it was adopted unanimously. I want to read the resolution and make a few brief comments in concluding my remarks:
Whereas the cessation of exports of apples to Great Britain is inflicting great hardship on many growers, especially those whose orchards are planted largely to export varieties, and
Whereas apart from the disastrous effect on the growers, it cannot be to the interest of the community to allow orchards to return to bushland, or to waste valuable food,
Therefore be it resolved by this 1949 B.C.F.G.A. convention that the executive of the B.C.F.G.A. be strongly urged to bring every pressure to bear on the Canadian government to purchase and export such fruit, accepting payment in sterling or British bonds, until such time as there is free exchange between dollars and sterling.
Some of our people also suggested that it would be a good idea for this government to purchase Canadian National Railways bonds, which are held in Great Britain, on this account.
I listened with a great deal of attention to the hon. member for Kamloops (Mr. Fulton) discuss this bill this afternoon. I distinctly remember the hon. gentleman saying that the bill was unconstitutional, unnecessary and undesirable. I was amazed to hear the representative of a fruit-growing riding in British Columbia make such a statement, in view of the attitude of the fruit growers of that province toward this legislation through the years, and in view of the fact that they have again endorsed this legislation by passing a resolution, which could not be given effect unless this legislation was adopted by this house. The fruit growers of British Columbia realize that anything done to implement this resolution would be as a result of this legislation being extended for a further period. Therefore I have no hesitation in repeating that I was very much surprised to hear the hon. member for Kamloops express such sentiments and opinions, opinions which obviously are in direct opposition to the wishes of the
IMr. Herrldge.]
fruit growers he represents, as this resolution can only be given effect under this act.
Again I do urge the minister to give consideration to the resolutions I have read. The fruit growers of the interior of British Columbia consider that if attention is given to these resolutions and something done to give effect to them, together with the legislation now before the house, something can be done towards improving the export market for British Columbia apples, and other fruits.
James Garfield Gardiner: Mr. Speaker-


Mr. Speaker:: If the minister speaks now he will close the debate.


James Garfield Gardiner: Following the remarks made by the hon. member who has just taken his seat, I would call attention to the fact that I think every farm organization which has been coming to Ottawa from year to year has been asking that these contracts with Great Britain be continued as long as it is possible to secure signatures to them. I do not think there has been any exception to that. Every farm organization coming here has suggested that their first choice would be a continuation of contracts such as those we have under this legislation, together with a continuation of the boards the government appointed to handle those products during the period of the war. But realizing that the constitution of this country, which has been under discussion at considerable length during this debate, does not permit, except under certain circumstances, of the government of Canada having boards which can be delegated the extent of authority these boards have had throughout the war period, they have suggested that, when the period comes to an end during which such contracts as these can be negotiated by boards such as we have now, there should be other appropriate legislation which would make it possible for the farmers to have boards set up under provincial legislation and complementary federal legislation. I wanted to make that statement in order to reply to some of the statements made by the official opposition this afternoon.
The statement was made over and over again that there is quite a difference between giving the authority which has been given to provincial boards set up under provincial marketing acts and the giving of authority to boards set up under the minister under this act. I submit, Mr. Speaker, that none of the provincial acts, and I think I have read all of them, have done anything except to give to the lieutenant governor in council the power to set up a board. It is not an

authority which is given to some farm organization to set up a board; it is an authority given to the lieutenant governor in council. Authority is given to the lieutenant governor in council to draft regulations and so on. In other words, it is legislation on all fours with the legislation we have been discussing. The only difference is that this legislation gives authority to the governor in council, which is the method of speaking of the government of Canada, as opposed to the lieutenant governor in council, being the government of the provinces. There is no distinction between the two in so far as to whom the authority is given under these
Agricultural Products Act acts is concerned; it is given to the government itself. That is true also of this particular legislation.
At an earlier stage in the discussion I was asked to place on the record, if I could, the statistics which endorse the statement I made earlier in the discussion about the purchase and production of apples by Great Britain. I am going to place these tables on the record. This is a table of the imports of apples into the United Kingdom, beginning in 1938 and taking the years 1945, 1946, 1947 and 1948. I am going to ask the permission of the house to place it on Hansard, and I will comment upon it:
Imports of Apples Into the United Kingdom (Hundredweights)
From	Australia	
1,502,504From	New Zealand	
407,285From	Canada	
3,006,589From	other British	countries	
68,017From	United States	
1,558,744From	other foreign	countries	
524,384Total	
7,067,5231945	1946	1947	194895,536	370,679	92,707	1,108,995100,617	357,529252,831	1,278,558	663.145	3,858	25,262	1,706	18,118245,166	49,613	610,843	7,800	14,954	121,945	471,883605,191	1,839,683	1,490,346	1,956,525
Source: "Accounts Relating to Trade and Navigation of the United Kingdom"-Issues of December 1946, and December 1948.
It shows that in 1938 Britain imported 7,067,523 hundredweight of apples. It shows that she imported 1-5 million hundredweight from Australia; 3 million hundredweight from Canada; 68,000 hundredweight from other British countries; 1-5 million hundredweight from the United States and 524,000 hundredweight from foreign countries; making a total of 7,067,523 hundredweight. It is true that since war began Britain has cut down greatly on her purchases of apples. In 1945 she only imported 605,000 hundredweight; in 1946 the importation of apples rose to 1,839,000 hundredweight; in 1947, it dropped back to 1,490,000 hundredweight. In 1948, the year that has been under discussion by those who have been quoting statistics, Britain purchased 1,956,525 hundredweight of apples, or almost 2 million hundredweight.
Where did Britain get those apples? She got 1,108,000 hundredweight in Australia as against 1,500,000 hundredweight in 1938. From New Zealand, 357,000 hundredweight were obtained in 1948 as against 407,000 hundredweight. Britain got 18,000 hundredweight from other British countries and
471,000	hundredweight from other foreign countries. The important factor in connection with these purchases in 1948 is that she did not take any apples from Canada and she did not take any apples from the United States. There is only one reason for these last facts, and that is that Britain did not
have any dollars to spend on apples. She bought all the apples she did buy from countries in which she was not required to have dollars in order to purchase. In other words,, if she had had the dollars and purchased the-same quantity of apples from Canada in 1948 as she did in 1938, and at the same time had purchased the same quantity from the United States as she did in 1938, there would not have been a great difference between the quantities of apples which she did purchase in 1938 as against what she would have purchased in 1948 under those circumstances.
But I am inclined to think she would not have purchased so many apples from Canada or the United States in 1948 as in 1938, even if she had had the dollars. That has been my argument from the beginning. There was another reason why Britain did not purchase more apples, whether it be from Australia, from New Zealand, from other British countries or from other foreign countries. She purchased less apples from all of them, and she did not purchase any at all from Canada and the United States. I agree that her chief reason for not purchasing any from Canada and the United States is the fact that she did not have the dollars with which to pay for them.
Let us look at the production of apples in Great Britain during that period of time. Going back to the year 1937-38, which was.

Agricultural Products Act the year I was dealing with when I touched upon this question before, namely, the year in which we went to Britain in order to negotiate quotas under the 1932 agreements, Great Britain produced dessert and cooking apples to the amount of 156 4 thousand tons in 1937-38.


Mr. Case:: Tons?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, tons.


Wilfrid Garfield Case: The other figures you were quoting were hundredweights.


James Garfield Gardiner: And these are in tons.


Edmund Davie Fulton: That makes it easy to compare.


James Garfield Gardiner: My hon. friend can multiply by one hundred and twelve. I think he is old enough to do that. Great Britain does not grow very many dessert apples, but some are grown. They grow cooking apples and cider apples. In 1937-38, Great Britain grew 156-4 thousand tons of dessert and cooking apples and 59,000 tons of cider apples. The whole chart will be on the record. I am not going to give all the figures, just enough to Indicate a trend. In 1938-39 Britain grew 86-4 thousand tons of dessert and cooking apples and 44-4 thousand tons of cider apples. In 1940-41 it amounted to 280-2 thousand tons of dessert and cooking apples and 48-4 thousand tons of cider apples; in 1943-44, 327 4 thousand tons of dessert and cooking apples and 78-1 thousand tons of cider apples. Coming down to 1946-47, 360-5 thousand tons of dessert and cooking apples, or a little better than double what they were in 1937-38; and 110 thousand tons of cider apples or again just about double what they were back in 1937-38. Coming down to 1947-48, 618-8 thousand tons of dessert and cooking apples and 106-1 thousand tons of cider apples. In other words, while back in 1937-38 they were producing 156-4 thousand tons, in 1947-48 they were producing 618-6 thousand tons. If that is not an indication that the British in the meantime have done something about the production of apples, then I do not know what statistics mean.
I will hand the table to Hansard.
Production 000 tons Dessert and
Cooking Cider
1937-	38	
156-4	59-01938- 39	
86-4	44-41939-	40	
453-0	106-01940-	41	
280-2	48-41941-	42	
163-0	31-71942-	43	
375-4	58-91943-	44	
327-4	78-11944-	45	
335-9	131-71945-	46	
258-7	28-51946-	47	
360-5	110-01947-	48	
618-8	106-1
It is true that, as you go up and down this table, just as you find in connection with any table with regard to the production of farm products which depends upon the weather from one season to another, in order to get the complete figure you would have to average some three or four years in a period. But all along the line there is an increase, the production of more and more apples, the reason of course being that in Great Britain back in the thirties there was done exactly what my friend who just took his seat says is to be done in British Columbia and just what we are doing at the present time in Nova Scotia. The growers began to take out the trees that were not producing as they ought to produce and they put in others. To begin with, today they have 2,500,000 more trees in Great Britain than they had back in 1937-38. In addition to that they have put in trees, to replace some of those that they had before, which are producing more apples than they produced before. I repeat that their chief reason for doing that was the change in trade policy which took place as the result of the 1932 agreements.
So I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that our friends opposite will have to take some responsibility for the fact that in Britain there is not as big a market for apples today as there was in the years preceding the war. There not being as big a market, neither the Canadians nor any others who depend upon the British market for the sale of their apples will be able to sell as much as they were able to sell before that policy was undertaken; and I do not know why my hon. friends opposite argue otherwise. I have always understood that the good old Tory policy was one of protecting industry within your own country in order to make it grow. And when they forced the British to protect the apple-growing industry in Britain to the extent of ten per cent, apparently their policy worked. And when their policy worked in a country where we were looking for a market, the increased production in that country has denied to us part of the market that we at one time had.
I find my friends across the way trying to switch over from so many of their traditional policies to some other policies that I have come to the conclusion that they themselves are convinced that Toryism is not a very good thing. Someone has been asking-I think it was the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefenbaker)-just why it is that the British go to Europe to buy products and why it is that we are not selling them as much as we were a while ago. As I stated on a previous occasion, but apparently my statement was not listened to, one of the reasons why they are going to Europe follows up the policy-
IMr. Gardiner.]

which I have enunciated in connection with these apples-that was inflicted upon the British people back in 1932 to 1936.
Britain is a country which must get about fifty per cent of its food from outside. It does not make any difference what we think about it. Only seven per cent of the people in Great Britain are producing food and the whole one hundred per cent are consuming it. When we look at the situation in this country as compared with that in Great Britain, we find it to be this. Close to thirty per cent of our people are actually living on the land, and a considerable percentage of them are so closely associated with it that they might just as well be called part of the farm population. Those who are buying grain along the line in western Canada in elevators, those who are distributing farm implements to farmers and so on are all so closely associated with agriculture that they might just as well be classified as agriculturists themselves. When one considers the proportion of the population in this country which is on our farms, which is dependent upon the production of food for a living, and then compares that situation with the conditions in Britain where only seven per cent of their people are on the land, where they are living on a small island that in area would be only a small part of any one of the larger provinces of Canada, where fifty million people are living there, then one must realize that if these people are to live on a small island, and if they are to eat, they must import around 50 per cent of their food.
When they reach the conclusion that that is what they must do, the next thing they must assure themselves of is that they are going to have the food year by year. It is all very well for those of us who are sitting in Canada to say: Yes, we have lots of food. We have some surpluses to sell. We want you to sit there and even, if necessary, remain hungry until we come over with sufficient food in order to feed you. But the British do not operate in that way. When they were asked to deny themselves the free market for food from all over the world, the British said that they would require to go to the different countries which had surpluses of food to sell and to buy it in advance, not wait until their people were starving, not wait-as my friends across the way apparently would-until the emergency is so great that everybody is suffering under it before you do anything about it. They have gone out in advance, they have gone into different countries, and have contracted for the products that they require.


An hon. Member:: Hear, hear.


James Garfield Gardiner: I am rather surprised that the only people who can say "hear, hear" to
Agricultural Products Act that, when the statements are made, are my friends of the socialist party. I would think that the official opposition in this house would be shouting their heads off every time that is mentioned-


Thomas John Bentley: It ain't constitutional.


James Garfield Gardiner: -because it was the good old Tory party in Great Britain, co-operating with the good old Tory party in this country, which brought about the condition that made these negotiations for quotas a necessity. Even the leader of the Conservative party in this house at the time, the Right Hon. R. B. Bennett-


Mr. MacNicol:: A great man.


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, a greater man than any one they have in the party now.


Mr. Ross (Souris):: That was not your story in those days.


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, Mr. Speaker, the Right Hon. R. B. Bennett knew that there was not any great difference in principle between a policy which set up quotas and made it possible for one government to go and deal with another in order to see to it that they were able to secure products out of that country in order to sell things of their own, and the old policies they had been advocating of controlling the situation by protecting the commodities by other methods. He said that was quite all right, they would do that; and that is what they are doing. Apparently the only people in this house who criticized them for doing it are my hon. friends of the official opposition. There is only one criticism which one could make of the British in connection with this matter, and it is not a criticism of them. There is only one criticism that one could make of the situation with which they find themselves confronted. I sometimes wonder why people read from a document and deliberately do not read it all. If I do not like what a document says I do not read it at all.
I have in my hand the document which has been scattered around this house and has been read by hon. members from all parties. It is a press statement, not a speech, made by Sir Stafford Cripps, the chancellor of the exchequer.


Mr. Tustin:: Are you going to read it all?


James Garfield Gardiner: No, I am not going to read it all. Most of my hon. friends have it and they can read it for themselves. This document was issued on February 23, 1949. It is addressed to editors, not to members of par-
2034	HOUSE OF COMMONS
Agricultural Products Act
liament. It is addressed to newspapers, and Mr. Gardiner: My figures are absolutely reads:	accurate.
It is hoped that the following full text of Sir Stafford Cripps' interview with Canadian Press will be useful for record purposes.
It is Sir Stafford Cripps' interview with Canadian Press. While my hon. friend's question is quite pertinent when he asked if I were going to read it all, may I say that I am going to read all that has to do with the point that my hon. friends had in mind when they were reading it. But they did not read it all. Here is what the document says on page 3:
Perhaps a special word should be said about United Kingdom food purchases in Canada. Since the end of the war we have been buying foodstuffs from Canada under bulk contracts negotiated by the ministry of food. If the terms of these contracts are examined, it will be seen that although the volume of purchases of bacon, eggs and cheese had to be somewhat reduced in the face of the acute world dollar shortage which hit the United Kingdom especially hard in 1947, we are nevertheless continuing to buy a substantial part of our total requirements from Canada.
I did not hear anyone read any farther than that, and most of those who read did not even read that far. Here is what the next sentence says:
In 1948, for instance-
That is the last year for which we have the records:
In 1948, for instance, Canada was our largest single source of supply for wheat and wheat flour (three-quarters of total United Kingdom imports) . . .


Douglas Scott Harkness: Why would it not come from Canada at the price at which they were getting it?


James Garfield Gardiner: Just wait until you get a little more, and perhaps it will apply to your pigs.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Don't worry about my pigs; they are being looked after.


James Garfield Gardiner: And they are making you plenty of money?'


Douglas Scott Harkness: I hope so.


James Garfield Gardiner: I continue:
. . . bacon (three-quarters of total imports), from Canada.
Judging by the figures which have been tossed about, I can understand my hon. friend asking me whether they were tons or hundredweights.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Tell us about apples.


James Garfield Gardiner: I spoke about apples; apparently you were not here.


Edmund Davie Fulton: I was here, and your figures were as inaccurate as the rest of your speech.


Edmund Davie Fulton: I have the British food commission figures.


James Garfield Gardiner: These are British food commission figures.


Douglas Charles Abbott: Oxford interpretation.


James Garfield Gardiner: Let me read it again:
In 1948, for instance, Canada was our largest single source of supply for wheat and wheat flour (three-quarters of total United' Kingdom imports), bacon (three-quarters of total imports), shell eggs (just under one-third of total imports) and dried eggs (three-quarters of total imports).


Edmund Davie Fulton: What about apples?


James Garfield Gardiner: Mr. Speaker, I should like anyone of the opposition to tell us of any time, excepting for three or four years during the war, when we ever had a greater proportion of the British market for these food products than we had in 1948.
Sir Stafford Cripps deals with wheat. Since I am shut out of dealing with wheat on this discussion I shall not touch upon it.


Mr. Smith (Calgary West):: You never were before.


James Garfield Gardiner: The document continues:
Towards the end of last year we signed a further contract for 70,000 tons of bacon as well as for substantial quantities of cheese and eggs. If, as at present looks possible,-
And this has been read before.
-we are obliged gradually to limit our imports of these foods somewhat further, it will of course only be after the fullest consultation with your government.
These are Sir Stafford Cripps' statements with regard to the position. They do not indicate from our point of view that the position is as bad as some have been trying to paint it. I thought it necessary to put all of the statement with regard to the position of certain products upon the record so that hon. members would have it.
There are also a few facts with regard to production and consumption in Canada which have a bearing upon the discussions which have been taking place. It has been almost the unanimous intention of those on the opposition side of the house, no matter to which party they belong, to try to leave the impression that farm production is down very low in Canada.


Edmund Davie Fulton: That is what the bureau of statistics says.


James Garfield Gardiner: My hon. friend puts a Tory interpretation on the reports of the bureau of statistics when he says that.


Edmund Davie Fulton: No; I just gave the figures.


James Garfield Gardiner: I have the figures here for all of them and I shall give them to you.
I am not going to read them all because it will take too long, but I am going to give a summary of what they mean. I am not going to say anything about wheat and not very much about grain, because grain is up and down in accordance with the seasons, depending upon whether it rains or whether it does not, as everyone knows. One can easily take the year 1948 and compare it with the year 1947 with regard to some of these products and say that they are away down one year as compared with another, but I have them all here beginning with 1936 down to 1948.


Major James William Coldwell: Is it very long? Could it be put on Hansard?


James Garfield Gardiner: It is about ten or twelve pages.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Have mercy on the printers.


James Garfield Gardiner: What I am going to say with regard to them in this. If anyone will take the trouble to examine these figures he will find that agricultural production never was higher in any ten years in the history of Canada than it has been in the ten years beginning with 1938 and coming down to 1948.


Edmund Davie Fulton: That is an entirely different thing.


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, it is quite a different thing from comparing 1948 with 1947 and saying you are down on eggs and you are up on potatoes. That has little to do with the position of farmers in this country. It has very little to do with the situation when you take one year and compare it with the year before or the year after. But take the ten years-and after all these are the years some hon. gentlemen have been talking about, Mr. Speaker. They have been talking about the years since there were dealings between the government of Britain and the government of Canada for food. The first of those years was 1939, the year the war began. These contracts have continued down to 1948 and we still have some of these contracts in existence for 1949. Therefore these are the years about which we are talking. The argument not later than half an hour ago was that under dealings of this kind with the British, agriculture in this country had suffered. I am pointing out to you, Mr. Speaker, that the ten years during which that kind of dealing was in effect we had the highest production of farm products that this country has ever experienced.
So that method of trading has not done them any harm. There may have been other
Agricultural Products Act things that may have done harm, but when you balance them one against the other you will find that the production-I am not speaking of the value of production; these figures are for pounds, bushels and tons of food-is higher in these ten years than at any other time. Perhaps I could take a few figures to give some indication of what has happened.
Much has been said in this discussion about barley. Back in 1938 we produced 102 million bushels in Canada. In 1948, which was not a good barley year, we produced 154 million bushels, an increase of a little over 50 per cent in 1948 as compared with the first year. If you run through these figures you will find that apart from the three years when we were paying for greater production of barley at so much per acre there was a great increase in the production in all other years right from 1937 down to 1948.
There is another thing that is important-domestic consumption. We consumed only 80 million bushels of what we produced back in 1938. The figures for 1948 are not yet complete, but we consumed some 143 million bushels in 1946 and 136 million bushels in 1947. In those years we were feeding practically all the barley we had. We were feeding it because we were producing more of other food products that are produced by the feeding of grain.
My hon. friend over here who grew a little rye for a year or two may be interested in knowing that we produced only 5 million bushels back in 1937; that we were up to 13 million bushels in 1940; up to 24 million bushels in 1942; that we then dropped back to 5 million bushels in 1945. Rye then went up to $4 per bushel. Many people like the hon. member for Calgary East (Mr. Harkness) went into rye. They sowed rye in the fall of 1947 when it was worth $4 per bushel, but they harvested that rye when it was worth only a little over $1 per bushel.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I got $1.49.


James Garfield Gardiner: The hon. member was lucky. He is a pretty good trader. But the fact is that the farmers who took that gamble raised the production of rye from 5,800,000 bushels in 1945 to 25,348,000 bushels in 1948. In other words, almost five times as many took a gamble on it in 1947 and 1948 as had been in rye back in 1945.
I am not going to boast about what those people did. They increased the production from 5 million bushels to 25 million bushels, but I venture to say that some of them are now taking the advice which we gave them a year and a half ago and are getting back into some other production that will be more useful in connection with our agriculture.

Agricultural Products Act We have had some talk about cattle. In 1938 we had on our farms 8,491,000 head of cattle; in 1947 there were 9,718,000; in 1948, 9,470,000. The figures run 8,491,000; 8,374,000; 8,380,000; 8,517,000; and 8,945,000. Then in 1943 the figures go up, and in 1948 they are still away above anything that we had prior to the war. In other words, our production of cattle is not down; our production of cattle is up.
What about domestic disappearance? My hon. friends want to know why we do not export more. We were eating 631 million pounds of beef in 1936. We dropped down to 629 million in 1937, and then in 1947 our consumption had risen to 945 million pounds as compared with 619 million back at the beginning of the period. These figures show why we have not as much meat to export now, in proportion to what we are producing, as we had before.
Then coming to hogs, back in 1938 we had on our farms 3,527,000, while in 1947 we had
5.473.000	and in 1948, 4,463,000. When one looks at these figures one can show that the production of hogs in Canada or the number on our farms was not as great as in 1947 and 1948 as it was during the years of the war; but the fact is that in these later years we have had a better production of hogs than we had in the earlier periods of the development of our industry.
Let us come to domestic disappearance. In 1938 we ate 424,631,000 pounds of pork in one form or another, and in 1948 we ate
710.880.000	pounds. In other words, if you took the greater number of pounds of pork that were eaten in 1948 as compared with the years preceding the war and converted it into bacon, we could send to Britain far more bacon than anyone has ever suggested that we ought to be able to send in years of peace. If my hon. friends want to know why we are not sending more of some of these things to Britain, all they need to do is to read the figures.


Wilfrid Garfield Case: We have pretty well eaten ourselves into prosperity.


James Garfield Gardiner: We have not done too bad a job of it.


Arthur Leroy Smith: How many more people are there to eat it?


James Garfield Gardiner: There is another thing I cannot understand. I have sat in this house for some fourteen years and during that time and for a long time before I have been listening to the Tories talk.


Douglas Scott Harkness: The minister has not learned much.


James Garfield Gardiner: They have not convinced me that they are right. They have changed their 
minds on so many things that I am beginning to think that I was right all the time. Here is another thing they have changed their minds on. When we used to talk about a market in Great Britain or in the United States our hon. friends across the way used to say that the only market worth while was the home market, that we ought to have the home market. When we say to them that the home market is consuming 50 per cent more of our meat than it consumed a short time ago they say, "Why, you ought to be shipping it to Great Britain. You should not allow Great Britain to go over and get some pork from Poland. You should not allow Great Britain to go and get some pork from Denmark. You ought to be taking it away from the people of Canada and sending it over there as export." I do not know that they can have the argument both ways. We have not been doing too badly as a party, during the twenty-one years out of the last twenty-five that we have been in office, in securing and developing markets. Our experience has been that whenever we allow these fellows over here to get into power we have a task on our hands for the next ten years to get back to where we were.
Let us have a look for a moment at their pet product, cheese. The last speaker on the other side took the greater part of his time to talk about the production of cheese going down, but most people who know anything about dairy products base their conclusions on milk rather than on any one of the products. After all, according to the table I have here-


Edmund Davie Fulton: Where did you get that table from?


James Garfield Gardiner: -about 25 per cent of our milk is sold in fluid form. I got the table from the same source as my hon. friend gets his if they are right. About one-tenth of the milk that is produced is consumed on the farm. Dairy and creamery butter combined use up around 50 per cent, and all of the remainder goes into cheese, evaporated whole milk, condensed whole milk, whole milk powder, skim milk powder, casein and ice cream. The largest of those is evaporated whole milk. Back in 1937 when 130 million pounds of milk went into factory cheese,
91,331,000	pounds went into evaporated whole milk. In 1948, when 89 million pounds of milk went into factory cheese, 248 million pounds of milk went into evaporated whole milk. Where we had 11 million pounds going into condensed whole milk in the first year I mentioned, last year we had 34 million pounds. Similarly where we had 5 million pounds going into whole milk powder, last year we had 19 million pounds. Where we

had 18 million pounds going into skim milk powder, last year we had 62 million pounds. Where we had 8 million pounds going into ice cream, last year we had 25 million pounds.
There is only one reason, Mr. Speaker, why there is not more cheese being produced in Canada. That is because there is approximately 150 per cent more milk going into these other forms of production at the present time than there was in the years when we were producing these greater quantities of cheese that are being talked about. Milk has been going from cheese factories to canning factories. Everyone in the province of Ontario-and they probably know more about it than anywhere else-who is associated with the dairy industry knows that the reason why there is not more cheese going to Great Britain at the present time is that those who sell their milk to canning factories to go into cans are getting more for it.
Having said that, I only want to repeat what was said last night, namely, that Great Britain is buying her cheese from Australia at 24 cents a pound, and she is paying us 30 cents a pound for it. Yet in spite of the fact that she is paying us 30 cents a pound for it, it pays our farmers better to put it in cans than it does to put it in cheese. That is the reason.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Are we milking more cows now than we were three years ago?


James Garfield Gardiner: If you and I milk all the cows we have, there will be a lot more milk in the country than there is at the present time.


Douglas Scott Harkness: That is not answering the question. Are we milking more cows?


James Garfield Gardiner: That is answering the question. There were three good farmers with me today at lunch. They all farm in Saskatchewan. They have spent the last three months in England, where they were born. They have been there since November, and are now on their way home to commence their farming operations again this spring. They told me why they were not producing hogs this winter. They told me why some others were not producing hogs this winter, and yet some of my friends here say it is because they go to California. I have lived on a farm in western Canada for a long time, and I have many more opportunities to go to California than most farmers. I have been there once in 1917, and I could name on the fingers of one hand the farmers in the community where I live who have ever been in California. The farmers of Saskatchewan have not enough money to go to California.


Mr. Mclvor:: Too busy.
Agricultural Products Act Mr. Gardiner: Somebody says "too busy".


Douglas Scott Harkness: You had better tell that to the member for New Westminster (Mr. Reid).


James Garfield Gardiner: I am telling it to everybody in the house.


Arthur Leroy Smith: That is mighty decent of you.


James Garfield Gardiner: I want to say to the members of the house that if they were to land in Regina tomorrow-


John George Diefenbaker: Was it not the high
income tax?


James Garfield Gardiner: I will tell you in a minute. If you were to land in Regina tomorrow-my friend, the member for Calgary West, knows this is correct-


Arthur Leroy Smith: I landed there in 1886.


James Garfield Gardiner: His father used to be mayor of Regina about the time I went there. I know that he knows the conditions around Regina. I know that he knows that everyone who has ever got off the train at Regina, and has asked to see a farm, has been taken out to see the Williams farm. I think he will agree with that. The operators of that farm are about the only farmers that I know who can live in the Saskatchewan hotel; they are the only farmers that I know who can go to California every winter if they want to. But they did not make their money on the farm. They made their money before they came to Regina, and I do not think they are even citizens of this country. Men who go to Regina, get off the train and go out and look at the Williams farm, have the idea that they have seen Saskatchewan farms. They have not seen Saskatchewan farms. There is not another farm like the Williams farm anywhere in Saskatchewan, and everyone who lives in Saskatchewan knows that.
As a matter of fact, the last time I discussed the matter with the Williams people there were thirty-six farmers farming the land they had, and the men who are living on that land and farming it are more or less under the instructions of the owners of it. Everyone who goes out there and talks to those people, and sees that they live at the Saskatchewan hotel, is inclined to think that is the way farmers live. The Williams people would be the first ones to tell you that is not the way farmers live in Saskatchewan. Farmers in Saskatchewan, who are real dirt farmers, who are producing wheat, producing hogs and producing cattle, put in twelve months in a year right on the farm, the same as any other farmer does, and if they do not they do not stay on the farm very long.

Agricultural Products Act


Douglas Scott Harkness: You have wandered a long way from the number of cows being milked.


James Garfield Gardiner: I was coming back to that in order to say to my hon. friend that if he were not a farmer living in the city rather than out on the farm he would be milking cows too.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I do live on the farm.


James Garfield Gardiner: We have heard a great deal___


Douglas Scott Harkness: Are you going to answer the question?


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I would remind hon. members that we are on second reading of the bill, and a member is allowed to speak only once. If hon. gentlemen want to question the minister I suggest that they wait until we are in the committee stage.


Douglas Scott Harkness: On a question of privilege, Mr. Speaker, while I was speaking this afternoon the minister made three speeches, at least, and numerous interjections.


James Garfield Gardiner: I am not objecting to the question at all. I will answer it in the shortest possible way by saying that the cows we had in Canada in 1938 produced 15,819 million pounds of milk, while the cows we had in 1948 produced 16,529 million pounds of milk. Either we had more cows in 1948 or they were better cows, one or the other. As a matter of fact, what these statistics show from beginning to end is that there is greater production of farm products in Canada now than at any time prior to the war, and there is no use of anyone trying to argue to the contrary. Everyone knows that is so. In addition, the farmers are getting more for their products than they ever got before; and because that is so the gross cash return to farmers in Canada for 1948 was about two and a half times what it was in any year prior to the war. 1 know some of my friends will say that costs are up too. Of course they are; but costs are not up in the same proportion that earnings are, as any farmer will tell you. Net returns from farm products for 1948 were $1,700 million as against some $800 million three years ago. So they are just about double what they were only three years ago; and that being the case I do not see how anyone can argue that the position is not better from all points of view.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Would the minister permit a question?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes.


Douglas Scott Harkness: In view of all this I am just wondering whether the minister has decided that agriculture was at its most prosperous 
level last year, and if that is so whether he will say there is still an emergency. Has he made up his mind?


James Garfield Gardiner: I will answer that question by saying the Liberal party, contrary to what has been the practice of some other parties, has never allowed an emergency to develop to the point where everyone is in relief camps before taking care of the situation. We know an emergency when we see it coming and deal with it before it reaches difficult proportions.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Now I wonder if you will answer the question.


James Garfield Gardiner: I have in my hand a speech which was delivered to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in London by myself. I am going to follow a practice which earlier in the session I said some members of the opposition could not follow; that is, that they could not quote themselves. I can quote myself in this speech.


Douglas Scott Harkness: It does not prove anything.


James Garfield Gardiner: In this way I can correct some of the suggestions made by those who were attempting to quote me. In this speech I reviewed the experiences we had during the war. I pointed out that we had a certain objective in mind, which was to prove to the British people that we could feed them to a greater extent than prior to the war they had thought we were able to do. I suggested that we had proven this. Then I went on to say: When victory was assured there was a change in the policy. The bulk sale agreements were made to read-


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the minister, but he has exhausted his time.


Some hon. Members:: Go on.


James Garfield Gardiner: There are just two paragraphs I should like to read; then I will sit down.


John George Diefenbaker: I want to raise a point of order, which has nothing to do with the question just dealt with. The minister was quoting from a document, and reaching certain conclusions based on the figures contained in that document. I understand that such reference to a document makes it necessary that the document be tabled so that other hon. members may be in a position to ascertain whether or not the conclusions stated were in fact based on the evidence contained therein. I would suggest that the minister table that document.


James Garfield Gardiner: Is that Mr. Cripps' speech?


John George Diefenbaker: Yes.


James Garfield Gardiner: When I am through with it I will hand it in.


Edmund Davie Fulton: How about that long table you had?


James Garfield Gardiner: If I gave you all those figures you would be making speeches for the rest of your life. To continue, I say that up to that time we were attempting to increase production in order to prove to the British that we could supply them with a much greater proportion of their requirements than they had been obtaining from us prior to the war. Then I went on to say that when victory was assured there was a change in the policy; they indicated to us that they would have to carry out some of their agreements with European countries after the war was over, and that therefore they might not be able to continue to take the quantities we were then supplying. We knew, of course, that we would not be able to maintain after the war the level of exports we had been sending Britain during the war; because no matter how much my hon. friends may think I like to have the authority contained in this legislation, I want to say to them that it is a most difficult thing to use that authority even if you desire to do so, and I do not desire to use it except where it is absolutely necessary. Then I went on to say:
AH of our discussions on food bulk contracts were proceeding satisfactorily until difficulties arose in adjusting the relationship between dollars and sterling.
As Sir Stafford Cripps states, it was in 1947 that those difficulties arose.
We were aiming at being able to provide the United Kingdom with 350 million pounds of bacon, 125 million pounds of cheese, 75 million dozens of eggs and having 400,000 head of cattle which we could dispose of either to the United States or the United Kingdom. We could provide all the requirements of the United Kingdom for wheat and much of the needed barley and oats if long-time contracts could be agreed to. It was our hope that you would agree to take these quantities and we would be prepared to accept returns for them which would bear a reasonable relationship to the returns which are being provided to your own farmers. Canada and Britain are linked in tradition. Canada and Britain are one in their hopes for the future. We were just beginning to think that at last our common sorrows growing out of war were going to result in lasting joy when the root of all evil "money" entered.
That will answer the question which was asked me by the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefenbaker) this afternoon, as far as I can answer it at the moment. That explanation was accepted in Britain, and it is the explanation that is accepted by Sir Stafford Cripps in his statement. The difficulties in connection with converting dollars to sterling and sterling to dollars are matters we in this country cannot overcome. My only fear is that if they are not overcome by some means, in spite of anything we can do about it and until in some way an arrange-
Agricultural Products Act ment or agreement is reached, or something develops which secures the balance which is required, we may have some little trouble for some time in marketing our products. I repeat that the only way to maintain our position in a market where our customers are having difficulty in financing is to assist them to the greatest extent possible. When we have done that, Mr. Speaker, I think we will have accomplished sufficient to warrant that, when we have more of these products to sell and when our friends on the other side have more of the wherewithal to pay for them, we will be able to get back into that market to the extent that we have food products to sell. I hope we will have far more of them than we have at the present time when that time arrives.


Major James William Coldwell: I am rising on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I did not want to interrupt the minister, who has given, I believe, a very clear statement. It is certainly a vindication of the controls that have been exercised. I did want to say, Mr. Speaker, that before he completed his remarks the minister had spoken for an hour and two minutes. I think if all members are to be treated fairly, when the forty minutes are up that fact should be indicated.


James Garfield Gardiner: I am sorry. I did not know I was speaking that long.


Major James William Coldwell: I know, and I am just drawing that to the attention of the house generally, Mr. Speaker.


John George Diefenbaker: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that the minister now table the ten pages to which the member for Rosetown-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell) made reference, instead of providing only a selected list.


James Garfield Gardiner: The ten pages? Oh, you mean the figures. I will give you the whole of it, and you can select what you like.


Mr. Nowlan:: I was paired, Mr. Speaker. Had I voted, I would have voted against the motion.


Mr. Beaudry:: I was paired, Mr. Speaker. If I had voted, I would have voted for the motion.


Mr. Xsnor:: I was paired with the hon. member for Colchester-Hants (Mr. Stanfield). If I had voted, I would have voted for the motion.


Mr.   Lillie@: I was paired, Mr. Speaker. Had I voted, I would have voted for the motion.


Mr. Nixon:: I was paired, Mr. Speaker. If I had voted, I would have voted for the motion.
(Translation):


Mr. Heon:: I was paired with the member for	Joliette-l'Assomption-Montcalm	(Mr. Lapalme). Had I voted, I would have voted against the motion.


Mr. Chapdelaine:: I was paired with the member for Labelle (Mr. Lalonde). Otherwise I would have voted against the motion.


Mr. Gagnon:: I was paired with the member for Quebec West and South (Mr. Parent); that is why I abstained from voting.
(Text):


Mr. Macdonnell (Muskoka-Onlario):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege. Observing that the hon. member for Parry Sound (Mr. McDonald) is not in his seat, I thought it was only fair to read this extract from the evening paper entitled:
M.P.'s Hockey Team Wins First of Series
Wilfred (Bucko) McDonald's Sundridge Beavers last night defeated Marmora 11-5 in the first game of a two-game total-goals semi-final series for the Ontario Hockey Association intermediate B title.


John Lambert Gibson: Pretty dirty.


Mr. Benidickson:: Pretty cheap.
The house went into committee, Mr. Golding in the chair.
On section 1-Expiration of act.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Mr. Chairman, the minister has given certain figures with respect to apple production, and in his remarks sought to leave the impression that the reason for the loss of the British apple market by Canada was the empire trade agreements of 1932. The first observation I would have to make is that by the attitude he has shown in his speech the minister has thrown grave doubts upon the accuracy of certain figures which have been given by the bureau of statistics; so much so that I feel that possibly an investigation should be made by his colleague, the Minister of Trade and Commerce, to establish whether or not we can rely upon the figures which have been given.


James Garfield Gardiner: On a question of privilege, the figures which I placed on the record were figures for ten years. The figures which my hon. friend and some others placed on the record were figures for two years. The figures -placed on by others-which I happen to have here are for 1947 and 1948. I did not

question these. On the other table presented by others the figures are for 1938 and then 1947 and 1948. These are in pounds, not dollars. I am quite sure these figures would not be the department's figures because they are in pounds. They must be English figures. I doubt very much whether my figures show anything different from what is here for these particular years, but I gave ten years in order to show the development.


Edmund Davie Fulton: I am glad to find that the minister does not question the figures produced by the bureau of statistics, because I rely on them. It was because I placed reliance on these figures that I made the statements which 1 did, that the record shows the Canadian agricultural production for the past three years, if the minister wants to confine it to that-


James Garfield Gardiner: No, I took ten years. I am not talking about the last three.


Edmund Davie Fulton: -has been declining.


William Henry Golding: Order. I will read clause 1 to the committee:
1. Section eleven ol the Agricultural Products Act, chapter ten of the statutes of 1947, as enacted hy section one of chapter one of the statutes of 1947-48, is repealed and the following substituted therefor:
"1. This act shall expire on the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and fifty."
All that is before the committee is simply a clause extending the time.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Are we to take it that the import of what you have just said is that we cannot discuss in detail the effect of the act which we are now asked to extend by this clause? I would suggest that one of the reasons which might influence us, in agreeing to this clause, or otherwise, is the record of agricultural production under the act which we are now discussing.


William Henry Golding: I point out to hon. members that all that is before the committee is a clause extending the time. The rule is clear; it is that speeches in committee must be strictly relevant to the clause under discussion.


Edmund Davie Fulton: That is so, Mr. Chairman, but in order to be relevant to the clause before the committee one has to discuss the act which we are asked to extend. When you have a bill which consists of one clause only, the principle of the bill can only be contained in that clause, and therefore one cannot discuss that clause without discussing the whole act.


William Henry Golding: Order. The hon. member is now discussing the principle of the bill.
Agricultural Products Act


Edmund Davie Fulton: No; I was making a point.


William Henry Golding: The principle of the bill was decided on second reading. The hon. gentleman is a good lawyer and I shall leave it to him to use his own judgment as to whether his speech is relevant to the clause.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Mr. Chairman, I certainly appreciate the position in which you have placed me and the confidence which you repose in me. Therefore I shall not abuse that confidence. I shall not go into it as I had intended; I shall content myself by saying that my acquiescence in the carriage of the principle of the bill would not have been given at all had it not been that the figures I was given are different from the figures which the minister has received, and I had hoped to be able to discuss them in committee and point out that they put quite a different light on this whole matter from the figures which the minister has given with regard to the production of apples. I will not say any more about it except that the figures I have seen show that the British domestic production is not the reason why we have lost the apple market over there. The figures show that the British domestic production has not increased in 1946 and 1947 over the pre-war years. The reasons are partly exchange difficulties, and partly other factors.


James Garfield Gardiner: I do not think there is any difference in the figures that I have given, in so far as what has been said is concerned, and the figures given by the hon. member. For the last three years the imports of apples into the United Kingdom were:
hundredweight
1946		   1,800,000
1947		 1,490,000
1948		 1,956,000
I do not question the fact that imports were higher in that last year than they were in the other two preceding years. I gave those figures and they show that the imports were higher. But what I did say was that they were not as high as they were back in 1938, when they were some 7 million and some odd. I accounted for that by showing that there were no imports, just for the very reason my hon. friend gives. There were no imports from Canada and none from the United States. Those totaled back at that time
4,564,000	hundredweight from those two countries alone.
1 went so far as to say that if you added the United States and Canadian figures of 1938 to the 1948 figures, your figures would not be very far short of what these were. In other words, the reason was a lack of dollars. That is the argument I used. I take it the argument my friend is putting up is that dollars were responsible for that position.
2042	HOUSE OF
Agricultural Products Act
Then I went on to show that in spite of what has been said to the contrary-I was not aware that it was my hon. friend who made the statement-to the effect that there has been an increase throughout the years from 1937-38 down to 1947-48 in the production of apples in Britain, the production has gradually increased every year, with ups and downs according to the seasons, until you reach a production which increased from
156.000	tons in 1937-38 to 618,000 tons in 1948, which is the year my hon. friend said he did not have figures for.
I agree that my figures did not come from the statistics branch, but their source is the accounts relating to trade and navigation of the United Kingdom, being the issues of December, 1946, and December, 1948.


Edmund Davie Fulton: The figures I have are at variance with those figures. I obtained my figures from the United Kingdom food mission here in Ottawa to whom I put the question: Is there a drive in the United Kingdom to make yourselves self-sufficient in apples? The answer I got was "No". Then I asked for the figures of the domestic production of dessert and cooking apples, which are the types we formerly supplied to the United Kingdom. In 1939-40, which was the highest post-war year, their domestic production was
453.000	tons. In 1946-47, a post-war year, their production was 360,500 tons, a slight decline. The table of figures runs from 1936-37, when there was a production of 345,300 tons, with slight variations, to the highest figure of 453,000 tons in 1939-40 and 360,500 tons in 1946-47.
The figures of our bureau of statistics show that in 1946 our exports were 1,151,000 barrels. I admit that it is difficult to relate those figures, but I only say that they compare favourably with the pre-war export figures. Right up to 1946 we were exporting to the United Kingdom an approximate equivalent amount every year. Then in 1946-47 we stopped exporting, obviously because of the dollar situation. It was not because of the increase in British production because that production would not increase so suddenly in one year as to cut off imports from Canada.


James Garfield Gardiner: I did not say that that was the only reason, but I said it was a reason. It was a reason to the extent of about 50 per cent of the production.


Edmund Davie Fulton: The statement to which I took exception was that it was the 1932 trade agreements which influenced the British to vastly increase their production of dessert and cooking apples.


James Garfield Gardiner: So it was.


Edmund Davie Fulton: That statement is not borne out either by the figures of Canadian exports up to 1946 or by the figures of British production up to 1946. The empire trade agreements, far from being responsible for the loss of the British market, actually increased our exports to the United Kingdom during the years up to 1946 when the dollar situation suddenly cut us off from that market.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: Has the minister in mind any new contracts that are to be negotiated with Great Britain or any other country under the provisions of this legislation? Are any discussions being contemplated during the current year?


James Garfield Gardiner: Discussions are going on with the British constantly with regard to the possibility of new contracts. The one that is under discussion at the moment, more than any other, has to do with cheese.


Mr. Charlton:: The minister made a statement that milk production was higher this year than in any previous year.


James Garfield Gardiner: I did not say any such thing. If my hon. friend is going to base his argument on something I did not say, I must object. I said the production of 1948 was higher than the production of ten years previous, but I did not say that it was higher than 1947. As a matter of fact, I said that that was no way to make a comparison-one year with another; that you had to take longer periods.


John Alpheus Charlton: I was just taking the statement of the right hon. minister.


James Garfield Gardiner: The hon. member did not take it right.


John Alpheus Charlton: Is the minister saying that the paper did not quote him correctly?


James Garfield Gardiner: I do not know what paper the hon. member is reading from.


John Alpheus Charlton: This is the Globe and Mail of January 6, from which I quoted last night. I quoted from the same speech last night but I did not quote this far. The article reads:
Canada's cheese production now is at its lowest point since 1900. he said. Milk production being down would account for about half the decrease, Mr. Gardiner felt. Another reason advanced, he said, was that producers weren't getting enough for their cheese. Even when net returns were lower, production had not sagged so badly, though.
As the minister has been so certain in his statement that the Liberal government was the only government that could get markets and hold them, I intend to put a few more figures on Hansard to show how wrong that statement is. I know the utter futility in trying to argue with the minister on figures,

but I do want to place these on the record. While they may not come from the dominion bureau of statistics, they are from the Industrial and Development Council of Canadian Meat Packers' letter on Canadian livestock products of March, 1949, and it shows the exports of hogs and pork to Great Britain, beginning with 1921, when the Liberal government was in power. The figures are:
Pounds
1921		 101,726,000
1922		 98,384.000
1923	  99,230,000
1924	  111,969,000
Then in 1925, when I understand the Conservative government was in power-


James Garfield Gardiner: No, 1929.


John Alpheus Charlton: 1925.


James Garfield Gardiner: The Liberal government was in power until 1930.


Gordon Graydon: That was the year they went out. They were defeated in the house.


John Alpheus Charlton: In 1925 and 1926, I understood, there was a Conservative government in power.


James Garfield Gardiner: No, it was a Liberal government. You were Liberal at that time.


John Alpheus Charlton: I give the figures:
Pounds
1925		 130.504,000
1926		 90.844,000
1927		 53.059,000
1928		 37,079,000
1929		 25,823,000
1930		 13,011,000
1931		 10,962,000
In 1932-don't laugh quite so quickly-


Douglas Scott Harkness: As the result of a Liberal administration.


John Alpheus Charlton: To continue:
Pounds
1932	 30,693,000
1933	 71,525,000


Gordon Graydon: They are getting over the hangover now.


John Alpheus Charlton: Pounds
1934		 119,708,000
1935		 124,328,000
1936		 154,769,000
Agricultural Products Act


Douglas Scott Harkness: R. B. Bennett pulled you out of the hole. I wonder if the minister can tell us what the situation is as far as the current hog contract with Great Britain is concerned. On the basis of the amount we are supposed to deliver, it should run to approximately 3 million pounds a week. By this time we should have sent them approximately 36 million pounds. The information I want to get is whether we are up to the contract or behind it at the present time.


James Garfield Gardiner: We are not up to the contract, but I have not been able to get complete figures, and since you are so particular about figures tonight I do not think I should quote them unless they are complete.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Can the minister give us the last figures that he has?


James Garfield Gardiner: I have not any figures at all that are authentic.


Wilfrid Garfield Case: Can the minister tell us whether we are selling any beef to Great Britain at the present time?


James Garfield Gardiner: No, we are not selling any beef to Great Britain. It is all going to the United States.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Title agreed to.
Bill reported.
Mr. Speaker:: Mr. Gardiner moves, seconded by Mr. Fournier (Hull), that the said bill be now read the third time. Is it the pleasure of the house to adopt the motion?


Gordon Graydon: On division.
Bill read the third time and passed.



CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAYS


Hon. Lionel Chevrier (Minister of Transport) moved: the second reading of Bill No. 13, respecting the appointment of auditors for national railways.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time, and the house went into committee thereon, Mr. Golding in the chair.
I will give the other figures if you wish, but I do not think they prove anything particularly. There was a steady increase from 1931 right through to 1939. The 1939 figure is much more than we sent to England last year or the year before.
James Garfield Gardiner: That was a Liberal government.


John Alpheus Charlton: It was not Liberal in 1932, 1933 and 1934.
On section 1-Auditors.


Lionel Chevrier: Perhaps I may be allowed to say a word. This is the usual annual bill which seeks the appointment of auditors for the Canadian National Railways. It is in the same form as it was last year, and it is introduced pursuant to section 13 of the Canadian National-Canadian Pacific Act. That act stipulates for the appointment of the auditors by joint resolution of both houses,

C.N.R.-Auditors
but since that method was found to be cumbersome many years ago, provision for a bill was adopted. The same firm of auditors is being appointed this year with the approval of parliament. They are George A. Touche and Company of Montreal and Toronto.


Thomas Langton Church: Is there any reason why the Auditor General could not act in connection with this work? The Auditor General has made very extensive improvements in the public service, and has given value for the money that it has cost. I fail to see, in the reports of the company which has been doing the auditing for some years past, any recommendations for the improvement of the services, land services, hotel services, ocean services, and all the rest of the services.
We had a big accident yesterday in the Don valley on the C.N.R. line. We had another one in my constituency last June where cattle were rolling all around. I think we should go into this question. The district which I represent and the surrounding area, the Niagara district and the Toronto district, have not been getting a fair share of the equipment. The head office never should have been established in Montreal. I think that the auditors should be changed every five or ten years. I believe that the Auditor General could do far better work than is being done at the present time.


Lionel Chevrier: There are a number of reasons why it is preferable to have an independent firm of auditors to do this work rather than the Auditor General. I do not want to go into the question at any length because we had quite a lengthy debate on the matter in 1947. The main reason is that a continuous audit is required. In order to be effective it must be one which does not cease. The staff which is assigned to this work ranges anywhere from forty to fifty. Then because of the operations of the Canadian National Railways, which has a large number of subsidiaries, and because some of those units are in the United States in places such as Duluth, St. Albans and Detroit, it would not be practical for the Auditor General to do the work. He would only have to employ agents, and he would use the people whom the firm of George A. Touche are already using in the United States. Then again the Auditor General must disclose publicly his report of the audit he makes, and if that were done in the case of the Canadian National Railways it would give to its competitors information which normally those competitors should not get. It is true that the audit report is referred to the committee on railways and shipping, and one can get there any information that is required. For these

reasons it has been considered, and I think wisely so, that a private firm of auditors such as this one would do a better job than the Auditor General.


Gordon Graydon: In what year were George A. Touche and Company appointed auditors for the Canadian National Railways; and who were the auditors before and how long did they hold that position?


Lionel Chevrier: The firm of George A. Touche and Company were appointed auditors in 1923, when the Canadian National railway system was established. They have continued to act ever since, except for the year 1935, when the firm of Clarkson, Gordon, Dilworth were appointed.


Gordon Graydon: For just one year?


Lionel Chevrier: Yes; but the firm of George A. Touche and Company did the auditing work of some of the predecessor companies of the Canadian National Railways, such as the Grand Trunk and other companies.


Gordon Graydon: What is the total cost of the audit?


Lionel Chevrier: The fee is $55,000 per year, which includes the cost of auditing the books of T.C.A. and the Canadian National securities trust.


Gordon Graydon: That covers the salaries and so on of all those identified with the company in that work?


Lionel Chevrier: That is right.


Mr. Stewart (Winnipeg North):: The minister said this audit required the continuous work of some forty or fifty people throughout the year, and as I understood him he said the audit fee was $55,000. It seems to me a rather extraordinary juxtaposition of circumstances that forty to fifty clerks should be employed throughout the year in a continuous audit and the cost should be only $55,000. Is the minister quite sure of his information?


Lionel Chevrier: Yes, but perhaps I did not explain that sufficiently. I was trying to reply to the suggestion of the hon. member for Broadview that it would be better if the Auditor General were to do this work. In my reply I stated that the staff employed on the work by the auditors ranged between forty and fifty, but they do not have those forty or fifty continuously on this work. While it is a continuous audit it is not necessary to have forty or fifty people on it continuously, but that number is employed on the audit at certain times of the year, particularly when the report is in preparation.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: Has the
minister inquired of the Auditor General as

to what might be the cost if his department conducted the audit?


Lionel Chevrier: No, I have not.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: Could that information be procured?


Lionel Chevrier: While I have not made that inquiry I remember a discussion which took place some two years ago, and I recall that if the Auditor General were to have a similar group of people doing this sort of work he could not do it for a smaller amount, particularly when one has in mind the fact that much of the work has to be done in the United States.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: I am sure this very reputable firm would do a first class job. I do not object to their doing it, but I just wondered what a comparable cost would be.


Wilfrid Garfield Case: Is any part of the auditors' report reviewed or commented upon or passed upon by the Auditor General, under the present set-up? I presume some reference would be made to the Auditor General, particularly if advances were made by the government to the railway company. I was curious as to whether there is any direct reference to the Auditor General of the auditors' report.


Lionel Chevrier: The answer to the question is no, because in 1936 parliament provided the method of audit of the books of the Canadian National Railways. That is in section 13 of the Canadian National-Canadian Pacific Act.
Game Export Act
some of which are accepted and some of which are not accepted but many of which are extremely useful in the operation of the Canadian National system.


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

James Garfield Gardiner: the second reading of Bill No. 16 to amend the Cheese and Cheese Factory Improvement Act.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time, considered in committee, reported, read the third time and passed.


Hon. J. A. MacKinnon (Minister of Mines and Resources) moved: the second reading of Bill No. 14, to amend the Game Export Act.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and the house went into committee thereon, Mr. Golding in the chair.
On section 1-"Game officer."
Stanley Howard Knowles: Will the minister explain the bill?


John Ritchie MacNicol: In private business-and I am now referring to large firms such as that with which I was associated for many years -very often the auditors advise the officials of the company where this or that could be done better, where this or that could be cut out, or where this or that amount of money could be saved. In the case of the government, the Auditor General in his report recommends what should or should not be done, and I think our dominion Auditor General is doing a very fine job. Do these auditors make recommendations to the railway officials on where they may be overstepping the mark here or wasting money there? Are they doing a job such as is done by the auditors who look after private firms?


Lionel Chevrier: Yes, very definitely. In their report to parliament, which I tabled this week and which has been referred to the committee on railways and shipping, they do review the operations of the railway over the years and make certain recommendations,


James Angus MacKinnon: Mr. Chairman, as the Game Export Act was originally drafted, it was contemplated that dominion game officers would be specially appointed under this act. Authority for such appointments was not, however, retained in the bill as enacted and there are no officers so appointed. Our policy is to procure the enforcement of the act by game officers appointed under the game laws of the provinces, by provincial police and by members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and customs officers, all of whom are given adequate authority ex officio by section 6.
In these circumstances the reference in section 2 (c) to persons "appointed to enforce the provisions of this act" should be deleted; and a special form of oath of office is unnecessary. Further, the wording of section 5 (2) has caused some confusion as to the territorial extent of the powers of officers who have authority under section 6 to enforce this act. The 1948 conference of provincial and dominion wildlife officials adopted a

Game Export Act
resolution requesting the present amendment in order that this confusion might be removed.


John Ritchie MacNicol: Mr. Chairman, may I ask the minister if it is the purpose of the department to appoint its own officers outside of those just mentioned?


James Angus MacKinnon: No.


John Ritchie MacNicol: The government does not intend to set up a staff of its own, but will confine enforcement activities to the provincial game officers, the provincial police and members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?


James Angus MacKinnon: That is right.


John Ritchie MacNicol: Are those officers to be paid extra for any activities in connection with this act?


James Angus MacKinnon: No, they are doing it as a public service. These people are not paid specially for their services.


Mr. Hodgson:: Has not the minister's department had game administration officers up until now?


James Angus MacKinnon: We have not had officers for the purpose of this bill.


Mr. Pearkes:: In recent years the ravages of wolves have made very considerable inroads in the herds of big game in the southern Yukon, Northwest Territories and northern British Columbia. Will the changes now contemplated by this amendment in any way reduce the protection which is now given? Will the numbers of individuals who are responsible for safeguarding game in the more remote parts of Canada be in any way decreased?
The damage being done in recent years has had a very serious effect upon those people who make their living by guiding hunting parties. These parties spend great sums of money in these northern parts. Statistics show that in the last few years there has been a serious depletion of the herds of big game in these areas. I think it is most important that nothing be done that will in any way diminish the inadequate protection which is now being given.


James Angus MacKinnon: This bill, Mr. Chairman, will not diminish the protection in any way. The problem mentioned by the member for Nanaimo (Mr. Pearkes) is a matter that is very much before the appropriate branch of my department at the present time. At the moment we are in consultation with the provincial authorities looking to the eradication of this menace.


Arthur Leroy Smith: May I ask the
minister the reason why we cannot export feathered game without removing the feathers?


James Angus MacKinnon: I am sure I do not know, Mr. Chairman. Possibly the member for Calgary West can tell me.


Arthur Leroy Smith: I think the answer is that the authorities are afraid the feathers might carry some disease.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.



CULLERS ACT


Alphonse Fournier: the second reading of Bill No. 15, to repeal the Cullers Act.


Gordon Graydon: Mr. Speaker, before you continue with this motion, this legislation was not mentioned in our agenda.


Alphonse Fournier: Yes, it was.


Gordon Graydon: It was not mentioned at first.


Alphonse Fournier: At first it was not mentioned, but I did mention it later.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee thereon, Mr. Golding in the chair.
On section 1-Act repealed.


Gordon Graydon: Will the parliamentary assistant to the minister explain the reason for repealing this act?


Mr. Mcllraith:: The Cullers Act is an act of the parliament of Canada passed in 1842. It was carried forward into the consolidated statutes in 1859 and now appears as chapter 39 of the 1927 revision of the Statutes of Canada. It is only applicable to the provinces of Ontario and Quebec.
Section 4 of the act provided that exporters of square and waney timber must have the timber measured and culled by a dominion culler appointed under that act. The last dominion culler was superannuated in 1921 at the age of sixty-seven. We have a situation now where many exporters of timber in this country are technically committing an offence under this old act. There is no way for them to avoid it. I might add that the provinces of Ontario and Quebec have statutes on the subject which provide for the culling of timber cut from crown land, but not covering the point in this old statute.


Gordon Graydon: Would the hon. member indicate why, when the revision took place in 1927, the act was not dropped at that time?


George James McIlraith: I suppose there would be no authority for the revision committee to drop it at that time, because it had not been repealed. There was nothing in the operation of law that rendered the act useless; it was simply not made use of. That would not give the revision committee authority to remove it.


Clayton Wesley Hodgson: Why does this pertain only to Ontario and Quebec?


George James McIlraith: Because it was passed in 1842 by the united Canada of that time which consisted only of the provinces of Ontario and Quebec.


Clayton Wesley Hodgson: Do you mean to say that the rest of the provinces have no cullers now?


George Alexander Drew: The simple fact is that all the provinces have their own cullers acts at the present time and this is a carryover which would have no application. Is that not the fact?


George James McIlraith: Technically, one section would have application, the section covering exporters.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.

Louis Stephen St-Laurent: the adjournment of the house. He said: I think we have reason to congratulate ourselves that the motion that was adopted with respect to possible sittings tomorrow has now lapsed and that when we adjourn we shall do so until three o'clock on Monday afternoon.
Cullers Act


John Ritchie MacNicol: What is the business for Monday?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: I have placed on the order paper notice of a motion to ask the house to consider on Monday, as the first order of business after routine proceedings, questions and notices of motions for the production of papers, government notices of motions for the purpose of moving a motion standing in my name with respect to the north Atlantic pact. If that motion is carried by the house it will be our intention to deal with only this one government notice of motion, that concerning the north Atlantic pact; and if it is disposed of before the end of the day, it will be our intention to revert to the standing order which would then call for the consideration of public bills.


Major James William Coldwell: I hope that later on, if time permits, some consideration will be given to according an opportunity to private members. There is no objection to the suggested procedure for Monday. In fact, I think the suggestion of the Prime Minister is one that the house should support. But I think that private members' days should be restored and that, if possible, time should be given for discussing some of the resolutions placed on the order paper by private members.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: After Monday there will be nothing in existence to interfere with the application of the standing orders.


Major James William Coldwell: That is all right.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and the house adjourned at 10.15 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Monday. March 28. 1949