1949-10-13

Mr. Browne (St. John's West):: What is the amount of revenue collected for (a) customs; (b) excise; (c) other sources, in Newfoundland. for the six-month period ending September 30, 1949?



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE


Right Hon. L. S. St. Laurent (Prime Minister) moved:: That on Monday, October 17th instant, and every Monday thereafter to the end of the session, government notices of motions and government orders shall have precedence over all other business except introduction of bills, questions by members and notices of motions for the production of papers.
He said: In moving this order, Mr. Speaker, I should like to take the opportunity to express what I believe to be the feeling of most members of this house, namely, appreciation of the interesting debates we have had so far this session on private members' notices of motions and public bills. More time for these debates was made available by the fact that we disposed of the debate on the address in reply to the speech from the throne in much less time than it has occupied in any other session since I first came to this house. Several hon. members have indicated to me that in their opinion the debates on these motions were much more interesting than a protracted debate on the address would have been. Personally I should be inclined to agree with that view. I suggest to hon. members that they think the matter over and ask themselves whether it would be a more interesting use of the time at the disposal of the house to have at the beginning of the session these opportunities for debating the various subjects dealt with in the notices of motions placed on the order paper by private members. I am sure that the debates we have had so far have been interesting and valuable, and I should like to extend my compliments to those who have participated in them.
Several days have been devoted during this session to private members' motions. As hon. members know, there is a large volume of
public business that must be dealt with. Even though we have devoted several days to the consideration of estimates we have not yet disposed of one department in its entirety. It has been found also that discussion of the estimates gives hon. members an opportunity to bring before the house matters which they feel are deserving of consideration, and that it would be well to be able to proceed with the estimates in a more leisurely fashion than is possible at the very end of a session. For this reason I hope that the motion will commend itself to the house, and that, before the business of the session can be considered as completed, ample opportunity will be given to hon. members to deal with matters which appear to them to be of public interest.


Mr. Gordon Graydon (Peel):: I think that hon. members will agree with much that the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) has said. There is one matter that I should like to mention, Mr. Speaker. It arises out of what the Prime Minister said with respect to opening up the estimates of the departments. On previous occasions the government has first settled upon two or three departments only, and often the estimates of many departments are left until the closing days of the session. The item of departmental administration gives hon. members an opportunity of discussing in a general way the policies and details of the department concerned. I suggest to the government that in this session, and in future sessions, if it meets with their convenience-I am sure it will meet with the convenience of hon. members generally-we have a wider distribution of departments, from the point of view of the estimates presented so that at least the item of departmental administration may be discussed in leisurely fashion. This would meet the wishes of many hon. members who desire not to be rushed at the very last minute in discussing major items. I should like the Prime Minister to take this suggestion into consideration, if he will. It would improve the whole standard of debate.


Mr. Angus Maclnnis (Vancouver East):: I do
not think there is any objection from this group to the motion which has just been moved by the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent). We are all appreciative of the opportunity we have had this session to discuss private members' resolutions on private members' days, which it was not possible

Business of the House to do in other years, particularly during the war years and the years immediately following, because of the urgency of government business which resulted in the curtailing of private members' days. But I hope that I did not understand the Prime Minister to suggest that in future if we want to have private members' days we would have to curtail the debate on the address. As a matter of fact, private members' days are provided for under the rules of the house, although there is no guarantee as to how many there shall be. At least, under the standing orders of this house, we are entitled to some, and I do not think we should be told that if we are good boys we can have them, but that if we are not, they will be taken away. What happened this year was that the debate on the address was completed in time to give us Thursdays, which we would not have had if the debate had continued for four weeks, as sometimes happens. Subject to these comments, may 1 say that we are quite agreeable to the Prime Minister's motion being adopted.


Mr. Solon E. Low (Peace River):: I should like to add one word to what has already been said. We shall have no objections at all to the passing of this motion, but I should like to say to the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) that we have appreciated the opportunity to discuss private members' resolutions, some of which have been on the order paper since last spring.
I understand that prior to the war, when sessions were carried on in a more leisurely manner, private members' days were greater in number than they have been since. As one member of this group I welcomed the return this session to a greater number of private members' days early in the session. I do not know whether that came about simply as a result of the shortness of the debate on the address in reply to the speech from the throne. But we have appreciated it, sir, and in future sessions I should like to see even greater recognition of the right of priyate members to discuss their resolutions as fully as possible. However, I think the time has come in the present session when we should pass this motion.


Mr. Donald M. Fleming (Eglinton):: I want to make one observation. I hope the adoption of this motion will enable the government to expedite the bill to amend the National Housing Act. 1 think many hon. members have regretted that there should have been any delay in the introduction of that important measure. May we have some indication as to when that measure will be introduced?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: With respect to the remarks made by the acting leader of the
FMr. Maclnnis.l
opposition (Mr. Graydon), may I say that I shall be glad to have my colleagues give consideration to suggestions made at any time by representatives of any of the groups as to bringing forward one department instead of another, so that there may be an opportunity for discussion on the item of general administration. We appreciate the fact that when these matters are brought forward it is desired by hon. gentlemen sitting opposite that we make better progress than we do, and for this reason, if for no other, we shall be glad to give sympathetic consideration to any such suggestion.
I did not intend to suggest that I was asking hon. members to behave in any special manner. What I was referring to was what the hon. member (Mr. Maclnnis) himself agreed to. It is only the first four Thursdays that are private members' days. In previous years the debate on the address has taken up those four Thursdays; therefore there were none available for private members' notices of motions. During this session we have had three of these Thursdays available for discussion of private members' motions.


Mr. Knowles:: Just two.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: With respect to the introduction of legislation, we do wish to bring forward at the earliest possible moment all of the legislation announced. The housing legislation would have been ready at the very first day of the session had it not been for the correspondence that is still going on with representatives of provincial governments. The Minister of Reconstruction and Supply (Mr. Winters) wished to get as clear a statement of the views of the provincial governments as possible before bringing in a printed bill; otherwise the provincial administrations might believe it to be too late to make any further suggestions.


Mr. Church:: Will any appropriation be included in the coming budget for the cost of these private members' motions?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Yes, but it would be only the item which provides generally for the cost of legislation.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. G. K. Fraser (Peterborough West):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask a question of the Minister of Trade and Commerce. This morning's press carries the following headline:	"Mothball fleet grows; 72,000 tons of
shipping idle in Halifax; no cargo; federal aid only solution."

Canada Forestry Act CANADA FORESTRY ACT


Some hon. Members:: Order.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The hon. member
should not at this time read newspaper headlines or articles.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: All right. Has the department of the Minister of Trade and Commerce taken any steps to relieve the situation which prevails at Halifax-and it may be the same at other points on the Atlantic coast-where 72,000 tons of shipping are idle and many men are out of work?


Hon. Lionel Chevrier (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, the question asked by the hon. member is one which the senior member for Halifax (Mr. Isnor) had intended to ask.


Gordon Graydon: You are giving him notice of the question now.


Lionel Chevrier: I might tell the house that the present plight of shipowners and ship operators is serious, first of all because of the increased costs of operation. I am informed that the costs of operating a Canadian ship are at least twenty-five per cent higher than the costs of operating a United Kingdom ship. Costs of construction vary to the extent of fifty per cent as between Canada and the United Kingdom. A further serious situation is caused by the deterioration in ocean freight rates. Finally, the exchange situation brought about by devaluation has had an effect. I regret to say that for these reasons some ships have had to tie up. I can assure the senior member for Halifax and the hon. member for Peterborough West that the government is giving careful consideration to the matter.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: I should like to ask a further question. Despite what the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe) has said, is it not also a fact that we have lost our foreign markets?


Right Hon. C. D. Howe (Minister of Trade and Commerce):: Perhaps I might reply to the hon. member by telling him that in the year ended September 1 last, the latest date for which figures are available, exports were the highest of any previous peacetime year in the history of Canada.


Mr. Gordon B. Isnor (Halifax):: Mr. Speaker, so that there may be no misunderstanding in the minds of hon. members, may I point out that in the regular fashion, and as a matter of courtesy, I had sent notice of my question to the Minister of Transport. In my question I asked:	.
Will the Minister of Transport, in the very near future, make a statement in respect to what, if any, action will be taken to assist the shipping interests at Halifax and other Canadian ports to overcome the loss of business, because of the exchange situation and the lack of overseas cargo?
I wish to place this question on the record.



FOREST PROTECTION AND EXPERIMENT, CONTROL AND MANAGEMENT

Hon. Colin Gibson (Minister of Mines and Resources) moved: that the house go into committee to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to present a bill to authorize the governor in council to establish as a national forest or as a forest experimental area lands belonging to His Majesty in the right of Canada and to exercise control and management thereof and construct works therein; to establish and maintain forest research laboratories; to assist provinces or owners of forests and to enter into agreements respecting the protection and development of forest lands. The Minister of Mines and Resources is authorized to appoint temporary officers and employees for the carrying out of the provisions of the act.
Expenditures incurred are payable out of the consolidated revenue fund.


Gordon Graydon: Mr. Speaker, I suggest that the minister ought to take advantage of this occasion to make a statement, which I have no doubt he is now prepared to make.


Colin William George Gibson: I have a brief statement to make. I had proposed making it, however, in committee, if that is satisfactory.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Dion in the chair.


Colin William George Gibson: Mr. Chairman, this resolution was on the order paper at the last session of parliament, but was not reached; consequently we are proceeding with it again at this session.
Hon. members will recall that we have as chapter 78 of the Revised Statutes of Canada an act known as the Dominion Forest Reserves and Parks Act. In 1930 the National Parks Act was passed. It dealt entirely with the national parks and removed from the original bill all the provisions referring to them. In the same year, 1930, the natural resources owned by the dominion in the western provinces were transferred to those provinces, with the result that all national forests which had formerly been set aside were placed under provincial jurisdiction. As a result, the Dominion Forest Reserves and Parks Act, as it exists, is out of date and no longer adequately meets the program and policy of the government.
While it is true that the natural resources of Canada come under provincial jurisdiction, the dominion government does of course recognize that it has a direct interest and responsibility in assisting in the development, protection and utilization of our forest products. The dominion government secures considerable revenue from forest industries. The employment they provide and the subsidiary industries that are maintained have

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contributed in great measure to maintaining the high standard of living which we have at present in Canada. It is not the intention in any way through this bill to invade provincial jurisdiction, but it is felt that by close co-operation and agreement with the provinces we can assist in the development of a constructive forestry program throughout the country. This bill is intended to provide a basis for that assistance.
It should not be assumed that up to the present time nothing has been done in this regard. I would draw the attention of hon. members to some of the activities of the forestry branch. In the dominion forestry service we are at the present time operating three research laboratories, one at Ottawa and one at Vancouver; and we assist in the operation of the pulp and paper research institute at Montreal. The functions of these laboratories are to experiment with new uses of various products, to take steps to preserve the life of the woods we produce, and to prevent waste. In addition to laboratories we have five forest experimental stations which are operating in five different provinces. Those have been set up for the study of problems concerning silviculture, the protection of forests, and the utilization of the products of our forests. Those forest experimental stations cover an area aggregating 227 square miles.
In addition to those laboratories and forest experimental stations we are doing a considerable amount of research work along other lines. For example, we have gathered together a tremendous amount of statistical information that is of great benefit both to the forest industry and to the provinces. By means of air photographs we have been able to secure valuable information as to the extent and quality of the forest resources of this country. New techniques and equipment have been developed which have greatly improved the work being done. The time and the cost required to secure this information have been cut down. I think we might well be gratified to know that the equipment we have developed in this country is now being used in many other countries, as well as by the provincial authorities.
There are many problems concerning forest conservation which require consideration. There is the problem of protecting our forests from fire, from insects, and from disease. These problems are common to all the provinces and undoubtedly can best be met by a combination of effort in research work which will be of benefit to us all.
The problems of reforestation and publicity can best be met by a joint program to be carried out in close co-operation with the provinces. The bill that is to be introduced
(Mr. Gibson (Hamilton West).]
will provide that the dominion government may enter into agreements with the provinces, with other departments of government and with other persons, in order to promote efficient forestry development.
I should like to point out one mistake that has been made in printing the resolution as it appears on the order paper today. This may have been copied from a similar resolution that was up for consideration last session. The resolution reads in part:
The Minister ot Mines and Resources is authorized to appoint temporary officers and employees for the carrying out of the provisions of the act.
There is nothing in the bill giving that authority to the minister, and I do not think it should be in the resolution. Any employees that will be taken on for the purposes of carrying out the activities authorized by the bill will be appointed in the usual way through the civil service.


Mr. Mclvor:: I have no doubt that many hon. members of this house know that the lakehead is the centre of development of our timber industry. During the last three or four months considerable alarm has been felt at the lakehead over the extensive ruination which has occurred in our forests because of the budworm. I am sure that those who know anything about the ravages of this budworm will welcome the statement which has been made by the minister and will read it carefully.
I commend the minister for what he has said about giving assistance to the provinces and to owners of timber land. We certainly would like to have a laboratory at the lake-head, right at the place where things are happening.


Mr. Murray (Cariboo):: As one who comes from British Columbia I commend the minister for introducing this measure. The forests of this country are of great value as a source of continuous income for our people from one coast to the other. I had the experience last year of proceeding along the Mackenzie river in northern Canada and observing a forest fire which had been burning for several weeks and which was wiping out great areas of timber which even today would be of commercial value.
I hope that the bill to be introduced will make possible the planting of state forests throughout this dominion. I do not think this country could make a better investment for the future than to have many forests under cultivation. Some of them could be planted on marginal lands which are not particularly fitted for agriculture-I am thinking of the valleys of British Columbia.


Mr. Cruickshank:: Hear, hear.


George Matheson Murray: The Fraser river valley, of course. There has been a continuous change in the value of the forest products of this country. Only a few years ago the timber in northern Ontario was regarded as having no commercial value. I can remember when the timber along the Canadian National Railways was not regarded as having any commercial value. Yet within one's lifetime there has been developed one of the greatest pulpwood mills in the world, and it is utilizing timber products which at one time were considered to have no value. This goes on all over the country.
Up in the Peace river country, some of which is in the constituency which I represent, there are stands of trees suitable for saw mill manufacture and possibly the greatest reserves of pulpwood available in this country are to be found along the Peace, Finlay and Mackenzie rivers. There is no doubt that this measure is of the utmost importance to the Dominion of Canada.


Mr. Pearkes:: Mr. Speaker, in the 1946
session, speaking at considerable length, I urged the government to give assistance to the forest industry to a greater extent than had been done up to that time; therefore I am pleased to see that a bill is to be introduced to carry out some of the suggestions I then made. I shall reserve my main remarks until I have had an opportunity to study the bill. I should like, however, to ask the minister to what extent the provisions of this bill will apply to dominion-owned lands on the Indian reserves.


Colin William George Gibson: The bill will cover all lands held in the right of Canada. The dominion forestry service will issue regulations to govern forest areas. The provisions of the bill will apply to dominion lands as well as to lands covered by agreements which we may make with the provinces in connection with experimental stations located on provincial limits.


Mr. Herridge:: Mr. Chairman, I think we all realize that the conservation and maintenance of our forests is of vital interest to the Canadian people. As a member representing a constituency in which a large number of people derive their livelihood from the forest industry, and as one who has spent almost his whole life in developing a small forest, and in the growing of trees, I take great pleasure in making a few remarks on this resolution.
First of all may I say that I am pleased that the government has decided to introduce this resolution. I shall look forward with interest to seeing the bill that is to follow. The subject of the resolution is of particular interest to me, if you will pardon a personal
Canada Forestry Act
reference, because I am a man who derives far more pleasure from skidding trails, a deck of logs, the perfume of sawn lumber, and woodland operations generally, than from listening to nebulous arguments on some intangible point of law. These things mean more to me and exemplify reality, shall I say.
I am happy to note that in recent years interest in forest conservation has widened. I have made a considerable study of forest conservation, tree planting, selective logging and things of that kind, and looking back over the years I find that there is now a much wider interest in forest conservation and maintenance than there was twenty-five or thirty years ago. I am pleased to note that in recent years trade union organizations and farm organizations in Canada and the United States have expressed themselves as being greatly concerned about the conservation of our timber resources. These people are becoming more aware of the importance of our forests from the point of view of climate, employment, irrigation, and flood control.
Forestry was the first industry on the North American continent. It has been in existence ever since Leif Ericsson came to the shores of this continent and took cargoes of timber back to Greenland. Then there was the development of the lumber industry by the New England colonists who first cut spars for masts for British ships and for shipment to Great Britain. We of this continent are the most fortunate people in the world in having forests containing between 1,100 and 1,200 different species. Today we can see the difference in type between the pulp timber of northern Ontario and the giant trees found in California in the Sequoia national forest, one of which is estimated to contain, if scaled, some 621,000 feet of lumber. Interest in forest conservation in Canada, so far as my reading of the subject is concerned, developed towards the concluding days of the nineteenth century, but the first large-scale organized expression of growing public opinion with respect to the conservation of forests was in the calling of the Canadian forest congress in 1906 by the forestry association of Canada. I believe that congress was called as a result of the successful holding of a similar congress in the United States about twelve months previously.
Although we have had but one major congress in Canada, since that time there has been increasing interest on the part of provincial governments because of their acquiring natural resources within the provinces. At the same time we have had federal government officials doing all they could with the money they had to spend. I should like

Canada Forestry Act
to bring to the attention of the house a paragraph from a pamphlet known as "Forest Facts", published in the 1920's, to indicate how little had been done up to that time. The quotation reads:
The forest resources of Canada are being depleted at the rate of about five billion cubic feet annually through cutting, fire, insects, and decay. If the reproduction and young timber are not protected, the stand of merchantable timber accessible for exploitation will not withstand this drain for more than twenty-five years . . . Few people realize the urgent need which exists for a forest policy in Canada.
That was the situation in the 1920's. We have had the dominion forest conservation commission, which conducted a survey of our forest resources in 1913 and 1914 without making recommendations. As I said before, we have had officials of various departments of the federal government doing limited work in connection with forestry. We have had the provincial governments taking an increasing interest. In addition to these efforts, a very encouraging development in recent years has been the increasing interest of the industry itself. I think it is only fair to say that the forest operators of Canada, large and small, are contributing large sums of money, either toward conservation policies given effect to by individuals, or in support of policies advocated by organizations, and for general publicity purposes to stimulate public awareness of this most important and vital situation.
In this respect I might say in passing that the Canadian Forestry Association has carried on an excellent work throughout the years. Various newspapers, and other publications such as "Woodland World," have also made a contribution. As a result of the fact that we have gradually moved from a pioneer civilization into an industrial civilization, there is a greatly increased consciousness of how basic the forest industry is to Canada. I have read a great deal about various conservation and management policies, and so on. I have read a lot of things written by people who read books and then wrote articles based on pure theory. I have heard lumber operators sometimes unjustly criticized because the person who criticized them did not have knowledge of the conditions under which they were working.
To formulate a policy for forest conservation and for forest management means that you have to formulate a policy to meet a great number of different conditions throughout the country. For instance, on the Pacific coast we have large timber stands with virgin timber that in many cases is five to six hundred years old. It is easy to criticize the operators for cutting those large stands, but on the Pacific coast you must cut virgin and
[Mr. Herridge.l
mature stands clean, and follow with a policy of replanting or of leaving seed trees to carry on reproduction.
In the interior of British Columbia there is an entirely different situation facing operators. They are operating largely in second growth stands with timber up to 125 years old. There they can log selectively. There some operators are beginning to take a limited amount of timber per acre per year from their holdings. Then we come to the timber forest conservation policy of the prairies, where it is almost entirely a policy of replanting under entirely different climatic conditions. Then we come to the pulpwood industry of northern Ontario, which represents an entirely different problem. Therefore in Canada we must have a policy drafted to meet different conditions and changing circumstances. I would urge that the dominion government give every support to the forestry congress proposed by the Canadian Forestry Association to be held in 1950. We all recognize that the management of forests comes directly under the provincial governments, but I am of the opinion that if we are to have an understanding of our forest problems, and if we are to get satisfactory public support for conservation policies that are drafted with a realization of the varying conditions in Canada, we must bring together all interested people at a national congress to function as a clearing house of ideas and opinions. Therefore I urge the minister and his department to give every support possible to the plans for a proposed forestry congress in 1950.
In this connection I should like to quote from an excellent brochure published by the Canadian Forestry Association. I believe it is worth any member's time to read this pamphlet. The excerpt reads:
The Canadian Forestry Association feels it is urgent to the welfare of Canada that a second Canadian forestry congress be convened, with the widest representation from all who are directly and indirectly interested in the forests of Canada.
In my opinion, Mr. Chairman, the essential steps that must be taken to establish a sound forest policy have been well defined as a result of wide Canadian experience. I want to mention briefly some general principles concerning the establishment of such a policy in this country.
In the first place I think we must proceed to halt and control the major destructive forces and processes such as shifting cultivation, overgrazing and burning, and the exploitative and excessive rate of utilization of productive forests. I believe we must create a body of public opinion on forest policy and law, and apply it. through a

competent professional organization. I believe also that we must ensure understanding of and support for these programs; that we must estimate the prospective need for forests in the various provinces, and determine what the forest lands of the country can produce under proper management. I believe it is necessary to apply forestry practices which will be effective and economically feasible, and also to learn a great deal more about forests, forest products and the utilization of waste than is known at present.
I could go on at greater length, Mr. Chairman, but when the bill is introduced I intend to deal with some matters I shall not mention at this stage. I do believe, however, this resolution is evidence that the government is cognizant of greater public interest in the conservation of our forests, and that it now realizes that our forests are a basic resource and must be treated as a national trust. Truly our woods and forests are one in our lives with soil, water, animals and food. Soil and water conservation, flood control, lasting abundance in industry and prosperity on the land-all are involved in the proper use of our forest resources. With all the ravages of the past, the errors and delays, the time required to develop a widespread realization of the problem before us, I am certain that the genius of Canadian democracy can yet restore our forests, redeem our watersheds, bring new life to ghost towns, and find increasingly successful ways to fight fire and pests, if this parliament and the legislatures of this country are willing to give the lead by co-operating one with another.


Colin William George Gibson: I should like to expand my reply to the question of the hon. member for Nanaimo concerning forests on Indian lands, to point out that while this measure will not directly apply to forest resources on Indian lands, it will of course apply to forest reserves that may be established on those lands.


Solon Earl Low: I have in mind two questions I should like to ask the minister, but before doing so I want to say briefly how much we appreciate the action of the government in bringing down the legislation which is to be based on this resolution. It must give great satisfaction to Canadians from one end of the country to the other who know anything about the situation that has developed with respect to our forest regions. When we consider the figures which were put on Hansard the other day, showing that in the period from 1940 to 1948 something like 17,000,000 acres of timber land in this country were ravaged by Are; when we realize the tremendous value of the merchantable timber on those lands that were burned over, and when we realize how destructive these fires
Canada Forestry Act
have been, not only to our timber resources but also to our soil and water conservation measures, I believe we must all acknowledge that the minister and the government are to be highly commended on bringing in legislation to provide for closer co-operation with the provinces in better methods of control and utilization of our forest resources.
My constituency of Peace River-not Cariboo, by the way, which is represented by another hon. member-is a big lumber producing area; but year after year we are finding it necessary to go further and further back into uneconomic areas in order to get the timber required. Unless new methods are adopted that will enable forest areas closer to the settlements to produce the lumber which is required, some day it may become economically impossible for our people to get out that timber and make use of it. All too frequently the government of my province has found itself utterly incapable of coping with the fire situation. It just has not the resources. That was one reason why some years ago the province entered into negotiations with the federal government and the predecessors of my hon. friend in the Department of Mines and Resources, with a view to bringing about closer co-operation between the dominion and the provinces with the ultimate objective of preserving the watershed on the east slope of the rockies. Eventually those negotiations bore fruit, and some two years ago a joint board or commission was set up. I understand the work that has been done by that board in the past year and a half has been especially good, and I hope that in the course of his remarks the minister will say something about that work. It seems to me that the joint board set up for the preservation and reforestation of the east slope of the rockies might be a pattern for the action envisioned in this resolution. I would ask the minister, when he has a moment to speak, to give us some report of what has been done and the success that has attended the efforts of that board.
The minister acknowledged that there was a printing error in the resolution, and that the following words should not be there:
The Minister of Mines and Resources is authorized to appoint temporary officers and employees for the carrying out of the provisions of the act.
Under the circumstances would it not be well for the minister to move an amendment deleting this sentence? Otherwise when the committee passes upon the resolution that part will be included, and we feel that the resolution should not be adopted while it contains those words.
Personally I want to commend the minister for his vision. I think he has the interests of Canada at heart when he brings forward

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this resolution. It seems to me he is exhibiting statesmanship and leadership in his department that we have not known there for a long time, and I extend my congratulations to him on what he is doing. I think this bill opens a new era of co-operation between the provinces and the dominion in connection with the conservation of the rich resources with which this country has been endowed. I am sure all provincial governments will welcome the legislation, and will take advantage of every opportunity to cooperate with the minister and his department. I know something of the work that has been done at these experimental stations in attempting to discover the causes of diseases that have been rapidly destroying some of our finest trees, and the promise of an expansion of that work is something to be commended. I am sure the people of this country will receive it with thanksgiving and joy.


Colin William George Gibson: I quite agree with what has been said by the hon. member for Peace River in regard to the work of the joint board set up to look after the conservation of the forest resources on the eastern slope of the rockies. I have not had a chance to visit that area, but I know they are doing valuable work, and the progress they are making in the preservation of that watershed should be of great benefit to the prairie provinces. I agree with the hon. member also that probably a motion should be made striking out from this resolution the words:
The Minister of Mines and Resources is authorized to appoint temporary officers and employees for the carrying out of the provisions of the act.
As I cannot make that motion myself, I would ask my colleague the Minister of Public Works if he would make it.


Mr. Fournier (Hull):: I move that the words quoted by the Minister of Mines and Resources be struck out of this resolution.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
Mr. Gibson (Comox-Alberni):: With my
colleague from Nanaimo, I come from Vancouver island which probably has the greatest stand of soft woods left in the British empire. Naturally I am greatly interested in this new bill which the minister proposes to introduce.
I think we are all conscious of the fact that the economy of Canada is greatly dependent on the forest industry. I am rather curious to find out why at this late date there is a necessity for the introduction of such a bill. It has always seemed to me that surely the federal government has been conscious of the tremendous revenues that have accrued from the forest industries. We have had our forest laboratories in operation, of course. I am 
rather curious to find out from the minister just what this bill purports to do that he has not already authority to do. :	'
As to reforestation, it becomes a matter of simple economics. I think it is a matter for the closest liaison between the minister's own department, the Department of Finance and the department of the Minister of National Revenue, whom I see over there, to make it of advantage to investors to put their money into a reforestation program. After all, if you put money in now, it is never going to do you any personal good. Trees take too long to grow for people to expect to get anything back in their own lifetime, usually. Many submissions have been made by the forest industries of British Columbia and of other provinces to the taxation department asking that more latitude be given to them so that it would be made more attractive for investors to put their money into reforestation programs. I should be glad if at some time, perhaps at the congress mentioned by the hon. member for Kootenay West, it would be possible for the forest industries to present their problems and suggestions to the taxation department in that regard. I can think of nothing that would cause more trees to be grown in Canada than making it attractive to private enterprise to put money into that particular business. I should like the minister to explain to me, if he will, just what he hopes to do through this bill that he has not already authority to do.


Colin William George Gibson: As I said in my opening remarks, we already had a bill, the Dominion Forest Reserves and Parks Act, which was out of date, and it was decided to bring in a bill to authorize the activities of the department more in keeping with the program and policies of the department at the present time. We have had operating, it is true, laboratories and experimental stations. Those have been authorized by vote of the House of Commons, and the money has been authorized for that purpose. But it is felt that we should have the forestry program modernized so that the department would have less difficulty in entering into the agreements that are required to carry out the joint program with the provinces.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: The hon. member for Comox-Alberni mentioned the profit from growing trees. There is a definite profit in reforestation because, when you plant your trees, you plant them thickly; and in a few years' time you can trim them out and sell what you trim out as Christmas trees. That is being done in Ontario at the present time, and I believe that Ontario has about the best policy of reforestation of any province in Canada. In fact, I know it has.

I feel that one reason for that is that for some years now the Ontario Horticultural Society, which is separate from the province, has been encouraging the growing and the planting of trees. Some few years ago Mr. Carter-I believe he lives in Guelph; he is a past president of the Ontario Horticultural Society-gave trophies in the rural schools throughout the province, to schools that would plant the best area or district in trees; and the Ontario government would give every school the trees to plant. That plan has been growing and growing each year. Some of the schools started in with a quarter of an acre.
I think that is what they were supposed to plant. The program has grown and many of the schools now have many acres in plantations. The schools can even make money in trimming the trees.
The hon. member for Peace River commended the minister for bringing in this resolution. I have read in the press many a time, as I know the minister has also, "Born twenty years too soon." I feel that this measure should have been brought in at least twenty or thirty years ago. Back in 1940 when we were going over the estimates of the minister's department, out of an expenditure of some $240,000-if my memory serves me aright; I have not the figures here-the government planted only some fifteen acres of trees. The rest of the money was spent in cutting out and so forth. The minister mentioned that they have laboratories for finding out ways and means of using wood, pulp and one thing and another. But I do not believe that his department have the facilities for finding out what will save our forests. I know that right here in this house we plugged for something to be done with regard to the bud worm; I believe it was with the Minister of Agriculture and also with the Minister of Mines and Resources. In my district this year we had a worm that some people call the army worm. We had it last year too. I believe the province call it the tent caterpillar. It was certainly on the march. They travel as close together as my fingers and travel at such a rate that they could cross the road nearly as fast as a turtle. They just jammed the highways. They travelled into the woods, and before half an hour had passed after they crossed the road, not a leaf would be left on any of the trees. I believe this department should find some ways and means of killing that worm. The government was asked if they could do anything to help, but nothing was done. Some people suggested spraying from the air. But you cannot spray from the air in populated districts, especially in the summertime when tourists are there.
The minister mentioned the fact that he was going to confer with the provinces. He
13. 1949
Canada Forestry Act did not say that he had conferred with them. I wonder if he would say whether he has already done so, and what they intend to do in this matter.
There is one point which has not been mentioned so far. It is the fact that if the forests are thinned out, as they have been in the last fifty or one hundred years, and that thinning out keeps up, we shall have nothing at all with which to attract United States tourists. If we did not have trees along our river banks and along our lake-shores the fish in those rivers and lakes would not live because they depend on the slow seepage of water into these rivers and lakes to get the food which they require. It has been found in places where the river banks and lakeshores have been cleared of trees that the fish have eventually disappeared. Has the minister talked to the provinces? Where does he intend to set up nurseries? Will they be set up in conjunction with the provinces, or will they be set up on dominion government land?


Colin William George Gibson: I did not say
that government nurseries were to be set up anywhere.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: Should they not?


Colin William George Gibson: As I pointed out originally, the control of natural resources is first of all the responsibility of the provinces. We had dominion forests in this country and in 1930 we turned them over to the provinces for their control and management. Therefore it was realized that the dominion government is not primarily responsible for the development of national forests, although we are keenly interested in the preservation of the forests and we want to do what we can to assist.
The hon. member for Peterborough West asked if we had consulted the provinces. We have had close co-operation with the provinces, and I can say definitely that they were consulted as to the provisions of the bill. We have had close co-operation with them, and we intend to continue it. The bill founded on this resolution will provide for agreements with the provinces to assist in mutual projects to protect and to develop the natural resources which are primarily the responsibility of the provinces.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: Does the minister think that it would be wise at once to get in touch with the provinces and consult with them? The minister's department has had no experience really in regard to forests, and the provinces have. The minister just said that the federal government had no responsibility for national forests. They certainly have some responsibility for national forests.

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Colin William George Gibson: I did not say
we had no interest in the national forests. I can assure my hon. friend that the officials of the forestry branch are in close consultation with the provincial authorities in the various provinces. They have been working together dealing with forest pests. We have not only the spruce budworm but various diseases that are attacking our forests. Our experimental stations are working in close co-operation with the provincial authorities in order to find cures and to assist in preventing damage that will develop in our forests if no action is taken. The same thing applies to fire protection. We realize that it is a great expense to the provinces to deal with that alone. I am quite sure that the co-operation which has existed in the past will be continued by our officials in the future.


Mr. Adamson:: This resolution deals with the whole ecology of our forests. The forest, whether it is provincial or federal, is like the king, indivisible. Likewise, the impact on the whole forest economy is a total impact on the economy of all of Canada, which cannot be overestimated. For that reason the bill, founded on this resolution, will be welcomed by all sides of the house. So far the debate has done one thing. A large number of members have spoken and they have each posed a different question. In many ways the questions were technical, dealing with reforestation, cutting, pest control, fire and its effect on the water resources of the country.
I want to make a suggestion to the minister. It arises out of the debate we have had this afternoon. In many ways this is a highly technical question. It is not a question on which there can be any political difference of opinion. Every hon. member is as jealous of the forest resources of Canada as any other hon. member; therefore I do hope that when the bill gets into the committee stage the minister will allow it to go to the committee on mines, forests and waters. I make this suggestion specifically so that in the committee we can hear the expert opinion of the pulp and paper industry, the conservation authorities, the provincial forestry authorities, the large timber operators on the Pacific coast, and people such as the wildlife conservationists. All these authorities and all these people have a vital interest in the forests. They all have a special problem. If I may say so, their problems in the main are technical. It would be a great advantage and help to the house if that evidence could be adduced in the committee. It would be a great service to the country to have 
evidence given by experts in that committee. For instance, we could have information on a comparison between Canadian and Scandinavian practices with regard to conservation, cutting and reforestation.
The matter of the water table destruction is important, that is, the ever decreasing and ever deepening level at which water is found practically all over the country. Co-operation with the new river valley authorities set up by the province of Ontario is important. That is a new act passed by the Ontario provincial authorities setting up what are known as river conservation authorities. They take one complete river and plan the conservation of it. Methods and remedies such as the replanting of trees, contour plowing, construction of storage dams and the restoration of the normal flow on the river are used. The most glaring example, and one on which much work has been done in this connection, is the Ganaraska river and now the Thames river near London in western Ontario. As a matter of fact, a very active conservation department is in operation under the Ontario provincial government at the present time.
There is the question of soil erosion and of the value of farmer's woodlot. Then there is the old forest reserves and national parks act. Will it be repealed? Certainly, in many ways, it needs amendment apart altogether from the bill which is to be founded on the resolution we are now discussing.
Then we come to the question whether it is advisable to set up a forest products laboratory such as the forest products laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, where a great deal of study and research is being done on the use of all kinds of wood products, for example, the use and the salvage of what were waste products such as sawdust and bark, and other waste products which used to be burned. There is the question whether it is feasible to set up such a laboratory in Canada so that the efficiency and economy of the whole wood products industry may be improved. While I understand that stumpage, and dues paid by owners of timber limits, are provincial matters, it would be interesting to know how far that money would go to rehabilitate the land and to replant the forests so that the crops of trees might be continuous, and the land might not be exploited. The forest is a continuous asset; it must not be used as a rich resource to be exploited by the first man or company on the scene.
The restoration of the forest covering in the old and settled parts of Canada is one of the most important matters with

which we could deal. Soil erosion and the resultant destruction of wildlife, the increasing incidence of fires, the destruction of rivers, and the fact that the percentage of farm lands under forest covering has been greatly decreased, far below the limits of safety, are indications of the perils and problems which beset large areas of Canada.
I refer to the importance of forests, not only to the great forest areas of British Columbia and northern Ontario and Quebec, where the forest product industries are located, but more particularly to the importance of forests to farmers and others in the central and southern parts of Ontario and southern Quebec.
These may be technical matters, but there are people in Canada who have the answers. Parliament would be rendering a service if, for these reasons alone, this bill were sent to the committee on mines, forests and waters, so that every hon. member and the people throughout the country may have explicit, accurate and complete information on the vital problem of preserving our Canadian forests.


Gordon Graydon: Mr. Chairman, I do not desire to delay the committee long, but there are one or two points which I should like to bring to the attention of the minister and which in my view are germane to the subject under discussion.
First of all I did not think the minister gave a clear answer respecting the negotiations carried on or the discussions held between the dominion government and the representatives of the provinces. I mention this only because a few moments ago the Prime Minister, answering a question with respect to the introduction of housing legislation at an early date, indicated that one of the reasons the measure had not been proceeded with earlier was that he did not want the provinces to learn for the first time some aspects of the dominion government's point of view in any legislation which might be brought down. He indicated, in other words, that he was anxious that the provinces should have a fair opportunity to discuss the whole matter before legislation was brought to the house.
In expressing agreement with the principle of the resolution, I wish to have it understood that I believe it is important that in all matters such as this, where it is the intention of the dominion government to co-operate with provincial jurisdictions, the dominion should be very careful to lay the groundwork well in the first instance, so that there may be no reason for a lack of co-operation at a later time.
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I have no doubt our forests are assets which present a challenge to the minds of every member in the house and of our people generally. I remember in my earlier years attending a public meeting in Ontario and hearing the late Hon. William Finlayson, the then provincial minister of lands and forests, deliver a speech. I believe that would be some time in the twenties. In that speech he referred to our forests as a crop and said -and I agree with him-that too often we have regarded our forests as a necessarily wasting asset instead of handling them as we would ordinary field crops. He pointed out that we would not think of planting a grain crop in the agricultural areas, and then proceed to harvest them without doing something about the next crop. He added that in some instances it took more than fifty years for those crops to develop.
I remember clearly the response to that suggestion by an old gentleman from a farming district in the county of Peel. This old gentleman, whom I knew well, sat in the front seat of the meeting. I hesitate, in the presence of such a highly developed and sensitive group of gentlemen, to use his expression; but the old gentleman said, "Mr. Minister, did you say fifty years?" and when Mr. Finlayson said that he had, the old gentleman said, "Well, to a farmer like myself that seems to me like a damned slow crop".
I believe that the pioneering work done at that time did create in the minds of the people generally the thought that, after all, the forests must be regarded as a crop, in the ordinary sense of the term. If I were to offer any criticism of the resolution it would be that perhaps we had begun too late to deal with this great asset, this important heritage.
I was looking up a few figures a short time ago and, while I have not all of them up to date, the ones I have indicate that we have in Canada three-quarters of a million square miles of productive forest lands. That, in itself, constitutes a challenge in the matter of conservation. It has been pointed out that ninety per cent of the forest areas in Canada are owned by the crown either in the right of the province or in the right of the dominion. I have no doubt the minister will agree that that means that a move of this kind is made that much easier by virtue of the nature of the ownership of those forests.
Figures show that in the past the dominion government has spent less than half of one per cent of the revenues derived directly or indirectly from the lumbering industry on the conservation of our forests, and general expenditures in relation thereto. When one
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realizes that out of every 100,000 feet of lumber cut an additional 40,000 is lost through fire, insects anu disease he must have some understanding of the importance of any measure which, working co-operatively between the dominion and the provinces, will bring to an end at least some of the wastage so apparent in this great national heritage and asset.
In our section of Canada, as the hon. member for York West pointed out a few moments ago, a section which has been settled for perhaps a longer period of time than some others, the questions of soil conservation, flood damage and flood control have been engaging the attention of our provincial authorities.
I never could see eye to eye with the dominion government-of course this is not the first time-in its policy toward the river authorities which were set up to deal with the Thames, the Ganaraska, the Etobicoke and other rivers. I have often wondered why they did not take advantage of the opportunity afforded by the provincial legislation to bear part of the expense of operating those projects. The provincial legislation which was passed about two years or more ago provided that the municipalities immediately involved would pay 25 per cent of the cost, the provincial government 37J per cent and the dominion government 37J per cent. Perhaps the minister is unaware of the long negotiations that took place because the representations were not made to his department, but the dominion government declined to pay anything toward the cost of operating the various authorities set up. The result has been that the provincial government has had to bear 75 per cent of the cost of the works that were undertaken, while the municipalities have paid for the balance.
I am glad to see that there is an indication that the dominion government has become conscious of the necessity of working hand in hand with the provinces in a great and forward-looking venture for the purpose of preserving this most important, although slowly developing crop, and seeing that in the days that lie ahead we shall not have wasted this great heritage that is ours.


Mr. Siuari (Charlotte):: Mr. Chairman, I feel that one of the greatest menaces to our forests-I am referring now to my own province and county-is the operators themselves. It has been asked whether this legislation will invade provincial jurisdiction. In New Brunswick our forests have been mismanaged and today it is necessary that the federal government come to our assistance.

In my own county the method of logging 25 years ago could be styled as a horse-and-buggy method. If we had to depend upon that same method today our mills would be closed because it is now necessary to haul logs as far as 100 to 150 miles in order to get supplies to the mills. The land in the immediate vicinity of the mills has been cut and slashed and the result is that nothing is left. I am referring now to crown and privately owned lands in my county.
I have walked through tracts of land in the county of Charlotte and have noted how they were crisscrossed with roads that had been dug with bulldozers through the woods. To my way of thinking that was hardly necessary. It will take at least 50 years or possibly 100 years before anything worth while can be grown on that land. I know of one particularly nice stand of spruce in my county that was sold two years ago for stumpage. I know quite well the gentleman who cut that off. He was instructed to cut everything that would make a two by three. The result was that what had been a fine piece of woodland was nothing but waste and would be nothing but waste for another 50 years.
I believe in free enterprise; but my thought is that, though you may give all the assistance you wish to the provinces, until there is some form of forest management in the provinces it will be a waste of time and good money. History shows that those European countries which have had planned forest management have forests that are more valuable today than they were thirty or forty years ago, but you cannot find that situation in New Brunswick.
The large companies have gone in and cut and slashed and destroyed without any thought of future generations. If the federal government feel that they are in position to help the provinces there should be some method evolved whereby this destruction will be made impossible in future. We now have members in the house from Newfoundland, a province which is sometimes referred to as backward. However, from the information I am able to gather, they have a much better system of forest management than exists in any of the provinces of Canada. They are protecting their forests.
It might be said that when the government steps in and tells you that you must not touch this or that in the forest we would be getting away from freedom of action, but I think this industry has been brought to a position where some means must be found to protect it if it is to be carried on in the future.
I would think that the people who would be more interested than any others in the

preservation of our forests would be the operators themselves. If they would agree to some plan for the preservation of our forests, I think they might be in position to ask for federal assistance. If assistance is going to be given and the operators still allowed to cut and slash and destroy as they wish, it will give those citizens who are providing the funds for this purpose little encouragement to support such a subsidy.


Mr. Gauthier (Porineuf):: Mr. Chairman, I am glad to see that the hon. member for Quebec South is in his seat. I know that he is better qualified to speak on this subject than I, but I am going to say a few words and I know that as he is a good friend and citizen he will not make any remarks. I am not an expert on this matter but I do want to take part in this debate, speaking only as a citizen who is anxious to see developed a general offensive which may result in a victorious battle against fire, insects, wastage and perhaps apathy in some quarters, the result of which is destroying slowly but surely one of our greatest assets.
My remarks will be confined entirely to personal observations. Not being an expert, as I have said, in order to sustain my contention I shall have to rely upon what has been said by those whose goal it is to preserve our forests against devastation by the means to which I have just referred.
Many people who are members of protective associations, forestry associations, the Canadian pulp and paper industry and so on are constantly looking for new designs and methods which may be used to develop a program which could be studied and perhaps finally accepted by the various provincial governments. Concerted action may be the successful means of giving the assurance of a new era in the protection of our trees, the continuance of our water power and, to a certain extent, the permanent irrigation of our soil. Some have proposed that a national congress should be held, but I suggest that there should be a dominion-provincial conference to deal with this matter and study it carefully. The apathy of our population may prove disastrous if even the layman is not interested and leaves the job to be done by others.
I often have the privilege of enjoying fishing and hunting trips in the Laurentides. My county is divided into two parts from east to west by the Laurentides, these lovely and enchanting mountains, the oldest in the country. I have often noticed the lack of cautiousness shown by some people in the handling of camp fires, matches and so forth. We will never know the loss suffered by the
45781-m
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taxpayers of Canada because of carelessness and lack of proper education. People should at least be willing to observe the warning posted in that forest. They only have to read the posters issued by the different associations and governments by the thousand and meditate on the meaning of one sentence that can be read on them, namely:
One tree can produce one million matches; one match can destroy one million trees.
But how many read it, and if they do so how many think of it and for how long?
The trouble lies in the absence of the program of widespread education I was advocating a few moments ago. Preventive medicine has learned that education must start at home with the help of the father and mother so that our children will know where danger lies. Prevention of forest destruction by fire and insects should begin at home and be continued in the primary and secondary schools. Naturally when a child grows older he is inclined to forget, and if public opinion is not aroused it will endanger and probably render impossible what I might call, when I speak of reforestation, the resurrection of the Canadian forest.
The arousing of public opinion is urgent. I hope that the step taken by the Minister of Mines and Resources will strike the right note, show the way, and provide the necessary incentive so that the march towards realization will be on for good. I urge the members of the house to look carefully into the wells of information given to us by the Canadian Forestry Association. Not being an entomologist I will not discuss the loss the forests of Canada have suffered from insects, but I will say a few words about wastage. Walking in the forest I often have deplored the enormous quantity of timber lost by careless exploitation. The forestry association tells us that five hundred million cubic feet are wasted in logging each year, and that you have to add to that figure four hundred million cubic feet wasted in sawmill operations. You will see what that amounts to in the depletion of our forests.
In co-operation with the provinces we should find a way to use waste timber of all dimensions which is left on the ground and provides, if not cleared out, a wonderful centre of culture for insects and fires. In the wintertime many poor people need fuel wood. Even in the best managed country of the world there will always be poor people. My proposal is to form an organization whose function would be to collect this lost timber, haul it out of the forest and forward it to charitable institutions in various communities so that the poor would be provided with

Canada Forestry Act
the fuel wood they lack. With the help of the various governments interested, Canadian Forestry Association contractors, jobbers and others, we might come to a point where it would be possible to work out a system to give, to those in need, fuel wood which otherwise would be left to the ravages of fires and insects. I think I could see from the remarks of the minister that he had in mind the elaboration of a general program of research and education to be carried on co-operatively by the federal and provincial governments.
Let us follow the example of a highly industrialized nation which years ago climbed the ladder of fame by its industry. They left nothing untouched; they created something out of almost nothing and came to a point where an industry was the pivot of world industry. If an insane leader had not misled that nation her potentiality would still be a power to deal with. I refer to the German nation. Let us be industrious and use the waste, reference to which is found in the pamphlet sent to us by the Canadian Forestry Association, and which is entitled "The Case for Forestry in Canada". They show that the waste from fire, insects and disease is eight hundred million cubic feet annually, and they go on to say:
This loss can be greatly reduced by better protection and education.
I stress the reference to education. It should be enlarged and forced into the minds of our people, especially our children. The pamphlet continues:
Waste in utilization.
Logging waste	500 million cubic feet
Sawmill waste	400 million cubic feet
If we were as industrious as the German people we would not lose that waste. We would bring it out somehow by means of some kind of organization. It takes only good will, co-operation, understanding, and an absence of political purposes, to form an organization of that kind so that we can use every piece of that timber that we see in the forests, which is now good for nothing and is lost to the population. It is only good for the insects and for fires. We could use it for the benefit of our population. We all remember that before the war the Germans used to manufacture tin toys for the little ones out of tin cans. We should follow that example, and I am sure that everyone in the country will be satisfied. The children will be glad to know. It would be a lesson in patriotism for them to know that a great deal of our timber is being used for their own benefit. To that end we need an example from the government and these associations.
IMr. Gauthier (Portneuf).]
I hope that the program the minister wants to put into effect will be followed by everyone, and that the march is on for the recovery and resurrection of our Canadian forests.


Thomas Langton Church: I wish to support the resolution of the government. There was never a time in the history of Canada when a national forest policy was more needed. We are a nautical people, and it took the second world war to show the country the necessity of conservation of the forests on the part of federal, provincial, municipal and other public bodies. Prior to the second war they were depleted by almost fifty per cent. The historian Parkman devoted several pages of his history book to the forests of our country and the need to preserve them for future generations; but, as I have said, they have been squandered at an alarming rate.
In speaking on this resolution I want to congratulate the Canadian Forestry Association on the good work it has done in this connection. This is one of the most constructive steps to be taken by the government at this or any other session. There never was a time in the history of Canada when we were more in need of a national policy to protect our forests. Parkman referred to the Indians and Eskimos away up in the northland, and said there was not a river entered or a cape turned but the way was led by an Indian or Eskimo. They were with Frobisher, they were with Hudson, they were with Mackenzie, and they were with Fraser when those men explored these great rivers. They helped show the people of southern Canada what a great heritage we have in our forest resources.
This resolution also refers to other matters which I am not going to mention, since I am going to speak only for three or four minutes. It provides that the government will-
-exercise control and management thereof and construct works therein; establish and maintain forest research laboratories; assist provinces or owners of forests and enter into agreements respecting the protection and development of forest lands.
That all links up with what Parkman had to say. The old schoolbooks used in both the public and separate schools of this country contained large pictures having to do with these matters, and the subject now has reached the universities, where I am glad to say they have research and forestry departments. We certainly should teach the rising generation something about the history of their own country, the wealth of vast forest resources, and the influence the forests have on water power, lumbering, logging and forestry.
This resolution also deals more or less with water power. We have a potential of

45,000,000 horsepower in this country, of which only one-seventh has been developed at the present time; and part of that is only seasonal, where some industries require it for only three or four months in the year. The great development in hydroelectric power brought about by the second world war has helped to fulfil the dreams of those who have been associated with this project for many years past and wanted a national hydro policy for Canada.
The history of the timber industry in Canada goes back for many years. Away back in 1885 loggers were taken from the city of Ottawa and other parts of Canada all the way to the Nile river, where they assisted in the relief of General Gordon at Khartoum. We are a nautical people, and Providence has provided us with a magnificent chain of rivers and inland streams and lakes. We are also fortunate in that we have great deposits of some twenty-five or thirty minerals; and for all these reasons we have long needed a national policy of this kind. If you turn to Houston's Annual, which used to be a standard textbook, you will find that much of the wealth of this country, including the timber along great sections of the Ottawa river, has been underwritten by and turned over to interests in New York city. I am glad that now we are going to develop a national policy for the protection of our own natural resources. During the last war, when we were giving minerals, lumber and many other things to Russia, and when we were told that from Puget sound north we had 760 miles of undefended coast, it was suggested that we should have a national policy of conservation. Now I hope that policy will be really developed. I remember when the harbour of Toronto was being developed, and we had to bring very heavy timber and logs all the way down through the Panama canal and up to Toronto for that work; and it was wonderful timber. If any hon. members visited the trade fair held in Toronto last May they must have seen something of the great importance of the timber wealth of our Pacific province to this country. As an example, Douglas fir and many other kinds of lumber are used in about twenty-six different forms in public buildings throughout the east, and in Toronto our public buildings, schools and national exhibition use all these; which shows what can be done by means of conservation.
I am glad to see this resolution on the order paper today. We have needed a national policy for a long time, and I hope now something will be done about it. I think a great deal can be done by means of education. We read of the great fires that occur in our timber lands and the wealth lost as a result; and
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it is appalling to realize how little is being done to preserve our forests for future generations. We have the greatest natural resources of any country on earth. Compared with other countries our forests represent unlimited wealth, together with our copper, zinc, platinum, gold, silver, asbestos, tin and other minerals. I believe the time has come when we should have a national policy not only for our forests but for our mineral resources, so that the wealth of this country may be safeguarded. It belongs to the people of Canada, and I believe that here we have a constructive resolution which will help develop in this country government of the people, by the people and for the people.


Mr. Harkness:: I am glad the government is going to introduce a bill designed to assist in the conservation of our forest resources. During recent years there has been an increasing awareness on the part of the general public, on the part of people engaged in the timber industry and on the part of governments of the necessity for better methods of forest management and improved forest conservation.
I do not intend to go into those matters today, however. I saw something of the forests of Great Britain, Italy and northwestern Europe; and one has only to see those forests to realize that we in Canada have a long way to go to catch up with the countries of Europe in the matter of forest management, conservation, reforestation, and so on.
In his remarks today the minister, as far as I could gather, did not say anything about the first part of this resolution. He spoke chiefly of what this measure was going to do to enable the dominion government to assist the provinces and to work in conjunction with them. However, I am far from clear as to exactly what this bill that is to be introduced is to do. What is the purpose of it? I should particularly like to know what the first part of this resolution means:
That it is expedient to present a bill to authorize the governor in council to establish as a national forest or as a forest experimental area lands belonging to His Majesty in the right of Canada . . .
And so forth. As far as I know, the only lands in the control of the dominion government are those in the Yukon, in the Northwest Territories, in the Indian reserves and in the dominion parks.


Colin William George Gibson: May I point out to my hon. friend that we have such lands as the Petawawa military area and some on military lands of that type.


Douglas Scott Harkness: In addition to the areas I have indicated there are, then, the military reserves. However, the minister has already

Canada Forestry Act
pointed out that it is not proposed apparently to establish any of the Indian reserves as national forests or forest experimental areas. I should like the minister to tell us just what the first part of this resolution means. Where are national forests to be established? Is it proposed to establish a national forest in the Northwest Territories, or is it proposed to use part or parts of some of the national parks, such as Banff national park or Jasper national park, for that purpose? When those national forests are established, what is the purpose of them? Are they going to be used as part of a reforestation scheme or as examples, you might say, of what can and should be done in the matter of forest culture? Exactly what is the purpose of them? It seems to me that before the resolution goes through we should have a little bit more information with regard to the matters I have mentioned.


Mr. Higgins:: Mr. Chairman-


Douglas Scott Harkness: Is the minister going to answer?


Colin William George Gibson: Several
questions have been asked. I was waiting to hear any other members who were desirous of speaking on the motion. The last speaker has asked what was the purpose of the act. In the first place we are, under the act, repealing an old act that has been on our statute books for a good many years and which dealt not only with national forests but with national parks; and we are bringing the legislation into line with the present program of the government. We also have five experimental stations on which forestry research is being conducted, and experiments are being carried on in the matter of forest conservation. This bill will not override the National Parks Act or the Indian Act, but if it is at any time later deemed advisable to declare some of the dominion lands to be national forests, it gives us power to do so. There is no immediate intention to do so. For example, we have an experimental station on the military area at Petawawa. While that land belongs to the Department of National Defence, through negotiations with that department we maintain an experimental station there.
The hon. member for Peel asked if we had had any previous consultation with the provinces. While I was not in this department at the time, I understand that the appropriate ministers of all the provinces except Prince Edward Island submitted a brief to the government as far back as 1943, asking practically for what is now provided for in this bill. Subsequently the matter was informally discussed with each of the provincial governments, so that they would know what it was

proposed to include in the bill; and I am informed that the majority, if not all, have expressed strong approval of this measure.


Gordon Francis Higgins: Before I deal with the resolution proper, I want to say that I thoroughly agree with it, but I should like to ask the minister who was the authority from the tenth province that was consulted in 1943. I should not imagine there was such a person. I should be interested in knowing if such were the case.
As to the resolution itself, it entails the presentation of a bill. I cannot imagine anybody opposing the resolution. As I am sure all hon. members must know, forty per cent of all United States dollars earned by Canada come from the Canadian pulp and paper industry. I believe that some one-quarter of a billion dollars is paid out annually in wages in Canada by that industry. Three out of every five newspaper pages printed anywhere in the world are printed on Canadian paper or on paper made from Canadian pulp. If that fact in itself is not sufficient to indicate the importance of the bill which it is proposed to introduce, as indicated by the minister today, I do not know what more hon. members would require. To me this measure is extremely important not only for Canada as a whole but particularly for what one of the hon. members today termed "the backward province of Newfoundland". I may say that we do not regard Newfoundland as being backward, and we shall regard this term as being used in a humorous way.
I might add, however, that the greatest single contribution to the Canadian economy, as a result of confederation, was the pulp and paper industry of Newfoundland. This industry brought into the Canadian economy some $40 million. That is no small amount when it is considered that it came from a province with a population as small as that of Newfoundland, particularly when it is recognized that sixty-five per cent of the newsprint produced in Newfoundland is sold in the United States for United States dollars. It is difficult these days to get away from the Yankee dollar.
In passing I should like to refer to a couple of statements made by the heads of our pulp and paper industries in Newfoundland. I hope it will not be deemed inappropriate, because I want to deal with them a little bit further later on. As a result of devaluation I feel that hon. members should know the views of these important people; at least they are important to us. This is a C.P. dispatch dated September 30, from Corner Brook, and reads as follows:
Sir Eric Bowater, president of Bowater's Pulp and Paper Mills here, biggest in the world-

I may say that the pulp and paper mill at Corner Brook in Newfoundland is the biggest single paper mill of its kind in the world.
-yesterday expressed the hope of obtaining more United States markets for newsprint in view of the expected loss of sale to the United Kingdom.
Sir Eric was commenting on a report from London that Britain proposes to switch her huge newsprint imports from the dollar markets of Canada to soft-currency sources in Scandinavia.
He said his company now is planning to increase production to meet further orders agreed upon for delivery to the United States in January, 1950.
He warned mill workers, however, that costs of production must come down and quality improve if the company were to expand sales in the highly competitive U.S. market. "The U.S. publishers can assure us a market only if the price is right," he said.
On the sulphite pulp situation, the president said markets in the sterling area have already been lost, but it was thought an outlet might be found in the United States.
That is the Corner Brook mill. Here is the Grand Falls picture:
The entire Canadian newsprint industry may be on short time next year, E. M. Little, president of Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company, said yesterday.
The president of the newsprint firm, commenting on a London report that Britain will buy her newsprint in Scandinavia instead of Canada to save dollars, said in a statement:
"The American market is at present good, but if the business decline in the United States continues, newsprint must eventually be affected . . .
The whole of the Canadian industry may be on short time next year, but to what extent is difficult to forecast as yet.
Conditions are not bright but this company must become and continue to be competitive. As money becomes available this mill will be modernized."
The reason I am quoting these statements is that a measure such as the proposed bill will be of great value in bringing down the cost of the production of newsprint. I take it that that is part of the program that the minister would contemplate in the investigation that he proposes to have made by the various research boards to be set up.
I would recommend that hon. members read the September 17 edition of the Financial Post. I believe every hon. member has been provided with a copy. I was. It is of great interest to anybody who is concerned with the pulp and paper industry and the value of that industry to the economy of Canada. One excerpt I should like to read is a statement by Mr. D. W. Ambridge, president of Abitibi Power and Paper Company, which was made to a pulp and paper meeting earlier this year. He was asked a question as to how much should be spent by industry on research if it is to do a proper job. He said that $6,400,000 annually should be spent by industry in research. That is entirely apart from the government assistance. There are five more points to which he referred and I should like
Canada Forestry Act
to read them to the committee. They are as follows: Here he is referring to starting points for research:
Wasted trees-millions of trees die each year from old age or disease or fire. Some are inaccessible, but most should not have perished. Research is needed to develop methods of saving them-new cures, new fire suppression methods, new uses for everything the forest grows instead of only the trees the industry can most easily use.
Waste liquors from chemical processes-usually disposed of, they carry away with them untold quantities of various materials which will some day be used. Sugars in the sulphite liquor are now being utilized in alcohol and yeast manufacture.
Bark-Mountains of bark are lying unused beside mills, yet in Europe bark is a valuable ingredient in a variety of products.
Lumber-Hundreds of small sawmills make lumber out of small logs, often waste 50 per cent of the wood in the tree. Even the finished lumber itself is often wasted; on construction jobs, for instance, where lumber used for concrete forms is usually burned afterward as part of tidying up.
Other fields for research-Development of efficient mechanized equipment for woods operations, including thorough clean-up after well-planned cutting, in order to make use of the slash, leave behind best possible conditions of growth for young trees and seeds. Application of the latest developments in science to the paper-making process. New by-products.
What's being done about these problems. On an industry basis, one of the most important factors in pulp and paper research has been the pulp and paper research institute which is a co-operative venture founded in 1928 by the industry in conjunction with the Canadian government and McGill university.
The minister referred to this institute. In the same article he said that up to 1947 the industry gave $50,000 a year to this research institute, but it is now giving $100,000 a year. When the minister replies will he tell us what the government is contributing to that institute and how much is being paid by industry?
In conclusion I should like to quote from page 52 of the same paper:
Pulp and paper men say that a national forest policy is necessary and that its needs are few and relatively simple.
First, they say, Canada should have complete air surveys and maps of the forests. Today their extent is not even completely known and there is no comprehensive and proper estimate of forest increment in Canada.
Secondly, Canada needs to check the insects and diseases which periodically reach epidemic proportions. Also greater effort is required to prevent the ravages of fire. Lightning is constantly causing fires in crown land forests and forest operators are constantly threatened by fires in unoccupied forest areas adjacent to their limits.
Finally, industry men say that Canada should increase the extent of its research work on the forests and on forest products.
Both federal and provincial authorities have through research contributed to the development of agriculture, minerals, and fisheries, but the forests receive less attention. Pulp and paper men say that the forests require at least as much interest and attention as are given to other valuable national resources.

Canada Forestry Act
That, Mr. Chairman, rather sums up the picture as far as I know it. But the value of our forests is important to the economy of Canada, and its value to the province of Newfoundland is so great that one can do nothing but most heartily endorse the resolution. Since we have problems which are peculiar to our province I should like to ask the minister whether it is not possible to place one of these research bureaux-in fact anything that is envisaged in this resolution 

in the province of Newfoundland. We have nothing in the maritime provinces. We have one in Vancouver and one in Montreal and there is one in Ottawa. Certainly, the mari-times are entitled to one, and naturally the newest province, with all its problems, with all its worries, with the value to it of the forest industry, should be entitled to one of these research bureaux.


Mr. Gillis:: After listening to the discussion I have wondered just exactly what the resolution means. As I understand it, the minister has merely moved a resolution for the purpose of introducing a bill. It remains to be seen what that bill will contain. This is not the place for a major speech. I am going to reserve whatever criticism I may have of the bill until it comes up for second reading. I am just wondering what the minister or his advisers had in mind because of the way the resolution is worded. Although a wide discussion has been permitted I cannot see where the resolution has anything to do with the pulp and paper industry. The fact of the matter is I cannot see that it is intended to bring in a bill that means anything if the wording of the resolution means anything. I say this for the minister's benefit. I hope that it is not the intention of the bill to set up a central experimental board for the purpose of providing research facilities for the benefit of those who exploit the forests of this country for profit. If the wording of the resolution means anything, that is my conception of it. It has nothing to do with reforestation; not a word is mentioned about that. It has nothing to do with conservation. It has nothing to do with the pulp and paper industry. So far as I can see, it is the intention merely to provide a small experimental area somewhere for the purpose of spending the government's money to carry on research for the benefit of those who exploit the forests for profit.
I cannot agree with those who take the position that it is a wonderful thing for us to be sending the real wealth of Canada to the United States or to some other country so as to bring in American dollars. Unfortunately that is the position we are in today; that is one of the fallacies of the system. I

believe however the day is coming, and coming pretty fast, when that will be corrected.


John Lambert Gibson: You cannot eat newsprint.


Clarence Gillis: But we can process our pulp in this country, and create an industry here which will pay wages to our workers. Except in Newfoundland, the maritime provinces have very little by way of a pulp and paper industry. I am safe in saying that 80 per cent of the pulpwood from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick crosses the border to be processed in the United States. The wages are paid over there. The product comes back to Canada, and we pay a high price for it. I say it should be processed here.
Dollars are not the real wealth of a country. We send our real wealth out of the country when we export our products. I hope that when the minister brings in his bill the areas he intends to set up as research laboratories will have something to do with fire prevention. I trust there may be some definite recommendation in that connection, because the greatest destroyer of our forests is fire.
Secondly, I hope that if and when this area is developed a part of the research will deal with ways and means of processing our own lumber, building up a pulp and paper industry of our own, putting our own people to work and making proper use of our own resources. If the federal government is to provide funds for that purpose, then I hope the minister will tell us to what extent the pulp and paper industry, or any other industry in Canada which may gain from such research, will be taxed. The operator pays stumpage. If the federal government intends to set up these research facilities, to what extent will the industries contribute to it?
I trust that when the minister brings in the bill he will give on second reading some information as to the mechanics of operation, because I want to have the answers to these questions. That is why I am asking now, so that fire prevention, reforestation and all these other matters may be taken into consideration when this area is being developed.


Mr. Dumas:: Mr. Chairman, as a forester I am pleased to see the interest taken by hon. members in the legislation, because in my view the proposed measure is an important one. Forest conservation is of major importance to the lumbering industry. I cannot agree with the hon. member for Cape Breton South when he says that in this proposed legislation he sees only the installation of an experimental station; because the resolution states that the government is anxious to

co-operate with the owners and with provincial governments so as to enter into agreements respecting the protection and development of forest lands.
I must say as a forester that in the past I have had occasion to see evidence of the co-operation which has existed between the federal and provincial governments, and the different owners of timber limits and private lands. The measure now before the committee has been prepared because of the encouragement given to the exploitation of the forests in a scientific manner. The measure looks toward the improvement of the management of forest areas for the purpose of conserving and perpetuating the forest empire in Canada, an empire which occupies more than a third of the whole area of our country and stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific in a belt ranging from 600 to more than 1,200 miles wide.
It is said that the forests are the spinal column of Canada's economy, and they form a great source of wealth for our country. Our forests offer a great attraction to tourists, and a sanctuary for wildlife. The annual wealth produced by our forest industries is tremendous. The annual harvest of forest products, plus the value added by manufacturing, is over a billion dollars-and this figure does not include the transportation of the various products, or the revenues from tourists, hunting or fishing.
One of the most important characteristics of our forests is that they are a product of the soil. Like the farmers' crops, our forests grow; unlike the farmers' crops they take many years before they are ready for harvesting. The science of forestry is based upon the principle of treating the forests as a crop during the growing period, and harvesting that crop in such a way that another will follow.
This is called silviculture-and is the tilling of the forests, just as agriculture is the tilling of the land. The job of the forester is to practise forestry, and to produce from the forests the greatest possible quantities of the most valuable products in the shortest time and at the lowest possible price.
In many parts of the world the only effective way to reproduce forests is by planting, what we call artificial reforestation. Fortunately in our country conditions of soil and temperature help natural reforestation. It is important however that we do more artificial reforestation, especially near unproductive lands located in the vicinity of pulp mills or saw mills. By passing this legislation I think the government will help the provinces and the different owners of timber limits.
Canada Forestry Act (Translation):
Mr. Chairman, I do not propose to speak at length on this subject. Since my profession is related to the timber industry, howover, I should like to say a few words.
I am sure that in all parts of the country, everyone interested in lumbering is glad to know that the government intends to introduce this legislation now. I would suggest to hon. members that they secure, if possible, a copy of "La Foret quebecoise", especially the July-August and the September, 1948, issues, and read therein the pastoral letter of His Grace Monsignor Labrie, bishop of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In his letter, Monsignor Labrie stresses the importance of the forest. He points out how we have neglected the forest, the source of one of our largest industries. I wish to quote a few paragraphs from the letter, as published in the July-August, 1948, issue. Speaking of the forest, Monsignor Labrie quotes Professor B. E. Fernow, LL.D.:
"It can be said without fear of contradiction," wrote Professor Fernow, "that next to the products necessary for the sustenance of human life nothing is so widely used, so essential in domestic and public economy as timber. It is impossible to conceive of civilization without lumber, large quantities of lumber." Those words, written in 1906, are still amazingly timely. In spite of staggering development in other spheres of industry, new techniques and uses, as well as transformations of a physical and chemical nature, the lumber industry has maintained its enviable position in the economy of our country.
We must protect our forests. Bishop Labrie, who is an authority in that field, mentions elsewhere in his pastoral letter, some of the steps initiated by various governments. I repeat his words, although I have no intention of praising our governments. Here is what Bishop Labrie writes:
Before setting forth the duties of each and everyone, we wish to commend what has already been done. As early as 1903, Professor B. E. Fernow, LL.D., stirred public interest in the matter by his series of impressive lectures. Since then, government authorities and lumber companies as well as universities, have spent large sums of money for the establishment of schools of forestry. In addition, they have sent engineers, specialized in forestry, to study the organization of the magnificent European forests.
Bishop Labrie, who assuredly held no brief for any government, obviously recognized, however, to what extent various administrations and other organizations had helped the forest industry. I fully appreciate that a great deal remains to be done in this respect, because forests are not only a national asset but also a national problem, one that should
746

Canada Forestry Act
be approached from the national standpoint by co-operating with the provinces and with owners of timber claims.
I am glad the government is introducing such legislation. The wording of the resolution clearly indicates the procedure required to implement this bill which will contribute so substantially to the conservation of Canadian forest resources.
(Text):


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that before this resolution passes a word of thanks should be expressed publicly to the minister for the most interesting and well put-up volume on the native trees of Canada which all of us in this house received with his compliments a few days ago.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Stanley Howard Knowles: This book is so well done and does such a good job of interesting people in the trees of Canada that a way should be found to get it into all the schools of this country. I would guess that a large number of those which have been distributed to members of parliament have already found their way into some of the schools in the different constituencies, but the fact is that all of us have not just one but many schools in our constituencies. I am sure it would do a great deal to increase interest in Canada's trees and forests and would pay dividends in the long run if the government spent a thousand dollars or so in providing sufficient copies to hon. members to be sent to the different schools in their constituencies. If the minister is afraid that we will not send them to the right schools we could send the names of the schools in our constituencies to the minister.


Colin William George Gibson: I am not
worrying about that.


Stanley Howard Knowles: With each book was enclosed a card saying that additional copies could be obtained from the King's Printer for $1.50 each, and I might point out that this book has been most favourably reviewed by the press throughout the country, but I would doubt that that will result in many school boards going out of their way to buy it. I hope the minister will consider this suggestion. He will note from the applause that greeted my suggestion that it meets with the approval of hon. members generally.
I want to take advantage of this opportunity to mention another book on Canada's trees. This is not a government publication and I do not suppose the government could go out into the market and buy books of this kind for the type of distribution I have mentioned. The book I refer to was produced

recently by a well known Canadian, Leonard Knott, and like his other books it is exceedingly well done. Leonard Knott is a Canadian who thinks that we have just as much of interest in this country as there is in the United States and he has demonstrated his belief by writing a series of books for children, including "The Children's Book of the Saguenay" and "The Children's Book of the Great Lakes" and now this latest one, "The Children's Book of Trees".
This book is well written and beautifully illustrated. I tried it out on a couple of young Canadians and I know it produces a real interest in this great natural resource that we possess. I wish there was some way in which that book, as well as the one put out by the minister's department, could be placed in every school of this country. They go very well together. The book produced by the department is more in the form of scientific treatise, while Mr. Knott's book is written in a more flowing style. It is addressed particularly to children but is good reading for adults, too. I am sure that these two books would do a good job of interesting the children and young people in our schools in this great natural resource.
The other comment I should like to make has to do with fire prevention. It seems to me we should pursue every suggestion that might help to eliminate the destruction of our forests by fires. My colleague, the hon. member for Cape Breton South, has already referred to the tragic loss by fire that we sustain every year.
In this connection I have been following the efforts that have been made by interested people in the United States and by some people in Canada to ascertain the extent to which cigarettes are the cause of forest fires. I understand there has been on foot for a number of years, particularly in the United States, a move to have eliminated from cigarettes saltpetre or such other chemicals as are put in them for the express purpose of making them burn faster. I do not happen to smoke myself so I cannot speak with too much authority, but I understand cigarettes do not last very long, and that apparently the tobacco people would not be too interested in anything that would make them last longer because then hon. members of the house would not have to buy so many more.


John Lambert Gibson: We would pick up longer butts.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The whole idea which I am suggesting is that if cigarettes could be made in such a way that, when discarded, they would not produce fires so readily we might save ourselves a great deal of the loss that we now sustain. I am told that the matter

has been a subject of interest on the part of people in the United States for twenty or twenty-five years. I am also told that they have not made much headway yet. The interests on the other side-namely the tobacco people-are pretty powerful, but that is no reason for not proceeding at least with research.
Press reports indicated that this question was discussed at the annual convention of the association of Canadian fire marshals held a month or so ago. It was indicated that representations might be made to the federal government asking them to bring in legislation outlawing the manufacture or sale of such cigarettes as I have referred to, which are so ready a fire hazard. I asked certain questions about this matter on the order paper, but the answers I got on October 3 of this year, as found at page 439 of Hansard, were not very helpful. Accordingly I wrote to the office of the dominion fire commissioner and had a very interesting letter in reply in which I was told that, although the representations were not made formally by the association of Canadian fire marshals to the government, nevertheless the president of that association has been making such representations, and has suggested to the government that definite research in this matter be pursued.
I suppose that one of the places for that research to be done is the national research council, but I notice that the resolution now before us calls for research work as to our forests. I suppose that research in the main is towards developing ways and means of increasing growth, methods of reforestation, and so on, but it would seem to me that it would also be a legitimate subject of research to go into the question of the extent to which cigarettes are the cause of forest fires. If it turns out that those who are interested in this matter are right, and that cigarettes with saltpetre in them are a major cause of forest fires, surely it would be the part of wisdom for the government to bring in legislation to improve the situation. I hope the minister will give the same sympathetic consideration to this point that I am sure he will give to my suggestion about getting more copies of that beautiful book of his into the schools of the country.


Mr. Balcer:: I should like to extend my congratulations to the minister on this beautiful book and to ask him a question. Can we expect a French edition of this beautiful work on trees to be published soon?


Colin William George Gibson: I am not sure as to that. I shall be glad to make inquiries and let the hon. member know if and when that publication will be available in French.
45781-48J
Fish Inspection Act
Resolution reported, read the second time and concurred in. Mr. Gibson (Hamilton West) thereupon moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 62, respecting forest conservation.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



FISH INSPECTION ACT


Hon. R. W. Mayhew (Minister of Fisheries) moved: that the house go into committee to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to present a measure for the purpose of regulating the inspection of fish and fish containers and of marine plants for export and import, and to provide for the appointment of inspectors and other officers and employees required for the proper administration of the act.


Gordon Graydon: On the previous measure I asked the Minister of Mines and Resources (Mr. Gibson) if he would not make his statement before you left the chair, Mr. Speaker. I believe on the present resolution some members desire to make their addresses while you are still in the chair, and I would ask the Minister of Fisheries (Mr. Mayhew) to be good enough to make his statement before you leave the chair.


Robert Wellington Mayhew: Mr. Speaker, I am quite prepared to make a short statement on the resolution at this time, but I should like to point out that there will be a number of occasions later when opportunities will be provided to speak on the measure. We propose to have it sent to the standing committee on marine and fisheries when it reaches second reading. There will be an opportunity to discuss the measure at length on other occasions. I would hardly believe that we would want to spend much time on the resolution stage, again on second reading, and again when we go into committee, and then have a further discussion in the standing committee on marine and fisheries. I will make my statement now. It will be a short one.
During the past two years we have considered the revision of the present fish inspection legislation. Fish inspection is carried on under two separate acts. Canned fish inspection is under the Meat and Canned Foods Act; other types of fish are inspected under the Fish Inspection Act. It is with the latter act that I am going to deal. This act was passed in 1914 to take care of the problem of pickled barrelled fish. Since then it has been amended on several occasions. We again reached the stage when we found we lacked the necessary statutory authority to meet present-day quality control problems. There was also the question of the validity of the act itself from a constitutional point of view.

Fish Inspection Act
Therefore the present act has been revised with three purposes in view: (1) to provide for inspection of fish which moves in interprovincial and export trade; (2) to revise the regulatory powers to meet present-day problems; and (3) to amplify and simplify some of the enforcement procedure.
The provisions of the existing Fish Inspection Act are not confined to export and interprovincial trade but deal with inspection generally. The act covers inspection of fish whether such fish is sold within the province or outside the province, and it is here the difficulty has arisen. Inspection, if it deals only with fish that is sold within a province, is a matter for provincial jurisdiction. Some years ago it was thought that this problem would be overcome by getting the provinces to pass enabling legislation, so-called legislation by adoption. Several of the provinces, where the act has been applied, passed acts which in effect said: "We adopt this act as our own, in so far as it might deal with matters which are outside dominion jurisdiction". Since 1932, however, there have been judicial decisions which cast a doubt on the legality of such an arrangement. So it was decided that one of the things that must be done to put our house in order so as tt>
be able to meet these problems was the revision of our basic inspection act.
Under the new act authority is sought for quality control and inspection of products which move in interprovincial and export trade. In connection with the revision of our legislation, we have had several conferences with provincial authorities, and before the revision was finally drawn up we had a conference with all the provinces. The officials of the fisheries divisions of the provincial governments agreed to co-operate with us and to recommend any necessary provincial legislation to cover any deficiency in respect of inspection, particularly at wholesale and retail levels, which is within provincial jurisdiction.
The second purpose, as mentioned before, was to extend the regulatory control under the act. Before regulations of any kind can ever be made the necessary statutory authority must exist. Parliament will be asked to pass an act giving the government the necessary power to meet the present-day quality control needs of industry. This does not mean that we are proposing at this stage any new regulations; we are merely seeking to establish the necessary statutory authority for instituting any inspection procedure whenever that becomes necessary. The industry will, [Mr. Mayhew.l
of course, be more interested in the inspection regulations themselves that might be proposed from time to time.
Again I call attention to the fact that we will be in a much better position to discuss this bill-and I hope we will confine ourselves to the bill-when we have it before us.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Dion in the chair.


Mr. Green:: Before this resolution is
reported I want to ask the minister a question which may not be strictly germane to the resolution itself but which is of great importance to the fishing industry. In the press this morning I noticed mention of renewed Russian competition in the market for canned salmon, particularly in the overseas market. If that report is correct the results may be extremely detrimental to our own salmon industry. Could the minister tell the committee just what is the position?


Robert Wellington Mayhew: A couple of months ago we sold Great Britain 410,000 cases of canned salmon from the 1949 pack. That pack has not been completed yet, so what my hon. friend is worrying about now is not the 1949 pack but the 1950 pack, and already steps are being taken to see what can be done about that. With regard to the Russians coming into the trade to any greater extent than before, that is news to me. I have not heard of that, though they were in the British market last year.


Howard Charles Green: The dispatch appeared in this morning's Gazette, and it might be worth while for the minister to check on it. It points out that the Russians have devalued their money to correspond with the British devaluation, and it is expected that they will get into the overseas market in quite a large way.


Robert Wellington Mayhew: I can assure the hon. member that the position will be watched very carefully, and that everything possible is being done to protect the interests of Canadian fishermen from coast to coast.


Gordon Francis Higgins: Is it six o'clock, Mr. Chairman?


The Chairman:: Shall I report the resolution?


Some hon. Members:: Carried.


Howard Charles Green: This resolution has not been carried. The hon. member for St. John's East is on his feet. The government has no right to try to rush this resolution through in this way, and it is the privilege of the hon. member to be heard. It is six o'clock.
At six o'clock the committee took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The committee resumed at eight o'clock.
Gordon Francis Higgins: Before making the few
remarks I intend to make on this matter, Mr. Chairman, and asking a couple of questions that worry me a little bit-I am sure they will not worry the minister-I want to take the opportunity of saying to the minister how greatly pleased we are with the cooperation he has given the fisheries board of Newfoundland and indeed how greatly the people of Newfoundland and the fisheries appreciate the work that has been done by him since he took over the office he now occupies.
I should like to remark, and I do not believe that it is hurting the feelings of anyone in this committee, that fish and fishery matters are of little concern to Canadians as a whole. This industry is more or less an orphan child of Canada, of interest to only a few of the provinces. I believe these provinces have been described as the "have not" provinces. I can assure hon. members that, with the entry of your newest province into confederation, you are likely to hear a great deal more about fish and fishery matters from this time on.
I am sure that if you will bear with me you will understand why you are likely to hear more about fish than you might be expecting to hear, because fish and Newfoundland have been more or less synonymous terms for a great number of years. In fact, I believe for practically four centuries Newfoundland's economy has been based on the fisheries and, to use a common term in Newfoundland, the fisheries are the backbone of the country. It was the fishery and all the business associated with the fishery that brought the settlers to Newfoundland, and it was the fishery that kept them there. When I speak of the fishery, I mean chiefly the cod fishery. As one of my friends boldly put it one day-and I certainly do not agree with him-it was a cod that brought people to Newfoundland, it was a cod that kept them there, and it was a cod that brought them to Canada. But I certainly do not agree with that remark in any way.
Up to 1894, practically ninety per cent of the export trade of Newfoundland was made up of fish and fishery products. That is not true today. The proportion now would be roughly as follows: wood products, approximately 48 per cent; mineral products, 26 per cent; and fishery products about 24 per cent. But that is not the true picture in any way, because the greater number of the population-that is of the wage-earning population-of the island of Newfoundland are
Fish Inspection Act
engaged in the fishery. The hon. member for Grand Falls-White Bay would be much more conversant with the picture than I am, but I should think 48 per cent to 49 per cent of those capable of working are engaged in the fishery. That is a fairly high figure. You can therefore appreciate the importance of this industry to Newfoundland as a whole.
As I said before, up to 1894, and in fact for many years after that, dried fish was the main industry. The changeover from dried fish to fresh frozen fish has taken place only in recent years; it started some ten or twelve years ago. I might give hon. members a little bit of local history.
In 1939 the commission of government of that time made a contract with General Seafoods Corporation of New York. As a term of that contract they agreed to build a plant in a place called Lapoile, Newfoundland, which is in the district represented by the deskmate of the hon. member for Grand Falls-White Bay. The commission of government was to provide them with the sum of $200,000. They were to be given a monopoly for twenty-two years and they were to employ Newfoundland labour exclusively. The codfish fillets were to be imported into the United States free of duty. It was a beautiful proposition, as hon. members will readily realize, as far as we in Newfoundland were concerned. The only unfortunate thing that happened was that the fishing industry and those associated with it began lobbying. I believe the start of it was in Boston. The people there had powerful interests in Washington, and as a result the United States congress passed legislation which completely finished the proposition.
I mention this matter to the committee because Newfoundland fishing firms in the fresh fish industry are again faced with that same proposition. Only today I picked up a Newfoundland paper and on looking over the headlines I saw this one: "Newfoundland Fish Draw Protest". The subheading reads: "United States Fish Association Claims Imports Will Ruin United States Industry". As I say, this matter may not be relevant to the present discussion, but I cannot help bringing it to the attention of the minister because it has to do with his department. The chairman of the fisheries board made a statement on September 24 to this effect:
In regard to sales of frozen fish and herring to the United States market, the effect of devaluating the Canadian dollar in terms of the American dollar should be beneficial.
This particular statement, reported in the St. John's Evening Telegram, asks congress in Washington to make an investigation. Thomas D. Rice, executive secretary of the

Fish Inspection Act
Massachusetts fisheries association, in the concluding part of his statement, is reported as follows:
Rice urged an immediate investigation into the situation by representatives in Washington as "the very survival of the three-hundred-year-old fishing industry here is at stake.
"Unless our government acts now, some firms here may have to go out of business. Our fishing vessels will be forced into idleness, large numbers of workers will lose their jobs," he declared.
That matter is extraordinarily important to us. I know it is not germane to the particular motion, but I am sure the minister will not mind my introducing it in that fashion, He may care to make some comments later on.
What I really wanted to ask him, having read over the statement he made this afternoon, is this. As I have it, the minister said that the present act has been revised with three purposes in view: (1) To provide for inspection of fish which moves in interprovincial and export trade; (2) to revise the regulatory powers to meet present-day problems; and (3) to amplify and simplify .some of the important procedures. He also said that they were not proposing at this stage any new regulations but that they were merely seeking to establish the necessary statutory authority for instituting any inspection procedure whenever that becomes necessary. Briefly put, that is what I understood him to say.
But the questions that I wanted to ask are in connection with the statement on fisheries contained in the statements on questions raised by the Newfoundland delegation during the negotiations for the terms of union between Canada and Newfoundland; it^ is that part specifically dealing with fisheries, and I think it is covered by the bill which it is now proposed to introduce. On page 37 of this booklet, entitled "Report and Documents", I find the following paragraph:
At present the Customs and Fisheries Protection Act prohibits the sale of bait to foreign fishing vessels in Canadian territorial waters, except by special treaty or convention. An amendment to this act will be introduced in order to continue the practice now followed by Newfoundland in this matter.
I wonder if that amendment has been introduced. That is one question. The other one is in connection with the next paragraph, which is as follows:
Licensing of premises to pack fish (including filleting and freezing plants).
It is understood that, while these matters will come under federal jurisdiction at the date of union, the Newfoundland fisheries board, during the time that it continues to operate, will be the medium through which application for licences will be made and the relative regulations brought into effect.

That is the other particular point that I wanted. There is also this paragraph:
Power of Newfoundland fisheries board to negotiate contracts.
The Newfoundland fisheries board will not be required to deal through the Canadian Commercial Corporation, and may in its discretion continue to charge a fee or commission for its services in negotiating contracts, subject only to such export and import controls as may exist.
The government is proposing controls here,
I presume. The next paragraph is as follows:
Fish wrappers and packages
Wrappers provided by purchasers in the United States for their suppliers in Newfoundland will be dutiable after the date of union but will also be eligible for the 99 per cent draw-back on re-export as containers of fresh frozen fish.
I want to ascertain if that is correct and if it is still in effect. The paragraph continues:
Efforts are being made to arrange for the continued use for export of the present stock Pf wrappers marked "product of Newfoundland."
I want to find out if these steps have come to fruition or what the position is in Newfoundland. I continue with the quotation:
Inspection Fees on Export
The present policy is to make no charge for inspection services.
Tariff Agreements.
I am not quite sure whether this comes within the scope of the bill. I have not seen the bill.
The position after union of the agreement between Newfoundland and the Dominican Republic providing for a low rate of duty on imports of Newfoundland codfish into the latter country is being examined. If necessary the Canadian government will initiate discussions on this matter.
Bait Service
The Canadian government will seek legislation or take such other steps as may be necessary to provide that the Newfoundland bait service will be taken over and operated without fundamental change by the Department of Fisheries. If, after the date of union, changes are made for the benefit of Canada as a whole, the question of payment will be discussed between federal and provincial authorities.
These are the questions. I trust the minister will not think that I have jumbled them all together. If he can help me out on the matter I shall greatly appreciate it.


Robert Wellington Mayhew: I have noted the questions and I think I could give the answers to them because we became pretty familiar with them while the committee was here dealing with this matter; but when I make a statement I would prefer to know that I have all the facts. The questions will be answered when we are in committee on the bill, or if we have to wait longer, when we are on the estimates, which I hope will be in a few days-

I fully appreciate everything that the hon. member for St. John's East has said. I know how important the fishing industry is to the province of Newfoundland, and I would be the last one to want in any way to shorten any of the debates that we have on that industry. I have visited all of the ten provinces since June 27 last, and have discussed this matter with the provincial governments, with the fishing industries and with the fishermen themselves. When we are on the estimates I hope we shall take time to talk about fisheries.
There is something in what the hon. member has already said, namely, that in Canada we have not been very fish-conscious. With the support of the hon. members from Newfoundland and some others, I think that the program which we hope to initiate will be of benefit to all concerned and that it will show how we can develop one of Canada's finest natural resources. For that reason I would not want to limit anyone who wishes to make a statement at any time in this house. However, this is a resolution. In the last few years it has become the habit here to have three debates on legislation rather than the one we used to have when I first came to the house. I was anxious that we would not get sidetracked tonight but that we would stick to the resolution. When the estimates come down we can give the hon. members who are not fish-conscious a chance to go and have a smoke or to sit and listen to the discussion because it will be something that will vitally interest everybody. I am the last man who would want to limit discussion.


Howard Charles Green: With all deference I do suggest that the minister should answer these questions in so far as he is able to do so this evening. He has his parliamentary assistant sitting with him. If he has not the officials of his department available in the building that is his fault and not the fault of the hon. members who are asking questions. When he says that there should be only one debate I point out to him that that simply is not the fact under our rules. A resolution is brought in, and that resolution can be debated. Then the resolution goes into committee and at that stage an hon. member quite properly asks general questions such as the hon. member for St. John's East has asked this evening. The minister says that he should not ask these questions now; that he should wait until the bill is brought in and is in committee, or until the estimates come down. Private members are not required to wait until the minister's estimates come down to get this information. If they try to question the minister when the bill is in committee and ask a question on a certain section some hon.
Fish Inspection Act
member can rise on a point of order and say that the question cannot be asked on that particular section. We are now at the stage when these questions should be answered. The minister has admitted that he could answer some of them. I think he should go ahead and do so, and not make a pleasant little speech about the fishing industry and all the hon. members getting together six weeks or two months from now, and perhaps two or three days before we go home when there is a great rush. Private members are entitled to ask the type of questions that have been asked by the hon. member for St. John's East. It is particularly important, because he is a member from our new province. I do urge upon the minister that he give us what information he has this evening and not simply give us a general talk which contains absolutely no information whatever.


Robert Wellington Mayhew: I do not know exactly the purpose of the remarks of the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra. I can assure him that I am not going to answer the questions because I am afraid I would not be able to answer them in the detail that would be satisfactory or fair to the hon. member for St. John's East. The officials of the department will be here. I will have the records in front of me. I do not intend to attempt to answer something when I am not perfectly sure that I can give an accurate answer in every detail. I was hoping that we would get through this resolution tonight because I do not think that we shall get the most out of the discussion at this stage. Hon. members will get the most out of it when they have the bill before them. We shall answer any questions we can when the bill is before us.


Howard Charles Green: No minister of the crown has a right to come into this house and tell us that we cannot ask these questions.


Robert Wellington Mayhew: I did not say that.


An hon. Member:: Who says so?


Howard Charles Green: That is what the minister said.


Robert Wellington Mayhew: I beg your pardon.


Howard Charles Green: I have the floor. Furthermore, the minister has said that he will not try to answer these questions tonight.


An hon. Member:: He has not.


Howard Charles Green: That is exactly what he said. You cannot imagine the Minister of Agriculture coming into this house and taking that position.


Mr. Gardiner:: I have.


An hon. Member:: Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Fish Inspection Act


Howard Charles Green: If the Minister of Agriculture did that he was wrong, and I dare say the only reason he did so was that he did not know the answer, although it is not very often that he does not know the answers to anything having to do with his department.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: Right or wrong.


Howard Charles Green: This is an intolerable situation. We were told last night that this resolution would be under consideration today. The Minister of Fisheries should have had his officials here.


Alphonse Fournier: No.


Howard Charles Green: So that he could answer these questions.


Mr. MacNaughi:: No.


Alphonse Fournier: Not on the resolution.


Howard Charles Green: This attempt to cut down the rights of hon. members-


Alphonse Fournier: Nobody is trying that.


Howard Charles Green: -is not good enough, Mr. Chairman.


Mr. Mcllraith:: Did you have a good dinner?


Howard Charles Green: If the Minister of Fisheries persists in his refusal at least to try to answer these questions, then we can draw only one conclusion, namely, that he does not know the answers and that he should know them.


Mr. Brown (Essex West):: He just said so.


Mr. Noseworihy:: Will the minister give us any other information? Will he tell us whether the measure that is to be introduced is to be an independent bill or an amendment to an act that is already on the statute books? As I recall it, in previous sessions we discussed the right of the government to make inspection of fish for import, export and so forth. There is nothing in the resolution to indicate whether it is to be a new act or an amendment of the one now on the statute books.


Mr. Ashbourne:: Mr. Chairman, coming
from Newfoundland, and as a representative from a very important section of the fishing industry of Newfoundland, I think I can speak with assurance concerning the resolution now before the house.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: What part of the cabinet do you belong to?


Thomas Gordon William Ashbourne: Let me say, Mr. Chairman, that I represent a part of Canada-Newfoundland-and I congratulate the Minister of Fisheries upon having introduced this resolution. I speak from experience because,

as the hon. member for St. John's East has said, for years we have heard the expression that the fisheries are the backbone of Newfoundland. We have found from experience that a certain amount of standardization has been necessary; and certain regulations which have been in effect for many years past in Newfoundland to govern fish inspection have proved most beneficial. In my view this resolution is a move in the right direction.
We know that fish forms an important food article. As we have seen in the past, proper and efficient merchandising of food articles requires adequate inspection. Also a certain amount of standardization is required so that when the customer places an order for a certain article he may know that the article will be graded according to certain recognized standards.
I could speak for the forty minutes allotted to me, but I do not think it is necessary at this time to do so. I shall have more to say when the bill is in committee. As a member from Newfoundland, let me say that I appreciate the action taken by the government by way of bringing in certain controls, which no doubt will be envisaged in the bill.


Robert Wellington Mayhew: In answer to the point raised by the hon. member for York South, let me say that this will be an entirely new act. I intimated before six o'clock that when we had first reading of the bill it would be circulated so that hon. members might see it. I am sure when it is seen it will be clearly understood.


Mr. Bryce:: Will this legislation apply in any way to the prairie provinces? After the fish is canned, will the inspectors have control-because the fisheries out there are under provincial jurisdiction. When the inspectors are appointed under this measure will they have control of fish after it is packed?


Robert Wellington Mayhew: Yes, they will have control of inspection over any fish sold interprovin-cially or for export purposes. It affects all provinces.


Gordon Francis Higgins: I presume the minister is aware of the action United States fish merchants propose to take?


Robert Wellington Mayhew: Last year United States fish merchants put on the same sort of demonstration in an endeavour to reduce the quota of fish sold by Canada to the United States. Evidently they are doing the same thing again this year. I do not know how far they will go, but the situation is being watched carefully in the interests of Newfoundland and the rest of Canada.
Resolution reported, read the second time and concurred in. Mr. Mayhew thereupon

753 moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 63, respecting the inspection of fish and marine plants.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.

The house in committee of supply, Mr. Gauthier (Portneuf) in the chair.
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE Marketing service-
29. Marketing of agricultural products, including temporary appointments that may be required to be made notwithstanding anything contained in the Civil Service Act, the amount available for such appointments not to exceed $6,000, $75,000.


Mr. Wright:: Mr. Chairman, in the details at page 117 we find an additional $50,000 being spent this year for advertising. For what purpose is that amount to be spent? Is it for the advertising and sale of surplus products going on the market, or just what schemes of advertising does the department propose to put into effect?


James Garfield Gardiner: Mr. Chairman, the committee will recall that prior to the war we had a large vote for the advertising of agricultural products. Much of that money was used overseas, and some of it used in Canada. During the war however there was no object in advertising overseas, because all the food was delivered to the British government, and it made distribution on a quota basis. There was no reason for advertising our food in Britain at that time. As a matter of fact during the greater part of the war, and for some little time thereafter, Britain did raise objection to the advertising of any particular food in that country, because they wanted to make distribution irrespective of where it came from.
Today however the position is somewhat changed, and we feel it is necessary and advisable to do more advertising than we have been doing. We have asked for an extra sum of money to be able to accomplish that. Speaking from memory, I think it will be found that when I get to the further supplementaries there will be still another amount to be added in order to take care of these advertising programs.
We are broadening out in order to advertise products in Canada. When it is reported that there is a surplus of a certain product we assist in advertising it in Canada in an effort to increase its consumption rather than to look entirely outside of Canada in order to find a market.


Percy Ellis Wright: I am glad the minister has given that answer. I do not want to leave
Supply-Agriculture
the impression that I am opposed to advertising, because I think the department is wise to go ahead with this advertising program, especially of agricultural products that may be in surplus supply. Last year we had a surplus of honey, and I know the British Columbia people may have a surplus of apples. These advertising campaigns have certainly broadened the markets for various agricultural products.


William Scottie Bryce: What products are advertised in Great Britain? I know that people there have thought they were getting United States bacon when in fact they were getting our good Canadian bacon. We should advertise our bacon, our apples, our honey and other products. I know this is done at the different exhibitions held over there, but the fact remains that Canadian and United States bacon have got mixed up in the people's minds and I know that our western bacon is much superior to any such products coming into Great Britain today.


James Garfield Gardiner: The position with regard to advertising in Great Britain is not too clear. We have been given to understand by those with whom we have come in contact that the British prefer that we do not advertise. I made that statement a year ago and to my surprise a question was asked in the British house, which I presume started from here, and the answer given was that they did not object. However, our experience is that they do object, no matter what the answer in the house may be.
I can quite understand why they should. The British are buying food from all over the world. All the food purchased is marketed by the government, not by individuals. If we went into Britain and advertised Canadian bacon as being the best in the world, if we tried to tell the people that that was what they ought to eat and thus induced the British consumer to demand that his government get Canadian bacon, I can understand the difficulty it would create for their government. It may be perfectly true that there is no law against it, that there is nothing to prevent its being done, but I have an idea that, if we did it, it would not be long before we ran into difficulties. For that reason we have thought it inadvisable to put on any definite program of advertising in Britain.
We do certain things when the opportunity presents itself. For example, the deputy minister came to me the other day and told me that we had not been allowing people to include butter in the parcels they were sending to Britain and he asked me what I thought about it. I told him that as some people thought we had a surplus of butter in Canada it might not be a bad thing to

Supply-Agriculture
allow people to put Canadian butter in their parcels instead of having Eaton's or Simpson's buy Danish butter to be sent over to Britain. Regulations are being sent out indicating that it will be quite proper to include Canadian butter in these parcels. This will be a form of advertising of Canadian butter. At some time we may have a surplus which we will want to sell and it might be a good thing to encourage people in this country to put it in their parcels so that our products would be advertised in an indirect way. Outside of that kind of action it is most difficult to evolve any plan to definitely advertise our products over there.


William Scottie Bryce: I hate to think I have been breaking the law in recent weeks by sending good Canadian butter to Britain. We have good products to sell and we should tell the world about them.


Mr. Quelch:: Has the trade been told that it is permitted to send Canadian butter to England? I have here a list of food that may be sent in parcels to England and butter is not included.


James Garfield Gardiner: The decision was just made within the last seventy-two hours so I do not think there has been much opportunity for anyone to take advantage of it. I do not want it to be understood that the trade, as we understand that term, is to be permitted to do that sort of thing. I doubt very much if the trade would be permitted to do it, not because of anything we might do but because of what the British government might do if business people here were permitted to ship this particular product to their counterparts in Britain.
But there are companies like Eaton's and Simpson's and a few others that make a practice of putting up parcels to be sent to Britain by individuals in this country. Certain food products have been included in those parcels, but butter was not one of them. We are now saying that it is quite proper to put butter in. The reason it was not permitted to be put in last year was that we were bringing in butter from outside in order to supply our own people. Some people complained because some of the products being put in these parcels were Danish, but one could hardly complain about putting in food products from another country if we did not permit food products from this country to be included in the parcels. We now have sufficient butter to supply our own people and there is no reason why butter should not go into these parcels and serve as a form of advertising.


Victor Quelch: I remember the minister being somewhat critical about Canadians sending Darcels from Denmark to England, but the

only reason that was done was that you could not send butter from this country. The reason for that prohibition has been given by the minister.


Mr. George:: I should like to ask a question in connection with a remark made by the minister the other evening, as reported on page 696 of Hansard, as follows:
If it has been fairly good, and if we want to market more products in the markets that are available, then I think we ought to produce them and put them on the market.
The question I intend to ask will apply equally to bacon, poultry and other products. Would it be possible to persuade the English to give us their quotas or commitments a year in advance of what they are doing now? It is practically impossible for a farmer to plan his poultry production unless he knows at least a year and a half in advance.


James Garfield Gardiner: During the war we were able to make contracts that extended for more than twelve months; in some cases we were able to make contracts for two years, and in the case of wheat we were able to make a contract that extended for four years. On all other products two years was the limit. While we had those contracts it was possible to let the farmer know at least a year in advance what he was going to be required to supply under them. Unfortunately that is most difficult at the present time; in fact I think it is impossible. It is not because of anything we do about it. The British are battling in order to maintain their dollar position, and they come over here once a year and indicate to us how many dollars they have available to carry on trade with us. Then they try to divide those dollars among the different types of trade that we carry on with them. So much is allowed for agriculture.
After they have taken that position we have another discussion with them as to whether the amount can be increased in so far as our food products are concerned if more dollars are needed in order to take care of our surplus. What I was suggesting the other night was that, in our experience up to the present, we have not been able to supply as much as Great Britain finally agreed they had the dollars to buy of those products that we were discussing. As long as that is the position, I can only say to those who are saying that we have lost markets, or that we should be finding markets, that the only reason for finding more markets would be to produce more products. We are now consuming much more of all those products in Canada than we were prior to the war, and as to many of them even more than during the war. For that reason we have not so

much to export, but our difficulty up to the moment with the British has not been one of having been refused markets. We have found difficulty in supplying even those markets for which Great Britain has provided so many dollars to buy farm products.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I think the minister will agree with me that from the long term point of view, if we are going to continue to have markets in Great Britain for our agricultural products, we must be in a position to live up to the contracts into which we enter. We had a discussion on this matter a few nights ago when the minister's estimates were before the house previously, and he more or less pooh-poohed the idea that there was any chance we might lose markets in Great Britain because we had not lived up to our contracts. Nevertheless, from the long-range point of view, I still believe if we do not live rip to those contracts year after year there will be considerable disinclination on the part of the British to enter into further contracts with us with any idea, as far as they are concerned, that we will live up to them.
I should like to ask the minister what measures he thinks might be taken, and whether the government has any ideas in mind as to what steps we might take so that we would be in a position to meet our contracts. I refer particularly to bacon. Perhaps more than anything else we have been notably deficient in meeting our contracts for bacon. Then there are eggs in which we have also fallen down, and generally all agricultural products concerning which we enter into contracts to supply the British market.
Personally I think we are in a poor position to bargain with Great Britain or any other country if we are deficient in meeting the contracts into which we have entered. I would say that it places us in a bad bargaining position to have to go to a country and say: We contracted to supply you with 160 million pounds of bacon, and all we will be able to supply is 50 million pounds; we are sorry there is this big deficiency. It seems to me that our general agricultural policy should be directed along the line of securing sufficient supplies to meet our contracts. What particular steps may be necessary to do that is a pretty complicated matter, but nevertheless I do not like the idea of entering into contracts, which the minister said has been done year after year, to supply so many thousand pounds of this and so many tons of that, with the idea always in mind that we will not be able to live up to them.
I think that the minister should give us an explanation or a resume of what the government has in mind to meet the contracts which we have at the present time,
Supply-Agriculture
and the ones which we hope the minister will be able to enter into with Great Britain before the end of the year.


James Garfield Gardiner: I have tried to tell the non. member on three or four occasions, and apparently I have not spoken plainly enough, that we do not intend to do any such thing. We have no intention of asking Canadian farmers to try to produce more bacon for the British at the present time. The chief reason for that is that the British have told us they have no dollars to pay for it. They have come over here for the last two years and have said: We would like your bacon all right; we could eat more of it but we have no dollars to pay you for it. Therefore they said that they did not want us to send it to them.
That is where we start from. Then we say to the British: Well, that may be all right, but we got into the habit of sending you a lot of bacon during the war, and our people still think that they should have the privilege of sending it to you if they have it. We say to the British that we would like them to sit down with us and estimate the greatest number of dollars that they can afford to pay for bacon. Then we say to them: We will try to bring down the quantity in the contract to the point where your dollars will pay for the bacon we do send. We understand one another. We know that they do not feel they are in a position to pay for any and so they say that they would just as soon we did not send it. They say: In order to keep some Canadian bacon on our market we are prepared to sign a contract that will cover a limited number of dollars We start off from there and we say to our farmers: Here is the contract price for bacon; that contract price will bring you a certain price for hogs. If you can sell your hogs for a better price somewhere else then do not worry about the British because after all they would just as soon you did not send them any.
That is what we are actually saying to the farmers today. What has been the result? During the last year somewhere between 50 and 70 per cent more pork has been consumed on the Canadian market than was consumed before the war. As a result of the fact that more is consumed on this market than before the war, hogs have been as much as 7 cents a pound dressed weight higher in Canada than you can get for them under the British contract. Why would any farmer insist on his hogs being sent to Great Britain at 7 cents a pound less than he can sell them for in Canada? He just is not going to do that. He will produce more hogs to sell in Canada at 7 cents a pound above

Supply-Agriculture
the British contract price than he would produce if you told him he had to sell them under the British contract at 7 cents a pound less.
I do not know any way to tell the farmer that he ought to have produced more hogs for Great Britain when he can get 7 cents a pound more by selling them in Canada. For that reason we have been saying that as long as the farmer can get that market at home we are not going to worry him about sending bacon to Great Britain, but we do say to the British that we would like them to continue the contract, that we would like them to undertake to take the maximum amount that we may have after we have sold all we can to the Canadian people so that when their difficulties are ended and they are able to provide the dollars we will still be in that market and they will know something about our product.
In that connection I have some figures which may be of interest, which I just happened to run across a few moments ago. They illustrate pretty well what is happening, and I only give them because they have some bearing on what we should be doing. I agree with the hon. member that it would be a good thing for the farmers of Canada if by some means or other they should come to the conclusion that they might produce more hogs than they are producing today, but at the same time I have no intention of going out and telling them so, or of trying to compel them, by means of legislation or regulation, to produce more hogs. I know how far I would get with that.
The point is that some farmers prefer to produce grain rather than hogs, and I do not blame them for that, either. A man can sow grain in the spring, let it grow and harvest it in the fall, and have considerable time to himself evenings and Sundays; and a farmer who can make enough money that way to live as he wants to live will not be easily induced to feed pigs and milk cows, which will keep him at home evenings and Sundays and all the rest of the time. So he decides to produce grain, and I would not quarrel with him over that. I know farmers too well to quarrel with them over such matters. They are going to make their own decisions, as they have always made them.
As a result we find that during the six months from January to June, 1948, the United Kingdom imported 35,000,000 pounds of bacon from Denmark, while for the same period in 1949 her imports from that country amounted to 58,000,000 pounds. In other words Great Britain obtained 15-8 per cent of her supplies in the first half of 1948 from Denmark, while she obtained 52-5 per cent of her supplies of bacon from that country [Mr. Gardiner.!	I
in the first six months of 1949. That means, for what it is worth, that Denmark is back to within two per cent of the position she occupied before the war in supplying the British market. It does not mean Denmark is supplying as much bacon as she supplied before the war; probably Britain is not eating as much. After all, bacon is the most expensive pork product you can eat, and when people are having difficulty in finding money they do not eat as much of the most expensive foods they can find. If you want to eat a really expensive product, eat bacon. Canada's position is that in the first six months of 1948 we supplied 167-5 million pounds of bacon to the British market, as compared with the figure of 35 million pounds from Denmark. For that period of time we supplied 74-8 per cent of all the bacon imported by Britain. In 1949, however, we supplied only 22-6 per cent as against Denmark's 52-5 per cent; that is, we supplied 25 million pounds as against 167 million pounds in the first six months of the previous year. One of the principal reasons for that change is that we are consuming more and more pork in Canada, at higher prices than the British are required to pay for the Wiltshire sides that enter into the production of bacon for that market.
I only give those figures to indicate that the trend is back toward the position we occupied before the war; and we are not trying to either induce or compel farmers to depart from their chosen practice. In my experience of almost fifteen years in this department I have found that 750,000 farmers all working on the job can make a better average decision about any of these matters than any member of this house, including the Minister of Agriculture. I do not intend to try to tell those 750,000 farmers what they should do. I try to give them the facts and let them form their own judgment, and that judgment is that they should not be producing as many hogs now as they did in the middle of the war.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I believe the pamphlet from which the minister was quoting figures a moment ago is the Searle Grain Company report of about two weeks ago?


James Garfield Gardiner: No, that does not happen to be correct.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Is that not so?


James Garfield Gardiner: If the figures are correct I imagine they would be the same no matter where they were found, but this happens to be a letter on Canadian livestock products, to foster a better meat industry, prepared by the industrial and development council of the meat packers.


Douglas Scott Harkness: In any event the figures are the same as those in this publication, and they are the figures which caused me to do a good deal of thinking, together with many other people who are engaged in the production of hogs. In his remarks the minister has left out of consideration altogether one thing about which he used to talk a good deal; that is, the long-term point of view as far as the hog industry of this country is concerned. Two or three years ago he would point out quite frequently that the future of the hog industry of Canada lay in the British market-


James Garfield Gardiner: It does yet.


Douglas Scott Harkness: -and that we should bend every effort to retain that market. The minister just interjected, "It does yet", and with that remark I entirely agree. I think it does, and that if we are to have a healthy hog industry in this country we must have the British market for our surplus pork products, particularly our bacon. I think the minister will realize that is what I was getting at in what I said before he spoke; that in this country we should be following a policy which will enable us to supply the demand for bacon in Great Britain. It is quite true that at the present time Britain is short of dollars. However, she does have a certain amount of money, some of which she is still spending for bacon; and it seems to me that in order to ensure our market in future-and this is the very thing the minister used to emphasize so strongly only two years ago- everything possible should be done to meet the British demand for bacon. If the government can take any action to put us in a position to meet that demand, I think that action should be taken. In other words we should do our best to retain that market. I think it is very bad policy on our part, in spite of what the minister has said-and he really has not dealt with this point-to enter into contracts for a great deal more bacon or any other product than we can possibly supply.
I should like to put that in the form of a question. Whom does this fool? Since apparently it is not fooling the British people, the only conclusion I can reach is that it is designed to fool our own people, particularly our producers of hogs, when we enter into a contract, for 180 million pounds as we did last year, when from present indications we will not be able to supply more than 50 million pounds at the most. That sort of thing does not seem to be good business. Certainly it is not good business as far as our farmers are concerned.


James Garfield Gardiner: What figure would you put in
The contract for next year?
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Douglas Scott Harkness: Nor is it good business as far as our customers are concerned, or perhaps I should say our customer in Great Britain. The minister mentioned that the 750,000 farmers of this country are the people best equipped to decide what they should produce. With that statement I agree entirely. The point is, however, that they will produce those things on which they can make the greatest profit and at the same time have a reasonable assurance that their market will remain. They will not go into the production of hogs on a large scale and as a steady business, for example, if they believe the market for pork products is liable to disappear overnight, which is exactly what happened some two years ago. People sold off weaner pigs, feeder pigs, brood sows and everything else because they were afraid of what was going to happen to the hog market.


James Garfield Gardiner: Then we had 48 per cent more delivered than before. Some of my friends were saying they had sold them off.


Douglas Scott Harkness: No. All you have got to do is look at the figures. You know it as well as I do. You have a great deal less delivered now than you had in 1947, which is the year I am speaking of. The general reason that farmers will grow hogs or will not grow hogs is, as the minister knows, the hog-barley ratio or the relationship between the amount of feed grains available and the price of those in relation to the price of hogs. During the past year the people who have been producing hogs have had a certainty that, as far as we are concerned in Alberta, the price of select hogs would not fall below $27.15 a hundred, dressed weight. That was the basic price. On that basis they were able to make their plans and go ahead.
At the present time quite a number of people I know are more than a little bit nervous as to what the situation is likely to be after the first of the year. They know that until the first of the year that is the least price they can receive; they can feed their hogs on that basis and more or less make their plans accordingly. But with the devaluation of the pound, and the fact that we have not been able to anything like meet the British contract, and the general uncertainty in their minds as to what the situation may be with regard to the marketing of pork after the first of the year-I think the minister knows I am not putting this argument up for political or any similar reasons; and he knows this as well as I do-there is a considerable amount of perturbation among the hog raisers as to what their situation is going to be after the first of the coming year. A few nights ago I asked the minister if he could give any assurance to these people, or

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if he could assure them in any way. He gave a long answer and, I am sorry to say, an evasive one. It was not one that was of any use to the ordinary farmer who is producing hogs. So I would ask the minister again if he can give any information, which would be of value to the hog producers of this country as a whole, as to what their position is likely to be after the end of this year.


James Garfield Gardiner: In the years since the beginning of the war, I have followed the practice of letting the opposition do the prophesying as to what is going to happen; as a result I have found that they were usually wrong. I am therefore not going to start to prophesy now.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I did not ask for a prophecy.


James Garfield Gardiner: You asked me what is going to happen next year. That is a prophecy.
The position in relation to hogs in 1947, which was referred to a few moments ago, is that every member who spoke on the opposition side of the house-and it did not matter from what section of the opposition he spoke-told the story about killing little pigs and marketing sows. That was in the fall of 1947. In the first six months of 1948 more hogs were marketed in good A and B grades than were marketed in the first six months of 1947.


Douglas Scott Harkness: No.


James Garfield Gardiner: And there were 48 per cent more marketed-


Douglas Scott Harkness: Have you any figures to support that statement?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, the figures are on the record


Douglas Scott Harkness: I think you will find you are wrong.


James Garfield Gardiner: There were 48 per cent more hogs marketed in January, 1948, to provide Wiltshire sides, than were marketed in January of the previous year. It is true that after October of 1948 the production of hogs dropped. That was all foretold by the officials of the statistics department. That was all foretold when we were discussing the question in 1947. If it is of any interest to my hon. friend, the present position is that the production is going in the opposite direction. Production was dropping in the latter part of 1948 and all through the early part of 1949. The production is now going up and we are having more and more hogs coming to market in addition to the number that came last year. That fact indicates to me that these 750,000 farmers, or that proportion of them that produces hogs, have an idea that

maybe they are going to get a little better return for their hogs in the months that lie ahead.


Douglas Scott Harkness: The hog-barley ratio is better, is it not?


James Garfield Gardiner: The hog-barley ratio at the present moment is not too good. But at the same time, if you want to take the same document from which my hon. friend usually quotes his figures, it will be found that, if you can get $30 a hundred for dressed hogs, you can get $2.16 a bushel for your barley. That is considerably more than barley is selling for, and hogs are still selling around 33 cents.


Douglas Scott Harkness: No, they are not. They are $29.50 in Calgary.


James Garfield Gardiner: I am speaking of one place all the time, not Calgary; I am speaking of one of the central points of Canada.


Mr. Lennard:: At Toronto they are $29.50 in today's market, or according to this morning's paper.


James Garfield Gardiner: They may be $29.50 tonight. But these figures bring you down to the end of August.


Frank Exton Lennard: That is not present prices.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is about as near up to the present as you can get reliable figures for. The fact that hogs were quoted on the Toronto market at 29 cents yesterday does not mean that they were not quoted a week ago at over 30 cents; and it does not mean that they may not be quoted before the end of next week at 27 cents. But the average over the week may amount to figures similar to those which were obtained in the latter part of August. As a matter of fact, you cannot go on the daily returns in connection with these prices. Let us go back to the point that my friend is arguing, that you do not get enough for your barley.


Douglas Scott Harkness: No, I was not.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is what the ratio between the price of hogs and the price of barley means, that if it gets down to a certain level, you are not getting enough.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Do not try to put words into my mouth. I was not arguing that for a moment.


Some hon. Members:: Order.


James Garfield Gardiner: If you can produce 100 pounds of pork by feeding 500 pounds of feed, you can get $2.16 a bushel for your barley if you get 30 cents for your hogs. If you get even 20 cents for your hogs you can still get $1.44 for your barley, which is

just about the price that barley is. In other words, the price of hogs is 50 per cent higher than the figure which is necessary in order to produce the price of barley.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Excuse me, but may I ask a question?


James Garfield Gardiner: You have asked a number, and I am trying to answer some of them.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I take it that this does not take into consideration the other costs of [DOT] feeding hogs. This is simply the price of barley. It has nothing to do with the labour involved and the land.


James Garfield Gardiner: My hon. friend feeds hogs.
I should like to ask him if he cannot buy barley, feed it to the hogs, and make money.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I would not be in the business if I could not.


James Garfield Gardiner: Of course you would not. And the farmer can make more money when he grows his own grain and feeds his own hogs than you can make buying your hogs and buying your barley.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I am growing barley.


James Garfield Gardiner: So the argument still is that the farmer is not doing too badly. If he can produce the 100 pounds-and if he is a good feeder he can do so-by feeding 400 pounds of feed, then he gets $2.70 for his barley, at 30 cents for the pork; and at 20 cents for the pork he gets $1.80. People talk about not getting enough for their wheat when they get $2 a bushel. If he is a good hog feeder he can get $3.37 for his wheat by feeding it to hogs.


Douglas Scott Harkness: If he can make 100 pounds with 350 pounds of feed. Look at your figures.


James Garfield Gardiner: No; if he can make 100 pounds of pork on 400 pounds of feed. I am sure my hon. friend will agree that he himself is a good enough feeder to be able to do that.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I think you will find that the figure is 350.


James Garfield Gardiner: No; the one I have just quoted is 400. The 350 is $2.88-no, it is not even down to 350. It is 375. There is no 350 in the table. At 450 he can get $2.40 and so on. The table indicates that it is not the case of the farmer not being able to make enough feeding the hogs that has caused him to come down in production. It is something else, and I am not going to try to guess what that is. It is a different thing with different farmers. I know what it would be in my case if I had to feed the pigs myself and clean up the pigpens. You can be sure that
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as long as I could get the price that I can get for grain now I probably would not do the job. That is one of the reasons why many of them take that position. They say, "We would rather have the returns that we get from the grain and not have to employ anyone since we do not want to do it ourselves. We do not want to have to employ labour in order to get the job done." I am not going to try to give all the reasons, but there are many. They are not doing it; that is the main thing.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: With respect to the marketing of fruit and vegetables, the minister's department maintains inspection services across Canada. I understand that a corps of these inspectors is employed more or less on a permanent basis, but the greater number are temporary employees employed during the period of shipping fruit or vegetables. I suggest, Mr. Chairman, that -while in British Columbia these inspectors have done a fair and reasonable job, in view of the importance of the inspectors' position between the producers and the consumers, has the minister given consideration to having the greater number of these inspectors termed "permanent employees"? I do not think one can expect a man to take up inspection work as a career if he is employed for five or six months a year and takes it as a part-time job.
Has the minister given consideration to the training of these inspectors? It is a very important matter so far as the industry in British Columbia is concerned. No doubt the minister knows that the industry maintains, at its own expense, a competent staff of inspectors who are of great assistance in British Columbia. At this time I want to express the appreciation of the industry for what the senior officials are trying to do in British Columbia with a very limited and part-time staff.
The minister may say that there is not enough for them to do the year round, but I just want to bring this to his attention. Just the other evening, my colleague, the hon. member for Yale, and I were walking down one of the streets of Ottawa looking into shop windows. There we saw four or five boxes of scrubby Ontario apples, I presume, piled into our extra fancy boxes from British Columbia. I presume the apples were being sold as jumbo pack apples. They were obviously all culls. They were being displayed in a large store window in our boxes labelled "extra fancy O.K. brand." Anybody knows if you buy an apple from an O.K. box that apple is O.K. Has the minister given consideration to increasing the number of permanent employees and increasing their salaries? When one considers the importance of these men of the inspection

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service to the industry, to the producers and to the consumers, and compares the salaries received by other very much less important people, he will agree that these men are entitled to receive treatment that would cause them to consider the inspection of fruit and vegetables as a career which would enable them to give the best service possible to this important industry.


James Garfield Gardiner: As the hon. member has pointed out, the grading of apples in British Columbia is done at least as well as it is done in any part of Canada. The actual grading of the apples is done by men and women employed by the trade or by the producers. In their plants they have certain machines to grade apples with regard to size. I have watched them at work. They have individuals standing alongside the machines picking them out, and when the job is done it is presumed that one of the best grading jobs is done in Canada.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: Right.


James Garfield Gardiner: All our inspectors have to do is to go along and look at them and come to the conclusion that the job is well done. When they have done that they have done their job. It takes a certain number of them but it does not take nearly as many inspectors to take care of a job of that kind at any other time of the year as it does when the apples are being shipped and marketed. I presume when we hire part-time men-the hon. member will know more about this than I do-we hire men who have been pretty well trained in the business themselves. I would imagine that when they go out to pick up men to do this job they may take some fellow who has some time on his hands at that time of the year and who has had experience in doing the job. They put him on for a few weeks or a few months. It is the same principle that is followed all the way through our agricultural activities. We do the same thing with P.F.R.A. and with P.F.A.A. It would be impossible to employ as many men and women for the whole year as are needed to do the job at that time of the year. But I do agree with the suggestion that we ought to get our staffs of competent persons who are employed for the full time up to a number which will see to it that the job is done as it ought to be done. If it can be shown by anyone that that is not so at the present time I am quite sure the department would be open to consider any representations made.


Victor Quelch: Can the Minister of Agriculture say what the attitude of his department is toward the proposal which I understand was made by the food and agriculture organization that a food pool be set up and that food
[Mr. Herridge.J
be sold from that pool to European nations and paid for in their own currencies where they lack dollars? I understand a similar proposal was made by the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. I should say that it actually originated with the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. I think the minister will agree that a proposal of that kind would help greatly toward the stabilizing of maximum production and sales to Europe.


James Garfield Gardiner: In answer to the question I can only say that I am on record in connection with the matter. The question was discussed at Quebec when the FAO was set up, and it was discussed again in Copenhagen and in Geneva. I was present on all three occasions and expressed my views with regard to it, and they were in agreement with those which had been presented to those organizations by Sir John Orr, who was then president of the FAO. I do not know of anything that was more completely earned than the Nobel prize which was presented to Sir John Orr during this present week for the, I would say, noble job that he has done in connection with the whole matter.


Some hon. Members:: Shame!


Douglas Scott Harkness: You can do better than that.


James Garfield Gardiner: The difficulty in connection with it is that there are too many people in the world who still think dollars mean more than anything else. The only reason I have heard presented by anybody as to why a food pool should not be provided in order to see that all people are properly fed throughout the world and producers able properly to market their products is that it might cost somebody too much. I do not agree that it would cost anyone too much. For example, this country carried 600,000,000 bushels of wheat through a very considerable part of the war, and no part of its population had anything to do with financing it, except some 200,000 farmers who produced that wheat. They carried 600,000,000 bushels of wheat to have it there towards the end of the war to feed the people in Europe who otherwise would have starved.
If 200,000 farmers can do that, then I do not know what good argument there is to come from any of the great nations of Europe as to why they should not see to it that surpluses are carried out of years of very high production into years of very low production, and particularly in connection with commodities such as wheat. I am all for it, but I do not know that I could carry all the people of Canada with me.


Victor Quelch: I wonder if the minister would go a step further and say that the dominion government is in favour of it?


James Garfield Gardiner: The government of Canada let me make three speeches on it, and did not kick me out.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Special-
31. Major irrigation and water conservation projects in the prairie provinces, $7,500,000.
Mr. McCusker:: I should like to speak on this item, which has to do with irrigation, and affects the constituency I represent.


James Garfield Gardiner: Would the hon. member for Regina City allow me to make a statement before he makes his speech? It might have some effect upon it-and it might not. But I should like to make the statement.


Emmett Andrew McCusker: Certainly.


James Garfield Gardiner: This item of $7,500,000 is the one for major irrigation and water conservation projects in the prairie provinces. At page 118 of the estimates the division of that amount is set out at the top of the page, and makes provision as follows:
St. Mary irrigation project, $2,900,000.
Bow river irrigation project, conditional upon satisfactory agreements with the province of Alberta and others, $2,000,000.
South Saskatchewan river irrigation project: Engineering surveys, land use and economic surveys and other investigational work, $2,000,000.
Survey and engineering costs on water development projects in the prairie provinces including the Red Deer diversion project, $600,000.
With regard to the second item in this group, I should like to make an announcement. This refers to the Bow river irrigation project. The announcement is that the government of Canada has approved the purchase of the assets of the Canada Land and Irrigation Company at Medicine Hat, Alberta. The hon. member for Medicine Hat may express any surprise he desires on this occasion with regard to this having been carried out.


Mr. Wylie:: I will be very glad to.


James Garfield Gardiner: The purchase price is the price that was offered to myself when I was in Medicine Hat on April 13 last-and which, incidentally, was before the election was announced.


Douglas Scott Harkness: You had it in mind, though.


James Garfield Gardiner: I did not know when the election was going to be, really.
The reason for the purchase is to enable the dominion to carry out a more active program in resettlement under the prairie farm rehabilitation program. The intention is to move farmers from those lands in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba where crop production is unsatisfactory owing to continued drought conditions.
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The irrigable area of land involved in the purchase is approximately 110,000 acres. There are at present over 400 farmers operating with the company at Vauxhall, Alberta. The dominion will arrange for the operation of the irrigation works. In addition, the dominion will immediately develop other irrigable lands for resettlement of farmers.
Final details of the agreement between the company and the Canadian government are being completed at Ottawa, but it will take some time before all details are finalized.
The reason for the time is that the company, the Canada Land and Irrigation Company, is located in London, England, and our negotiations have to be with persons located at some considerable distance away. Those negotiations have been going on for some time, and it has been finally agreed that the purchase be made on the basis of the offer made on April 13 last.


Emmett Andrew McCusker: Mr. Chairman, I wish to speak on this item because it affects the constituency of Regina City, which I have the honour to represent in this House of Commons. Before I proceed further I think it would be well for me to say a few words on the history of the location of that city, and something concerning its development, so that hon. members in the house may appreciate some of the difficulties we have with water in that area, and so that they may understand, as the successors of former parliamentarians, they have inherited certain responsibilities.
When the Canadian Pacific Railway was built into western Canada it was understood that it was to pass along the north side of the Qu'Appelle lakes, and that Regina city was to be located in the Qu'Appelle valley. There, in that broad valley, was an abundant supply of water, shelter from the winds, a spot of great natural beauty, an ideal location for any city.
The railway was to extend farther west along the Qu'Appelle valley and along the Saskatchewan river to Estuary and along the Red Deer, and then the Bow river to Calgary. I am quite sure that the parliament of that day took the advice of the people of western Canada who knew something of the country, and agreed to build the railway in close proximity to surface water, so that the settlements which were bound to take place along the right-of-way would have no water problems.
What happened? The survey party of the Canadian Pacific Railway met with some right-of-way difficulties at Fort Qu'Appelle. It withdrew and ran the survey across .the prairies thirty to sixty miles to the south of this natural water supply, across the dry plains. They ran it from Brandon to Medicine

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Hat. As a result we have Regina, Moose Jaw, Swift Current, Gull Lake, and many other small towns and villages in perpetual water difficulty.
I wish to deal more particularly with Regina. They located Regina on the old pile of bones or Wascana creek. It was there the Indians met after they slaughtered buffalo, jerked the meat and made pemican-there was enough water for that, but very little more. Since that time the city has developed tremendously and met with many adversities, one of which was the cyclone of 1912 which left a path of death and destruction through the city.
There was the drought period of the thirties. More recently, last winter, there was a disastrous fire which wiped out the barns and rolling stock of the transportation system. It has faced all these difficulties, and met them. It has faced all its problems and settled them-and it has always had very serious problems. One of the most serious has been the problem of the shortage of water.
To understand that problem I believe the committee should know something of the geology of the country. In the ice age the great ice cap lay over Labrador. The glacier flowed across Hudson bay and down across the prairies toward the gulf of Mexico. As the ice receded it left deposits of glacial drift -that is, gravel and boulders. At different places on the prairies there is evidence of this, and here we find water. As the glacier receded a great lake formed over that prairie country into which rivers flowed. Silt was deposited to a depth, at Regina, of 42 feet. It is impervious to water. At places the glacial drift comes to the surface, but it is difficult to ascertain the extent of this or the amount of water it contains without drilling -and drilling is a costly business.
We drill wells to depths of 50, 100 and 200 feet in order to obtain variable supplies of water. We have had the opinion of some of the greatest water engineers on the continent, such as Mr. N. S. Hill, Jr., of New York; R. O. Wynne-Roberts of Toronto; H. E. Simpson of the university of North Dakota and Professor Forsberg of the university of Saskatchewan. Their opinions vary slightly but they all state that in this glacial drift there is a limited supply of water and that we are now drawing beyond the limit of safety.
Last spring we seeded our gardens and planted our flowers. Our flowers came up, our gardens grew as they do there in the early spring when you have moisture; the flowers came into blossom and our lawns were green. Then came the hot weather and our gardens and flowers dried up and our lawns

became brown. One hot day in the summer when it was 105 in the shade we could get no water on the second stories of our homes.
This is a serious problem. In order to obtain water we must go to Buffalo Pound lake, which lies in the Qu'Appelle valley about 45 miles northwest of Regina. Buffalo Pound lake is formed by the runoff water of the great plain and is deepened by a dam thrown across the valley. Normally the water from the runoff down the Qu'Appelle valley is used to irrigate 30,000 to 40,000 acres of hay lands where they have a method of flood irrigation. Then farther down they carry on market gardening.
An urban municipality has priority over a rural municipality and irrigated land in order to obtain water for its population. When we take water from Buffalo Pound lake we will jeopardize the supply of water for those who live below. I should like to ask the minister if there is sufficient money in the estimates to provide for a project to maintain the water level in Buffalo Pound lake. This would have to be done by pumping water from the Saskatchewan river. When the dam is built at Elbow the water will flow by gravity down the Qu'Appelle valley and there will be no problem, but in the intervening years something must be done to protect these people who grow hay, who have market gardens, or who have summer cottages along the valley right down to Brandon and Winnipeg.


William Duncan McKay Wylie: I want to say to the Minister of Agriculture that I am happy that an agreement has been reached between the government and the Canada Land and Irrigation Company. It is now up to the government to carry on an extension of that program. As far as my speech during the throne speech debate is concerned, and perhaps I should not refer to it, may I say that the argument was not between the minister and myself, it was between certain newspapers out west and myself. I should like to refer to a report that appeared in one of those papers. When I asked a question the other day the Minister of Agriculture gave me a rather smart answer which was applauded by many Liberal members.


James Garfield Gardiner: It was an answer to a smart question.


William Duncan McKay Wylie: The minister said that he did not publish either paper. I knew, and I am sure that most hon. members knew, that the minister did not publish either paper, but most hon. members do not realize the statement that appeared in the press that day. I am going to read the report that appeared in one of the papers. When the government goes into business I think this house should

be the first to be informed and not the defeated Liberal candidate in any particular constituency. That is what happened in this connection and that is why I refer to it. The Medicine Hat News of Thursday, September 29, contained the following report on the front page-


An hon. Member:: What year?


William Duncan McKay Wylie: 1949. The report reads: Government Buys Canada Land
The Canadian cabinet this morning accepted the Canada Land and Irrigation Company deal. This means the government buys the company's assets on the Bow river extension, including the Ronalane-Redcliff project, for a sum of $2,250,000.
An expenditure of $3,500,000 in addition will be required to complete all extension works to bring the water to Medicine Hat. In addition the Alberta government has a stake of $1,250,000 in the development.
The announcement was officially made to the News this afternoon by Harry Veiner, of Brooks, Liberal candidate in the last general election, after a long distance telephone communication from agricultural minister James G. Gardiner.
Mr. Gardiner stated that the company's offer to sell had been accepted by the cabinet this morning and would be announced in the house later today. Confirmation will be forwarded to Dave W. Hays, local manager of Canada Land. It consummates a proposal originated some months before the election in a conference between the three principals mentioned above, and brings closer to realization a thirty-five year dream of Medicine Hat residents.
If, as the minister tells us, this deal has gone through, I am glad and I am sure every voter and resident in the Medicine Hat area and the drought area of that part of the province is happy about it. But this will depend upon whether the government carries on with that project and shows that it means business. We have wasted another year. Nothing has been done to enlarge the canal or to extend the project further. We do not expect that anything will be done before next year, but I can assure you that we do expect to see some action taken in connection with this project.
When this project is completed I think the citizens in the semi-arid areas surrounding Medicine Hat should be given the opportunity to settle on irrigated land. When the Rolling Hills area was settled not so many years ago, shortly after the drought years of 1935, 1936 and 1937, not one farmer in the Medicine Hat area was given an opportunity to move to that irrigated area. They were all brought in from Saskatchewan. We have no particular objection to bringing people in from Saskatchewan but we want to give our own farmers, who have experienced drought for twenty-five years, an opportunity to settle on some of that land. I hope that the dominion government will take that into consideration in the settlement of the land and give some of our dry-land farmers an opportunity to settle on that project. My hon. friend says
Supply-Agriculture
that they may bring all Liberals in there to defeat me, but I may say that if they thought they were bringing all Liberals into the Rolling Hills area they were badly fooled because first of all they voted C.C.F. and now they are mostly Social Crediters.


John Lambert Gibson: They are getting crazier every day.


James Garfield Gardiner: They are advancing. They will get along.


William Duncan McKay Wylie: I am sure that once they are Social Crediters they will always be Social Crediters. I had a question to ask on item No. 30, but it went by so fast that I missed it. I presume, however, I can ask it now on the item we are dealing with at the present time. It is in connection with the Ross creek irrigation project. No doubt the minister is acquainted with that. There are about eight or ten miles of canal built under the P.F.R.A. What I should like to know is the amount that has been spent on the canal up to the present time, and also if it is the intention of the P.F.R.A. to complete the canal up to the distribution point, and also the gates of the dam. I should like to know if it is the intention of the government to finish the project this fall.


James Garfield Gardiner: As to the questions that were just asked, in the first place it is not the responsibility of the federal government to carry out any irrigation projects in Alberta. It is the responsibility of the government of Alberta, and it is the responsibility of the provincial governments in other provinces, to carry out irrigation work. The land that the federal government purchased from the Canada Land and Irrigation Company was purchased for the purpose of carrying out a program which was announced in 1936, and which has been carried on steadily from 1936 down to the present time. It is a policy of resettling the lands in the dry areas of western Canada.
It was stated a few moments ago by the hon. member for Medicine Hat that we put in the Rolling Hills project before the war, and we did, but it was stated at the same time that provision was not made for taking local people onto that project. One person out of every three is a local person. We took two from outside for every one who was taken from the area immediately surrounding the Rolling Hills project. It may be argued that we should have taken two from the local district for every one we took from elsewhere, but after all most of the people who were living in that district were already on irrigated land. We followed the practice for one-third of the area of attempting to take the sons of some of those who did not have

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sufficient land, and we brought in people from dry areas in the neighbourhood in order to take up the other two-thirds. All of them, of course, were from one or another of-the western provinces.
This particular project is somewhat similar to that but on a larger scale. The land itself, which is being utilized for the purpose, will belong to the federal government. It will be utilized for the purpose of making it possible to move people off submarginal lands where we are now paying considerable sums through prairie farm assistance in order to maintain them in submarginal areas. As many of those people as can be will be moved onto these areas that will be supplied with water.
It is true that east of the area we have purchased there are somewhere in the neighbourhood of 70,000 acres of land upon which water can be placed, and to the west there is also about 70,000 acres of land, in round figures, that can be brought under irrigation, but all of those lands belong to the provincial government. They are actually the property of the provincial government, and they became the property of the provincial government when natural resources were returned to the provinces in 1931. I repeat that, in so far as there being any responsibility on any particular government to do anything about those lands, the responsibility is on the provincial government and not on the federal government.
It is true, however, that there have been discussions with regard to the provision of water for the lands both west and east of the Canada Land and Irrigation Company properties which we have purchased. There have been discussions as to ways and means of putting water on these other lands. The federal government is prepared to sit down and discuss with the provincial government ways and means of having that done. As to the amount of money which has been provided for the purpose in previous estimates, the intention was to spend a certain sum of money, something over $2 million, in the development of the ditches that have already been put in by the Canada Land and Irrigation Company for the purpose of making it possible to carry sufficient water in those ditches to supply the lands which can be irrigated to the west, and which in all probability will be developed by the province when they are developed, and to supply water for the lands to the east.
In other words, the water will have to be carried 198 miles to be exact. I was going to say 200 miles, and possibly you might remember that figure longer. The water has to be carried in the neighbourhood of 200 miles from the Bow river down beyond Calgary. Persons who drive west to Calgary on
IMr. Gardiner.]
No. 1 highway travel around a little lake called McGregor lake just before they reach Calgary. That is the first storage east of Calgary having to do with that system. The ditches extend farther on, having been put there originally by the Canada Land and Irrigation Company, almost to the Saskatchewan boundary north of Medicine Hat, but those ditches east of the Vauxhall project have not been utilized to any great extent for supplying water and have remained in disuse from the time when they were first constructed in the early part of the century. It is intended to develop those projects further or at least to enter into arrangements with the provincial government under which we may give some assistance towards the development of them, but not because it is our responsibility.
It is because we realize that the costs in connection with projects of this kind are considerable, that probably some benefits will accrue to all the people of Canada because of their development, and for that reason probably we should give some assistance. I do not want the committee, or the hon. member for Medicine Hat, to go away with the idea that there is any direct responsibility, constitutional or otherwise, on this government to do that job. As long as any government, whether it be that of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba or any other province, approaches the problem by trying to convince everyone that this is a federal job, all I can say is that they are approaching it from an entirely wrong point of view. The federal government has spent nearly all the money that has been spent by any government upon these projects. Certainly practically all the money that has been spent since the present Alberta government took over the administration of that province has been spent by the dominion. I do not intend to accept the suggestion from any member of this house or any member of the government of Alberta that this government has not been meeting all its obligations. It has been going away beyond its obligations and spending millions of dollars in order to make it possible for people out in Alberta to have irrigation.
We are quite prepared to sit down and discuss the question further, but there is one thing I am going to say very plainly. We are not going to sign every document any member of the government of Alberta wants to draw up, call an agreement, sign and send down here to us. We do not intend to do that. Those are the only kind of documents before the people of Alberta or before this government at the present time. There are no agreements before this government, though we have indicated our desire and

7G5
intention to sit down and discuss this matter at any time with the government of that province, and as far as I know the government of Alberta is prepared to sit down and discuss it with us. But when someone like the hon. member for Medicine Hat gets up during an election and makes the kind of speeches he made, indicating to the people that because for the last twenty years federal governments had done nothing, the present government was not going to do anything, and that all this talk about buying Canada Land and Irrigation was only so much hot air for consumption during election time-


William Duncan McKay Wylie: On a point of privilege, Mr. Chairman, I am going to ask the minister to withdraw that statement.


James Garfield Gardiner: I am not going to.


William Duncan McKay Wylie: That is one statement I have never made, that it was nothing but hot air.


James Garfield Gardiner: The statement you made meant that, even if you did not say it. I have your own advertisement here, signed by yourself, and I could produce two or three more. This is by no means the worst of them, but I am going to be more than fair and read one of the milder ones.


William Duncan McKay Wylie: I don't own that paper.


James Garfield Gardiner: No, but you paid for this advertisement; you published it. Here is what it says:
As thousands of electors in this district will not be able to get into the big tent, they are interested in the answers to the following questions.


William Duncan McKay Wylie: Is that the circus tent?


James Garfield Gardiner: That is the circus tent that you prepared for the people of Medicine Hat in order to induce them not to vote Liberal.


Stanley Howard Knowles: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, are not hon. members supposed to address the Chair?


James Garfield Gardiner: I can look in the other direction and still address the Chair. The first question, Mr. Chairman, in the advertisement is this:
What amount has been paid to the Canada Land and Irrigation Company for their interest in the irrigation scheme known as the Redcliff-Ronalane?
When that advertisement was published my hon. friend knew no one had ever said that any money had been paid the Canada Land and Irrigation Company.


William Duncan McKay Wylie: May I ask the minister what is the date of that?


James Garfield Gardiner: It is the date you paid to put it in the Medicine Hat News, in June, 1949. At the bottom it says:
Inserted by the Medicine Hat federal constituency social credit association. Keep in step with Alberta! Vote social credit. Wylie.
Supply-Agriculture Mr. Harkness: And they did.


James Garfield Gardiner: Then it goes on to say:
When will the actual construction work start?
Who has the contract for the actual work?


Mr. Johnston:: We should have asked the Liberal candidate; he was probably the only one who knew.


James Garfield Gardiner: And it goes on:
How does the dominion Liberal government expect to socialize farming within the boundaries of this an autonomous province?
In other words he did not believe we were ever going to purchase the land and do anything at all about putting farmers upon it.
Why haven't you signed the agreement between the Canada Land and the Alberta government as you had promised to sign?
Then he goes on with this:
The people want the answers to these questions. Promises of irrigation are strictly out in this district. Keep in step with Alberta. Vote social credit. Wylie.
I say this is one of the milder advertisements. There were a number of others along slightly different lines, insinuating all the way through that this job was not going to be done. Only a few nights ago in this very chamber the hon. member made another speech of the same sort in which he insinuated that there was not much likelihood of this contract ever being carried out. It is all very well for him to say he was reading from the press. If I read everything the press has had to say about me, we would be here until next year. These things that appear in the press are the opinions of those who write them; and the only report that went out to Medicine Hat on the day indicated, no matter what the press had to say, was a report direct to the company that we were prepared to continue negotiations for the purchase of the property. Those negotiations have continued from that day until today, when it was finally agreed that the contract could be signed.
I do not want to be misunderstood, or to have someone say in the Medicine Hat News that the contract has been signed. I am telling hon. members, as I did a few moments ago, that the contract cannot be signed until we have completed our negotiations not only with the individual representing the company here but with the company itself, whose headquarters are located in London, England. Those negotiations are going on, and we have every reason to believe that they will be concluded successfully, that the contract will be signed, that the money will be paid and that we will proceed with the development of that project on that basis. But I want it clearly understood not only by the hon. member for Medicine Hat but by all others that the initial responsibility for this sort of thing

Supply-Agriculture
does not rest with this government. It rests with the government of Alberta; and it is only because we are interested in resettling an area which was originally settled by the dominion government when the natural resources were under the control of the federal authorities that this government has asked the people of Canada to take an interest in the matter. Up to the present time they have taken an interest to the extent of well over $30 million, and in these estimates we are asking hon. members to vote $7,500,000 for these larger projects and $3 million for P.F.R.A. In other words this year we are asking for $10,500,000, which is just about one-third of the total amount that has been spent since 1936 in carrying on all these P.F.R.A. activities throughout the three prairie provinces. As soon as the estimates are through the house we are prepared to sit down with the government of Alberta and discuss what they think ought to be assumed by the federal government. At the same time we shall feel quite free to suggest what we think they should assume in order to get these projects under way. I am quite sure that when we do get together we will be able to reach satisfactory conclusions, providing the hon. member for Medicine Hat does not make too many speeches.


William Duncan McKay Wylie: I have no intention of carrying on a verbal battle with the Minister of Agriculture.


An hon. Member:: What are you doing?


William Duncan McKay Wylie: What are you doing sitting over there? May I say this. In fairness, I think the minister should read some of the advertisements which were put in the paper by the Liberal candidate in the constituency and which precipitated these questions. If those were read, I think hon. members would understand why these questions were asked. When you have someone going around the constituency saying that the deal is all through-and the same thing appeared on the 29th of last month-something which is not true according to the minister's own words in a telephone communication with the defeated Liberal candidate, then I think it is time that something was done.
I have no intention of holding up any of the irrigation works. I believe that we should do everything possible to complete every project. I do not entirely blame the provincial government of any province, as the minister does. I have listened to campaign speeches in Saskatchewan where they have accepted the responsibility of getting some of these projects. I have heard what they are going to do with that dam across the Saskatchewan river. They have told us about that. I am sure that some of my 
C.C.F. friends can back me up on that. I think it is fairly well understood that, with respect to that irrigation project mentioned in the Meek report, the main responsibility falls on the dominion government. I think that was fairly well understood in that report.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is not in the report.


William Duncan McKay Wylie: It is in the report, and I think it is fairly well understood that the main responsibility falls upon the dominion government. No matter what the Minister of Agriculture says about the government of Alberta, I may say this in connection with the Canada Land and Irrigation Company. The dominion government had their experts; the Canada Land and Irrigation Company had their manager, Dave W. Hays; and the provincial government had some men on it. They investigated the whole situation and they agreed as to the amount each would carry. The provincial government signed that agreement and sent it down to Ottawa for the signature of the dominion government. We are still waiting for that. Now that the project is taken over by the dominion government, there is no need to sign that tripartite agreement. But may I ask the minister this question. When the dominion government bought out the Canada Land and Irrigation Company, did they consult the provincial government?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes.


William Duncan McKay Wylie: Did the provincial government agree?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes.


Mr. Weir:: Next question.


William Duncan McKay Wylie: The minister says that the provincial government did agree to the purchase of this company by the dominion government. According to the minister's statement, and according to some press reports from Ottawa, the provincial government had about $1,500,000 ready to put into the purchase of the agreement.


James Garfield Gardiner: No, they did not.


William Duncan McKay Wylie: I am going to read you the press report. You do not have to take my word for it.


James Garfield Gardiner: You can get into difficulties when you go to the press too much.


William Duncan McKay Wylie: I may be getting into difficulty but I am sure I am not in the difficulty that the minister is in. At no time did the provincial government say that they would assist in the purchase of the Canada Land and Irrigation Company?


James Garfield Gardiner: No, not to us.


William Duncan McKay Wylie: I doubt very much if the provincial government ever agreed, or ever said to the Minister of Agriculture that they would like to see the dominion government take over that project.


James Garfield Gardiner: Does my hon. friend doubt my word? Is that what he is saying? Is he saying that he thinks I am lying about it? I went to Edmonton prior to getting the firm offer from the Canada Land and Irrigation Company. I met four of the members of the government, including the premier, in the premier's office. One of the gentlemen sitting here at the table in front of me was with me at the time. I presented the whole project to them, just as it has been carried through. They agreed that it was the best possible thing to do; and as a matter of fact there are letters on file to the same effect. There is not any question about that at all. It was agreed to by the provincial government when four members of the government were present.


Mr. Thatcher:: I must say a word on this matter. Some people may be facetious about the south Saskatchewan irrigation project if they want to be, but the fact remains that the constituency in which I live happens to be in the dust bowl; and I can tell hon. members that drought conditions this year again are serious, as the hon. member for Regina City pointed out. At one time this year you could go out in an automobile on a highway and not be able to see the front of the engine because the dust was blowing so badly. You could go out on the golf course and try to putt your ball into the hole on a green but there were so many grasshoppers in the way that it would not go straight.


An hon. Member:: Do you blame the Minister of Agriculture for that?


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: The situation is serious. I am amazed to hear the Minister of Agriculture tonight get up and state that irrigation is not the responsibility of the federal government

and that is what he said, if I understood him correctly-because for forty years the Liberal party has been promising at every federal election and every provincial election that they were going to take effective action on irrigation. I remember what happened back in 1940. We have a little creek in the town of Moose Jaw not far from the main street. I remember the Liberal candidate getting up to speak, and from the way he talked I thought ships would be sailing down that Moose Jaw creek from Hudson bay. In 1945 I remember the minister and his party made a specific promise about the south Saskatchewan irrigation project. I have quoted it before in the house, and I am going
S upp ly-A griculture
to quote it again. This promise was carried in the Moose Jaw Times on June 9, 1945-[DOT] not this election but the one before. The advertisement reads:
The south Saskatchewan irrigation project will be commenced immediately men and material are available-it has been approved.
In 1945 the Liberal party stated: "It has been approved". What has happened to it? That was a straightforward statement which did not carry any qualifications that could not be met today. Yet nothing has been done. We saw the same thing in the by-election in which the hon. member for Rosthern was elected. Here is another clipping which says in effect: Elect the Liberals and you will get irrigation projects. Here is another one from the minister's nominating convention: Elect the Liberals. We will do something about irrigation.
The hon. member for Regina City was speaking a few moments ago. Here is one of his promises:
Water for Regina!!
Never before in the history of our city has the need for a new water supply been so urgent and immediate . . .
Probe failed to get you a new water supply-let McCusker do it!
I say, let's get going. I want to help McCusker do it, and I want the minister to help him do it. The advertisement of the hon. member for Regina City went on to say:
The failing water supply in Regina endangers the health of the people . . .
Recourse to rigorous water rationing is an everpresent threat to every householder.
Unless immediate steps are taken to cope with this crisis, Regina faces the greatest drought in her history.
And so on.


Emmett Andrew McCusker: You are just making my speech again.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: A personal pledge.
As your elected Liberal member for Regina in a Liberal government at Ottawa, I would use every resource at my command to get immediate action on a new water supply.
Every Liberal member for the past twenty-five or thirty years, as they have gone into that dust bowl area, has been talking about the south Saskatchewan irrigation project. I say that the time has come for the Liberal party to give us a little bit of action and not so many words. This estimate tonight means only one thing to the people of Saskatchewan and the people on the prairies. Only two million dollars for irrigation surveys means that once again the Liberal party is reneging on specific election promises. Once again the Liberal party is doing nothing, or

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very little in a concrete way, about this south Saskatchewan irrigation project which is needed so badly.
The minister is a Saskatchewan minister. Quite true, he represents all Canada, but first of all he represents Saskatchewan. I am happy indeed to see some work being done in Alberta; but I hope the minister will use his influence soon to start at least one major project in his own province of Saskatchewan which elects him, and where it is needed far worse. I think this estimate that the minister brings down tonight is a national disgrace. I think it is a national tragedy.


Solon Earl Low: I was very much interested in the statement made by the Minister of Agriculture, and while I am not going to enter into the pretty strong debate that has developed on irrigation, for my own information I should like to ask the minister some questions about the statement he made. If I remember correctly he said that he was not going to sign any old agreement that the province of Alberta, or somebody in that province, wants to send down already signed. If I am wrong in these words I should like the minister to correct me. Have the federal government executed any agreement between themselves and the government of Alberta for the completion of the works and the colonization of the St. Mary river irrigation development? If they have not, then I should like the minister to tell the committee why not. If they have I should like the minister to tell us when it was executed. If I am not mistaken the federal government has already spent around $2,750,000 on that project, which is a commendable thing.


James Garfield Gardiner: Over $5 million.


Solon Earl Low: Over $5 million to date. That is even better.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is a pretty good
signature.


Solon Earl Low: I quite agree, but the minister must realize that, if there is no agreement between the federal government and the provincial government with respect to the completion and the colonization of that project, then he must admit that the federal government has gone a long way toward telling this country that irrigation is a federal responsibility. I am serious about this and not acrimonious at all. The minister ought to know, before he answers these questions, that there are certain newspaper writers in this country who are trying to make the people believe that the Alberta government does not want to sign an agreement. I say that these newspaper writers, one of whom is T. H. Grey, have been writing in some of the

western papers and eastern papers lately. I want to say for the benefit of Mr. Grey, and of others, that the province of Alberta does want to sign an agreement, and they have been after the minister to get the agreement.


James Garfield Gardiner: The hon. member is hardly correct. They have sent an agreement down signed by themselves which was never entered into by us.


Solon Earl Low: I know that it has never been entered into by the dominion government. Let me ask this question. Was that agreement not drafted by a representative of the government of the province of Alberta sitting with a representative of the federal government?


James Garfield Gardiner: No, it was not.


Solon Earl Low: That is my information. I would like the minister to answer the question.


James Garfield Gardiner: The question asked by the leader of the Social Credit party is a fair one and I shall try to give him a fair answer. There have been no, what are called, large irrigation projects undertaken up to date in western Canada. The policy with regard to large irrigation projects has not yet been established as between the dominion government and the provincial governments, but some few years ago the United States took the position that unless we were going to utilize the water in the St. Mary river they would probably use it. The members of the water development committee did say at that time that they thought these waters ought to be conserved in Canada, and because of this decision something ought to be done toward conserving them. Discussion started as between the government of Alberta and the government of Canada. No agreement was reached with regard to the matter. But the Canadian government took this position, that farmers could not remain on lands in Alberta, or in any other part of western Canada, if they had to pay what amounted in costs to more than $10 an acre of the lands that were going to be irrigated. Therefore they said that if it was going to cost say $40 an acre or $50 an acre to put in the works that made it possible to have the land irrigated, then the farmer himself could not pay the amount and at the same time pay his water charges and pay the taxes on his land and all the costs of operation. Therefore somebody ought to do something about establishing the capital works.
We said that we were prepared to put in the main dam. In other words we were prepared to establish the storage in the St. 'Mary river and thus start to utilize waters which otherwise might have been taken into the United States. When we said that, the

provincial government asked us not only to build the dam in the St. Mary river but to build the storage at Pothole which is a small lake that forms the storage and is about thirty-five miles from the main dam. They asked us to pay at least some part of the cost of digging the ditch from the main dam to Pothole, some thirty-five miles, and then to pay some part of the cost of Pothole as a secondary storage. We said that we were not prepared to discuss the question as to where the division of costs should end, but that we would go ahead with the construction of the dam in order to maintain the position in relation to the United States.
As has been said, the costs that we are going to be put to there will run up toward $20 million before we are through. We have spent about $5 million. At that time the province said that they were prepared to pay the cost of Pothole and Pothole has been constructed and paid for by the provincial government; but they agreed to pay the cost of Pothole conditionally upon the federal government entering into an agreement later on to pay some part of the costs at least as far as Pothole.


Solon Earl Low: To make that a part of the big project.


James Garfield Gardiner: To make that a part of the original project which was not to be capitalized on the land itself. The undertaking given was that whatever arrangement was made dnally with regard to the works between the main dam and Pothole or beyond Pothole was to apply to Pothole itself. So that the present position is that the provincial government has paid for Pothole, and we have paid for all the works on the main dam, and regotiations are still continuing with regard ;o the other matters.
The document which has been sent down aere relating to the construction of works, laving to do with the St. Mary dam, is a locument which provides for very extensive expenditures over a very extensive program. The agreement reached between the provincial government and the federal government some two years ago in the offices at Sdmonton, when I myself was there, was to .he effect that whatever principles we were joing to follow in other large projects in western Canada would be established in *elation to the construction of the St. Mary lam and any lands which were irrigated :rom that dam.
That is the general agreement that was altered into by word of mouth-it is not in writing, although it may be in some letters which have passed. But it was an agreement *eached through discussion, namely that whatever arrangements were finally made with regard to the division of costs in con-45781-49
Supply-Agriculture
nection with the St. Mary dam and the waters stored there would be followed in particular in connection with other large projects.
In answer to the direct question: "Has any agreement on the question been signed", the answer is no. I accept the document which was sent here by the provincial government, drawn up on the basis upon which they thought payments ought to be made and in that document-


Solon Earl Low: Is that correct? Is it correct, in view of the fact that your own representatives assisted in the drafting of that document?


James Garfield Gardiner: I understand that the provincial government applied to our office, as the only source from which information could be obtained, for all of the engineering information with regard to the project. And, basing their conclusions upon the information thus obtained, they asked that certain things be done, and wrote them into the form of what they would like to see under an agreement, and have sent it down to Ottawa.


Solon Earl Low: Just at that point-and I am only asking for information, because we have to clarify this matter-is it not true that at the time that document was sent, or just after that, you told the people in Alberta that you could not very well enter into any agreement or attempt to sign an agreement until the election was over?


James Garfield Gardiner: What is that?


Solon Earl Low: Is it not true that you told people in Alberta, with respect to this very agreement we are talking about, that you could not attempt to enter into any such agreement until after the election?


James Garfield Gardiner: No, I did not tell them that. They may have assumed from the discussion that probably we would not; but I did not at any time tell them that. I am quite sure that, if I had entered into any agreement while the election was on, the speech made by the hon. member for Medicine Hat with regard to what was said there would be mild when compared with what my hon. friends would be saying. I certainly did not enter into any undertaking to make any agreement with them immediately preceding the election; and I would not have done so, even if I had been in a position to do so-which I was not.
And I am not in a position to sign any agreement with them yet. The reason is that the document which has been submitted to us asks that we not only foot all the bills for the St. Mary dam, and all the bills for Pothole, but that we assume all the expenditures for storage at Ridge, and all the storage at

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Chin and all the storage at Horsefly, over to the southwest of Medicine Hat; and that we assume all the cost of digging all the ditches to connect all these storages.
They say, "If you will do all that, then we under our act will do certain things." The hon. member for Moose Jaw says, "Whose obligation is it?" Well, I was minister of highways in the Saskatchewan government for five years, and while I talked about irrigation I was not talking about anybody at Ottawa doing the job of irrigation. I was talking about my own department doing it. When I was minister of highways we had an irrigation act. We have not an irrigation act here; irrigation acts are on the statute books of provincial legislatures.
So the Alberta government asks us to do all the work to deliver the water right to the door of the farmer-and when I refer to the door of the farmer I refer to the point where the farmer takes the water out of the main ditch. They say, "If you will do that, then under our irrigation act we will organize the farmers into irrigation districts, and we will finance the construction of work in those areas, and then we will turn around and charge the farmer for the cost that we put up."
What we say in regard to that is this, that the provincial government ought to share some of the capital cost, which reduces the total cost per acre from some $40 or $50 down to the $10 that the farmer can pay, and that no part of that money ought to be collected back from the farmer. We say the federal government should put up something and the provincial government should put up something; and whatever that amount is, it should be charged up to the capital cost which the farmer is not going to be required to pay, in order that his costs may be reduced down to the $10.
My personal opinion about that is that when you take all the works for which we are responsible, including the original dam, we would be assuming far more than our total responsibility, whatever that responsibility might be based upon, whether it is a legal responsibility or a national responsibility. We would not be very far from the mark if the provincial government became responsible for half of the cost and the federal government became responsible for the other half.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: Does the minister suggest that for the south Saskatchewan project, also?


James Garfield Gardiner: I have told my hon. friend that whatever we finally decide with the Alberta government as being the principle

to be applied will be applied to all of them. The difference between the project in Alberta and the project on the south Saskatchewan river is that back beyond the St. Mary storage there is another storage known as the Water-ton lakes. Only today in our city of Ottawa the international joint commission held a hearing to decide the question as to whether that water belongs to the United States or to Canada, and certain findings were made with regard to it.
I do not know what those findings were, because the document is not yet made public. It will probably be out in a day or two. In any case, they have been deciding the question as to what part of that water belongs to Canada and what part belongs to the United States. A ditch about two or three times as long as the one between the St. Mary dam and Pothole would have to be constructed to take the water from Waterton lake to St. Mary dam. That water again would be required before you could irrigate the 500,000 acres of land extending east from Lethbridge upon which water can be placed-if we can get enough water to irrigate it.
As we go along, when once the federal government has entered into an agreement with regard to St. Mary, the same principles would apply with regard to the other storages. I do not know how many years it will take to do one job; but the position we are taking is that we should establish a principle on the basis of whatever we are going to do at St. Mary, and apply those principles to the other projects. That is the present position in relation to it. I do not know whether I have answered the questions asked.


Solon Earl Low: I wish to thank the minister for travelling forty-five miles when he could have answered the question by a simple yes or no. I quite realize however that it was difficult for him to answer yes or no, and to give a proper impression. Now-


James Garfield Gardiner: That is why you would like me to say yes or no.


Solon Earl Low: I simply asked the question whether you had or had not signed the agreement.


James Garfield Gardiner: But my hon. friend should realize this, that there is not any agreement to sign.


Solon Earl Low: That is right.


James Garfield Gardiner: When there is an agreement we will certainly sign it, but there is not any agreement to sign.


Solon Earl Low: That is perfectly correct, but in the statement the minister made just before

I asked my question he implied that Alberta had been quite derelict in its duty and responsibility toward irrigation. In fact he made the statement, I think quite clearly, that Alberta had not done anything about irrigation.


James Garfield Gardiner: Just let me put my hon. friend straight. The hon. member for Medicine Hat was asking what the federal government was going to do about the lands east of the Vauxhall project and the lands west of that project. I said that that was the responsibility of the provincial government because they owned the land. We know what we are going to do about the lands that we own.


Solon Earl Low: What the minister said was that since the Social Credit government came into power in Alberta it had done nothing about irrigation.


James Garfield Gardiner: I did not say "nothing," I said that they had not done very much. As a matter of fact I have just told you that they had done one thing: they built the dam at Pothole. I would like to know what else they did?


Solon Earl Low: The minister did not say that at first.


James Garfield Gardiner: And they expect us to pay for it.


Solon Earl Low: The minister knows that that is not true.


James Garfield Gardiner: It is hardly true because we actually built the dam but they paid for it.


Solon Earl Low: You paid for it.


James Garfield Gardiner: They expect us to pay them the amount of money that they paid for it.


Solon Earl Low: That is not true either and the minister knows it.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is exactly true.


Solon Earl Low: The minister knows that the Alberta government went ahead in good faith vith nothing but a verbal agreement. They lad had experience with the federal government before with verbal agreements, but ;hey completed the Pothole storage and :anals.


James Garfield Gardiner: It is a written agreement.


Solon Earl Low: They went ahead with a verbal igreement and the understanding was that vhen the St. Mary river project was competed this would be entered as part of that iroject and whatever the cost was it would >e allowed to apply with respect to the Pot-lole project.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is all in writing.
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Solon Earl Low: The minister comes here and says, "They expect us to pay them for it." That is not playing the game.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is playing the game. I can produce it from the records. It appears in the documents that they asked us to pay it.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: I think this debate becomes more serious as the minister proceeds, because he has enunciated tonight an entirely new irrigation policy for the Dominion of Canada, when he suggests that the province should pay a portion of the cost of irrigation projects. He has never taken such an attitude before in the many years he has been promising irrigation projects. What does that mean to the west? The budget for the province of Saskatchewan last year was approximately $53 million and I admit quite frankly that we had a fairly difficult time in balancing that budget.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: Hon. members may laugh if they will, but this is a pretty serious matter for my constituency and my province. If we are going to have to pay one-half or one-quarter or some proportion of the cost of the south Saskatchewan irrigation project, the financial position of the province is such that we may have to wait fifty years for its completion. The minister knows that very well.


James Garfield Gardiner: If we have a C.C.F. government.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: I think Alberta is in precisely the same position. What the minister is telling us tonight is that the federal government, a government that had a surplus of a billion dollars three years ago, a billion dollars or more two years ago, and about a billion dollars this year, a government that has had those huge revenues, is now calling upon the provincial governments to help pay for major irrigation works. I think that is shameful. I think this committee should hold up these estimates indefinitely if he is going to continue along those lines. I do not know whether that is possible, but I shall do my best. I sat in this parliament during 1945 and 1946 when hundreds of millions of dollars were voted as gifts and loans to countries overseas. Probably a good deal of that was justified but surely-


Mr. Mitchell:: My hon. friend voted for it.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: That is not correct. If this government can be so generous with other nations, why should it find so much trouble in providing money for projects at home that are needed so badly? The minister and this

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parliament know the advantages of irrigation. I assure the minister that if this is a new policy he has enunciated tonight it will not receive wide acceptance in western Canada.


James Garfield Gardiner: This is not a new policy being enunciated tonight; it has been enunciated every time I have spoken on the question in the House of Commons.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: Oh.


James Garfield Gardiner: It has been enunciated every time I spoke on the question in western Canada.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: Oh my.


James Garfield Gardiner: My hon. friend does not come to my meetings. He usually has to read the C.C.F. press to find out what I have said. Coming back to this question of whether the south Saskatchewan river project should be built with the assistance of the provincial government, may I say that, when the present government of Saskatchewan took over, the revenues of the province were about $32 million. According to the statement made a few* moments ago those revenues are now about $53 million.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: We are building roads and giving some social services.


James Garfield Gardiner: If the south Saskatchewan river project was built under conditions that existed some three or four years ago it would cost in the neighbourhood of $60 million.


Percy Ellis Wright: What would it cost today?


James Garfield Gardiner: If it had to be built under conditions as they are today that amount would be increased by perhaps $10 million or maybe a little more. But it would be absolutely impossible to construct the south Saskatchewan river project in less than ten years. The total expenditure required would be averaged out over that period of time at somewhere between $6 million and $8 million per year. Is my hon. friend telling me that a province that can raise $20 million more- as a matter of fact he told us a while ago that they were not able to raise it-


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: I said nothing of the kind.


James Garfield Gardiner: My hon. friend said that they were having difficulty balancing their budget.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: That is different.


James Garfield Gardiner: It is the same thing to me. On two occasions I was provincial treasurer of Saskatchewan and I know how difficult it is to raise money in Saskatchewan. That government undertook this year to spend

$53 million, which is about $20 million more than was spent in the last year before they came into office.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: The federal government
spent five times as much as they did in the same year.


James Garfield Gardiner: The federal government gave this present government $15 million, and that is $10 million more than they gave the previous government. If the government of Saskatchewan can raise $20 million more, I think there is a good argument for saying that they can pay $3 million or $4 million a year in order to have this irrigation project carried out in that period of time.
I am not arguing that that is going to be the final outcome of our discussions, but if that is the outcome of our discussions with regard to the St. Mary river project, it will have to be applied all the way across the board. If the final decision is that we pay two-thirds and the province pays one-third of the cost, that will have to be applied all the way across the board. In other words, we will have to treat one government just the same as we treat any other government.
With regard to that, I should like to say that we are doing a similar thing in the maritime provinces. Down there we are constructing dikes in the marshlands and the undertaking is that they will pay one-third, the farmers will pay one-third and we will pay one-third. The same principle runs through that expenditure as I have enunciated in connection with the irrigation projects. I think under the arrangements that are being made down there the expenditures made by the provincial and by the federal government will be money spent and then the farmers will have to pay the other third in the form of rates charged against their land. That may work out to be the general policy right across Canada. We do not intend to apply it any differently in Saskatchewan from what we do in the other provinces. I expect we will get the same results in Saskatchewan, when we finally come to deal with it there, as we have had in Alberta and elsewhere.
Before I sit down I want to answer the first questions that were asked and which 1 had almost forgotten. The member for Regina City started this discussion, and we have gone all the way round the board. I should like to come back to Regina before we close I should like to say a few words in reply-


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: Moose Jaw too.


James Garfield Gardiner: When anything is done foi Regina, Moose Jaw always comes in for c share.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: Always?


James Garfield Gardiner: Practically always.


An hon. Member:: We always look after our suburbs.


James Garfield Gardiner: The fact is that the storage of water that would be provided by the construction of the south Saskatchewan dam would be nearer to Moose Jaw than it would be to Regina, and Buffalo Pound lake is nearer to Moose Jaw than Regina. Any work that is done in order to assist Regina will assist Moose Jaw. The water passes along the way and can be taken down to Moose Jaw without as much ditch being dug as is required for Regina.
The question that was asked by the hon. member for Regina City is whether there is sufficient money in the estimates, as they are now brought down, to take care of any work which might be necessary to take water out of the Saskatchewan river, pump it over the height of land, run it down into Buffalo Pound lake, and keep the level of that lake sufficiently high to make it possible for Regina and Moose Jaw to take water out of it over the period during which construction of the south Saskatchewan dam may be taking place. All I can say about that is that there is enough money in the estimates, but it is not definitely stated anywhere in the estimates, or in connection with them, that the money will be spent for that purpose. There is $2 million in the estimates to take care of anything that we may require to do touching upon the south Saskatchewan river project which will help to determine the question whether or not we should proceed with it. It is conceivable that money could be taken out of that vote in order to do this job.
The present position is that representatives from Regina came down here and asked us what we were prepared to do. Representatives of the Saskatchewan government also came with them. The representatives of the Saskatchewan government presented the case to us, which was to the effect that they thought we should spend all the money in order to provide for the taking of water to the city of Regina. We replied then exactly as I have replied to the house tonight. We said that it was not our responsibility, that it was the provincial government's responsibility, and asked them what they were prepared to do. In reply to that the city of Regina said that they were prepared to find one-third of the cost, and the representatives of the provincial government refused to say that they would find one-third of the cost. It was suggested to them, not by myself but by the minister concerned, that the government might give some consideration to the
Supply-Agriculture
proposal if they put forward a three-way proposition, but up until now such a proposition has not been made.
That is the present position of the whole project. There is sufficient money in the vote to take care of anything that might require to be done, provided it can be shown to be a part of the south Saskatchewan project-and I believe this might be shown to be. The government intimated that they were prepared to consider a proposition put to them by the city of Regina and the province combined. Up to now we have not had a proposition of that type.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: Will the minister say
whether this estimate means that no actual construction work will be commenced this year on the south Saskatchewan irrigation project?


James Garfield Gardiner: I think that was the intimation given to the house when the estimate was first brought down, which was prior to the election. This is the same estimate as was brought down last spring.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: But you are not talking the same way.


James Garfield Gardiner: Oh, yes, I am talking exactly the same way. Members of the committee and of the house asked the same questions then as are being asked now and tried to force the government to take the position that we were going to proceed with construction. We said that it was necessary to spend another $2 million before we could make a definite decision on the question whether we should proceed with construction. That $2 million is in this estimate. Up to now we have committed ourselves to an expenditure of $634,000 out of the $2 million, and we have a considerable number of months to run. In other words, we have spent a considerable part of the first six months' allotment from the vote down to the end of the six-month period.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I should first like to correct a small item of geographic misinformation on the part of the minister a short time ago. The irrigation lake immediately to the east of Calgary, which the minister mentioned in reference to the highway passing it, is not McGregor lake but Chestermere lake. McGregor lake is considerably to the south of that. I hope that the minister will not produce a newspaper advertisement to prove to me that those two lakes had changed places.
I was glad to have the minister give us some information in connection with the St. Mary river dam and irrigation project. I should like to ask a few more questions about

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it. He will remember when this matter was last before the house on his estimates we had a considerable discussion about the St. Mary river project. At that time it developed that the original contractors for the rock tunnels, and so forth, were in difficulty, and I believe the contract was taken away from them and given to somebody else. Will the minister tell us whether the rock tunnels have been completed, if the amount of $2,200,000 which we voted last year covers those rock tunnels, and if any portion of the $2,900,000 which we are now voting is for the purpose of those rock tunnels? If it is not for that, or a major portion of it, I wonder if he would tell us how much of that has been expended on the earth fill, the water gate construction and so forth, and also what stage of completion the St. Mary river dam has reached. Would he also tell us about the work which is going on at the present time and when the project is likely to be completed.


James Garfield Gardiner: The dam is 125 feet high now and it will be 190 feet when it is completed, which will be about a year from now?


Douglas Scott Harkness: It will be completed about a year from now?


James Garfield Gardiner: We figure it can easily be completed by a year from now. The spillway, which I understand the hon. member has in mind, which has been decided upon, and which is somewhat of a change from the original plan-


Douglas Scott Harkness: Is that the one tunnel that is used?


James Garfield Gardiner: Wait till I get through with the spillway; then I will deal with the tunnel. The proposal has been made that the spillway should be constructed by the contractor who is now on the job at the same unit rates as he gave in his contract in 1946. I think anyone will agree that rates established on a contract in 1946 would be comparatively low if applied to a contract now, and we are considering whether something should be done in respect to the present contractor. The concrete part of the structure is such that there were no unit prices in the original tender, and we shall be calling for tenders on that, whatever may be done with regard to the remainder.


Douglas Scott Harkness: What do you mean by unit prices?


James Garfield Gardiner: So much per yard of earth, so much per yard of rock, and so on. First a tunnel had to be put through in order to take the water by the dam. Then a tunnel had to be put through to take the water from the dam down to where it is delivered into the ditch for irrigation purposes. These

tunnels were through a sort of sand rock in both cases. The diversion tunnel is not quite as long as the irrigation tunnel. It is true, as was stated, that tenders were called on both tunnels back in 1946. Three concerns tendered. At the time it was intimated to us by our engineers that the work could not be done at the unit prices of the lowest bidder.


Douglas Scott Harkness: That was Bennett and
White?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes. We called in the contractors and explained to them that this was our information, but they said they could put in the tunnels at the prices they had quoted. We had our advisory engineer from the United States, General Ferguson, who has had great experience with dams of this kind, come up and look over the project. He saw Bennett and White and gave it as his opinion that he doubted whether the work could be done at the prices they were quoting. They still insisted that they could do it at those prices. We told them that this was the first project of the kind we were undertaking, and we said, "We cannot go ahead accepting bids on a basis on which, according to the best engineers, the work cannot foe done, and then later find ourselves in the position of having to raise the price above the bid of the second bidder or even perhaps above that of the highest bidder. We cannot get into that position". In spite of that they said they were prepared to go ahead, and they did so. Their costs ran higher than the figure quoted by the second bidder, and I think even higher than those of the highest bidder. After some discussion they asked for further payments. We called attention to the discussions that had taken place in the beginning, and finally it was agreed that it would be better for them to quit their contract on completion of their first tunnel and allow the job to be carried on by someone else. The work has been given on a cost plus basis to the second bidder.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Who was that?


James Garfield Gardiner: The Assiniboia Construction Company. They are working on it now. The second tunnel has been completed as far as boring through the rock is concerned, and they are now completing the work of cementing the inside of the tunnel. So the job is being completed within the time set when the second contract was let.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Then I take it from what the minister has said that a considerable portion of this $2,900,000 we are now voting-


James Garfield Gardiner: About $910,000.

Business of the House


Douglas Scott Harkness: -is for this tunnel.	BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes.	,


Douglas Scott Harkness: The minister said the contract for the second tunnel was given to another company on a cost plus basis. I wonder if the minister would tell us, if he has the information, where the rock tunnellers working on that contract came from and if their cost is included in the cost plus figure.


James Garfield Gardiner: The men doing the work are miners from British Columbia. Even in Alberta we sometimes have to get help from British Columbia. Our information, which I think is correct, is that one of the best tunnellers in Canada is Stevens of Vancouver. Stevens was obtained by the Assiniboia Construction Company to take charge of this work, and I understand the plan is that this man makes his agreement with the miners who are brought down to do the job, and the work is done by them on the basis of agreements made with him.


Douglas Scott Harkness: It is a subcontract, then?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes. Then that is allowed as part of the cost, and the work proceeds on that basis.


Victor Quelch: I have three or four questions to ask, but it is almost eleven o'clock.
Progress reported.


Alphonse Fournier: Tomorrow we shall take up first resolution No. 10 on today's order paper in the name of the Minister of of Justice, concerning the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act; then resolution No. 9 of the Minister of Justice concerning the Judges Act, 1946. Then we will go into committee of the whole on Bill No. 8 to amend the Exchequer Court Act; then Bill No. 9, to amend the Department of Justice Act. From eight to nine o'clock will be public bills and orders, and then we will take up estimates: Agriculture, Veterans Affairs and Labour.


Howard Charles Green: In that order?


Alphonse Fournier: I could not say as to
the last two departments, but Agriculture will be first.


[Stage Direction]
At eleven o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
[The following items were passed in committee of supply]:

[Stage Direction]
29.	Marketing of agricultural products, including temporary appointments that may be required to be made notwithstanding anything contained in the Civil Service Act, the amount available for such appointments not to exceed $6,000, $75,000.
Special-
30.	Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act and water storage, $3,000,000.
[Stage Direction]
Friday, October 14, 1949