1950-03-06

CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAYS


Hon. Lionel Chevrier (Minister of Transport):: I have a statement to make, Mr. Speaker, concerning the resumption of full passenger service on the Canadian National Railways. Mr. Donald Gordon is making the statement from Montreal at 3.30 this afternoon, and he was kind enough to send me an advance copy of it so that I could make it to the house. I would not want the house to think that I am scooping him, because it is now only ten minutes after three. The statement is as follows:
When the coal shortages forced the Canadian National Railways to reduce passenger train service in Canada by twenty-five per cent, the railway management promised that the trains which were being temporarily discontinued would be put back into operation as soon as conditions justified. Now we are keeping our word. Full Canadian National train service will be restored as from Wednesday midnight, March 8. All trains in Canada that stopped running because of the coal shortage will go back on their normal schedules.
To the public who have given us their understanding support we express our thanks and say that the Canadian National Railways will, as in past years, continue to provide fast, reliable, up-to-date transportation.
In addition to restoring passenger train services, the management has given instructions that coal consigned to commercial and other users be given preferential movement over our lines.


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Clarence Gillis (Cape Breion South):: May I address a question to the Minister of Transport, arising out of the statement he just made? I am sure we were all glad to hear it. It indicates the efficient manner in which the minister handles all matters that come within the scope of his department.


Lionel Chevrier: There must be something coming.


Clarence Gillis: Is it now the minister's intention to convene the committee on government-owned railways and shipping in order to complete this particular story?


Lionel Chevrier: The last time the question was asked of me I think I indicated that it was my intention to convene the committee on railways and shipping as quickly as possible. I wish I could indicate the date, but I hope it will be before the Easter recess. Perhaps I may add this: since it takes some time to prepare the reports that are submitted to the committee, such as the annual reports of the Canadian National Railways, the Trans-Canada Air Lines, and the like- and I would not want, as I am sure the house would not, the officers of the Canadian National Railways to come back twice-I hope it will be possible to convene the committee around March 27. I hope that will meet with the approval of the house.


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr.  W. Chesler S. McLure@Queens: I
should like to direct a question to the Minister of Transport. Has the Canadian National Railways made a general proposal to all the other provinces similar to that which has been made to the government of the province of Prince Edward Island, namely, to take over all the highway bus and truck services, and to place them under the control of the board of transport commissioners?


Lionel Chevrier: That is quite an order. I have had no advance notice of the question, but I may tell my hon. friend that I am not aware of any such movement. In any event I am sure that the Canadian National Railways, or for that matter the federal government, would have no jurisdiction over provincial highways on Prince Edward Island, and over one or two of the other matters which my hon. friend mentioned in his question. That is about the only information I can give him at this time.



UNITED NATIONS


Hon. L. B. Pearson (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: I wish to table copies, in English and in French, of the report of the Canadian delegation to the fourth session of the general conference of UNESCO held in Paris from September 19 to October 5, 1949.

Inquiries of the Ministry
CONTROVERTED ELECTIONS	Mr. Speaker: Order.



ANNAPOLIS-KINGS    CERTIFICATE AND REPORT ON TRIAL OF ELECTION PETITION    ISSUE OF NEW WRIT OF ELECTION

Mr. Speaker:: I have the honour to inform the house that I have received from Hon. Mr. Justice Doull and Hon. Mr. Justice Mac-Quarrie, two of the judges of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia selected for the trial of an election petition pursuant to the Dominion Controverted Elections Act, a certificate and report relating to the election in the electoral district of Annapolis-Kings.
Shall I read the report?


Some hon. Members:: Dispense.


Mr. Speaker:: I have the honour to inform the house that, in conformity with chapter 50, section 69, of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1927, I have issued my warrant to the chief electoral officer to make out a new writ of election for the said electoral district.


Mr. Diefenbaker:: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask a question arising out of the record that you read respecting the Annapolis-Kings election. I should like to ask the government whether any investigation has been made with regard to the constituencies in which the illegal votes would have been properly cast. In other words they were cast in the wrong constituency; they belong to other constituencies.


Righi Hon. L. S. St. Laurent (Prime Minister):: My understanding is that the votes were cast in that constituency in such form that they could not be counted elsewhere, the voter having written in the name of the person for whom he was voting, and that person was a candidate only in the constituency where it was found that the votes could not legally be cast.



WHEAT BOARD


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. J. A. Ross (Souris):: I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Trade and Commerce. Will the report of the Canadian wheat board for the crop year 1948-49, which was tabled in the house on February 21, showing a deficit on the 1945 to 1949 pool account of $5,235,621.37, be referred to the standing committee on agriculture this session, in order that the report and activities of the wheat board can be examined and thoroughly studied?
Perhaps when the minister is answering he will make a statement as to the meeting with Mr. Charles Brannan-


James Arthur Ross: -United States secretary of agriculture-


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I must insist that when a question is being asked and I rise to call order, the hon. member who is asking the question should resume his seat.


Right Hon. C. D. Howe (Minister of Trade and Commerce):: Mr. Speaker, the report of the wheat board for the crop year 1948-49 has been tabled in the house. If the committee on agriculture wishes to review it, the department will give the committee every facility to do so. I think my hon. friend will find that the so-called deficit reported in the statement has no significance whatsoever except as a working capital item.


Mr. Macdonnell (Greenwood):: Just one of those bookkeeping entries.


Clarence Decatur Howe: As to the meeting with Mr. Charles Brannan, the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) and myself met with him and discussed a division of wheat allocations to the United States and Canada, contingent upon the participation of Germany and Japan in the wheat agreement. Complete agreement was reached, but since Australia is also interested in the division, and since the final decision will be made by the international wheat agreement council, it is not thought wise to give the figures at this time. Our discussions were simply preliminary to a report to the council in London.



TRANS-CANADA HIGHWAY QUESTION AS TO AGREEMENTS WITH PROVINCES- ROUTE THROUGH SASKATCHEWAN

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. A. C. Slewart (Yorklon):: I should like to direct two questions to the Minister of Resources and Development. Have agreements for the building of the trans-Canada highway been forwarded to all ten provinces? What government selected No. 1 highway in December, 1948, or January, 1949, as the trans-Canada route through Saskatchewan?


Mr. Speaker:: I doubt whether that is a question that should be asked on the orders of the day.



PIT PROPS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. A. J. Brooks (Royal):: On Friday last I asked a question of the Minister of Trade and Commerce regarding the markets for pit

props. His parliamentary assistant said he would have the answer for us today. May we have the answer?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Trade commissioners in several countries are working on the sale of pit props, and there is some hope that sales will be made. I think anything I might say in addition to that would only jeopardize the current negotiations.


Alfred Johnson Brooks: We were told that as soon as the British elections were over-


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes; they were over last week.


Alfred Johnson Brooks: I know they were.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: You had better go back yourself.


Alfred Johnson Brooks: I should like to ask a question arising out of the minister's answer. Can he give us any idea when these negotiations with the other countries will be completed?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Just as soon as the other countries indicate that they are ready to sign a contract for the purchase of pit props.


Alfred Johnson Brooks: That is the sort of answer we have been getting.



AERO TIMBER PRODUCTS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Clarence Decatur Howe: On Friday last the hon. member for Peace River (Mr. Low) asked the Prime Minister whether he would give the name of the department which has possession of the records of Aero Timber Products Limited. These records are in the custody of the Department of Trade and Commerce.



PRICES SUPPORT


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. L. E. Cardiff (Huron North):: I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Agriculture, based on a statement which appeared in the press on Saturday regarding the butter situation in Canada. Is it true that the government is going to sell 10 million pounds of butter? If so, to whom, and at what price?


Righi Hon. J. G. Gardiner (Minister of Agriculture):: When the government undertook to take butter at a floor price it was
The Address-Mr. Knowles the intention eventually to sell it all. I understand that the amount on hand at present is something under 25 million pounds. I hope that sooner or later we shall sell it all, and we hope we shall sell it in the ordinary way.



SPEECH FROM THE THRONE


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed, from Thursday, March 2, consideration of the motion of Mr. F. H. Larson for an address to His Excellency the Governor General in reply to his speech at the opening of the session, and the amendment thereto of Mr. Drew, and the amendment to the amendment of Mr. Coldwell.
Mr. Stanley Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I rise in this debate to register my protest-and in doing so I am satisfied that it is the protest of many thousands of Canadians-against the way in which the government is failing to carry out one of its most important promises in the field of social security.
The people of this country, despite the fact that they have shown much patience with the Liberal party, deeply resent the breaking of solemn promises. One of the offers, one of the promises with which the people of Canada are most familiar, is the offer made in August of 1945 with respect to old age pensions. That proposal was spelled out very clearly. It was to be $30 a month, but please note these features-it was to be payable at the age of seventy to all Canadians, without any means test, and it was to be financed and administered entirely by the federal government.
I know from my experience that during the past number of years hundreds and thousands of people have been hoping each year that that would be the year in which that offer would be implemented. Last summer, after the election of June 27, many people thought then that surely there was nothing standing in the way of such a huge Liberal majority carrying out its proposal for a universal old age pension without a means test.
We are now confronted, however, not merely with a repudiation of that proposal, but with a denial that it was ever made. I wish to quote the words of the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) in answer to an interjection of mine during his speech on February 20, as recorded at page 62 of Hansard of this session. He had been speaking about old age pensions, and about the desirability, so far as the government is concerned, of moving in the direction of a direct contributory system. This was my interjection:


Stanley Howard Knowles: That was not the federal government's offer to the provinces in 1945. Was that offer not made without its involving a contributory system?

The Address-Mr. Knowles
And this was the reply:


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: No. it was not. I think that if the hon. member will refer to the proposition he will find there never was any offer of a pension without a means test and without a contribution.
That is the basis of my protest this afternoon-that we have this government not only back-tracking on its promises, not only failing to fulfil them; but now we have the head of the government denying that a promise with which all Canadians are familiar was ever made.
That was not just a chance statement by the Prime Minister, because he went on to say:
There could not be,-
In other words, there could not be such an offer.
-because it just would not work. We cannot have that proportion of the income of the nation derived from ordinary taxation devoted to old age pensions.
Then he went on to express his sympathy toward the old people, but indicated his own personal disapproval of there being no means test by saying:
Why should I, within the next two years, get a pension of $40 per month and hand back only something of the order of 45 or 50 per cent of it to the treasury?
The Prime Minister went on to discuss the matter further, in a lengthy paragraph which makes it clear that he meant precisely what he was saying when he declared that there never was an offer of a pension without a means test and without a contribution. I wish to document rather fully my contention that, to say the least, that is a misstatement of the facts.
I hold in my hand a copy of the proposals of the government of Canada presented to the dominion provincial conference on reconstruction in August, 1945. Under the heading "National Old Age Pensions at age 70", we find this at pages 37 and 38:
As part of the general proposals now put before the conference, it is proposed that the federal government would establish a system of national old age pensions entirely financed and administered by the federal government, and paid at the uniform rate of $30 per month regardless of means to men and women aged seventy and over in all parts of Canada.
The cost of national old age pensions by 1948, for example, is estimated at $200 million. (For details see table I below). There would be a partial recovery from people over seventy paying income tax.
Then on page 38 there is a further indication of what was involved in this proposal:
The principal feature of the proposed national old age pensions is the elimination of the means test after reaching age seventy, regarding this as unsuitable for the oldest group in the community, over eighty per cent of whom are not in fact capable of supporting themselves in useful remunerative work.

That is as clear cut as it could be. The principal feature of the proposal was the elimination of the means test after the age of seventy. Yet on February 20 of this year the Prime Minister said there never was any such offer. The paragraph at page 38 continues:
Payment, of pensions as of right to people of this age offers the best kind of economic security. It removes the fear of destitution much more certainly than any other method, and relieves old people of the necessity of seeking work, or of endeavouring to keep on working in unfavourable circumstances and beyond the age at which they should be able to retire, without dependence on charity or burdening the family. In addition to providing a minimum subsistence for those with no other resources, this system would enable other persons with moderate private savings to retire from active work sooner, or in more comfort than would otherwise be possible.
That offer in 1945 was a long hoped for turning point in this country, so far as thinking about old age security is concerned. I have in my mind a vivid recollection of an editorial which appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press some weeks ago, in which some of us were condemned for having so much to say about old age pensions. One of the reasons we were condemned, it was pointed out, was that by talking so much about old age pensions we were building up the hopes of old people-hopes which could not be fulfilled.
I plead guilty to the first part of that charge; I hope I have helped to build up the hopes of the Canadian people that there would soon be justice for our older citizens. But I point out that the document that really did build up the hopes of the Canadian people that the means test would be done away with was not a propaganda statement by a political party, but a forthright proposal and a definite statement from the government- the statement I have just read. That was the position of the federal government right down to February 20 of this year-that the means test had to go.
On that same page of the government's proposals it goes on to say this:
The removal of the means test would make it possible for these pensions to be administered by the federal government alone on a uniform national basis, without the necessity for provincial participation, and would therefore considerably relieve provincial finances. As the federal government would be assuming full financial responsibility, it would also administer the payment of these pensions.
Please note that in that outline of the proposal it is clear that there was to be no means test, and that these pensions were to be paid in full by the federal government. Now the Prime Minister stands up in this House of Commons and says there never was any offer of a pension without a means test and without a contribution. So-


Mr. Marlin:: Why not state the situation correctly?


Stanley Howard Knowles: I am stating it correctly and I am going on to state a lot more; indeed I shall be quoting from the minister's own words several times before I have finished in support of my contention that since 1945 it has been the government's position to get rid of the means test.
At page 42 of the same book there are further references to this matter, one paragraph of which refers to the financing of the plans put forward in 1945. I quote:
The proposed system of old age pensions payable as of right without means test to persons seventy or over would be instituted and administered by the dominion government, and specific agreements with provincial governments would not be essential 'o its implementation.
There it was in categorical terms. There was an underlying condition, the tax agreements; but, given the tax agreements, no other specific agreement was necessary before the federal government would proceed to implement its proposal of universal old age pensions at age seventy without a means test, paid in full by the federal government.
The proposals go on to say:
It is within the power of the dominion to finance its share of the combined cost of health insurance and of old age pensions out of the consolidated revenue fund with such modification of taxation as would be justified, in the opinion of parliament, by the universal benefits of health insurance and old age pensions and by the other purposes of dominion expenditure.
There are, however, some definite advantages, in terms of administrative efficiency, compliance, and popular understanding of the plans, in introducing features more specifically contributory in nature and tied up more closely with the provisions of health insurance and old age pension legislation. These additional and desirable features would be helpful in the early and effective inauguration of the plans, and the dominion government asks that they be provided for in specific agreements with the provincial governments.
I know what the government is now doing. The government is now relying on that subsidiary reference to a contributory plan, which was to be considered only when health insurance was combined with old age pensions. Before I conclude, I shall have something to say about the loose way in which the word "contributory" is used. It is the sort of word that needs to be defined.
I read that last paragraph which I just quoted in order to give, as it were, both sides of the story-to give the wording that the government now uses in its claim that it always had a contributory plan in mind. But I point out that, in the paragraph I have just quoted, the contributory feature comes in only when there is talk about an over-all plan, including both old age pensions and
The Address-Mr. Knowles health insurance. With that I agree; but remember that the offer to go ahead and implement the proposal of universal old age pensions without a means test was categorical and definite. The paragraph I have just quoted said that specific agreements with provincial governments would not be essential to the implementation of universal old age pensions without a means test.
That proposal was put before the country at that time. It was given considerable publicity. I hold in my hand bulletin 9-A put out by the wartime information board on August 11, 1945, giving a summary of these proposals. It was on the basis of that summary that stories reached the newspapers and got to the Canadian people. Here is what it said:
The federal government would itself finance and administer a system of national old age pensions for persons over seventy years of age. Pensions would be at the flat rate of $30 per month, regardless of means. To be eligible, the individual must have resided in Canada for at least twenty years since age eighteen, including the three year period immediately preceding the date of application for pension.
This part of the program would cost the federal government approximately $200,000,000 by 1948, although there would be some recovery through income tax receipts from persons over seventy.
In case there is any doubt as to the interpretation being put on those proposals by the wartime information board or by the press of that day or by the general public, I call as another witness on my side of the case the present Minister of Justice (Mr. Garson). I hold in my hand a copy of the budget speech which he made in the Manitoba legislature on Thursday, March 27, 1947, when he was provincial treasurer as well as premier of Manitoba. The first subject that he dealt with as provincial treasurer was by way of a report to the Manitoba legislature on the dominion-provincial negotiations of 1946-47. The present Minister of Justice, then provincial treasurer of Manitoba, started off with a few words about financial matters and he then went on to say:
In addition the dominion offered under the heading of social security to pay the following grants:
1. To everyone of the age of seventy years and over, an old age pension at the rate of $30 per month without a means test, with the dominion assuming sole responsibility for the total payments and costs of administration.
The Minister of Justice is a smart man, and you do not fool him very often. He knew what those proposals meant, and he stated that quite clearly in his report to the legislature of Manitoba.


Murdo William Martin: We have done better than that, and have increased the pensions since then.

The Address-Mr. Knowles


Stanley Howard Knowles: The total amount of pension has been increased, with provincial participation, and in the case of some pensioners the federal government does now pay $30 as its share. But the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Martin) should know better than try to get me off the track. The eligible age should be lowered and the amount of the pension increased, but first of all I am contending that the most important hurdle to get over is the removal of the means test and the making of old age pensions universal for all Canadians. That is the main issue. It was the offer to do that and the denial by the Prime Minister that such an offer was made that prompts me to speak in the terms I am using now.
May I remind the house, particularly hon. members who were in the last parliament, that this whole question was discussed in the House of Commons a good many times during the twentieth parliament. We met for the first session of that parliament on September 6, 1945, and I find that on September 14 the then minister of national health and welfare, the present Minister of National Defence (Mr. Claxton), spoke in the debate on the address and dealt with the dominion-provincial proposals. I read this simply to show that the proposals as understood by the wartime information board, as understood by the press, as understood by the Canadian people, and as understood by the then premier of Manitoba, now the Minister of Justice, were confirmed by a member of this government on the floor of the house. I quote from page 182 of Hansard of September 14, 1945, where the then minister of national health and welfare is reported as saying:
Then there are the proposals with regard to old age pensions. First, it is proposed that there shall be a national old age pension of $30 a month, payable by the federal government to everyone over seventy years of age and, second, a contribution by the federal government on a fifty-fifty basis to the cost of old age pensions, payable on proof of need1 to people between sixty-five and sixty-nine years of age, to be administered by the provinces.
Then again on page 183:
These proposals now put forward by the dominion government are as generous as we can make them, while at the same time keeping the whole plan in balance, and workable. We have reached a balance in our estimates: the plan hangs together, and can be made to work.
Those are the words of the present Minister of National Defence: "the plan hangs together, and can be made to work." Against those words we must now place the words used by the Prime Minister on February 20 of this year when he said that there never was an offer of a pension without a means test and without contributions; that there could not be, because it just would not work.
iMr. Martin.]
You see we are getting not only backtracking on promises, but a denial that the government ever made certain specific promises which have built up the hopes of the people of this country that the means test would be abolished.
A little later, on September 18, 1945, I was speaking in the debate on the address. It will be of no surprise to hon. members to hear that I was speaking on old age pensions. I asked some rhetorical questions which prompted the then minister of national health and welfare to interrupt. I quote from page 272 of Hansard of that date, where I am reported as follows:
Incidentally, it is still only a proposal, and all the figures with reference to it in the proposals made at the dominion-provincial conference, and all the figures given by the minister in his address the other day, referred to the year 1948. I wonder why 1948; is that the year of the next election?
Some hon. Members; Oh, oh.
Not a bad guess; I was only a year out. The report continues:


Mr. Claxton;: May I answer that now?


Stanley Howard Knowles: I suggest that we should have something more than proposals for the distant future.


Brooke Claxton: May I answer the question now?


Stanley Howard Knowles: I shall be glad if the minister will.


Brooke Claxton: Most of the figures for the proposal put before the conference were based on the year 1948. That was the first year following the war when we thought full conversion from war to peace would be in effect.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Has the government or the minister or anyone speaking on behalf of the government given any indication that the proposal of $30 a month is to come into effect any sooner than 1948?


Brooke Claxton: It will come into effect as soon as the provinces agree to the proposals.
There you are; once again there is confirmation. They were only waiting for tax agreements between the dominion and the provinces; but given that condition, a clear-cut, well-defined proposal for a universal pension without a means test and payable to all was to come into effect.
We came back in 1946, and in the course of that session the subject came up once more. I should like to quote again from the present Minister of National Defence, who at that time still held the portfolio of health and welfare. At page 751 of Hansard for April 10, 1946, I find these words:
Before that, social security legislation was studied by other branches of the government and in consequence the proposals made by the federal government to the dominion-provincial conference were worked out.
Please note, in view of the study we are now asked to make, by means of a special committee, that there was a study of this question before the proposals were worked out in 1945. I go on with the quotation:
They are proposals which we believe can be carried out by the Canadian people and which will work to their advantage. We also believe that the burden can be carried by the Canadian economy.

The Address-Mr. Knowles
The Prime Minister says now there never was any such offer, and that there could not be, even though the Minister of National Defence said on April 10, 1946, as he had said in 1945, that the proposals they had worked out had been worked out on the basis of study, and would work.
Further down the same page, and continuing on the next page, the then minister said:
The plan proposed by the federal government to the provinces would provide for the payment of $30 a month without a means test to everyone at the age of seventy, and that it is estimated would cost $200 million in 1948.


Mr. MacNicol:: To every person?


Brooke Claxton: Yes, over seventy.
I repeat, Mr. Speaker, that is the point in the whole issue that I am concerned about this afternoon-the universality of old age pensions, or getting rid of the means test. There is still the need for a higher pension and a lower eligible age, but first we must get rid of the means test. Hon. members are aware of the fact that we are receiving a great many representations these days on this subject. Admittedly that is one of the reasons why I am speaking about this matter, on behalf of the hundreds of people who are writing me, but I am also speaking about it because I firmly believe, from the study I have made of the question, that this is the most important hurdle to overcome. We can make other changes in old age pensions, but if we have not changed their application, if we have not made them apply to all our people, it will never be satisfactory. If we get a contributory system applying only to a limited section of the community, we shall have the same troubles they have been having with some of their plans in the United States. The first and the most important thing to do is to get rid of the means test and make the plan universal for all Canadians.
To carry on with my documentation of the government's position from 1945 until the Prime Minister uttered those strange words on the night of February 20, I ask you to turn to Hansard for June 18, 1947, at page 4283. We were then dealing with a bill to amend the Old Age Pensions Act in order to provide for certain increases that year. In this case the present Minister of National Health and Welfare is speaking, and at page 4283 he said:
As part of its program in the field of social security, the federal government proposed a system of national old age pensions. This provided for the federal government to assume the full responsibility for paying pensions at the rate of $30 a month to all persons in Canada seventy years and over.
I hope the minister will not get up and say that they are now paying $30, which is the federal government's share of the pension of
$40; because they are not paying it to all persons in Canada seventy and over, and that is the nub of the problem.


Mr. Maclnnis:: And not without a means test.


Stanley Howard Knowles: If you take away the means test you pay it to everyone. The government has used both ways of defining the same thing.
I continue to read what the minister said at that time, on June 18, 1947:
The federal government proposed these pensions for all eligible persons without any income or means test whatsoever, and the federal government proposed to administer this scheme directly and bear one hundred per cent of the cost, amounting to an estimated $200 million annually.
That was not a request, Mr. Speaker, made from this side of the house. That was a forthright statement made voluntarily by the Minister of National Health and Welfare, in which he Confirmed the proposals made in 1945- ' confirmed them in the terms in which they were understood by the press and the people of that day, and in the terms in which they were understood by the Minister of Justice who was then premier of Manitoba.
Later on in the same speech I find these words:
This, in broad outline, represents the proposals made by the federal government to the provinces with respect to the aged and the blind. These are an integral part of the objectives in social security which this government has set for itself as soon as satisfactory over-all arrangements on social security, fiscal and other matters can be made with the provinces.


Mr. Martin:: That was right and still is.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Just a minute; you were still talking in those days about dominion-provincial agreements as the one thing that was a condition precedent to the implementation of such a plan. The Prime Minister did not mention that the other night. His position now is that the offer of a universal pension paid to all without a means test and without contribution was never even made. He even went so far as to say such an offer could not have been made, it would not work, and anyway he did not believe in it.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Why not quote the Prime Minister's statement correctly?


Stanley Howard Knowles: I have done so several times already. Continuing with what happened on June 18, 1947, the then leader of the opposition was speaking, and the present Minister of National Health and Welfare interrupted him several times. The record is to be found at page 4291 of Hansard of that date. I need not quote it. The whole point was that the then leader of the opposition was saying that the government had changed its position, and

The Address-Mr. Knowles the minister of national welfare rose on a question of privilege and said that the position had not been changed, that the position as laid down in 1945 was still the position of the government.
I now turn to page 4643 of Hansard of June 25, 1947. The present Minister of National Health and Welfare was again speaking, and he said:
What my hon. friend can do is seriously to consider what I said about the government's over-all security proposals made to the provinces in August, 1945.
Listen to this:
If he does not accept my assurances I call to witness the words of the present Minister of Justice (Mr. Ilsley) when he was Minister of Finance last July, when he said that once we had a fiscal understanding with the provinces, the government's social security program represented an essential part of the government's objectives. I call to witness the statement of the present Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) twice this year, once in Toronto and once in this house. I call attention to my own statements as a responsible minister of the crown. But if that does not satisfy the hon. gentleman, let me remind him of the words of the Prime Minister in a telegram sent to the premier of Saskatchewan on July 15, 1946, and reiterated three times since in subsequent communications. This is what the Prime Minister of Canada said:
"As emphasized in the budget address, the public investment and social security proposals submitted last August remain an essential part of the dominion government's program. As soon as there is sufficient acceptance of the proposed tax agreements"-
That is the only condition-sufficient acceptance, not even total acceptance.
"-we shall be ready to explore, in a general conference, or otherwise, the possibilities of working out mutually satisfactory arrangements in regard to the whole or any part of our earlier public investment and social security proposals."
I turn now to page 4708 of Hansard of June 26, 1947, and I find that again the present Minister of National Health and Welfare is arguing with the then leader of the opposition; and the minister points out:
That portion of the old age pension scheme referring to the government's willingness to pay a pension to everyone seventy and over without a means test would cost the government over $200 million a year. These, as my hon. friend will appreciate, are not ordinary figures. The government's scheme was a plan in which every part had its place.


John Ritchie MacNicol: What does the minister mean by
"the government's scheme"?


Paul Joseph James Martin: The proposals put forward by the
government to the provinces in August, 1945. The government stands by these.


Paul Joseph James Martin: And still does.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I am glad to hear the Minister of National Health and Welfare say that; I hope he will so inform the Prime Minister.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Nothing the Prime Minister said is in any wise to the contrary.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The Prime Minister said there never was any offer of a pension without a means test and without contribution, and he said that there could not be, because it just would not work.


Mr. Fleming:: The Prime Minister and the Minister of National Health and Welfare cannot both be right.


Stanley Howard Knowles: A little further on we find the Minister of National Health and Welfare repeating his stand. This is on page 4715. I need not take time to read it; it simply reiterates all the assurances the minister had given previously, quoting again the Prime Minister's telegram to Premier Douglas of Saskatchewan and the statement of Mr. Ilsley on June 27, 1946, making it crystal clear that the offer of the government still stood, that the government stood by its proposals of 1945.
Then we get on to 1948, when, on June 16, as reported at page 5346 of Hansard, we find the Minister of National Health and Welfare saying:
I am going to say in the kindliest way, as my colleague the Minister of Labour would say, because we have to be realistic, that we have made certain proposals to the provinces. The Prime Minister, the present Minister of Justice, the present Minister of Finance and I have stated the policy of the government with regard to those proposals. They still remain in their broad essentials the policy of the government of Canada.
After that came the Liberal convention in the summer of 1948, which adopted a long platform witih twenty-one planks. Plank 14 reiterated the 1945 dominion-provincial proposals. After that came the election campaign of 1949. Here is a Liberal advertisement which appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press just before the election, advertising the various Liberal candidates, including the hon. member for Winnipeg South (Mr. Mutch), who now says he does not advocate social security but rather social justice, which is a very fine distinction; but here is his picture right opposite the words "Vote Liberal-Social security."
Similarly I have here a couple of copies of a publication known as the "Canadian Outlook," put out during the pre-election period, in my city at any rate. From where you are, Mr. Speaker, you can see the headline "Security", and then these words:
The Liberal platform is a living, progressive, practical program of expanding social security.
That was coupled with a warning that if by any chance there was not a clear majority of Liberals in this parliament, the country might not get broader social security. Well, see what we have: an overwhelming Liberal majority, and a denial by the Prime Minister

that the offer of 1945 was ever made. Here it is again in another of these pre-election pamphlets:
Canada's business is your business. Keep Canada prosperous. Safeguard your security on June 27. Vote Liberal.
Well, Mr. Speaker, all this evidence simply makes it clear that what we declare to have been the understanding of the Canadian people is perfectly correct. Ever since August of 1945 they have understood that this government stood for the removal of the means test from the old age pension, and stood for making the pension universal for all Canadians seventy years of age and over, and possibly even younger. Now, however, we have this annoying and very disappointing denial by the Prime Minister; and I am speaking as I do today because I am convinced there simply must be a change in that position.
We hear a great deal of talk today about a contributory system. I want to say that as a matter of fact you cannot have anything other than a contributory system. The people on old age pensions today have contributed to the wealth out of which those pensions are being paid. They contributed to the building up of the economic well-being of this country. But there are other kinds of contributory systems. You could have one in which you would make a direct contribution in return for which you would get a pension based upon the amount of the contribution you had made. I hope we do not get a restricted system of that kind, for it is no better than the private life insurance companies can offer. There is another kind of contributory system under which everyone contributes to the cost of government through income tax, recognizing that one of those costs of government is social security, in return for which everyone would get the old age pension as a matter of right. I give the government this much credit; I believe that is what was in their mind when they made their proposals in 1945. I believe they had in mind that the financing of their proposals might involve adjustments or even increases in the income tax so that the total cost of old age pensions without a means test could be paid out of the federal treasury. That would be a proper scheme, because it would envision people paying according to their ability to pay, and drawing the old age pension at the proper age as a matter of right.
But what is happening now? The people who made those promises last June-especially the Liberals-are getting themselves off the hook by talking about an undefined contributory system, when they know it would take years before such a system could be brought in. One Liberal candidate at least was on the beam in this matter last June. I refer to the hon. member for Vancouver
The Address-Mr. Knowles Centre (Mr. Campney) who, with some of that $21,000 he spent in his election campaign, advertised in the Vancouver News-Herald of June 13, 1949, saying:	*
6.	I will fight for a contributory retirement pension plan for all persons over sixty-five as a right.
7.	Pending the establishment of the foregoing act, I will fight for old age pensions to be paid to men of sixty-five and women of sixty without a means test, the pension to be large enough to ensure an adequate standard of living.
I wish that same member would get up in the house and express those views and fight for the things he said he would fight for, because all we are getting today is a lot of talk about a contributory system which is just an excuse for not supporting our demand for the removal of the means test. I want to say to the Minister of National Health and Welfare, the Prime Minister and those responsible for any steps that may be taken, that if you put old age pensions on a contributory basis first instead of first making the pension universal, you will bedevil old age security in this country for many years to come. That is one of the great problems they are facing in this field in the United States today despite the many good features of their legislation. It arises from the fact that they put it on a contributory basis and did not in the beginning include all United States citizens. Now the problem of extending the coverage is very difficult indeed.
The first thing we should do is precisely what the government proposed back in 1945. Just as what was put forward in 1945 represented a forward move in the thinking of the government about this matter, so .1 believe it is extremely important that at this session of parliament the idea expressed by the Prime Minister the other day should be squelched at the first opportunity. I say that we should not let it go any further; that the important step, the move that must come first, is not getting the contributions started. That will come, and come easily. The move that should come first is getting rid of the means test and making the pension universal and payable to all Canadians. I say to hon. members who are getting these cards and petitions, as I am getting them by the hundreds, that I believe they emphasize the soundness of the position I am taking, that the removal of the means test should come first.
A moment ago I mentioned that in one of of the advertisements appearing in the Winnipeg Free Press of last June calling upon people to vote Liberal in order to get social security-imagine that-the picture of the hon. member for Winnipeg South appeared opposite the words "Social security". He catapulted himself into fame in this country by making an interesting speech in Toronto

The Address-Mr. Knowles some days ago, in which he said that some Liberals might be confused, but he was not; that what we need in this country is not social security but social justice.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: He was just trying out the ice.


Stanley Howard Knowles: No doubt he was flying a kite. He said:
Social justice means lifting the fallen, aiding the unfortunate, standing between the weak and those who may seek to oppress them.
But he also said:
During the last federal election the Progressive Conservatives and the C.C.F. talked of social security. We Liberals in our platform distinguished between social security and social justice. I confess that some Liberals have failed to note the difference.
Well, that was a very interesting speech to read. He wants social justice; he wants to lift the fallen and aid the unfortunate, to stand between the weak and those who may seek to oppress them. But don't give them social security; just offer it to them in an advertisement just before election day. He went on to say that this talk about social security is fundamentally dishonest. I wonder about this talk of dishonesty when at election time you get this sort of thing- "Vote Liberal and get social security,"-and immediately thereafter you are told in a speech that the Liberals do not stand for social security but only for a vague thing called social justice.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: After all, they can still say they won the election.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Oh, yes; that is the usual song -they won the last election. It will probably oe their last win-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Stanley Howard Knowles: My hon. friends may laugh, but they know that if they keep on going in this reverse direction so far as these social security proposals are concerned, they will have seen their last victory at the polls in this country.
May I say to the hon. member for Winnipeg South that while a great many people are taking his name in vain because of the speech he made in Toronto, at least he has found friends in the Canadian chamber of commerce. In their most recent newsletter they have an interesting little article entitled "Plain talk from Mr. Mutch". It says that his speech is going to make him some enemies, but it will also make him some friends, and I assume that the friends are amongst the people to whom this newsletter is sent. That speech of the hon. member for Winnipeg

South, according to the report of it in this Canadian chamber of commerce newsletter, included this statement:
The term "social security", Mr. Mutch is reported as saying, "is indefinable, immeasurable and dishonest."
I am just about through, Mr. Speaker, but I want to say something about that remark of the hon. member for Winnipeg South, to the effect that the term "social security" is dishonest. I do not know exactly what he meant, but I have a notion that he meant that it is dishonest to give people the impression that they can get something for nothing. May I say that the thing that I deplore most about the economic order we have at the present time is its dishonesty, as is spelled out by the fact that thousands, yes, millions of people, produce wealth the fruits of which they are not permitted to enjoy. The glaring fact about our economy today is that millions of people do not get the full measure of the wealth they create, whereas a privileged few get far more than they produce. It is that fundamental dishonesty, that injustice, that unfairness, that we are trying to correct by advocating proper measures of social security. I call upon this parliament, and particularly upon the Liberal members of it, to put all the pressure they can on the government to reverse the trend indicated by the Prime Minister on February 20, when he said there never was such an offer as a universal pension without a means test, that there could not be, and that it would not work. I call upon the government to get back to the essential soundness of the proposals that were made in 1945, namely, that our old age pension be made payable to all Canadians, regardless of any means test, on a universal basis, and without delay.


Mr. E. A. McCusker (Regina City):: May I,
Mr. Speaker, join with those who have preceded me in offering congratulations to the mover and the seconder of the motion for the address, and also to the hon. member for Edmonton West (Mr. Prudham) on his promotion to the position of parliamentary assistant. A few days ago this house went into committee of supply on the Department of External Affairs. The Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Pearson) gave us a report on the operation of his department, and a general review of the international situation. He referred to some of the most important problems explored on his recent trip and conference, and stressed the generally unsatisfactory and anxious position in which the peace-minded democracies find themselves today on account of the hostile attitude and uncertain intentions of the communist-dominated countries.

He was alternately criticized and praised by those who followed in the debate. The hon. member for Peel (Mr. Graydon), who is absent today, complains that the department does not keep the members of this house in general, and the committee on external affairs in particular, fully informed on the current situation or on its plans for the future. He complains that the committee was not allowed to call before it for questioning Mr. Davis who was our ambassador to China. As one who opposed calling Mr. Davis before that committee, I should like to point out that the usefulness of Mr. Davis as an ambassador would have ended after one session in a committee in which he might be subjected to questions and his statements made public. I should like to have listened, to his report on China; it probably would be most interesting; but I should like to see him continue in that service.
Those who are employed in positions such as the one occupied by Mr. Davis cannot be expected to report to anyone but the head of his department, or to the Prime Minister. I am afraid that we on that committee must content ourselves with the meagre information passed on by the department. When I say "meagre information", I do not accuse the department of withholding information to which we are entitled. We must realize that the department has certain information which it cannot divulge to a committee where it would be made public, and therefore we cannot expect them to do so.
I have listened carefully to, and studied, the speeches made on foreign affairs in this house since the opening of the session. While I congratulate all those who have spoken on the research they have done in the preparation of those speeches, I still maintain that the information contained in them is gleaned mainly from the many periodicals which fill our mail today, and is available to all our people. They cast no new light upon the problem, but tend to stress the personal fears and anxieties of those who have spoken. As far as I am concerned, the situation remains as it has been for the past few years, one of grave concern to which our Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) and the Secretary of State for External Affairs must give close attention; but the gravity of it must not be allowed to depress our people and develop in them an attitude, a complex of fear and futility. Because of this unfortunate international situation we are committed to large expenditures for the defence of democracy. Although the burden is heavy, I feel that we have the ability to carry it. We feel that within our resources we are
The Address-Mr. McCusker doing everything that we possibly can do. There then remains for us who are not fully occupied in this task a duty to develop our country so that it can support these evergrowing expenditures.
Let me now direct the attention of the house to the many important practical problems which require our immediate attention. The first is unemployment. We all know that in this country, in which we have a severe winter climate, we are bound to find seasonal unemployment. This year some employers listened to the talk about depression, and curtailed employment beyond what they were justified in doing. In addition, the layoff in shipping has added to the unemployment. In the province from which I come we always have winter unemployment. This year it is greater than normal, but when the spring season comes around, which will be soon, and the people are able to return to the land, and when the construction projects that are in view are started, I feel that labour will be fully employed, and that all this unemployment will be absorbed.
The condition in Vancouver was aggravated by a great number of people who each winter go from the prairies to Vancouver looking for a warmer winter climate, and who seek positions there in order to help pay expenses for the winter. They were disappointed in their quest. In fact, I am told that the conditions in Vancouver and Victoria were so bad this year, with snow and slush so deep on the streets, that the older inhabitants had to attach outboard motors to their wheel chairs in order to get around; and this of course added greatly to the traffic congestion.


Mr. Cruickshank:: Nonsense.


Emmett Andrew McCusker: There is not a member in this house who does not feel sorry for the unemployed and their families. I am sure we were all pleased with the rapidity with which the house came to their assistance by means of extension of the unemployment insurance benefits. I feel that the worker who is employed will not object to the additional premium of one cent per day, nor will the employer.
Those who contribute to that fund must have been happy to learn that it was substantial, safe and carefully administered. As the debate indicated, there are those who confuse unemployment insurance with plans to relieve unemployment. Surely there should be no confusion.
May I at this late date extend my congratulations to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration (Mr. Harris) on his promotion

The Address-Mr. McCusker to cabinet rank. I am sure he will attack the problem of immigration with vigour and determination.
The hon. member for Cape Breton South (Mr. Gillis) informs me that yearly many boys and girls upon leaving high school in the maritime provinces have to leave home to seek employment in other parts of Canada and in the United States. The industries that formerly employed them there have gone. I feel that every effort should be made to induce the boys and girls to remain in Canada, and to assist them to remain. The minister should be given wide latitude in doing that. What is the use of bringing displaced persons from Europe and allowing our own educated boys and girls to leave the country?
To a great extent western Canada was first settled by teen-agers and they played a large and prominent part in developing the country. Mr. Isaac Pitblado, who was honoured the other day in Winnipeg, was one of those. He opened his law practice in Winnipeg at the age of nineteen. I believe the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) came to the prairies in his teens. He taught school there and assisted in developing the country. To him goes the honour of first advocating the franchise being extended to eighteen-year-olds. His ideas were considered too advanced at that time, but they bore fruit some time later; for the franchise has been extended to these people in Saskatchewan. I do not think it would do any harm if we extended it federally.
During the periods in which we were engaged in two wars Canada developed in wealth and national status with a rapidity that might not have been achieved in times of peace. It is true our sacrifices were great and our suffering considerable, but what can be achieved without sacrifice and suffering? Are we to allow the gains made in those years to slip away from us, to be wiped out, because we want security, wealth and comfort? I hope not. Today our purse is full. Never before have we enjoyed such prosperity. That prosperity will last just so long as we continue to develop our many resources with all our energy.
We have great deposits of iron ore in Canada. We have the Steep Rock mines in Ontario, and great deposits in Labrador. We have great deposits of coal in the maritimes. It is true there is no coal in close proximity to the Steep Rock mines, and that ore must go south. But need the ore from Labrador all go south to the smelters, and must our people follow it to obtain work? We have coal in the maritimes; we have the people to mine it. We have a steel industry there. Why not develop those two industries? A good

steel industry in the maritimes would support the entire economy of that part of the country with a population three times as large as it is today.
There is coal in Alberta. There is oil in abundance in that province, and in the Lloyd-minster area of Saskatchewan. Should we not develop that as quickly as possible? The Imperial Oil Company is building a pipe line, which will be completed to Regina in October of this year and on to Superior early next year. The oil from Superior will be taken down to Sarnia and Toronto by boat to be refined. Today Montreal receives its oil from South America. There is a pipe line from Portland to Montreal. I understand there is another pipe line to be built there. Why not build a pipe line from Parry Sound on the Georgian bay to Ottawa and on to Montreal and use the western oil? In the event of war does Montreal think or do we think that Montreal will have an uninterrupted oil supply? I think not. Because of the many submarines that Russia has today I think it will be considerably interfered with. Parry Sound is only 225 miles from Ottawa and 325 from Montreal. Why not build a pipe line now while we are at peace?
I should now like to direct the attention of the house to irrigation. In Alberta today there are approximately 175,000 acres under irrigation. There is a large beet industry there which employs a large number of people. Along with the beet industry there is a canning industry, because the beet crop must be rotated with garden crops and so garden crops are grown. In Canada we produce only 10 per cent of our sugar requirements. Here is an industry which we could develop quite easily. I was told by some of the men who were attending a beet growers meeting here in Ottawa recently that they are feeding
60,000	head of cattle and 125,000 sheep on the by-products of that industry in Alberta this winter. It is an industry that employs a considerable number of people.
The St. Mary river dam project is nearing completion. When it is completed it will bring under irrigation in the Lethbridge and Medicine Hat areas approximately 500,000 acres of land. I might almost say under cultivation, because in the dry years there is not much cultivation in that part of the country. The project at Red Deer will bring another half million acres under cultivation or irrigation. In addition it will supply 20 million kilowatt hours of electricity for sale a year. The greatest project of all is the one on the Saskatchewan river at Elbow. It will provide water to irrigate 650,000 acres of land. In addition to that it could produce yearly 435 million kilowatt hours of electricity. That is sufficient to supply one and a half times the needs of

the province at the present time. It will produce revenue sufficiently large to pay for the project itself in about 40 years. Yet I am amazed to find that in the agricultural estimates this year only $1 million appears for this project, half of what was there last year. I understand the difficulty is that no agreement has been made between the provinces and the federal government as to the proper allocation of costs of distributing the water after the dam is built.
I think hon. members to my left, the C. C. F. and the Social Credit groups, could do a great service to this country and to the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan by impressing upon their friends in the governments of those provinces the necessity of an early agreement in this matter.


Mr. Wylie:: Especially the Liberal government.


Emmett Andrew McCusker: Wait a few more years and you will be able to talk to a Liberal government in Saskatchewan. I do not want to have to wait that long for this project to be proceeded with.


William Duncan McKay Wylie: You never know what you are talking about.


Emmett Andrew McCusker: I cannot let this opportunity pass without saying how pleased I am to see that the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Martin) has a resolution on the order paper having to do with old age pensions. I am glad to know that he intends to place this matter before a committee where all views can be submitted and heard. I think that committee is the place to hear it, and that all hon. members will be glad to remove from this chamber much of the tiresome debate to which we have had to listen on that subject to date. Let us have those matters settled in committee.
Let me say to the hon. member who has just taken his seat that during the last campaign I said, and I have said it also from the floor of the house, that I was in favour of old age pensions without a means test, but on a contributory basis. That statement was quoted in all my literature. I repeated it when I was home this year, and it is a view, may I say, that meets with the approval of the majority of the people in Regina.


Mr. Quelch:: Would the hon. member say what he means by the word "contributory"?


Emmett Andrew McCusker: I shall take the hon. member aside and explain it to him later. I have not the time to do so now because I have other things to say. There are a few other matters to which I should like to refer, now that I am on my feet. One of these is the Hudson bay route, a road which has been too long
The Address-Mr. McCusker neglected and to which I suggest attention must be paid. However, I understand another hon. member will refer to this matter in greater detail at a later date.
We have in Saskatchewan an office in connection with the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act. In that office we find a group who are doing good work for the rehabilitation of farmers in the western part of the province, and especially in the area of Gull lake, and Maple Creek which is represented by the hon. member who the other day made what I thought was a jocular remark with respect to dividing the province. He may feel it is necessary to do that to get rid of the government we now have in Saskatchewan. That is not my view however, because I think they are on the way out now-just waiting for the next election.
Let me tell the house why I believe they are on the way out. About 1941 or 1942 the Imperial Oil Company came to Saskatchewan and initiated a program of exploration and drilling for oil. It was their opinion that the main pool of oil lies under Saskatchewan. With that in mind they brought in drilling and seismographic crews. Then the C.C.F. government took office and passed confiscatory legislation, with the result that the crews left the province and went to Alberta, where they felt they would receive a fair deal. Those crews which were driven from Saskatchewan to Alberta were responsible for the discoveries of the Leduc and Redwater fields, and other discoveries in the area.
The good fortune Alberta is enjoying today might have been ours, had we had more experienced people in charge of our government.


Mr. Blackmore:: If you had had a Social Credit government in Saskatchewan you would have had the development there.


Emmett Andrew McCusker: It might be worth while even to put up with a Social Credit government if we could have that development.


John Horne Blackmore: You are right.


Emmett Andrew McCusker: Because we would have some compensation for it.
On this occasion the ordinary private member has an opportunity to review the requirements of his constituency. As it happens, I am fortunate today in that I am asking for my constituency something of national importance. I wonder if the Minister of Justice (Mr. Garson) is aware of the condition of disrepair into which the buildings of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at Regina have fallen. This condition is not due to neglect, but rather to the age of those buildings, some of which were built as long ago as 1882 or 1883, and
-i80	HOUSE OF
The Address-Mr. Higgins some even earlier than that. They are on rubble foundations and are no longer safe. The small chapel was at first a wet canteen. That building was enlarged and converted into a chapel. Today it stands as a pleasing memorial to those in the force who lost their lives while in pursuit of their duties. It would be a shame to fail to repair that building, or to permit it to be destroyed. It has great tourist attraction. Then, the barracks buildings are inadequate because, as we know, the force is constantly being enlarged. Regina is a training centre, and there is great overcrowding at that point. It is also necessary to provide additional accommodation for the instructional staff. I hope the Minister of Justice will bear these facts in mind and see that attention is given to them.
Since coming to the House of Commons I have heard many hon. members tell us what a great people we are. We take pride in our new national status. Our representatives return from abroad to tell us of the high esteem in which we are held. Today, Mr. Speaker, we have an opportunity to prove whether we are worthy sons of those great pioneers. Though the international horizon be cloudy, though our defence burdens be heavy, though our domestic problems be great, our opportunities are equally great and unlimited. In the manner in which we apply ourselves to our duties will be found the answer as to whether or not we are a great people, a nation.
Mr. G. F. Higgins <St. John's East): Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure again today to speak from the newest province and to extend congratulations to the mover (Mr. Larson) and the seconder (Mr. Dumas) of the address in reply. Unfortunately I did not have the pleasure of hearing them speak, but I read their speeches carefully and I must say they were excellent in every way.
I did not hear them for two reasons. The first of these, the weather, is something over which we have no control. However, the Canadian National Railways, the second of those conditions, is something about which I feel the Minister of Transport (Mr. Chevrier) could do something. I have in mind particularly the conditions at Louisburg, Nova Scotia. However, I shall not deal with that matter now because I believe it might be discussed more appropriately at a later time.
Referring to the speech from the throne my leader (Mr. Drew) said, as reported at page 38 of Hansard:
As to the speech from the throne itself, it contains so little of a definite nature that any remarks which may contribute to the effective consideration of our problems necessarily must be related more to what the speech from the throne does not say than to anything it does say.
	,

In the old days of the parliament in Newfoundland we had an expression which would seem to sum up what was said by the leader of the opposition. We would have said that the speech from the throne was more remarkable for what it did not contain than for what it did contain. Or, as one of my constituents said in a letter to me the other day, "Heap big smoke; no fire".
In the few remarks I shall make I intend to deal only with provincial matters. Perhaps it is better that I follow this procedure because the problems of the new province are not yet well known. I believe that, on every possible occasion other members from Newfoundland and I are permitted to inflict our views upon the house, we should try to direct the attention of hon. members to Newfoundland and its problems.
When the other day the Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. Gregg) unequivocally refused to set up a parliamentary committee on veterans affairs I was greatly disturbed, because among the requests received by members from Newfoundland was one from our great war veterans association asking in particular that such a committee be set up. I found it necessary to reply to them by stating that for some reason or other, which we had not yet been able to ascertain, we had received only a blunt refusal to their request. Furthermore, in the letter received there was a request that we support the Legion's recommendation for increases in the basic rates of war veterans' and widows' allowances from $40 to $50 per month for single veterans and widows with no dependents, and to $80 per month for married veterans and widows with dependents. The brief of the dominion executive council of the Canadian Legion, presented I believe in November of last year, stated that in some provinces the recipients are receiving less than they would under the Old Age Pensions Act. The Legion appreciated the extra aid given but stated that it feels strongly that a general increase in the basic rate would be more satisfactory to all concerned. I trust that the minister and the cabinet will take under advisement the necessity of reconsidering the decision already given in this matter.
I notice the Minister of Transport (Mr. Chevrier) is not in his seat, but I should like to take advantage of this opportunity to draw to his attention a situation that exists at Gander airport. Owing to a regulation passed during wartime the erection of new buildings is not permitted within five miles of the airport. The result is that housing conditions are simply scandalous. Families are paying $110 per month to live in old converted

barracks. This is a ridiculous situation and I trust the necessary action will be taken to have the regulation rescinded immediately.
As the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) just said, all hon. members are receiving requests with respect to old age pensions and the removal of the means test. Along with the other Newfoundland members I have received a great number of these. The Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) more or less intimated the other day that Canada could not afford to pay for such pensions, but in view of the able argument put forward by the hon. member I am convinced that that legislation should be on the statute books.
I concur in what was said by the hon. member for Skeena (Mr. Applewhaite) with regard to the establishment of a coastguard. I spoke in this chamber last session with regard to that matter. The hon. member indicated the necessity for such a service on the west coast of Canada. As you know, the wise men come from the east and all I can say is that the need on the east coast for such a service is as great as it is on the west coast. I am in favour of a coastguard modelled on the United States coastguard. No blame can be attached to the R.C.M.P., who operate the present set-up, but I submit that they certainly should not have to do that work.
There is another matter I should like to raise but I do not know just what value my argument may have. As hon. members know, there are now three senators from Newfoundland and three more are to be appointed. I suggest to the Prime Minister that he act in accordance with past precedent when new provinces came into confederation and not appoint all the senators on party lines. When the new appointments are made I suggest that he go outside his party and appoint those who are other than Liberals.
There is another matter I should like to bring up, and here again I do not suppose there is much hope. Owing to the uncultured state of Newfoundland before we entered confederation all books were allowed to come in duty free. Since confederation any books coming into Newfoundland from the United States must pay duty. It would not cost the country very much and would be of great help, even to the people in older Canada, if the duty on books were removed. I can assure the government that the people of Newfoundland would welcome that move very much.
The speech from the throne referred to the dominion-provincial conference held in January. The parliamentary assistant to the premier of Newfoundland stated on February 15, when the Newfoundland legislature was
The Address-Mr. Higgins opened, that he had been present and could not help but notice the high regard in which the premier of Newfoundland was held by all the people in Ottawa. He said that from what he could see and hear there appeared to be only three premiers at the conference, the Prime Minister, the premier of Quebec (Mr. Duplessis), and Mr. Smallwood. He compared them to Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, although he did not particularize which was which. I would think that there was a fairly good foundation in fact not to compare the Prime Minister with Joe Stalin. I doubt if the parliamentary assistant would compare his own premier to Stalin. It would appear to me as if we may be getting ready for war between Quebec and Newfoundland over the Labrador boundary. That by the way.
It was stated in the speech from the throne that employment and prosperity remained at a high level, but as far as my part of the country is concerned that statement is not borne out by the facts. As I stated earlier, I am not going to refer to the over-all picture but only to the picture as it presents itself in Newfoundland. The present outlook there is bleak indeed. The number of unemployed is high and the prospects are far from bright. In January the men engaged on relief work, apart from those receiving unemployment insurance or unemployment assistance, numbered 10,237.
The minister of finance of Newfoundland issued a message at the end of the year in the Daily News, stating that it was expected that that province would close the year on March 31, not with a cash surplus of $40 million but with one just under $32 million. He said that a total of $8,500,000 would have been expended from the cash surplus during the year. For the eight months April to December there was a deficit of over $4 million on current expenditure. When it is realized that the entire revenue for that period is around $20 million you will realize how grave the situation is.
Iron ore for Dosco at Sydney is supplied largely from Bell island, but the mines there are having a difficult time. It was expected that a contract with the British steel makers for the delivery of 1,500,000 tons per year for ten years would have been entered into last year, but the British government would not consent because of the exchange situation and the deal fell through. Permission was given to complete the balance of the 1949 contract. Last November a possibility appeared to sell 1,125,000 tons to be delivered this year, made up of 300,000 tons to Western Germany-Germany before the war was always a great market for our ore-
300,000	tons to England and the remainder to the steel plant at Sydney. Unfortunately

The Address-Mr. Higgins this deal also tell through. I understand it was to be financed more or less by means of Marshall aid, and whatever happened-
I think it was the curtailment of funds more than anything else-the deal also fell through. At the present time the only prospect in sight is the amount of ore to be shipped to Sydney, some 700,000 tons, and from the latest information we have it may be reduced by another 100,000 tons.
The present position at Bell island is that they are only operating two mines on a five day a week basis, and that there are some
1,000	men actually unemployed out of a working force of 2,000. From the best advice that we can secure this situation is going to continue, and there may be an even bigger reduction in the number employed because I understand they are modernizing the plant and putting in new machinery, which naturally will cut down on employment. I take it that is generally the result of installing machinery. That is what the hon. member for Cape Breton South (Mr. Gillis) tells me, and he should know. At all events the situation is causing grave concern not only to the people of Bell island but also to the provincial government.
In order that the necessary action may be taken, I should like to draw to the attention of the minister concerned the fact that some difficulty has arisen in the payment of unemployment insurance cheques and there has been great dissatisfaction. Cheques have not been received regularly. Some of these people have been kept waiting over two months, and they have to travel twelve miles by land and water to St. John's to get their cheques. I trust that action will be taken to see that these people who have no money, and who have to get to St. John's as best they can, will be able to receive their unemployment insurance payments without having to wait two months and be paid at Bell island.
The provincial government have undertaken relief work in Newfoundland, as I think I said during last session, and the burden has been considerable. So far the Newfoundland government has expended $1,250,000 on unemployment relief, a tremendous amount of money for that little province, and how long it will be able to keep it up is very difficult to say. So long as we have a voice in this house there is one matter which we will raise. We want the terms of confederation revised upwards. They must be revised if Newfoundland is going to be able to keep up with the other provinces of Canada.
There is another matter that has only come to my attention recently, although it should have before. In talking to some of the business people of Newfoundland they have


pointed out that there is a factor which was never mentioned in the confederation discussions, and which should have been. I refer to the great benefit that Canada is receiving now from increased trade, something that she did not have before. Most of our former trade with the United States is now being carried on with Canada. In other words, Canada is selling to Newfoundland $40 million more than she sold before confederation. That is a considerable factor and should certainly be borne in mind when we ask to have the terms revised, as we will have to very shortly.
I had hoped that fishermen would be included in the amendments to the Unemployment Insurance Act. I presume they could not be, although I do not know the reason why. It seems to me to be a great pity that some scheme cannot be worked out whereby fishermen could be covered under the Unemployment Insurance Act. What has become of these poor people who do not qualify for unemployment insurance? There is no federal agency taking care of them. They are left chiefly to charitable organizations, and that is a most ridiculous situation in a country which we heard described last year by the hon. member for Spadina (Mr. Croll) as a welfare state. As I have already said, there is a considerable amount of unemployment, and a lot of it can be attributed directly to confederation. That is a pretty harsh statement. I realize that even the most rabid anti-confederationist cannot blame confederation altogether for that fact, but even the most partisan-and I include hon. members on the other side of the house from Newfoundland^-supporters of confederation must agree that the hitting of our secondary industries and the closing of a number of them can be directly attributed to this fact. I understand that some half a dozen have closed already, and the remainder are making a very gallant effort to keep running, but what happened in the case of the maritimes, as is known so well to maritime members of the house, will happen in Newfoundland in so far as the secondary industries of the province are concerned. The best proof I can give of that-and I am sure you will understand that I do not say this because I was an anti-confederate

is that, if I may use slang language, it comes right from the horse's mouth.
I should like to refer to the submission of the government of the province of Newfoundland to the royal commission on transportation, and particularly to that section of it dealing with the economic outlook for St. John's. Practically all of our secondary industries are located there. The submission reads:

The impact of confederation upon St. John's as the chief trading and distributing centre of the island will be revolutionary. Heretofore it has been the chief receiving centre and distribution point for imports into Newfoundland. Because of the diversion of trade from sources of supply in the United States of America and Europe to Canadian suppliers, and because of the re-routing of imports through gateways more contiguous to the mainland than St. John's, this import business, with its consequent distributing trade, will be lost irrevocably to the capital. It is safe to say that in time the trading and distributing activities of St. John's will be limited largely to the Avalon peninsula. This prospect poses a matter of grave concern to that section of the population residing within and around the Avalon peninsula. It is of particular moment to those resident in St. John's.
No basic industries exist in St. John's. No natural resources capable of providing a basic economy are to be found within its immediate vicinity, with one exception. It therefore follows that with the falling off of import trade through this port, and the consequent loss of its primary position as the distributing centre for the island, an alternative economy must be built up or St. John's will not only fail to maintain its present position, but must inevitably suffer a decline in trade and employment of serious and1 far-reaching proportions.
The local industries located within the area may exist precariously for some time to come, but it is difficult to see how manufacturing concerns within St. John's can compete effectively with mass-producing units engaged in the same line of business on the mainland.
There is one ray of hope in this dark outlook. It is to be found in the establishment at St. John's of a great producing and processing centre for the products of the sea. The harbour is ice free all the year round-
This is a misstatement so far as this year is concerned.
-and for this reason it can be utilized as a base for such an operation.
So, Mr. Speaker, in the vernacular this submission, which comes from the Smallwood administration and can therefore be taken as unbiased, means that the outlook is for St. John's, one of the oldest cities on this side of the water, as a result of confederation to become nothing better than a fishing village. That is the most it can hope for; and that is not a nice picture. I do not know what will become of the people who are going to lose their livelihood as a result of our local industries closing. The sad part of it to me, and to many others who think as I do, is that the only alternative appears to be for the people who are now engaged in these secondary industries to increase the population of the other provinces of the dominion. Without doubt we are going to see mass emigration from Newfoundland in the years ahead.
I am glad to learn from the speech from the throne that it is proposed to amend the price support legislation. I trust that these funds will be made available to the fishermen of Newfoundland because, as I have said before, the backbone of our economy is the salt fish trade. A number of Newfoundland merchants 55946-311
The Address-Mr. Higgins engaged in the fish trade are in this city today; and their chief purpose in coming to Ottawa is to interview the cabinet in an endeavour to arrange for the conversion of sterling. I know this problem of sterling conversion exists throughout Canada, but I do submit that the people of Newfoundland must be given special treatment for some years to come. After all you must remember that here on the mainland you have a pattern that has been woven over many years. We are now trying to come into that pattern, but it is utterly impossible to expect us to do so at once, particularly with respect to our export trade, chiefly the fish trade, where we have been dealing in markets that have no substantial attraction for the other provinces of Canada. So it is going to be very difficult for us to be assimilated into your general trade pattern unless special treatment is given our province. The special treatment we ask-and I know this will be supported by all hon. members from the province

is that for a few years to come you arrange for the conversion of sterling in connection with the fish trade. It will not amount to very much. At the most in a single year it will not exceed $15 million, but that $15 million means the difference between life and death for Newfoundland. So I ask the members of the cabinet to give serious consideration to the request which I understand was presented to them today.
There is still another matter; we are great people for asking, and it is just as well to put all our needs on record. As hon. members are aware, our seal fishery has been of historic note for many years as a source of livelihood for our people. This year the seal fishery is being carried on by only three ships. One of those ships comes from the mainland of Canada; the other two are being sent out by the firm of Bowring Brothers, I believe chiefly for sentimental reasons, because of their long connection with the seal fishery. What is the cause of this? The reason is that seal oil is no longer used by manufacturers in Canada, who instead are using United States dollars to buy vegetable oils. I submit in all honesty that these manufacturers should be required to buy marine oil at the same price they are paying for vegetable oil from the United States. The seal oil is just as good, and I do not know why they no longer use it. Certainly I feel this action should be taken. It would be a great help to us; it would relieve a good deal of unemployment and at the same time would conserve United States dollars. So I believe this suggestion is well worthy of consideration.
In discussing the matter of secondary industries in Newfoundland the question of freight rates is most important. I feel very
484	HOUSE OF
The Address-Mr. Higgins strongly about this question, and there has been a great deal of publicity about it at home. When I say "at home" I am referring to my province; I cannot quite fit into the pattern here as I should, even yet. The position with respect to freight rates is this. As a member of the original delegation to Ottawa in 1947, accompanying the present Secretary of State (Mr. Bradley) and the hon. member for Grand Falls-White Bay (Mr. Ashbourne), I had a very clear understanding of the matter, and I am sure those two hon. members had the same clear understanding. As far as freight rates were concerned we understood that Newfoundland was to be placed in a position which would enable it to compete, by being treated as the maritime provinces are treated. That was the definite, clear understanding and undertaking that we took home with us. That was the understanding and undertaking given to those who signed the terms of union in 1948, and that has been the understanding of those who have discussed the matter.
What has happened? Instead of carrying out that undertaking an entirely different tariff rate has been applied to Newfoundland. Our tariff rate is C17 as against tariff rate C19 for the maritimes, and as a result my province has had to pay an overcharge of 28 per cent. Let me give a few examples so hon. members will be able to follow the trend of my argument. The figures I intend to give do not include the last 16 per cent increase; they were made up before it went into force, and I could not get up-to-date figures because the tolls have not been filed as yet. These are the old figures, which I presume will be increased by 16 per cent; and here is the position. From Bic, Quebec, to Campbellton, New Brunswick, the distance is 133 miles, and the charge for carrying 100 pounds of class I freight is 66 cents. The distance from St. John's to Clarenville, Newfoundland, is 131 miles, and the charge for the same quantity and class of freight is 76 cents. From Saint John to Blackland, New Brunswick, the distance is 254 miles. The charge for the same quantity and class of freight is 79 cents. For a distance of 253 miles from St. John's to Lewisporte, one mile less, the charge is $1.02. From Saint John to Campbellton, New Brunswick, is 276 miles and it is also 276 miles from St. John's to Grand Falls, Newfoundland; yet to carry 100 pounds of class I freight in New Brunswick the charge is 83 cents, while in Newfoundland the charge is $1.05.
By a peculiar coincidence, the tariff rates on all classes of freight from Oak Bay, Quebec, to Halifax, Nova Scotia, a distance of 405 miles, are exactly the same as the rates on the same quantity of freight from St.


John's, Newfoundland, to Grand Falls, Newfoundland, a distance of 276 miles; the same price is charged for 405 miles as we Newfoundlanders have to pay for 276 miles.
The final example I shall give you, Mr. Speaker, is from Sydney, Nova Scotia, to Upsalquitch, New Brunswick, a distance of 547 miles; the charge is $1.14 for 100 pounds. Yet for exactly the same distance from St. John's, Newfoundland, to Port aux Basques, the charge is $1.62.
In order that hon. members may be aware of what has happened, may I point out that the government of Newfoundland applied to the board of transport commissioners to cancel the existing tariff-that is, the tariff from which I have just quoted-and to substitute therefor tariff and tolls based on the rate structure now in effect in the maritime provinces. This application was based on section 32 of the terms of union, and was refused by the board in a judgment delivered on February 14 last. Subsections (2) and (3) of section 32 of the terms of union read as follows:
(2)	For the purpose of railway rate regulation the island of Newfoundland will be included in the maritime region of Canada, and through-traffic moving between North Sydney and Port aux Basques will be treated as all-rail traffic.
(3)	All legislation of the parliament of Canada providing for special rates on traffic moving within, into, or out of, the maritime region will, as far as appropriate, be made applicable to the island of Newfoundland.
As many hon. members will recall, when this matter of freight rates was being discussed at the first session of this house in 1949, a number of those still here engaged in the discussion. As reported at page 608 of Hansard, the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent), referring to this particular agreement and these freight rates, stated:
This matter was fully gone into with the representatives of Newfoundland, who were also quite concerned about it, and the best we could tell them was that the board of transport commissioners would have to take that into account.
Then again on the same page:
That is something also which was carefully discussed with the representatives of Newfoundland, and they were told that all these matters would have to be taken into consideration by the transport commissioners. What is provided is that this connection to Port aux Basques is a part of the railway rate, but the maritime rate will apply within Newfoundland. It does not apply now to the traffic carried by water from Halifax to any point in Newfoundland; but in determining what will be proper rates to charge for rail movement the board will have to take all appropriate factors into consideration. The delegates from Newfoundland finally were satisfied with this position; that we do not want to have things happen which will interfere with the economy of Newfoundland, and we do not want things to happen which will interfere with the usual trading practices of the maritime provinces. We hope that instead of there being interference there will be promotion of trade relations, and that is something with which the board of transport commissioners will have to deal.

Then as reported at page 619, the Minister of Transport (Mr. Chevrier) stated:
Under the bill the Canadian National Railways is required to file tariffs with the board of transport commissioners on March 31, assuming that confederation takes place on that date, and assuming also that the lines of railway on the island of Newfoundland and the steamer service between North Sydney and Port aux Basques are entrusted to the Canadian National Railways on the same date. Such rates will have to conform to the general pattern of rail rates in the other provinces of Canada; otherwise they would be discriminatory. Discriminatory rates, either higher or lower than in the same general territory, cannot be maintained under the Railway Act. Therefore, as stated, the rates will follow the general pattern of the rates in the other provinces.
I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, to note that word "discriminatory", because it is exactly the same word that is found in the judgment of the board of transport commissioners, and I read from the last page of that judgment:
This subsection may also mean that the rate structure in Newfoundland is to be in general conformity with the rate structure in the other maritime provinces. But we do not think there is anything in this subsection to affect in any way the principles upon which the board has acted in the past in regard to discrimination under the provisions of the Railway Act.
The board apparently thinks it can discriminate; the Minister of Transport apparently thought it could not. The present position is that this matter is now met by the formal approach of the premier of Newfoundland to the cabinet, I believe made today, and a request from him that this section of the terms of union be honoured.
All I have to say is this, Mr. Speaker. As it was generally understood by all of us, and as the Secretary of State (Mr. Bradley) was a member of that delegation, and the hon. member for Grand Falls-White Bay (Mr. Ashbourne) and I myself were members of the first delegation, and as members of the Liberal party in Newfoundland campaigned using that understanding as one of their arguments, I therefore say that there is only one thing for all the members from Newfoundland in this house to do with the exception of my learned confrere the hon. member from St. John's West (Mr. Browne), who did not actively participate at that time. I say in all sincerity that if the cabinet does not honour that agreement that was understood by us, the Newfoundland members should resign. It may be said that it is not written into the terms of confederation but certainly it was understood by us. Unless therefore we are put on the same basis as the maritimes, in the matter of freight rates, then I say that in all honour the only alternative is for the Secretary of State, the hon. member for Grand Falls-White Bay and the other members of the Liberal party from Newfoundland, to resign from this house.
The Address-Mr. A. W. Stuart


Mr. Ashbourne:: On a question of privilege, Mr. Speaker, may I suggest that the hon. member-


An hon. Member:: Ask your question.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. The hon. member should be allowed to state his question of privilege.


Thomas Gordon William Ashbourne: The question of privilege is this. How can one member speak for someone else? I suggest that the hon. member speak for himself. I am here to speak for myself, and the Secretary of State can speak for himself.


Mr. Higgins:: Let there be no misunderstanding about this matter. I speak for myself entirely. What the other hon. members of this house do is their own affair. But as for myself, if this agreement is not honoured by the cabinet, I am resigning from this house and I am going back to Newfoundland where I shall endeavour, by all possible means, to have the province of Newfoundland secede from confederation. That is what I intend to do if this promise is not honoured. That is all I have to say.


Mr. Lennard:: He is speaking for himself now.


Mr. A. W. Stuart (Charlotte):: My opening remarks, Mr. Speaker, will be congratulations to the mover and the seconder of the address in reply to the speech from the throne. I wish to compliment them sincerely. I think their contribution was worth while and was well delivered.
After having listened to the remarks by the member from Newfoundland I think that the house will have, when I have finished, a good idea that the members from the maritimes are much dissatisfied and in many cases are much of the same mind.
The particular part of the speech from the throne in which I was interested was a section which dealt with trade relations between the various countries of the world who were willing to trade with us. That is one of the most important things we have to deal with in the maritimes. We are in a different position from that of many parts of Canada, since we are practically wholly dependent on the United States for our markets. For that reason the closer relationship there is between the United States and Canada and the better trade agreements that can be arranged between the two countries the more beneficial it will be to our part of the country.
On many occasions in the house we hear discussions on unfavourable trade balances. As a rule when that condition does prevail every effort is made to rectify it. But I often

The Address-Mr. A. W. Stuart wonder whether we give sufficient consideration to the unfavourable trade balances as between the provinces of the dominion. That is the great problem that faces the maritime provinces. At this point I might say that we have found it much easier to break into the markets of the United States than into the markets of central Canada. We have always been able to deal with the United States; we have always been able to get along with them even though the things that we produce are also produced in the United States. They have always been very considerate of us and we consider them our friends.
During the war we were told that it would be necessary to centralize industries in this part of Canada, and that after the war it was hoped that the centralization of industry would be discontinued, and that we in our section of the country might expect a better break than we had received in wartime. Many of the war plants in Ontario and Quebec, to the construction of which we paid our proportionate share, were practically given to industries in the two central provinces immediately after the war. I have seen them in Hamilton and in other parts of central Canada. We paid our proportionate part to build these very fine structures. After the war, instead of the maritime provinces receiving what they considered belonged to them, these properties were practically given away to create new industries and to induce other industries to come to the two central provinces. It was the same old story that we have had since confederation, centralization of industry.
There is a point that I wish to make, which I feel will be discussed openly some time in the near future, and which is of great interest down in my section of Canada. During my five years in Ottawa I have heard hon. members from Ontario and Quebec, who I believe were sincere, say that they would like to have an opportunity to assist the people in less fortunate provinces. We believe that today they have that opportunity. It is only a few years ago that an hon. member from Ontario visited the maritime provinces. He was the former member for Davenport, Mr. John R. MacNicol, a most distinguished Canadian. Speaking in Saint John city on that occasion he had this to say, according to the Saint John Telegraph-Journal:
It is an outrage against the maritime provinces that the (Chignecto) canal was not built fifty or seventy-five years ago. I say further that the buildi-ing of that canal would revolutionize the whole economy of the three maritime provinces.
He went on to make further flattering statements about the maritime provinces. I believe he was sincere in every way.


In the province of Quebec and in Labrador we have enormous quantities of iron ore, which has been discovered within the last few years. Iron ore cannot be manufactured without coal, and so far as I know there is no coal in Ontario or Quebec. Therefore it would be necessary to ship this iron ore to central Canada, and then use United States dollars to import United States coal if this industry is to be centralized where most other industries are. That idea has already been strongly suggested by many papers in Ontario, and by many people. At this point I should like to quote a short statement from Maclean's, which is a national magazine, read all over Canada. It was written by "the man with a notebook." It is dated February 15, 1949, and reads as follows:
If the seaway does go through, Ottawa of course will stand up and cheer.
He is referring to the deepening of the St. Lawrence waterway in order to provide means of bringing Labrador ore into central Canada. I fail to understand why we from the maritime provinces who sit in the House of Commons should stand up and cheer over the announcement that the St. Lawrence waterway was being deepened. In other words, the people in the central provinces expect the maritime provinces to make their proportionate contribution toward the deepening of the St. Lawrence waterway in order that the ore that should be manufactured in the mari-times may be taken to central Canada to be manufactured so that they may enjoy the benefits. To me that is merely a selfish statement. It goes on to say:
High tolls on Labrador ore would divert it from the great lakes area to the Atlantic seaboard.
I realize that in the eyes of a person living in central Canada that would be a terrible calamity; but in the eyes of the people living in the maritime provinces that would be the logical thing to do, and the economical thing as well. It would be the logical and economical thing to manufacture Labrador ore where there is coal. I am certain to hear arguments propounded in the house sometime in the near future as to why this ore should be manufactured in central Canada. I realize that we are going to be asked to stand up and support it. That ore could be taken a much shorter distance to where we already have coal, and we already have a problem in connection with our coal industry. Markets cannot be found for maritime coal. We are told that it cannot compete even as far west as Montreal. If the hon. members from central Canada are sincere this is their opportunity to assist the maritime provinces. Here is the opportunity from an economical standpoint, and from the standpoint of the saving of

The Address-Mr. A. W. Stuart United States dollars, to make every effort bers in the House of Commons from the to manufacture this ore in the maritime maritime provinces will stand on his feet provinces.	and fight against it.
When the Chignecto canal is built-and I hope it will be-much of this ore may be manufactured on the Atlantic coast of the United States. I have no doubt that some people would not like to see that happen, but I would love to see these people get Canadian ore. They have supplied us with ore for many years. They have supplied us with many commodities that we were not able to produce in this country. I would never take the selfish attitude that it should be kept at home. If we have a surplus we should not hesitate to sell it to our neighbours to the south who have always given us most generous consideration.
I should like to read another article at this time from the Northern Miner, of recent issue. This is along the same lines and, speaking about Labrador ore, states:
With the domestic iron production on the march to an annual outpouring that could conceivably reach 20,000,000 tons, Canadians can see the basis for tremendous industrial expansion for the nation. This is a mighty giant that has been unleashed by the proving up of hundreds of millions of tons of reserves.
It is not likely to stop with the mere digging up of the ore and loading it on a train or boat. The resulting annual influx of United States dollars from these simple operations-$100 million or more is quite possible-is nothing to be sneezed at but Canadians with courage and imagination will expect the iron ore revelations to mean much more than that.
They can see huge growth for the Canadian steel industry, not ignoring the sixty per cent expansion that has taken place in the last half dozen years and the works currently in progress. Their ideas go far beyond. They see present steel plants much, much bigger and1 new steel centres established-at the head of the lakes, for instance.
Every mention made of manufacturing Labrador ore contains reference to the head of the lakes. I have yet to hear or read anything from Ontario or Quebec which would suggest that this ore should be manufactured in the maritime provinces. Perhaps I am repeating myself, but before leaving this subject let me say that we feel we have in our argument a logical approach; we feel we have coal for which markets cannot be found. We feel we have the personnel, some of whom are unemployed. We feel that from an economic standpoint there can be no argument in favour of any other part of Canada. I do hope that when any mention is made of the deepening of the St. Lawrence waterways so as to take this iron ore to central Canada, each and every one of the mem-


Alfred Johnson Brooks: I would sooner see it come to upper Canada than go to the United States, as the hon. member mentioned a moment ago.	.


Andrew Wesley Stuart: I referred to the surplus. I repeat, in answer to the hon. member for Royal, that I think perhaps I have a warmer place in my heart for those people to the south than he has.


Alfred Johnson Brooks: I do not doubt it.


Andrew Wesley Stuart: International good will has prevailed in the particular section in which I live, since confederation. Any favour that will be helpful to our southern neighbours will receive my support in every way.
There is another argument in favour of manufacturing in the maritime provinces. We have always been given to understand that it was cheaper to transport a finished article or a manufactured article than to transport raw materials. If this steel is needed in central Canada after it is manufactured, there is no question that it can be brought here. It can be delivered in central Canada much cheaper than the raw materials could be delivered.
For many years we have subsidized the manufacturers of Ontario and Quebec. It may become camouflaged by some other name, such as tariff protection. Nevertheless it is definitely a direct subsidy when it is imposed upon the people in that section of Canada. If it were a two-way arrangement I am sure there would be little difficulty in dealing with the people in the maritimes; but from the time of confederation there has been a most unsatisfactory balance favouring only one section of the country.
Speaking in this chamber a few days ago the hon. member for Dufferin-Simcoe (Mr. Rowe) had this to say about cabinet ministers, as it is reported at page 264 of Hansard:
They are nice fellows, grand fellows. Whatever the United States says, they do.
I think perhaps the hon. member who made that statement had in mind the thought that the province in which he resides has not been accorded the generosity of the people to the south which has been accorded us in the maritime provinces. I doubt whether the hon. member would have spoken that way, had he enjoyed that generosity.

The Address-Mr. A. W. Stuart
In connection with being told by the United States what we should do, may I quote briefly from a British publication dated at London, January 8. It states:
The Financial Times says today that Canada would "do well to give the matter much thought" before relaxing restrictions on imports from the United States on consumer goods.
These are instructions from the other side of the ocean.
In a review of a statement Thursday by Hon. D. C. Abbott, Finance Minister, on Canadian currency reserves, the paper says that marked deterioration in the dominion's internal economic situation during the past years makes Ottawa naturally anxious to find ways of stepping up supply of goods for consumption and capital development in Canada.
It would appear at the present tirhe that there are people in other countries who are endeavouring to instruct us in Canada as to how we should carry on the business of our own country. Might I add that in our dealings in New Brunswick with the United States-and I can speak for that province at least-I am convinced the balance has always been in our favour. We have always been able to sell more to the United States than we have been allowed to buy from them. We would have purchased much more, but tariff protection in this country prohibits us from doing so. Rigid and stringent regulations compel us to make those purchases from subsidized monopolies in other parts of Canada.
The term "subsidized monopolies" may seem to some hon. members rather severe. I believe it was the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) however who, in describing refrigerator manufacturers in this country recently, used that very expression. He said it was a monopoly. That is the thing we have been dealing with for many years.
On Tuesday last the hon. member for Dufferin-Simcoe made another statement I was sorry to hear him make. At that time he was discussing the serious difficulty we were encountering in Canada in connection with the disposition of surplus farm products. Dealing with the question of surplus potatoes he said this, as reported at page 317 of Hansard:
I am not going to be disturbed about whether eve sell potatoes or not.
That, to my mind, is a typical Ontario statement. Potatoes were of no concern to the hon. member for Dufferin-Simcoe. This matter had reference particularly to the maritime provinces so it caused the hon. member very little concern. But statements such as this and statements such as we read in the press of the central provinces have pretty well convinced us down there that about all we are required to do is to support
(Mr. Stuart (Charlotte) .1
additional canal systems for the central provinces, and pay our proportional share, even though it may take something from us which we feel is properly ours. We must pay those two central provinces our proportional part for everything they would like to have, and yet at the same time we are denied the privilege of selling a single thing in return. It is the most unfavourable trade balance you could find anywhere in the world, nationally or internationally.
This has been going on for many years. We have heard much discussion of maritime rights. I do not believe in preaching maritime rights; I believe this is a national right. It is my belief that in order for one part of this country to be prosperous, it must all be prosperous. We have to live and let live. We must try to work together. Where there are indications of discrimination, some way must be found to rectify that condition. This same story has been placed before the house for years and years, but apparently, to date, very little has been done to rectify it.
As I stated a few moments ago, I shall await anxiously the arguments that will be used in this house before it closes with regard to the deepening of the St. Lawrence and with regard to the Labrador ore development. I have no idea what arguments will be advanced, but I can assure hon. members that they will have to come up with something good before the maritimes will take the bait.
During the short time we have been here many suggestions have been put forth by hon. members of the opposition with regard to trade relations between Canada and Great Brit.ain and between Canada and other countries. As I sat here and listened to those arguments I wondered why one thing was said one day and something else the next. During the past two weeks I have heard members of the opposition say that everything should be done to increase trade with Britain, and then I have heard an hon. member from the same group get up and complain that an industry in his constituency is in jeopardy because of British goods coming into the country. Just a few days ago I noticed an editorial in the Christian Science Monitor which would indicate that these stories have crossed the border to the United States. I should like to quote a short passage from this, as follows:
The facts of this Incident can be explained, but they show instantly the pressure which Canadian manufacturers can be expected to throw against imports which disturb their present position.
This government may expect larger pressure than any predecessor, for the obvious reason that in the last ten years Canada has emerged from the status of a raw-material producer into the status of a great industrial nation, with an inevitable shift in political gravity.

And again:
There has been skirmishing only on the side lines-strong protests from a few Conservative members against new British competition.
My idea of trade with Great Britain or any other peace-loving country is that it should be on the basis of their trading with us as well. I am bitterly opposed to the way trade has been carried on with Great Britain during the last four or five years. It has been trading on a one-way street. I realize that there has been great privation and suffering in Great Britain but I am convinced also that people in this country have not been given the fair deal they justly deserve.
Many questions have been asked in this house with regard to the pit prop business in the maritime provinces. At the start of the war delegations came from Great Britain to our province and asked pulpwood producers to discontinue their contracts, contracts which would have continued until the present time, in order to produce pit props for Great Britain. They agreed to do that, but when Great Britain found that they could buy pit props for a few cents less in other countries, their purchases here were discontinued immediately. This meant considerable hardship to people in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
I contend that those people were not treated fairly. They did not receive the consideration they deserved. They were unable to renew their contracts with the pulp and paper people and were left with nothing. Pit props piled up on the breakwaters because markets could not be found. I am opposed to that sort of dealing. I believe some other way could have been found and the break might have been a little less sudden in order to give these people some warning and permit them to find other markets for their wood products.
In closing I want to say that the remarks I have made in connection with the St. Lawrence waterway and the development of Labrador ore represent my own personal opinions, but I want to repeat that if hon. members of this house feel that we in the maritimes are not as fortunate as the people in other parts of the country, if they are really serious in their desire to help out the situation down there, we shall anxiously await their approval or disapproval of the policy of steel manufacturing in the maritimes.


Mr. William Bryce (Selkirk):: Mr. Speaker, in rising to take part in this debate after fifty hon. members have spoken, it is rather hard to say something that has not been said already. You can start off by saying that you have the best constituency in the world, which would be quite easy for me to do, and then you can attempt to cover some other topic that has been touched upon already.
The Address-Mr. Bryce
I might say that Selkirk constituency was remodelled last year and now contains both urban and rural dwellers. But it still contains the descendants of the Selkirk settlers who came out at the beginning of the last century to blast a trail and build a gateway to the golden west. We are now coming to the end of the first half of the twentieth century, and as we look back over the last five decades and remember the calamity of two world wars and the greatest depression in history, we register in our minds the hope that the second half of the century will be free from such disasters.
It is true, and I think most hon. members will admit, that during the last few years our people have been better fed than ever before. It is true also that our farms and our factories have produced more goods and produce than ever before. Yet, with all that, we know that many Canadian people are not well fed today and that a great many Canadian workers are not receiving good wages. Many of our aged citizens still receive small pensions pn which to live. Sometimes the means test prevents them from getting very much.
May I say in passing that I have had more requests about this means test than I have ever had about anything else. As things are today, the man who has been thrifty and has attempted to provide for a rainy day is penalized. The man who has never saved anything, the man who perhaps in many cases has never even paid taxes, can draw a full pension. As I say, the man who has scraped to save and provide for a rainy day is penalized for his thrift. No law should be allowed to exist that penalizes a man or woman for thrift, long considered one of the great characteristics of the Scottish race. We all hope that the second half of the century will prove to be happier and more prosperous for the human race than the first half.
Another problem I should like to draw to the attention of the government is the great need of financial aid for education on a federal basis. In the last few years the effort has been to move people from crowded city areas into the adjoining municipalities. This relieves the city or town of the responsibility but creates a new problem for the municipalities which have to provide education for these boys and girls. The law of the land is that every boy and girl must go to school, and one must also remember that people are demanding better educational facilities for their families than they themselves had thirty or forty years ago. It has been said repeatedly that education is a provincial responsibility but the situation is now getting beyond provincial governments. If our school districts are to have the proper people to teach the pupils and be able to pay fair wages for their

The Address-Mr. Bryce services-wages comparable with other professions-build new schools, and enlarge old ones to accommodate the pupils coming in from other areas, then the federal government must come to the assistance of the provinces.
In the speech from the throne mention is made that a bill for the revision of the Indian Act is to be introduced at this session. I am sure this will be welcomed by everyone interested in the welfare of the Indians. To the members of the committee which sat for three years considering recommendations that could be incorporated in the present Indian Act, this will be most gratifying. As a member of that committee I know the tremendous job they did in the three years the committee worked, and to see the fruits of their labours in amendments to the present Indian Act brought before the house will be encouraging not only to the Indians but also to the people who worked so hard to do a satisfactory job on the Indian Act.
I have already congratulated the minister who heads the department which will now have charge of Indian affairs, the hon. member for Grey-Bruce (Mr. Harris). It is to be hoped that the revised Indian Act will be a new Magna Carta for the 135,000 Indians in Canada. I hope that the new minister will hold his position long enough to be able to do some constructive work in the Indian department. I have only been in parliament seven years but during that time the new minister is the fifth to have charge of Indian affairs, and I hope that he will have charge of the department long enough to do the best job that has yet been done.
We have heard a great deal about lost markets in the last few days, and different reasons have been advanced for the troubles now confronting us. I know there is no simple direct answer to the question. For instance, one of the reasons we hear is the one popularly known as the dollar shortage. Another reason is that improved methods of production have produced surpluses of various commodities. Another reason is that the marketing system which we have been using for the last fifty years is now out of date. Finally, only recently we have been faced with the factor of mass unemployment. There may be other causes, but let us look at those I have mentioned. So far as the dollar shortage is concerned there is actually no shortage of dollars at all. What there is a shortage of is goods that can be produced in Europe and sold to Canada and the United States in exchange for the iron ore, oil, cotton and wheat which those countries are forced to purchase from this continent because they cannot obtain them anywhere else at the present time.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The house resumed at eight o'clock.
William Scottie Bryce: To start from where I left off, Mr. Speaker, there is in the marketing situation another important factor that- has developed only recently, namely mass unemployment. Dairy farmers, poultry keepers and livestock farmers in general should be particularly concerned about unemployment. Just as soon as a man loses his job and in fact as soon as he sees that unemployment is increasing, he begins to cut down on his expenses. He buys margarine instead of butter. At the present time in Canada there is more butter in stock than there ever was before, 46 million pounds of it. This is about 20 million pounds more than there was last year at this time. The more unemployment there is, the more margarine will be consumed, and the less butter. The unemployed man cuts down on his milk. Milk consumption per capita has decreased steadily since the end of the war, and it will go down still further. Not only will this lessen the market for milk, but it will increase the possibility of sickness. All hon. members know that milk is one of the finest all-round foods we have, particularly for children. But just as surely as unemployment increases, so will milk sales go down and so will sickness increase.
The unemployed man will cut his purchase of eggs. While he was working he could have bacon and eggs or ham and eggs for breakfast. But once he loses his job, it becomes a case of "bread and jam", or even bread without either jam or margarine, both for himself and his family. The same thing applies to meat; such as beef, pork and chicken. His meat will be confined to hamburger, bacon ends or something of that kind. When the worker becomes unemployed, he does not fill a lunch box every day, or a lunch pail as

The Address-Mr. Bryce some people call it. He does not use bread or meat or fruit. This situation in turn destroys the market for the farmer and the fruit grower.
Unemployment in the cities is the worst thing that can happen to the farmers, particularly at a time when overseas markets are in danger. I am sure that every thinking man must be greatly concerned about this marketing situation. I know that the farmers who are looking ahead are greatly worried. The folk who live in the cities should be worried too; for if the farmer cannot sell his crops, his livestock and his milk, he certainly cannot buy the machinery, the equipment, clothing and house furnishings that the city folk have to sell.
Farmers and city workers are interdependent. If one is prosperous the other is prosperous too. If one is in distress, it is not long before the other is in distress also. The sooner this hard fact is recognized, the better it will be for everyone concerned. There is a definite relationship between the income of those engaged in agriculture and those engaged in industry. When the income of the one group is depressed, the other group is directly affected. Canada's net national income is about $8 billion more than it was before the war. Wages, taxes, rent, lumber, steel and farm products have all gone up in price. In my travels up and down the country and elsewhere I meet people who claim that farm prices are far too high, and that cheaper food is the answer to the problem. But if anyone cares' to check with the dominion bureau of statistics he will find that in these post-war years, and years of high prices, the per capita consumption of eggs, bacon, beef and pork and dairy products was much higher than it was in the pre-war years when we were in an era of low prices. For instance, the per capita consumption figures are as follows:
1939	1947
Eggs	
20 1	doz.	24 0	doz.Poultry	
19.5	lbs.	24-8	lbs.Pork	
43-6	lbs.	52-7	lbs.Beef	
56 0	lbs.	67-7	lbs.
In every case the wholesale prices of these items was at least 100 per cent or more higher than it was in 1939. Consequently, cheap bacon and eggs is not the solution. Unless food is purchased and consumed, low prices do not work. The real answer is to have enough purchasing power in the hands of the people to consume all that is produced.
I am also told that the farmer is making unreasonable profits at the expense of the consumer, and that farm prices are away out of line. Perhaps the individuals who make such claims might be able to tell us tMr. Bryce.]
how it is that the production of eggs has dropped in 1949 by 50 million dozen, and hog production has dropped by 338,000 hogs. The reason egg production dropped is that the cost of production is too high. A farmer can buy eggs at the store cheaper than he can produce them by keeping chickens. And so I say-and I think every reasonable man will agree with me-that our farmers are facing a serious marketing crisis. They are facing riot only the loss of overseas markets but the loss of the domestic market too. We are losing out because the powers that be on this North American continent, which prospered during the war while the rest of the world suffered huge losses, have failed to live up to their obligations. They are thinking only in terms of capitalistic profits instead of in terms of production for use. There are in the world millions of people still needing food, capital equipment, houses, clothing, roads, schools and factories. But because of the artificial restrictions imposed by the Canadian and United States governments, these millions of people cannot trade with this continent. They cannot buy our goods unless they have Canadian or United States dollars. For overseas trade, Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that we reduce tariff barriers, accept part payment in sterling, and invest funds in European countries. These are only temporary solutions. The only permanent solution is the adoption of the principles of international co-operation. Produce goods in those parts of the world where they can be most efficiently produced, and use them in any part of the world where they are needed, without any trade restrictions whatever.
For the domestic trade, adopt policies that will provide full employment at the highest possible wage rates and the lowest possible profit rates. It is only by adopting some such policy that the volume of goods which is produced each year can be consumed.
Remember, a high standard of living is measured by the volume of goods produced and consumed. If high rates of profit are made, there is not enough money left in the hands of people to purchase the goods, surpluses pile up, and unemployment begins again.
I would like to ask the government to consider the advisability of having a government inquiry into the price fluctuations of livestock as paid by the packing houses in Canada. Why there are fluctuations from day to day has always puzzled the livestock raisers, as it did the grain farmer before we had a wheat board. Why should steers be worth so much on Monday and so much less on Tuesday, or vice versa? It seems competition has been eliminated from the packing business altogether. Since they all pay

the same price it does seem to the farmer that prices are set and agreed to. The meat is all going to sell at the same price as the consumer's price is steady and does not change from day to day. Take hogs. Last September hogs at Winnipeg were $30 per 100 pounds. The government began negotiations with Britain for a new bacon contract. Articles in the papers suggested the price would be lower. The first thing the farmer knew was that the packer had depressed prices down to $24 per 100 pounds. There was no need for this, as the bacon was going into the domestic market and the consumer was paying the same price for what he had to buy.


Mr. Ferrie:: No.


William Scottie Bryce: I will debate that with you any time you like.


Gladstone Mansfield Ferrie: You are wrong; I buy every week. I know.


William Scottie Bryce: I want to continue, Mr. Speaker. I shall be through in a few moments if I am left alone. I was interrupted when I said the consumer was paying the same price for what we had to buy. I still think I am right, and I am entiled to that view. The new price of 29 cents per pound, f.a.s. has been announced, and the government has promised to pay the packer a subsidy of 3i cents per pound on export Wiltshire sides; so on these prices the farmer takes $9 less for his hog and the packer is taking $4.20 less. I might say here that a 200-pound pig on the hoof makes 150 pounds of pork, which in turn makes 120 pounds of Wiltshire sides. Hon. members can calculate for themselves that at this time the packer has still made $1.80 more of profit per hog than he made before.
Last year we contracted to supply Britain with 195 million pounds at $36 f.a.s. but only supplied 100 million. This year we have a contract for 60 million pounds but our domestic market will take around 900 million pounds, so we have the spoonful setting the price for the tubful. This 60 million pounds sets the price for the 900 million because the export price is cheaper; and remember it takes more to feed a hog this year than last year.


Lewis Elston Cardiff: That is the government's fault again.


William Scottie Bryce: In the past by resolution I have asked the government to consider the setting up of a board of livestock commissioners to license and regulate facilities for the handling, grading, selling and processing of livestock, poultry and their products, but up to the present I have had no success. I know the packer is in business to buy as cheap as he
The Address-Mr. Bryce can and sell as dear as he can. He makes no bones about that. He tells you that is what he is in business for. But in the hands of a few firms, it becomes a monopoly which some hon. members call free enterprise, but when it gets to the stage of destroying the prosperity of the farmer it has gone too far.
In closing, Mr. Speaker, may I say I think there should be a government inquiry to look into the methods adopted by the packing houses, with special regard to condemnation insurance, price fluctuations and spreads between producer and consumer prices. Every year we set up new t.b. free areas but our condemnation insurance rates remain the same as they were thirty years ago. Surely the time has come, after all the work that has been done by the Department of Agriculture and supported by livestock organizations and municipalities to clean up t.b., to have this reviewed. The packing industry today is the same powerful monopoly that it was in 1935. Let me quote what they thought about it in 1935. I am quoting from the report of the royal commission on price spreads at page 161:
In recent years, this situation has completely changed. This change has been brougnt about, mainly, by two factors. First, the elimination of the small packing company and the wholesale butcher, either by merger and absorption or by cut-throat competition. Today, as we saw in chapter IV, the meat packing industry has been concentrated in very few hands. Canada Packers, Limited, is the dominating unit with a business greater than the next five packing companies combined. This development has reduced competition to the detriment of the producer. Canada Packers' buyers are to be found on the chief stockyards in Canada, and all are instructed as to price, methods and practices from a single office in Toronto. Swift Canadian Company, with plants at six centres in Canada, has its buyers on the same stockyards, directed from head office at Toronto. Burns, Limited, with plants at Calgary, Vancouver and Edmonton, has its buyers on all western yards, all directed from Calgary. Livestock purchasing is thus concentrated, with a result, as our evidence shows, of lack of price competition among packer-buyers.
There was uncontradicted evidence given to us by a former official of Canada Packers, Limited, that in Toronto it was the usual practice for this firm to arrange with Swifts, before the market opened, as to the prices to be paid for purchases of livestock. Also, the manager of the western stock growers' association, one of the largest ranchers in Alberta, gave evidence that if a packers' buyer gave an offer for cattle on the ranch, it would not be raised by any other packer-buyer either on the ranch or in the stockyards.
Another method adopted by the packers, which has reduced competition on the open market, is the practice of selling tp the wholesale butcher carcasses on the rail, at cost price plus killing charges, and thus removing the wholesale butcher from competition on the public stockyards.
I shall not read further from this report, because my time is drawing to a close. May I say however that they are not improving any.

The Address-Mr. Bryce
Then, only last year, we received the report of the royal commission on prices, from which I shall quote briefly at page 31:
The primary livestock industry and the retail meat trade are very competitive, but the processing industry shows a high degree oi concentration. The three largest packing firms account tor about 60 per cent of thfe total inspected slaughterings in Canada, which would indicate that competition operates within a fairly restricted framework, though there may be considerable rivalry among these firms. These large firms are efficient in their operations and, though realizing small profits per unit of output, earn substantial returns on their investment. The very heavy capital investment required, together with decreasing cost ratio as the scale of the business expands, tends to keep additional competitors from entering the field.
The three largest packing firms indicated that they made a net profit of $4-3 million in the four months following the simultaneous removal of price controls and settlement of the packing-house workers' strike in October, 1947, compared to less than $1 million in the corresponding period the previous year. Firms holding beef and pork in cold storage at the end of 1947, made substantial fortuitous gains as a result of inventory appreciation as market prices advanced with United Kingdom contract prices. Four firms held over two-thirds of total cold storage stocks and it would appear that they made substantial profits on these holdings.
The profits made by these powerful companies who agree to agree among themselves are built up by a continuous squeeze on the producer and consumer.
I shall conclude with one more quotation. This goes to substantiate the argument I used before, and is taken from the Globe and Mail for March 2, 1950. The heading states "Packer Pays One Cent More; Butcher Eight Cents; Eater, Three to Ten Cents"; and the article goes on to say:
Beef prices, which have mounted about one cent per pound during the past two weeks in stockyards, have increased from three to ten cents a pound on the average retail price in the same period. During the same period the wholesale price of beef to the butcher has increased about eight cents a pound.
The rise, reflected to the consumer, ranges from a three-cent raise for short rib roasts to a ten-cent-per-pound raise for porterhouse steaks. These are prices quoted by an independent butcher in an average income and rental district.
More sensational price increases have been marked in- the luxury markets but meat affected is not of the type usually purchased by the average consumer.
Meat price, increases at an average market during the past two weeks are indicated in the table below.
		Yester-	Three
		day	Weeks
		per	ago per
		pound	pound
		cents	cents
Hound steak 	
75	60Sirloin steak 	79	72Porterhouse 	
85	75Wing roast 	
83	75Short rib 	
58	55Blade (bone out)	
56	52Rump roast 	
68	65On February 15	good	grade light steers were	quoted at $21.50 to	$22.50	per hundred. Yesterday	
they were quoted at $22.50 to $23.50 per hundred. 
According to a retail butcher, his wholesale price per carcass has increased from 344 cents per pound to 42J cents per pound, an increase of eight cents.
And the farmer got one cent more!
He said this would entitle him to increase his retail price by thirteen cents a pound to conform with the margin on which he works. However, he said he cannot afford to increase prices by thirteen cents on some grades of beef and has to scale them so buyers of best grade must pay the higher increase.
Price of beef, he said, will vary in the neighbourhood in which the butcher is located. Butchers in high rent areas cannot afford to sell porterhouse at his figure of 85 cents a pound. He estimated in such areas the charge would be between 90 and 95 cents a pound for best grade.
He said there have been no complaints from his customers, but that many began buying cheaper cuts or smaller quantities this past week.
The time has come for producers and consumers to demand an inquiry into the operations of the packing industry, because it affects everyone either directly or indirectly in the Dominion of Canada.


Mr. H. H. W. Beyerstein (Camrose):: Mr. Speaker, looking over the speech from the throne and analysing it from the viewpoint of an Albertan it does not take long to conclude that it contains nothing but matters of a routine nature. There is nothing in the speech from the throne to suggest that the government has any solution for our present problems of dwindling markets, the ever-increasing unemployment or the prevention of another depression.
However, when one considers statements made by a couple of cabinet ministers while they were in Alberta a few weeks ago, one can readily understand why there were no sound proposals in the speech from the throne for the solution of the problems I have just mentioned. It is with these statements made by the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) and the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Claxton) that I wish to deal tonight.
When he was in Edmonton a few weeks ago the Minister of Agriculture said that Alberta had failed to develop her natural resources, that she was sitting on a great store of wealth and doing nothing about it. It takes a lot of nerve to make a statement like that in Alberta, and the people of that province were not slow in making a come-back.
In an editorial in the Edmonton Bulletin of Saturday, February 11, we find this:
Not even the most bigoted critic could maintain that the Alberta government has been backward or maladroit in developing the oil resources of the province.
In most respects Alberta's oil policy is the best in the world. At the very least, that policy gets the oil out of the ground and puts it to useful work-and at the same time sends a nice flow of profits into the public treasury.

As a result of Alberta's industrial policy oil companies from all over the continent have not hesitated to go to that province. They have come into the province by the dozen with their drilling rigs and exploration crews. Leduc has blossomed out into a major field estimated to contain some
250.000.	000 barrels of oil. Then came Red-water, larger than Leduc, with reserves estimated at 500,000,000 barrels. Success continued with Golden Spike, Joseph Lake, Bon Accord, Stettler, Excelsior and Normandville. To answer the minister's statement I do not think I could use any better words than those of John R. White, vice-president of Imperial Oil Limited, who had this to say about the development of Alberta's resources:
What is there that cannot be done with 50,000,000,000 tons of coal, 1,000,000,000 or so barrels of oil,
3.000.	000.000 cubic feet of natural gas and $250 million worth of farm produce every year.
Add in salt beds that underlie most of Saskatchewan, through Alberta to Athabaska. Include the 15 000 square miles of tar sands, 150,000 square miles of' timber and 106,000 horsepower in Alberta's waterfalls alone.	.
With basic resources of this sort, it is hardly necessary to count the rarer materials such as potash, bromine and iodine that have been indicated in some of the oil seekers' drill holes. Unnecessary, because what few materials Alberta lacks can be brought from outside, for example, from the metal mines that surround her on all sides.
Visible in the west are the materials for every type of plastic, for virtually all the major industrial chemicals and electro-chemical products. There is, here, the material for rayon, for nylon, synthetic rubber, phenolic and cellulose plastics, carborundum, graphite, cyanamide, acetylene and its host of relatives.
And it follows that if the materials for these basic products are present, there is the possibility of erecting over them all the secondary and tertiary industries that have been based upon them in other parts of the world.
Such are the potentialities of Alberta, the province that 15 years ago could not even pay the interest on its bonds. Such is the picture of the chain of events that well may have been set in motion by the discovery of that Leduc well.
As far as industries are concerned, Alberta has not been lagging behind in that respect either. We have in Alberta approximately 1,400 manufacturing establishments with an estimated production of $300 million yearly. During 1948, thirty-two new industrial enterprises with a capitalization of $31 million located in the province. During 1949, forty-three new industries were founded in Alberta. That indicates splendid progress considering the obstacles that Alberta has had to overcome.
When the present government of Alberta took over, it found the provincial treasury empty and the province with a huge, staggering debt. In addition to that, during the early days' of that government there was wholesale discrimination by the lending institutions
The Address-Mr. Beyerstein against those who had to borrow for production. The freight rate structure has been of no help to our province and still is of no help. I submit that we have been making splendid progress considering the handicaps we have had to overcome during the past fifteen years.
The Alberta Industrial Corporation was set up by the provincial government and has granted loans amounting to $2,700,000 to new industries starting in the province. In addition, the treasury branch serves a wide clientele of farmers, businessmen and plain citizens. This organization has made loans from time to time totalling over $10 million. I would point out also that the interest rates in Alberta are the lowest in Canada. In order to illustrate how Alberta helps to promote industry I should like to read from an article which appeared in Saturday Night of February 14, 1950, entitled, "Alberta Oil Sparks Growth of Industrial Economy." This article indicates how the Alberta government is ready to help even small manufacturers. It reads:
A middle-aged farmer at Radway, in northern Alberta, noticed that farmers often had to make a long trip into town, for the sole purpose of getting the blacksmith to sharpen the blades of their disc ploughs-a job which took only a few minutes, but one which most farmers lacked the equipment and skill to do themselves. So he designed a simple device operated from the power take-off on a farm tractor, by which discs could be sharpened on built-in emery wheels without any danger of doing the job wrong. The sharpener was small in size, and could be made to sell profitably at $15.
On a trial order from the provincial marketing board, a young blacksmith's helper at High River, Alberta, built 100 of the sharpeners. The board had the experts from the research council look them over, and when they gave the machine a technical O.K., passed it on to the department of agriculture to adjudge its usefulness to the farmer.
As a final aid, the board helped to arrange for the demonstration of the new device at rural fairs and other places where large farm groups could be reached. In the words of Oberholtzer, "Sales after that were remarkable."
This sort of assistance, of course, takes money- and lots of it. Fortunately for its program, money is one thing the Alberta government has lots of these days. Certainly, on a per capita basis, it is the richest provincial government in Canada.
I quote that to indicate that Alberta is not only interested in the larger industries; they will do everything possible to assist smaller industries. They will do anything to get them going. When the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) comes to Alberta and says that we are not doing anything to develop our resources, we in turn would like to ask him what is being done to develop Alberta's water powers. The Minister of Agriculture has said that that province has the highest hydro potential of any province in Canada. We would also like to ask him what is being done to get the most from our

The Address-Mr. Beyerstein coal which the minister has indicated constitutes fifteen per cent of the world's total supply. We would like to ask him: Where is our national coal policy?
Another statement attributed to the Minister of Agriculture as having been made in Calgary appeared in the Calgary Herald of February 1. It is interesting to note from that statement that apparently he has lost some of the pep he usually demonstrates. Speaking of agriculture the article refers to what the minister had to say, as follows:
He predicted that 1950 would be a satisfactory year for Canadian farmers, "although we cannot bank on its being as good as last year, which was a peak year." He said some levelling off was to be expected. The minister felt that markets would be available for Canadian wheat produced in 1950, although he commented that no dofinite picture could be obtained until the crop was in. However, the expected "plenty" of markets would be open at at least the floor price of $1.40 a bushel.
If you will notice the wording of this statement you will see it is quite different from the statements made prior to the last federal election. There are such words in it as "satisfactory", "cannot bank on its being as good as last year", "some levelling off was to be expected". The minister felt that markets "would be available". He also used the words "no definite picture", although he expected "plenty of markets". These statements show that the minister is not as sure of himself as he was about a year ago.


William Duncan McKay Wylie: They were made after the election.


Hilliard Harris William Beyerstein: So much for the statements of the Minister of Agriculture. I should like to pass on now for a few moments to a statement which was made by the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Claxton), and quote from the Edmonton Bulletin. The heading of the article is:
Claxton Asks Harper Help
It reads as follows:
"Get behind Harper and help him when the time comes and then we'll have a new provincial government", Hon. Brooke Claxton, Minister of National Defence, told Edmonton and district Liberals at a Liberal luncheon in Corona hotel yesterday. Support of provincial Liberal leader J. Harper Prowse, M.L.A., as strong as that given Alberta Liberals in the federal election would result in a return of the Liberal party to the "sphere of influence" in Alberta politics, the minister said.


John Horne Blackmore: And complete disaster for Alberta.


Hilliard Harris William Beyerstein: Evidently before the minister made that statement he did not take time to look up the platform on which the Liberals campaigned in the last provincial election. I have here a copy of the Liberal

statement which appeared in the Edmonton Bulletin of August 13, 1948, just prior to the last provincial election. The heading is:
Liberals-$100 million on Roads
The article reads:
We propose to spend $100 million in the next five years for roads. Twenty-five million dollars is to be used for the construction of "market" roads to serve your rural communities. The remainder or $75 million is to be spent to provide permanent allweather main highways which will stand up under all kinds of weather and traffic conditions.


Mr. Low:: Even the pork barrel.


Hilliard Harris William Beyerstein: The article continues:
We will spend $5 million each year out of current revenue on rural roads. This is more than twice as much as the present government is spending. And we will keep on spending at least this amount each year until our rural areas are adequately served by decent roads. The kind of road we expect to build on the main highways will be permanent highways -roads which will last for at least thirty years.
Then follows the statement which interests us most. It reads:
We will borrow the money to build them and we will pay for them as we use them over a period of twenty years.


John Horne Blackmore: Mortgage the oil industry.


Hilliard Harris William Beyerstein: The article continues:
The cost per year for interest charges will be $1,500,000. The cost per year to retire principal will be $3,750,000, making a total annual payment of $5,250,000. Out of current revenue we propose to add $500,000 to ensure adequate maintenance, making a total annual cost of $5,750,000, which is $3,250,000 less than the Social Credit is spending without getting us permanent highways.
It is sound business to borrow for capital improvements, such as these highways will be, provided you know how you are going to pay off your debt. We know how we can do that.
With Alberta's rich oil reserves no doubt they could pay off the debt, but what is the sense of borrowing when we can progress on a pay-as-you-go basis and still have the same thing in the long run. I should like to remind the Liberal leader for the province of Alberta that when the present government took over there was a huge debt. At the present time this debt, even after some whittling down over the period of the last few years, amounts to $128 million.


John Horne Blackmore: Most of it Liberal debt.


Hilliard Harris William Beyerstein: A large portion of that $128 million was incurred by the Liberal government and the balance by the U.F.A. government. In order to gain power in Alberta the Liberals advocated the borrowing of another $100 million, and we have not been able to pay off the debts they contracted in the earlier years of the province.


William Duncan McKay Wylie: They do not need to worry. They will never be in power anyway.


Hilliard Harris William Beyerstein: At the present time, as I said, the debt of Alberta is $128 million, and the annual carrying charges on it are over $5 million. With oil revenue now running at the rate of about $35 million a year, and the boom barely begun, it is obvious that Alberta could be debt free in a comparatively few years, an unprecedented achievement for a government today. Compared with 1935 the contrast is staggering. In a few years we could be debt free, but our Liberal friends are suggesting that we should borrow another $100 million and go further into debt.


John Horne Blackmore: Let them get their dirty hands on Alberta again!


An hon. Member:: What about your $25 a month?


Hilliard Harris William Beyerstein: There are a number of indications, however, that within the next five or ten years Alberta's oil income may approach $60 million a year which would be enough, if the government chose, to administer the affairs of the province without levying one cent of taxation. We could carry on from current revenue, and yet the Liberals say that we should borrow money in amounts as large as $100 million so that we could pay more interest to the financial institutions.


Mr. Smith (Calgary West):: Don't give up the liquor. We get $11 million from that.


Hilliard Harris William Beyerstein: That is right. This year, without borrowing money, the Alberta government has under way a public works program which will give us approximately $20 million worth of roads, and that is all on a pay-as-you-go basis. In addition to that, they are preparing to build a $1,500,000 300-bed sanatorium in Edmonton. Another new tuberculosis hospital is being built at the provincial mental institution at Oliver. A new occupational therapy building costing $75,000 is being constructed at the mental hospital at Ponoka. More than $1 million, part of it a loan, goes to the university of Alberta building program for a $706,000 library and a students' union. The government itself is building an eight-storey administration building in Edmonton and has also earmarked $250,000 for construction of a provincial laboratory building. New highways, bridges, irrigation projects and $1,205,610 for the conservation of the eastern Rocky mountain forests make up most of the balance of the $75 million budget for this year. So the government of Alberta is doing very nicely without borrowing any such staggering amount as $100 million.
In closing I suggest to the ministers that when they come to Alberta they should guard their statements. I am reminded of a couple of chaps who were having a cup of coffee the
The Address-Mr. Catherwood morning after the minister made that statement in Alberta. After reading the statement one said to the other, "You don't have to be crazy to understand those fellows, but it certainly would help a lot."


Mr. A. Earl Catherwood (Haldimand):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity of taking part in the debate on the address in reply to the speech from the throne. I know it is customary to congratulate the mover and seconder on the part they took in this debate, and I personally want to compliment them on the grand job they did and the realistic approach that was made in view of the very difficult throne speech they had to work on.
I believe, as the hon. member for Kinders-ley (Mr. Larson) stated, that the economy of our nation is more affected by the economic position of our farmers than by that of any other Class of people. I also wish to state that we have to think of this country as a unified nation. I was very sorry to hear the hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. Higgins) make the statement this afternoon that the government have been dealing with the new province of Newfoundland in such a manner. I am sure we all hope that matters will be remedied very shortly, because I know we do not want to lose the hon. member for St. John's East. This is a unified nation, and we have to think of every province as a part of our great country. We in central and eastern Canada must think of the west and the problems they have to face. They also must recognize our problems. So I think we in parliament have a real responsibility at this time, in what might be called the atomic age, to view these problems and deal with them as best we may.
One of the advantages of this debate is that it gives hon. members an opportunity tc branch out and discuss matters they feel to be of paramount importance to Canada. I regret very much that this parliament did not see fit to adopt the motion that was moved by the hon. member for Lake Centre for the calling of a conference of commonwealth nations. I feel that we should take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself to increase trade, either as between the commonwealth countries or world trade itself; so I am sorry our suggestion in that regard was turned down by the government.
I should like to mention another phase of this matter of world trade, which has been mentioned also by the hon. member for Peace River (Mr. Low) and others of our Social Credit friends, as well as by the hon. member for Selkirk (Mr. Bryce) this afternoon. That is the suggestion that we should set up an organization under the food and

The Address-Mr. Catherwood agricultural organization of the United Nations. Canada needs an outside market for only a small portion of her farm products; but the small surplus that does exist can cause depressed prices in this great industry. So I believe that with the combined efforts of the agricultural leaders of the nations participating in the FAO it should be possible to reach an agreement which would make this plan acceptable. I feel sure it could be made workable; I believe it is sensible and sound; and through the medium of this world food organization I am confident that we could at least find a partial solution to these great problems of world trade confronting us at the present time. We must find some means of overcoming the difficulties now faced by nations trading in currencies other than our own; and I suggest there is a great opportunity for this government to show leadership in this connection.
I had hoped that on his return from the conference held at Washington last October and November, which we all so greatly hoped would be successful, the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardner) would have made a statement to this house outlining the reasons for failure to arrive at the principles advocated there. Regardless of why no headway was made, I am firmly convinced that until such time as this international commodity clearing house is set up there can be no immediate possibility of a solution to a problem that is of such grave concern to all. Canada possesses an immense wealth of natural resources, but at the same time she is extremely vulnerable as far as abnormal trade conditions are concerned. I would urge the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe) and the Minister of Agriculture to give the necessary leadership, so that from the ashes of that Washington conference there may arise a new and stronger organization that will perhaps establish a new world order as far as trading conditions are concerned.
We in Canada and the United States were greatly disturbed at the announcement by a high official of the United States department of agriculture that some 50 million pounds of potatoes were to be destroyed. This is contrary to all accepted laws of civilized countries. Why is it that such measures should be necessary on the part of such enlightened and intelligent people as we in Canada and the United States claim to be? Everyone knows that while we have a surplus of food in Canada and the United States the undeniable fact remains that millions of people, particularly in the Asiatic countries, are pitifully crying for a crust of bread. I attended a theatre here in Ottawa a few weeks ago and saw a news reel which depicted conditions in those Asiatic countries. They were


almost impossible to believe. There we saw pictured undernourished and starving children. We also saw the parents of those children subsisting on a bowl of soup and a few spoonfuls of rice per day. It almost made one want to shout from the housetops and ask why conditions like these must prevail.
These remarks may not be closely associated with the business of this parliament, Mr. Speaker, but I do feel that unless we take some responsibility for the alleviation of such conditions where they exist throughout the world the implications may be more far-reaching and disastrous than we can imagine; for I believe there is no more fertile ground for communistic propaganda than in the hearts and minds of hungry people. While the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Pearson) does not agree with many of the suggestions we make from this side of the house, I believe he will agree when I say that one of the main reasons for this communistic infiltration which is making such tremendous headway in China and Asia generally, as well as in Europe, is the lack of food and consequent undernourishment of these peoples.
It is very heartening to us in this house to see that at least the government have recognized the problem of unemployment, to the extent of introducing the measure to amend the Unemployment Insurance Act, which was put through the house last week. That was not a solution to the problem, however. I attended church service here in Ottawa just a week ago, and during his sermon Reverend Mr. Finlay mentioned this proposed legislation. He said, and I quite agree, that this legislation is not the solution to our unemployment problems, that what the people need is an opportunity to earn their daily bread. That is very true. As with all of us, a workingman likes to feel that he can go out and do a day's work and accomplish something, so that he can make a contribution to society and earn his daily bread.
At the time that legislation was being discussed in this House of Commons some splendid suggestions were offered to the Acting Minister of Labour (Mr. Martin) which I hope will be taken into consideration when the act is revised. I feel sure that the Acting Minister of Labour will implement all these suggestions made from this side of the house, because there were some good ones. I hope he includes all of them in the act.
I should like to make a brief reference to one item that was mentioned by the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefenbaker); I refer to those people who are ill, are unable to collect unemployment insurance, and who in many cases have been indisposed for

months. They cannot collect compensation. I hope that the minister, with his humanitarian instincts, will implement in the act that suggestion as well.
Speaking about humanitarian efforts, may I say that I have often thought that there should be some solution to the problem of our people who are stricken with arthritis or poliomyelitis and are crippled from various diseases and have no way of getting an income except through relief which they may receive from the various municipalities. I hope that some provision for them will be included by the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Martin) in his health proposals to this house.
I am also glad that in the speech from the throne reference was made to price support legislation for our farmers. I know that the press across Canada are not too favourably disposed towards this suggestion; and the press, whether we like it or not, have great influence upon the people of Canada. But I feel that floor prices are necessary at the present time. My business is farming, and I have always been a firm believer in the law of supply and demand. I have felt that it has been the greatest equalizer we have had down through the generations. But I feel that the law of supply and demand has been greatly interfered with in recent years, particularly by governments and their controls, not only in our own country but in other countries as well. They interfered with this law to such an extent that the law of supply and demand is not practical at all any more. Eventually, however, as time goes on, I hope that conditions will again return to normal and that price supports and price regulations will not be necessary. But I insist that for the present we need price support for our farm people, and that it is essential that we have it.
The memories of some people I think are very short, when they fail to recall how the farmers of Canada were asked to accept much below world prices during those war years. As long as we have farmer members in this house I hope they and our urban friends as well will continue to recognize this fact, that we for many years accepted prices much below world prices. I know that one should not mention a personal situation; but in my own case as a farmer I took a considerable loss, having regard to the world price, on one commodity, to the extent of $3,000 over a period of five years; and I am only one farmer out of hundreds of thousands across Canada. When this bill is introduced in the house, I hope it will have the support of all hon. members.
While speaking on the subject of agriculture, I should like to mention one other thing
The Address-Mr. Catherwood and direct to it the attention of either the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) or the Minister of National Revenue (Mr. McCann). I make the plea that some method be devised to simplify the instructions with regard to filling out our income tax forms. I should like to suggest to the minister that the forms themselves be simplified to the extent that they can be interpreted much more easily than is now possible. I should like to quote from a pamphlet which is sent out to the farmers, instructing them how to fill out their income tax forms. I quote from the Hamilton Spectator Ottawa correspondent:
Where the taxpayer has in a taxation year regularly used a property in part for the purpose of gaining or producing income from farming, and in part for a purpose other than gaining or producing income, the depreciable cost of the property for the purpose of this part, is the proportion of the amount that would otherwise be the depreciable cost, that the use regularly made of the property for the purpose of gaining or producing from farming is of the whole use regularly made of the property.
That is very simple.


Mr. Fraser:: As clear as mud.


A. Earl Catherwood: I was glad the Department of National Revenue recognized the fact that farmers are clever people. It is true that they can interpret that instruction, but it takes considerable time; and I know that the farmers of Canada would like to spend more of the time on actual farming operations.
Another matter to which I should like to draw your attention, Mr. Speaker, is one that was mentioned by the hon. member for Cam-rose (Mr. Beyerstein); that is that we should have some type of coal policy for Canada. The hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra (Mr. Green), I think, mentioned the matter. One reason why I suggest that some type of coal policy be inaugurated for the Dominion of Canada is the recent coal strike in the United States, which we are happy to know has been settled. It caused a difficult situation to exist in Canada. The resulting coal shortage caused dealer rationing throughout many sections of Canada. The strike paralysed our rail transportation system. We are glad the Minister of Transport (Mr. Chevrier) announced this afternoon that the services on this transportation system will be resumed. The strike also caused the paralysing of industry throughout Canada to a large degree, all because of dependence on the whims and words of one man, John L. Lewis. I do not think there is any member of this house who is not agreeable to the salary or the wages earned by these men who go down into the bowels of the earth and mine coal. They are subject to great danger; we all recognize that
soo

The Address-Mr. Catherwood
fact, and we would not for one moment suggest that they are earning too much money. But we do suggest that when one man can paralyse industry in a country outside his own, it is high time that our government gave consideration to some type of national coal policy that would utilize our own coal resources in this country.
I should like to quote some figures which will indicate just how big a business coal is, having regard to importation:
Imports from U.S.	Tons
Briquettes of coal or coke	166,270
Anthracite screenings	 8,708
Anthracite domestic sizes ..	2,704,553
Anthracite smaller sizes ...	562,048
Coal bituminous	 16,596,310
Coalex warehoused ships stores 345,408
Value $ 1,939,618 53,143 33,312,066 3,954,640 86,539,036 1,871,312
Total	 20,383,297	$127,669,815
It will thus be seen that we in Canada are paying a fairly high price for the coal war in the United States.
I feel that this latest threat to our economy should be the straw that has broken the camel's back. We have great undeveloped hard coal resources in northwestern Canada which can be mined cheaply enough to make it possible to ship by rail to the head of the lakes and thence by boat down to southern and western Ontario.
We also have large coal supplies in the maritimes awaiting orders from central Canada, if we had a policy that would encourage and further the mining of this fuel. Assurance of a market for the product of these mines would not only contribute to the stabilization of industry but would be a powerful factor in bringing about a .more equal balance of trade. I therefore urge upon the government that they give serious consideration to implementing a coal policy for Canada.
I wish to say a word about immigration and citizenship. I think that our system of immigration is one that will require a forward, selective policy on the part of the government. I am happy that the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) has seen fit to appoint a full-time Minister of Citizenship and Immigration in the person of Walter Harris. He is young and aggressive; and we hope he will give strong and vigorous leadership to this new department, something which is urgently needed in our department of immigration.
There are those who feel that our immigration should be cut to the minimum particularly in difficult times. This, to my mind, would not be a sound policy. We in Canada have always prided ourselves upon the fact that our population has been increasing year by year. When we read the statistics

that are published and see that our population has increased, we are happy. I think it is very essential for Canada, if such is the case. Where would Canada be today if it did not have a good immigration system? At the turn of the century, back in 1900, we had a population of a little over five million people. In 50 years our population has increased to 13,728,000 people, according to the last figures issued by the bureau of statistics. The other day the hon. member for Lake Centre (Mr. Diefenbaker) told me that the fathers of confederation planned that we should have forty or fifty niillion people in Canada by 1950. Our progress has been slow, but I do feel it is necessary that we continue a selective policy of immigration in order to promote and develop the industries of Canada. By a process of a selective immigration system for our farms and for our vast new prolific fields of production that are being opened up and will continue to be opened up in an increasingly high degree as a result of the amazing recent discoveries of crude oil, iron ore, titanium, uranium and other valuable natural resources, Canada will go forward by leaps and bounds. If these new sources of production are to be fully developed, and thei economic independence of our country maintained in so doing, Canada must increase her manpower to the point that will make this development possible.
It was through a selective system of immigration over many years that our great neighbour to the south, the United States of America, built up her population to the point where without question she is recognized as the strongest nation in the world today.
There is another part of this ministry that is perhaps, while generally not considered as such, just as important as immigration, namely, citizenship. It is in this connection that we as citizens have a responsibility, and in accepting it we can play an integral part in the reception we extend to our new Canadians. The part we play in this regard begins where immigration ends. These people who come to our country have left behind the traditions and associations of the old world in the hope of coming to a land where people are free. The vastness of our land, the difference in language and in culture are so significant that time must elapse before they can accept the Canadian way of life and become good citizens. The town of Thorold, Ontario, takes top honours in this country in its welcome to our new Canadians. I should like to quote from the Financial Post of March 12, 1949:
Thorold has recognized the fact that newcomers to Canada are perhaps more susceptible to red agents and red propaganda, so through the council and the board of trade, they sell themselves to

these new citizens by a heart-warming demonstration of friendliness and good will-the offer of unstinting help, opportunity offered wherever possible and genuine interest shown.
To quote the words of a grateful Hungarian, "You have made us welcome-you have showed your interest in us and that we are wanted-and that we belong-this is more than food and drink to us to know we are one of you."
The board of trade in that town visit the newcomers shortly after they become settled. They are then invited to spend an evening at some of the homes of the members. They offer the services of the board of trade to explain our customs, our monetary system, our educational and recreational facilities, et cetera.
That is but a part of the effort that is put forth to welcome these new Canadians. Let us remember also that we can show Cana-dianism to these newcomers only by the reception we give them, by not recognizing them as strangers, not recognizing them as foreigners. That is not a very good word. We do not like that. If we go to a strange country we do not like to be classed as foreigners. Let us recognize them as friends. Let us extend to them sympathy and friendliness. Sympathy and kindness shown and extended openly and with sincerity will create a warm feeling among them towards this new country of Canada and will greatly speed their readjustment to their new way of life.
The hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra (Mr. Green) asked the government to inaugurate a social security policy during this session and to abolish the means test and to set up a pension plan on a contributory basis. This was also emphasized this evening by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles). I do believe that this is something which is uppermost in the minds of the people of Canada today. I do not think there is any question of more paramount importance that we can deal with. Therefore I urge, as the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra did the other evening, that we immediately get down to business and indicate to our older citizens of Canada the sincerity of every hon. member and that we put this suggestion into effect as soon as possible.
In conclusion I wish to say one word about the riding which I represent. I shall be brief. We are celebrating our one hundredth anniversary this coming summer in Haldimand county. It will be one of the biggest events that has ever happened in the county during those one hundred years. The Governor General and Lady Alexander have already accepted an invitation to be present. I should like to extend an invitation to every hon. member to come down and visit us during the coming summer, beginning in July and ending in August. I should like to extend an invitation to the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent). The Prime Minister was in our
The Address-Mr. Kickham county last year on official business, but I was not privileged to welcome him on that occasion. If he and all the members of his cabinet will come down next July we will give them all a very enjoyable time in Haldimand county. I promise you that all the facilities of the county will be at your disposal. We will give you the key to the county. I know that when you come back to Ottawa you will say: "Well, I have seen everything."


Mr. T. J. Kickham (Kings):: Mr. Speaker, in rising to take part in this debate I wish to join with previous speakers in extending congratulations to the mover (Mr. Larson) and the seconder (Mr. Dumas) of the motion for an address to His Excellency the Governor General in reply to his speech at the opening of the session.
I should like first to say something concerning our fishing industry, which is an important industry in the maritimes, and particularly in the province of Prince Edward Island. I was greatly pleased with the progressive program, as outlined by the Minister of Fisheries (Mr. Mayhew), with a view to improving quality, extending better inspection services, finding markets, and educating fishermen and potential consumers on how to prepare fish in a palatable and appealing manner for the table, as well as assisting fishermen in submarginal areas in a financial way.
The educational features of how, for example, to defrost fish and the numerous ways that fish can be placed on the table, cannot be over-emphasized. Preparing fish in an attractive manner could easily, I believe, lead to a much greater consumption of fish in Canada. Canadians consume approximately twelve pounds of fish per person per year. In Europe the consumption is approximately thirty-five pounds per person per year, so that in relation to the European consumption there would appear to be a strong potential market to be developed in Canada. I do hope that the program outlined by the minister and his efficient staff may be vigorously pursued to fruition.
I pointed out to this house last year, and which the minister is fully aware of, the need of dredging our shoal harbours and in some harbours extending the protection to deeper water to permit free entry and departure of boats. Until this work is accomplished we will have continued dissatisfaction among our fishermen and packers.
We have come to the time when our fishermen require larger boats of the dragger type. The small-sized boats now being used for trawling hake and cod are practically useless in inshore fishing. With this boat the fishermen are waiting for the fish to come to them.

The Address-Mr. Kickham
Now with the larger boats equipped for dragging, the fishermen can go where the fish are to be found. Our fishermen will be gratified to know that this government is assisting in the construction of larger boats, with an outright grant of $165 per ton per boat.
There is some argument pro and con as to whether draggers destroy the feeding grounds of fish. I have talked with experienced fishermen, and they are not decided on whether the draggers injure the food used by the fish, and kill the smaller fish. It would not do any harm in the maritime provinces if our fishermen used draggers for a time at least; and if the time came when the fishermen felt that the numbers of fish were becoming depleted other methods no doubt could be found.
I have had many electors in my county expressing their desire for the abolition of the means test and reducing the age limit to sixty-five years. In this respect, I am pleased to know that this government is naming a committee to make recommendations to the government and, based on their findings, the government will be in a position to adopt appropriate measures. I trust that the committee's deliberations will result in added security for the aged, so that this government may enact concurrent legislation.
Expressing my view on the question of radio, licence fees should be discontinued, thereby eliminating costly administration and collection costs, and substituting therefor an increase in the sales tax commensurate with the need.
Coming to agriculture, I wish to commend the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) and the government on coming to the rescue of producers of eggs, cheese, butter and hogs with support prices and bonuses. In our province in January last, eggs had reached the low level of 19 cents for grade A and 13 cents per dozen for grade C. These were ruinous prices for egg producers. The markets for beef, veal and lamb are very satisfactory.
We are hopeful that the Department of Agriculture will give us a support price on potatoes for this year only, to assist in stabilizing the very depressed market which at present exists.
Many of our potato growers believe, however, that a support price on potatoes induces speculators to grow potatoes, with the result that each year we find we have too great a quantity to market, with accompanying depressed market conditions. I would like very much to see the potato-growing industry left to the genuine and bona fide farmer, thus giving him some cash in the fall season to buy fuel and clothing for his family. These speculators in the potato-growing industry, because they command greater finances than

the ordinary farmer, spoil the chance of the bona fide farmer making any profit on his operations) causing much distress and disappointment.
Because of overproduction during the past two years, the federal government is besieged with requests for a support price. The government is reluctant to meet these demands on a perishable product such as potatoes. My opinion is that a support price invites speculators other than the bona fide and stable farmer to grow more potatoes than our present and foreseeable markets can absorb.
There are two means, in my opinion, of curtailing production. One is restricting the acreage that can be grown. The second is the imposition of a levy per acre per grower. I would favour the latter as a more effective measure of controlling production, and I should like to submit tentative suggestions to the members of this house for their consideration, realizing, as I do, that any remedial action must come from the governments of each of the provinces, the federal government having no jurisdiction in this field. Nevertheless, if what I am going to suggest appeals to the members, they could discuss the matter with their provincial departments of agriculture.
I submit the following:
That all provincial governments impose a levy on all potato growers in their respective provinces.
1.	In the case of those who plant over one hundred acres, a levy of $25 an acre be imposed.
2.	From fifty acres to one hundred acres, a levy of $20 per acre.
3.	From thirty-five to fifty acres, a levy of $15 per acre.
4.	From twenty to thirty-five acres, a levy of $10 per acre.
5.	From twenty acres and under, no levy.
I firmly believe that if the provinces would
pass legislation to this effect it would be a practical way of controlling potato surpluses and retaining the potato growing industry for the bona fide growers. The growing of up to twenty acres per farm works nicely in with a crop rotation, having a great effect in cleansing the farm of noxious weeds, because of the intense cultivation which is necessary in the growing crop. Now, if the provinces agreed to some such measures, I think we could expect a healthy market condition each year and possibly the provincial governments might derive some revenue, rather than being subject to demands for support prices each year.
It is my duty to express my views, as I see them now, concerning assistance in our

The Address-Mr. Kickham
province, as compared with assistance granted to other provinces of Canada. It would appear to me that our share of federal grants, placing these on a per capita basis, is relatively small in comparison with our sister provinces. For example, there are many grants of which other provinces can avail themselves but which are denied to us because they do not apply to us. Other provinces, as I have said, enjoy money grants, such as grants for slum clearance, assistance under the Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act, the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, the National Housing Act and encouragement for mining and the development of oil resources. So that to place us as a province on a par with the other provinces, we should receive special consideration in federal grants that do apply to our province.
At this time, I shall confine myself to one, namely, education. As I pointed out to the house last year, our teachers are the lowest paid of any province in Canada. I have here some figures from the bureau of statistics in this connection which might be of interest to hon. members. The table before me gives a comparison of the salaries paid teachers in the different provinces and, for the purpose of demonstrating the point I am making, I should like to place on record the salaries paid for male and female teachers in a one-room school first in Prince Edward Island and then in Ontario. The male teacher in Prince Edward Island receives $950 and the female $925 whereas in Ontario for the same type of work the salary is $1,580 for the male teacher and $1,516 for the female. I have pointed out that this condition exists because in Prince Edward Island we have the lowest per capita earnings in Canada.
We are in need of money to provide for technical and vocational education. Our surplus population moves to central and western Canada. I should like to have the house realize that money provided for education for our boys and girls in Prince Edward Island is not charity at all, but is the soundest investment this government can make. All the provinces would share in such investment in having our boys and girls migrating to other provinces educated as bookkeepers, surveyors, engineers, technicians, doctors, nurses, et cetera. Educated in surroundings and an environment that are ideal, as things are now, the larger number of the boys and girls educated in the province move out to the other provinces, where there is continual expansion and where the opportunities are awaiting them. These young people come from families that have funds to educate them; but for those young people leaving our province with very little education, because
their parents are too poor to give them an education, they must take the pick and shovel jobs. Many of the girls find domestic work in Montreal, which I maintain is unfair. Our boys and girls should enjoy equal rights in the field of education, comparable to that which is given to the boys and girls in our sister provinces. I could give hon. members figures on our per capita earnings as compared to the other provinces, but I gave the per capita earnings to the house last session and I will not repeat them today. I believe every hon. member of the house, and the government as well, wish to treat our province fairly. Canada cannot have a healthy body if any member of that body is ailing.
I am sure that there is not a member of this house who would wish to deprive the weaker sister of the ten provinces of equal rights with the other provinces. The hon. member for Kindersley (Mr. Larson) made a significant statement when he said that the maritime provinces were regarded by western Canada as being in practically a different world. I fully agree that there should be a greater knowledge and understanding between the provinces, and the government could then more readily effect an economic levelling off so that all provinces would share equally in Canada's economy as they do in direct and indirect taxation.
Having said that, I should like to submit some figures. The prairie provinces received from the dominion government under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act during the years 1947, 1948 and 1949, the years for which I have figures, $11,156,147,	$17,669,568 and
$14,382,805 respectively. Under the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act during the same years they received $2,354,448, $3,546,627 and $4,857,560 respectively. During the past three years an amount of $4,179,742.35 has been paid out for the development of oil resources, while during the same period $3,332,196.07 has been paid out in grants by the bureau of mines. During the past nineteen months a total of $15,613,051.60 has been paid out under the gold mining assistance act.
I am firmly convinced that the federal government was fully justified in assisting these provinces to the extent they have and I hope they will continue to do so in an effort to promote further development of the natural resources of Canada. I should like to quote from a statement made in 1935 by the former Prime Minister, Right Hon. William Lyon Mackenzie King, as follows:
The Liberal party recognizes that the problem of distribution has become more important than that of production and believes that personality is more sacred than property. It will devote itself to finding

The Address-Mr. Kickham ways and means of effecting a fair and just distribution of wealth and increasing regard to human need, to the furtherance of social justice and the promotion of the common good.
I should like to add to those words the following words spoken by the present Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) thirteen years later:
We will not be satisfied until, in co-operation with the provincial governments, we have achieved a national standard of social security and human welfare which assures the greatest possible measure of social justice to all Canadians.
I submit that there is a wide difference between the treatment accorded those provinces and the treatment accorded to the mari-times, and I am now speaking of Prince Edward Island particularly. I think our young people are a valuable asset upon which the other provinces have been drawing and we have not received any equitable reimbursement for the cost of their education. It is estimated that from the beginning of a child's school years until graduation into a profession the total cost is approximately $10,000. The grant to returned veterans who wished to take advantage of the government's offer for further education averaged $2,012, making a total of $110,400,139 to October 31. Many of the 54,859 veterans who took advantage of the government's offer stayed only a short time in the training schools and this lowered the average cost. When we realize that in this house of 262 members there are 156 members who come from Quebec and Ontario, called central Canada, with only 106 from the remaining eight provinces, we have an indication of the population of that central area.
I agree with what has been said by the hon. member for Regina City (Mr. McCusker) and the hon. member for Charlotte (Mr. Stuart) with regard to the possibilities of developing a mining industry in Nova Scotia instead of having the ore sent up the St. Lawrence river. There are great possibilities and this development would create a market for our home grown products. In this connection I should like to quote the words of Premier Jones of Prince Edward Island, who on March 2 said:
When I see that 2,000,000 tons of ore are going to be stock-piled in Labrador ready for shipment up the St. Lawrence to western Ohio through the canals, it seems to me the height of foolishness. Leaving Seven Islands a boat could sail down to Baie Verte and into Portland just as quick as she could reach Montreal. It seems ridiculous to think of taking ore there because the Bethlehem Steel Company has established a big plant not far from Philadelphia. Why does not the ore go up the St. Lawrence instead of going down the Atlantic coast?
What right have they to build locks at our expense, when the bridge goes over the strait of Canso. There is no reason why Sydney could not become a great steel empire.
[Mr. Kickham.1
With the opening up of the Chignecto canal Nova Scotia could become the Pittsburgh of the maritimes. Over the years since confederation under all governments the maritimes have proved to be a prolific mine for central Canada, both economically and in the providing of talented human beings. Should the maritimes be suddenly shorn off from central Canada I am sure that the perpetually productive old milch cow would be missed. The permitted increase in freight rates further militates against the maritime provinces in their competition in central Canadian markets.
In conclusion, may I say that the young people from my province go to the other provinces of Canada entertaining no fanatical heresies or economic theories in connection with trade, monetary or social matters, such as we hear in this house from the C.C.F. group. There is no problem of assimilation as islanders have relatives and friends in every province of Canada. The C.C.F. had candidates in our province contesting the election, but they did not get to first base, losing their deposits each time. I can assure the leader of the C.C.F., the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell), that we welcome his candidates. The government can use their deposits for social aid purposes which he pretends to champion.
Our people do not lend themselves readily to flighty economic and political theories. They prefer to rely on the two permanent and stable political parties, namely, the Liberal and Conservative parties, who have led Canada through the trying stages of development and while in the embryo period. The fact that we have now reached the status of a full-fledged nation is in no small measure due to those stalwart parties.
(Translation):


Mr. Henri Couriemanche (Labelle):: Mr. Speaker, may I begin my remarks on a rather sad note. A parish in my district has been the scene of a tragedy of a rather unusual nature. In the province of Quebec, as elsewhere, during the winter months river roads on the ice are used as short cuts. This practice has caused in the village of Labelle an accident which has been widely reported in the newspapers and to which I feel I should draw the sympathetic attention of the hon. members of this house.
Four people were crossing lake Labelle in a car. The ice broke and the car slid into the icy waters. Only one of the occupants was able to free himself, while the three others perished under conditions of anguish and suffering that can be well imagined. Two of the occupants were imprisoned in the car.

I wish to deplore the trouble we had in finding a properly equipped diver. We telephoned Halifax and were told no equipment was available for a 225-foot dive since the pressure at that depth would be 91 pounds per square inch. We were even informed that only the United States Navy owned equipment that could be used under such a pressure. Would it not be possible to provide the national harbours of Montreal with suitable equipment and save us in future from risking too many lives? The local people had to work in shifts of 25 on the ice surface in sub-zero weather with improvised means.
Public opinion in the province of Quebec has been stirred for some time by the question as to whether Count Jacques de Bernon-ville will be deported or not. I know that his case is being considered by the department of immigration. I know nothing whatever of his past in France, but recently the hon. member for Bonaventure (Mr. Arsenault) supplied us with a fairly condensed account of it.
That he was condemned to death by an exceptional tribunal, by a political court of justice made up of members of the underground forces and of communists does not make one iota of difference in his favour or against him.
Is it any wonder that he came into Canada without a passport? When leaving their country, opponents of a political system are seldom privileged to have their passport visaed.
During the rebellion of 1837, had the United States required papers in proper form from Louis Joseph Papineau and William Lyon Mackenzie, grandfather of the predecessor of the present Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent), both of them would have been returned and hanged with the others. Like every civilized nation, England has been giving refuge to newcomers without asking them whether they had been sentenced to death in absentia. Would Canada be more backward in 1950 than was Britain at the end of the eighteenth century?
I find it hard to understand the government's relentless attitude towards Jacques de Bernonville. A principle of justice and fair play is involved. Why this drastic application of a regulation which in all fairness does not hold in his case? A perusal of the files of the immigration branch will show that other foreigners have entered Canada under the same circumstances as Count Jacques de Bernonville, but they have been
6,	1950	gfF
The Address-Mr. Courtemanche spared the tribulations imposed upon this man and his family over the past two years. History records numerous precedents.
In March 1939, 500,000 Spanish refugees entered France without valid passports and were granted the right of sanctuary.
In 1936, Manuel Azana, former Spanish minister, fled to France to escape persecution. He died peacefully at Montauban, November 4, 1940.
Francisco Largo Caballero, known as the Spanish Lenin, who became Spain's first socialist prime minister, in 1936, took refuge in France, without first obtaining a legal visa. He was never molested and died at Paris in March 1946.
By the peace treaty signed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles on June 28, 1919, 27 countries had agreed to request and demand the extradition of Kaiser William II. Yet he died at Doom, a small Dutch village, without having been brought to trial.
All these facts add up in favour of Count Jacques de Bernonville.
Though pagans, both the Greeks and the Romans granted legal protection to foreigners and recognized the right of sanctuary. Would Canada refuse to grant asylum to a Frenchman who did us the honour of believing in Canadian freedom? The government of my country must act in such a manner that we will feel proud of being Canadians.
May I now congratulate the new Clerk on having provided the house with a bilingual diagram. This innovation was needed in order that the two official languages might be placed on an equal footing in parliament and in the country. This gesture also testifies, in the most straightforward and commendable manner, to the genuine Canadian patriotism of the man who is responsible for it.
I am sorry, however, that I cannot entertain the same flattering views about the government's present policy. It seems this country is walking into three blind alleys, namely: the loss of our markets, the resulting unemployment and, as a natural consequence, communism.
The taxpayers of my constituency are disappointed. During the last war the Liberal party asked us to make sacrifices to ensure security in the post-war period. This policy proved to be shortsighted. Though we were promised prosperity, we are now faced with a real economic depression. It is all very well for the government to claim that conditions were never better, but our farmers
506	HOUSE OF
The Address-Mr. Courtemanche have had a difficult year and the future is dark, while the number of unemployed keeps growing in our large cities.
Our eyes are being opened. The Quebec voter realizes he has been duped. He was misled when Liberal orators promised prosperity and praised the agreements signed with Great Britain, which were supposed to grant us the enviable privilege of being the British market's only suppliers. While this idea was being spread among the public by Liberal propaganda, the federal cabinet was well aware that Sir Stafford Cripps, on behalf of the United Kingdom, had advised the Canadian government that they would buy nothing, or very little, from this country.
The policy of agricultural security implemented by the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) has collapsed. Actually the results of this lack of foresight have been felt for some time now. This is what Mr. Gerard Filion had to say about it in the January 31, 1948 issue of Le Devoir:
The whole agricultural policy of this country must be completely overhauled. We have systematically refused to sell to those who wanted to buy our products and obstinately sought to sell to those who no longer wish to buy from us. Soon we will be in the rather uncomfortable position of the man who has to sit between two chairs.
Canada could have taken advantage of wartime and post-war conditions to increase the number of its export markets in order to achieve a better balance of trade. If could have found profitable markets in the United States and, through extensive exports of agricultural products, made up for its shortage of American dollars.
In order to fulfil our contracts with Great Britain, the export of bacon, cattle and cheese to the United States was prohibited. The dollar crisis was created artificially. Restrictions on travel and purchases in the United States became necessary. Our economy was upset in the .hope of securing remote profits and illusory security.
It is worth-while to recall that during the war, farmers were requested to make all kinds of sacrifices in order first to win the war, then to help to rehabilitate Great Britain. Thus, while Argentina sold her wheat to Great Britain at $3.55 per bushel, we in Canada sold it for only $1.55. And the same thing applied to all our goods, to everything we exported overseas.
The Minister of Agriculture realized his lack of foresight so well that he stated last fall:
I realize that it is rather hard for Canadian farmers to learn that Great Britain relies on them only in wartime.


On another occasion, the same minister, upon being questioned by reporters, probably after uttering bitter words against Great Britain, had this to say:
On more than one occasion, I have claimed that the British authorities were endeavouring to prevent us from selling our goods on their market and I have nothing to take back.
That is how things stand, Mr. Speaker. We have lost our markets and we have sacrificed them in vain. Our industries are at a standstill and our people are worried, but we lack the markets to help them.
The machine is idle, the plant is about ready to shut down, and our workers are going through a pre-unemployment period, all on account of our lack of markets. And yet our country is rich in land, in raw materials and in manpower. Do we realize that the loss of these markets involves unemployment? We must face it. That evil, worse than one of the plagues of Egypt, the scourge of our time, is the curse visited not upon our workers but upon the responsible ones, our present leaders.
It is alarming and shameful that it should be impossible to enjoy a certain comfort in a country where everything is plentiful. Vox populi, vox Dei. The people claim the right to live and to subsist. The unemployed grumble, threaten, cry for vengeance against those who nap, beat about the bush and follow a policy from which one may only conclude that a certain propertied and ruling class is not suffering. We feel that people will not stand for this situation as they did from 1929 to 1939. In those years, there was submission, fear. Today, people realize that the guilty parties who have shirked their responsibilities are napping. Organized unemployment, as is evidenced today, is apt to bring unpleasant surprises. It will breed men difficult to handle.
How can we blame the unemployed? Call them lazy, improvident. They will tell you they were not unemployed yesterday because there was work to be had. They have none now and they are laid off by the thousands. The present rulers are responsible since, in governing, they must have foresight and they have failed to show any.
Many were startled to learn that the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) had asked municipalities to go further into debt in order to undertake projects to relieve unemployment.

The federal government caused a housing shortage by displacing workers, by sending our building materials overseas and by promoting settlement in urban centres. When the load became too heavy, it passed the buck to the provinces. By rent control, the dominion government is placing too heavy a burden on thousands of tenants, while it is dealing most unfairly with some landlords. When things reach a breaking point and protests surge from everywhere the government throws up its hands and dumps rent control into the lap of the provinces.
Let us not forget that unemployment is the breeding ground of disorder, poverty, unrest and communism. Unemployment leads to communism. It must therefore be averted. We have tried to fight it with words but that was a wasted, futile, useless effort. People do not yet understand why there was so much employment and money in wartime and why there is so little now, in peacetime. If money is found for destructive ends, it should also be available for constructive purposes. Should the fact that consumers are too few in number justify starvation in the homes of the jobless?
We now dread a third world war. It is feared that the Russians have discovered the secret of the atomic and hydrogen bombs.
Have we forgotten that communists are already waging this third war by taking over surrounding countries one at a time? Have we forgotten that, in their fifth column, which is well established in every country including Canada, they have the best weapon in existence?
This fifth column is wide awake at present but will prove even more efficient when the time comes for action.
Communists are now active in Canada in three different main groups:	(a) labour
organizations; (b) study and cultural organizations; (c) the civil service.
All this has been proved during the Kellock-Taschereau investigation, yet the Ottawa government refuses to take the firm steps required by the situation.
Far be it from me to make excuses for communism, which, in the words of Leo XIII, is a fatal plague that infects the very marrow of society and destroys it. I know too much about its workings not to condemn it. The communists will lose the next war, should they provoke or start it, but unemployment, this breeding ground of discontent, this mixture of confused causes, will make people
The Address-Mr. Sinnott look upon communism as the solution to the eternal social question.
I therefore request the government to attend to these alarming wounds, to heal them. That is within its powers as well as within its duties. There is no reason why any one of our citizens should not be able to live in a country 3,700,000 square miles in area.
In my own name, in that of my constituency, of my province, of my own race, in the name of the whole country which is threatened with the same crisis, the same miseries, I beseech those in power to put an end to this sad state of affairs.
Let us find jobs for our people. That is the only way to earn a salary. Whatever work is found, let it be, not just any work, but useful work, constructive work which will benefit our country. Let us not fight communism with words, but with action, honestly, by ensuring to the people what is rightfully theirs-order, justice, prosperity and national security in this fine, powerful and great country of ours.
(Text):


Mr. J. S. Sinnott (Springfield):: I wish to congratulate you, Mr. Speaker (the Acting Speaker, Mr. Beaudoin), on the position you are now occupying. As you are my former roommate, it gives me great satisfaction to see you there. I also wish to extend congratulations to the mover and the seconder of the address in reply to the speech from the throne. It gives me more satisfaction to extend them to the mover, however, as I have known him for a considerable number of years.
In the great riding of Springfield a few things are happening which I should like the house and the people of Canada, as well as others, to know about. I refer to the $10 million oil refinery which is being built in one part of the constituency. This refinery will employ a number of men for a considerable period of time, and will be of such a size that it will supply all of the oil to Manitoba. I should like to read from a clipping from the Winnipeg Free Press of some time ago. It reads as follows:
Construction on the Imperial Oil Company's $10 million refinery at East St. Paul, Manitoba, will begin about March 15, or as soon as weather permits, J. K. Jamieson of Sarnia, Ontario, manager of the engineering and development division of the company, stated Tuesday.
Mr. Jamieson arrived in Winnipeg Monday with other company officials to complete plans for the construction job.
First work to be undertaken at the 400-acre site, located seven miles north of Winnipeg's city limits, will be building of temporary office quarters, fencing the property and laying a temporary railway siding.

The Address-Mr. Sinnott
Biggest job now on the books of the company's manufacturing department, construction of the plant, will employ between 500 and 600 men during peak activity. May, 1951, is still the date set for completion of the project, Mr. Jamieson said.
With a capacity of 10,000 barrels a day, and working on a 24-hour, seven-day schedule, the refinery will supply all Imperial Oil's petroleum needs in Manitoba. All crude oil for processing will come from western Canada through the Edmonton-Superior oil pipe line now under construction.
"We are planning to bring tank crude to the Winnipeg plant from the oil line at Gretna," Mr. Jamieson explained. "However, possibility of the use of a pipe line from this point is still being discussed," he added1.
The refinery site is adjacent to railway lines of both Canadian National Railways and the Canadian Pacific Railway, and switching facilities are to be installed from both railways.
Refinery plans also include provision for an asphalt plant. Manufacture of this petroleum byproduct depends on the type of oil, the type of asphalt the market requires and the sale for it, officials explained.
Mr. Jamieson emphasized that there would be little or no chance of pollution of the Red river by waste products from the plant.
"Pollution should be kept to a minimum," he said. "We will have all the latest type of equipment to purify the 12 million gallons of water per day that will pass through the refinery."
"Actually, the water should be cleaner coming out of the refinery than that going in," he added.
When completed1 the refinery will have a "tank farm" of 42 storage tanks for both crude oil and finished products, having a total capacity of 35 million gallons.
Products of the plant will be high-grade automobile gasoline, diesel fuel, domestic and industrial fuel oil. No high-octane aviation gasoline will be manufactured, Mr. Jamieson said . . .
The construction company will also let sub-contracts to local firms wherever possible, Mr. Jamieson said.
Used in construction will be, 15,000 feet of fencing. 16 miles of pipe, 8,000 feet of roads, 5,000 yards of concrete, 13,000 tons of steel and 3 miles of railway spur tracks.


Arthur Leroy Smith: How much sewer?


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: That all depends on you.
Another project which is under way in the riding of Springfield is a $20 million power plant which is now being developed on the Winnipeg river. I take great pride in representing this riding, which is the key to all of Manitoba. In that riding is developed all the power for the whole of Manitoba, and that includes the great city of Winnipeg.
We discussed the unemployment situation here in the house for some considerable time a few days ago; and while some members regard the situation as serious, I myself do not take that attitude. Some members think that governments are a cure-all for this situation. I do not. I think that Canadians as a whole would be doing themselves a great disservice if they had in mind this idea of foisting upon the dominion and provincial governments almost the entire responsibility for handling the unemployment situation.

We must not forget that wholesale spending on giant public works is not a cure-all for unemployment. It merely takes up the slack at times, in most cases causes considerable strain on the purses of both the provincial and dominion governments, and in turn has to be met by the taxpayers themselves. If in the future we should have severe unemployment situations, and I hope we shall not, there should be more intelligent co-operative planning among the businessmen, professional men, labour leaders and ' other authorities. Planning by industry itself goes a long way to create steady employment. I believe that labour leaders can certainly help to develop and put into effect workproviding plans by giving both industry and the government the benefit of the workingman's ability and ideas. Let us not be panicky and be always looking at the black side of the picture, as this sometimes induces a hasty and unwise course of action.
A few days ago I believe the hon. member for Souris (Mr. Ross) stated that there were not many municipal men on this side of the house.


James Arthur Ross: You have got me wrong.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: I am glad the hon. member is in his seat now.


Mr. Casselman:: He is always here.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: Did I hear him say that I was wrong? In the cabinet we have some municipal men. The Minister of Fisheries (Mr. Mayhew) has had considerable experience. The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) has had some experience. I believe the Minister of Labour (Mr. Mitchell) has had considerable experience as well. There are other backbenchers on this side of the house who have had considerable experience. I will refer to the hon. member for The Battle-fords (Mr. Bater), who has had about 31 years' experience. We have the hon. member for Mackenzie (Mr. Ferrie), who has had considerable experience. There is the hon. member for Hastings South (Mr. Foil well); the hon. member for Spadina (Mr. Croll); the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre (Mr. Maybank), who is a parliamentary assistant; the hon. member for Middlesex West (Mr. McCubbin), who is a parliamentary assistant; the hon. member for Nipissing (Mr. Garland); the great hon. member for Fraser Valley (Mr. Cruickshank); the hon. member for New Westminster (Mr. Mott); the hon. member for Lafontaine (Mr. Ratelle); the hon. member for St. Ann (Mr. Healy); the hon. member for Moose Mountain (Mr. Smith); the hon. member for Swift Current (Mr. Whiteside); and then we have the hon. member for Springfield, who served eight years as a municipal reeve, and is reeve

again, in spite of the Free Press editorials. You know, I have a new name. Now they call me two-job John. The editor of the Free Press went out on a limb so far as to call me two-job John and to point out the reason why two-job John could not handle the municipality as well as being a federal member. Well, I left it to the good taste and democracy of the county. I was asked by so many of the ratepayers of the municipality in which I live to run that I allowed my name to stand, and I came down here. I never held a political meeting of any kind, and I was elected without them. We left it entirely to the people themselves. In spite of the Free Press and its editorials we left it, as my friend from Montreal says, to true democracy and to their sound judgment. They would rather listen to someone who had served them for a number of years previously than to a crackpot editor of a newspaper.
Some hon. members on the other side of the house have said that the farmers have lost $2 million; others have said $5 million; and we are at a loss to know which figure is correct. There have been so many estimates that it is difficult to say which is the right figure. We have not yet come to the end of the contract. If there should be any loss, in view of the fact that the government has taken care of the egg producers and other producers, they should make up the loss out of the consolidated revenue fund of Canada.


James Arthur Ross: You are a good finance minister.


Mr. Harkness:: What about the "if"?


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: Farmers as a whole never look for handouts. As hon. members know, during the war many of them worked sixteen to eighteen hours a day, and some of them twenty hours a day to make the same amount of money that the people in the factories were making by working about eight hours a day. Therefore I ask the government to think twice before the end of the contract, and if there is any loss it should be made up out of the consolidated revenue fund of all Canada.
I wish to thank the government for introducing their health plan.


Some hon. Members:: Which one?


Stanley Howard Knowles: Where is it?


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: Under this plan a hospital has been built in my riding, costing some $22,000. Another $100,000 hospital is going up at the present time, of which the federal government is paying quite a share. Laugh that one off!
We heard from the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) this afternoon with regard to old age pensions. I
The Address-Mr. Sinnott believe he was giving us all of the cure-alls. What he gave was not cure-alls. He was merely asking the dominion government to remove the means test. I do not think any hon. members in this house are more in favour of removing the means test than those of the Liberal party.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Is that why you voted against it last fall?


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: But we must ask ourselves, where is the money to come from? Can we taxpayers afford it?


Mr. Hansell:: You should know; you ran as a Social Credit candidate at one time.


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: I was like a kitten at that time. It has to be nine days old before its eyes are open. As I said before, there is no one in this house who is more in favour of seeing the means test removed than the Liberal members.


An hon. Member:: Why don't they remove it?


John Sylvester Aloysius Sinnott: We expect when the two richest provinces of Canada come into the allnation program this fall we shall be able to remove it.
We have pensions for the blind, but there is one class of citizens for whom there is no pension. I refer to those who are incapacitated and are unable to work. Being the reeve of a municipality I know who pays for these things. The whole burden falls on the municipalities themselves. The provincial governments and the dominion government should come into this field and grant pensions to these people just as they grant pensions to the blind and to the aged. These people who are incapacitated have to sit in a wheel chair day in and day out and read story books to pass away the time. They are unable to help themselves. They should come under a pension plan of the dominion government.
I should like the Crowsnest freight rates to remain as they are. They have been on the statute books for a long time and I think it would be a mistake to have them removed.
I should also like to see the completion of the trans-Canada highway as soon as possible. As we know, that highway goes through the whole of the constituency of Springfield. Not only will it help to bring east and west together, but it will result in a saving of United States dollars. With those remarks, Mr. Speaker, I should like to close.


Mr. E. B. Huffman (Kent, Onl.):: Mr. Speaker, my first remarks this evening will be those of acquiescence in what has been said by other hon. members by way of congratulations to the mover (Mr. Larson) and seconder

The Address-Mr. Huffman (Mr. Dumas) oi the address in reply to the speech from the throne. However, I would like to add my special word of appreciation to all who have taken part in this debate. This is the first time I have spoken in the House of Commons, and perhaps it would be well if I were to tell hon. members some of the impressions I have gained as I have observed other hon. members take part in the debates of this and the former session.
I was intrigued to hear the hon. member for Skeena (Mr. Applewhaite) describe the beauties of his constituency. He told of the great trees, the beautiful scenery and everything connected with it. I was reminded, too, of the beauty of other constituencies in Canada; but as I was enraptured by the descriptions offered by hon. members taking part in the debate my mind turned to the beauties of my own riding of Kent.
In this connection let me point out that of the seventeen major crops grown in Canada the county of Kent, which it is my honour to represent, has succeeded in excelling in twelve. Attention of hon. members was directed this afternoon to the sugar beet industry. That, I may add, is one of the main products in Kent. In Kent is situated one of the largest sugar refineries on the North American continent, and practically all the sugar beets processed in the factory are grown in the county and the counties adjoining. For every dollar a sugar company pays for the beets produced, it provides in goods and services an additional $1.25. That in itself is a remarkable fact, and serves to assist in the economy of the country as a whole.
Industry has located in that area because of the excellent public relations existing between labour and management. In 1948 the city of Chatham, the only city in the county, was known across Canada as the industrial city of the year. It had enjoyed greater industrial expansion than any other city because it was served by an alert industrial commission which spent a great deal of time promoting the advantages of the city and succeeded in persuading many industries to locate at that point.
We were told in the house this afternoon why industries are moving to central Canada. I would add that anyone who wishes to attract industry to his constituency must accept as one of the prime requisites in such an endeavour the necessity of having a good public relations officer or trade commissioner. The gentleman who serves us in Chatham in this capacity, Mr. W. M. Gray, has become known across Canada because of the excellent relationships he has developed between those

wishing to establish industry in Chatham and the city executive.
The sugar industry has provided employment for many people in Kent county, and it is one of the safest crops that could be introduced to any community. Like the other hon. member who spoke this afternoon, I foresee the time when Canada will provide a much greater proportion of the sugar consumed than is provided at the present time.
To facilitate the location of industry in Chatham, we have been fortunate in the fact that the national housing administration has provided homes for those who have come to this point. For this reason labour is well satisfied and well housed, a combination of facts which has worked out advantageously. I am certain the results would be the same in other places if similar facilities were provided.
Because of its international significance, may I point out the geographical location of my constituency. We are the most southerly part of Canada, reaching as far south as part of the state of California, and for this reason we are blessed with an excellent climate, combined with good soil and climatic conditions.
In addition to these features we have a fishing fleet operating from the ports on lake Erie, and that fleet is on the lake today gathering its catch for the lenten tables of our own province, and the great consuming public to the south of us. One significant fact about one port on lake Erie stands out. It is completely landlocked, with the exception of a narrow outlet so limited in extent that a stone could be thrown across. It is nine miles in length and approximately six miles wide, surrounded by trees of a provincial forest on one side and productive farm land on the other.
I would draw to the attention of the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Fournier) the fact that a submission was made to his department some time earlier promoting the development of this port. It is the most southerly in Canada and, as I have already pointed out, the fact that the fishing fleet is at work proves that there is no ice condition with which to contend. If some work were done at the port now or in the near future the department would succeed in providing one of the safest harbours on the lakes, and one which would open first in any season and accommodate those lake freighters which might choose to tie up at that point. This work could be extended further. We have had numerous inquiries from industries that have indicated a desire to locate in this particular port. With the assistance of the Department of Public Works I am certain that a good deal could be done to develop this

port. Adjacent to the port is land from which the water is diked back. On this land are located people from every country in central Europe who mix with our own people to work this productive soil on which they are able to produce two crops in a season.	.
There is another matter of perhaps national importance that I would like to draw to the attention of the Minister of Transport (Mr. Chevrier). There is a municipally-owned air field south of Chatham. This field is half-way between the air route from London to Windsor, and it is also on the air lane of the flights to New York, Niagara Falls, Buffalo and Chicago. It is on the route of the T.C.A. planes from Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, London and Windsor. In 1941 one of the most unfortunate air tragedies this country has ever witnessed occurred in the adjoining county. If the facilities at this field had been extended it is quite possible the large transport plane could have been directed to this airport. If the lives of the 21 people who were killed when the plane crashed could have been saved I am sure that the expenditures would have been considered to be in the interests, not only of our own transport lines but of the transport lines operated by our great neighbour to the south.
I would like to make a few observations about agriculture. Going back in history we can note the development of agriculture, not only in our own country but in the country to the south. The early settlements were in the eastern part of Canada, but as time went on the curtain was rolled back and the plough was placed time and time again to the virgin soil of this country. In so doing we reaped the immediate benefits that accrue from an operation of this kind, but unfortunately in many cases we have not returned enough to the soil so that those who will follow will have the same heritage as those who have had access to the virgin soil of our country.
I sincerely hope that the agricultural program of Canada will be such that our agriculturists will be encouraged to return sufficient to the soil so that this great heritage may continue and our production be as it is at present. As the centuries have gone along and new avenues of production have opened up I am convinced, as I am certain many others in this house are convinced, that the areas of virgin soil are becoming smaller and smaller. We must not forget that only eight per cent of the world's surface is arable.
If we continue to mine the soil the results will be unfortunate and we will not be in position to feed the ever-increasing population of the world.
There never was a time in the history of our country when we heard so much about conservation. There never was a time that the agri-
The Address-Mr. Huffman culturists of this country had a better opportunity to practice conservation. I am quite certain that we can maintain a better balance within our agriculture which will permit us to meet the demands of the time in which we live. Last year the speech from the throne made reference to reforestation, a matter about which we have been negligent in the past. I am quite certain that if we work with the provincial governments on this it will be to the advantage of Canada and will continue to provide for Canada those things which are essential to our economy.
I would like to refer briefly to the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Pearson). We are proud that six years of the early life of the minister were spent in Chatham and the people of that area take great pride in the work the minister is doing. We feel that as the twig is bent, so grows the tree. I never want to make one remark about Canada that is not in the best interests of Canada. I feel that if all of us, especially hon. members of this house, would try to sell Canada to the world, the very thing that we fear most- in the words of the late president of the United States, "the only thing to fear is fear itself"

will not happen because no communist or others who think along those lines would be able to find any comfort in our remarks. We would thus attract to our country those people who possibly may not hold the same views that we do but who might be attracted to us by our actions.
The hon. member for Haldimand (Mr. Catherwood) spoke about the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the county of Haldimand. I would like to mention at this time that the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) has agreed to visit the county of Kent on the occasion of the 157th anniversary of the founding of Fairfield village, which was founded by the Moravians and later became known as Moraviantown. As you all know from your knowledge of history, that is where the great Indian patriot, Tecumseh, came from. The battle of the Thames will be commemorated this year. As the celebration will have an international complexion, besides the Prime Minister of Canada invitations have been extended to the President of the United States and the governors of five of the adjoining states whose officers and men participated in the battle during the war of 1812 to 1814. Four of these five governors have accepted the invitation to be present on the occasion. Like the hon. member for Haldimand, on behalf of the people who have honoured me by electing me as their representative I invite each and every one of you to be present on the occasion of the 157th anniversary of the founding of Fairfield village.

The Address-Mr. Huffman
I would like to refer for a moment to the people who live in the county of Kent. In the early history of our development we were fortunate that people from the adjoining province of Quebec came there, and in their early struggles to found a settlement, the first year of which was not successful, they named their community Pain Court. According to the information I have, the translation of that name into English is "short bread". I regret I am not able to honour the French-speaking members of the house by being able to make some remarks in their language, but I can say that from the time of the naming of this village these people have become some of the best farmers in the county of Kent, and their soil is among the most productive.
So far as trade and commerce is concerned, I am certain that the people of the county of Kent would want me to pay tribute to the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe). In these times many things are being said about the loss of this market and that, but it is not because of lack of effort on the part of the Department of Trade and Commerce. No country in the world today has as extensive a trade commission service as Canada. These young people have been taught in the offices of the various departments in Ottawa, and they are the best ambassadors that Canada can have. In every country they are seeking to promote the sale of the things that we produce, not only industrially and agriculturally but everything that Canada has to offer on the markets of the world. I know that they are doing their very best to sell the goods that we have to offer. I am reminded that the hon. member for Skeena (Mr. Applewhaite) said that in this imperfect world not all is perfect.
I would like to say a few words to the Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. Gregg). I am sure every one of us realizes that the government has done an exceptional job for the Canadian veterans of world war II. As the hon. member said, not all is perfect. I should like to mention one point that has been brought to my attention on numerous occasions. As regards small holdings under the Veterans Land Act, many veterans tell me that for two reasons they are not able to establish themselves as they would like to under the existing legislation. The first is that in an area of small communities the requirements of the Veterans Land Act as to small holdings are that if the price of the land is $500 per acre or more at least two acres must be purchased, and if it is below $500 the requirement is three acres. In many small communities adjacent land is highly productive and two acres in the county of Kent, for example, would cost from $2,000 to $2,500.
This does not leave the veteran with equity enough to build a home suitable to his needs. After their return from the war many of these veterans have been living in rented houses or in rooms. They have growing families. I am certain that not one of us would deny them the right to home ownership, the pride of ownership, the home the very thing on which Canada is founded. As this matter has been drawn to my attention on several occasions I would ask that it be given consideration and revert to the half-acre requirement. I realize that the construction of homes on small holdings under the Veterans Land Act was not intended as a housing project, but nevertheless it has been a factor in the provision of housing in Canada. As my time is up there are many other things relating to the county of Kent I would like to refer to, and will on another occasion.
In conclusion I would like to observe that I am sure the people whom I have the honour to represent will not ask for, nor expect any favours except in the interests of Canada as a whole. Forming one of the 262 component parts of Canada, all that I will seek as their representative will be a fair and equal distribution of the services that Canada provides, and I shall take an active interest in their behalf.
On motion of Mr. Blair the debate was adjourned.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Fournier (Hull) moved: the adjournment of the house.
He said: As the first item tomorrow we will take up the motion of the Secretary of State for External Affairs to refer his estimates to the committee on external affairs. We do not believe the debate will be very long, since the first item of his estimates came up on Friday and was discussed for the full day. Then we will take up the motion in the name of the Minister of National Health and Welfare to set up a committee on old age security. Some time during the day we will move to go into committee of supply and call the departments of transport and finance. We will call transport because many hon. members have asked to have a discussion on Friday on the first item of that department. I should like to have finance in because after the estimates of external affairs are referred to the committee not many departments will be left, and sometimes a minister has to go away or is ill; so if there is no objection I would like to have at least three or four departments in.
Motion agreed to and the house adjourned at 10.50 p.m.

Tuesday, March 7, 1950