1949-11-08

Mr. Speaker:: I have the honour to inform the house that I have received a message from His Excellency the Governor General, signed by his own hand, reading as follows:
Government House, Ottawa November 8, 1949
Members of the House of Commons :
I have received with great pleasure the address that you have voted in reply to my speech at the opening of parliament. I thank you sincerely for this address.
Alexander of Tunis



COMBINES INVESTIGATION ACT


Hon. Stuart S. Garson (Minister of Justice):: I wish to rise on a question of privilege. I should like to refer to the morning editions of the Ottawa Citizen and the Montreal Gazette, in which newspapers there is attributed to the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefen-baker) a statement to the effect that he recalled that he had been told "by Mr. Garson" last year that the government had used the dental case to test the Combines Investigation Act. I did not hear my hon. friend make any such statement, and if he did, it would be an incorrect one.


Mr. Diefenbaker:: I have no hesitation in saying that what my hon. friend says is correct. I referred to an answer made in the house by the then Minister of Justice, Mr. Ilsley, at page 2506 of Hansard of March 23, 1948. There was no reference to the present Minister of Justice (Mr. Garson).



REPORTS OF COMMITTEES


[Stage Direction]
Mr. L. O. Breiihaupt (Waterloo North) presented the first and second reports of the standing committee on railways, canals and telegraph lines, and moved that the first report be concurred in.
Motion agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
First report of standing committee on marine and fisheries.-Mr. Ashbourne.

[Stage Direction]
Joseph Celestin Nadon, Esquire, member for the electoral district of Gatineau, introduced by Right Hon. L. S. St. Laurent and Hon. Alphonse Fournier.
William Malcolm Mott, Esquire, member for the electoral district of New Westminster, introduced by Right Hon. L. S. St. Laurent and Hon. R. W. Mayhew.


Right Hon. L. S. St. Laurent (Prime Minister):: I wish to table further correspondence with the premiers of the ten Canadian provinces with respect to the dominion-provincial conference on amendments to the British North America Act. All the provinces agree that the conference shall open at Ottawa on January 10.
As was done in previous instances, I take it to be the desire of hon. members to have this correspondence printed as an appendix to Hansard, if Your Honour will give that instruction.


Mr. Speaker:: If it is the wish of the house, I shall give instructions accordingly.
(For text of further correspondence, see appendix, pages 1577-78.)



BANKRUPTCY ACT


Stuart Sinclair Garson: the first reading of Bill No. 149 (from the Senate), respecting bankruptcy.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



PRIVATE BILLS


[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 150, for the relief of Chesna Laing Shapiro.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 151, for the relief of Edith Turcotte. -Mr. Winkler.
[Stage Direction]
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Bill No. 152, for the relief of Irene Brodwin Miller.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 153, for the relief of Jean Ruth Montgomery Loiselle.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 154, for the relief of Joseph Charles Michel Emery.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 155, for the relief of Lyla Almina Wharry Johnston.-Mr. Weir.
Bill No. 156, for the relief of Marjorie Helen Glass Nixon.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 157, for the relief of Olga Hetman-chuk Dorval.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 158, for the relief of Grace Melina Cotton Crawford.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 159, for the relief of Thomas Gillespie Shields.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 160, for the relief of Czerna Berger Borodow.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 161, for the relief of Freda Tippett Hart.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 162, for the relief of Rebecca Rosa Jacobs Bershadsky.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 163, for the relief of Etta Valerie Sherwin Sperber.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 164, for the relief of Sandy Douglas Carbone.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 165, for the relief of Hellen Isabel Dawson Parlee.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 166, for the relief of Violet Emma Woodhall Brownridge.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 167, for the relief of James Samuel Hatton.-Mr. Weir.
Bill No. 168, for the relief of Anne Denburg Hershcovich.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 169, for the relief of Ruth Baranoff Clark.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 170, for the relief of Viateur Longpre.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 171, for the relief of Evalina May Carter O'Connell.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 172, for the relief of Borys Zaryn. -Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 173, for the relief of Alice Dorothy Rolison Cransky.-Mr. Winkler.


Mr. M. J. Coldwell (Roseiown-Biggar):: Mr. Speaker, I ask leave to move, seconded by the hon. member for Vancouver East (Mr. Maclnnis), the adjournment of the house under standing order 31, for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely, the action of the government in allowing a further and drastic increase in domestic rents, the effect of which will further increase the cost of living in this country, aggravate the housing shortage, and seriously impair the health and living standards of our people.
[Mr. Garson.l


Mr. Speaker:: A similar motion was moved yesterday, but was not proceeded with because the house had an opportunity of discussing the matter during the day on the motion to go into supply. However, the house decided to discuss another matter. It may be that the house wishes to discuss this matter today.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: I do not think the motion is strictly in order, since the matter could be discussed in the debate on the budget; but in view of the general public interest in this matter, and because no hon. members object, I shall read the motion to the house:
Mr. Coldwell asks leave to move, seconded by Mr. Maclnnis. the adjournment of the house under standing order 31, for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely, the action of the government in allowing a further and drastic increase in domestic rents, the effect of which will further increase the cost of living in this country, aggravate the housing shortage, and seriously impair the health and living standards of our people.
Has the hon. member the leave of the house to introduce this motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: Before the hon. member begins his remarks, may I say that I would not want the action I have taken today to be considered as a precedent, since it is contrary to other precedents in this house.


Major James William Coldwell: Mr. Speaker, I think the house and the people generally will be glad that you have permitted this motion to be moved today.
There is great concern across the country following the announcement by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) permitting another- and I emphasize the word "another"-and drastic increase in domestic rents-without, incidentally, any appeal to any body for the purpose of determining whether or not there is justice in that increase. I am glad, too, you did not hold that this question might be discussed in the budget debate, because I would remind hon. members that that debate is partly concluded, and some hon. members who might have liked to discuss this matter would be precluded from doing so because they have exhausted their right to speak.
Of course I readily admit that the policy announced by the Minister of Finance was in line with the general policy of decontrol instituted by the government after the war. We hold the view that the removal of beneficial controls and subsidies following the war has resulted in the cost of living in this country reaching unprecedented heights. The government may say that this was all done before the last general election, and that therefore this policy was approved by the electors of

Canada on June 27 last, when they gave the government the green light to proceed with its policies. But I do not believe the people thought the government would allow drastic increases in domestic rents before something had been done to provide housing accommodation, which would be within the reach of great masses of the Canadian people. If the view is taken, as is sometimes put forward, that the people of Canada supported the policy laid down by the government in these particulars, then all I can say is that many of the people of Canada who are complaining today are getting precisely what they voted for. I am convinced, though, that had many thousands of Canadians realized that within five months of the election further increases of twenty and twenty-five per cent in rents would be announced, the government would not have had the huge following in this house which it has today. Hundreds of thousands of families are paying rents for inadequate accommodation far beyond their means. Overcrowding in every part of Canada, particularly in every large urban centre, is, I think hon. gentlemen will agree with me, the order of the day. Low-income groups are paying rents far beyond their capacity.
No provision in the way of low rental accommodation has been made for hundreds of thousands of families who have no veteran under their roof. Let us not forget that. It was our obligation to make every possible provision for the veterans who served this country in the last war. But there are many thousands of men and women engaged in industry, who stayed in industry in order to serve their country during that great struggle, and for them no provision has been made. It has been estimated by the Community Planning Association of Canada that there are a half million tenant families in Canada who can afford no more, and many indeed much less, than $30 a month for shelter. This I presume is based on the government's own advice, given several years ago to our people, that no more than twenty per cent of the family income should be expended for shelter. Many families in Canada today are compelled to pay from forty to fifty per cent of the family income for shelter.
The shortage of houses is not a new thing in this country. For many years in every part of Canada thousands of families were awaiting housing accommodation, on a rental basis, which they could not get. There were more families than there was housing or shelter accommodation to provide for them. I recall an interesting debate in this house on February 17, 1936, in which the deplorable housing conditions revealed by the 1931 census were discussed. I participated in that debate,
Rent Control
which was initiated by the hon. member for Broadview (Mr. Church). I recall that I drew attention to the fact that there were thousands of members of the building trades idle at that time. It was a time, as hon. members will recall, of serious unemployment in this country. The lumbering industry was suffering from serious unemployment and a lack of markets. The manufacturers of building materials and other supplies required in the erection of homes were maintaining idle plants while there were many thousands of Canadians on relief.
In other words, we had the resources; we had the artisans; we had the lumber and the factories to produce all we needed in order to build houses. Nothing was done. Thousands of our young men were idling in relief camps at twenty cents a day. Had we had the policy this country should have had at that time under a Liberal administration, and the year before under a Conservative administration, we could have utilized the materials, resources and human labour forces in such a way as to make some provision for the houses that were lacking in 1931 and the years before.
During those depression years, Mr. Speaker, the governments of the day did nothing effective to promote the building of houses. In other countries, nation-wide projects were undertaken, notably by the newly-elected Labour government of New Zealand; by the government of Sweden; by the government of the United Kingdom, and by the governments of the other civilized countries. If hon. gentlemen will look at the census reports for 1941, particularly volume 9 at page 182, they will find that the census returns show that 18-1 per cent of the housing units were overcrowded, and that 978,227 Canadians were living under overcrowded conditions.


Mr. Gibson (Comox-Alberni):: How many were empty at that time?


Major James William Coldwell: I do not know how many were empty. There may have been some empty houses. If there were empty houses in 1941, Mr. Speaker, two years after the war broke out, it underlines the fact that in 1940 and 1941 thousands of persons were unemployed in this country. In the first year of war there were approximately 400,000 persons unemployed and on relief. These deplorable conditions continued until the destruction of war enabled employment to become widespread, improve Canadian farm prices, and pull us out of a depression we had not managed to get out of under a Liberal administration in all the years that went before. I should add that neither the labour nor the materials were available in 1941 and the war years that followed.

Rent Control
The government points, of course, with pride to what has been done since the war ended. A number of new housing units have been built. But let me point this out. Equally important is the kind of house that can be bought or rented by families- whether they are accessible to the wealthy few or the less wealthy many. Judged by this standard, the housing policy of the government since the war has failed. Judged by this standard, the consternation of many people who suffer from inflated rents, and those who view with misgivings the possibility of further wage demands and salary increases, cannot be ignored.
I have already said that overcrowding persists in this country. Let us remember that overcrowding, resulting in large measure from high rents and high prices, will ultimately have a serious effect upon the health of the people generally. With the greater proportion of the family income absorbed in payment for shelter, it will undoubtedly mean a lowering of food standards. When food standards are lowered and supplies of milk for the family have to be reduced, physical deterioration of many families follows.
Let us remember that tens of thousands of houses and apartments built since the war, with the exception of those made available to veterans-and I am glad that lower rental accommodation is available to veterans-are renting today at $50, $60, and $70 or more per month. Indeed, this is not only permitted but encouraged under the government's housing plans. The guarantees offered to private builders have resulted in the building of apartments to rent, in most cases at not less than $70 a month. When rentals as high as this are asked, invariably the landlords say that this figure has been approved by the government of Canada. The dominion bureau of statistics reported that in 1948 thousands of urban families in rented shelters were paying no more than $30 a month; but when we examine the kind of accommodation they had at that rate, we see that they were in overcrowded rooms, overcrowded housekeeping rooms, overcrowded small houses, and that overcrowded conditions prevailed generally among that group of people. For this important group of Canadian families, which, again according to the bureau of statistics, is about one in every four, little housing has been built since the beginning of the great depression in the 1930's.
A large proportion of the Canadian people have been left entirely out of the picture since the war, because the government's policy has not resulted in the building of housing units within their reach. Now, before making any provision for this group, the government announces a drastic increase in
[Mr. ColdwellJ
rents, twenty per cent for unheated units and twenty-five per cent for heated units. This is a substantial increase, following, as it does, three previous increases of five, ten and four per cent respectively. It should be remembered that those increases, together with the twenty per cent or twenty-five per cent now, will mean an increase of forty per cent or more since the end of world war II.
No doubt some landlords have been receiving rental returns that are inadequate; but had we continued a proper rent control system, these surely could have been adjusted. This cannot, however, justify the government's announcement of the large increases that were announced last week. There can be no excuse for permitting at this time increases as much as twenty and twenty-five per cent all round.
One has only to consult the advertising columns of the newspapers in any city-in Ottawa, if you will-to realize the heights to which lack of accommodation and competition for new-occupancy dwellings have forced rents. In one of the local papers a couple of weeks ago a two-bedroom bungalow was advertised for rent, unfurnished, at $125 a month. A census of overcrowding in the urban centres of Canada would indicate that thousands of families are living under conditions that are intolerable, and for inadequate accommodation, are paying rents that can only be described as extortionate. Yet now the government allows a further increase of twenty-five per cent or twenty per cent, which will only aggravate the intolerable conditions to which I have referred.
This house, Mr. Speaker, must say explicitly to the government that the recent announcement of the Minister of Finance must be reconsidered and that rental controls must remain until the provinces are prepared to step into the field and undertake the protection of the Canadian people, if it should prove to be their obligation to do so. Indeed, until the menace of high rentals has been removed, the government, in its reconsideration of this policy, at least should provide for appeals to rental control boards across the country before rent increases are put into effect, and indicate that they should apply not only with respect to houses that have been under rental control, but also to some of these new occupancy dwellings and apartments as well.
I know that this is a problem which affects the urban members of this house more directly than it affects the rural members, but I appeal to all hon. members to join in this protest. The announcement of the Minister of Finance shows an entire disregard of the welfare of the great masses of the Canadian people, and this should not be

tolerated by the house. I only wish it were possible at this time to move an amendment to test the feeling of the house and that hon. members in all parts of the house would feel free to vote for such an amendment on the merits of the case.


Mr. Donald M. Fleming (Eglinton):: Yesterday, Mr. Speaker, a motion was offered to you for the adjournment of the house for the purpose of discussing this subject. At that time your ruling was that the subject could be discussed during the course of the day, on the motion to go into committee of supply, and therefore you did not permit discussion of the subject. I had assumed that had the question arisen today, your ruling would have been that the subject might be discussed on the bill to amend the National Housing Act, which is to be considered at a later stage of today's proceedings.


Mr. Knowles:: We could not take a chance on that.


Donald Methuen Fleming: But, Mr. Speaker, you have permitted debate to proceed on this motion, and I should like to contribute some thoughts with reference to this subject of rent control, particularly in the light of the announcement made by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) in this house on Thursday night last.
It seems to me to be a most anomalous situation that we have two ministers, one of whom, the Minister of Finance, is responsible for administration of all aspects of the housing problem that fall under the subject of rent control, or the controlling powers of the wartime prices and trade board, and another, the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply (Mr. Winters), who is supposed to be responsible for all matters in which the federal authority is interested that fall under the subject matter of housing. The Minister of Reconstruction and Supply is responsible for administration of the National Housing Act. Here we have a dual system, with one minister not in a position to announce policy in a field that falls within the province of the other, and creating confusion in debates in the house, and also in government policy and government administration. It seems to me that in the proceedings of this house yesterday and today, as well as last week, we have had clear evidence that this dual system should not be allowed to continue. It is high time that the government made up its mind to unify its program and policy, if any, with reference to housing. You cannot take out of the field of housing this question of rent control or freezing controls on tenant-occupied accommodation and treat that matter as though
Rent Control
it were a problem separate and apart from the problem of the housing needs of the Canadian people.
Rent controls became necessary because of a critical scarcity of housing. A critical scarcity of housing came about partly because of wartime conditions and partly because of deliberate government policy. In this respect I do not dissociate government policy from the conduct of the war, but I say that this scarcity, which has existed for some years now, and still exists in critical proportions, is attributable to government policy, for it became government policy during the war to remove much of the productive capacity of the building and construction industry from its normal pursuits and to devote it to war production. Labour was siphoned off from the construction trades, and the scarcity of housing continued to accumulate. Because we had an abnormal situation it became the duty of the government to step into this field and to take measures to control rents and to impose certain freezing regulations, simply because these measures were necessary to cope with the scarcity, an abnormal situation itself directly attributable to government policy.
What is the background? What are the conditions from which this new statement of government policy made by the Minister of Finance stems? It certainly does not stem from a situation in which the problem of scarcity has been corrected. It does not stem from an abundance of housing in Canada. The conditions out of which, the background against which, this last announcement of government policy has been made are conditions as critical as at any time in the past. Sir, I am not going to repeat what I said on this subject in the house on October 31, but I do remind hon. members, every one of whom has a responsibility in the light of this new statement of government policy, to consider facts such as these: first, that Mr. Mansur, the president of Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, said last January:
The number of household groups, including not only families but also individuals who maintain households, exceed the number of front doors by approximately 350,000.
And again, the statement of General Young, vice-president of Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, made on April 28:
Canada's housing situation is getting worse instead of better.
And the statement of the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply of recent date:
New housing, even at the present record rate of production, is barely keeping up with current needs and making no important inroads into the backlog.

Rent Control
That, sir, is the background. That, sir, is the state of affairs out of which the government has enunciated a new policy of permitting increases in controlled rents, extending up to twenty-five per cent across the board.
It needs to be said, and said most emphatically, that this announcement represents a government decision, and a decision by the government alone. Parliament has had no voice whatever in the new order that has been made. Parliament has not been consulted in any way. The Minister of Finance simply came into the house and announced a fait accompli. He merely acquainted the house with the fact that the government, by executive decree, had imposed these increases ranging up to twenty-five per cent.


Mr, Abbott:: No landlord has to charge them.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Speaker, we had some enlightening comments from the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) a few days ago on the subject of naivete. I think that the Minister of Finance has broken all records for naivete in the statement he has just made.


Mr. Abbott:: That is a matter of opinion.


Donald Methuen Fleming: And, sir, the position in which parliament is left in dealing with a subject of this kind is a most uncomfortable and inconvenient one, because all that parliament can do now is to discuss something that has already been decided. Of course, if it ever came to a question of voting on this, the Minister of Finance would be rising in his place, as he did only yesterday, and saying: Well, there may be something in this argument that has been made from various quarters of the house, but this motion comes from the opposition; therefore it becomes a test of confidence in the government, and therefore I reject the motion or the amendment. Then the government members are called upon to fall in line, because the Minister of Finance says it becomes a test of confidence in the government.
Well, sir, in the form in which this matter comes before the house today we have not even the opportunity of introducing an amendment or a motion. That is most unfortunate, and for that very reason it seems to me more incumbent upon any government supporters in the house, who are not prepared to swallow this government announcement whole, to rise in their places and say so, and not to follow along like driven sheep simply because the Minister of Finance says it is government policy.
Sir, nothing could have been more arbitrary than the way in which this increase has been brought about-no consultation with parliament, no opportunity on the part

of parliament to investigate the matter; simply an executive order more far-reaching, I venture to say, in its effect on the homes of Canadians throughout this broad land than anything else that has been done or transacted or said in this parliament throughout the present session.
It is an amazing thing that while parliament is in session the thing which has affected the lives and homes of Canadians more than any other since this session began was something done outside parliament, and parliament is simply notified at quarter to eleven one evening that it has been done. Moreover, it will continue to be possible for the government, simply by such executive decrees, without consulting this parliament, to make sweeping changes that affect Canadian homes by the hundreds of thousands, if we permit the government to enjoy the powers that they possess today under the Transitional Measures Act. This points, as clearly as anything can possibly point, to the inherent error in the way in which parliament has clothed this government with powers in view of the alleged national emergency. I am not going to retrace the whole ground covered in the debate of the first 1949 session, when we of the official opposition pointed the way to the government as to the method which ought to be taken in laying a proper legislative groundwork for rent control. But, of course, the government were not accepting suggestions of that kind. Rather they insisted on arrogating to themselves those wide omnibus powers under the Transitional Measures Act, and then by executive decree making the sweeping orders under the powers conferred by that act.
I wish to place before the new members of the house one or two extracts from significant passages in the debate on that measure. I recall two important remarks made by the leader of the opposition (Mr. Drew) in the debate. First of all I shall quote his statement of March 14, 1949, when at page 1446 of Hansard he said:
The time has come for the government to place before parliament a statute dealing with the housing problem, and to provide in that statute clear and unmistakable terms which can be understood by both landlords and tenants so the confusion which exists today may be brought to an end.
I would have thought that that was a very constructive suggestion, but the government rejected it. They wanted an omnibus bill giving them sweeping powers, and then under that measure to have the power by executive decree to make orders such as the one which was announced by the minister on Thursday night. Sir, can you imagine anything that contributes more to chaos and confusion, as well as to hardship, in Canadian homes today

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than this continued uncertainty as to when another executive order is to be made? People are simply at the mercy of executive orders; for these orders are made whether parliament is in session or parliament is not in session. Their elected representatives do not control the situation. Their elected representatives, by reason of the nature of the legislation under which these orders are made, have not had any voice whatever in the making of the decisions embodied in this order.
At page 1448 of Hansard of the same date the leader of the opposition said:
I hope that no one will suggest that any hon. member who opposes the continuance of these wartime powers is opposing rent control or any other provision to meet the situation which has arisen very largely as a result of the activities of the government itself.
We Progressive Conservatives said that the measure embodying this omnibus power was an inherently wrong method, and asked the government to bring in a proper measure to embody the legislative provisions needed with respect to the relationship between landlord and tenant in this emergency situation.
At page 1484 I had some comments to make -and I mention these with diffidence and simply because it fell to my lot to follow my leader in the debate. Hansard of March 15, 1949, page 1484, contains my following words:
It was made quite clear by my leader in his remarks yesterday that an adverse vote on this omnibus resolution by any member of this party-
The Progressive Conservative party.
-is not to be considered as opposition to rent control, a proper statutory measure of rent control. That has been made abundantly clear by the observations of the leader of the opposition at pages 1446 and 1448 of Hansard yesterday, so let there be no misunderstanding of the attitude of the members of this official opposition, of which I think we had a veiled suggestion last evening in the question asked by a member to your right, Mr. Speaker, on the subject of rent control. It has to be a proper measure; it has to be a measure in proper statutory form, not something hidden in an omnibus resolution of this kind.
We followed that up; and when the bill to continue the Transitional Measures Act came before the house for second reading we offered an amendment which is to be found at page 1743 of Hansard for 1949.
This was the amendment introduced by the official opposition to the motion for second reading:
That the said bill be not now read the second time but that the subject matter thereof be referred to the standing committee on banking and commerce with instructions that they have power to recommend a specific measure relating to rent control, and other specific measures relating respectively to other matters provided for in the said bill.
After some discussion, Mr. Speaker ruled the amendment out of order, the house
dividing on our appeal from the ruling. The ruling was upheld, and the division is recorded at page 1766 of Hansard.
I now turn to some of the features of the statement of the Minister of Finance on Thursday night. He has announced that the government proposes a reference to the Supreme Court of Canada to determine the constitutionality of federal rent control. If doubts have been raised, I suppose it is desirable that this matter be settled in that way. I think it might be asked, however, and with some justification, why that course was not followed earlier; because had there been a decision earlier on that question by the Supreme Court of Canada it certainly would have enabled us to know even at this stage the position with reference to the powers of parliament. Even if a favourable decision had been made as long ago as a year, it is reasonable to expect that the judges of the supreme court would have indicated the formula by which the emergency in this respect is to be tested, under which the dominion would derive its power. However, that aspect of the announcement will probably be generally approved.
I turn now to the specific increases made by executive order, and I ask members of the House of Commons what their position is in the light of these measures. It is not an answer for any member of the house-least of all, members supporting the government- to say: Oh, well; that was done by the government under special power, and did not come directly before the house in any manner which would have permitted action by the house. That would be turning our backs upon our responsibility; it would be an endeavour to escape responsibilities which the house must meet, in the face of this government's decisions.
Apparently parliament is not to be afforded any opportunity to review the evidence upon which the government proceeded to make its order. The government has refused to allow the house to appoint a select committee to review housing conditions in this country, or to consider such evidence as the rent control authorities have, and upon which they based their recommendations to the government now embodied in this cabinet decree.
Has there been any progress in decontrol? The house would like to know. We had a statement from the government on October 3, in reply to some questions asked with a view to eliciting information as to the progress which had been made under previous rent control amending orders. At page 442 of Hansard we see that the order of April 14, 1947, concerning landlords who suffered grievous hardship from their inability to recover

Rent Control
possession of their own housing accommodation, permitted recovery of possession in a total of 8,388 cases up to August 31, 1949.
Then, under another rent control order effective November 1, 1948, the wartime prices and trade board permitted landlords who needed housing accommodation for their own personal residence, and who had owned it since November 1, 1947, to give to the tenant six months' notice to vacate. The government reported at page 442 of Hansard of the present session that up to August 31, 1948, such notices had been filed to a total of 9,900. I do not know whether that should be the year 1949; I daresay the "1948" is a mistake. The filing of notices does not signify that those landlords recovered possession of their houses.
That is about all the information given to the house on the subject. It is on that inadequate information that the members of the House of Commons will have to accept and swallow the government's decision, or say, as I hope they will say: We are not satisfied with this. As a matter of fact, more information came out in this morning's press than members of the House of Commons have been given in the house-and more than they would have had opportunity to obtain, I am sure, so long as we are to be denied any opportunity to appoint a committee of the house to consider these questions and to adduce firsthand evidence.
A Canadian Press dispatch appearing in this morning's press contains just about all the information available to us on the subject. It states:
The boost in rental ceilings which comes into effect ten days before Christmas may hit some 4 million Canadians living in rented rooms, flats, apartments and houses, government officials estimated today.
The official based this estimate on a rental survey which showed that approximately 1,500,000 flats, apartments and houses across the country could be the target for the twenty and twenty-five per cent increases in rents.
Other government estimates:
1.	That at least ninety per cent of leased accommodation in the large urban areas is rented on a month-to-month basis. Tenants in this category will be among the first to be hit by the authorized hikes.
2.	Some of this type of accommodation is rented on a weekly and not a monthly basis, and that means that only a week's notice-not a month- need be given by the landlord. If the tenant doesn't pay he can be pushed out the day before Christmas, December 24.
3.	In most cases, however, the rental increases will not go into effect before February 1, 1950. Tenants renting on a monthly basis will have to receive a month's notice as from December 31.
4.	If the government had lifted the controls completely to meet the wishes of Canada's landlords, urban rentals in the big cities would have increased by approximately 100 per cent.

5.	Taking into consideration both rural and urban areas, the new ceilings generally are considered to be about 25 per cent below the level which would prevail if the regulations had been removed completely.
6.	In some areas landlords may not be able to get the tenants to pay the full 20 and 25 per cent hikes. In these areas, such as Kirkland Lake, Ontario, the supply is slightly higher than demand, and it appeared likely that the landlords in these areas "will have to be satisfied with whatever they can get."
The officials emphasized that accommodation constructed since January 1, 1947, does not come under the government's controls, and therefore the increases do not apply. Rentals prices in these cases were beyond the edict of the government's rental administrator. Accommodations in this class are estimated at about 50,000 units. The same thing applies to accommodation vacated on or after November 1, 1948. No estimate was given of the number of units in this category. Tenants with long term leases would not be affected by the rental increases until the leases expire.
That is the end of the statement appearing in the Canadian Press dispatch today and which, as I have said, contains more information than the government has chosen to give the house. I think it leads inescapably to the conclusion that it is high time that the house took this question out of the hands of the government, and put it on a basis where parliament will be making the decisions, where parliament will assert its right to full consultation and to obtain all the information that is available and is required to make a proper decision on the question, and where we will not be compelled simply to accept a fait accompli delivered to us by the government.
Representations have been made to the government by responsible bodies such as the Canadian Legion, which put forward a very strong submission, which apparently has been completely ignored by the government in the decision it has made. Organizations which are close to the problem, such as the federation of mayors and municipalities, and other organizations which have made a firsthand study of the matter, have also made representations, but apparently they have received little or no consideration.
There were rumours going around the house last Thursday afternoon that an announcement was to be made that evening in regard to increases in controlled rents. Rumour had it that the increase might be 10 per cent, or in some cases 15 per cent. I venture to say there is not a member of the house, apart from members of the government, who dreamed for a moment that increases would be allowed to the extent of such figures as 20 and 25 per cent. It would be interesting if the supporters of the government were to come forward and offer their views specifically on the percentages of increase which the government has decided

upon. Let us hear from some of the members of the house who support the government, who were very eloquent on this subject during the election campaign, and who said, for instance, that they were going to uphold rent control.
As a matter of fact, there is one hon. member of the house, a colleague of mine from the city of Toronto, who interested himself in this subject to the point where he wanted to give assistance to the government in a reference pending before the Ontario courts regarding the constitutionality of federal rent control. On October 20 he wrote a letter to every hon. member of the house pointing out that the lawsuit was coming up, and that the federal government was to be represented by counsel. He went on to say:
It has occurred to me that your constituents may be interested in providing counsel for the government with evidence to assist the court at the trial. I have many constituents who wish to present evidence for consideration of counsel representing the government. Because of this, I shall be pleased to work with you or your constituents as to evidence which your constituents may want to present, all with the view to ensuring a full and proper trial of this case now before the courts.
The letter is signed "Charles Henry, member for Toronto-Rosedale".
I should be interested to know the views of the hon. member for Rosedale on these increases. I should be interested to hear the views of Liberal members from the city of Toronto who when at home in their ridings have not been silent on the subject of the difficulties of housing conditions. We will await with interest their contribution to the discussion, and their specific comments on the increases that have been promulgated by the government.
I mentioned that no one expected that the increases would reach the figures announced of 20 and 25 per cent. One would like to know what relationship these percentages bear to uncontrolled rents, or what the increases might be expected to be if rents were decontrolled. That is one of the things that I think a parliamentary committee, if it had the opportunity to go into the question, would like to know.
The minister has talked on previous occasions-and I think this is the expression he has used-of "cushioning the shock of complete decontrol." If the 25 per cent increase represents a cushioning of the shock, then I think that the tenants of Canada will plead with Providence to spare them any more of these government cushions. On what was the percentage based in each case? How did the government arrive at it? It takes one's mind back to the method, described by an hon. member of the house, by which the
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government arrived at the particular percentage of devaluation of the Canadian dollar. He described it as a case of putting some figures in a hat, and then somebody, presumably the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott), put his hand in the hat and drew out a figure.


Mr. Cleaver:: That was the Tory policy.


Donald Methuen Fleming: That was the gist of government action in this case.


Hughes Cleaver: It was the announced Tory policy.


Donald Methuen Fleming: If the hon. member for Halton (Mr. Cleaver) knows where the government got the figures of 20 and 25 per cent, I will be happy to sit down and let him tell the house.


Hughes Cleaver: By using the best of good judgment.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Isn't that informative?


Hughes Cleaver: Just as informative as your speech. You have not committed yourself on rent control.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I infer that the hon. member for Halton has given his complete blessing and approval to these percentage increases. He says they represent good judgment. It will remain for other government supporters either to rise and applaud, as has the hon. member for Halton, this government cushioning of the shock by means of these increases, or to say that they have different opinions. It remains for hon. members of the house to say. If they are satisfied with these arbitrary percentages, very well; they may well say so. Certainly their silence, if they do not speak to the contrary, will properly be interpreted in the same way as the words of the hon. member for Halton who has said that these percentages are the result of good judgment. The house, the country at large, and tenants by the hundreds of thousands, are left in a state of continuing uncertainty. It is the tenants particularly who are going to suffer from the uncertainty because they are left in a position where, overnight, the government can announce more increases, and apply more of these measures that they call cushioning the shock.
Now, sir, here are some of the things which I say have not been considered by the government. In the first place the circumstances of the tenants have not been taken into account. There are great numbers of Canadian tenants to whom this measure is not going to be a cushion but a great shock. The government does not seem to be aware of the fact, as members of parliament should be aware from their personal relations with their constituents, that many Canadian tenants are just holding their heads above

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water today, with limited incomes and the high cost of living. This is one reason why from now on parliament should take over from the government responsibility in regard to this matter, and make laws to meet the need. Now, with an increase by such a large percentage, it simply means that great numbers of tenants are not going to be able to pay these rents. I am sure I do not need to quote figures in regard to the increase in the cost of living. As of October 1 that figure had reached 162-2, (1935-1939 = 100) and now the government decrees another substantial increase which will seriously affect those families whose economic affairs are in such delicate balance today. I do not think it was much of a contribution toward easing the fears of such people for the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) to make the announcement he made in Montreal on November 6, where he is quoted in a Canadian Press dispatch as follows:
He expressed the opinion further wage demands would not be justified-"it must be understood that in recent years wage rates have gone up very much higher than rental costs."


Douglas Charles Abbott: And that is true.


Donald Methuen Fleming: The minister must be aware that already notice has been served by some labour organizations that increases in wages are going to be demanded in the light of these increased rentals.
On the other hand, and I want to emphasize this, the order is simply flat and arbitrary in its application, and does not take account of the fact that today many people who are occupying quite comfortable and in fact luxurious housing accommodation can well afford to pay uncontrolled rents. I have never been able to understand why wealthy people who choose to live in luxurious apartments or to rent luxurious homes must be protected by rent control. I wish to see rent control preserved now for the people who need it in order to keep their heads above water. I do not see any need to retain rent control for the benefit of people in comfortable circumstances.
In the next place this order, because it is flat and arbitrary, does not take account of the great variety of conditions existing across Canada. There is the greatest variety; yet this is an arbitrary order that applies right across the country without regard to geographical variations, or variations as between urban and rural municipalities.
In the next place it does not take account of those tenants who are subletting their properties at handsome profits. There is no provision in the order under which the owners may repossess such accommodation.
In the next place the timing of this announcement has been almost incredibly bad. Here we are with winter coming on and

these increases are announced, some of them to take effect before Christmas and others in the middle of the winter. If this was in the mind of the government all along it would have been interesting if they had announced it before the by-elections were held a week or two ago, so the people in those constituencies would have had an opportunity to pass judgment.
In the next place, this order does not take account of any obligation on the part of landlords to repair the premises. There is nothing in this order providing that landlords who increase rents by these large percentages are required to carry out any repairs, which in many cases have been delayed for years.
In the next place the order does not relate itself specifically to the increased costs of the landlords. For instance, on August 22 the minister announced that in the city of Toronto a four per cent increase in rents would be allowed to take care of increased taxes accompanying re-assessment in that city. I should like to know whether in the case of my city the latest increase is in addition to that four per cent, or whether the four per cent is to be swallowed up in the increase of twenty or twenty-five per cent.
In the next place this order makes no attempt at all to deal with the discrimination that still exists in a great number of cases, even in the same locality and the same community. When the deadline was first established in 1941 in connection with rent control, many landlords missed it, and since that time they have not had an adequate opportunity to bring their rents into line with others in close proximity to them. These discriminations are continuing, and are being exaggerated by this flat percentage increase.
In conclusion, sir, in the face of arbitrary actions like these by this government I say it is high time this house stepped into the picture and undertook a review of the situation by a proper committee. We are not going to meet the need by sudden, drastic measures of this kind. In his statement, at page 1434 of Hansard, the minister said:
... it is our policy to permit this adjustment to be made gradually rather than abruptly.
Well, Mr. Speaker, if this is a gradual adjustment I think the people of Canada had better learn how long and to what extent they must continue to be at the mercy of these arbitrary decisions on the part of the government. Let this house make it known to the government now that we want an end to the chaos and confusion caused by these sudden government decisions. Let us undertake in parliament now a proper review of this whole situation and write legislative measures with due regard for the needs of all Canadians, which will meet this situation.


Douglas Charles Abbott: Mr. Speaker, this might be an appropriate time for me to say a few words on this question of rent control and the reasons which prompt the government to announce the measures of decontrol which I announced in the house last Thursday evening.
With respect to the remarks of my hon. friend the leader of the C.C.F. group (Mr. Cold well), let me say at once that his position and that of his party is thoroughly consistent. As he said quite frankly, they advocated the continuation of all controls after the end of the war, including rental control. The stand they take today is no different from the stand they have taken right through the piece. The position of the Liberal party has been different. Before the election of 1945 we pledged ourselves to a gradual and orderly decontrol policy. In fact rental control is the last of the major wartime controls remaining. The attitude of the Progressive Conservative party is not nearly so consistent. Pretty steadily throughout the life of the last parliament they advocated the abolition of all controls.


Some hon. Members:: No, no.


Douglas Charles Abbott: My hon. friend qualified that, of course, by saying they were not in favour of abolishing rent control.


Mr. Graydon:: You are not right on that.


Douglas Charles Abbott: I think my good friend the former member for Stanstead, Mr. John Hackett, was the only member of that party who openly said that he favoured the abolition of all controls. I do not want to impute motives to anyone, but I think there were a good many who were advocating that policy privately; but I repeat that between 1945 and 1949 they were generally advocating the removal of all controls.


Donald Methuen Fleming: The minister has made a statement, which we have denied, and I ask him to point out where the Progressive Conservative party said it advocated the abolition of all controls. The same thing was said by another minister in the last house, and it was denied at that time. We never advocated the abolition of rent control.


Douglas Charles Abbott: Mr. Speaker, as I said, they did not dare to openly advocate the abolition of rent control. They pussyfooted on that as they did on a number of other things, but nevertheless the general policy of the Tory party was to abolish controls. They qualified it because they knew there were so many tenants in the country they would not dare to openly advocate the removal of those controls.
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Gordon Graydon: What did you do in the byelections? You did not dare to advocate it then.


Douglas Charles Abbott: I was making this statement, Mr. Speaker, as a preface to what I have to say about rental controls as such, and about the circumstances which prompted the government to make this further decontrol move. I believe I hardly need say to the house that the government felt this would be an unpopular move. Nevertheless, it is sometimes necessary, even for governments, to do things which may not be universally popular but which may be the proper things to do. The government came to the conclusion that a modification of the rental control regulations, some eight years after they were first adopted, was a step which should be taken.
I have had a good deal of personal experience with the removal of controls of one sort or another, and I found that the more rigid and more successful the controls have been, the more difficult it is to remove them for reasons which I think will be fully understood by all members. These rental controls were part of a general wartime control program. At that time we controlled salaries, wages, prices; we controlled virtually everything which entered into the cost of living. These controls have now disappeared, leaving rental control as the sole survivor of these major wartime controls.
I think with the possible exception of my friends in the C.C.F. party, all members will agree that the federal government cannot and should not continue in the field of rental control. It does not lie within the field of federal jurisdiction under ordinary circumstances. I may say at this point that counsel for the dominion government will contend before the supreme court, on the reference which I announced the other evening, that the federal government has the right to taper off rent controls in a gradual manner; but they will not contend that we have the right to continue them indefinitely.
What is the history of this decontrol program so far as rentals are concerned? The house will recall that in October of last year, after the government had given a good deal of consideration to the constitutional policy of the dominion to continue in this field, I wrote a letter to all provincial premiers in which I stated that the right of the dominion to do so had been challenged in the courts. I offered to abandon rent control in any province if any provincial government desired to take it over, and offered to make the facilities of the rent control administration available as well as to pay the cost for a year.
I am free to confess it did not surprise me that none of the provinces accepted that

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offer. Some of the provinces talk a good deal about provincial autonomy, but when it comes to assuming an unpopular responsibility they are not nearly so ready to talk about it. Be that as it may, none of the provinces saw fit to take on that obligation. Mind you, Mr. Speaker, I am not attaching any blame to them for failing so to do; I am merely stating the facts.
The other evening I announced I was writing to the provincial premiers stating that we now intended to refer to the supreme court the question of our right to continue in the rental control field until we taper off the control, and orderly decontrol has been established. I repeat my statement that if any province cares to enter the field and take over the responsibility, the dominion will suspend its rental regulations in that province.
It may well be that the people of some of the provinces would be prepared to see rent control in effect on a permanent or semipermanent basis. If so, they must seek action from their provincial legislatures. We can do nothing about it and we should not mislead the public into thinking that we can. It was for this reason that I offered a year ago to vacate the field to the provinces, and that is why I repeated the same offer last Thursday night. As I say, no province has as yet come forward with a request that the dominion withdraw its rental controls in that province to permit the provincial legislature to assume that responsibility.
So far as the federal government is concerned, it has consistently followed a policy of orderly decontrol. It has proceeded step by step exempting certain classes of dwellings from controls, authorizing rent increases, and gradually returning to the owners the right to gain possession of their own homes. We could, of course, have decided to abandon rent control entirely on March 31 when the present legislation expires. That policy was considered, and seriously considered. We were strongly urged to do that. I do not think I am betraying cabinet secrets when I say that some of my colleagues thought that might be a desirable course to follow. The government decided, after the most careful and prolonged consideration, that it should proceed to relax controls rather than bring them to an end abruptly.
As I said before, the government recognized that an authorized increase in rental ceilings would be unpopular. We also had ample evidence that an abrupt ending of rental control would create a situation of extreme gravity. I am not going to burden the house with details, but I am sure that many of you are familiar with the rents being charged for houses and apartments that are no longer

under control. I have been told that, in many cases and especially in the larger industrial centres, rents have doubled or gone up as much as fifty to seventy-five per cent after the removal of control.
In answer to the question put, I think, by the member for Rosetown-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell) or the member for Eglinton (Mr. Fleming), I am not sure which, I am told by the rentals administration people who have been studying this question throughout the years that it is impossible to tell what would happen if rental controls were suddenly removed. Our information from rentals officers in the field has convinced the government, however, that a most confused and disorderly situation would arise. Such a course of action should therefore be avoided. Consequently, we decided to take another step toward eventual decontrol.
This was a substantial step, and it was intended to be. In spite of the laughter which greeted my remark a moment ago, it does not mean that all rentals will go up by twenty or twenty-five per cent. My own estimation is, we will see whether it is borne out by events, that in a great many cases the increase will not be that much. In centres where the shortage of rental accommodation is most acute, probably the majority of the landlords will take advantage of the maximum ceiling allowed. My estimate is that it will not be an across-the-board increase. This merely gives tenants and landlords the right to bargain within that range. My opinion, which is supported by the rental authorities, is that there will not be a horizontal increase of either twenty or twenty-five per cent.
Be that as it may, I felt and the government felt that if a base could be fixed we could, through those who have been charged by the government with administering this admittedly difficult and onerous control, control the maximum increase to an over-all margin within which landlords and tenants might bargain.
I repeat that this move in the decontrol of rents was part and parcel of our decontrol program announced prior to the election of 1945; and the increases granted were not based on any estimate of the rise in costs or on the needs of the landlords or of the ability of the tenant to pay. Nevertheless, in view of some of the comments that have been made, I want to place before the house with regard to rentals some facts and figures that do not appear to have been sufficiently emphasized.
According to the dominion bureau of statistics, the rent index on September 1 of this year stood at 123-9. That index is based on the period 1935-39; so that, broadly speaking, there has been an increase of about 24 per cent in rents since pre-war years. I

should point out that this index is based not only on houses that are under the ceiling but also on new dwellings which have never been under control and also on dwellings which for one reason or another have been exempted from the ceiling.


Major James William Coldwell: Do the figures include light housekeeping rooms?


Douglas Charles Abbott: I could not answer my hon. friend offhand; but there has been no increase in the rentals of light housekeeping rooms.
I make this point that I have made because it means that, on the average, dwellings which are still under control have risen by even less than the 24 per cent increase shown by the index figure which I have just quoted. Since November, 1941, when the ceiling came into effect, the rent index has been raised by only 12-7 points; that is, from 111-2 to 123-9.
I think it is relevant in the circumstances to look at the figure for prices generally. The cost of living index, which includes rents, of course, has risen by 62-2 per cent since pre-war years as against 24 per cent for rents themselves. It is also relevant, I think, to make a comparison between wages and rents. According to the dominion bureau of statistics, average wage rates in non-agricultural industries and average weekly earnings in manufacturing are both up by over 90 per cent since 1939.
An even more striking comparison is that between November, 1941, when the wartime controls on prices, wages and rents came into effect, and the present time. In November, 1941, the rent index stood at 111-2. Today, as I have said, it stands at 123 -9. The percentage increase in rents therefore is, as I said a moment ago, 12-7 points or 11-4 per cent, which I would repeat includes decontrolled as well as controlled dwellings.
What about prices and wages in the same period-that is, the period since rental controls first came into effect in November, 1941? The cost of living index since November, 1941, has risen from 116-3 to 162-2; that is, by 45 -9 points or 39 per cent. Average wage rates in 1948, which is the latest data available, are up by 73 per cent since 1941, and average weekly earnings by 63 per cent between November, 1941, and the present time.
There is one other point I should like to clarify. In my statement last Thursday night I said:
Landlords will be permitted to offer a term certain lease for not less than one year in consideration of a rental increase of not more than 20 per cent in the case of unheated self-contained dwellings and of not more than 25 per cent in the case of heated self-contained dwellings.
These increases will make a total of general over-all increases permitted since November, 45781-98
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1941-a period of eight years-of 30 per cent for unheated accommodation and 40 per cent for heated accommodation. While the present increases of 20 per cent and 25 per cent are in addition to the previous increases of 10 per cent and 15 per cent, the government has never intended to apply the one percentage increase to the other, which would, of course, have resulted in more than an over-all general increase of 30 per cent or 40 per cent. In other words, the increases are not cumulative. The mechanics to be employed by the rentals administration in carrying out this policy are now being worked out and they will appear in the relevant orders.
My hon. friend the leader of the C.C.F. party said that this policy represented an entire disregard of the welfare of the majority of the people. I am aware, of course, that there are a great many more tenants than there are owners in the country. But I have never felt that mere numbers justified the perpetuation of unfairness or injustice, assuming that such unfairness or injustice exists.
In another debate yesterday some reference was made to matters of discrimination. In view of the figures which I have given to the house as to the increase in wages, salaries and other items, as compared with rentals, I ask any member who is honest with himself whether he believes that the owner of a property on which he has had his rent frozen since 1941 until the present day or who has had the moderate increase granted up to the present time, is being treated on a comparable basis with regard to other groups in the community. To me, Mr. Speaker, the answer to that question is self-evident.
When one talks about ignoring the welfare of the majority of the people, if one accepts majority rule in matters of this kind, then of course my hon. friend is right. If one accepts the proposition that in matters of fairness and equity one should be governed by the number of heads that you count, then of course my hon. friend is absolutely right, and my friend the hon. member for Eglinton (Mr. Fleming), with his demagogic appeal, is absolutely right. But if you are talking about questions of fairness as between one group of the community and another, then it is perfectly clear that the existing structure of frozen rentals is unfair to the majority of people who are receiving them. It is in an attempt, first, to proceed with its program of orderly decontrol and, second, in an attempt to be fair to a group of Canadians in the community, that the government is putting forward this policy. It believes that it is a sound policy and it intends to back it up.

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Mr. C. E. Johnston (Bow River):: I should like to add some thoughts on this subject, Mr. Speaker, before the debate closes. I was greatly interested in the remarks made by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) on the reasons for their decontrol policy and the method which they have outlined. I was particularly interested in noting what the minister had to say about the Progressive Conservative party and their attitude toward rental control, although I hold no brief for the Progressive Conservative party. The minister said that the Progressive Conservative party should have made their stand known to the public before the general election. At the time he made that statement I was wondering if there was any party in the house which was less considerate of public opinion in this regard than was the Liberal government; for certainly had the public of Canada been acquainted with the so-called decontrol methods of the government, as put forth now, they would have shown their position in no uncertain manner. But they were not permitted that opportunity. It was thought wise by the government-and politically it was probably good judgment-to save this rent policy until after the general election.
My mind goes back to other things which the public should have been informed upon before the general election. Had this rent control policy, along with the flour-milling report, been presented to the people of Canada before the general election, I am sure that the Liberal government would have found that the people of Canada were dissatisfied with some of the operations of this government.
In speaking of the stand that parties have taken with regard to decontrol, let me say that the Social Credit party has always taken the view that we should have controls where necessary, and on no other occasion. But this is not one of the times when controls on rent should be lifted, or indeed lifted to the extent that they have been under the new rent control order.
In regard to this subject the premier of Alberta said the other day that he believed in decontrol in normal times, but these are decidedly not normal times. The minister speaks about having a proper decontrol method, a decontrol method which would be less severe on the majority of people. He said that they have tried in their decontrol policy to cushion the shock. I wonder, Mr. Speaker, whether that is exactly true. Under the decontrol methods used by the government it seems to me that there has been a great deal of dissatisfaction, discontent and hardship. I want to point out instances of this hardship and discontent. Today there are a great many people whose incomes will not

warrant an increase in rent. Several organizations throughout the country have estimated that a man cannot pay more than 20 per cent, or one-fifth of his income, in rent. In Calgary not so long ago one large concern, not a provincial industry but a national one, was paying its employees $100 to $115 a month. If a man is receiving $100 to $115 a month how in the world can he stand an increase of twenty to twenty-five per cent? I know of some of these men who were paying $45 a month in rent. If you add an increase of twenty-five per cent on that, and it has to be paid out of an income of $100 or $115 a month, it can readily be seen that there is room for complaint and that there is decided hardship in these cases.
The minister may say, "Oh, a great many of these landlords will not take advantage of this increase." I think that is true. But can you leave such a major problem as this open to the possibility that some landlords will not take advantage of the increase? Probably the landlords who are already charging $140 to $150 a month for rent will not take advantage of it and increase their rates by twenty to twenty-five per cent; but there are a great many landlords who are charging $40 to $45 a month. These landlords who are dealing with people on a very moderate income will take advantage of this decontrol order. They will raise their rents to the people who can least afford it.
It has been stated, and the hon. member for Eglinton (Mr. Fleming) pointed it out a while ago, that about four million people will be affected by this so-called decontrol of rent and over 50,000 housing accommodation units will be affected. There are a great many inequitable cases. Let me give the house some of them. New houses that were built prior to November 1, 1948-it used to be 1947, but this order carries it through to 1948-are entirely free from rent control. Then certain houses are vacated for some reason or other. They are free of rent control. Suppose a tenant decides to move out for some reason or other. That house immediately becomes free of rent control. There is another house of equal value in the same residential part of the city in which the tenant still remains. In one case the rent is frozen and in the other it is free. Show me what justice there is in a situation such as that. There are two houses of equal value in the same part of the city. The owner of one is absolutely free to charge any rent that he can get. I know some men who are charging $150 to $200 a month. The house right next to it is under control. There is just no equality in that. Surely this government could arrange a decontrol policy under

which these unfair and inequitable conditions could be ironed out and a logical and decent decontrol policy put into effect.
There is no question about it, Mr. Speaker, that the action of the government at this time in raising the rents from twenty to twenty-five per cent will greatly affect those people who can least afford to pay any increase. Right off the bat I am going to agree with the minister that there are some instances where landlords need an adjustment in their rents. I pointed that out a few moments ago. But there are many instances where there is unfairness, and where there is no attempt to make a uniform policy in regard to these rents, and consequently a great deal of hardship will be felt throughout the country. How can people on these low incomes survive if their cost of living is going to be jumped twenty to twenty-five per cent on one item alone? It just is not reasonable to expect them to be able to survive. The people are entitled to some reasoning in the decontrolling of rents.
Let me give you one illustration, Mr. Speaker, to show that people cannot afford an increase in rent. Take old age pensioners, for instance. How are old age pensioners going to be able to pay an increase in rent? I do not care how small the increase may be. At this point I may say that it may be necessary for the government to subsidize some landlords, but in regard to the old age pensioners there is no justification for allowing an increase in rent. They just cannot pay it. All of the people on fixed incomes are going to be materially affected, and most of them are going to be unable to make any financial adjustments in this field.
The minister speaks about the government's policy of decontrol. He went so far as to say that it was questionable whether the legal position of the government was sound in continuing rent control. I can only say to you, Mr. Speaker, that the premier of Quebec was right when he said the other day, as reported in the Ottawa Citizen:
Government Action "Remarkable"-Duplessis
Premier Duplessis yesterday described as "remarkable" announcement of the federal government's intention to obtain a supreme court decision on the validity of rent controls.
"Nine years after the federal government passed a law, they want to find out if they had a right to enact it," he said at a press conference.
"It seems remarkable. It reminds me of stories about an ancient Scottish practice of hanging a man and afterward holding a trial to see if he is guilty."
That is just about the position in which the federal government finds itself now. Did they not know that their legal position might not have been any too sound prior to June 27? I think they would have known it then.
45781-98i
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Why did they not come out frankly and tell the people the intentions they had, the practices they were going to put into force right after the election? They were not much concerned about dealing fairly with the public at that time; in fact, I think it was just about the opposite.
Let me quote briefly from the Ottawa-Journal of Monday, November 7, under the heading "Mr. Abbott Set With Long Lease But Colleagues Face Rent Hoists", just to show how utterly impossible it is going to be for people to pay the rents they are likely to be asked. It states:
An official cited the following as- an example for a heated self-contained dwelling if all relaxations were transformed into increased rent:
Basic rent, 1947, $100 monthly.
Ten per cent increase allowed April, 1947, making rent $110.
Five per cent increase allowed for heated dwelling, October, 1948, making rent $115.50.
Twenty-five per cent increase allowed September 15, 1949, making rent $144.37.
Mr. Abbott and his officials told the Journal it was obvious that if rent controls were eliminated completely a chaotic situation would arise. They have had experience of rents being as much as doubled on houses free of rent controls because they were built since 1947 or had been released because the occupants under rent control had moved away. These experiences indicated that without control rents would skip sky-high in many cases.
That shows how rents can increase. There will be cases where it will be utterly impossible for the people of Canada to meet these conditions.
A moment ago I spoke about the increased cost of living. It has been indicated by the trade unions that they are going to demand increases in wages. The ones to whom I referred a short time ago, who are receiving $100 or $115 a month, are not under the large trade unions, and therefore they will not receive the benefits of trade union activities and protection to get increases in wages.
In the same article from which I quoted a moment ago we find this paragraph:
Trades and labour congress unions are considering asking for higher wages as a result of the government's rent boost action, TLC President Percy Bengough said today.
There is no question about it that the action the government has taken upon itself to increase rents by 20 and 25 per cent is going to start another surge across the country for increased wages. We cannot blame the trade unions for asking increases in their wage scales when the government makes it absolutely impossible for wage earners to carry on at present wage rates. The government is creating this chaotic state. They are demanding that unions go out on strike in an endeavour to obtain increased wages. The government is creating the condition which is

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throwing thousands of people out of employment through the necessity of having to go on strike to obtain increased wages resulting from government action.
This is not the time when rent controls should be increased to the extent of 20 per cent. It is not the time to increase rents-a time when old age pensioners and others, on fixed incomes cannot be expected to pay such rents. Surely it is not the time to increase rents by 20 and 25 per cent when the great majority of our working people are earning from $100 to $150 a month.
I could take hon. members to Calgary and show them hundreds upon hundreds of people, married men with families, who are living on $35 a week. They cannot afford these increased rentals. No matter what the minister may say with respect to some landlords who will not take full advantage of the increase, I venture to say that at least 75 per cent of them will take advantage of it to some extent, and raise their rents. Those increases will fall most heavily upon the people who can least afford it.
For that reason and for others which I have given, I am definitely of the opinion that this is not the time for the government so to increase rents.


Mr. W. Ross Thatcher (Moose Jaw):: Mr. Speaker, I suppose the most significant thing which has come out of this debate so far is the fact that the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) deemed it advisable to speak before some of his own backbenchers had the opportunity. No doubt a good many members of the Liberal party feel a little bit uncomfortable today- and I do not blame them particularly.
Over the week end I happened to pick up one of the Montreal papers, which indicated that an energetic reporter had been talking with some of the Liberal members from Montreal regarding the recent Abbott announcement. I thought their answers were rather significant. .


Mr. Maclnnis:: Grade 1 or grade 2 members?


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: I have before me the Montreal Standard of November 5, which quotes the hon. member for St. Ann (Mr. Healy) as follows:
I am in favour of having rent controls continued. I do not want the controls taken off until housing conditions are improved.
The hon. member for Laval (Mr. Demers) stated:
My personal opinion is that rent controls must not disappear until there are sufficient dwellings to satisfy the needs of the people.
Then the hon. member for Maisonneuve-Rosemont (Mr. Fournier):
I am in favour of continuing: rent controls as long as there is a shortage of housing.

The hon. member for St. Mary (Mr. Fauteux):
I believe that the time has not yet arrived to give up rent control.
Next the hon. member for Cartier (Mr. Hartt):
My attitude is to continue rent control.
And the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace (Mr. Whitman):
I believe rent controls are essential until the housing problem becomes solved.
I could quote some of the others.


Douglas Charles Abbott: They are still on.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: Only technically. A majority of the members from Montreal, with the exception of the Minister of Finance himself, seem to be in favour of rent control. I think there is room to argue that the residue of rent controls remaining is not, from a practical view, control at all.
I hope therefore that before the debate is concluded we may hear from some of the Liberal backbenchers. I hope they will not have been frightened by what the minister said today. I would hope, too, that when the Montreal members speak, they will speak as they did to the reporter last week. What is more, I hope after they have spoken in that manner, they will vote as they have talked- and not do as one Liberal member did yesterday, speak one way, and vote the other.
The reaction to these whopping rental increases across Canada can be described only as one of profound shock. In effect many landlords are going to be able to raise their rents from 20 to 25 per cent. The manner in which the minister introduced these rental increases last Thursday night is an affront to the authority of this parliament. As the hon. member for Eglinton (Mr. Fleming) has said, the Minister of Finance presented us with a fait accompli. Members were given no opportunity to debate this basic issue. Even some of the Liberal backbenchers were shocked by the announcement. That is, they were shocked if we can believe what we read in the Ottawa Citizen, this morning.
I quote:
Several rank-and-file Liberal members of parliament plan to ask the government to reconsider its announced Intention of allowing 20 to 25 per cent boosts in domestic rental ceilings.
A number of members are claiming the announced increases in rental ceilings came "as a complete surprise." They claim they had no idea before the announcement was made the increases would be as substantial as they were.
I do not blame my Liberal friends for being pretty peeved. Has parliament lost its right, Mr. Speaker, to even discuss a basic issue? Have we lost our right to debate

a problem before a decision is announced? I am beginning to wonder if we have been sent down here-and I include Liberal members-simply to rubber-stamp decisions which the cabinet has already made. I hope that is not true, but if it is I want to say that there might be some danger in the future of our becoming as ineffective as the German Reichstag once was under Adolf Hitler. The way in which the cabinet has appeared to run things recently seems to me to be similar to the way the Cominform runs the Czechoslovakian government-by decree.


An hon. Member:: Isn't that ridiculous.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: Hon. members will not forget that the minister made his announcement last Thursday evening with only about five minutes left before the house adjourned. We did not even have time to ask questions let alone to debate the issue. Nor will hon. members forget either, that the minister who flouted the authority of parliament Thursday evening is the same minister who, a year and a half ago, introduced taxation by radio to Canada. As I understand these rental changes, they do not become effective until December 15.


Douglas Charles Abbott: High class debate.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: Why should not parliament have had the opportunity to debate the changes before they were actually introduced? Why were rent controls originally introduced? They were brought into being eight or nine years ago to prevent property owners, in face of the acute housing shortage, from taking undue advantage of the situation to charge excessive rents. In other words, they were introduced to help to keep the cost of living down to a reasonable figure. I will say at once that in my opinion rental control helped to do that but if rental control was desirable in 1941 why is it not desirable in 1949? Today the housing situation is infinitely worse than it was eight years ago. We can take the words of the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply (Mr. Winters) as proof of that fact because he said at page 118 of Hansard:
New housing, even at the present record rate of production, is barely keeping up with current needs and making no important inroads into the backlog.
In the past eight or nine years our population has increased substantially, and as a consequence housing is in short supply. Landlords are in a better position today to charge unfair rent than they were in 1941. In my opinion the increases which the minister announced last Thursday night were so sharp that we can well question whether the residue of controls is of any practical value. The new regulations will render millions of
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Canadians vulnerable to the housing shortage and to the whims of their landlords. In many cases the last rental increases will mean a total increase of as much as 45 per cent since the first unfreezing order two years ago. Many Canadian tenants are going to be caught in the squeeze between higher rentals and the shortage of housing. The Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) admitted that much over the week end.


Mr. Sinclair:: Will the hon. member permit a question? How does the hon. member calculate the figure of 45 per cent?


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: That is the total of the increases which have been made in the past 2 years. If the hon. member will check the regulations he will find I am correct.


John Ewen Sinclair: The hon. member obviously did not listen to the minister when he made his statement.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: I obviously did. I think you will find I am correct.


Mr. Cruickshank:: Then you did not understand it.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: Oh, yes, I did understand it. The over-all total increase in some cases is as much as 45 per cent.


John Ewen Sinclair: Forty per cent.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: At the risk of arguing with a Rhodes scholar, I say almost 45 per cent.


George Alexander Cruickshank: No, 40 per cent.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Do you support 40 per cent over there?


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: Over the week end the minister had a good many interviews-some of them rather unhappy. According to one reporter, the minister said he was sure that landlords would not take advantage of the full amount of increase allowed, but that they would be "kindly". I am sure some landlords will be reasonable and will not take all they can get, but I am equally sure there are many other landlords who will take every cent they can get, and who will not be kindly. I think the minister's admonition to some of these individuals will be about as effective as pleading with a weasel in a henhouse to be kindly.


Mr. Ferrie:: What are you worrying about? Saskatchewan can do it. Saskatchewan can stop it.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: Fortunately Saskatchewan has some stand-by legislation, but that is no fault of my hon. friend from wherever he comes from.


George Alexander Cruickshank: Don't get excited.

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Wilbert Ross Thatcher: In his speech last Thursday night the Minister of Finance made some very pious statements. I have heard a good many of his pious statements in the last few years, but I am beginning to take them with a grain of salt. At page 1433 of Hansard he said:
The government intends to continue with its program of orderly decontrol as rapidly as conditions warrant . . .
Further on he said:
We believe that gradual and orderly decontrol is the right policy.
Further on again he said:
, , . it is our policy to permit this adjustment to be made gradually rather than abruptly.


George Alexander Cruickshank: Don't you agree with that?


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: As he does so often, the minister talked one way and acted another, because as soon as he had said that the government believed in orderly decontrol, he announced drastic rental increases of 20 and 25 per cent. Where is there any consistency in that kind of action? I admit at once that there are cases of individual hardship so far as some landlords are concerned, and I think it is fair and reasonable, if that type of hardship exists, that those landlords should have been given some increase; but why give an increase right across the board regardless of whether or not there is hardship, and regardless of the type of property?


An hon. Member:: Rough justice.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: Surely if rental increases were needed at this time, surely if the minister was genuinely sincere in his statement that he wanted orderly decontrol, an increase of perhaps 5 per cent would have sufficed at this time. When rental control was introduced in 1941 the cost of living index stood at 111*7. Today the cost of living index is 162-2, an increase of almost .47 per cent. I say that Canadians are far more vulnerable today to rental increases than they would have been in 1941. Rental increases can only mean one thing. They will almost certainly mean that the cost of living index will reach an all-time high. That in turn will probably mean a new series of wage demands from the various unions which cannot help but have an inflationary effect. Many union leaders have already warned us of that fact. G. Russell Harvey, national organizer of the American Federation of Labor, had this to say on Saturday in Montreal:
It is going to provide a dislocation of what was otherwise becoming a stabilized wage condition. Now, it has become necessary for labour to demand higher wages to meet the added cost of living forced by the increases in rents.

I believe that the government of Canada once again has sacrificed the obvious wellbeing of the majority of our citizens to a privileged group, this time the property owners. It is quite true that the minister is getting rid of a political headache, but by prematurely scrapping rental controls the government is indirectly causing extreme hardship, and unnecessarily so, to a great many people of Canada. Trade unions, consumer organizations, veteran groups and many other groups have been protesting. The views of one of the officers of the Canadian Legion are to be found in the Toronto Star of November 5 in an article reading as follows;
Norman Gillespie, chairman of the housing committee of the Quebec command of the Canadian Legion, said the government, in allowing the increases, had broken faith with Canadian fighting men who died to make it possible for landlords to retain their properties. "Instead of families being protected, they are being exploited," he said.
May I say that the C.C.F. group dislikes controls as much as any other party in the house. We dislike controls for the sake of control. If there were adequate housing in Canada, and if there were any other way of keeping rents down, we would be quite happy to see rentals decontrolled; but that is not the case.


George Alexander Cruickshank: Is it not true that Saskatchewan or any other province can take over rent control, if it wishes?


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: I am coming to that in a moment; I have a major point I want to make, but I thank the hon. member for his question.


John Ewen Sinclair: You will never get to it.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: I shall get there in a minute. In the minister's statement there was one significant sentence at page 1433 of Hansard:
The government has therefore decided to refer the question of the validity of the rental regulations to the supreme court . . .
This means that nine years after the law was passed, nine years during which the government has been enforcing it, the minister suddenly decides to go to the courts to see whether or not it is valid. As Shakespeare might have said: There is something rotten in the state-not Denmark this time, but in Canada. Personally I believe this government is trying to get rid of its responsibility for maintaining rental controls in exactly the same way it dealt with the margarine issue. It is going to do everything in its power to have the supreme court throw out all rental controls, as far as the federal government is concerned. The Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe) has had the reputation in many parts of Canada of being the extreme right winger

of the Liberal government. Perhaps he is proud of that reputation; I do not know. I want to tell him, however, that after his performance in the last few days, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) is becoming a first-rate challenger for that very dubious honour.
I say the government betrayed the confidence of the electors of Canada, who supported them so strongly in the last election, in abandoning rent control; and I believe the government is shirking its responsibility in a very cold, very calculating way. Today the ten provincial governments are the last line of defence, one might say, to protect tenants from landlords who may wish to raise rents too high. Let us hope these provincial governments will act with a great deal more courage than has been shown by the Minister of Finance. I am happy to know that in Saskatchewan we have stand-by legislation. I believe ours is the only provincial government having legislation of that kind, and I am reasonably sure that our provincial government will retain rental controls there.


Mr. T. L. Church (Broadview):: Mr. Speaker, I want to say a few words on this matter, inasmuch as our city is very much interested in it. I do not intend to criticize what the government has done, or what anyone has done. The hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell), who moved the motion, referred to something I had forgotten about, a motion in connection with a national housing and reconstruction policy which I moved on February 17, 1936. The subheading reads:
Proposed measures in respect of housing, land settlement, reforestation:	youth in education,
industry and employment.
The motion was in these words:
That, in the opinion of this house, Canada should immediately adopt a comprehensive national housing, building, reconstruction, renovation, slum clearance, land settlement and reforestation policy adapted to its circumstances. . . .
In that connection I suggested that a committee should be appointed. This motion was moved in 1936, when conditions throughout the world were bad. People were out of work; large numbers of our youths were riding the rods; thousands of my constituents were on relief; skilled workers, carpenters, bricklayers, lathers, plasterers, men who had never known what it was to be without employment, were walking the streets. In the riding I represented at that time sixty-five per cent of the people owned their own homes, but because of the intolerable conditions which obtained many lost their properties. As I said at that time, the wealth of this country does not consist only of the natural resources of the sea, of the soil, of the forest, of the mine or of the lakes; it does
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not consist only of the grain in our great elevators or the shipping in our harbours. There is a more glorious treasure than that. It is the character of our people. This character, through unemployment and the lack of housing, has been gradually destroyed. The care of our young citizens is our most important duty. Several billion dollars have been spent on the construction of railways but only a few million have been spent on housing. Our school boards are doing the best they can, but they are having a hard time of it.
As I said, at that time we were in difficulty because of world conditions. Now we must realize that the housing question is very closely associated with public health. Unless you have proper housing you cannot have a healthy rising generation. What did they do over in the mother country, which has been criticized so much in late years? They led the whole civilized world at that time. Our former sovereign, King Edward VIII, was one of the pioneers in this connection. He visited the slums of London and Wales, and travelled all over Britain. In 1937 he awakened the whole country to the necessity of correcting the slum problem. What was the result of his campaign? Two million new homes were constructed under the auspices of various public and private bodies.
We have to look at the cause and effect of this whole problem. Canada was once a nation of property owners. Practically every man owned a property of some sort, but that is not the situation today. I have no doubt tha-our own city does more to provide for our city suburbs sewers, water service, roads, health services, cheap light and power and efficient transportation than any other city in Canada. As I say, in the old days practically everyone owned some property; a small farm, a market garden, a grocery store, a mill or something of the kind. We were all property owners, some small, some moderate, and some large; but this condition gradually changed. What caused that change? Canadians owned real estate; and that individual ownership, on the comparatively extensive scale on which it then existed, was the basis of Canada's national life. But the politics of big business has practically destroyed pastoral Canada, and it is the duty of parliament, the duty of members of all parties, to take this into consideration. We must dedicate our efforts to a solution to this problem of housing, and one of the most effective means of bringing that about is to restore the condition that existed when most people owned a little property, as in the days of Sir John A. Macdonald, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and Whitney in Ontario.
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Then Canada was indeed the land of the free; Canada was the home of artisans and farmers; Canada was a democratic country.
In nothing is the determined spirit of the mother country more evident than in her program of construction of new homes. People who have been in England in the past two or three years have returned to Canada enraptured with what they saw over there in the construction of new houses; the spirit of the mother country has been particularly evident in what she has done in that direction. Large apartment houses are going up all over the countryside. Houses have been built by government subsidy, and England has shown her determination properly to house as large a proportion as possible of the poorer classes of the population. One man remarked to me that low-cost housing there had ceased to be a political issue, and I submit that the same should be true in this country. Low-cost housing is a permanent government policy in England; long may it continue. And it should be here as well. There is great need for construction of houses, not only urban but suburban and rural as well, the last mentioned being the most needed of all. Let me quote something I came across in the reading room the other day. This newspaper item is typical of many; it refers to Windsor:
Today is moving day in the historic and picturesque village of Coinbrook, on the Bath road, near Slough.
That is something that was done in England in the olden days.
Now, I shall conclude what I have to say in a few moments because there are several other members who wish to speak. So far as I can see, this country needs a housing program now.
As I say, this question has been related to public health. In last Sunday's Montreal Standard, I noticed that the fourteen members from the Montreal district stated a policy for Montreal island. If hon. members were consulted, I believe they would say the same thing, that is that a control system with some variations should be continued until the supply of houses is sufficient. Small prefabricated houses should be built. I remember that Mr. Churchill was responsible for the building of about 500,000 of those prefabricated houses in England during 1945 or 1946. The materials were secured in Canada. What have we been doing in this country? We have been doing very little.
I believe that the notice given by the government is too short. Nearly four million tenants will be affected by the new regulations which have been announced. I do not think the policy of the government commends itself to the country. There is no use in the

government kicking the football over here because, as astute politicians, we would kick it right back to them. The government of the day is responsible for a proper housing policy, a proper reconstruction policy and a proper slum clearance policy. It is not for the opposition to do that. The opposition does not seek any political advantage from it.
As has been said in this debate, we gave the government fair warning of what would happen in 1936 or nearly 14 years ago. The policy of the government now is to pass the matter over and to criticize the provinces. If it had not been for the fine autumn weather, which was a blessing to the people of this country, people would have suffered severely from the lack of housing. It was very fortunate that all fall we had fair weather and it looks like the hand of Providence. I believe the first duty of a government is to look after the health, wealth, peace, happiness, prosperity and housing of its people. It should be a national program. One of the mistakes we made at confederation was that some of these matters were not transferred to federal jurisdiction. I believe that housing is really a national problem today.
In connection with my own city, I believe that nothing has contributed to the lack of housing as much as the lack within the city of cheap land. There is no cheap land in the city. I can tell you that land is now about $65 per foot, what little there is left of it in the city. The member for Danforth (Mr. Harris) may remember the time we built a civic carline on the Danforth from Broadview avenue to the east end. It was necessary to acquire from the north side from the township of York all the land for about two hundred and twenty feet on the north side of the street in order to widen the street. It cost little or no money to build that carline. Another streetcar line was the one on Gerrard street. The land was secured for $6 per foot, and that was true even down in the Greenwood riding. Six tickets for ten cents was the rate in those days.
The working people were encouraged by that car service, by the cheap tickets, by the cheap light and by the municipal services. Those services were extended away out into the county, into York township. Suppose this chamber were the city proper. There is the lake and the bay to the south. We extended these services to the east of the city proper, out into the county of York and away to the north beyond the city limits. All the people in this locality were given the same privileges, cheap light, sewers, water, and police protection. There were lots of good roads. I remember when we could not get milk into our city. We had to establish the first good roads in Canada,

which extended for a radius of fifteen miles from the city. So, I say the government should not be so quick in turning this back to the provinces.
I do not believe the notice is any good; it is too short. The provinces should have been consulted before any move was made. I believe the members from the city of Toronto are of the same opinion as the Montreal members. Until such time as the supply of houses is sufficient, new regulations for rent control should not be passed. I may say that if the city of Toronto had a suburban service like Montreal, it could solve its own housing problem. There is no land in the city except at $65 per foot. Then there is the matter of these people being turned out of their houses. There are about four million tenants who are in fear of this in Canada.
What is more necessary than a house? If a person has not a home, he has not anything. The lack of a home interferes with family life and causes many other evils such as delinquency. Just look at the front page of the Ottawa Citizen today. According to it, four million tenants are to be evicted before Christmas. One of the Ottawa judges blames the lack of housing for crime in this city. I believe that something should be done to construct, as early as possible, half a million of these prefabricated small houses such as those that were constructed at Three Rivers, Oshawa and many other places.
Without a steam suburban service I believe that we can make little headway even if the program of the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation is adopted. Certainly with no cheap land in the city, and without a steam suburban service, there is no chance of our solving the housing program out in the county of York, and we need not look for any scheme to do it. Without transportation and the civic services, the new housing plans will not be worth anything.
In conclusion I want to say this. Many people have been burned to death in the ramshackle buildings that are being used. I have seen houses, occupied by soldiers who served in the second war, in which the windows had to be shut because of smoke; some of these houses are not fit for human habitation, in my opinion. A couple of people were burned in a fire on Church street. I notice that in a fire in the maritimes, five were burned last week end. Fires occur in these old condemned buildings which are not fit for human habitation, and many people have been burned.
As I say, I believe we should have some proper system. This housing problem follows every great war. The Addington administration had it; the two Pitts had it. The question of control and decontrol is one 45781-99
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which should not be so suddenly turned over to the provinces. The number of eviction orders which the senior county court judge of the county of York has had runs into the thousands. I believe that something should be done along the lines I suggest.
As to the new way of doing this business, turning it over so suddenly, and passing a new order in council, is all wrong. I believe we should continue some controls. No doubt some soldiers should be allowed to get into their own homes. I believe there should be some variation in order to enable them to do that. People who fought for their country should have some relief accordingly. But I say that the time is too short for the government to take this action at the start of this winter, that the order is too hasty and that it is going to lead to untold hardships during the coming winter. I have in my hand a picture which shows 47 people in Montreal living on top of an old fire station, a place which is unfit for human habitation.
(Translation) ;


Mr. Henri Courtemanche (Labelle):: Mr. Chairman, the housing problem is surely one of the major issues stirring up public opinion at the present time. The housing shortage is all the more surprising in that it affects a country that prides itself, and rightly so, on its high industrial potential. There is a shortage throughout the country as a whole but for a long time it has been growing steadily worse in the larger cities. For a long time the situation has reached the critical stage and threatens to lead to consequences whose effects can hardly be foreseen or even exaggerated. This over-all breakdown of the housing industry seems the more irritating in that it affects a country that is privileged in the matter of space and raw materials, such as iron, lumber, etc., in a country where manpower, both plentiful and skilled, is already haunted in certain districts by the spectre of unemployment. Indeed, in some Canadian cities, the housing shortage is almost as acute as in some European countries, where density of population reaches 7,500 people per square mile, as in Belgium, or as in countries devastated by two world wars, in 1914 and in 1939.
Travellers returning from Europe all marvel at the way in which countries so badly damaged by bombing during the last war have managed to rebuild, under particularly difficult circumstances. It may be said, due allowances being made, that the housing situation in Belgium and in Europe is better than here in Canada. Great Britain, France and other countries stand as shining examples that should inspire our own government's policy in this connection.

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It is not difficult to understand the reasons for those countries' desperate attempts to solve their housing problem. Housing is among the first concerns of any civilization. It may be said that material civilization consists in properly solving the threefold problem of food, clothing and shelter!
Is it not heart-breaking that our workers are still anxiously wondering where they will find a dwelling, and pay the rent at the end of each month?
I suggest that the matter has not been carefully considered by this government and was settled in a hasty, easy and haphazard way. No constructive, practical and final solution to this knotty problem was evolved by those who had undertaken to consider it. Did peace dry up the source of the energy we displayed throughout the war? How can such a great gap in the domestic economy of our national policy be explained and justified? Are war conditions the indispensable incentives to the vast building projects of which we gave so many examples for the benefit of our allies in Europe during the six years of the last war?
Yet this housing situation has been a feature of our policy many years before the war. This government itself has seen the premonitory signs of the ill we are now deploring. Has it taken any action with a view to preventing the threatening housing shortage? With the coming of war the government has enacted protective measures for the benefit of tenants, who form an overwhelming majority of the population. All citizens have welcomed such a manifestation of elementary prudence on its part during the war years. However, everyone was expecting a solution to this emergency; none has been forthcoming, and we are still awaiting one. The visionless, listless and neglectful policy of the government is responsible for that. To govern is to foresee. The government should have foreseen this emergency and devised means to meet it. It has seen the people accept with heroic patience rationing, as well as the restrictive and repressive measures of the sad period of the European tragedy. It has taken for granted that the patience of the victims of that period of sacrifices would last forever; it has relied on that to postpone the solving of the serious problem which is involved in providing housing for the middle and the working classes in Canada. The war is over. Victory is still floating in the folds of the future Canadian flag. Apparently we are in a period of full prosperity. How can 
we believe those Liberal prophets when hundreds of Canadian family heads are wondering if they will have tomorrow a lodging for their wives and children? Nothing can justify this uninterrupted standstill in the building industry. The sons of the most humble families are apprehensive; their eyes are troubled by the vision of furniture on the sidewalks. Yet they have contributed in no small measure to the victory of our armies. Many are proud to wear military medals which bear testimony to their gallantry. Still they are not sure that tomorrow they shall still have a home, a place to rest after their daily toil.
What miracle, what prodigy is the government awaiting before setting itself into action to find an efficient solution, an adequate remedy to the present crisis which has already lasted too long and worsens daily? The country was prosperous in wartime. The government did not hesitate to spend billions in order to build destructive weapons for our European allies. We rejoice that the sacrifices made by the Canadian people have brought timely relief to those unjustly oppressed populations who, alas, foresee once more the bloody spectre of a new, perhaps remote but more murderous adventure. But we are now living in time of peace. Our natural resources are still there, awaiting peaceful mobilization in favour of our closest allies, the Canadian population. Productively, our manpower is still strong. It is time to capitalize on the financial possibilities of a huge country whose government should be concerned chiefly with the housing of all its citizens.
Far from introducing encouraging and beneficial measures, the Minister of Finance has just taken the tenants by surprise in announcing very drastically a disappointing and substantial raise of 20 and 25 per cent in the present rental rates. The government have always been praised for their insinuating policy, for proceeding by stages before enacting. The undercover processes resorted to during the war had only confirmed this subtle and disturbing diplomacy.	The
sudden announcement by the Minister of Finance has left all our population worried, especially the tenants, who are nonplussed and distressed before a fact brought to them in such a sudden and disappointing manner. Why was that important announcement not made before the election or during the electoral campaign? Was it for fear of disastrous results at the polls?

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Were landlords right in hoping, prior to the elections, that a few months after June 27 they would be able to obtain a generous increase in rents? It would surely be interesting to know the answers to all these questions. At any rate, the time has come to take heed of the legitimate requests of tenants. The government should avail itself of all the means at its disposal to end that lamentable and ridiculous situation in a country where there is no reason for such an internal calamity. It is praiseworthy to help the various nations of the world in times of emergency, but in peacetime it is the duty of the government to achieve prosperity for its citizens. A country cannot be prosperous as long as its workers are threatened with being thrown out in the street on the very eve of a hard winter. An increase such as the one which the Minister of Finance has just inflicted on tenants will not solve the problem. I therefore urge, on behalf not only of my constituency but of the low-income group, that is to say of tenants all over the country, immediate settlement of this intolerable condition.
Every conflict has found us ready to struggle, to co-operate, even at the cost of billions of dollars. Let the government now show the same concern, the same spirit of self-sacrifice-I ought to say a keener sense of justice and a greater interest in social security-so that our country may break this humiliating deadlock brought about by its internal policy.
Policies such as the Quebec farm loan should make the government aware of the goodwill and solvency of our country's little people; they appreciate the confidence and benefits bestowed upon them by public authorities.
No one can be unaware of the seriousness of the situation in which hundreds of thousands of householders find themselves. Their modest budgets will not allow them, no matter how hard they try, to meet the landlord's new demands. That capitalism will again lose a few feathers, soon to be picked up by the evil-boding bird of communism, is easily foreseen.
The government's decision to refer the rentals control act to the supreme court is not likely to allay a natural concern. This action can do nothing to help the tenant pay his rent. This astute legal device will only add to the irritation of the victims of the coming increase.
Who is it that has been legislating in this field for nine years? Who is it that has brought us to our present difficulties? Who is it that has steered the ship of Canada for 45781-99j
Rent Control
nine years, heedless of the recriminations and protests of all and sundry? It is this govern-' ment. They have no right to throw the helve after the hatchet in this matter of housing and to shift their responsibilities upon others. It is up to the present government to continue its task, as long as this acute shortage prevails, of bridging this gap for which it is responsible. It must find the means whereby a quick and satisfactory solution will be brought to the problem of exorbitant rentals and shortage of housing in this country! The present government has just taken an antisocial and anti-family stand which has created grave unrest among the working classes.
If the present administration uses its accidental and absolute majority to impose dilatory and vexatious measures, it will only succeed in further upsetting the lack of balance of our economic machinery. It is not normal that the government should hesitate in these days of peace and prosperity -a prosperity which has been extolled from every meeting hall-to treat with fairness the people of this country who, for too long now, have been worried and uncertain about the future.
The people do not want any special privilege but only claim for themselves an unequivocal and vital right, from the governments which are entrusted with their economic well-being. If every family cannot be suitably housed at a decent price whom shall the present administration convince that prosperity has been brought to this country by five years of peace after victory?
(Text):


Mr. Leon Balcer (Three Rivers):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to place myself on record as protesting, in the name of the population in my riding, against the new rental increases as announced by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) last Thursday. It is a measure which will bring hardship to the majority of Canadians, and which has taken everyone by surprise. To date we have yet to be given some reason for the move. Nowhere have we seen proof that such a tremendous increase was necessary.
On the contrary, rentals have always been one of the major factors in the high cost of living. That is why it is so regrettable that the government has permitted an increase which will heavily load the budgets of the majority of Canadian families. Even before these latest increases many families have had to cut into their food budgets to pay

Prairie Transmission Lines their rent. The situation would be different if they could move to other homes offering rentals in accordance with their means. However at this time, five years after the war, the housing situation is so far from being solved that such a means must be disregarded completely.
I believe the government has shown a complete disregard for the welfare of the ordinary Canadian citizen. Everywhere since last Thursday, from all across Canada, and especially from Quebec and the island of Montreal, these new increases have brought discouraged protests from our people. In my own riding more than 75 per cent of the population is going to be hit by this Christmas present from the Liberal government.
Before taking my seat I should like to ask the minister for the last time to reconsider his decision. Our population really deserves better treatment.
At six o'clock the house took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The house resumed at eight o'clock.


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed, from Tuesday, November 1, consideration of the motion of Mr. Benidickson for the second reading of Bill No. 119, to incorporate Prairie Transmission Lines Limited.
Thomas Langton Church: Mr. Speaker, the other evening I addressed the house for a few minutes on the principle of the measure now under consideration and that involved in Bill No. 66, to incorporate the Alberta Natural Gas Company. Tonight we are dealing with Bill No. 119, to incorporate Prairie Transmission Lines Limited. I want to apologize to the hon. member, who is the sponsor of the bill now under discussion, for not having a eopy of it at the time. As I see it, the principle of this bill, and that of the bill to incorporate the Alberta Natural Gas Company, are the same. Shall we part with any more of our natural resources? I have always taken the position that it is almost impossible to part with any more of the natural wealth of Canada in the way we have been doing.
We had an illustration the other day in connection with forests. Hon. members on both sides of the house rose and wanted to preserve our forest resources and timber wealth, and all the other things that flow therefrom, for the people of Canada. We have the same situation as to pipe lines and the Pipe Lines
[Mr. Balcer.J
Act. Will it develop Canada? That should be the first consideration. Is it right, just and proper that we should develop our natural resources for the benefit of other countries? As I said the other day, we had a similar situation with regard to power in the Niagara river. In 1905 the power resources of the Niagara river were under private ownership. Yesterday a return was made in the house- at the moment I have not a copy of it-which referred to the millions of kilowatt hours that were given away by private ownership to the people of the United States. I admit that we owe a great deal to the United States for their kindness and help in both world wars, but nevertheless they are our competitors in an economic way, in a financial way, in a military way. We are even following their social security program to a great extent. We have given first consideration to what is for the benefit of that great nation to the south of us which is more or less our friendly competitor for the wealth of Canada.
You have recently had to consider the question of power in the Niagara river. At the time Sir James Whitney became premier of Ontario, private ownership was giving away pretty nearly all the power in the Niagara river, but when Sir James Whitney came into office in 1905 he cancelled the remaining issues of power which were granted under the Ross-Hardy Liberal government. What did he then do? He instituted what is commonly known as the hydroelectric development, which was a blessing to the people of Canada. Yesterday a return was made in the house-again, I am sorry that I have not a copy at the moment, but I hope to get one shortly-showing the large number of kilowatt hours of power which have been exported from Canada. In Ontario it is a very large amount, and in Quebec it is about the same. I think Ontario has exported more than Quebec to develop industry across the border. The return also referred to the other provinces, and showed that a lesser amount of direct current is generated.
Are we going to continue this policy? I cannot refer to the various clauses of the present bill because it is a composite one. This measure and the bill to incorporate the Alberta Natural Gas Company are the same in principle although the directors are different. This bill was considered in another place the other day, and you will notice that there was a four-line discussion there. That was all that was said on second and third readings. Is that fair? Is that the way to confer a franchise? I hope the house will notice what is being created by this particular bill. You are creating a franchise and giving away the physical assets and natural resources

of Canada. To whom? To private ownership.
My contention is that these great natural resources should belong to the people of Canada so that they may be used for the development of Canada and not for the development of our competitor. While the United States is a friendly nation, and we owe a lot to them, nevertheless they are our friendly competitors. If I had the time I could show the direct saving that has been made in the power of the Niagara river. I should like to quote three or four paragraphs from a speech I made on June 15, 1925, on the export of power. Today the export of power is nearly ten times as great as it was then. The excerpt reads:
1.	Every dollar of the $160 million hydro investment is earning interest and sinking fund.
2.	Hydro investment saved Ontario from a coal famine that would have bankrupted the province in wartime.
That was in 1917.
3.	Hydro investment saved 2,200,000 shareholders over $75 million in reduced coal, light and power bills.
4.	Hydro investment saved Ontario over $100 million on coal prices, which would have gone to $30 per ton in wartime but for the hydro investment that gave Ontario the equivalent of 3,000,000 tons of United States coal per annum.
That is a short story of the development of power on the Niagara river and that value has increased by about ten times today. Now, are we going to give away this franchise? If this bill is sent to a committee I doubt if it will be given any study at all. We had an example of that in connection with another bill two years ago, concerning the Bell Telephone Company; and we saw what happened in that case. That bill was initiated in the other place, which is well named. They seem to consider these bills in a different way over there.
We represent the people of this country, and we have no right to confer a franchise like this. Look at the bill; what does it contain? I cannot refer to the various sections on second reading, but there seems to be a different principle in almost each section. You will see that one section confers power to construct and operate pipe lines for the transmission of gas, oil or any liquid product or by-product. The company is also given power to hold lands. Under various sections of the bill the company is given very wide powers. Then they take out various sections of the Companies Act; in other words, this franchise is conferred upon this private company without the protection afforded by some sections of the Companies Act. Other sections of that act are specifically mentioned; sections 12(7) 39, 40, 59, 62, 63, 64, 65 and 91 of part I of the Companies Act, 1934, are to apply to the company provided that wherever in subsection 7 of section 12 and
Prairie Transmission Lines in section 59 the words "letters patent" or "supplementary letters patent" appear, the words "special act" shall be substituted therefor. So this special act, considered by the Senate, exempts this company from the provisions of certain sections of that general act.
This company is asking a franchise to do what? Well, about the only things that are not covered by the bill are the heavens above, the earth below and the waters beneath the earth. How we can consider a thing like this? Then I call attention to another feature. We are asked to give this company certain privileges and rights which in my opinion should never be given to any company. No one knows just what is involved.. This all follows the adoption of the Pipe Lines Act, which as I said the other evening I think should be called the pipe dream act; I believe that would be a far better title for it. Under that act they can give away anything they like, and now we are asked to confer a franchise upon this company for all time. One of the provisions with respect to the development of power in Ontario was that the people had to vote on all these matters. That protects them when a franchise is sought in the province of Ontario. We have a clause in the municipal act providing that no municipality may give away a franchise without the consent of the ratepayers, and that is good legislation. Many of the younger men in the house came up from the municipalities, the villages, towns and cities. I saw the other day that our honoured and respected Clerk was given a reception and thanked for what he had done for his town in Quebec, and rightly so. I was pleased to see the tribute he was paid in the town from which he comes. Protection such as I have mentioned is a wise step; without the consent of the ratepayers no franchise for the use of the public streets may be granted.
What are these people going to do under this special act? Are they going to rip up the streets? They can do anything they wish. They can transmit anything they like across the border, to help build up the economy of the United States. Our two countries are supposed to be friendly competitors in trade. Eaton's and Simpson's are friendly rivals for trade, but they are also good businessmen. So are these people in the United States who are our competitors. If this is the way business is done in the other place, I think some changes should be made. In connection with the bill to which I was referring the other evening, I had the report of proceedings in the Senate. The bill was introduced, sent to committee, reported back and put through, and the whole procedure only took up three or four lines in Hansard. If that is the way they confer franchises I am surprised at the

Prairie Transmission Lines high court of parliament, and I can only say that is not the way to part with the wealth of this country.
Years ago Houston's Annual used to be a textbook in all the stock exchanges across the country. Now they have a different book with a blue cover, listing all companies and showing their affiliations with each other. What does that book show? It shows the way these companies are interlocked. I looked up some of these points not long ago, and found that all our natural wealth along the Ottawa river is owned and financed in New York. The timber, the gold, the silver, the platinum, the zinc, the asbestos and all the other things are shipped out in raw form, and there manufactured into finished articles, providing employment for thousands of men and producing wealth amounting to millions of dollars. Is that the way for us to build up this country? How are we going to develop our natural resources under such a policy? Is that the way to create employment? Do not forget that we may run into a depression. Nobody can tell. It may come like a thief in the night. Is that the way to create employment? I say no. What we have to do is to veto these bills. There is no use talking about friendly competitors in these days.
The question is, are you going to give over the natural resources and the natural wealth of this country to private people to exploit for gain, or are you going to reserve the natural resources of our country-I have only mentioned a few of them-for the development of our country. I believe in a policy of Canada for Canadians, trade and industry and everything else. Our own work for our own workmen; our own markets for our own products; that is the policy in which I believe. I believe that policy has built up this country. For those reasons, I am going to vote against second reading of the bill. No one else is prepared to move a six months' hoist oh the principle of the bill. If I can get a seconder, I shall be glad to move that this bill be read a second time on a date six months from today.


Mr. Howard C. Green (Vancouver-Quadra):: Mr. Speaker, I believe this bill merits the *careful consideration of the members of the house. This evening I propose to say a few words about it. In the first place, a word about some terms of the bill which is, as all members know, a bill to incorporate a company known as the Prairie Transmission Lines Limited. The men who are applying for the incorporation are five in number, and are all solicitors, either of Toronto or of Ottawa.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I think the hon. mem-oer should discuss the principle of the bill

at this time. The hon. member is now referring to a section of the bill, and on second reading the principle should be discussed.


Howard Charles Green: I mentioned the applicants for incorporation because I propose to bring that into my submission at a later stage. It is quite obvious that the applicants are merely acting for some other interests.
The bill gives this proposed company the power to construct and operate a pipe line, for both natural gas and oil. By virtue of a statute passed at the session of the house last spring, which was known as the Pipe Lines Act, if this company receives incorporation, it will have the very wide powers outlined in that foundation bill. For example, it will have wide power to enter on property to make surveys and construct a pipe line, and it will have extremely wide powers of expropriation. One other feature about the terms of the bill itself is that the company is given these powers within the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia or outside Canada.
Before continuing, I think something should be said about what happened in this house last spring. Those members who survived the holocaust of June 27 will remember that the Pipe Lines Act was brought into the house a day or two before prorogation. At the same time several of these private bills were brought in, under which approximately five different companies were eventually incorporated. At that stage in the session it was impossible to give careful consideration either to the foundation bill or to those private bills.
Members will recall that the private bills were referred to the standing committee on railways, canals, and telegraph lines. During one of the evenings of the last week of the session there was a meeting of the committee which lasted about half an hour. The men representing the various companies were present and gave brief explanations. I think the committee took an average of about five or ten minutes on each of those private bills. I do not believe anyone can dispute the fact that this house did not have an opportunity in April to give careful consideration either to the Pipe Lines Act or to any of those private bills. Everything was put through in great haste. We were told that the Imperial Oil had to commence laying the pipe line from Edmonton to Regina at once, and that if the bills were not put through western Canada would suffer.
The time has now come, Mr. Speaker, when it is the duty of this house to give more careful consideration to pipe line bills. I think it is our duty to insist that this bill, or any legislation that goes through the house from now on dealing with pipe lines, must be in

the best form possible. It need not necessarily be in exactly the same form as the legislation which went through in such a hurry last April. I suggest to the house that there are several things that should be taken care of in legislation of this type.
In the first place, the general route that is to be followed by the pipe line should be set out in each of these bills. If we pass this bill in its present form, we are giving a blank cheque to the company. In the case of some of the bills, we are simply saying, "You can build a pipe line anywhere in Canada," and in the case of this particular bill we are saying, "You can instal a pipe line anywhere in Alberta or British Columbia". It certainly is the responsibility of parliament to go into the question in more detail than that, and to decide the approximate route the pipe line should take.
I should like to point out what happened in connection with this particular bill when it was before the other place. I do wish, Mr. Speaker, we were allowed to say the Senate; it would be more understandable. When this bill was before the other place, the sponsor explained the route of this particular pipe line. The members will find that on page 117 of the Senate Hansard.
The sponsors of the bill are Canadians; they have completed their engineering studies for the construction of the pipe line, and propose to transport gas across a corner of British Columbia, up to Trail, and through to the coast at a point near Seattle,-
Which is, of course, in the United States.
-and thence up to Vancouver.
Now, that was the statement made in the Senate. But when the bill was introduced in this house the hon. member for Kenora-Rainy River (Mr. Benidickson) told a different story. As reported at page 1344 of Hansard, this is what he said:
I wish to make it clear that the passing of this bill does not in any way establish routes for the transmission lines for this company.
Then on the next page he said:
I should like to inform the house that the bill has nothing to do with routes. There is nothing in it that establishes a route.
If we turn back to the days when railway charters were being granted by parliament, we find that in the incorporating statute the routes were set out. I have here the statutes for 1902, containing an act known as chapter 62, an act to incorporate the Essex Terminal Railway Company. It constitutes certain men a corporation but it has a paragraph which sets out the line of railway authorized; that is section 8, which reads as follows:
The company may lay out, construct and operate a railway, of the gauge of four feet eight and one-half inches, from a point in or near the town of
Prairie Transmission Lines Walkerville, through the townships of Sandwich East and Sandwich West, and the city of Windsor, to some point in or near the town of Sandwich, and through the town of Sandwich, the townships of Sandwich West and Anderdon to a point in or near the town of Amherstburg.
Then I have here another act. This time the petitioner was the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. It is chapter 79 of the statutes of 1919. It gives the Canadian Pacific Railway Company the authority to build seven different lines of railway but in each case says approximately where that line is to go. Finally, I have here the statutes of 1924. In chapter 82 we find an act to incorporate Joliette and Northern Railway Company. It is the same type of act. It constitutes certain men a corporation. Then there is this section which sets out where the line of railway must go. Section 9 reads as follows:
The company may lay out, construct and operate a railway of the gauge of four feet eight and one-half inches from a point in or near the town of Joliette, in the county of Joliette, in the province of Quebec, in a north by northwesterly direction to a point in or near the village of St. Michel des Saints in the county of Berthier, and thence by the most feasible route to a point on the National Transcontinental Railway at or near Parent, a distance of about one hundred and sixty miles.
That has been the practice followed with railways, and I suggest that we should adopt the same practice with regard to these pipe lines. This house cannot decide on the merits of these applications for statutes incorporating a private company unless the members of the house know where the pipe line is to go. It is not good enough to have somebody read in the paper that it is going to be in such and such an area.
The same point was raised in the other place in a debate on October 4, that debate being on the other pipe line bill, incorporating the Alberta Natural Gas Company. There Hon. Mr. Hugessen raised this point. At page 81 of the debates of the Senate he is reported to have said:
I was just wondering whether the bills we passed last year specifically stated the particular area in which the companies intended to build.
And he went on to say:
I think in the future that parliament should take care to see that this is done.
I submit this evening therefore that we should take care to see that in each one of these private bills there is written in the area in which the pipe line is to be laid.
There is another provision which I suggest should be written into this legislation, and that is a provision to the effect that Canadian requirements must be met first by the companies before they export their product to the United States. There is a provision of that type in a statute known as the Electricity

Prairie Transmission Lines and Fluid Exportation Act, which is chapter 54 of the Revised Statutes of Canada of 1927. There we find it written into the act:
Any such licence-
That is any licence for the export of fluid.

may provide that the quantity of power or fluid-
Which fluid would include gas and oil.
-to be exported shall be limited to the surplus, after the licensee has supplied for distribution to customers for use in Canada power or fluid to the extent defined by such licence, at prices and in accordance with conditions, rules and regulations prescribed by the governor in council.
My submission is that some provision of that type should be written into each one of these private bills.
In the case of the bill we are now discussing there is of course no attempt whatever to meet the requirements of Canada before exporting to the United States. The statement made in the Senate shows that the pipe line is to go from southern Alberta through the Crowsnest pass into British Columbia, and then down into the United States at the first convenient place. Once it goes into the United States it will go to Spokane and eventually to Seattle and Portland.
In the Senate there was a suggestion that there would be a branch of this pipe line up into Trail in the valley of the Columbia river in Canada. Frankly, Mr. Speaker, I doubt very much whether that would be done. Certainly the main object is to get into Washington and Oregon. The suggestion is made that eventually this pipe line will reach Vancouver. It may or it may not. There may or may not be any gas left over by the time it gets to Vancouver, and the United States authorities may or may not permit that pipe . line to come back into Canada once it has gone into the United States. I doubt very much whether they would give that permission.
In any event, the pipe line certainly will be of little value to any other part of British Columbia. Actually, in going through the Crowsnest pass it will put gas in competition with the coal industry in that pass. As hon. members from British Columbia know, the Crowsnest district depends largely on coal for employment. If this bill is passed, and if this company goes ahead as is suggested, the result will be the development of Washington and Oregon. I would point out that it is not only gas that is involved. They are also taking the power to pipe oil there. If they pipe oil, then we shall have refineries established down in Spokane or Seattle, giving employment to Americans, and Canada can just wait or possibly the west coast can continue indefinitely

to import her oil from the United States. It would mean giving employment to Americans instead of to Canadians.
The situation is even worse than that because British Columbia is in direct competition with Washington and Oregon. Our lumbermen have to compete with lumbermen of Washington and Oregon. Our fishermen compete with the fishermen of Washington and Oregon. Our fruit growers are in competition with fruit growers down the same valleys in Washington. You may well have the position that the Americans in competition with us are getting Canadian gas and Canadian oil while the people in British Columbia cannot get these commodities.
The bill which was passed last session did not have that objection, because that company's line was to come from northern Alberta down through the province of British Columbia, serving practically every community in that province, and once it served Vancouver and New Westminster nobody could have any objection to the surplus being exported to the United States. There was a plan which I suggest was in the best interest of Canada. For that reason the bill passed last session without any opposition whatever.
I repeat, there should be written into these acts some provision that Canadian requirements are to be met first. The premier of Alberta has taken that stand. During previous debates letters from him have been read in the house. One of them will be found at page 1345 of Hansard. In that letter he pointed out the requirements of the government of Alberta before they would issue a licence. The third requirement was:
It will be a condition of any export permit that Canadian requirements must be given first priority.
I am asking that that condition be put in this bill, and that in every pipe-line bill there should be a condition that Canadian requirements must be given first priority. The suggestion will be made that that can be left to the board of transport commissioners. Mr. Speaker, it is not the job of the board of transport commissioners to lay down a policy of that kind. If that is the policy of the government it should be laid down in a statute by parliament and not just left to the board of transport commissioners.
May I mention something else in connection with these pipe-line bills. I believe that hon. members should be very careful to see that these bills are not merely in furtherance of a promotion scheme. There is big money involved in this business. In a few months or a year's time we may find that we have granted these charters to some solicitors and that they were acting for some promoters,

and that these promotors have sold the charters for hundreds of thousands of dollars. That is a situation against which this house must guard. Let the people who are really behind these applications for private bills come into this house and ask for incorporation themselves so that we may know to whom we are giving these rights. If there are big oil companies involved let us know about them. When a company was incorporated last spring to build a pipe line from Edmonton to Regina we were told that the Imperial Oil Company was behind that company; that it was in effect a subsidiary of the Imperial Oil Company. The Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe) may correct me if I am wrong in this, but there was another private bill incorporating a company known as the British American Pipe Line Company. We were told that that company was a subsidiary of several of the major oil companies. Hon. members had that information. But in the case of the bill now before us we have no idea whatever who is behind it.


Mr. Howe:: May I ask my hon. friend a question? Is not the proper place to get that information the committee of railways, canals and telegraph lines?


Howard Charles Green: No, I do not believe it is. I believe that we should establish a practice here of insisting on knowing who the men are who are asking for these great rights. Let us know their names. Certainly the sponsor of the bill could have told us who was behind this company. I suggest to the Minister of Trade and Commerce that the wise way for this house to handle these bills is to insist on being told such facts before approving the bill. These names should appear right in the bill itself. If that were done there could be no misunderstanding and there could be no fast footwork. We would know with whom we were dealing.
There is another thing we should remember about this bill. While the power is taken to carry oil, it is primarily a natural gas pipe line, and under the Pipe Lines Act, which was passed last session, the companies that carry natural gas are not common carriers. Companies that carry oil are common carriers, they have to carry oil produced by anybody who offers it for carriage, or however you describe the movement of oil. But that is not so with these natural gas pipes lines. They are not common carriers.


Clarence Decatur Howe: How could they be?


Howard Charles Green: It may be that they cannot be common carriers, although we did not have time last session to go into that question
Prairie Transmission Lines carefully. I point out to hon. members that if this company is incorporated and puts in a natural gas pipe line it will be under no obligation whatever to carry natural gas for any other company.
I know the suggestion will be made-in fact it has already been made-that we should give incorporation to anybody who wishes to come here and ask for a private bill, and let them compete. That would be a very unwise way to handle the situation. It would in effect mean that parliament acts purely as a rubber stamp, granting incorporation to anybody and then letting them fight it out. I do not believe that we can evade our responsibility in that way. I suggest that it is the duty of hon. members to go carefully into the facts in each of these applications for incorporation, and then to decide on the merits of the particular application.
Therefore I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that the house should vote down this bill. It is a private bill. Government policy is not involved. All we are dealing with is the application of five solicitors to be made a company and to be given these tremendously wide powers. There can be no question of a vote against the bill being a vote of want of confidence in the government. I hope hon. members will vote against the bill. That would mean that in the months intervening between the end of this session and the beginning of the next one further consideration could be given to the points I have raised and those raised by other hon. members in these pipe line debates. There will be far more time next session also to consider these bills in committee. For these reasons therefore I do urge that this bill be voted down.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Mr. Speaker, I should like to attempt to shorten the debate by calling the attention of hon. members to the situation that faces parliament when dealing with these applications. This is not an application to build a pipe line; it is simply an application to incorporate a company that would like to build a pipe line. If the incorporation is granted the next step must be for the company to sign up sufficient production of natural gas or to acquire natural gas in some way, in quantity sufficient to justify the pipe line.
The third step is that the company must obtain from the province of Alberta a licence to export gas from that province. That step is really the key to the whole situation, since the company that receives the licence to export gas from Alberta will be the company that builds the pipe line for gas. And may I say in passing that I am very glad indeed,

Prairie Transmission Lines as a member of this government, that the province of Alberta has relieved this government of the responsibility of making a choice of pipe line companies to do this particular job.
The next step is this: the company, having sufficient gas to warrant a pipe line and having a licence from Alberta to export that gas, must come before the board of transport commissioners and satisfy the requirements of the Pipe Lines Act. It must prove to the board convenience and necessity. It must show that the project is properly financed. It must show that supplies of gas within the control of the company are sufficient to warrant a pipe line, and it must obtain the approval of the board of transport commissioners regarding a route.
But that is not all. The board of transport commissioners will, I assume, as they have in the past, require that the company produce a licence under the Electricity and Fluid Exportation Act which is administered by the Department of Trade and Commerce. The purpose of that act is to see that resources of Canada, such as power or fluids or gas, which depend upon continuous transport, are used primarily for the benefit of Canada. That act was passed by this parliament at a time when it was found that, in the past, electricity produced in Canada and needed in Canada had been alienated by long-term contracts made with users in the United States.
In my opinion the Electricity and Fluid Exportation Act is one of the most important acts on our statute books. I believe the administration of the act has prevented alienation of Canada's natural resources, such as had been taking place before the act was placed on the statute books.
A good deal has been said about the route of these two pipe lines. All I know about the route is that one of the groups asking for incorporation visited me and asked what the attitude of the government would be regarding administration of the exportation act to which I have referred. I stated that the attitude of the government would be that the export of gas would be treated in exactly the same way that we treat the export of electricity, namely that the needs of Canada would be served first and would be protected in perpetuity for all export purposes.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Nine o'clock.


Mr. Speaker:: The hour reserved for private and public bills having expired, the house will resume the business interrupted at six o'clock.



HOUSING


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Coldwell for the adjournment of the house, under standing order 31, for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely the action of the government in allowing a further and drastic increase in domestic rents, the effect of which will further increase the cost of living in this country, aggravate the housing shortage and seriously impair the health and living standards of our people.
Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, we are back now to the consideration of the motion made this afternoon by my leader, the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell), protesting against the action of the government in allowing further drastic increases in domestic rents, the effect of which will further increase the cost of living in this country, aggravate the housing shortage and seriously impair the health and living standards of our people.
I do not see how anyone can apply the words "orderly decontrol" to a proposal to increase domestic rents by amounts running up to 20 and 25 per cent. Surely that is a misuse of the word.-and I am sure every Liberal member in the house must agree with that statement.
It seems to me quite clear that the course followed by the government in allowing such drastic increases simply could not have taken place just before an election. Neither could it happen in a House of Commons more evenly divided between government and opposition members than is the present one. I suggest that points to the error in the decision made by the government, and also to the tragedy of this parliament. The tragedy of this parliament is that its overwhelming government majority is becoming more and more detached from the people of Canada whom it is supposed to represent.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Stanley Howard Knowles: My hon. friends are throwing in their little interjections as they did this afternoon. Every time anyone on this side of the house said anything they did not like they threw in interjections of one kind or another. And any time the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) said something that sounded as though it was time to applaud, as for instance when he said that the government was going to stand by its decision, they applauded. By their actions during this debate, and by their interjections right now, they are demonstrating the truth of what

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I have just said, that having got into this House of Commons, with its overwhelming majority, they have become detached from the people they are supposed to represent back in their respective constituencies.
I suggest, particularly to hon. members on the government side, that they go back in their thinking to the months of May and June of this year, when they were campaigning in their constituencies and when, instead of hobnobbing with a great overflowing majority of Liberals in this House of Commons, they were with the people whom they were seeking to represent, feeling their problems and making promises to them.


An hon. Member:: We are still.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The way hon. members are acting in the house shows that they have completely forgotten the relationship with the people of their constituencies which they promised they would maintain. I suggest to hon. members that they do not even have to take their thinking back to the months of the campaign, May and June. Those who went home last week end will recall the protests they received from the people of their constituencies about the announced increases in rentals up to 20 and 25 per cent. Those hon. members who did not go home can go up to their offices and get out the letters they have been receiving in the last few days. Those things must surely impress upon Liberal members of the house that what the people back home want is that their representatives shall live up to their promises, and that parHament shall somehow represent the wishes and desires of the Canadian people.
It seems to me there ought not to be this difference between a House of Commons that is evenly divided and a house that has an overwhelming majority on one side. It is still the elected house in the parliament of Canada; and the job of hon. members, whether they are on the minority or the majority side, is to think of the wishes and desires of the people of their constituencies. What happens? Some hon. members went home for the week end, and they got the feeling of their constituents. They told newspaper writers either in their home towns or after they came back to Ottawa that this was a hot issue. The newspaper writers were able to put stories in the papers to the effect that there would be a real commotion within Liberal ranks, that Liberals would be calling upon the government to rescind the order, or certainly to make very drastic changes in it.
We understood today that once the debate was under way certain Liberals would take part in it, but such has not been the case. The Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) gets
up and makes a very fine speech; Liberal members applaud, and somehow or other they are mesmerized into thinking the situation is not so bad after all. I ask any Liberal member to get a reprint of the speech made by the Minister of Finance this afternoon, send it to the people of his constituency who are complaining, and ask them to use it to pay the increased rent. Ask them to read that speech and see if it makes them feel as satisfied as some hon. members felt this afternoon, simply because the minister lulled them back into their accustomed complacency. I challenge hon. members again to get away from being mesmerized by the feeling they are in power with an overwhelming majority. They are not just members of a club of good fellows who are here to get along with each other. Every one of us in this house represents 30,000, 40,000, 50,000, 60,000, or possibly 100,000 people back home. It is the job not only of members in this corner of the house but of every individual Liberal member to remember his responsibility to his constituents who, as the motion before the house puts it, are going to have their health and living standards impaired by the action that the government has taken in increasing rents by 20 and 25 per cent.
In connection with the whole question of the overwhelming majority that the Liberals have in the house, may I remind them that does not mean that whatever they think or say, or whatever they decide to agree with because it is proposed by the government, necessarily represents the views of the majority of the people. As a matter of fact, the 193 or 194 Liberals in this house do not have behind them a majority of the votes of the people of the country. I have in my hand the Canadian Press election handbook for this year which gives figures of the percentages of the votes on June '27, that date that hon. members opposite are so fond of quoting. What do these figures show? They show that the Liberal vote on June 27 was only 49-54 per cent.


An hon. Member:: What was the C.C.F.?


Stanley Howard Knowles: Oh yes, the C.C.F. had only a minority vote.


An hon. Member:: What was the result of the election? You are asking for it.


Stanley Howard Knowles: My friends are boasting again that they got more votes than we did, but they are ignoring the fact that the people of Canada are looking to them tonight to speak for them here in this house.


Mr. Whitman:: Don't be provocative.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The people of their constituencies are looking to them to speak for them

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on the question of increased rentals. Let me finish my point: 49-54 per cent of the people of Canada-actually only a minority-voted Liberal on the 27th of June, and that 50-46 per cent voted against the government now in power.


Donald Methuen Fleming: The Liberal percentage dropped in the by-elections.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Lest anyone think I am overlooking any figures in this table let me say that in addition to the 49-54 per cent who voted Liberal there were -49 per cent who voted Independent Liberal-I suppose that accounts for the grade A and grade B Liberals-


John Ewen Sinclair: What about straight independents?


Stanley Howard Knowles: I suppose that explains the two grades of Liberals-the kind who are introduced by cabinet ministers and the kind who are introduced by private members. When you add together the two figures I have quoted it shows that 50-03 per cent of the people of Canada voted Liberal or Independent Liberal, and 49 [DOT] 97 per cent voted for other parties and against the government.


John Ewen Sinclair: Did you add the independent vote in Comox-Alberni?


Stanley Howard Knowles: To which side of the house does the hon. member for Comox-Alberni (Mr. Gibson) belong?


Frederick Primrose Whitman: Over on that side.


Stanley Howard Knowles: As a matter of fact, he supported my amendment yesterday with respect to trade union dues, so I am prepared to welcome him down here. The point I am making is that I am asking hon. members to realize, and particularly members on the government side -


An hon. Member:: That we are in power.


Stanley Howard Knowles: There is the same thing again. The lecture I am trying to give to Liberal members apparently is in vain. All they can think of is that they are in power with over 190 of them here, but half of the people of Canada did not want a Liberal government on June 27, and a lot more feel that way now. These Liberal members promised their electors that they would protect their interests, and one protection that they said they would give was to see that the living standards of the people in their constituencies were protected. You cannot call it protection of living standards if you allow such an increase in rentals at the present time.
I hope it will be a lesson to the people of Canada, Mr. Speaker, and that they will realize that, no matter how good the party

is they are putting in power, they should not give it too large a majority in the House of Commons. An overwhelming majority produces a totally different situation than you have when, as in the last parliament, the majority was fairly close. In fact I hope the people of Manitoba, where there is an election in a couple of days from now, will realize that they had better be careful as to the size of any majority they put in power.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Stanley Howard Knowles: My hon. friends are laughing again. Some of them may even be thinking the reason I got up to speak is because that election is taking place on Thursday of this week. It might be.


An hon. Member:: Surely.


Stanley Howard Knowles: At any rate, in relation to this whole question, I read in today's Ottawa Journal a dispatch from my home city of Winnipeg dated November 8, which is as follows:
The Manitoba government is loath to take over rental control, Premier D. L. Campbell said in a statement read by Educational Minister C. Rhodes Smith last night during a radio address.
Apparently they do things the same way there as in this government. One minister speaks for another and you never know where you are with them. At any rate, one minister made a statement on behalf of the premier of Manitoba indicating that the Manitoba provincial government has been put on the spot by the action of the Minister of Finance in announcing his rental increases last Thursday. I am amazed that the Minister of Finance was not a little more considerate of his friend and namesake Douglas Campbell of Manitoba, and did not postpone his announcement a week or so. The Journal dispatch goes on to say:
The statement explained that "we believe that rental controls are more easily and efficiently administered by one national government than by ten provincial governments." It added the provincial government is loath to assume the jurisdiction now exercised by the dominion until convinced such a step is necessary in the public interest.
I do not blame the provincial government for being loath to enter the field of rental control. I think Premier Campbell is right when he says that rental controls are more easily and efficiently administered by one government rather than by ten provincial governments, but I hope the people of Manitoba realize they are now being handed the same kind of half assurances that they were given by the Liberals prior to the 27th of June. Once the 10th of November is past, any thought that the Manitoba government would take over rent control in that province is just

as far down the drain as is the promise of the federal government that they would protect the health and the living standards of the Canadian people.
Well, Mr. Speaker, I do not intend to go much further, but there is one thing the minister has tried to say both ways to which 1 want to call attention. I do not know how long we are going to have to keep on telling the ministers that they cannot have it both ways; they try to do it continually. Last Thursday evening, when the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) announced increases in rents, he prefaced his statement as to the precise changes being made by asserting that in the view of the government you could not completely remove rent controls without creating chaos. This afternoon, when hon. members were complaining about these increases, which could go as high as 20 and 25 per cent, the minister said, "Oh, the increases are not going that high. That is just a permissive ceiling, but I am satisfied they will not go that high." In other words the minister has put the ceiling so high there is no pressure on it. Well, you cannot tell us on Thursday evening that the government feel they cannot take off rent controls altogether, and then tell us today that that is exactly what they have done. It seems to me there should be come consistency in this matter. I also think the government should realize this proposal that the provinces take over rent control, after they have put the ceiling so high that it no longer has any effect, is asking the provinces to take on something completely impossible.
I leave it at that. I come back in my closing sentence to the clearly-stated effect of the government's action as it was put by my leader when he moved the motion this afternoon. I submit that individual Liberal members of this house owe it as a duty to themselves and to their constituents to think of this matter not in terms of the feeling of power they have here, but in terms of what the people expect of them. I am sure the people back home want them to say with us- and to protest against it-that the action of the government in allowing a further and drastic increase in domestic rents will further increase the cost of living in this country, aggravate the housing shortage and seriously impair the health and living standards of our people. That is not what Canadians voted for on June 27. That is not what the Liberal members of this house promised to do for the people of Canada by Christmas t^iis year. I suggest that they show some sense of responsibility to the people who elected them
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by rising in their places and protesting with us against the action the government has taken.


Mr. Clarence Gillis (Cape Breton South):: Mr. Speaker, I have listened to the debate with considerable interest, and I should like to preface my remarks by saying that this question is not a political issue. It is not a Liberal nor a Tory nor a C.C.F. issue. It boils down to cold, hard economic facts and a little bit of honesty. If we intend to relieve the people of this country who are going to be affected by this action-and around four million are affected-if we honestly want to do something for them and face the economic facts, then it is not good enough to follow party tactics. Nor is it good enough for the government, with their large majority, to sit back complacently and say, "Well, we are here for four more years. The memory of the people is short. Before the next election we will give them a few little palliatives and they will forget all about this." That seems to be the feeling. You know, Mr. Speaker, I do not like the truculent attitude of the members of the government in chucking their weight around. It pays to be humble in victory; when you stick up your head too far somebody is going to knock it off for you. If you keep it down and show a little honesty in your thinking on questions which come before you, in which there is merit, I think the people of Canada will have a great deal more respect for this institution.
There is a great deal of merit in this question. The whole matter is one of control, and we do not need to guess about the problem any longer. When this country faced a crisis in the early days of the war there was no quibbling about it. We then had a national objective, the winning of the war. It was a matter of survival, and neither the members of this house nor the cabinet sat back and said, "We are just going to let this thing go along in a haphazard way." It required a certain amount of planning. The first thing the government decided must be done was the holding of prices somewhere within reason; and they made a very good job of it. From the start of the war until about the end of 1941 prices were uncontrolled, and in that period they jumped about 15-8 points. So the government instituted controls. They fought the war; they allocated materials; they controlled prices; and up to the end of 1945, when the war was over, the price index had gone up only about 4-3 points.
In defending controls in this house Mr. Ilsley made the statement that by means of controls he had saved the people of this country some $12,500 million, or approximately $1,000 for every man, woman and

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child in Canada. That was good business, was it not? No one was hurt; no one transacting business during that period suffered; their profits were within reason, and every person in this country benefited to the extent of a thousand dollars. Then came the end of the war and we wanted to get back to the things that caused the war; the unplanned, unrestricted economy, where greed and avarice are the motivating factors in society; and that is where we went.
The minister speaks of orderly decontrol. Beginning in 1946 controls were removed. Our opinion was that they were never more badly needed than during the transition from war to peace. We had an effective machinery administered by experienced men; and the worth of that machinery had been proved during the war. But in 1946 the minister said he was going to go ahead with it in an orderly fashion, so controls came off; and from early in 1946 until about the end of 1947 the price index jumped by some 25 -9 points. In other words prices rose by only 4-3 points in the whole process of fighting the war; then in a little more than a year after the end of the war, when controls began to be removed, the index soared by 25 -9 points. I believe that increase indicates to hon. members that price controls should have been maintained during that period. It must be remembered that industry in this country went through a great deal of upheaval, trouble, strikes and misery, because when prices began to skyrocket wages began to chase them. If controls had been maintained during the period I have just mentioned, and prices kept within reason, we would have avoided that disruption of industry. It would have been good business, and it should have been done.


An hon. Member:: Including wage control?


Clarence Gillis: Wages were controlled. Certainly you must have a measure of wage control if you are going to have price control. We have never denied that. In fact we have advocated it, and it was accepted during the war. Today the cost of living index stands at around 160. I believe it was 160-1, but it dropped a little. There has been a terrific increase in the cost of living. The people that I have in mind in this particular instance are the people in the low-income brackets. A large percentage of our people do not pay income taxes, and those are the people who live in rented houses. Those are the people who are going to suffer most under this rent increase.
An estimate made by the Toronto welfare council reveals that the small-income groups in this country spend at least fifty-five per cent of their total income on food. In the matter of rents, the landlords received a
[Mr Gillis.]
rent increase of 10 per cent about a year ago. I believe that this last gesture on the part of the minister was ill-considered. I am not going to kick the minister around for it because I know him quite well. I know his background, and he came up the hard way. The minister may be on top of the heap today, but I believe he has some bad advisers in the background. I think he should look them over carefully. This move was badly timed, very badly timed.
I do not think the government should have made a move at this time. They have not exactly removed the control from rents but, in effect, they have told the landlords of this country they are justified in increasing rents by 20 or 25 per cent. I believe that was a wrong approach to the problem. If the minister was going to do anything about it, it would have been better for him to vacate the field completely and leave out of the picture that matter of instructing the landlords as to the percentage by which they could increase rents. The minister says they do not have to increase rents by that amount. The fact of the matter is that the landlords will charge it. Examples of that can be found in this house.
I know a person employed in the civil service who had an apartment for which he was paying $30 per month. When certain types of accommodation were decontrolled, he had to get out immediately. He went into an apartment which before the war rented for around $45 per month. The landlord split it up and made two apartments out of it. This man who was paying $30 per month rent, all he could afford, was forced to pay $85 per month for one end of that apartment. The other end was rented for $75 per month. That landlord was receiving $160 per month for accommodation which, in 1939, rented for $45 per month. That was under decontrol. You will find a large percentage of the landlords will take that attitude and say, "Well, Mr. Abbott said twenty-five per cent for this type of accommodation. Rents will be increased by twenty-five per cent. It would have been much better if the federal government had vacated the field and said nothing about the rent increase.
I believe that housing is this country's No. 1 problem in many respects. It is the No. 1 problem in the field of employment. The lumber industry is rather stagnant; the steel mills are not producing as they should; the fuel industry is down and the building trades are not all employed. I believe Canada should set up a low-rental housing program as a national objective. This would provide us with an incentive such as we had during the war. This country has no objective now. In this House of Commons we

are roaming around like a ship without a rudder. Someone on the government benches should set a low-rental subsidized housing program as an objective to cure the housing problem of the low-income groups. Until such time as that is done, nothing will help our people. It would stimulate the lumber industry and the steel industry and put the building trades to work. It would create employment and new wealth for this country. I think that is an objective for which we could all work. It is not a Liberal or a C.C.F. objective; it is a common-sense approach to our No. 1 problem.
Then the question arises, where are you going to get the money? Before the war that question was heard quite often. There was no money for relief or anything else. Immediately upon the outbreak of war, instead of appropriating millions we were appropriating billions-we were even making gifts of billions. There is money. I am going to name one particular spot from which we could get some money. These figures were taken from the public accounts and concern subsidies that were paid up to 1945. The total subsidies amounted to $210,591,000. The administration of the wartime prices and trade board cost $14 million in 1945. That sounds like a lot of money.
Immediately after the war excess profits taxes were abolished. The yearly revenue from those taxes amounted to $465,805,356 per year. That is also a lot of money. If the government is in earnest about solving the low-rental housing problem of this country on a subsidized basis, I believe it would cost somewhere in the neighbourhood of $120 million per year. Is it unreasonable to say that the excess profits tax should be reimposed in an amount sufficient to offset a subsidized housing program for this country?


John Ewen Sinclair: Will the hon. member permit a question? Is he aware that the British Labour government removed the excess profits tax on industry one year before this government did, for reasons which the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave at that time?


Clarence Gillis: The tax rate in the United Kingdom is much higher and they also have a capital gains tax which we have not got.


John Ewen Sinclair: Is the hon. member aware that, when the Canadian government removed the excess profits tax, it followed the same procedure as the United Kingdom and increased the standard rate of corporation taxation from 18 per cent to 30 per cent?


Clarence Gillis: I was not aware of that.
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John Ewen Sinclair: I suggest you do a little research about your Labour government in Great Britain.


Clarence Gillis: I have done a little research, and it appears to be hurting. Your questions do not bother me at all.


John Ewen Sinclair: The answers bother you.


Clarence Gillis: I have no objection to the hon. member asking those questions because he just gets his feet wet all the time. There is no comparison between Britain and Canada. I have heard the Prime Minister and other members in this house say that we are much better off than any other country in the world. I think that is childish and nonsensical. Britain was devastated by war. She came out with perhaps a million of her people in airraid shelters. The United Kingdom imports practically everything the people eat or wear as well as all building materials. The same thing applies to the rest of Europe. You cannot compare this country, which covers half a continent, has unlimited resources, thirteen million people and never a scar of war, to a country like Britain. We built up our standards while they were tearing theirs down. There is no comparison at all. We are better off, certainly, but I would not want to go through what the people of Britain went through with the same kind of administration we have today, and expect it to drag us out of fthe ruins of war. I think the comparison is one which hon. members would not want to put on the record.
I was just pointing out, Mr. Speaker, for the benefit of the minister who just entered the chamber, that in this matter of removing controls-I have said a lot about it and I am not going to repeat it-I thought that the success of the whole control structure during the war, the benefits that the Canadian people derived from it and the excellent job that was done by the administration in that field, was attributable to the fact that this country at that time had a national objective, which was the winning of the war. It was not a Liberal war, a Tory war, or a C.C.F. war. We all got into it and helped to win it. You laid down certain mechanism that worked during the war.
I make this suggestion to the minister. He is a military man and knows that you have got to have objectives if you are going to go into a battle; you must choose a battleground, plan your attack and so forth. I think we now need another national objective, and that we shall have to reconstitute some of the machinery with which we were so successful in fighting the war. I made this suggestion. I am repeating this for the minister's benefit. I know he is receptive

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and sympathetic, and that if ideas are right he will perhaps put them into operation. I suggest that our housing problem in this country is our No. 1 problem and that we should all forget our party politics and should set as our objective the elimination of slums and the establishment of a good, low-rental, subsidized housing program as the only means of relieving the low-income groups and giving them housing. I think we should say that should be done. It would stimulate production. Your lumber industry would work on it. Your steel mills would work on it. Your building trades would go to work. It would create employment and solve our No. 1 problem.
Someone may ask where we are going to get the money for all this. I pointed out the amount of subsidies-according to the public accounts report of 1945, some $210 million was paid out; the administration of the wartime prices and trade board cost about $14 million, in round figures; but at the same time your excess profits tax that you had used during the war in order to finance the war was yielding the government some $465 million, in round figures again. According to figures I have seen, a subsidy of about $120 million a year would provide an adequate low-rental housing program in this country. I ask the members of the house if it is unreasonable to reimpose an excess profits tax to gather sufficient revenue to provide that subsidy. I do not think you would have hurt anyone because I think that normal profits, without extra profits, are sufficient. I think the balance sheets of companies and corporations throughout Canada during the war show that they were making a fair and reasonable profit as determined by the finance department. That huge amount of money that was handed back to them in excess profits is not being used. They do not need it. I suggest to the minister that he appeal to all members in this house to forget their party differences; let us tap that resource in order to get a sufficient amount of money to provide a low-rental subsidized housing program, make it a national objective at this time, and get behind it and push it.


Mr. Charles Cannon (Iles-de-la-Madeleine):: I heard the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) issue a challenge to this side of the house, Mr. Speaker. He inquired why more so-called Liberal backbenchers were not getting up to speak on this subject. As a rule, I do not like to allow a challenge to go unheeded. I am therefore taking this one up. To the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, who mentioned the fact that he thought we were getting out of touch with the people, I should like to say

that he should remember that not so long ago we were very much in touch with the people, and I think we still are. I believe that the right-thinking people of Canada- the people who do not, for instance, take advantage of a debate like this to practise demagoguery and to bring forward a program of "soak the rich"-are inclined to agree with this government which they elected not so long ago and in which I am sure they still have confidence.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Does the hon. member think that the people support these rental increases?


Charles-Arthur Dumoulin Cannon: I think that the majority of the people do. They are not rental increases, as a matter of fact, and I think that the majority of the people support the policy of the government which I will attempt to explain in a few minutes if my hon. friend will bear with me.


Douglas Charles Abbott: We believe in a fair deal for all.


Charles-Arthur Dumoulin Cannon: One of the members on the other side of the house said that it was not a political issue. By no stretch of the imagination can this government be accused of playing politics with this issue.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Charles-Arthur Dumoulin Cannon: They are certainly not taking the easy way and they are certainly not trying to take what they might have reason to believe would be the most popular course with the people-


An hon. Member:: After the election.


Charles-Arthur Dumoulin Cannon: -or with the tenants, who after all are the majority in certain of our large cities. But I wish to say that, as the government is not playing politics, it is at the same time being consistent. The government is doing no more than carrying out the policy that was laid before the people in the last election, and that policy was supported. I see that my friend the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre looks surprised.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I am surprised.


Charles-Arthur Dumoulin Cannon: I will attempt to establish that fact. In the last election the government said that it was in favour of doing away with all wartime controls. It has been the policy of this government for some time to do away with all wartime controls. One of the wartime controls, and the only one remaining, was rent control. The government and the speakers who spoke for the government-and I was one-said that in due course the rental controls would be removed. Now the rental controls are being removed. Things are perhaps going a little

bit faster than was expected. I will admit that; nevertheless the government is taking the courageous action it said it would take, and it is being even more courageous than it possibly had to be under all circumstances. As I said before, it cannot be accused of playing politics nor of taking the easy way. When one is governing, one must remember -and if my hon. friends on the other side of the house ever have to govern, which I hope will not happen in my time, they will realize it-that it is more difficult to do the right thing than to do the popular thing.


John Lambert Gibson: It is hard to be a statesman.


Angus MacInnis: The hon. member will never succeed.


Charles-Arthur Dumoulin Cannon: The government is carrying out this program of removing controls, and is also taking another method of doing away with the disadvantage that lessees suffered from because of high rents, with a housing program. The hon. member for Cape Breton South (Mr. Gillis) talked about having a subsidized housing program. We have a housing program which has been explained to us by the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply (Mr. Winters) and it is going forward. Under it we have built more houses and have done more to relieve the shortage of dwellings than any other country has done since the war. That fact should not be forgotten.
Something was said about newspaper writers. I read the reports in the Standard also. I read all the declarations made by the members from Montreal, and I was particularly struck by the unanimity of those declarations. They all said one thing and one thing only, namely, that they were in favour of retaining rent controls for the present. Who is not? We are. We are retaining rent controls for the present. We have lifted the ceiling but we are retaining rent controls, and that is all the hon. members said. It cannot be said that one of these hon. members made any statement that was not in conformity with the policy of the government as it has been established by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott). We must not lose our sense of proportion. After all, this is a decision that shocks some people, but it is not the end of the world. It is not the end of this parliament; it is not even the end of the Liberal party. Talking about not losing a sense of proportion, I should like to re-establish some figures that the hon. member for Moose Jaw (Mr. Thatcher) did not seem to quite understand this afternoon. I refer to the maximum increases which are authorized. As was explained by
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the Minister of Finance, to whom I listened this afternoon, the total is 40 per cent as the limit, not 45 per cent. First, 10 per cent, then 5 per cent and then 25 per cent, which makes 40 per cent.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: You work it out.


Charles-Arthur Dumoulin Cannon: Forty per cent only. The minister said this afternoon that when you calculated the 10 per cent you calculated it on 100 per cent. When you added 5 per cent you did not add it on to 110 per cent, you added it on to 100 per cent. When you added 25 per cent you did not add it on to 115 per cent, you added it on to 100 per cent, and that makes 40 per cent. Let us consider this in a dispassionate manner. Let us take the figures as they are and let us not lose our sense of proportion. We are not losing our sense of proportion. The important thing to my mind is the proportion of rent to wages.
I challenge any hon. members on the other side to prove that this is not true, even with the increase that is now going into effect, if it goes into effect and rents are increased to the maximum authorized. Even if rents are increased up to the limit authorized the proportion of rent to wages will not be any higher than it was in 1939. The proportion of rent paid by the working man on the average in proportion to his total wages is not any higher now than it was then. So, where is the great hardship? There is no great hardship there; it is just a matter of readjustment.


Clarence Gillis: You mean you want to get back to the 1939 conditions?


Charles-Arthur Dumoulin Cannon: I did not say I want to get back to the 1939 conditions. I am asking hon. members not to lose their sense of proportion.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Like you have.


An hon. Member:: He has not any.


Charles-Arthur Dumoulin Cannon: There is another angle to be considered in this. I take it, it will not be popular with hon. members on the other side, but one must consider that the government and the rent controls have to be fair to the land owners. After all, they are citizens of this country and like any others they are entitled to be fairly treated. Evidently hon. members on the other side do not want them to be fairly treated; but I believe it is the duty of this government to treat all classes of citizens in this country equally fairly. If the land owners are fairly treated they are getting only their due. If the ceiling were not raised we would be in this situation. We would be taxing illegally one section of the population of this country; we would be discriminating against one class whom we would be forcing to bear the burden of the benefits

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that the tenants are deriving from the fact that the rents are not allowed to go up. Who would have to pay for that? So far, the property owners. I say that is not fair. I say it is not fair to tax one class of the population in this country so as to benefit another class. That is the policy of the Liberal party. That is the policy they have had the courage to put into force by the regulations that have been made.
Another point that should not be lost sight of is that after all rent control is a provincial responsibility. There can be no doubt whatever about that. For the moment I am speaking as a lawyer. If anyone looks at the B.N.A. Act he can see that property and civil rights are a provincial responsibility.


An hon. Member:: Why take it to court, then?


Charles-Arthur Dumoulin Cannon: I shall explain that in a minute. Property and civil rights are a provincial responsibility. There is no doubt about that. What can be more within the scope of property and civil rights than rent? Rents have to do with real estate, which is property, and the civil rights of the land owners who rent to the lessees, and the civil rights of the lessees who rent from the landlord. There is no doubt at all that that comes squarely within property and civil rights.
To answer my hon. friend's question, during the war, because of the emergency, the federal government assumed control with the consent of the provinces, if not the explicit consent, at least the tacit consent; and we still have their consent evidently because they will not take the responsibility themselves.
Another thing that we should consider when talking about the responsibility of the provinces is that not only is it a legal responsibility but in all fairness they should take it because conditions are different in different provinces. It is not a matter on which the federal government can legislate for the whole of Canada. It is a matter which should be legislated upon in the different provinces where conditions vary. Conditions in my province of Quebec are not the same as they are in Ontario. Conditions in British Columbia are not the same as they are in the prairies. Everybody knows that. From there it is easy to conclude that it is a matter that should be taken up by the provinces. I understand that the province of Saskatchewan has some stand-by legislation, and that it is ready to assume its responsibility. Evidently it is the only province in Canada that has done so. Since my hon. friend's party is in power there, I take the opportunity of congratulating them on having done that, but the other provinces ought to do it also. There is no doubt that it is a provincial responsibility.

It is an unfortunate situation. Everybody agrees that it is an unfortunate situation, but it is an unfortunate situation that had to come sooner or later. The policy of the government was decontrol.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Orderly decontrol.


Charles-Arthur Dumoulin Cannon: The policy of the government is to give up the control of rents. They are giving it up. It is an unfortunate situation, but the government is not wholly responsible for it. As I pointed out before, those who are really responsible for this situation are the provinces who refuse to assume their responsibility.
In concluding, Mr. Speaker, I say that I think we ought to be thankful in place of criticizing the government, in place of trying to make things difficult for the government, which has taken on its responsibilities like a man. We should be thankful that we have a government which is taking its responsibilities-


Stanley Howard Knowles: Shirking them.


Charles-Arthur Dumoulin Cannon: -that are not rightfully its under the British North America Act. I turn the word "shirking" back to my hon. friend. I will say to him that it is the provinces who are shirking their responsibilities.


Stanley Howard Knowles: You will be sorry you made that speech.


Angus MacInnis: Mr. Speaker, coming from the city of Vancouver, which is perhaps one of the most overcrowded cities in the Dominion of Canada, I cannot very well let this debate go by without saying something about the issues involved and how it is going to affect the people in my part of the country.
I believe the psychologists say that you can always know the environment in which people were brought up by their reactions to certain conditions or circumstances. People who live in isolated places will not understand the problems of congested cities where large numbers of people have to live in poverty. The member who just preceded me said that this was a very unfortunate situation. I agree with him, that it is an unfortunate situation, because it will affect people-as every other increase in the cost of living has affected people-who would find it difficult to get along even if there were no increase in the cost of living. It will affect the poor. It will not affect the members of this House of Commons. It will not affect people in Canada who are getting $6,000 a year or more. But, as I can show hon. members, it will affect mothers who are trying to bring up families of several children on incomes of less than $100 a

month. Under circumstances such as that, any increase, no matter how small, means that those women and children will have less to eat.
That is why it is unfortunate. I am not going to belabour the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott). I will agree at once that some landlords have been getting a bad deal, and that some attempt should have been made to find a way to help them. But when the minister calls the removal of controls to the extent of 20 and 25 per cent orderly decontrol, he is just talking nonsense. I am not so sure it would not have been better to remove controls altogether. I am not saying that it would, but I am saying that -


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Angus MacInnis: Just a moment, now; that is no joke.


Douglas Charles Abbott: No, it is not.


Angus MacInnis: I am saying the probability is that every landlord who raises his rent will raise it the full amount allowed by law. That is what is likely to happen. He will say "the government allows a 25 per cent increase, and I am going to take it."
It was refreshing to find one member of the Liberal party, apart from the minister, who had the hardihood, even if inexperienced, to rise in his place in defence of the government. Oh, I could name a good many members in the house whom I did not see rising to their feet with a rush to defend the action of the government. I look over at them, and I could name quite a number of them; but out of consideration for their feelings and the fact that I know them, and know they are good fellows, I shall not mention their constituencies.


Stanley Howard Knowles: And they are very grateful to you.


Angus MacInnis: But that is the picture. We have heard it said that he who runs may read. Well, you can run pretty darned fast during the past few days and read the protests from one end of this country to the other. When we have opponents of controls such as the Montreal Gazette and the Montreal Star writing long editorials on the folly of this decontrol, you can rest assured-


Douglas Charles Abbott: Just the Montreal Gazette, I think.


Angus MacInnis: No, the Montreal Star. I believe it was the Montreal Star reporter who drew my attention to it yesterday afternoon as I was walking along the corridor. I took occasion to have the page bring the paper in the chamber to me, and I read it here. It was the Montreal Star,
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Douglas Charles Abbott: The Montreal Standard raised its price the same day the changes were made in rent controls.


Angus MacInnis: Why not? If the Minister of Finance considered the people of Canada to be in such good circumstances that he could allow the removal of rent controls, why should not the Montreal Standard increase the price of its product, as well?
I would draw the attention of the house and the minister to the situation in Vancouver. The Vancouver housing association made a submission to the government on rent control, of which I received a copy dated August 1949. I may say that the submission was made in view of reports circulated that it was the intention to end all controls on March 31, 1950. In part they say this:
If rent controls were necessary at the time of their imposition, they are doubly necessary now in cities with housing shortage. In Vancouver, despite the high rate of building, the shortage estimated reliably at 20,000 dwellings at the end of the war has risen by a further 5,000 during the last three years.
So that today there is a shortage of 25,000 family units. Where there is a shortage of rental dwellings this allowed increase will amount to something very drastic to people who cannot afford any further increases in their cost of living.
I have said that I know from talking with some landlords, and knowing about their circumstances, that controls worked a hardship on some. But to say that all landlords are in that position is nonsense. Hon. members know that in most of the poorer dwellings, and perhaps in most of the middle class dwellings, no repairs have been made and no decorating done in the last eight or nine years. Tenants have been doing their own repairing and decorating. With the increases now allowed, in the event of a tenant not paying the amount asked and having to move out, the landlord will have the advantage of the repairing and decorating and will increase the rent to the next tenant.
I wonder if I might be permitted to draw the attention of the house to those who are going to be affected by this change. The Vancouver housing bulletin of September, 1949, contains some specimen cases.
1. A family of seven (five children and the two parents) have an income of $112 per month, and $25 family allowance, or $137 per month. Rent for a small, dark, two-room suite in a dingy, indescribably dirty house in the Chinese section-
This is in Vancouver.
-is $47.30 per month. This leaves them $90 per month for food, clothing, fuel, light and other expenses. The low cost adequate food allowance for a family of this size-
Food allowance alone.
-is $116.

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The hon. member who preceded me can meet these increases with equanimity. He will not feel them, but if there is another rental increase in this case there will be another reduction in the amount of food available for the children. Canada cannot build a great nation on undernourished children. Case No. 2 is as follows:
A mother with two children has an income ot $58.50 and $10 family allowance. Formerly they lived in a small housekeeping room on East Hastings, where rent was $42.50 per month. After eviction for nonpayment of rent, they moved to a room on Cordova where they pay $12 per week or $51.60 per month. This leaves them $16.90 for food and all other expenses . . .
That is, $16.90 for a mother and two children. Does my hon. friend think that an increase in rent is not important to this woman and her two children? I could read dozens of these cases. We have on the order paper amendments to the National Housing Act. I am not going to discuss them. I was about to say a great majority of the people of Canada cannot afford to pay economic rent, but I will not say that. I do not know. It is agreed that a large number of Canadian families cannot pay economic rent, and it is proposed that the building of houses shall be subsidized to enable them to pay. If that is necessary for the building of new homes, it is equally necessary for rented premises where families are not able to provide the required rent. If we were willing to do so, there could have been some sort of reasonable provision made for a much smaller rent increase than the one that has been allowed.
Let me tell the minister and hon. members of the house that these rental increases are taking place when cold weather is coming on, and in the winter it is cold in every part of Canada. Additional amounts of money are required for clothing, food and fuel, and to have a rent increase besides makes the position of these people unbearable.
This is happening at a time when residential construction is falling off, when unemployment is increasing, and when production in various lines is decreasing. Where are we going to end? Among numerous letters received, I have one I took out of my mail box as I was coming into the house. It is from the Army, Navy and Air Force Veterans in Canada, British Columbia provincial command. The letter is addressed to me and reads:
Dear Mr. Maclnnis:
This provincial command wishes to again go on record as being strongly opposed to the unjust rental increases as published recently in the press. Housing shortage and unemployment are two of our major problems, and any increase in rent at this time will work a great hardship on all our citizens, particularly pensioners, war veterans allowance recipients and widows. In this regard I would ask you to place our representations before the appropriate government department.

The letter is signed "H. E. Warburton," secretary of the organization I have mentioned. I am drawing this letter to the attention not only of the department but also of the minister and hon. members of the house who know these conditions as well as I do, no matter how smugly they may sit and glower.
I said that housing construction was falling off. I have a clipping from the Montreal Gazette of October 5 giving figures as to the construction situation in the eight municipalities making up greater Montreal. The figure for last year was slightly over $10 million, and this year it is a little less than $5,900,000, a drop of nearly 50 per cent. The same situation is true in my own city.


Donald Methuen Fleming: It is true across Canada.


Angus MacInnis: It is true across Canada. More buildings have been finished so far this year than for the same period last year, but they are buildings that were started last year. There were fewer buildings begun this year than last year.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Fewer starts.


Angus MacInnis: Fewer starts; that is the proper word. Surely in the face of these circumstances this party is not doing a disservice to the house or to the people of Canada by bringing these matters to the attention of the house. I appreciate the difficulties associated with rent control, but there are difficulties associated with almost everything in life. I remember before coming to attend the 1948 session of the house I was asked, with a number of other men in public life including some members of parliament, to attend a meeting called by the two labour bodies of Vancouver, the Vancouver labour council and the Vancouver trades and labour council, to discuss the question of the high cost of living. I remember at that meeting one of the speakers who preceded me justifying the increases, and saying that what was required was greater production. When my turn came to speak I said that I fully agreed that what was required was greater production, but I said the moment we get greater production, overcome the present shortages and bring supply up to demand, then under our system of production for profit production will fall off. The people will be poorer than they are now, not because they did not produce enough but because they produced too much. That is the situation facing us across Canada: production increasing, poverty increasing, and the ability of the people to consume decreasing. That is the problem we have to solve, and we are not going to solve it by removing rent control. Neither are we going to solve it by imposing rent control. We can only solve it when, as the

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hon. member for Cape Breton South (Mr. Gillis) said, we make it a part of our national objective to see that people are properly housed and properly fed. Until we do that we shall be plagued with these problems.
I could give this house figures to show how production is falling off and how unemployment is increasing. In September of this year the number of people on the unemployment insurance roll was approximately twice what it was for the same month last year, while the amount paid out in benefits was more than twice the amount paid out last year. So let us not, as the saying is, kid ourselves that we are going to remedy this situation by removing rent control. We can do that and add to the accumulated misery of increasing numbers of people in this country. Or we can do something else; by the proper use of the natural resources of this country and the skill and ability of our workers and technicians, we can build a better life in Canada for all our people.


Mr. H. W. Herridge (Kootenay West):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to support this very important motion which has been moved by the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell), and in a few words to voice the protests of my many constituents who have been seriously affected by the action of the government in permitting rent increases of from 20 to 25 per cent. This matter is causing serious concern in thousands of Canadian homes at the present time. It is causing concern to thousands of low income families, thousands of old age pensioners, thousands of people receiving small disability pensions and thousands of recipients of war veterans allowance. So I think we are fully justified in taking this time to bring to the attention of the house the plight of this large section of the Canadian people.
The arguments concerning this subject have been fully developed in this debate, so it is almost impossible for one to add a new thought; but in the few minutes I wish to speak I want to deal particularly with three points. My first point is that on this important issue, concerning which the country has been showing great anxiety for weeks and months and with which hon. members of the house have been concerned since coming to Ottawa, we are informed of government policy and government action through a statement in the house by the minister. I am of the opinion that if the government had brought this matter before the house and had permitted one day's debate on the issue before coming to a decision, and then had given effect to the opinion of a majority of hon. members, the result would
have been very different from the policy announced by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott).
My second point is that in my view there is an evasion of responsibility on the part of the government in dealing with this question. I know that technically and from the constitutional point of view property and civil rights come under the provinces. But under the conditions existing in Canada today who can say there is not a national emergency as'far as housing is concerned? More than that, the government could act on this matter with the full support of the Canadian people. The provinces are not anxious to take over this responsibility. They realize the difficulties and the magnitude of the problem. The federal government has been operating this machinery of rent control for some years now.
Mention has been made of a reference of the matter to the supreme court, and the wish has been expressed that the provinces would take responsibility in this field. I repeat that in this matter of rent control I believe the government is evading its responsibility, in view of the attitude of the Canadian people and their support for the continuation of this measure. To support that point of view I want to read briefly from a statement on rent control issued by the Canadian federation of mayors and municipalities. Before doing so I want to point out that without question this body represents a large segment of the business interests of the country. Those who are elected as mayors and representatives of the municipalities in Canada are usually people in business, people with some assets, people who are quite levelheaded and constructive in their approach to any given question. The Canadian federation of mayors and municipalities is composed of people of all political parties; and, as a previous speaker has said, this matter of rent control is not a political question. It embraces all of us; it is an economic question of serious concern to the Canadian people. To support my contention that in this matter the government is evading its responsibility I quote briefly from this statement:
For the federal government to withdraw from the field of rent controls, on the understanding that the provincial governments may step in, if they wish, would not be a solution, but rather an evasion of responsibility. To be realistic in this matter it must be recognized that for reasons of their own the provinces are not likely to enter the rent control field, at any rate in time to prevent the serious situation which will undoubtedly arise should the federal government relinquish its present controls.
I think in allowing flat increases of from 20 to 25 per cent the government is getting very close to relinquishing rent control. That was my second point. Before sitting down I want to make a third point, that the

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increases permitted under the new order are far more drastic than were expected even by those who at times are considered to look at things from the point of view of the property owner. To support that statement, I want to quote again from this brief:
While the retention of rent controls Is imperative, no objection can be raised to permitting reasonable increases in rent levels, provided (a) they are carefully scaled and controlled and provided (b) it is recognized that the proper corollary to decontrol is a positive program of assisting low rent housing construction. Thus it might be reasonable to permit additional rent increases for residential property erected prior to 1945 of no more than 10 per cent, graduated downwards to a maximum of 5 per cent for rentals which are below $40 a month.
Before concluding that paragraph may I say that if the government had brought this question before the house and hon. members had been free to express their sincere beliefs, I believe these are possibly the increases which would have been endorsed by the House of Commons. They would have been a ten per cent increase on, shall I say, the middle class type of dwelling and a five per cent increase for the lower income group. Possibly that would have been considered and adopted by this house. I realize that in some cases landlords have been suffering an injustice. I know some people of very fine type who, out of generosity, had allowed people to live in certain quarters, during the depression and the years previous to the war, at a rental far less than economic. Then, because of their generosity, they have suffered for some years owing to these restrictions.
Continuing, Mr. Speaker, to read from the brief.
It must be recognized that the great majority of tenants who need protection against exorbitant increases are in this group; and it is this group who have not been able to find any new accommodation within their means since the war. Because of these circumstances, the Canadian Federation of Mayors and Municipalities most strongly urges upon the federal government that they reassure the people of Canada that it is not their intention to remove rent controls in March, 1950, as has been suggested by press reports.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, there is no question about the attitude of the majority of the Canadian people. It is indicated by editorials in the newspapers throughout the country. It is indicated by resolutions passed by the veterans' organizations, the Canadian Legion, the army and navy veterans, all organizations of a non-political nature. They are composed of people representing all parties in Canada, but people who are living close to the problems we are discussing this evening. In addition to that, the trade unions of this country are seriously considering making further wage demands because of this
[Mr. Herridge.l
increase in the cost of living. Various women's organizations, such as the women's institute of the province of British Columbia, are deeply concerned.
I would ask the members of this house, Mr. Speaker, when this matter comes to a vote to consider not the party point of view but the interests of the Canadian people as a whole, and for once do something the majority of the Canadian people wish them to do, that is, to support the protest my leader made this afternoon.
(Translation):


Mr. Gleason Belzile (Rimouski):: Mr. Speaker, I wish first of all to convey my most sincere and heartfelt congratulations to the hon. member for Vancouver East (Mr. Maclnnis) and to the hon. member for Kootenay West (Mr. Herridge) for the interest they have shown in the study of this problem.
In fact, they lifted the debate to the level of a social question in dealing mostly with the possible social effects of the present removal of controls. I believe it proper to follow them on this ground and to consider not only the economic aspects of the problem, as dealt with so far, but also the social aspect.
Everyone knows that each of those measures is in itself of definite and distinct social import, involving repercussions that will be felt later not unlike the ripples expanding to the edge of a pond into which a stone has been cast.
The Liberal policy has always been a social policy in the highest sense of the word. It has even reached a high degree of Christian charity. The Liberal policy in the past has never sought immediate benefits and political advantage. It has been marked by foresight and when the time came, in 1940, to set up controls that ran counter to the wishes, the aspirations and the instinctive inclinations of the Canadian people the Liberal party did not fear, at that time, to establish control of salaries, wages, rentals, etc., at all levels of social life.
The Liberal policy adopted in 1940 upset all the notions we held till then with regard to housing. We thought that the right of ownership stood solely for the proprietor's personal and immediate benefit. The Liberal policy reversed that idea, so that the tenant could have the full and real use of the property. It considered property as a commodity which could be disposed of as ordinary chattels.
The measure adopted in 1940 was a courageous one, and this more recent action by the government is also courageous and will bear fruit in the future.

The government and all the members of this house should fully realize that our housing policy must be far-reaching, taking into account not only the present but also the future.
The Minister of Reconstruction and Supply (Mr. Winters) has just made known the government's housing program. An adjustment is taking place in labour costs. Materials are becoming increasingly plentiful. Plumbing and heating fixtures are the only materials still in somewhat short supply. This would show that a readjustment is really taking place in the country's economy and that it will become easier to solve the housing problem.
An incentive is required. Interest is still a driving power. It is useless and ill-advised to lull tenants with the belief that the government will always provide for their housing needs. The incentive lies in the substantial 20 to 25 per cent increase decreed by the government. This is a sensible measure. It shows a good appreciation of the housing situation today.
Had we continued to please tenants by granting increases of 5 to 10 per cent, they never would have faced the need of becoming property owners. The construction program which the government wishes to undertake would have met with failure without this measure of decontrol, which is but the continuation of the same courageous decision taken in the past by the government.
In addition, Mr. Speaker, this measure is an act of justice and I would add of belated justice. Rentals have been frozen for nine years. For instance, in the city of Ottawa, the rent of some controlled dwellings is $25 to $30 per month, while similar decontrolled accommodation is being rented at $60, $75 and $80. There surely is disproportion and injustice, and there has been since 1940 or 1941.
I said a while ago that our understanding of what was meant by property rights has been changed. Such rights consist in using and disposing of one's assets at will. For nine years, the plight of the property owner has been such that he could neither use nor dispose of his assets. Our whole economy in the field of rent control was based solely on the principle that rents being considered essentially as chattels, the tenant alone was entitled to use them.
The remedy introduced in 1947 was practically useless. Before regaining possession
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of his property, the owner had to prove in court that his need was greater than the tenant's.
Again, I say that property rights had been disregarded. However, I do not wish to censure the government since rent control was providing for an emergency brought about by the war.
I believe that today the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) again deserves to be congratulated.
(Text):


Mr. J. W. Noseworihy (York South):: I want to speak for a few moments, Mr. Speaker, in support of the resolution. Some hon. members have criticized the minister for the timing of this particular order in council. For the tenants who will be affected by this order, I suppose the timing is bad. This increase comes at the time of the year when living expenses are at their highest. No time of the year could be chosen when this order would be more harmful to the millions who will be affected by it and who come within the low-income brackets.
But, I take it, that was not the consideration taken into account by the minister in timing this particular order. I submit, Mr. Speaker, that the minister has shown astute political judgment in his choice of timing. I submit that he would not have gone on the hustings before June 27, nor would any member of the cabinet nor any Liberal candidate in this country, and announced the fact that they were going to "up" rents by 20 to 25 per cent. I submit that none of those same cabinet ministers or Liberal candidates would have dared to make that announcement on the eve of the recent by-elections. Coming as it does after a general election and after a series of byelections, and four years away from the next general election, it is good political timing. That consideration, I submit, was the one uppermost in the minister's mind and in the government's mind at the time this order was issued.
The minister speaks of his orderly decontrol of rent. I can understand some of the difficulties in which the minister and his associates found themselves with regard to this matter of rent and rent control. This order in council is the culmination of a series of such orders which have made a complete hodgepodge of the whole business of rent control. The government had gotten themselves into such difficulties concerning rent control that no doubt something had to

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be done. It was becoming apparent that the job of rent control was getting just too big for the government. I suggest that the government policy of decontrol has been a disorderly rather than an orderly one. Here are some of the things that have been permitted to happen under rent control.
A few blocks from where I live, a house that was built for $8,000 in the middle thirties has, under government rent control, been sold and resold until a few days ago it sold for $22,000; and it is now rented for $175 a month whereas, prior to the war, it was renting for $55. That is the kind of thing that has been happening under the government rent control policy. There was no end of loopholes.
In the city of Toronto today there are any number of tenants who, under the government's rent control policy, are able to sublet single rooms and for those rooms collect rents that more than cover the entire rental they are paying for the house. That has been happening under the government's rent control policy.
It is true that there were some landlords who were "stuck". There were landlords who, during the depression years, were generous and conscientious enough to keep their rents down and who were caught by the government orders. Many of them have been stuck and have been obliged to rent their properties at a deflated value. Undoubtedly there are people who have suffered because they have been unable to get into some of the houses that they have purchased with the intention of moving into them. There has been a great deal of unfairness in the whole rent control business.
What was needed, I submit, was not a general lifting of rents by 20 per cent or 25 per cent, but an overhauling of the rent control regulations. There was ample room for improvement and for an overhauling. But the government did not receive from the country, on June 27, a mandate to raise rents by 20 or 25 per cent. I am going to ask this question of these Toronto Liberal members, most of whom have been in their seats all during this debate, and not one of whom has made any move to rise either to defend the government's position or to appose it. Because the minister led off in this debate by stating the government's position, are we to believe of these Toronto Liberal members -who during the campaign were so loud in telling the people of their constituencies what the government would do about the housing situation-that they took a hint from the minister's speech? The hon. member for Spadina (Mr. Croll) during the election had a great

deal to say about what this Liberal government would do with regard to the housing situation. I suppose no member in this house had more to say during that campaign than had the hon. member for Spadina about the wonderful things the Liberal government, if elected, would do to relieve the housing situation. I have not heard him protesting against these government orders.
As every Liberal and other member from Toronto knows, in the city of Toronto today the housing situation is desperate. I challenge any member elected from a Toronto or York riding to claim that he had any mandate from the people of those ridings to support a boosting of rents to 20 or 25 per cent. Just what has been the government's policy on decontrol? Let us look for a moment at how the government is gradually getting rid of control in this field. First of all, any accommodation built since January 1, 1947, is not subject to control. That lets out, I am told, about
50,000	units which have been provided since January 1, 1947, where builders and landlords have been free to squeeze out of the tenant every last dollar that the market would permit, and that has been followed pretty' generally.
Then another group became decontrolled, namely, the accommodation that has been vacated for various reasons since November 1, 1948. That lets another considerable group of houses and landlords out from under control. Under this new regulation, as I understand it, any tenant who is unwilling to take a year's lease at the increased price which the landlord may charge, up to 20 or 25 per cent as the case may be, can be ousted from his house. That is going to remove another large group from control. That appears to be the policy which the government is deliberately following in its decontrol measures.
Today I read in the press that the case which was to come before the supreme court in Toronto to determine whether or not the federal government was within its jurisdiction in maintaining controls was indefinitely postponed because the government's solicitor was not present. If that is true I want to ask this question. Has the government's last move in this respect been so agreeable to the real estate interests who were pressing this case that they are now satisfied and are we going to have a test case? We were told by the minister that every effort would be made to have this test case brought on and judgment rendered in time for the provinces to take over control should the federal government find that it could no longer maintain rent control. It would seem to me that in a matter so vital the government would see to it that its solicitor was on the job when a case of this kind came before the courts.

I turn now to a discussion of the landlords. iVe saw this afternoon how the minister's leart bled for the landlords just as another ninister's heart seemed to bleed yesterday ifternoon for the poor milling interests of this :ountry. Under the government's regulations here are unquestionably some landlords who lave suffered, and unquestionably a modifica-ion should have been made in the rental egulations to take care of these cases of njustice and unfairness. But there is a large ;roup of landlords who will derive high entals under this order, not because of any nvestment or increased investment that they lave made in their property, but because the *alue of their properties has risen along with he rising costs of other general commodities, would say that by and large the landlords ave not fared too badly, considering the arge group which has been let out com-letely from underneath controls.
It is rather interesting to find the minister
0	concerned with the landlord's side of the uestion. I want to ask him whether he has onsidered other parties who will be affected.
submit that if the minister has given per-lission to landlords to raise the rents of those 'ho are on old age pension, of veterans who re subsisting on their pensions and on eterans' allowances, then he is in duty ound, as far as these same people are con-erned, to increase their pensions and their Uowances by an equal amount.
The minister's action will be the beginning f a whole series of demands across this auntry for wage increases. Over the week ad I had the privilege of meeting representa-ves of about thirty trade union locals. The leeting was called to discuss a certain subset. That whole meeting resolved itself spon-meously into a protest on the part of the ade unionists present against the government's action of raising rents. The one thing lat was emphasized all through this meeting as the determination of those who were Seers of trade union locals to press on the rst opportunity for wage increases in order
1	compensate the workers for the increases i rent which they would be required to pay. This evening the Ottawa Journal carries a sading that the increase in rent sparks a jmand on the part of civil servants for creased salaries. This morning the Montreal azette carried the story of the president of ie dominion civil servants association, aiming that that organization would be ireed to seek higher salaries to offset ie increases in rent which the civil rvants would be required to pay. That is >t a good thing for this country at this time, ut the government could not have made any her one single move that would have
Rent Control
sparked trade unions across this country, civil servants and others, to go out immediately to demand increased wages.
I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, that this debate does not give every hon. member an opportunity to show by his vote just where he stands on this issue. I am sure that some of the good Liberals from the Toronto ridings would find it very difficult to cast a vote in this house in support of the measure. I want to ask them, in closing, what voice they had as members of the government party in determining or helping to determine this policy which the government has announced. I ask that because during the election campaign the Liberal condidates in Toronto were constantly telling us how much more beneficial it would be for the people of Toronto if they had members sitting on the government benches. I ask those member who are on the government benches tonight what they are doing for their constituents.


Mr. O. L. Jones (Yale):: Mr. Speaker, much has been said about rent controls. I have very little to add, except a reply to an hon. member on the government side of the house who suggested that the country is behind the action taken by the government in increasing rents. Let me point out to him that the federation of mayors who met recently in Montreal were most emphatic in their views on rent control. I consider this one of the best bodies in Canada, from the standpoint of gauging public opinion. In it are the mayors of every town across this dominion. They are closely associated with the people in those towns, and their interests are closer to those of the people than the interests of members of parliament here in Ottawa.
Let me quote what they have to say with regard to controls. They say, in part:
As such, it has no hesitation in saying that the removal of all rent controls, now or in the near future, would produce catastrophic effects for thousands of families throughout the country, and more particularly in those cities where there continues to be a demonstrably large housing shortage.
I would include in those towns both Ottawa and Montreal. Not a single member, to my knowledge, has risen in his place to protest against the condition which will arise in those cities when rents are increased. The statement from the mayors continues:
It needs no argument to show that the inflation of prices since 1946, particularly affecting real estate, has shot the level of rents for new dwellings out of all comparison with the rents which prevailed over large areas of Canadian cities before the war.
Then, referring to the general shortage of homes they go on to say:
Until this glaring weakness in the national housing program is rectified, a prospect which is not likely for the near future, it would be a dereliction of responsibility for the government to withdraw from the rental control field.

Rent Control
Then they go on to give an example. It continues:
No less disturbing Is the acute sense of insecurity already engendered in the minds of thousands^ of tenants by the mere rumour of decontrol, giving rise to the fear of evictions as well as that of having to pay rent beyond their means.
I suggest that those are the true views of the common people of Canada, and not the views as expressed by hon. members who would support the government in what it has done. The mayors are fair in the suggestion they make. They suggest, as did the hon. member for Kootenay West (Mr. Herridge), that a fair increase is due and reasonable, and would be acceptable. Their suggestion is a general increase of 10 per cent and an increase of 5 per cent on low-rental housing, not exceeding $40 a month. With that I would agree. I feel the capital invested in many of the homes now increasing in rents has not been changed for twenty years. It is the original capital. I admit that capital has shown good returns for ten or twenty years; but the same capital today is showing greater
returns than it ever did from the inception of the investments, because today the same homes and tenements are in full occupancy,
Already they have been given three increases in rents, and many of the services they formerly gave to tenants are not being given. They are cutting down on repairs, heating and in every way grasping that extra dollar which can be obtained from lowered services. I feel that, in protest against giving these people an added 20 per cent, the condemnation of the whole country has beer voiced by the federation of mayors on behall of the common people of Canada.


Mr. Speaker:: Eleven o'clock.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Fournier (Hull):: Tomorrow we wil resume the debate on the budget, in the hops of concluding it and beginning with ths budget resolutions.


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

Appendix
Appendix

[Stage Direction]
Province of Newfoundland Office of the Premier
St. John's, October 31, 1949
Right Hon. Louis S. St. Laurent, M.P., P.C.,
Prime Minister of Canada,
Ottawa.
Dear Prime Minister:
Tuesday, January 10, 1950, would be for us a suitable date on which to begin the sessions of the dominion-provincial conference to consider a method of amending the constitution in Canada.
J. R. Smallwood
Premier's Office Prince Edward Island
Charlottetown, October 31, 1949
Right Hon. Louis S. St. Laurent,
Prime Minister of Canada,
Ottawa, Canada.
Dear Mr. St. Laurent:
The date, January 10, 1950, as suggested in your letter of October 29, for a dominion-provincial conference to consider a method of amending the constitution of Canada, will be satisfactory to me.
Yours sincerely,
J. Walter Jones
Office of the Premier Province of British Columbia
Victoria, October 31, 1949
Right Hon. Louis S. St. Laurent,
Prime Minister of Canada,
Parliament Buildings,
Ottawa, Canada.
My dear Mr. Prime Minister:
I have for acknowledgment your letter of October 29, regarding the dominion-provincial conference.
Please be advised that the date of January 10 will be most acceptable to the province of British Columbia.
With kindest personal regards.
Yours faithfully,
Byron I. Johnson
Premier
Premier's Office Saskatchewan
Regina, October 31, 1949
Right Hon. L. S. St. Laurent,
Prime Minister of Canada,
Ottawa, Ontario.
My dear Prime Minister:
Thank you for your letter of October 29, suggesting that a dominion-provincial conference to consider a method of amending the constitution in Canada begin its sessions on Tuesday, January 10. 1950.
This date is satisfactory to me, and we will make the necessary arrangements to have our representatives there for this conference. Personally I would have preferred an earlier date in order to give us more time to prepare any questions that might have to be submitted to the legislature when it meets early in the new year. However, I can appreciate the fact that your government will require some time to prepare for this conference, and if you feel that January 10 is the most convenient date, we will most heartily concur in this arrangement.
Yours sincerely,
T. C. Douglas
Office of
The Prime Minister and President of the Council Ontario
Toronto, November 1, 1949
Right Hon. Louis S. St. Laurent,
Prime Minister of Canada,
Ottawa, Canada.
Dear Mr. Prime Minister:
I have your letter of October 29 in which you suggest Tuesday, the 10th January, as the opening date for the dominion-provincial conference.
This date is satisfactory to me.
Sincerely yours,
Leslie M. Frost
Province of Manitoba Office of the Premier
Winnipeg, November 1, 1949 Right Hon. Louis S. St. Laurent, K.C.,
Prime Minister of Canada,
Ottawa, Ontario.
Dear Mr. Prime Minister:
I am in receipt of your letter of October 29, 1949, suggesting that the dominion-provincial conference to consider a method of amending the constitution in Canada begin its sessions on Tuesday, January 10, 1950.
Although a week earlier would have better suited the Manitoba representatives, if the date of January 10 is preferred by the other provinces, we shall be quite agreeable to meeting at that time.
Yours sincerely,
Douglas Campbell
Office of the Premier Alberta
Edmonton, November 1, 1949
Right Hon. Louis St. Laurent,
Prime Minister of Canada,
Ottawa, Ontario.
My dear Prime Minister:
In reply to your letter of October 29, I would advise you that your suggested date of January 10 for the conference in respect to the constitution is quite satisfactory.
45781-ilOOJ
[Stage Direction]
Appendix
May I, however, refer to the statement in your letter of September 14 to the effect that if the provincial governments desired a preparatory conference of constitutional experts, you would be ready to have federal officials participate. As I stated in my reply of October 12, the Alberta government favours such a meeting of constitutional experts being held in advance of the main conference.
In view of the many intricate aspects of the matter involved, we believe such a preliminary meeting to be most desirable. We would appreciate being advised as soon as possible in respect to this advance meeting.
Yours very truly,
Ernest C. Manning
Premier
Province of Quebec Office of the Prime Minister
Quebec, November 2, 1949 Right Hon. Louis S. St. Laurent,
Prime Minister of Canada,
Ottawa.
Mr. Prime  Minister@: The members of the provincial executive council have considered today your answer, dated October 29 last, which I received on the 31st of the same month, to my letter of October 26. In that communication I was reaffirming, as I am doing again today, for that matter, the "very clear" stand of the province of Quebec, and I was bringing to your attention the very important work of our provincial legislature.
Quite obviously, the postponement of our legislature's session involves some inconvenience. However, under the present circumstances we feel justified in putting off for some reasonable time the work of our legislature so that the province's delegates may go to Ottawa for the Canadian intergovernmental conference which you intend to convene for January 10 next.
The government of this province has a sincere desire to co-operate, on a fair and appropriate constitutional basis, in the settlement of the vital problems involved.
Sincerely yours,
M. L. Duplessis
The Premier Nova Scotia
Halifax, November 5, 1949 Right Hon. Louis S. St. Laurent, M.P., P.C.,
Prime Minister of Canada,
Ottawa, Canada.
My dear Prime Minister:
I should like to thank you for your letter of October 3, acknowledging my letter of September
27. Your letter arrived when I was absent from the city, and I did not return to my office until Monday of this week. On that day your further letter arrived, suggesting that the dominion-provincial conference to consider a method of amending the constitution in Canada should begin its sessions on Tuesday, January 10, 1950. That date will be convenient for the Nova Scotia delegation.
Yours sincerely,
Angus L. Macdonald
Canadian National Telegraphs
Fredericton, N.B., November 5, 1949 Right Hon. Louis St. Laurent,
Prime Minister of Canada,
Ottawa.
This will acknowledge receipt of your letter of October 29, suggesting January 10 for the proposed conference on constitutional changes. If the proposed date meets the general convenience, we shall arrange to be represented at that time.
John B. McNair,
Premier of New Brunswick



THE FOLLOWING IS THE TEXT OF A LETTER SENT TO ALL PROVINCIAL PREMIERS

[Stage Direction]
Office of the Prime Minister Canada
Ottawa, November 7, 1949
My dear Premier:
I wish to advise you that I have now heard from the premiers of all the provinces, and that Tuesday, January 19, 1950, appears to be generally acceptable as a date for the opening session of the dominion-provincial conference to consider a method of amending the constitution of Canada. It is therefore proposed to open the conference in Ottawa at 10.30 a.m. on that date.
As many of the premiers did not feel that a preliminary meeting of constitutional experts in advance of the main conference would serve any useful purpose, my colleagues and I feel we should not attempt to arrange such a meeting.
Yours sincerely,
Louis S. St. Laurent
[Stage Direction]
Wednesday, November 9, 1949