1952-06-06

Mr. Speaker:: I have the honour to inform the house that the Clerk has received from the chief electoral officer certificate of the election and return of the following member, viz.:
Of Joseph Leon Deslieres, Esquire, for the electoral district of Brome-Missisquoi.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE


Right Hon. L. S. St. Laurent (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, perhaps hon. members would welcome at this time a brief statement as to the extent of the remaining legislative program which the government proposes to submit for the consideration of parliament before the end of the session. Fortunately there is not much left, but in addition to the bills and resolutions now appearing on the order paper and the two resolutions of which notice appears in Votes and Proceedings of yesterday, there are the several measures which have been referred to the committees. These include the Treaty of Peace (Japan) Act, the amendment to the Canada Grain Act, the amendment to the War Veterans Allowance Act, the amendment to the Veterans Benefit Act, the amendment to the Veterans Insurance Act and the redistribution legislation. It is expected that these measures will be reported back to the house in due course and will be required to be dealt with.
There are three measures which were before the Senate, one of which has just been passed by that house. If the two remaining measures are disposed of in that place in time they will be sent here for consideration. These are the Criminal Code revision and the amendment to the Food and Drugs Act.
The government expects within the next few days to give notice of a bill dealing with the Belleville harbour commissioners and there will be the usual annual bill respecting Canadian National finances. It is hoped and expected that at an early date we will have the final polishing up given to a bill which has been under consideration for some time dealing with currency, the mint and the exchange fund. There may also be
a resolution to approve of an agreement for the promotion of safety on the great lakes and there will probably be introduced in the Senate a bill dealing with trade-marks. It is not intended that that bill shall go beyond the committee stage in that house at this session. It is being introduced, as the Bankruptcy Act and the Income Tax Act were introduced, so that it may get publicity and so that during the recess of parliament interested parties may make such representations, or prepare themselves to make such representations, as they may see fit at another session.
We have another bill that has been ready for some time to amend the Eastern Rocky Mountain Forest Conservation Act but it cannot be introduced until the revised contract with the government of Alberta has been completed. If that is completed in time to make it convenient without rushing matters here to introduce the confirmatory legislation that will be done. So far as I know there is nothing else in contemplation, and that will complete the whole program.


Mr. Diefenbaker:: I should like to ask the Prime Minister a question with particular reference to one matter to which he referred, the revision of the Criminal Code. The law societies have had a general opportunity afforded by the Minister of Justice to examine the measure but in view of its amplitude and the fact that the law societies have not had a full opportunity to examine its terms, and having several letters on my desk with regard to the various provisions, I should like to inquire whether the Prime Minister will consider allowing that measure to stand over. After all, no real harm would be done by allowing it to stand over until the next session so that every representation consistent with the principles of justice embodied in the Criminal Code may be made. I make that suggestion because I feel that so important a piece of work as the amendments to the Criminal Code certainly should not be rushed through the house until the law societies and others interested have had the fullest opportunity to study the matter and if necessary make further representations in addition to those they have already made.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: There has never been any intention to rush it through the house. It is a measure which is not controversial in party

Business of the House political terms. It is a measure that is being devised for the better administration of the criminal law for the whole Canadian public. We fully appreciate that it has to receive the most careful consideration. We are under the impression that the law societies and others outside parliament have had a full opportunity to make their views known. There are many lawyers in this house, as there are in the other place, and I am sure that every one of them will feel a personal responsibility to give due consideration to all the sections of the measure amending the Criminal Code.
I think it would not be advisable to try to deal with it in this house if it did not reach us at least a fortnight before the approximate date for prorogation of parliament. It is not something which has to be passed at this session. However, it has been delayed inevitably for a long time and we would not care to delay it any longer than is reasonably necessary to make it acceptable as a piece of legislation having had the most careful consideration possible from those who will be responsible for its enactment. We had already given the matter consideration and had come to the conclusion that unless it reached this house at least a fortnight before the target date for prorogation it would not be proper to try to have it considered in a hurry.


Mr. Drew:: I would point out that there may be a consideration that should be borne in mind in that respect. Already, as the Prime Minister knows, some representations have been made that the legislation should stand over in order to provide a further opportunity for discussion. To some extent what members of the house will do in the meantime will depend on whether the legislation is or is not going to be proceeded with. I believe that a number of members will perhaps wish to answer the communications they have received with some knowledge whether it is or is not proposed to proceed with the legislation. Therefore without asking that a definite statement be made today, I wish the Prime Minister would consider that feature of the subject because many of us would probably feel that we would simply answer the letters we have received by saying that it is the intention of the government to permit further consideration, if that is the intention.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: We know of no reason, other than the time required to give the matter careful study in the house, that would justify retarding the coming into force of the legislation, but it may very well be that the kind of consideration that it should be given by members of the house will make it

undesirable to have it completed at this session. I think the general public would naturally wish to have it come into force in proper form just as soon as that task can be accomplished, and I would not like to make any commitment to other bodies that it would be delayed for any other reason than that members of parliament would not have been satisfied in the meantime that they had had all the information that might be of benefit to them in helping them to discharge their responsibility.


Mr. Knowles:: One of the questions I had intended to direct to the Prime Minister has already been put by the hon. member for Lake Centre. Perhaps I might be permitted to say that we support the suggestion that the Criminal Code amending bill should stand over until next session, for the reason suggested by the Prime Minister as well as for other reasons. The other question I wish to ask is in two parts. Will there be introduced at this session the legislation indicated in the speech from the throne respecting the Canadian Citizenship Act, and will there also be introduced at this session the legislation to amend the Government Annuities Act which we had before us at the last session of parliament?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: With respect to the
Canadian Citizenship Act, at the present time it is not contemplated that it will be dealt with at this session. It has always been contemplated that that would depend upon what was done with the Immigration Act. It was felt that if the Immigration Act as proposed were adopted in exactly that form it might be desirable to have concurrent amendments made to the Canadian Citizenship Act. However, it is not now intended to bring them forward at this session because even when the Immigration Act is enacted it will be provided that it is not to come into force until proclaimed, and it will not be possible to proclaim it at once because it will require some preliminary organization changes before it is proclaimed.
With respect to the annuities act and two or three others mentioned in the speech from the throne, we have not yet got them in the shape that we would wish to have them to recommend them to parliament, and we do not expect to have them in shape to enable us to recommend them to parliament at this session.


Mr. Fleming:: May I ask the Prime Minister one other question with regard to the Criminal Code? How does the government propose that this measure shall be handled if and when it does come to the house? Is it

intended that it should be considered in committee of the whole after second reading or referred to some select committee after second reading?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: That point has not been decided. It is a matter in which it is felt that all members of the house of course are interested, but I think those members of the house who are not of the legal fraternity will look to their confreres of the legal fraternity to take the principal part in discharging the responsibility of getting the revised code in proper shape. No decision has been arrived at as to whether the most convenient form would be the committee of the whole or a special committee made up principally of the lawyer members of the house. My own view would be that it would probably take less time and might meet with the approval of the non-lawyer members of the house to have it referred to a committee of lawyers. I would not want to press that on the house if other members felt that they also wanted to take part in the detailed examination of the various clauses of the bill.


Stanley Howard Knowles: You have got to have some common sense in it.



CRIMINAL CODE


Hon. Alphonse Fournier (for the Minister of Agriculture) moved: the first reading of Bill No. 309 (from the Senate), to amend the Criminal Code (race meetings).
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



WAR RISKS INSURANCE


Alphonse Fournier: that the house go into committee at the next sitting to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to introduce a measure to provide (a) that the Minister of Finance may enter into insurance and reinsurance agreements against any or all war risks of aircraft, vessels and cargo; (b) that there shall be established in the consolidated revenue fund an account to be known as the marine and aviation war risks insurance account; and (c) that there shall be credited to the account amounts equal to the premiums or other moneys received, sums allocated from appropriation by parliament and amounts directed to be credited to the account as temporary credits.
He said: His Excellency the Governor General, having been made acquainted with the subject matter of this resolution, recommends it to the consideration of the house.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
Proposed Legislation NORTHWEST TERRITORIES ACT

Hon. Robert H. Winters (Minister of Resources and Development) moved: that the house go into committee at the next sitting to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to introduce a measure to amend, revise and consolidate the Northwest Territories Act and inter alia to provide for an increase in the allowance for living expenses of the members of the council when the council is in session; to provide also for the payment of all territorial revenues into the consolidated revenue fund and for the establishment therein of an account to be known as the Northwest Territories revenue account to which shall be credited (a) amounts equal to the territorial revenues paid from time to time into the consolidated revenue fund pursuant to subsection one; (b) all moneys appropriated by parliament to be credited to the Northwest Territories revenue account; and (c) an amount equal to the amount standing to the credit, at the commencement of this act, of the account then known as the Northwest Territories revenue account; to provide also for the payment, out of the consolidated revenue fund, of money required for the territorial purposes specified in the ordinances of the commissioner in council, all such payments to be charged to the Northwest Territories revenue account; to provide also for the establishment' of a territorial court of the Northwest Territories and for the appointment in certain cases of deputy judges thereto; and1 to provide also that the governor in council may appoint police magistrates in and for the territories and may fix their salaries and allowances; and to provide further that the governor in council may'appoint the clerk of the court, sheriff and such other officers as are deemed necessary and fix their salaries and allowances.
He said:	His Excellency the Governor
General, having been made acquainted with the subject matter of this resolution, recommends it to the consideration of the house.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.


Alphonse Fournier: that the house go into committee at the next sitting to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to introduce a measure to amend the International Boundary Waters Treaty Act to increase the maximum salaries of the members of the Canadian section of the international joint commission; to bring the secretary and all other employees under the provisions of the Civil Service Act; and to provide that all expenses incurred in carrying out the provisions of the act and the treaties shall be paid out of moneys appropriated by parliament for the purpose.
He said: His Excellency the Governor General, having been made acquainted with the subject matter of this resolution, recommends it to the consideration of the house.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
[Stage Direction]
Inquiries of the Ministry KOREA


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Louis Stephen St-Laurent: On the 4th of June, the day before yesterday, the member for Vancouver East (Mr. Maclnnis) asked a question about the situation in South Korea. I had the answer yesterday but the hon. member was not in his seat at the time the orders of the day were called. Though he has not yet come in this afternoon I think I should make a short answer so as not to leave the impression that I have not given his question the consideration it deserved.
Previous to the visit of the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Pearson) to New York yesterday and the day before, our permanent delegate to the United Nations, on instructions from Ottawa, had expressed to the Secretary General of the United Nations our concern over the situation in South Korea. The minister, during his visit, has himself also discussed the matter with the Secretary General. It has also been taken up by our representatives in London and Washington with the appropriate departments of the United Kingdom; government and the United States government. No doubt on his return next week the Secretary of State for External Affairs will wish to say something further on the subject.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Jean Francois Pouliot (Temiscouaia):: Mr. Speaker, referring to questions at pages 2787 and 2788 of Hansard of Monday last, June 2, the answers or the supposed answers which appear in Hansard are not the same as those that I have received. They pertain to the Canadian National Railways and on each answer, which bears the signature of the deputy minister of transport, there is:
Answer: The Canadian National Railways advise as follows:
That appears on both answers. However, it does not appear on Hansard and that makes all the difference in the world, because the answers which I hold in my hand are typewritten and have just been conveyed to the House of Commons by the minister and not given by him. They are not the minister's answers; they are the answers of the railway.
I would ask the minister if I am right in that respect-and I have a second question to ask him.

If the answer had been given by the railway and conveyed by the minister to the house, are the answers from the board of directors of the Canadian National Railways or are they answers from the management?


Hon. Lionel Chevrier (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, I think the house is familiar with the practice in so far as the Canadian National Railways are concerned. Questions when asked are put on the order paper and submitted by the officials of the Department of Transport to the officials of the Canadian National Railways, and the answers given by the railway officials to the questions are the answers which are tabled in this house. Normally it is stated in the answer that the Canadian National Railways advise as follows:
And the answers follow, 1, 2, 3.
That is the practice, but if it has been omitted-and I note that it has in the questions to which my hon. friend refers at pages 2787 and 2788 of Hansard-I have no objection to that being inserted, but it is a matter for the house to determine and not for me.
Dealing with the questions of my hon. friend, I think what I have said so far answers his first question. The second question would be answered by the fact that these are not the answers of the board of directors. Questions are not sent to the board of directors, they are sent to the officers of the Canadian National Railways with whom our officers are in contact. The replies submitted by them are the replies which are given by myself to the house.


Jean-François Pouliot: I thank the minister for his fair answer which will permit me to use proper language with regard to the Canadian National Railways people in due course- language that I would never use toward him.



CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Jean-François Pouliot: Now I have a question to ask of the distinguished gentleman who sits on my left, the hon. Secretary of State (Mr. Bradley).
Will he be kind enough to tell us when he will table the report of the civil service commission for last year, and if it will be tabled as usual on prorogation day.


Hon. F. G. Bradley (Secretary of Slate):: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. gentleman for having given me notice of his question.
Subsection 4 of section 4 of the Civil Service Act provides that:
The commission shall make an annual report and statement of the transactions and affairs of the commission during the year then next preceding, and such report shall be laid before parliament.

That is to say, of course, it is an annual report. Pressure of work in connection with salary revisions and the recruitment of personnel for national defence and emergency positions has delayed the preparation of this year's report, but it will be in the hands of the queen's printer by the beginning of the next week, and will be here shortly thereafter.


Jean-François Pouliot: I congratulate you.

The house in committee of supply, Mr. Beaudoin in the chair.



DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL HEALTH AND WELFARE

[Stage Direction]
259.	Administration of the Quarantine and Leprosy Acts, $322,001.
Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Chairman, before we go on with item 259, may I ask a question about the statement which the minister put on the record just at the moment of adjournment last night. It is a question that relates to a number of the items in the estimates of the department. In comparing the statement of the actual expenditures, item by item, which the minister tabled late last night with the estimates of 1951-52, I notice that in many instances the expenditures exceeded the estimates. What is the explanation for that? Were there supplementary estimates for those items which were not included in the estimates as printed in the present volume?


Mr.   Marlin.@: The further supplementaries are not included. Those items are covered by further supplementaries.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I then make this observation on this volume of estimates. I suppose the same thing will apply to all departments, and not just the Department of National Health and Welfare. When figures are shown as being the estimates for the year 1951-52 for comparison with the year 1952-53, we are given apparently only the original or main estimates for the year 1951-52, and the supplementary estimates or further supplementary estimates are not included in those figures. I urge, Mr. Chairman, that when the volume of estimates is to be printed in future it ought to give members that information.


Mr.   Marlin.@: This discussion is really out of order. What the hon. member is saying now he should have said on the main item. I do not want to engage in a debate on the issue, but obviously the estimates are compared only with the main estimates and with the supplementaries of the previous year, but not with the further supplementaries. It could not be otherwise, and it has been that way for years.
Supply-Health and Welfare


Donald Methuen Fleming: I misunderstood the minister. I can understand that the further supplementary estimates, which might not be passed until the last month of the fiscal year, would not be included in the volume which probably will have been already printed before that time. Will he clear this point, as to whether the supplementary estimates, apart from those brought in at the end of the fiscal year, are or are not included in the volume?


Mr.   Marlin.@: They are.


Donald Methuen Fleming: They are shown?


The Chairman:: Shall item 259 carry?


Donald Methuen Fleming: I had asked a question of the minister in regard to No. 259. Will he tell us how many lepers there are at the two establishments, the one at Bentinck island in British Columbia and the other at Tracadie in New Brunswick.


Mr.   Marlin.@: There are eight, three at Bentinck and five at Tracadie.


Donald Methuen Fleming: What is the cost of maintaining those two establishments?


Mr.   Marlin.@: Roughly about $22,000.


Donald Methuen Fleming: How is it broken down?


Mr.   Marlin.@: About $7,450 at Bentinck and $14,700 at Tracadie.


Mr. Murray (Cariboo):: I believe that this item was referred to some years ago, and questions were asked about the necessity of maintaining a place for the treatment of lepers. I hear that there are eight such people in British Columbia now, and a year ago there was one. This difficulty in Korea, and the constant traffic back and forth across the Pacific, may very well expose us to the dangers of this sort of disease. I believe the minister should be commended for maintaining an institution where patients may be treated, and also maintaining a very close observation of persons landing on these shores from the Pacific. I believe it is very much better for the nation to save money by preventive measures, instead of spending money after there has been an occurrence of this and other diseases in many places.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
260.	Immigration and medical services, $1,198,360.
Donald Methuen Fleming: This is a large item that
relates to the immigration medical services, and shows some increase over last year. In referring to the details on page 322, I notice that the number of medical officers is being increased from 28 to 47. There is also a substantial increase in the number of housemaids. There is a provision for 24 assistants, who are new. I wonder if the minister would

Supply-Health and Welfare review the situation in regard to the maintenance of these services, particularly in the light of immigration policy outlined to us, and give us the duties and qualifications of the various persons who are being added to the staff in these respective capacities.
I would ask the minister also to indicate what will be the effect, if any, on the administration of the immigration medical services, following the adoption of the new Immigration Act which has been introduced in the house? Will he tell us something about the plans of the department in regard to locating medical examiners abroad, and particularly if there are any changes in contemplation. I would ask him to tell us something, in general, about the health of immigrants. The minister is aware that early in March the minister of health for Ontario reported with some regret that during the last four years more than 70,000 days of treatment had been provided for displaced persons in Ontario, at a cost to the province of considerably more than $200,000. He mentioned that the tuberculosis rate was two and a half times that of Canadians, and indicates that these immigrants were apparently more susceptible than Canadians to arthritis and other diseases. Will the minister make a statement covering the points I have mentioned?


Mr. Thatcher:: I was going to ask several questions along the lines of those asked by the member for Eglinton. There is one particular point I cannot understand and that is that the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration told us there would be 30,000 to 40,000 less immigrants this year than we had last year, so why should we have to spend $307,000 more examining them with an additional staff of 40 people? The two things do not seem to jibe, so would the minister give an explanation?


Mr. While (Middlesex East):: I wanted to ask the minister if this item pays for any of the doctors and nurses on our immigration staff.


Mr.   Marlin.@: Entirely. I take it that there are no other questions on this item, so I shall deal with them now.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: I have some other detailed questions to ask.


Mr.   Marlin.@: Then I suggest that the hon. member do it now, and I shall deal with them all at once.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: I would prefer to have a general answer, and then ask the detailed questions.


Mr.   Marlin.@: First of all, with regard to the last question. The entire services of
(Mr. Fleming.]

the examination staff are under this vote. As the committee will realize, we service the immigration department as we service other departments of government in other ways. While there is not complete centralization of medical services, an effort is made, in so far as it is possible, and in the light of all conditions, to make the Department of National Health and Welfare provide the medical services for those departments of government requiring them.
Our budget is determined, not by our own departmental program, but by the requirements that follow the program of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration itself. There has been an increase to the extent of 19 medical officers, together with consequential staff that has to be employed, not only abroad, but for the functions they exercise at our hospitals and our centres at Gander, Harmon field, Sydney, Halifax, Moncton, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and so on. I do not know that anything arises in which we are concerned in the proposed citizenship bill, or in the amendments to the act to which the hon. member has referred. I am not aware of anything that would affect us consequentially. However, I may not have fully understood the hon. member's point.
It is true that the minister of health in Ontario did point to the great danger, and properly so, in his position of minister of health in that province. But I can assure my hon. friend, as did my parliamentary assistant when he replied on March 7 to a question asked in the house along the same lines. His answer is reported at page 203 of Hansard. I can assure my hon. friend that the greatest care is taken in the examination of proposed immigrants.
In respect of certain persons, such as epileptics, mental cases, tubercular cases and those affected with trachoma, as well as venereal disease, not only are the proposed immigrants examined themselves, but the members of their families are also examined. Then, for more than two and a half years there has been the requirement of X-rays from the proposed immigrant in the country of origin. The greatest care is taken in the examination of the proposed immigrants. In many instances there is re-examination. This does not happen in every case; but where for some reason or another an immigrant may be considered as possibly undesirable, there is re-examination here at the point of disembarkation.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Would the minister indicate whether in the past year the proportion of immigrants medically examined abroad, before beginning their journey to Canada, has increased. I notice in the last annual

report of the department for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1951, at page 69 there is the following statement:
During the year a total of 136,755 immigrants were medically examined abroad and 77,348 on arrival in Canada. Of the numbers examined 42,445 were from the British Isles, 92,076 from Europe and 2,234 from the orient.
Has there been any increase in the percentage of those examined abroad?


Mr. Martin:: Yes, a very considerable
increase, over 100 per cent.


Donald Methuen Fleming: That is what we would expect from the increased appropriation last year, and the increase still being provided. Would the minister deal more specifically with my inquiry in regard to assistants? As will be seen in the details at page 323 provision is made for 24 assistants. I have asked about their duties and qualifications, and I am also curious to know about the addition of 22 housemaids, in the particulars as they are shown at page 322.


Paul Joseph James Martin: We are opening our hospital at Rockhead, we have our hospital in the west, and our Park Savard hospital. If there are more immigrants, that means that more staff is necessary.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I gathered from what the minister said that these personnel, the assistants and housemaids, are located in Canada?


Paul Joseph James Martin: Yes, and some outside. For instance we are opening a new office in Oslo and the doctors have to have assistants there. We have some, too, in London and in the Paris office. But this staff is the staff thought to be necessary in the light of the policy of the immigration branch.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Are they assistants-because that is what they are called in the details?


Mr.   Marlin.@: Yes, that is what they are.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Are they medical assistants to the doctors?


Mr.   Marlin.@: X-ray operators, clerks, typists and that sort of assistant.


Donald Methuen Fleming: In other words it includes all kinds of staff?


Mr.   Marlin.@: Yes.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: I am not clear on what the minister has said. If we are to have 40,000 less immigrants this year than we had last year-and I think that was what the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration announced a few weeks ago-why do we need this staff?


Mr.   Marlin.@: I can only say that if we are going to have less we will not require the same staff. All we are doing is to service
Supply-Health and Welfare another department of government. If the staff is not required it will not be utilized.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: But if the minister would turn to page 323 he would see there an estimate for hospital materials and supplies, in which there is an increase of $60,000. If there are to be fewer immigrants, why do we have this increase?


Mr.   Marlin.@: My hon. friend may be assured that if we do not need the staff and do not need the material or cannot find adequate places to use it, we will not order it. But our staff is predicated upon the requirements to service the needs of the department. If the government should decide upon a different policy for this service, then we will have to cut our cloth accordingly. But we have to provide the equipment and the commodities used to give the kind of examination that the hon. member for Eglinton urged, and properly so, should be maintained.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: I understand that; but let me say this, that if our immigration policy has been cut, then these estimates should be cut.


Mr.   Marlin.@: I think the hon. member fails to realize that if he will compare the estimates this year with the main and supplementary estimates for last year he will find that they do not take into account last year's further supplementary estimates of $508,000. If these are taken into consideration, then the present estimates will appear as a decrease of $200,000. The blue book makes no reference to last year's further supplementary estimates.


Mr. Tuslin:: I notice that the item for allowances at page 323 is an increase from $53,184 to $127,536. What is the reason for this?


Mr.   Marlin.@: Those allowances are for our officers and personnel abroad, in accordance with the general policy of the government regarding officers in all departments who serve outside Canada and who, in view of special conditions attaching to residence outside the country, are provided for in this way.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
261.	Sick mariners treatment services, $588,129.
Mr. McLure:: What class of mariners is affected? Are these persons in the service of the government, or does the item apply to any sailor in private enterprise? I know of two sailors-or mariners, as we call them- who have been sick all winter down home, and have not received treatment of any kind. They have had no service from the department, so far as I am aware.


Mr.   Marlin.@: The treatment that is provided is for sailors for whom fees are paid.

Supply-Health and Welfare


Mr. Harkness:: This is a matter with which I first became familiar just a short time ago. I understand that this is in the nature of a medical insurance scheme, and the people who come under it are the members of the crew of any ship which pays a fee, and I think it is two cents per ton gross tonnage, every time it comes into port. The chief beneficiaries are fishermen, particularly along the Atlantic coast, and I understand there is a hospital, or there are hospitals, operated by this branch. Can the minister tell us where the hospitals are operated and how many are operated and whether they are operated continuously?
We are asked here to vote $588,000 when, as a matter of fact, the amount of money which will actually be required is about $250,000 less than that. The amount collected from the fishermen and from ships of various sorts that come in, as I understand it, makes up the revenue which, in the details on page 324, was $240,000 last year and is estimated at $250,000 this year. It would seem to me that this thing should be set up in such a way that we would be voting the actual amount of money required rather than the total amount of money which is spent.
I presume that the revenue collected goes into the consolidated revenue fund, but as for showing what the actual position is of this medical insurance scheme for fishermen and mariners, which I think is a good thing, we should be voting the actual amount which is required rather than the total expenditures made, because I do not think this gives us the true picture.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Well, as my hon. friend knows, there is a deficit in this. Theoretically this is a revenue bearing scheme, but the revenue does not take care of the positive obligations. As the deputy minister of health explained the other day before one of the committees- perhaps my hon. friend was a member of the committee-there is a problem and my hon. friend may be familiar with it. I feel strongly that you could make a pretty strong case for increasing the fees so as to make a greater equality between obligations incurred and moneys received by way of revenue. But it is thought that if that were done it would mean that a great many fishermen on the Atlantic coast would be denied medical services.
As to the accounting problem that my hon. friend has mentioned, I will make note of it, and see that it is given further consideration.


Douglas Scott Harkness: It is not an accounting problem. I do not think it is an accounting problem; I think it is a matter of the picture which is presented through the estimates to parliament and to the country.


Mr.   Marlin.@: Yes. With regard to the question as to where the hospitals are, marine hospitals are operated at Sydney and Lunenburg, Nova Scotia; sick mariners' clinics at the ports of Vancouver, Montreal, Quebec, Saint John, and Halifax, will continue to be operated as usual, a new sick mariners' clinic is planned for Victoria, British Columbia, and is expected to provide increased facilities for the care of out-patients. Elsewhere in the province in which the act operates, the various port physicians are paid either on a fee or part-time salary basis as conditions warrant, and we have not contemplated any essential changes.


Douglas Scott Harkness: In connection with what the minister said in regard to increasing the fees, the information that we got in the committee, to which he referred, was that the fees have been constant since 1868. I think there has been no increase in the fees since that time.


Mr.   Marlin.@: That is right.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Until not very long ago the revenue taken in from these fees was equal to the expenditures incurred. I think in all the time of operation the total deficit to date is only around a million dollars, and most of that, I presume, has been incurred in the last few years when hospital costs and so forth have gone up so extensively. I would think that possibly some small increase in that rate might make the scheme more or less self-liquidating again without, as the minister expressed it, making it impossible for the fishermen to take advantage of it.
I was rather surprised at the list of hospitals that the minister gave because the total amount of expenditure, including revenue, is only $588,000, and I am quite sure it would not be possible to run all these hospitals on that amount.


Paul Joseph James Martin: These hospitals are not used exclusively by us for that one single purpose. My hon. friend asked at what places or at what hospitals were we giving the service.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I asked at what places you were operating hospitals under this particular item, and I think the minister gave most of the hospitals that are operated not only under this branch but under various other departments.


Paul Joseph James Martin: The Sydney hospital is an Indian hospital in the main now, but we do treat sick mariners.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Perhaps the minister can tell us what hospitals are operated by this branch.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Sydney and Lunenburg are the only ones exclusively for this purpose. At our Park Savard hospital in Quebec, which was originally entirely used for immigration

purposes, we found it was too big for that and some years ago we converted it into an Indian hospital. We have not only Indians in that hospital; we actually lease some space incidentally to veterans affairs because of the existing current shortage of hospital space for veterans in Quebec city. At Rockhead we also treat Indians as well as sick mariners.


Douglas Scott Harkness: One other question on this, Mr. Chairman. What is the reason that mariners or fishermen are not eligible beyond the borders of Ontario and Quebec? In other words, all the ones on the St. Lawrence river from that point westward on the great lakes are not eligible.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Well, my hon. friend has touched a problem that has concerned me right from the time I became the minister of this department, and every other minister, I am sure, who has been in charge of this department. This particular service developed in the first instance out of a convention between various member states to protect the health of sick mariners travelling from the home country. It was confirmed by the league of nations, but it had been done before that. But long before the present time, because the maritime provinces and the province of British Columbia are maritime provinces traditionally, there was a difficulty sometimes in differentiating between sailors who are operating from one port in the country to a port in another country. Then there developed the difficulty that sometimes a ship travelling let us say from Quebec to Cherbourg would stop at Saint John or Halifax, two ports in our own country, and men would be sick, and the question arose: Are you going to continue treatment of these people? They would have got this treatment if they had gone to France. That policy developed, and we then had demands for treatment of sailors on the great lakes. The same policy has been urged. Well, we have had to resist that, and I think properly so, because people operating in inland waters have the same facilities of medical attention that any other citizen has in that province, and yet there is the anomaly in the case of some individuals. I can say no more than to state that the anomaly does exist.


Mr. Nowlan:: Some reference has been made to this vote being of importance to fishermen on the Atlantic coast, but I think the minister will agree with me when I say that it applies only to boats of a certain tonnage and fishermen working on boats below that would receive no benefit whatsoever.


Paul Joseph James Martin: It is not every fisherman.


George Clyde Nowlan: Hand liners and fishermen working with motor boats off the maritime
Supply-Health and Welfare coast would receive no benefit whatsoever. Benefits would be received only by those operating bankers and going out to sea with boats of larger tonnage. Did the minister say that there was a hospital at Lunenburg and Sydney operated by the department? I notice that only one matron is mentioned in the details.


Paul Joseph James Martin: In the other case she is called the head nurse.


Mr. Gillis:: Are all shipping companies on the Atlantic coast contributing to the sick mariners' fund?


Paul Joseph James Martin: They are not all contributing.


Clarence Gillis: How many contribute?


Mr.   Marlin.@: I will get that information before the end of the day.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
262.	Grants to institutions assisting sailors, in the amounts detailed in the estimates, $2,600.
George Clyde Nowlan: Upon what basis are these institutions selected? I note there are thirteen each receiving $200. Are they all in the maritime provinces?


Paul Joseph James Martin: No. There is one at Halifax, one at North Sydney, one at Sydney, two at Saint John, three at Montreal, two at Quebec, one at Vancouver, one at Victoria and one at North Vancouver.


George Clyde Nowlan: How are they chosen?


Paul Joseph James Martin: We discussed this with the sailors' organizations. This list is not allinclusive of this type of organization in the country. If my memory serves me correctly, there has only been one addition to this list during the last five years. At one time I wondered why these grants should be continued, but we discussed the matter with the various organizations and while they are perhaps symbolic it was generally thought that as they had been given for such a long time they should be continued as they do provide some assistance.


George Clyde Nowlan: I know that the organizations in Nova Scotia are performing a useful service. Although this is only a symbolic payment I think it is one which should be maintained. The minister says that there has been no increase during the last five years but in that time Newfoundland has come into confederation and I am wondering if there are similar organizations in that province which should be recognized by symbolic payments.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I am sure that this discussion will elicit such a request because there is somebody looking at me right now who I

Supply-Health and Welfare am sure will make certain that Newfoundland's interests are fully protected.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Laboratory of hygiene-
264. Construction or acquisition of buildings, works, land and new equipment, $424,000.
Donald Methuen Fleming: There is an item in the details on page 327 of $400,000 covering the construction of a virus laboratory. Where is this laboratory to be located and what is its direct purpose?


Mr.   Marlin.@: It is proposed to locate this laboratory at Tunney's Pasture in the west end of Ottawa and I may say that it is greatly needed and has been long overdue as the present quarters of the virus section are wholly inadequate. The new laboratory will provide adequate space and facilities. The department has approved of a two-storey unit with a partial subgrade basement. A great deal of study has been given to the design of this building and I think it will be found to be economical. We envisage that there will be provision for the necessary safety measures in preparing antigens and sera to be used for the laboratory diagnosis of viral diseases, especially the neurotropic viruses, such as poliomyelitis and the viral encephalomy-elitides. I forgot to mention last night, when we were talking about the virus program, that sixty of the research projects provided for in Ontario in the past two years were carried out under the national health program. The virus section of the laboratory of hygiene will be in a position to assist the laboratory divisions of the provincial departments of health. We also anticipate that numerous research projects will include the development of improved diagnostic procedures for neurotropic virus diseases with particular emphasis on the poliomyelitis group of viruses.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Will the minister indicate the size of the building and the staff that will be employed there?


Paul Joseph James Martin: It is estimated there will be about twenty.


Donald Methuen Fleming: How long before the building is completed?


Paul Joseph James Martin: I do not know. My colleague, the Minister of Public Works, is sitting beside me and with his usual benevolence I hope that it will not be too long.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
266. Industrial health, $232,348.
Donald Methuen Fleming: I notice that in the report of the department to which I alluded earlier mention is made at pages 46 and 47 of the

many functions performed by the department under this particular vote. It is stated that technical aid is provided to a number of federal agencies, including crown companies, on occupational health matters. I gather that in times past there has been no attempt made to charge other government departments or crown companies for the services rendered to them by the Department of National Health and Welfare. I am wondering if as a matter of true accounting to the public and to parliament it would not be better if that were done. We have many cases of this sort where work is done by one department for another department and a charge made accordingly. We are now told that crown companies are-going to pay income tax under the recent amendment to the Income Tax Act, and as an aid to clear accounting I am wondering: whether it would be desirable to make charges for this work.


Paul Joseph James Martin: That is a problem for finance and it would arise in connection with services rendered for departments like immigration, transport and agriculture. If this department was paid for the services rendered the total financial obligation of the government would not be less, although the estimates of the department might be reduced.


Donald Methuen Fleming: We would have much truer accounting.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
267. Civil service health, $262,457.
Mr. Cruickshank:: I am not criticizing this item, but I understand there is an increase of $111,000.


Paul Joseph James Martin: The increase is $29,000.


George Alexander Cruickshank: In order to be correct, may I ask which item we are on?


The Deputy Chairman:: I understood the hon. member was speaking to item 267.


George Alexander Cruickshank: The increase is more than that in the book I have. I will not take the minister's mistaken figures but will go to the correct figures in the blue book.


Stanley Howard Knowles: May I suggest that the hon. member has last year's book of estimates.


George Alexander Cruickshank: No, I have not. I do not care whether it is $29,000 or $30,000. I want to ask whether this item covers inspection services for health purposes.


Paul Joseph James Martin: No. You are thinking of the food and drugs inspection services.


Stanley Howard Knowles: This confirms my suggestion. The hon. member for Fraser Valley should get a boy and have him get a copy of this year's estimates. He is looking at last year's.

estimates in which item 267 concerned food and drugs and in which there was an increase of $111,000.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
269.	Administration of the Food and Drugs and
the Proprietary or Patent Medicine acts, $917,832.
Stanley Howard Knowles: Under item 269, which deals with the administration of the Food and Drugs Act, may I express the hope that by now the minister is in a position to make an informative and useful statement on a question that I have put to him quite a number of times.


Mr.   Marlin.@: Yes.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Just a minute. My question relates-


Mr.   Marlin.@: Don't be hard on me. I am just trying to help my friend.


Stanley Howard Knowles: -to the matter of brown bread. As the minister knows from remarks I have made on this question before, I am not suggesting that any impurities are being put in bread but I do suggest that a form of deception develops owing to the fact that not all brown bread is whole wheat bread. It appears that some of it is white bread dyed brown. I do not mean to suggest that the materials with which it is dyed are impure or injurious to health, but certainly it is unfair that people should buy brown bread thinking that they are getting whole wheat bread when such is not the case. I have drawn this matter to the minister's attention a number of times. It was treated with some levity at first but gradually we have been getting fairly serious attention paid to it, and the -last two or three times the matter has been raised the reply has been that it would be discussed between the officials of the minister's department and the trade concerned.
It is good to know that progress is being made and that there are such discussions but I hope that the officials did not just listen to what the trade had to say but made some pretty definite suggestions to the trade as to what should be done in the interests of the people of Canada.
I have in my hand a copy of the report of the minister's department for the last year for which the report is available, the fiscal year ended March 31, 1951. I find in it a few interesting pages on the work of the inspection and enforcement services under the heading of food and drugs. The comments on pages 73 to 75 indicate that this division has been fairly active. For example, they have concerned themselves with the "molasses for health" fad. I note in the report this comment:
While vendors generally made no claims themselves, one, who did advertise that "if you suffer
Supply-Health and Welfare from heart troubles, high blood pressure or gallstones, try crude molasses," was prosecuted under section 6A of the Food and Drugs Act. Conviction was refused on the grounds that a recommendation to "try" a product was not a recommendation for treatment. The case was appealed and a conviction obtained.
There are two or three other interesting items such as this one:
A number of butchers and vendors in the Ottawa district were prosecuted for selling horsemeat; it is an offence to sell horsemeat without clearly labelling it as such, or to use it in the manufacture of sausages or to use it or any other meat, except beef, in hamburg steak. As it was apparent that the vendor had often acted in good faith, believing his product to be beef, section 24 of the act was invoked to bring charges against the wholesaler or supplier as third party.
There is another reference to a Cornwall cheese factory violating cheese holding regulations. It turned out there were weaknesses in the regulations and they are now under study. Then there is this reference:
As a result of a case where 2,800 gallons of maple syrup seized in Quebec were found to be adulterated with cane sugar, conferences were held with the federal and provincial departments of agriculture, and methods of close co-operation developed.
Then I read the following:
Special attention is being given to food colours, some of which in the past have represented a definite health hazard. This year a shipment of 150 pounds of food colour imported from England was found to be of a kind not permitted in foods and was returned to the exporter.
My reason for referring to these few examples listed in the report of the department is to suggest that what some of us are asking for is not out of line with the sort of thing that the department is already doing. I feel that while the matter of white bread dyed brown may not involve something that is actually injurious to health nevertheless it is most unfair that there is not some regulation requiring that a loaf of brown bread must be whole wheat bread and not white bread dyed brown. I hope that this time the minister has something definite and informative to tell us.


Paul Joseph James Martin: My hon. friend hopes I will have something definite. He must not confuse his perfectly legitimate aspiration, with which I fully agree, with the practicalities of the situation. As the committee knows-


Stanley Howard Knowles: Are we going to get elegant words again?


Paul Joseph James Martin: They are not only elegant but they are pregnant with true meaning.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Let the minister speak for himself.


Paul Joseph James Martin: The minister may not be referred to in those terms any longer, although I will admit that for a long time I did believe that all brown bread was non-fattening, but
2982	HOUSE OF
Supply-Health and Welfare I have learned through bitter experience that that is not the case. The committee knows that first reading has already been given in the other place to a bill to revise the Food and Drugs Act, and it is a rather important revision. It is not the intention to have the bill come into this house this year because we want a full discussion by outside interests of the implications of that measure.
My hon. friend has drawn my attention specifically to the question of bread. Incidentally, I think that the food and drugs division is perhaps one of the least known but one of the most important and most effective operations of the government of Canada. The committee will be interested in knowing that the Food and Drugs Act is one of our oldest statutes. In fact I think it was the second statute on our statute books. The public have no knowledge of this fact, and I am sure all members have not, but every type of food used in Canada is examined in some form or another by the sampling method through our system of continuous inspection. Canada has a reputation in the standard of its foods generally which I think is excelled by no country.
At the American food institute last September Canada was given first recognition among all countries in attendance at that conference not only for its administration but for the philosophy and purpose behind the Food and Drugs Act. With regard to the bread question, a meeting was called by the department on April 8 at which discussions were held with representatives of the consumers, bakers, millers and allied trades on proposed amendments to standards for flour and bread under the Food and Drugs Act. Following the discussions the proposed amendments are now being drafted. Actually the amendments that we had in our minds were not put forward in the form in which we were thinking about them but the principles were. We wanted to get the reaction because there is no point in hurting a trade simply for the purpose of passing a regulation. We try to administer this act on the basis of co-operation with the industry, and we find that brings good results both from their point of view and ours. So that we are now in the process, and drafting is pretty well complete. One of these days very soon I will submit to the governor in council the regulations we have in mind, and they will be tabled in this house. They are not ready at the moment but they will be complete.


Stanley Howard Knowles: May I interrupt to get this clear? It seems to me that the minister is talking about two things: a bill to amend the act and proposed-


Paul Joseph James Martin: No, this has nothing to do with the bill. I just referred to the bill in order to pay tribute to the officers of the food and drugs division who have been working on it for a long time. I am now talking about the questions my hon. friend raised, and the questions I am dealing with have to do with this particular amendment. The amendment will deal with proposed standards for such items as wheat flour, whole wheat flour, brown bread, white bread and specialty bread.
As my hon. friend knows, there is some bread that does have less nutritional value than other bread. We are seeking to deal with that aspect of the situation. I believe I can say with assurance that labelling requirements for whole wheat bread in the new regulations will require a statement of the percentage of whole wheat flour used, and that this figure for percentage will be incorporated as part of the same. So, my hon. friend may feel assured that this matter is being faced up to.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I am very glad to hear that action is being taken and that new regulations are being drafted. The minister makes it clear, does he, that it will be definite that any whole wheat bread claiming to be whole wheat bread will have to be properly labelled? But would it still be possible, under the amended regulations, for brown bread to be put on the counters not labelled as whole wheat bread and not be whole wheat bread? It seems to me that is the problem.
We can understand that if you buy a wrapped loaf of bread and if the label says it is whole wheat bread, then you know.you are getting whole wheat bread; but how about the housewife who buys an unwrapped loaf of brown bread thinking she is getting whole wheat bread?


Paul Joseph James Martin: My hon. friend states the
problem and we have it in mind.


Stanley Howard Knowles: You are trying to grapple with it?


Paul Joseph James Martin: We are trying to grapple with it in characteristic manner.


Stanley Howard Knowles: No, no.


Some hon. Members:: Not that.


Douglas Scott Harkness: That requires a definition.


Stanley Howard Knowles: That answer means that we have to start all over again. If it is just being dealt with "in characteristic manner" that means we will have the issue of brown bread dealt with at the election after the next.


Paul Joseph James Martin: You will be surprised when you see the results. You will say: What a wonderful minister!


Stanley Howard Knowles: Don't put words like that in my mouth. They would make me choke.
I am glad to note that these regulations will deal with the content of flour as well. It is not only a question of the bread that is being produced for sale by the trade; it is also highly desirable, in a country like this in particular, that our flour should be as healthful in content as possible.


Paul Joseph James Martin: My hon. friend has not got the same trouble I have. He should not be worrying about slimming; he should be worrying about eating all kinds of things, including all kinds of bread.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Do you charge for that
prescription?


Stanley Howard Knowles: We will come to that on the item covering nutrition. I am sorry to see it is being reduced and I suppose that is being done because the minister is desirous of moving in that direction.


Paul Joseph James Martin: No, I have a perfectly good answer to that.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The minister said that at the conference on April 8 there were representatives of the milling people, the bakers, somebody else, and the consumers. Could he tell us who represented the consumers?


Paul Joseph James Martin: I cannot tell you at the moment but I will make sure you know before the day is over.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Before the sun sets.


Stanley Howard Knowles: In characteristic fashion.


George Alexander Cruickshank: I would like to ask one
question, if the other great representative of labour over there will let somebody else have two minutes out of the day. I might say I just got a card sent in to me indicating that a gentleman from his riding wishes to meet me. He represents a bulldozer company.


Mr. Hees:: He has been sent to the right man.


An hon. Member:: A spreading company?


George Alexander Cruickshank: They do not need to "spread" in the Fraser valley. They do in some of the Kootenay districts and around here. If you look out at the gardens today you will see we have that kind of soil and the people to spread it.
The question I want to ask, and to which I would like a "characteristic" answer, concerns previous discussions and statements from the minister's department about certain hospitals. What steps are taken to check and examine oils brought in from low standard of living countries for the manufacture of margarine?
Supply-Health and Welfare Are they examined here? Are they examined in other cases at the port of export to our country?


Paul Joseph James Martin: All foods that are imported are examined.


George Alexander Cruickshank: Where?


Paul Joseph James Martin: At the port of entry.


Douglas Scott Harkness: On a point of order, I would ask the minister to address the chair. When he turns in that manner we cannot hear his answers.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I am sorry. I should have done so, but on one occasion an hon. gentleman criticized me for not looking at him and I did not want to be guilty of that again.


George Alexander Cruickshank: I do not take up as much time in a whole week as the member for Winnipeg North Centre takes in every twenty minutes, but I would like to know just how thorough an examination is made of these oils.
You may think I am a margarine hater but we heard the member for Danforth, who has been in those countries, tell of the way oils used in the manufacture of margarine are produced. The member actually saw those oils produced and I want to make mighty sure there is a full check made on these cheap oils which come in to make this imitation food. Could I have the assurance of the minister that no diseases can be spread in Canada through this importation?


Paul Joseph James Martin: I can tell my hon. friend that every food, or any substance which is consumed by the body in any way, or which is placed on the body, are examined. Those samples are sent down to one of our food and drug laboratories. I would invite hon. members to go down to see the food and drug laboratory here in the city of Ottawa. When they see the work that is going on there they will get their eyes opened-and there is very little known about it. It is a very great service and my hon. friend may be assured that our examination is as thorough as is humanly possible.


George Alexander Cruickshank: On every shipment?


Paul Joseph James Martin: On samples of every shipment that comes into the country.


William Alfred Robinson: Shall the item carry?


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
270.	Administration o£ the Opium and Narcotic Drugs Act, $160,372.
Donald Methuen Fleming: This item relates to the administration of the Opium and Narcotic


George Matheson Murray: Before the minister does give his report, I want to make a few observations on this vote. I believe it is wise to be vigilant and try to prevent the importation, and of course the use, of illicit narcotics in this country. In recent years, as our relationship with the Pacific countries has been drawn more closely together, we are brought in touch with the origin of this terrible curse, because most of the opium is at present being grown and processed across the Pacific. Not many days ago I was speaking to a responsible officer who had returned from the Far East. He stated that narcotics were being distributed by the red army to their troops in order to build up their morale, and stimulate them to high endeavour when they made their mass attacks against the United Nations forces in Korea.
It was only a few years ago that the Japanese were greatly interested in the narcotics business. In their struggle to obtain control of China, they sought to corrupt the Chinese by the free distribution of heroin and other narcotics on the streets of Hong Kong and other ports. It was a studied policy of trying to undermine the morale of these people. The generalissimo of China is the only man of whom I know who had any effective way of curing addiction to these narcotics. He passed a law that the Chinese addicts who were found must be taken outside the city walls and have their heads cut off. Not many years ago there was an opium factory in Vancouver, and opium and these other narcotics were regarded as regular items of commerce between the nations.
We are indebted to the work of the late Prime Minister Mackenzie King, who proceeded to a conference in Shanghai in 1900, and to others, for an effort to control illicit traffic in narcotics throughout the world. As a result of the work done there, later followed up by the league of nations and now being further carried out by the United Nations, a strong effort is being made to control international trade in narcotics. We in British Columbia, with all our ports on the Pacific, are of course vulnerable to the

importation of these narcotics. An examination of our jail statistics, penitentiaries and schools for the correction of young men and women, will show that there is a very widespread addiction. I hope that the minister will give this matter greater attention, and that the vote may be increased.
In this connection I want to point out the good work that has been done by the attorney general of British Columbia, the Hon. Gordon S. Wismer, who has almost made it a life work to try to clean out peddlers and dealers in narcotics in the province of British Columbia. If we could suppress this thing we could take a great load off the taxpayers of this country. I want to say to the minister that some of these milder forms of sedatives, to my mind, are the thin edge of the wedge in popularizing the use of narcotics. I know that medical men prescribe these things, and in most cases there is a general addiction to headache wafers and to certain kinds of pills and other things which are readily available. I urge the minister to use every effort to get at the root of this thing, and purge Canada completely of the commerce of illicit narcotic dealers.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I want to say to the member for Winnipeg North Centre that the consumers were represented at the conference mentioned on the last item by Mrs. W. R. Walton, president of the Canadian Association of Consumers, Mrs. Herbert Kemp and Miss Grace Sharp of that association.
I thank the hon. member who spoke last for his contribution. He may be assured that this problem, in its serious import, is fully appreciated by the officers of my department and myself. This is an important problem which has to be dealt with, not only by way of domestic but as well by way of international arrangements. We have been a member of the various narcotic conventions since their inception, both under the league of nations and now under the United Nations. Our officers have been recognized as very useful collaborators at that end. The problem of barbiturates is one that we are continually considering. My hon. friend knows, of course, the requirements as to prescriptions in that regard. However that phase of the matter is receiving our full attention. I fully agree with him as to what he said about the attorney general of British Columbia. That gentleman has evinced a very considerable interest in this whole problem, not only because of where he lives but because,
I would suppose, of his own professional experience as well. He has given my officers and me the greatest measure of co-operation, as indeed have all the attorneys general in our ten provinces.
55704-188J
Supply-Health and, Welfare
I think it would be wrong to let the wrong impression go out from this chamber-and I am sure the hon. member for Eglinton did not intend that it should; there was some justification for what he said, because of press comment-but I should not like to. have the wrong impression go out. While the situation is serious, and will continue to be serious as long as people are using narcotic drugs illicitly, the situation is not one which would justify anyone saying that our teenagers, our young people, are using these drugs in improper quantities.
In fact, when these stories began to appear, I was concerned about the matter, and made inquiries in the two centres in the United States which may be regarded as the chief centres for the distribution of these illicit drugs. I am satisfied from my contacts there, and from what I know in this country, that those stories do not represent a situation that could be characterized in the generally exaggerated terms used. This does not mean to say that there are not cases-because there are. The use of codeine, of course, is not due entirely to illicit use, because codeine is found in medicines in common use. That explains in some measure the considerable use of this product.
One of the serious situations-and I hope what I say in this regard will get outside the chamber-is the development of some of the synthetic chemicals possessing potential addiction properties. They have no relation whatsoever to opium, the poppy or the coca plant. Those people who may be interested in this synthesis may be sure that the officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States, and the national revenue officers are aware of this situation. We may not know where all the centres are; but this matter is one that is being closely followed, and will be prosecuted with all the might that Canada and all other nations combined can bring to bear upon this unfortunate development. At the moment I shall not say more on this subject; but I do hope that what I have said will reach the proper sources.
The hon. member has directed my attention to the treatment of addicts in British Columbia. In the United States there are two centres, one located at Lexington and one at Fort Worth, where for ten or twelve years they have carried on treatment on an experimental basis. It was proposed that we should establish a similar centre in Canada. I was sympathetic with that point of view and that objective, because it is one thing to stop the use of these illicit drugs, one thing to find the person who sells them
2986	HOUSE OF
Supply-Health and Welfare illicitly, and quite another to deal with curing those unfortunate individuals who become victims.
Provincial departments of health-and in this I include Mr. Wismer in British Columbia -have been interested in surveying this problem. I have sent two of my senior officers to visit both these institutions and to see the work done. Without deprecating what is being done there, I am afraid the evidence thus far does not support the claims-well, I shall not use the word "claims"-does not support the complete success of these ventures.
The cost is very considerable indeed and, on the basis of present evidence the results do not strike us as being fully satisfactory. However this is a problem -which must be faced, and we are studying it.


Donald Methuen Fleming: From what the minister has said I take it that there is no basis for the report issued on September 26?


Paul Joseph James Martin: I have not seen that report. What is it?


Donald Methuen Fleming: I read it during my remarks a moment ago.


Paul Joseph James Martin: It would be correct to say that we are trying to work out some scheme.


Donald Methuen Fleming: This went so far as to say that the officials of the federal health department did consider the possibility of establishing an experimental centre on the west coast for the treatment of drug addicts.


Paul Joseph James Martin: It is true that such consideration is being given.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Indians and Eskimos health services-
271.	Operation and maintenance, $11,518,246.
Douglas Scott Harkness: I notice that the vote for this item has gone up every year in the last five or six years, and I believe that as a result of that the health of Indians and the facilities for caring for them when they are ill have improved. I should like to compliment Dr. Moore, of the health of Indians branch, upon the work he has done in improving health services for our native population.
The increase this year in items 271 and 272 amounts to nearly $2 million, and that would seem to be a satisfactory situation. However, an examination of the details makes one wonder whether there has been or is likely to be a parallel increase this year in the health services provided for Indians. In looking over the details I notice there is an increase of only one medical officer. The number of graduate nurses is up from 236 last year to 261 this year. In my view that is


a commendable change. I am glad to see the health of Indians branch securing the services of more graduate nurses. That is one of the ways in which the health of Indians is likely to be improved.
While I am oni my feet I shall ask several questions, following which the minister can answer. The first of these questions is as to where the extra number of graduate nurses are to be employed. What is their use? Are they to be used in hospitals or at the nursing stations scattered about in various places?
Another of the details shows that ward aides and housemaids are to be supplied in greater number. I do not know the extent to which that would improve the health of Indians and I would ask the minister to comment on this point. How many of these ward aides and housemaids are Indians. One of the great weaknesses in the Indian affairs branch, it seems to me, is that an insufficient number of Indians are employed in this type of work when, in many cases, they could be employed satisfactorily. Thus far the number of Indians employed has been small indeed. That is one weakness which in the past has affected the Indian health service, and we should be making every improvement to get away from that condition.
Then I notice an item for firemen-labourers, which is increased from 22 to 45. How many of these are Indians? I find it difficult to understand why the number of firemen-labourers would have to be increased to more than double what it was. I also find it a little difficult to understand how this considerable increase in expenditure is going to improve the general health of the Indian population, or the way in which they are cared for.
Taking the whole list of details altogether, under the general heading that is given here for operation and maintenance, salaries and so on, you will find that the amount has gone from $2,531,000 odd to $3,217,000 odd or an increase of approximately $700,000. Then there is a note Which says that $193,000 is for increases in the rates of pay. In other words, the rest of it is for new people that were taken on since last year. I was somewhat disturbed to find that for these new people taken on there was an expenditure of over $500,000, or an increase in expenditure of over half a million dollars. In that amount there was only one more medical officer and there were some twenty odd more nurses. It seems to me that it is out of proportion when the expenditure of that $500,000 is not going to result in a parallel improvement in the health of the Indians or the facilities for taking care of them. It disturbs me more, if that is the case, which

is the conclusion that one would perhaps draw from this without any further explanation of it.
Another matter that I want to ask the minister about is the situation in regard to tuberculosis tests. We had some discussion on that last year. The minister gave us the figures of the number of people tested last year, the number tested to date and the incidence of tuberculosis in our Indian population. As is well known, the incidence of tuberculosis in the Indian population is very many times that of the rest of the population. It has been one of the greatest cripplers and killers so far as Indians are concerned, and is the greatest plague from the medical point of view which has to be fought by the particular branch whose estimates we are now considering. I would hope that the minister can produce figures which will show some improvement in the incidence of the tuberculosis rate from last year, and also that the program of chest X-ray of Indians has been completed. It certainly has been in process for some considerable time and should be completed by now.
In addition to the specific questions which I have asked at this point, perhaps it might be possible for the minister to make a general statement in regard to the affairs of this particular branch of his department; in other words, what has been accomplished by this branch throughout the year, and so forth. That might expedite proceedings by making it unnecessary for a number of questions to be asked which otherwise would have to be asked.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I thought there might be some other questions, and I would deal with them all.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I have quite a number of other questions that I should like to ask.


Paul Joseph James Martin: With regard to the nurses, three of them will go to the three new nursing stations which are located at Lansdowne House, Onion Lake and Pikangikum. The other one will go to Sioux Lookout. The one medical doctor to whom my iron, friend directed my attention is also at Sioux Lookout. My hon. friend had the same reaction as I had when these estimates were submitted to me. I looked at the situation from the point of view that he himself has done by seeing where the new medical personnel was going to go rather than to study these occasional workers, and so on.
As my hon. friend knows, most of the medical staff that we use are not permanent; that is to say, they are not departmental. They work on a fee basis. We have some
Supply-Health and Welfare sixty doctors of our own in our own hospitals and here at the centre. We cannot go and develop these hospitals as we are developing them, the one at Charles Cam-sell, the one at Moose Factory, the one at Sioux Lookout, the one at Coqualeetza, the one at Fort Qu'Appelle, the one at Nanaimo, overnight. As my hon. friend has said, the great hospital program is one that is having tremendously satisfactory results in tuberculosis, as he knows from his knowledge of the problem. But unfortunately, the moment you build one of these institutions, with it must go all sorts of help to maintain the institution. My hon. friend is quite correct in saying that 40 per cent of the increase in this vote is in salaries.
There was one other question, but I forget what it was.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I referred to housemaids, ward aides and firemen-labourers.


Paul Joseph James Martin: These are staffs that our officers deemed necessary to carry on the proper functioning of the hospitals. My hon. friend knows something of some of the hospitals in Alberta. As he knows, they are good hospitals, and there is no over-extravagance. They are not comparable in some respects with the material set-up of corresponding institutions, although the service is good and is one that this country can be proud of, in keeping with its duty, responsibilities, and one that we ought not to be afraid to boast about to nations of the world who complain that the western nations do not treat their native populations as they should.
The results of this whole program are seen, as my hon. friend mentioned, in the reduction of the tuberculosis rate. There is no doubt that tuberculosis among Indians is a very serious problem. And while we cannot always measure achievement by financial expenditure the fact is that since the government of Canada did take this increased interest in the problem of the native by building these new hospitals at very considerable expense, by the increase of staff-when you think that the budget now is some $13,500,000 for Indian help, and five years ago it was around $2,500,000, you cannot help seeing that there is a tremendous increase in the expenditure, and I think the results more than demonstrate what is being done.
We have not by any means successfully tackled this problem, but from coast to coast, through the private practitioner, the doctor, the nurses, those permanently and those parttime engaged in our services, by the results of the researches that are going on in tuberculosis, the co-operation with the provincial departments of health and so on, we are able

Supply-Health and Welfare to present I think a very satisfactory position. The death rate for tuberculosis has dropped 45 per cent in Indians, in five years. That is a tremendous achievement. It is not one for which I am taking credit or one for which I am seeking to give full credit to our officers. It is the result of combined effort on the part of many agencies. I could mention many. I am thinking now of the late Dr. Fred Tisdale of the Toronto Sick Children's Hospital, who devoted so much of his time and so much of his own resources to this problem. I mention this simply because he passed away two years ago and I neglected on that occasion to pay him the tribute that he deserved in connection with this program. He was associated with Dr. Vivian who, along with our own Dr. Moore, made that very important survey on Indian health that gave us the guide for much of the work that we have been able to do.
The statistics are as follows:
Per 100,000
population	1946	1947	1948	1949	1950Indian	
579 1	549-8	480 1	399-6	298-8White	
41-9	38-2	32-4	26-7	22-0All Canada	..	47-4	43-4	37-0	30-4	25-9
I think those figures speak for themselves. All we can hope to do is continue with this program. We have under project for this year the construction of a modern hospital at Norway House in Manitoba, which will be of interest to the hon. member for Selkirk.


Mr. Bryce:: When will the opening take place?


Paul Joseph James Martin: We will try to make it convenient for my hon. friend and myself. Then we have in mind the restoration and rehabilitation of the Coqualeetza Indian hospital, which is a 170-bed hospital. Also additional staff quarters at our Moose Factory hospital, a power house and laundry at the Coqualeetza Indian hospital, additional staff quarters, nurses' residences, and health centres in certain isolated districts throughout the country are being constructed.
I think the committee may rest assured that the tribute paid to Dr. Moore by the hon. member for Calgary West is most deserved. The work he and his officials are doing under this program deserves the tribute which has been paid.


Douglas Scott Harkness: The minister has given us an interesting review, but he has not answered specifically a number of the questions which I asked. Were the 25 graduate nurses taken on the staff this year all placed in the three nursing stations he referred to?


Paul Joseph James Martin: They went all over. I mentioned three new nursing stations, but these graduate nurses have been distributed among all our centres.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Were any new hospitals opened during the year?


Paul Joseph James Martin: No.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Only three new nursing
stations were opened.


Paul Joseph James Martin: That is right.


Douglas Scott Harkness: The remainder of this
increase in staff went to augment the personnel of existing hospitals?


Paul Joseph James Martin: Yes.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I asked how many ward aides and housemaids were Indians.


Paul Joseph James Martin: The number fluctuates, but at the moment there are 66 natives on the staff. I fully agree with my hon. friend that we ought to make every endeavour to have as many of the native population as possible serve in this capacity. We have taken steps to get young girls to go into nursing training and have encouraged them in every way. Our success in that regard is not what I would like it to be by any means, but my hon. friend may be assured that that is the policy we are pursuing. Where possible we employ native personnel in all ranks.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Are these 66 native employees the only ones in the department?


Mr.   Marlin.@: There are 66 more this year.


Douglas Scott Harkness: What is the total number of ward aides and housemaids who are Indians? I understood the minister to say the total number of Indians employed in the branch was 66.


Mr.   Marlin.@: No; if I did I was in error. I thought my hon. friend asked how many more we had taken on this year. That represents the largest increase in any of the six years during which I have been connected with the department. We now have about 212 Indians in our service, although the number fluctuates.


Douglas Scott Harkness: How many of the firemen-labourers mentioned on page 335 are Indians? I notice that there were 22 last year as compared with 45 projected for this year, with the cost being more than doubled.


Mr.   Marlin.@: Last year they were casuals but now they are permanent civil servants. As my hon. friend knows, they must go through a period of probation. They are not extra people.


Douglas Scott Harkness: It is just a change in classification?


Mr.   Marlin.@: That is right.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I am sorry to see that while the incidence of tuberculosis among both

white and Indian populations has been reduced considerably since 1946, the incidence among Indians is still about 14 times what it is among the white population. There does not seem to be any improvement from that point of view. In other words, percentagewise the situation is just as bad as it was.


Paul Joseph James Martin: That is true, but the improvement has been more rapid among Indians than among whites. I forgot to answer one question about X-ray examinations. Chest X-ray examinations have been made of almost 75 per cent of the Indian population.


Douglas Scott Harkness: When the minister says the improvement among the Indians has been better than among the whites-


Paul Joseph James Martin: I said more rapid.


Douglas Scott Harkness: That is not correct. It is just the opposite; it has not been as rapid. Taking the minister's own figures, the incidence among the white population in 1946 was 41-9-


Paul Joseph James Martin: I was talking about the five-year period.


Douglas Scott Harkness: -per 100,000; in 1950 it was 22. In other words, it was cut down to just about half, but it has not come down that much as far as the Indian population is concerned.


Paul Joseph James Martin: There has not been the same reduction in the white population over the five-year period that there has been with the Indians.


Douglas Scott Harkness: If these figures are correct it would indicate that the situation has improved more in connection with the white population than it has with the Indians. I think that is still most unsatisfactory. I think everyone is glad that the rate per 100,000 has fallen from 579-1 in 1946 to 298-8 in 1950 as far as the Indians are concerned, but there is no room for congratulation when their rate is still about 13 times that of the white rate. The comparative rates have not improved during that period, which would indicate that there is room for a wide field of activity in stamping out tuberculosis among the Indians.


Mr.   Marlin.@: No doubt about that.


Douglas Scott Harkness: The minister said something about the X-ray examination program among the Indians. I do not understand from what he said whether or not all Indians have now been chest X-rayed.


Mr.   Marlin.@: This past year 75 per cent of the Indian population of 135,000 have received X-ray examinations.
Supply-Health and Welfare


Douglas Scott Harkness: Is that the aggregate figure up to date? If so, there are 25 per cent of the Indians who have not yet been X-rayed.


Mr.   Marlin.@: That is this past year.


Douglas Scott Harkness: What I am trying to get at is whether 75 per cent of the Indians were X-rayed last year or whether that is the aggregate figure.


Mr.   Marlin.@: Last year roughly 75 per cent of the native population of the country received X-ray examinations. It is not stopping; it is unending.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I know that, but can the minister tell us what proportion of the Indian population has never had any X-ray examination?


Mr.   Marlin.@: Before we built the big hospital in the James bay area I can tell you, as the Vivian report pointed out, that the picture was one of which no one had reason to be very proud. I cannot give you the exact details of the numbers who have never been examined.


Douglas Scott Harkness: The reason I am asking these questions is because I am afraid that what happens is that the same people were X-rayed this year as were X-rayed last year. That is quite all right and is necessary in a large number of cases. I am not complaining about that, but what happens is that people who have never been X-rayed continue without being X-rayed. The result is that a large section, probably some 20 per cent on the basis of the figures the minister has given, has never been X-rayed and tuberculosis still runs wild amongst them to a large extent.


Mr.   Marlin.@: We are extending our services as fast as we can.


Douglas Scott Harkness: What I should like to know from the minister is what steps are being taken to cover the	20	per cent	who so far,shall we say, have	escaped	his	toils in this
regard.


Mr.   Marlin.@: We are seeking to extend our services just as quickly as we can get personnel and the money to do these things. I agree 1,000 per cent with everything my hon. friend has said. I read an editorial the other day in which someone was referring to the money we were spending on Indian health. I am going	to	send	that editorial tomy hon. friend, and I	hope	he	will be good
enough to join with me in writing to the editor and explaining why we are spending it. We can extend these services only if we have more personnel and equipment, but that costs money. The government has to take into consideration its over-all obligations. I regard
2990	HOUSE OF
Supply-Health and Welfare this as one of the most important. I thank my hon. friend for giving the support to this measure that he has, and I know that if the budget is increased next year he will agree with me that it is a perfectly legitimate expenditure.


Douglas Scott Harkness: As the minister has indicated, not only have I never criticized any increase but in most years I have asked for a greater increase because I am aware of the crying need for the expansion of Indian health services. I have another question of a different nature. The amount appropriated last year, as shown at page 41 of the estimates, was $9,875,000 for operation and maintenance and $1,609,000 for construction or acquisition of buildings. In the table the minister put on Hansard last night the figure for expenditures for operation and maintenance is $10,735,000 which is just about $1 million more than we voted. The figure for construction or acquisition of buildings is $924,000 which is $700,000 less than we voted last year. Can he explain how he got the extra money in the one case and what happened to the remainder of the vote in the other case?


Mr.   Marlin.@: In the first case we got almost a million dollars in the further supplement-aries last year.


Douglas Scott Harkness: They are not included here.


Mr.   Marlin.@: No. As to the $700,000 in the other case, the answer is that it is due to construction delays.


Mr. Mclvor:: As an Indian chief I congratulate the minister for the statement he has made that 75 per cent of the Indian population have been X-rayed. Is that true?


Mr. MacDougall:: Ugh!


Mr.   Marlin.@: As an Indian chief I thank you.


Daniel (Dan) McIvor: We are in the same boat. I doubt whether 75 per cent of the paleface population of Canada have been X-rayed.


Mr. Carroll:: I should like to ask the minister-


Stanley Howard Knowles: Are you an Indian chief?


John Lorne MacDougall: If you are not an Indian chief then don't enter this debate.


William F. Carroll: There are two main reservations in Nova Scotia, one at Eskasoni and the other at Shubenacadie. I should like to ascertain from the minister how the department is doing in gathering all the Indians into those two reservations. The reason I ask the question is that there was a reservation at Why-cocomagh and the Indians there were inclined to go to Eskasoni.


Mr.   Marlin.@: My hon. friend will appreciate that is a matter for the Indian affairs branch. That does not come under me.


William F. Carroll: You handle the maintenance of these Indians.


Mr.   Marlin.@: Just health.


Douglas Scott Harkness: In connection with the exchange which has just taken place between two Indian chiefs, as just an ordinary Indian I should like to make a remark. It is simply "ugh".


John Lorne MacDougall: That has long since been remarked.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Looking at the details on page 336 I see that the estimate last year for travelling expenses was $115,000 and it is the same for this year. How much of the $115,000 last year was actually expended?


Mr.   Marlin.@: The amount expended was $169,000.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Then if $169,000 was
required last year why do you keep using the same figure of $115,000? Do you expect there will be considerably less travelling this year than last?


Mr.   Marlin.@: We are hoping to cut our travel costs, but I am afraid we are going to have to ask for supplementaries.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I should like to comment that I think the figure that is put in the estimates for our consideration should be one that bears a fairly close relationship to the experience of the department under this particular item in the previous year. A general figure should not be put in the estimates which is the same this year as last year, but rather a figure which the department thinks represents the amount they will actually expend.


Mr.   Marlin.@: It is pretty difficult to foresee an epidemic, you know.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I would complain somewhat about that method of preparing the estimates. Underneath that there is an item for educational and informational publications. Last year the amount was $3,500 and this year it is $5,000. Would the minister tell us what those publications are and for whom they are designed? Are they for the education of the Indians, or to educate the white people about the Indians?


Mr.   Marlin.@: My hon. friend was here last night when the hon. member for Eglinton was engaged in criticizing one of these publications. I will ask my hon. friend who has iust spoken for whom he thinks they were designed, if he was criticizing the low I.Q.

quality of them. Obviously they are directed to try to reach the population concerned. The item involves film strips, posters and displays, one poster on a proper breakfast, one poster on a proper lunch, one poster on a proper supper and two placards done in a form and employing techniques that it was thought would reach the population concerned. The same is true of the film strips.


Douglas Scott Harkness: You are now talking about the next subitem, educational and informational material other than publications, $10,000, are you not?


Mr.   Marlin.@: I thought you were talking about that.


Douglas Scott Harkness: No, the $5,000 item.


Mr.   Marlin.@: That is an instructional handbook on practical hygiene that we have put out for the Indians.


Douglas Scott Harkness: It just covers one publication?


William Scottie Bryce: I wonder if the minister would tell us something about what happened to the four Indian girls who were sent to Australia to take a midwifery course. That was an experiment, and I would like to know whether it worked out well or whether it was a failure. I think it was about three years ago that they were sent to either Australia or New Zealand.


Mr.   Marlin.@: There were four of them.


William Scottie Bryce: Yes.


Mr.   Marlin.@: One of them is now in our employ at our hospital at Fort Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan. I am sorry I cannot say what has happened to one of them but two did not come back.


William Scottie Bryce: Was it New Zealand they went to?


Mr.   Marlin.@: Yes.


Mr. Calherwood:: Would the minister comment on the position of the Eskimos now? A report came out in the newspapers expressing some concern about the health of those people. We do know that the Eskimo is a declining race but I wonder if the minister would say a word as to their health?


Paul Joseph James Martin: The Eskimo is not now a disappearing race of human beings. Their population is increasing at the rate of about 1J per cent per year now. Undoubtedly that is due to improved medical attention, although we are not reaching them as effectively as we might because of the location of the population. There are about seven or eight thousand Eskimos, and with the moneys and facilities at our disposal, we are greatly interested in their welfare, as we are interested in the welfare of the Indians.
Supply-Health and Welfare


Douglas Scott Harkness: There is just one other subitem about which I would like to ask. I see that laundry and other sundry items is down from $130,000 to $100,000. That laundry bill, I presume, is for washing sheets and so on in the hospitals. I was just going to ask the minister in what way it was cut down. The answer might prove an example to other departments.


Paul Joseph James Martin: My hon. friend will remember the discussion in the house last year and how one hon. member criticized the request for moneys to purchase some laundry machines. There was one we were putting in at a cost of about $60,000. We installed one at Nanaimo with another one at Coqualeetza, and another one at Fort Qu'Appelle. We have cut down the bill because we are doing our own laundry with good machines.


Louis-René Beaudoin: Shall the item carry?


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Indians and Eskimos health services-
272.	Construction or acquisition of buildings, works, land and new equipment, $1,814,400.
Douglas Scott Harkness: Would the minister tell us what the construction or acquisition program was last year? In other words what buildings were actually acquired or built, and what is the program for this year?


Paul Joseph James Martin: I gave the program for this year.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I do not remember that.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I did when I answered you earlier. I mentioned Norway House, Sardis, and the power house at Coqualeetza. I gave you that. Construction last year was: an enlarged health centre at Hazelton, British Columbia; a laundry building at Nanaimo, British Columbia; major repairs at Miller Bay, British Columbia; completion of the hospital at Hobbema, Alberta; extensive progress on the addition to the hospital at Fort Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan; extensive progress in the construction of a hospital at Norway House, rehabilitation, Fisher river Indian hospital; completion of health centres at the following places: Lansdowne House; Pikangi-kum, Ontario; Christian Island, Ontario; Ruperts House; Seven Islands, Quebec; and Shubenacadie.


Louis-René Beaudoin: Shall the item carry?


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
273.	Special technical services, $401,710.
Stanley Howard Knowles: There has been a change in the form of the estimates in respect of this item from last year. Last year "special technical services" was the heading of a group of estimates and then we had the following items under that in the main part of the book of estimates: nutrition, child and maternal
2992

Supply-Health and Welfare health, venereal disease control, dental health, hospital design and consulting service, mental health, blindness control, and civil aviation medicine.
Only one of those items listed in the main estimates last year still remains in the main estimates this year. We have already passed that item-item 268, epidemiology, including the former venereal disease control. When one looks for those other items that were listed in the main estimates last year he finds them now merely as details in the back of the book; in this instance they are to be found on page 337. I would be glad to have the minister's comment as to why this change was made. It seems to me it was better to have those individual sections of the work of this branch listed in the main items themselves.
While I am on my feet I should like to say a bit about one of the special technical services. They are broken down into details in two ways. First of all they are broken down in regard to the various types, and then they are broken down again in these various headings: nutrition, child and maternal health, etc. My question relates to one of the sections, namely nutrition. As I indicated to the minister when we were back on another item, there has been a reduction in the amount allotted for nutrition from $144,069 to $122,358 this year.
It seems to me, Mr. Chairman, this is a field in which very useful and worth-while research could be pursued. I think we are realizing more and more that preventive measures in the field of health do improve with studies in proper nutrition. I have read with interest the section of the last annual report, under the heading of nutrition, found on pages 44 to 46. While I find it interesting, it seems to me from reading that section that with a little more money and a little more encouragement still more might be done by the nutrition division of the department. Here is a paragraph on page 45 that I will call to the minister's attention:
The table of food values recommended for use in Canada was first issued in 1946 because no compilation of Canadian information on this subject existed. Even now only some of the figures are strictly Canadian. A special design for this booklet was developed and much new information was obtained on weights and measures of foodstuffs. A complete revision was carried out during the year and calorie values were recalculated in terms of the new factors recommended by the food and agriculture organization.
I suggest, Mr. Chairman, that this is a field in which more research might be done and in which valuable information might be made available to our people. Surely nutrition is basic to our health. In connection with the comment the minister made a little while ago,

I may point out that health should not be judged by girth-mine as against his-


Paul Joseph James Martin: Mine is like yours.


Stanley Howard Knowles: We have come a lot closer together in the last couple of years.


Mrs. Fairclough:: Is that good?


Stanley Howard Knowles: Whether it is good or not depends on how that relationship is defined. At any rate, he is much thinner, and I have not gone the other way. Further in this same section on nutrition I note this:
Only one nutrition survey was carried on during the year, the study of a typical county in southwestern Ontario, carried out in the Elgin-St. Thomas health unit. Such surveys, the most extensive work of this type now being done in Canada, are carried on as a co-operative effort by the federal, provincial and local governments and serve to stimulate interest in nutrition and health generally. At the same time, by screening a group for nutritional defects, they assist in estimating the extent of malnutrition existing in Canada. If carried out in areas selected as being typical of the country as a whole, as recommended by the Canadian council on nutrition, such surveys would provide a comprehensive over-all picture of nutritional conditions in Canada.
The wording of that paragraph implies that more could be done, and if more were done it would be useful. The inference is that when those who wrote this report endeavoured to put down what work is being done under the heading "nutrition" they had to admit that it left room for much more work to be done. That being the case, I do not like to see the amount being reduced. I want to emphasize the fact that, as I see it, our interest in nutrition should not be only in obvious cases of malnutrition, but our interest should be in finding out what are the best types of foods for us to be eating for the development of the health of our people. I would be glad to hear from the minister on these various points.


Paul Joseph James Martin: The consolidation of these votes took place because it is part of our general policy to absorb the funds of these divisions into one main vote. We have been able to save about $14,000 as a result of that effort. I would -hope to hear a lot of tributes paid to that effort, because it has not in any way interfered with the objectives which we had in mind.
I can tell the hon. member that if there was a reduction in the federal item, it does not in any way represent a lessening of activity. We feel we have on hand sufficient stocks of certain informational material to cover our operations for this year, and that is largely the reason for the reduction. We had more than one survey under way this year. There was the one to which my hon. friend referred, and there has been a nutritional survey going

on in Manitoba dealing with dental conditions and so on. Last year was the fourth of a five-year study at six Indian schools, and there was also a survey dealing with nutritional therapy for blindness. In 1952-53 we have in mind three more nutritional surveys, one among Quebec school children. Then we have a project for a mental and dental examination at six Indian residential schools, which will complete the five-year study. Then there will be a continuing study of blindness, including nutritional therapy. The hon. member may be sure there is no lessening of the work of this division.


Stanley Howard Knowles: That is the same answer the minister gave me the last time I complained about a reduction in the amount for this division. I hope that is the case, but as I say my reading of the latest report available suggests that there is room for more activity there. In the light of the paragraph of the report which says that even now only some of the figures in the table of recommended food values are strictly Canadian, may I ask the minister whether there has yet been prepared a strictly Canadian table of recommended food values?


Paul Joseph James Martin: No.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Does the minister not think it might be a good idea to pursue that project?


Paul Joseph James Martin: My hon. friend knows that no one on the continent has a better reputation as a nutritional expert than Dr. Pett. He has made no submission to me that I have turned down.


Stanley Howard Knowles: But the minister has turned down some of my submissions.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
274.	Health insurance studies and administration of general health grants, $74,305.
George Harris Hees: This is the item, Mr. Chairman, upon which the minister last night suggested we continue our very interesting discussion on health plans.


Mr.   Marlin.@: No, I did not say that.


George Harris Hees: That was my understanding.


Mr.   Marlin.@: What I said was that I would be glad to give my hon. friend a further explanation of my statement that his proposal did not appear to me to be satisfactory. That is quite different from the general debate on the item, upon which we have already had a general discussion.


George Harris Hees: Then I shall deal with a couple of matters we discussed in regard to my proposal, which I understand the minister is quite agreeable to discussing now. In describing the plan that has been in operation 55704-1894
Supply-Health and Welfare in Sweden for the past 25 years when I was speaking last night I said the following, as found on page 2952 of Hansard for June 5:
It calls for the patient to pay 25 per cent of the doctor, dentist or hospital bill, with the remaining 75 per cent to be paid out of a health insurance fund maintained by regular contributions by all those who are financially able to contribute. The 25 per cent which is paid by the patient-
Then the minister interrupted and said:
It is the other way around.
As I understand that, Mr. Chairman, the minister implies that under the Swedish health insurance plan the patient pays 75 per cent of the cost of the doctor, dentist, or hospital bill, and the health insurance fund pays 25 per cent; is that correct?


Mr.   Marlin.@: That is right.


George Harris Hees: Now, that is very interesting-


Mr.   Marlin.@: I misunderstood the question. What was the question again?


George Harris Hees: In outlining the plan, I said the following:
It calls for the patient to pay 25 per cent of the doctor, dentist or hospital bill, with the remaining 75 per cent to be paid out of a health insurance fund maintained by regular contributions by all those who are financially able to contribute. The 25 per cent which is paid by the patient-
Then the minister interrupted and said:
It is the other way around.
The question I just asked the minister was, is it correct that he claims that under the Swedish plan the patient pays 75 per cent?


Mr.   Marlin.@: No, no; the patient pays everything, and then he gets a two-thirds refund.


George Harris Hees: The minister said it was just the other way around, implying that the patient pays 75 per cent.


Mr.   Marlin.@: No.


George Harris Hees: What else does that mean, if it is the other way around.


Mr.   Marlin.@: You take it as you want it, but I am telling you what the facts are. I am trying to help my hon. friend.


George Harris Hees: I am trying to straighten the minister out. He interrupted a quite sensible plan that I was putting forward-


Mr.   Marlin.@: I do not agree that it is a sensible plan. I do not want to adopt it.


George Harris Hees: I did not say the minister did want to adopt it. I am putting it forward as what I think is a sensible plan.


Mr.   Marlin.@: Does it represent the point of view of your party?


George Harris Hees: It represents my point of view, I said over and over that it is my idea of a sensible plan. It is the only plan that has

Supply-Health and Welfare been put forward by anybody in this house, so far as I know, because the minister has never stated what he thinks is a good plan or a bad plan for health insurance. All we have ever heard for the last 33 years is when we are told just before an election that we will be given health insurance; that is all we have heard. I believe it is time we heard from the minister, after the tremendous amount of money and time that have been put into study by his department during the last six years, as to what he believes is a good health plan.
The point I should like to straighten out with the minister is this. When I was describing this health plan, that has been in successful operation in Sweden for 25 years, the minister interrupted me and said, as reported at page 2952 of Hansard:
My hon. friend has referred to the Swedish scheme, and in order to know exactly what his position is I should like to know whether he is in favour of the new act in Sweden . . .
I take it he was implying there is a new act that is in the process of going into operation, and the old one is being discarded.
I refer again to page 8 of the minister's own publication, "Health insurance in Sweden", social security series memorandum No. 10, produced by the research division of the Department of National Health and Welfare. At page 8, in referring to this new plan under the heading "Proposed program" it says:
Legislation was passed in 1946, which would bring about a universal .compulsory program, mainly state-supported. The reform has not been brought into force, and is now postponed indefinitely.
That was six years ago. They have not put it in for six years. I think it was passed then, and it has now been postponed indefinitely. Yet the minister has tried to leave the impression that it was just on the verge of going in, and he backed that up by saying, when I asked him to comment on the Swedish plan, "I do not think very much of it, nor do many people in Sweden".
What I say is that the people in Sweden have had the present plan in operation for 25 years and they have not changed it, though they could have done so. So far as I can see there is no possibility of their changing it. So I say there are a lot of people in Sweden who do like it. I say the people in Sweden consider that this is a very satisfactory plan.


Paul Joseph James Martin: You say; but that is not the fact.


George Harris Hees: All you have to do is to ask the people who live there-the doctors, the dentists, the people.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Have you done that?
tMr. Hees.]


George Harris Hees: Yes, I have.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Well, I have right in front of me now perhaps the greatest authority on health insurance on this continent, and my statement was based upon a memorandum which he gave me.


George Harris Hees: Well, all I can say is that it is very strange that the Swedish people have kept this plan for 25 years, and that they seem to be in process of keeping it for a great many more years.


Paul Joseph James Martin: And you are in favour of it?


George Harris Hees: If it were so bad, why have they not thrown it out and put in this much more desirable plan, according to the minister? I want to know that.
Now let us get on to the health studies covered by this vote. As I understand the vote, it is to provide money so the minister and his officials can examine all matters pertaining to health insurance, can study plans from other countries that have been in operation.


Paul Joseph James Martin: That is one of the reasons.


George Harris Hees: It is to help his officials decide which would be the best plan for this country, in their opinion.


Paul Joseph James Martin: That is one of their many functions.


George Harris Hees: And a very important one.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Undoubtedly; but they also administer the national health grants.


George Harris Hees: The minister has held his portfolio for six years. So far as I can find out these studies have been going on for about that length of time. Yet so far to my knowledge we have not heard any of the results of the studies these votes have paid for. A report from the minister to the people of this country is long overdue.


Paul Joseph James Martin: You just read it.


George Harris Hees: I am speaking of-


Paul Joseph James Martin: You have the report right in your hand.


George Harris Hees: -a report saying what you think is the best plan for Canada.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Do you wish me to answer that now?


George Harris Hees: Mr. Chairman, if I had been interrupting the minister as he has interrupted me I am sure you would be calling for order.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I am sorry.


George Harris Hees: And I am asking him to keep quiet. I request the minister to keep quiet until I sit down.


An hon. Member:: That is a reflection on the chair.


George Harris Hees: Because I am going to ask him to give me-


Louis-René Beaudoin: Perhaps I might point out to the hon. member that on every occasion the minister has interrupted him the hon. member has replied, thus acquiescing in the interruption. If the hon. member does not wish to be interrupted, then he should disregard the interruption.


George Harris Hees: The minister has such a pleasant personality it is hard to ignore him.


Paul Joseph James Martin: You are not bad yourself.


George Harris Hees: As I say, the people of this country have been waiting a long time to hear the minister tell them the results of the studies he and his departmental officials have been making for at least six years. They are waiting to hear the results of the studies of plans put into operation in other countries, and the studies as to the possibility of health insurance in Canada. I think by now they should have come to some pretty definite conclusions. They should be able to outline what in their opinion would be a suitable plan for this country.
I am not asking the minister to state government policy at this time. I am asking him to state what in his opinion he believes would be a satisfactory plan today, after having studied this tremendous amount of information. First of all it would be interesting to hear his opinion as to the plan in operation in Great Britain. He has had a great chance to study it. Does he think it is a good plan or is it a bad plan? If it is a bad plan, then what fault does he find with it? Then I would like to hear from him why he believes the Swedish act passed six years ago is better than the present plan. I would ask him to close his remarks by telling us, after all his deliberations, what he thinks would be a good plan for this country. Could we have an answer from the minister?


Donald Methuen Fleming: Answer.


Paul Joseph James Martin: The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre wishes to speak.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I have a question or two to ask, but my questions do not bear on the point raised by the hon. member for Broadview. Perhaps the minister would answer his questions first.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I would like to hear what the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre wishes to say. I wish to deal with these things in a summary fashion.
Supply-Health and Welfare


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Chairman-[DOT]


Paul Joseph James Martin: You get into less difficulty if you do.


Stanley Howard Knowles: You may be up for summary conviction.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I can appreciate the minister's concern over his present position.


Paul Joseph James Martin: No concern at all; it is a matter of delight.


Donald Methuen Fleming: My question relates to something different. Bast year, at the 82nd annual meeting of the Canadian Medical Association held in Montreal a decision was taken to set up what was called the trans-Canada medical service. I understand a corporation was to be incorporated for that purpose.
When the announcement was made the Prime Minister, speaking in the House of Commons said:
It would be a most happy solution if the medical profession would assume the administration of, and the responsibility for, a scheme that would provide prepaid medical attendance to any Canadian who needed1 it.
I wonder if the minister will tell us what headway has been made in the meantime by the medical association with the trans-Canada medical service. It was stated publicly at the time that the new body would not supplant regional medical care plans, but that it would extend its services in three ways:
1.	Contracts with one plan may be transferred to any other plan operating in Canada.
2.	Large national employers with employees in several provinces can insure them through trans-Canada under individual plans in each province. This service has been requested by many employers.
3.	Trans-Canada will act as a clearing house for information, administrative counsel and statistics for all plans.
Could the minister tell what headway has been made in the meantime in that regard?


Stanley Howard Knowles: The minister is free with his invitations today.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I am not inviting; I just thought the hon. member was going to speak.


Stanley Howard Knowles: This is indeed an extremely important question. As a matter of fact, several facets of it have already come to light in the interchanges between the hon. member for Broadview and the minister, and in the remarks made just now by the hon. member for Eglinton.
The House of Commons is well aware how anxious some of us are to get a health insurance program established; but it is equally important that it become established on a proper basis. I want to say at the

Supply-Health and Welfare outset that I do not favour the kind of plan that would permit the medical association or any other private body to insure the healthy and wealthy and leave the ill and not so wealthy to the state. In my view it should be-


Paul Joseph James Martin: That was the plan proposed by my hon. friend.


George Harris Hees: No, no.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Oh, yes.


George Harris Hees: No, no.


Stanley Howard Knowles: In my view the only proper health insurance program for Canada is an over-all program that includes all our people. Perhaps if we are getting to the point where we are discussing different types of plans- the minister admits that these various types are being discussed-we are at least moving.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I think we should make clear what we are doing, Mr. Chairman, because my hon. friend is now trying to lay the basis for a general discussion again.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The minister just invited me to make a statement.


Paul Joseph James Martin: No; I invited you to deal with this item. The hon. member for Broadview did deal with this item, this health insurance studies item, and he is perfectly entitled to ask about any specific study that has been made. The question he put forward had to do with the study of a plan made by this department. I do not think, Mr. Chairman- and I say this with great respect and with much confidence in the submission-that we can at this time under this item have a general debate on whether or not we should have health insurance.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I shall direct my remarks to the item that is now before us, for health insurance studies. In discussing health insurance studies I think it is appropriate to pick up the annual report of the department and find out what has been done in the past under health insurance studies. Are we getting along all right now?


Paul Joseph James Martin: We shall see.


Stanley Howard Knowles: All right. I find that in the last annual report we have, the one for the year ended March 31, 1951, we are told that "the departmental activities in health insurance work are the responsibility of the directorate of health insurance studies, with the research studies being conducted by the research division". I find also that during the year covered by this report, under the estimate we are now voting, "a complete revaluation of the 1945 proposals for health insurance was undertaken, with close attention being paid to analysis of systems in operation
IMr. Knowles.]

in all countries, including detailed study of programs, administrative methods employed, the success with which objectives are being met, the principal difficulties that have been encountered and costs and methods of financing". I hope that at some stage in the discussion of this item the minister will tell the committee what has been the result of the expenditure of this amount of money on health insurance studies in terms of the department's statement that they have made a complete revaluation of the 1945 proposals.
I note also-and I am still reading from the annual report, the last one we have, at page 61-that the operation of the British national health service and the New Zealand program received particularly close attention. Mr. Chairman, that is part of the studying of health insurance which is provided under this item. I think the minister should tell us what his thinking is as a result of the study, on the basis of this money, that has been made of the British national health service and the New Zealand program.
I note also from this report that "certain features of the programs in Sweden and Denmark which appear to possess considerable relevance to Canadian planning continue to receive detailed study". The report says that health insurance planning in other countries such as Australia and New Zealand has been kept under constant review. I find it very interesting to learn that particular attention has been paid to countries such as Denmark and Sweden. I pointed out last night that I have in my possession the memoranda that have been prepared on these two countries. I note there are to be memoranda, that will be paid for out of the money we are now voting, on health insurance in Great Britain, 1911 to 1948; on health insurance in Norway; on health insurance in the Netherlands. And I would assume-although it is not indicated in this list now before me -there would be one on the United Kingdom and on New Zealand in view of the reference in the paragraph I read a moment ago.
We are told by that paragraph, Mr. Chairman, that a study has been made of Denmark and Sweden because of their particular relevance to Canada. That makes very interesting the comment the minister has been making on this memorandum on health insurance in Sweden, in the interchanges he has had with the hon. member for Broadview.
The minister has stated categorically that he has no enthusiasm for the plan formerly in existence in Sweden, the one that actually is still there until it gets supplanted by the one which has been given legislative enactment.

Private Bills AFTER RECESS


Mr.   Marlin.@: I should think you would agree with me.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Oh, I agree with the minister more than he agrees with himself. I agree that the new plan which is spelled out in the memorandum that his department has prepared and has furnished us is much better than the one that has been in existence across the years. The old one was more on a voluntary basis and was terribly limited and restricted in its coverage. The new plan, as set out on pages 8 and 9 of the memorandum I hold in my hand, would bring in a universal compulsory program, mainly state supported. It is specifically pointed out that elimination of all restrictions on coverage would take place. The benefits that are now being provided would be continued and expanded, and there would be provision for cash maintenance allowances and other improvements of that type.
What appeals to me about the legislation that was passed in 1946, but which has not yet come into force in Sweden, is its compulsory and universal nature. The minister has said to the hon. member for Broadview that the old plan is no good. His department has been studying Sweden because of the particular relevancy of the Swedish situation to the Canadian situation. The implication is that the minister would prefer the new Swedish program to the old one. At some point he should tell us whether the result of that judgment, which he has made on the basis of the studies made in his department, is that we are any nearer to a health insurance program of that type in Canada.
As I say, a great many countries are being studied. The minister's departmental report draws special attention to the British, New Zealand, Swedish and Danish programs. This is the report for the year ended March 31, 1951. We are always about a year late getting these reports, as hon. members know. But this is the point we have reached by virtue of the fact that we have been voting money for health insurance studies. We have reached the point where particular attention is being given to the British, the New Zealand, the Swedish and the Danish health insurance plans. Well, if that study is being given and these memoranda are being prepared, surely it is time for the minister to tell us what his thinking is in the field of health insurance. This will be continued at nine o'clock.


Mr.   Marlin.@: I may surprise you.


George Harris Hees: I should surely like to get bowled over on this.
At six o'clock the Speaker resumed the chair and the house took recess.
The house resumed at eight o'clock.



PRIVATE BILLS

Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Hon. members will notice that items No. 24 to 113 inclusive are all private bills to be considered in committee of the whole. Is it agreeable to hon. members that one motion be made that all these bills be considered in committee of the whole?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.



GREAT EASTERN INSURANCE COMPANY

[Stage Direction]
The house in committee on Bill No. 243, respecting the Great Eastern Insurance Company-Mr. Macnaughton-Mr. Beaudoin in the chair.
On section 1-Incorporation.
Louis-René Beaudoin: Hon. members will note that this bill was considered by the banking and commerce committee and has been reported without amendment.


Mr. Green:: During this session there have been quite a few of these bills to incorporate insurance companies, and they seem to be in almost identical form. I wonder if one of the ministers could state what objection there would be to having the underlying statute- I am not sure of the correct name-amended to provide that these charters could be granted upon the filing of the necessary documents and the meeting of the requirements of the superintendent of insurance or the registrar of companies or whatever official was chosen to fulfil that function. There seems to be little point in bringing these applications to parliament by way of private bills. I can see the reason for a private bill in other cases, but why should it be necessary to put these applicants to the expense of having a private bill put through and the country to the expense of having to consider these applications in both the Senate and the House of Commons?


Mr. Byrne:: What about the pipe lines?


Alphonse Fournier: I think the main reason is to retain in parliament control over these applications. The moment we would want to divest parliament of the power which it has now, perhaps my hon. friend will no1 be ready to agree. I shall direct the attention of the Minister of Finance to his remarks and ask him to take them under consideration,


Stanley Howard Knowles: If the attention of the Ministei of Finance is to be called to the remarks of the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadrs I suggest that his attention also be called tc the remarks of the Minister of Public Works Indeed, I agree with the point made by the

Private Bills
Minister of Public Works that parliamentary control over corporations of this kind should be retained. I do not know whether the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra heard the interjection of the hon. member for Kootenay East.


Howard Charles Green: No, I did not. Was it worth listening to?


Stanley Howard Knowles: Quite. Not that his interjections are always worth listening to, but this one was rather pertinent. He said: "What about the pipe lines?"


Howard Charles Green: Oh, no.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra was perfectly justified in raising the question, but I think he got the proper answer from the Minister of Public Works, that parliament should retain control over these companies as parliament retains effective control over the granting of pipe-line charters.


Howard Charles Green: There is a vast difference between a pipe-line charter or a railroad charter and one of this type. In the other cases public works are to be constructed in certain parts of the country and for a certain purpose, but here we are dealing only with the incorporation of a company which is to be set up for the purpose of doing insurance business. The powers to be granted are always numbered from A to Z and there seems to be no variation between the different bills. I ask the Minister of Public Works to see that this matter is given some consideration. There may be a valid reason for requiring this procedure in each case, but at the moment 1 cannot understand why it should be necessary.


Alphonse Fournier: I cannot add very much to what I have just said. The only ihing is that it would appear that the hon. gentleman is in favour of piping insurance hrough different companies while he objects ;o piping oil through different pipe lines. I :annot really see the objection.


Howard Charles Green: That is not a very good comparison.


Alphonse Fournier: I cannot see the real )bjection. The hon. member, who is so ealous of the prerogatives of parliament, is now saying that some official should be dlowed to deal with these insurance com-ianies. Each company that is incorporated :ompetes with other companies. I think com-jetition is a good thing, but competition ihould not apply only to fire or other nsurance companies. I think competition hould also apply in other branches of the iconomy. I really will call the attention if the Minister of Finance to the remarks nade by the hon. gentleman.


George Alexander Cruickshank: May I say a word in this connection? I had not expected to.


Mr. Riley:: Will it only be a word?


George Alexander Cruickshank: If I get some assistance from the maritimes, Mr. Chairman-


Daniel Aloysius Riley: You may need a little assistance from the maritimes before you are through.


George Alexander Cruickshank: Well, we in British
Columbia have been carrying the maritimes on our back long enough, so I guess-


Louis-René Beaudoin: Order. I will have to ask the hon. member for Fraser Valley to speak to the bill. The hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra raised a point which was commented upon by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre and to which the minister has replied. That was by way of opening up a discussion on these insurance bills that are now before the committee. I do not think we should carry on a discussion on that particular point. What is before the house is a bill-


George Alexander Cruickshank: Mr. Chairman-


Louis-René Beaudoin: Order-to incorporate the Great Eastern Insurance Company, and the hon. member must address himself to clause 1 of that bill.


George Alexander Cruickshank: I will be glad to but I think you will admit, sir, that I was interrupted and it has taken part of my time. My friends on the right who interrupted me were not corrected for their irrelevant interjections. I was merely going to follow along the same lines as the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra. In my province we have no objection to the incorporation of as many insurance companies as want to be incorporated.
We are only hopeful that the more there are incorporated-and this comes under the section-the lower the rates we will get. Unfortunately in the past we had a bad experience with one insurance company which was incorporated. I think the only director outside of the province of British Columbia came from the city of Fort William. That company incurred a lot of expense and needlessly wasted the money of the people of my province. It went into bankruptcy, as the hon. member well knows. I am not going to mention the name, though I could.


An hon. Member:: You might as well mention the name.


George Alexander Cruickshank: In that connection I have something I might read, but possibly I will be out of order so I will use it on another occasion. In incorporating these insurance companies the same procedure is being

followed as in the case of other companies. There is another matter that I will not bring into the discussion, but I might at a later date. I read a press report no later than yesterday that gas was originally discovered in Medicine Hat in 1883-


Mr. Wylie:: Hear, hear.


George Alexander Cruickshank: -and we still have it with us. Therefore I think we are entitled to ask questions as to who is behind this company. I am speaking on the section, Mr. Chairman, and possibly it would be in order for me to read the names.
Section 1 reads as follows:
Rog?r Gerald Maclsaac, insurance manager, of the citv of St. Lambert, Harold Michael McLaughlin, secretary-treasurer, of the city of Montreal-
That is a good city.
-and Rene Labelle, one of Her Majesty's counsel, of the town of Mount Royal, all in the province of Quebec, together with such other persons as become shareholders in the company are incorporated under the name of "The Great Eastern Insurance Company" hereinafter called "the Company."
All I want to ask is whether the debentures, shares or stock of this company will be available to the investing public throughout the Dominion of Canada and not merely in one province. They are asking for a dominion charter and for the right to insure people of all the provinces, including the maritimes and the great provinces of western Canada, notably British Columbia. I want to know whether these shares or debentures will be available for sale in all provinces within Canada.


Louis-René Beaudoin: It seems to me that question might be asked on clause 3. Shall clause 1 carry?
Mr Gillis: I should like to disagree for a minute with the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra. While the chairman has ruled that that discussion is over, I would respectfully submit that the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra suggested a bad precedent.


Howard Charles Green: I merely asked a question.


Clarence Gillis: He suggested amending the basic insurance companies act so that in future companies may apply to the office of the Secretary of State and secure the right to start an insurance company.


Louis-René Beaudoin: Order. I know the hon. member feels that because I allowed the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra to deal with this matter I should allow him to do so as well. At this moment in the house there might be approximately 75 to 100 members.


Stanley Howard Knowles: There might be.


Louis-René Beaudoin: If I allow the hon. member to carry on this discussion, then all other
Private Bills
members would expect to receive similar treatment. That would simply mean that during the hour devoted to private bills tonight we would discuss nothing but the suggestion of the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra that the Minister of Public Works look into the reason why so many insurance companies are coming here for incorporation. Does the hon. member think we should follow that procedure on clause 1 of a bill which is entitled, "An act to incorporate the Great Eastern Insurance Company"? I do not think so. I will confess, though, that when the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra initiated the discussion


Clarence Gillis: You should have stopped it.


Louis-René Beaudoin: I should have stopped it. I confess that, but I thought some latitude might be allowed especially when we were initiating the discussion on four bills to incorporate insurance companies. I felt that the hon. member, merely by way of comment on the bills that are now before the committee, was asking the minister to consider that suggestion and would then proceed with the study of the bill. It so happened that he did not have any questions to ask on the first clause, and the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre commented upon the remarks made by the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra and the minister replied. Wg have about 120 bills before us at the moment, and if we are to take advantage of the hour devoted to private bills I think not only in fairness to hon. members who do not wish to take part in the discussion but also in fairness to the corporations who have applied for incorporation we ought to devote our time to a study of this bill. I am sure the hon. member, having heard the remarks made by the member for Vancouver-Quadra, will have another occasion to discuss the point he has raised. I would ask him not to deal with it now.


Clarence Gillis: I am always willing to be cooperative but actually what worried me was the commitment given by the Minister of Public Works that he would bring this matter to the attention of the Minister of Finance. I thought if we said nothing in the house the Minister of Finance would naturally think we acquiesced. I have no intention of pursuing the matter further and whatever remarks I have to make on the bill itself I shall reserve for the clauses.


John Lorne MacDougall: I might point out that these bills now before us have all been through the miscellaneous private bills committee and information which hon. members might desire to seek in connection with them may be found in the reports of that

Private Bills
committee. I suggest that we go forward and deal with as many of these bills as we are able to in the hour.


Louis-René Beaudoin: I would point out that these bills have not been considered by the standing committee on miscellaneous private bills but have been before the banking and commerce committee where they have been carefully considered and reported without amendment.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Sections 2 to 5 inclusive agreed to.
On section 6-Classes of insurance authorized.
Clarence Gillis: I notice this company is being granted the right to carry on many types of insurance activity. Personally I think we have plenty of insurance companies in Canada today in the field in which this company is seeking a charter.
Take automobile insurance, for example. I think anyone who drives a car in any province in Canada, with the possible exception of the province of Saskatchewan, will agree that some governmental action, either provincial or federal, is necessary in that field, particularly when you realize how car insurance costs have risen during the last ten years. The great majority of people in the low income groups find it almost impossible to insure a car today, and my opinion is that it is pretty nearly time the federal government should do something about it, as the provinces do not appear to be doing very much. Perhaps the provinces cannot do very much about it when these national charters are granted giving companies the right to operate from province to province right across the dominion.
If you take a look at the casualty list on the highways over the week ends I know you will say there is either something wrong with the drivers or with a lot of the cars which are on the highways. However, I think some yardstick or measure of automobile insurance is necessary in this country because the average policy one has to take from the old line companies for a passenger car, covering collision, public liability, and so forth, will run from $135 to $150. The average person may be able to secure his licence, and pay the instalments on his ear, but when it oomes to putting that car on the road and paying the rates demanded by insurance companies today he finds that almost impossible. In most provinces in this country that type of insurance is compulsory. Although they will sell you a licence and you may put your car on the road, you can drive that car only until you

have an accident. Then, under most provincial laws covering the matter, the R.C.M.P. have the right to pull you up and if you have not public liability insurance on the car, for which you must pay $130 to $150 your car may be confiscated, impounded and sold to pay the damage.
While the average person on the highway may be as careful as he likes, if someone who is not covered smashes into him then his car is in the garage with adjusters running around for months arguing about who is responsible and who is not responsible. Regardless of the fact that you may be insured by one of these companies, nine times out of ten if you are involved in an accident you have to hire a lawyer and go to court to prove that you have a right to your insurance.
If we are going to continue to grant charters on a national scale-and here I am thinking of automobile insurance particularly because it sticks out like a sore thumb- some governmental action must be taken. That insurance is compulsory in the provinces, but nothing is done, until you tear into somebody. Then the R.C.M.P. come into the picture, court action is necessary, and there is litigation all over the place. I think it is pretty nearly time the federal government at least set up some machinery to make an appraisal of automobile insurance in this country, particularly in view of the fact that the provinces are not doing it, to determine whether automobile insurance is being sold on a fair and reasonable basis that does not mean just a lot of money to the companies selling insurance and very little protection to the average person who is buying that insurance.
I am not quarrelling about the rest of the insurance here but I am particularly interested and concerned about automobile insurance because it is running way beyond the reach of the average person. I think the time has come when the provincial governments should set up their own insurance offices and, when a person takes out a licence for his car, if they are going to make insurance compulsory when the licence is granted it should be accompanied by an insurance policy which is fair, reasonable, and within the financial limits of the average person who is taking a car out on the highway. Anyone who cannot afford a policy should not take a car out on the road.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Clarence Gillis: The provincial government
should be forced to determine the financial responsibility of a person applying for a

licence to take a car on the highway-a car in half decent shape-so that others may be protected.
I am pretty much concerned about this. If we are going to keep on giving national charters in this field I think it is time for the federal government to take some responsibility to ascertain that this insurance is within reach of at least the average person who drives a car.


Mr. Dickey:: I do not want to prolong debate on this clause, but the hon. member did say two things which I do not think should go unchallenged. He is dealing with a very important matter and I certainly agree that it is something to which great consideration should be given. He said, however, that ordinary automobile insurance costs the average passenger-car driver anywhere from $130 to $150. Now, Mr. Chairman, different coverages cost different sums of money, and if you want special coverage you have to pay for it; but certainly in the province of Nova Scotia those figures do not apply. I carry what I think is very adequate coverage and the premium this year, for instance, was something in the vicinity of $75.


Clarence Gillis: You are not very well protected.


John Horace Dickey: I am very well protected. The other statement the hon. member made was that nine times out of ten, even if you had an insurance policy, you had to go to court to collect your insurance. I am sure the hon. member is under a misapprehension there. It is true litigation arises out of many motor vehicle accidents, but it is for the purpose of determining who is responsible. If a party is found guilty of negligence, then his insurance company has to pay under the liability clause. But to suggest that a person covered by insurance in any but the most exceptional cases has the necessity of going to court to collect on his own insurance is not in accordance with the facts. I do not think that statement should go unchallenged on the record.


Clarence Gillis: Mr. Chairman, I drive a car in that province, and it is that province I was thinking about when I was speaking. I know that if the hon. member just carries fire and theft insurance, he can perhaps get it for the figure he has mentioned. The main insurance you have to carry if you drive on the highway today is collision insurance. If you take out a policy that protects you against fire, theft, public liability and collision, it will cost you $130 this year, as a pleasure driver. I have that policy, you see, and I have no more money than the hon. member to chuck around unnecessarily, but that is what my policy costs me.
Private Bills
I might say that in the last ten years the cost of that policy has risen from $40 to the figure I mentioned a moment ago. On the other point mentioned by the hon. member, I leave it to the average person in this country who has had a motor accident to decide whether he is correct or I am correct. If you meet with any kind of an accident there has to be an adjustment. In most cases you cannot get that done without seeking legal assistance, and as you know lawyers do not work for nothing. If the accident is serious enough, there is generally a court case to decide liability. In the meantime your car is tied up.
I do not want to waste any more time in quarrelling with the hon. member, but what I said a few minutes ago on these two points was the result of my own experience; that is what my policy cost me in Nova Scotia this year. It would cost more if I wanted more protection. You can get that protection in Saskatchewan for around $12, because the government has cut out the middleman.


John Horace Dickey: All I can say to the hon. member is that he is paying a great deal more for bis insurance than I am. If he wants the name of my company I shall be very glad to give it to him.


George Alexander Cruickshank: I do not altogether agree with the hon. member for Cape Breton South. I do not think you need to go to court to get action, certainly not in my province. We have some very fair insurance companies, although I believe their rates are too high. I believe the junior member behind me is not carrying sufficient insurance. The insurance on my car, which is just a Pontiac and not a Cadillac convertible, is $107.30 per year. I carry adequate insurance because in my province, Mr. Chairman, the people, including the legal fraternity and those who represent the people of our province as elected representatives, believe that those of us on the road who are entitled [DOT]to drive a car should protect the public we are driving against, as you might say.
I agree with the hon. member, although I think the rate is too high. The insurance on my Pontiac-not being a parliamentary assistant or a great labour leader I can only drive a Pontiac-costs $107. The section on which I believe we are entitled to more information concerns the $250,000. Obviously the rates of this insurance must be too high, because we have had this great influx of applications for new companies. Here is a company that is going to insure everything from A to Z. I always have to look at the two things, because I can never remember the entire alphabet. The list goes from

Private Bills
windstorm insurance to fire insurance. Here is a company that is going into insurance from A to Z and it has only $250,000 paid up capital. Mr. Chairman, in my province one accident alone cost the insurance company $58,000. Here is a company rushing in where angels fear to tread, but apparently lawyers from the maritimes delight to enter. They are going into this field with only $250,000 of paid up capital. They are rushing to get into it. Surely, Mr. Chairman, there must be some reason for this great desire, shown by so many companies at this session, to get into this business.
I agree with the member for Cape Breton South that the rate should not be so high, although probably maritime drivers are not as capable as those from the far west and that may be the reason.
In the old days, Mr. Chairman, we used to play poker, and instead of using chips we used to use the charters of railway companies or insurance companies. That was in the days when my uncle Horace was a young man. It would appear to me that it has become a favourite game now to obtain a dominion charter. I do not know whether you know very much about poker, Mr. Chairman, but I once lost a railway company-the charter, that is. I believe every consideration should be given to the financial responsibility of this company before such an asset as a dominion charter is granted.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Sections 7 and 8 agreed to.
Preamble agreed to.
Title agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.

[Stage Direction]
The house in committee on Bill No. 262, to incorporate Equitable Fire Insurance Company of Canada-Mr. Cannon-Mr. Beaudoin in the chair.
Sections 1 to 5 inclusive agreed to.
On section 6-Classes of insurance authorized.
Winfield Chester Scott McLure: I have not a copy of that bill before me. Is this section just the same as the one in Bill 243?


Louis-René Beaudoin: Exactly.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
On section 7-Subscription and payment of capital before commencing business.
Howard Charles Green: Here the requirement is for only $200,000. In the other bill it was for $250,000. Who decides upon the amount that is to be required?


Mr. Harris (Grey-Bruce):: Mr. Chairman, I am not prepared to answer that at the moment, but I think perhaps the answer is that in one case it is a mutual insurance company, although I am only expressing an opinion.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Sections 8 to 13 inclusive agreed to.
On section 14-Effect of non-payment of assessments.
Stanley Howard Knowles: I wonder if the same minister or someone else can explain why it is that in some cases, as with the Great Eastern Insurance Company, the bill consists of only eight sections, whereas with this company, which seems to be similar and covers the same groups of insurance from A to Z, the bill contains twenty-one sections.


Walter Edward Harris: Again I would be speculating, but I imagine the legal advisers of the respective companies felt that they had covered all that was required for their purposes.


Stanley Howard Knowles: One lawyer was more long-winded than the other.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Sections 15 to 21 inclusive agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.

[Stage Direction]
The house in committee on Bill No. 240, respecting the Sisters of Charity of the House of Providence-Mr. Henderson-Mr. Beaudoin in the chair.
On section 1-Name changed.
Louis-René Beaudoin: I might point out that this bill has been reported without amendment by the committee on miscellaneous private bills.


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

[Stage Direction]
The house in committee on Bill No. 244, to incorporate the Economical Mutual Fire Insurance Company-Mr. Darroch-Mr. Beaudoin in the chair.
Sections 1 and 2 agreed to.
Preamble agreed to.
Title agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.

[Stage Direction]
The house in committee on Bill No. 241, respecting a certain patent application of the Garrett Corporation-Mr, Richard (Ottawa East)-Mr. Beaudoin in the chair.
Sections 1 to 3 inclusive agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.

[Stage Direction]
The house in committee on Bill No. 278, to incorporate the National Dental Examining Board of Canada

Mr. MacDougall-Mr. Beaudoin in the chair.
Sections 1 to 10 inclusive agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.


Mr. H. W. Winkler (Lisgar) moved: that the house go into committee on the following bills:
Bill No. 186, for the relief of Ludwik Bul-kiewicz-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 187, for the relief of Jean Betton Harris-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 188, for the relief of Violet Mary Bailey Black-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 189, for the relief of Corinne Laroc-que Sergent-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 190, for the relief of Omer Mont-petit-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 198, for the relief of Ismena Archange Labatt Chipman-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 199, for the relief of Rose Larocque Crawford-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 200, for the relief of Gladys Lucille Jane Annal Williams-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 201, for the relief of Emily Amelia Ahern Manhire

Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 202, for the relief of Margaret Joyce Berryman Thomas-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 203, for the relief of Lillian Deutsch Payne-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 204, for the relief of Murdoch Graham Nicholson-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 211, for the relief of Jeanne Antoinette Sophie Helena Kessler Meyer-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 212, for the relief of John Stachyshyn-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 213, for the relief of Theodora Dunska Williams-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 214, for the relief of Marguerite Mary Winn Nelson-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 216, for the relief of Roger Pilon- Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 217, for the relief of Winnifred Shirley Nice Perry-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 218, for the relief of Ursula Runge Kniewel Fijalkowski-Mr. Winkler.
Private Bills
Bill No. 219, for the relief of Bella Sybil Feinman Brenton-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 221, for the relief of Helen Kouri Cumas-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 222, for the relief of Cora Marguerite Blume-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 223, for the relief of Marie Maude Louise Ladriere Cook Tooby, otherwise known as Marie Maude Louise Ladriere Cook-Salisbury Tooby-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 226, for the relief of Laetitia Daigneault Martel-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 227, for the relief of James Alexander Ford.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 228, for the relief of Joseph Gerard Abondius Fauvel.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 229, for the relief of Richard Patenaude.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 230, for the relief of Francoise Bellehumeur Dixon.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 231, for the relief of Cynthia Daphne Roberts Gagne.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 232, for the relief of Dorothy May Tucker Patterson.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 233, for the relief of Reginald Clare Darrah.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 234, for the relief of Marjie Weston Frost Law.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 235, for the relief of Carmen Verna Garcia Copping.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 236, for the relief of Edna Ruth Dowsett Young.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 237, for the relief of Eleanor Mary Courtney Flannery.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 238, for the relief of Florence (Fannie Ruth) Sacks Roitman.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 247, for the relief of William Wallace Watson.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 248, for the relief of Russell James Barrett.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 249, for the relief of Alice Sabria O'Connor Muskett.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 250, for the relief of Julia Emma Pearl Sager Noiseux.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 251, for the relief of David Gilmore Bennett.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 253, for the relief of Mary Elizabeth Cate Lowe.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 254, for the relief of Aldea Gen-dreau Bourbonnais.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 255, for the relief of Peter Ernest Walker.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 256, for the relief of Dorothy Agnes Kearns Bradley.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 257, for the relief of Sarah Bernstein Smith.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 258, for the relief of Margaret Gladys Redman Glassco.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 259, for the relief of Louise Joslyn Smith Harvey-Jellie.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 260, for the relief of Bertha Naujoks Stehr.-Mr. Winkler.

Private Bills-Divorce
Bill No. 261, for the relief of Margit Aloisia Payer Worontschak.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 264, for the relief of Tom Barnard Clayton Gould.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 265, for the relief of Helene Laura Solomon Wiseberg.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 266, for the relief of John Borland White.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 267, for the relief of John Laurence McDonough.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 268, for the relief of Jean Wiseman Schwartz.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 270, for the relief of Agnes Bertha Baugh Guimont.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 271, for the relief of Genevieve Flora Agatha Brown Smith.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 272, for the relief of Marcelle Alice Beliveau Martin.

Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 273, for the relief of Marcel Despatis.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 274, for the relief of Joseph Wilfrid Ernest Senecal.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 252, for the relief of Kathleen Hilda Turk Woodall.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 263, for the relief of Leo Kendall. -Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 269, for the relief of Judith Sorel Riven Gainsbury.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 280, for the relief of John Harold Roger Wright.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 281, for the relief of Agathe Neubauer Landsberg.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 282, for the relief of Norma May Attridge Chilton.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 283, for the relief of Andrea Gendron Repper.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 284, for the relief of Edith Bessie Franks Parsons.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 285, for the relief of Annie Teresa Nash Pelltari.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 286, for the relief of Mary Clemence Morice Waldbauer.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 287, for the relief of John Gordon Smithers.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 290, for the relief of Libby Levine Bloom.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 291, for the relief of Shirley Israel Thau.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 292, for the relief of Ralph Patrick Barker.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 293, for the relief of Madeliene Kostick Glock.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 294, for the relief of Olive Myrtle Weston Rouet.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 295, for the relief of John William Day.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 296, for the relief of Marcelle Marchand Adams.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 297, for the relief of Marie Marguerite Germaine Aubert Forest. - Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 298, for the relief of Betty Lauraine Conner Norell.-Mr. Winkler.

Bill No. 299, for the relief of Franeoise Marguerite Beaudin Patrick.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 301, for the relief of Greta Mildred Duncan Croteau.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 303, for the relief of Leo Berco-vitch.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 304, for the relief of Joseph Raymond Demers.-Mr. Winkler.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Beaudoin in the chair.
On section 1-Marriage dissolved.


Louis-René Beaudoin: Shall section* 1 of these divorce bills carry?


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Chairman, I take it you are calling the first section of all the divorce bills at once, and I am not going to exercise my right to prevent you from doing it in that way on this occasion. But I do wish once again to register my continuing and very strong protest against the fact that the House of Commons is still handling these bills, and handling them in this way. They should not be here at all.


Louis-René Beaudoin: In view of the fact that the hon. member began his remarks by saying he does not object to my doing it in this way-


Stanley Howard Knowles: I did not say I was not
objecting, I said I would not prevent your doing it in this way.


Louis-René Beaudoin: It may be that a reader of Hansard, a person who is not a member of the House of Commons, might say, "Well, the chairman followed a certain procedure and, although an hon. member protested, it was done in this way." I should point out that with the exception of the few weeks or months in which representations have been made that this procedure should be changed, it has been the practice for many years to call the clauses in committee, all at one time, as I am doing now. I think that should be on the record.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I recognize and confirm what Your Honour has said, that it has been the practice. But my point is that it is a very bad practice, and I am against it.


Louis-René Beaudoin: I am sure the hon. member will agree that I cannot discuss that point.


[Stage Direction]
Section agreed to.
Section 2 agreed to.
Bills reported.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:: When shall these bills be read a third time?


Some hon. Members:: Now.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Under protest.


Howard Waldemar Winkler: the third reading of the bills.
Motion agreed to and bills read the third time and passed.



IRENE MARY JOHNSON MUIRHEAD

[Stage Direction]
On the order:
Second reading of Bill No. 215 (Letter L-7 of the Senate), intituled: "An Act for the relief of Irene Mary Johnson Muirhead."-Mr. Winkler.
Howard Waldemar Winkler: I would ask that this and the other divorce bills for second reading stand, please.
Order stands.



BOUNDARY PIPELINE CORPORATION

[Stage Direction]
The house resumed, from Tuesday, June 3, consideration in committee of Bill No. 62, to incorporate Boundary Pipeline Corporation-Mr. Larson-Mr. Beaudoin in the chair.
On section 1-Incorporation.
Winfield Chester Scott McLure: Mr. Chairman, this bill has been before the house now for some time. This committee is dealing with Bill No. 62, an act to incorporate the Boundary Pipeline Corporation. At this time we are dealing with section 1. I should like to know from the chairman whether he is going to allow a general debate on the first section, or on each section as we go along. We have had different rulings on that, and probably we shall get a new one on this pipe-line bill.


Some hon. Members:: Carried.


Winfield Chester Scott McLure: I do not know whether or not the names of those who are applying for the incorporation have been placed on the record, but I find that their names are as follows: George Herbert Barr, solicitor; William Purdon Cumming, solicitor; Robert Milliken Barr, solicitor; Archibald Turner Brown, managing director, and what else I do not know, and Frank Benjamin Poutney, investment dealer, all from that great city of Regina in Saskatchewan. These are to be the directors. In other words, these five men come to parliament and ask that they be made into one body, and that body to be called the Boundary Pipeline Corporation; or, putting it in shorter terms, they are to be called the company. In the incorporation clause they also say that there are a great many other persons who may become shareholders. All these other persons are unknown to your committee, Mr. Chairman. These five gentlemen alone are seeking the incorporation, and are to be called the company.


Mr. Boisvert:: What is wrong with that?


Winfield Chester Scott McLure: You will have a chance after awhile. Quite a number of speeches have
Boundary Pipeline Corporation been made with reference to this incorporation. In checking them over I have found that very few have endorsed these directors, but I am not taking objection to them. Like those who have spoken before me in reference to this bill, I take objection to the principle of it, and I shall endeavour to tell the committee my reasons for so doing.
I said a moment ago that there did not seem to be very many champions of this bill on the government side of the house. I might add here that those who are against it have given very good reasons, in my opinion, why the bill should not pass. When the bill passes, if it ever does, it will be a question of time before we know whether they have been given the proper authority or not.
We all know that this deals with something that is very important to Canada. It deals with the national products of Canada, the natural resources. In the past two or three years, and probably a little longer, attention has been turned as never before to the great natural resources of this country. For instance, the eyes of the world are fixed on the great discoveries and the great development of the natural products of some of the western provinces, particularly on Alberta and Saskatchewan with their oil and gas. Because of that, we find speculators of all kinds coming in; and, as I think we have in this case, speculators are seeking to incorporate a company to move gas from Saskatchewan to some other place. They are quite prepared to build their pipe line into Manitoba and on in to the city of Winnipeg. When they get there by way of an all-Canada route they immediately want to turn south and take their supply of gas down into the United States.
I would have no objection to a pipe-line company asking for a charter of that kind if there was sufficient gas in the west to supply Canada first. In this case it becomes a question of Canada first. We would be very wise in this country if we went to our neighbours to the south and extracted a leaf from their book of success and learned of the development of their country and their natural resources. If we were to take a leaf out of their book I am sure we would look to our own interests, and it would be Canada first.
I congratulate the great country to the south for having such a policy and carrying it into effect. After they have supplied their own people they are always willing to sell their surplus. However, their plan has been to develop the United States first. Let us copy that idea and let us make our slogan Canada first.
Section stands.
Progress reported.
300G	HOUSE OF
Supply-Health and Welfare


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The hour devoted to private and public bills having expired, the house will continue with the business which was interrupted at six o'clock.

The house in committee of supply, Mr. Beaudoin in the chair.



DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL HEALTH AND WELFARE

[Stage Direction]
274. Health insurance studies and administration of general health grants, $74,305.
Stanley Howard Knowles: When the house rose at six o'clock I was directing the attention of the minister to the fact that some very valuable studies of health insurance have been carried on by virtue of the money we vote under this item. In particular I pointed out that the annual departmental report states that special attention has been given to the health insurance plans in Great Britain, New Zealand, Sweden and Denmark. I feel that the committee has the right to expect a statement from the minister at this time as to his views on the plans in effect in those countries and what he feels would be the best type of health insurance plan for Canada in the light of this study. He should also tell us when the point will be reached at which the studies for which we have been spending this money across the years will be converted into action, namely a health insurance program for this country.
Furthermore, I would point out that under this item of health insurance studies, health and sickness surveys have been conducted in the various provinces. Last evening I drew to the attention of the minister a recommendation made in the Saskatchewan health survey report which was prepared as part of the work of the health insurance studies division. Notably I drew attention to the fact that that report recommended a nationwide program of health insurance and in particular it recommended that if all the provinces were not ready to participate in such a plan, nevertheless a national plan should be established so the provinces ready to participate might do so. A reference is made to these health survey reports on page 62 of the minister's departmental report, which reads:
Exceedingly valuable material will be made available through the health and sickness surveys now being carried on by the provinces, which will give very much more complete data than any hitherto available on existing health services, and prevalence of illness and disability.
We have the departmental report saying that special attention is being paid to New Zealand, Great Britain, Sweden and Denmark, and the minister in that report saying that it has been valuable to get the information


contained in the health survey reports from the provinces, in one of which is the recommendation that there be a nation-wide program of health insurance.
I think the minister will agree that we are entitled to a statement as to his opinion, not only of the studies made in these other countries but of the recommendation made in the Saskatchewan health survey report. Not only should he give us the benefit of his views on the basis of this study; he should tell us how soon we can expect the enactment of a nation-wide program of health insurance.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I promised the hon. gentleman that I would tell him briefly what in my judgment was wrong with the plan he put forward-


Stanley Howard Knowles: The minister is now referring to the hon. member for Broadview.


Paul Joseph James Martin: -with regard to Sweden, and I shall also state what I think is wrong with the plan put forward by the hon. member who has just spoken.


George Harris Hees: I understood the minister was going to outline his ideas on the British plan and also give us his ideas on a plan for Canada.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I shall have to decide what I am to say. My hon. friend is exercising his right as a member of the opposition and 1 am exercising what I conceive to be my duty in the light of government policy and other circumstances, and as a minister of the government. The plan my hon. friend put forward is limited to persons in good health between the ages of 14 and 40. It does not deal with the age group from birth to 14 in the non-dependent class, a most significant age group in our population. It does not provide for medical or hospital care for the age group over 40, and particularly the group from 60 to 70 and 80 years of age, which is another equally important group in the population of any country.


George Harris Hees: May I correct the minister on that. On page 5 of his memorandum, talking about the present program he says:
At the present time, everyone between the ages of 14 to 40 years of age, and in "good health," is eligible for membership In a local sickness fund. Married women must insure themselves independently of their husbands, and the couple may insure their children under 15 years.
Actually a parent has to insure a child; the child does not insure himself.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Under that plan only the age group 14 to 40 years is covered.


George Harris Hees: Children are insured by their parents.


Mr.   Marlin.@: I beg to differ with my hon. friend. The plan just covers that group. Anyone who has given thorough consideration to this matter will realize how inadequate that would foe. That particular program is not a health insurance program at all; it is a cash sickness maintenance scheme which may require a waiting period of 90 days on admission to membership before eligibility for benefits is obtained. The great weakness in that plan is that it covers about 50 per cent, or at best 60 per cent of the population.


George Harris Hees: Sixty per cent, so the memorandum says.


Mr.   Marlin.@: Sixty per cent of the population generally, and there have been years when it covered as low as 32 per cent of the population. In view of those limitations I cannot take any other stand than the one I took last night, that this proposal is not a health insurance scheme at all; it is simply a scheme of providing for a method of financing whereby the individual pays the full fee and receives two-thirds as reimbursement from the government or the state. I am sure that plan is not one that would commend itself to any group in this country that has given the matter serious consideration.
The question before us is of the greatest importance and has many implications. Our situation in this country is different from that in Sweden, New Zealand or the United Kingdom. Under our constitution the provinces are endowed with the primary responsibility for matters of health. I am sure no one would suggest that we embark upon a scheme of health insurance in Canada without the co-operation of a substantial portion of the provinces.


George Harris Hees: That goes without saying.


Mr.   Marlin.@: My hon. friend says that goes without saying, but he did not mention it.


George Harris Hees: There are some things so obvious that you do not have to mention them.


Mr.   Marlin.@: If my hon. friend will just
allow me to finish my argument, he may say all he feels like saying after he hears what I have said.


George Harris Hees: The minister interrupted me
freely all afternoon.


Mr.   Marlin.@: This matter is something that has to be considered in the light of our constitution. At no time has this government taken any other position, nor has the party of which my hon. friend is so distinguished a member. Just think what would happen if the central government of Canada, without regard for the provinces, embarked upon a scheme which in part touched a phase of
Supply-Health and Welfare their exclusive constitutional competence. Under the constitution of this country hospitals and eleemosynary institutions are the declared reserve of the provinces. You cannot have a hospital insurance scheme nor can you have an adequate medical insurance scheme unless the hospitals of the country are part and parcel of the plan. There is no question where the party of which I am a member stands. We have advocated health insurance in our platforms as an objective. That was done, as the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre pointed out, in the platform of 1919. It was mentioned in the platform of the convention at which the present Prime Minister was made the leader of this party. But that does not mean to say that because a party has a plank in its platform, it has got to be done overnight.


George Harris Hees: Well, do it within ten years, or fifteen years.


Mr.   Marlin.@: No hon. member will find any word of mine at any time where I said that this matter would be brought in without the proper foundation being laid.


George Harris Hees: That is the trouble.


Mr.   Marlin.@: I have had now for six years the responsibility of administering this department, and my relations with all the provinces have been most satisfactory. I think I may say I have an adequate understanding of the difficulties involved. Those difficulties are not the attitudes of the provinces, but there is also the matter of the necessary facilities to make this program work. I picked up the Ottawa Journal tonight, as I am sure other members did, and saw on the third page a headline pointing out the serious shortage of hospital beds in the Ottawa civic hospital. That situation is true not only of that great hospital but of most hospitals particularly in the larger centres of the country.
The reason the more meritorious scheme in Sweden has not been implemented, although it is the law, is because of the shortage of hospital beds and hospital personnel, particularly doctors. If you want to damn a scheme at the beginning all you have to do is give it immediate effect without having taken the necessary preparatory steps. When the former prime minister announced this program in May of 1948 he referred to the need of doing something in this important field. His whole life was one that demonstrated his soundness of judgment and faith in his declarations in the matter of health.
It is interesting to note what has happened since the introduction of that plan. At that time we estimated that we were short some 65,000 hospital beds in Canada. We embarked
3008	HOUSE OF
Supply-Health and Welfare on a program of assistance to the provinces in the construction of hospitals. Since that time we have been able to assist the provinces in the provision of over 38,000 hospital beds. That is a tremendous achievement. When that objective was stated it was argued in this house that it could not possibly be reached in a five year period. Not only have we assisted in the provision of that number of beds, but 433 new hospitals of varying sizes have been built in this country in the past four years.
In addition, when we announced this plan we sat down with the ten provincial governments, surveyed the whole scene as best we could and set for ourselves certain objectives. One of the great shortages at that time was in personnel, both in the provincial departments and in the various health groups. Our national health program has resulted in the provision of 4,500 additional provincial government health officials in this country, research people, hospital administrators, nurses, psychologists, occupational therapists and the like. These 4,500 are paid entirely out of the moneys voted for this program.
In addition we have provided over 3,500 additional health workers, individuals who are attached to local health units, individuals who are engaged in work respecting arthritis, tuberculosis control and cancer control, all supplementing the health personnel of the provincial governments. Under this program rural health care is being brought closer to the level of that in urban areas, so much so that the deputy minister of health of the province of Ontario referred to this program at a recent meeting as one that had brought rural health care to a higher level than at any time in the history of his province.
Most of these new projects were and are paid for out of the national health program. The committee will understand that the program provides for outright grants except in the case of cancer control and hospital construction, where the principle of matching with the provinces is entertained and serves as a condition precedent. I think I can say that the program has resulted in putting new life into provincial campaigns to lessen child and maternal mortality, to control diseases like diphtheria and typhoid, and to counter the great cripplers, polio, arthritis and rheumatism. As the hon. member for Lanark said last night in his excellent speech, we have to face the fact that the infant mortality rate in this country, while it has improved in the last decade, is still behind that of Iceland and some other countries. That problem has to be met and is being met under this program as I have indicated.

The provincial governments are now enabled as a result of the financial assistance we give them to add new divisions to extend the scope of their public health services. For instance, right here close to Ottawa, in the county of Carleton, the county health unit is paid for half by the federal government and half by the county. There are many health units in the province of Ontario. Until the advent of this program most of the health units were paid for by the province and by the county concerned. This project provides assistance for extensions of existing programs or for new programs. The local unit in Carleton county was an extension of a program. We pay half the cost and the county the other half, thereby relieving the province of its financial responsibility for that particular area.
Likewise the provincial laboratory in the city of Ottawa is now being replenished with new and needed equipment under this program. Then there is the amount of equipment provided in our mental institutions and the number of occupational therapists who have been trained. In the Whitby mental hospital alone, one of the very good mental institutions of this country, you will find that we have provided equipment costing almost $300,000 to give the directors there an opportunity to provide more up-to-date care for the mentally ill. We are engaged in a program of building mental health clinics throughout the country. As the hon. member for Lanark and the hon. member for Eglinton said, mental illness is one of the great challenges that face many countries of the western world. The largest single grant in the national health program is for mental health.
When one realizes that 50 per cent of the bed occupancy in this country is by people suffering from mental illness, one gets an appreciation of the immensity of the problem. We have assisted in the provision of 8,000 mental hospital beds under this program. We have already provided under the mental health program fourteen mental health clinics, the idea being to try to reduce the number of people who go into these institutions. We want to see if we cannot cut down the population in the mental institutions. Our aim is to have a program of prevention to deal with people before they have to go to such institutions, or prevent them from going altogether. Experience of countries which have carried on this program has revealed that mental health clinics attached to hospitals or to public health units are capable of dealing with and anticipating many cases, in both adults and children, in this advanced way. That program is one we are very anxious to see in full operation. All these

things are a very important part of any medical or hospital care insurance program.
When we began this program we did not wait until the surveys were undertaken. The government had given consideration to that. At first we took the view that we should not inaugurate the plan until we had a careful assessment of the problem as it was seen in the provinces, but we knew there were certain things which had to be done. And we knew there were conditions precedent to ultimate action. We went ahead and built hospital beds, provided additional medical research, did something about crippling conditions among children, assisted the provincial governments and the voluntary organizations in their tuberculosis programs, did something about mental health, and did something about general public health. We went ahead on the basis of the facts as we knew them but, at the same time, we said to each provincial government: We would like you to undertake a survey in your province to see what the situation is, as it is seen not only by your officials but as well by the most qualified people in the field. As they come in I am tabling in this house the various health survey reports which have taken some three and a half years to prepare. The federal government provided $500,000 to the provinces for that purpose.
I am sure very few hon. members have had the opportunity of reading any of those reports completely because they are monumental documents, but those who have looked at them will realize the great effort and study that has been put into them. We find now that we underestimated the number of hospitals needed in many parts of this country. All one has to do is to look at the Ontario health survey report and one will see that we underestimated the number of beds which it is thought in this report will be required.
The recommendations in all these reports are very germane to this discussion now. My hon. friend, the member for Broadview, agreed that we could not do anything in this field without consulting the provinces, and that it would be unwise to embark immediately on a program without having provincial action. But the province of Ontario has made no recommendation about health insurance at the present time. As the member for Winnipeg North Centre said, only two survey reports thus far have urged the kind of scheme that has been discussed here today, the province of Saskatchewan and the province of Alberta.
If my hon. friend wanted to pursue the plan he has been so assiduously promoting, he would have some considerable influence with
Supply-Health and Welfare the premier of the first province of the country, the largest province. I am sure that to the minister of health of the province of Ontario his views would be of great interest. The gentlemen in the provinces have to look at the problem in the same light we do. It is a problem that has an objective which we want to achieve, but it can be achieved only when preparatory steps have been taken, so that when the objective is achieved the scheme does not fall down simply because preparatory steps have not been taken.
These surveys are of the greatest importance but no one has emphasized that except the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre. He has only referred to the recommendations of two provinces, but that is because I am sure he has not had a chance to give careful analysis to the other recommendations, or even to read the other reports. When the house sees the report of the province of Quebec and that of the province of Nova Scotia they will realize that it is one thing to get up and say we must do something, and another to realize you have the responsibility for proposed action. You may want to see a thing done but you also want to see it work well. You do not rush into a scheme of the immense proportions we have here without laying the foundation. My hon. friend the Minister of National Revenue asked what I thought was a very appropriate question last night. He asked the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre: How are you going to finance the scheme? That is a very important consideration.
My views on this matter are well known. I have spoken of them in this house and elsewhere long before I came to this house. My views on the subject are known all over this country. I certainly would not want to embark upon a scheme until that scheme was ready to be embarked upon. I certainly would not want to embark upon it unless I knew we could count on the co-operation- not only co-operation by word of mouth but co-operation in dollars and cents-of the provinces themselves, and of the people of this country.
A scheme such as my hon. friend has been talking about and such as has been discussed generally here is one that will envisage contributions from three sources: from the federal government, from the provincial governments, and from individuals. When the Prime Minister announced this program four years ago, what was the situation in the world? We did not have a defence program of $2 billion a year to face. Our federal and provincial government social security expenses now are $1,500 million and of that $1,500 million the federal government is responsible for 80 per cent.

Supply-Health and Welfare
Now what are we charged with today in this country, in this house? We are charged with having overtaxed the people of Canada.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Paul Joseph James Martin: The hon. gentlemen say "hear, hear", tout that is the charge. Our answer to that is that while it is true we have the highest tax load ever experienced in peacetime, it is because we have embarked upon a defence program as well as maintaining the other normal functions of peacetime government. We have at the same time, in the light of our capacity as we see it, embarked upon important social security and health programs.
What would a health insurance program cost? My hon. friend said $400 million. A health insurance program in this country would cost much more than that. Such a program in this country would have to face the matter of additional costs of all kinds; and what the government has to consider is whether, in the light of our tremendous financial commitments for defence and all our peacetime activities, we could meet the additional burden that would be imposed upon us. It is all very well to talk about this sort of thing and to say just do it, but we can only do it in one way; that is by imposing an additional financial burden on the people who have to pay for it.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Paul Joseph James Martin: The money for all these schemes-for old age pensions, for family allowances, and for all these' things-comes from but one source, and that is the hard work of the Canadian people.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Paul Joseph James Martin: They are carrying a big load now. We think it is a load that is within the capacity of this nation; to go ahead without consideration from the provinces, without consideration of their attitude, I suggest would be not only unwise; not only would it have the elements of irresponsibility, but it would have the elements of danger, so much so that the scheme itself might not succeed.
I believe the national health program we have undertaken in this country in collaboration with the provinces is a necessary groundwork. I am asked to declare now when such a scheme is to be adopted. Of course in keeping with the traditions of responsible government that is the prerogative, as it must be, of governments themselves. Whatever the policy of the government may be in the light of the continuing situation, that is a matter which the government will announce on its responsibility when it thinks the appropriate moment has


come. When will that be? Well, many hon. members have been suggesting that we have been making all sorts of studies. Of course we have been making studies. A few years ago we were charged with not making any. While we have not been criticized for-


Stanley Howard Knowles: The charge bore fruit.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I have no better authority for the decision on the present course than the words of the hon. member who has just interjected. This afternoon he said, and I fully agree with him on this, that the house is well aware how anxious some of us are to get a health insurance program established, but it is equally important that it become established on a proper basis. In my judgment the hon. gentleman never uttered truer words.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I think the minister should give the rest of the quotation. I stand by the words, but I was referring to one plan as contrasted with another.


Paul Joseph James Martin: If that was the case I accept what my hon. friend has said, but juist as the words of a good man are applicable to any situation, so are his words in this particular context.
This program upon which we have embarked is important. The work of building hospitals, providing medical research, providing for cancer control and t.b. control, providing for improvement in mental health -those are very important efforts and are a very important basis for what might follow. It is a program that has won, I am happy to say, the complete co-operation of the ten provincial governments. It is one of which this country can be justifiably proud.
I conclude what I have to say by mentioning what I said a few minutes ago, when I was asked by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre whether we were going to establish a health insurance committee. I told him then, as I tell him now, that all the provincial health surveys are not in. Not one of them has yet been fully assessed by the provincial governments or by ourselves. These surveys are going to take a good deal of honest digging, in which we are now engaged. On top of that is the fact that the most important-as I said last night, on the authority of the American public health association-morbidity and sickness survey ever undertaken in any jurisdiction is the one we started about two years ago under this program. Using 40,000 individual cases, we are seeking to estimate medical care costs and hospital care costs as they apply to individuals, as they apply

to families and as they apply to local communities. This survey is just about complete, and we are going to assess that. When we have made these assessments the government will be in a position, in the light of the over-all obligations that it has with provincial governments, and with many other problems, to decide the next step.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Chairman, it is good to know that the minister, speaking for the government, has not gone back on the promise some day to establish health insurance in Canada. It is good to know that some day there is to be an announcement of the next step. But, Mr. Chairman, in spite of the excellent case which the minister may feel he has made for delay in this matter, that is all it amounts to, simply delay and delay. He cannot turn aside the fact that this subject has been studied by his party for 33 years, and very actively for the past 10 or 12 years.
I submit, Mr. Chairman, that the evidence the minister piles up concerning the amount of study and research that has been conducted only demonstrates that we should have had that special health insurance committee at this session. In fact the more the minister makes it clear that his department is possessed of a mass of material, the more tragic I feel it is that that committee was not appointed. I would hope that had the committee been appointed it might have gone a long way toward making recommendations to parliament. But even if it had not been able to wade through the mass of material the department laid before it, and thus reach the point of making recommendations, at least it would have been an education for the members of the committee, for members of parliament generally and for the public to have that material laid before the committee, studied, digested and given to the public generally. I am still not satisfied with the answers that have been given as to why this change was made.
Last June we were certainly given the impression that we were to have a committee at this session. Last fall when we were down here we were certainly under the impression that when we came back for the 1952 session, we would have a health insurance committee. As a matter of fact, when I left home in February to come to this session it was still very much in the news that one of the most important matters before parliament at this session would be the special committee on health insurance. It was only after I arrived in Ottawa the morning the session opened or the day before, I forget which, that one of my friends told me he had seen a rumour in the newspapers that the health insurance committee had been called off. A decision made in that way, so suddenly, I suggest was
Supply-Health and Welfare not only a disappointment-I think to the minister too-but a tragedy for the people of Canada.
I believe the minister protests too much in the effort he makes to explain why we must wait still longer before the next step is taken.
I agree with his statement that any health insurance plan must be well founded. He knows that when I made that statement this afternoon, I was making it in reference to the kind of plan to which the member for Broadview had referred and the kind of plan to which the member for Eglinton had referred. I was making it clear that I wanted a plan that would provide health insurance not just for the healthy and the wealthy but for the entire community. Indeed, one very excellent way to get that health insurance plan well founded would have been to have a committee dealing with this matter and getting information on this question out to the public. We have lost that chance for that type of educational work, for that kind of ground work, at this session. I repeat that, in my view, it is a tragedy.
Tonight the minister used the words the Minister of National Revenue used last evening: what about the cost? The minister picked up the figure I gave of $400 million, and said that a health insurance program would cost a great deal more than that. He has not yet given a figure. "A great deal more than that" he says, and that might be another $100 million or a total of $500 million. When I gave that figure of $400 million last night I gave it as a figure representing approximately the amount of money Canadians are now spending on health and hospital care. I arrived at that figure by adding together certain figures in one of the sessional papers the minister had tabled.
I reminded the Minister of National Revenue last night, as I now wish to remind the Minister of National Health and Welfare, of what was said in the report of the committee on old age security with respect to this very question, namely the cost of a health insurance program. I quote now from page 104 of that report:
It has been estimated however that the over-all cost of a comprehensive system of health insurance would probably be not less than $300 million annually-
I have been prepared to accept a higher figure.
-although it must be added that a large-


Paul Joseph James Martin: Twice that.


Stanley Howard Knowles: All right; twice as much, if you will. I suggest to the minister, while I am interrupting this quotation, that it is not a case of whether we can afford to have health insurance; we cannot afford not to

Supply-Health and Welfare have it. The minister knows that view was expressed clearly in a document to which I drew his attention before. Then, to go on with the quotation:
-although it must be added that a large proportion of such an amount would represent not a new burden on the people of Canada, but merely a rechannelling of existing expenditures on various forms of health care.
Now, I do not wish to oversimplify the matter. I do not wish to get away from the fact that when we have a health insurance program we will be spending more on health than the total amount we are spending now. Once we have a health insurance program many forms of health care people are not getting now will be made available to them. Indeed that is one of the reasons for having a national health insurance program. But the minister should not give the impression that whatever figure he gives, be it $400 million or $500 million or $600 million, is a new sum of money the whole of which will have to be found. A large portion of it, perhaps half or three-quarters, will simply be a rechannelling of money that is now being spent on health care by the people of Canada in one form or another.
The minister has indicated that a great deal of study has been given to the matter. We have these various recommendations, and it does seem to me that he should go a bit further than he did tonight. He should give the House of Commons the assurance that an early opportunity will be provided for a committee to study all this material, and get moving on a health insurance program.
He does not like us to use that language. He does not like us to say, "Get moving; get going." Well, what does he want to do? Does he want just to sit and wait? We have to get moving somewhere, somehow, and the experience we have had with old age pensions bears out the validity of the position the minister took last year, that it would be a good idea to have a committee of this kind.
The minister spent a good deal of time just now, in the earlier part of his remarks at any rate, in criticizing the plan in existence in Sweden at the present time, and in that part of his speech he disagreed with the remarks of the hon. member for Broadview. But he did not comment on the plan proposed by the new legislation in Sweden. He gave his opinion as to why it is not yet in effect, but he did not say whether he favoured the new plan as against the old one. I certainly do.
He did not comment on the plan in Denmark. He did not comment on the plans in Great Britain or in New Zealand, which have been studied by his department through

the provision of the money we are now voting. I feel we are entitled to some further statement from him as to the type of health insurance plan he and his officials feel would be good for Canada, in the light of studies that have been made under this very note.
I feel, too, that the minister should face up to the fact that old age pensions in the first place were brought in before all the provinces were ready to participate. Indeed Mr. King made it clear, once he had been put in the position where he had to bring in old age pensions, that he was not going to delay the bill because some provinces did not want to come ini He made it clear that since the measure was a good one, and since some provinces were ready to participate, they should be given that opportunity.
As I have already said, the Saskatchewan health survey report recommends that the same policy be pursued with respect to health insurance. Let me read again paragraph 5 of its recommendations as they appear at page 226 of the report. It says:
In the event It is decided that health insurance is to be organized and administered1 on a provincial rather than on a national level, the federal government should adopt immediately the provisions for a national health insurance program as contained in the proposals to the provinces in 1945.
May I interject to point out that because this comes from Saskatchewan it does not follow that it has any particular political flavour. It does not come from the provincial government of that province; it comes from a health survey committee consisting of very eminent people in the field of public health, appointed under the direction of the present minister. It will be noted that this committee recommends that we should have immediate adoption at the federal level of a national health insurance program as contained in the proposals made to the provinces in 1945 by this very federal government. I go on with the quotation:
The federal government should establish basic standards to be met by the provinces as conditions for receiving the grants in order to provide at least minimum uniform benefits throughout all Canada, with reciprocity of benefits for insured persons moving from one province to another.
I feel that while we are on this item, in which we are asked to vote money for health insurance studies, the minister should tell us something further about what he thinks of the new proposal in Sweden, what he thinks of the plan in New Zealand, what he thinks of the plan in Great Britain, and what he thinks about this recommendation made by the Saskatchewan health survey committee for the immediate establishment of a nation-wide health insurance plan with

a provision for provincial participation. All the evidence makes it clear that the time has come for action on this very important question.


George Harris Hees: When the minister was tearing down this Swedish plan, which has been in successful operation for 25 years, he made *a point of playing with figures. He said there were no children insured under the plan, and that only 50 per cent of the people in Sweden participated.
I wish to refer to page 6 of his own memorandum, and to quote therefrom:
In 1933 there were just under one million members, but in 1949-
And this shows the natural healthy growth of a plan which is successful.
-this had risen to nearly three million adult members, with over 1-23 million children covered for medical benefits through some 1,100 funds; this coverage represented approximately 60 per cent of the total population.
There is an awful lot of difference between one and a quarter million and no children, as the minister claims. There is a lot of difference between his claim of 50 per cent, and the 60 per cent which is the actual figure of coverage today. It seems to me too bad that when he tries to tear down a plan which has been successful in another country, he cannot use correct figures when taking part in the discussion.
The minister also made a great point of saying that I had suggested bringing in a plan without the co-operation of the provinces. Of course that is a lot of nonsense. It is so obvious to anybody who deals in health matters that they are a provincial responsibility that, in talking to the minister, I did not think it would be necessary to cross the t's and dot the i's or to underline every word, as would now seem to be necessary. So I think that kind of criticism from nim was a little bit unnecessary. What we have actually heard has been a stock speech, which we are used to getting in this house, on the accomplishments of the department. Every hon. member knows the health department is doing a reasonable job. Nobody is denying that. We are going ahead every year in health matters. Nobody denies that in the slightest. All we have had tonight is a stock speech outlining these things for us once again. What the minister actually said in essence was that we are not going to get a health insurance plan. That seems to be plain. What I would suggest to this government is that they therefore stop promising health insurance at every election and byelection, and on every platform, until they are in a position to present an actual plan
Supply-Health and Welfare for examination by either a committee of parliament or by this house itself.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
General health grants-
275. To authorize and provide for general health grants to the provinces, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon Territory upon the terms and in the amounts detailed in the estimates and under terms and conditions approved by the governor in council including authority, notwithstanding section 30 of the Financial Administration Act, to make commitments for the current year not to exceed a total amount of $53,968,409, $27,500,000.
Stanley Howard Knowles: This is an item we are always very glad to support. It is the item for the continuance of the health grants program. I should be glad if the minister would say a bit about the situation which is indicated by the way the details are set out in the back of the book, particularly on page 341. It is noted there that the total health grants program amounts to $53,968,409. Then there appears this notation:
Less estimated amount required for commitments nominally to fall due during the fiscal year, in accordance with the health grants program detailed above, but not required for actual expenditure during that year.
The amount thus subtracted is $26,468,409, which leaves the net figure that we are being called upon to vote tonight, namely $27,500,000. That deduction of $26,468,409 is set against all the items in the health grants program. Can the minister tell us what are the particular phases of the program for which commitments are being made but in connection with which expenditures for this year are not anticipated?


Mr.   Marlin.@: The sum of $17,100,000 odd is for the unexpended balance in the first two years of the hospital construction program; $1,031,000 increase in mental health grants; $48,100 is a new item for the Northwest Territories; $28,600 is a new item for the Yukon, and $251,000 represent changes in the various grants as a result of the new census figures.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Those are the amounts that are not to be spent this year?


Mr.   Marlin.@: May not be; we do not know.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Can the minister explain why they are included in this year's figures and then subtracted from them?


Mr.   Marlin.@: The provinces may commit us, you see; we do not know. We have to have the authority to do it if they do, and we will approve the project. Projects approved and begun in one year may not be paid for until the next year.


William Scottie Bryce: I want to draw the minister's attention again to the West Kildonan health committee. I took the matter up with the
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Supply-Health and Welfare minister some time ago, and again a year ago when they were in need of funds to carry on. Well, they did get some help. They are now in need of a grant, and I want to bring their need before the minister.
The West Kildonan clinic has been in operation for twelve years and is financed by grants from the municipal council and the school board. It attempts to look after the dental needs of school children who are unable to afford other dental treatment. The clinic operates two mornings each week. A recent dental survey of all West Kildonan school children, grades 1 to 8, indicated that the clinic, operating as at present, cannot begin to meet the need.
When I asked the minister about that he told me to go to Hon. Ivan Schultz and he would look after it. It has not worked out that way. I think the work the ladies and gentlemen have done in carrying on in West Kildonan is something worth while. The dental health of the West Kildonan school children is something better than average, and they feel that this fact is explained by the existence of the clinic since 1938. Operating on the present basis of two periods per week, during the school year, it is not possible for the clinic to cope with the work to be done. They are doing a wonderful job. I am not going into the whole thing. I have the report for 1951. Last year they examined 1,141 children. Out of those 634 needed amalgam fillings; 361 needed extractions; 62 needed silicate fillings; 11 needed prophylaxis; 18 needed orthodontia; 4 needed scaling; 138 needed immediate attention and 369 had no defects. I have the other reports that the secretary of the West Kildonan dental clinic, Miss Arnold, was good enough to send me.	.
I do not want to leave the impression that they have never got anything, because they did get a grant in the amount of $1,135. That was for a dental unit in the amount of $575; a sterilizer in the amount of $135 and filling supplies and instruments, mat, stool, forceps and sundry supplies to a total of $425. But they could do a far better job if they could get a little more money. I am making this appeal to the minister, asking him whether he will see his way clear to take the matter up with Hon. Ivan Schultz. I should like to read one paragraph from a letter the minister sent to me as follows:
If this is an extension of their present services, it would seem to me that they would be eligible for assistance under the general public health grant of the national health grants program, and the proper thing for Miss Arnold to do is to make application for assistance under the health grants program directly to the provincial health department.


This is an extension of the present services. All the children they have in the schools cannot be treated now, and the two days a week are not sufficient. We need more time than that, and with additional funds they could do the job. The reason Hon. Ivan Schultz gives for not supplying them with any further grant is:
The reason stated for rejecting our application is that the Department of Health does not consider it advisable to subsidize any existing regular clinics other than by the purchase, when required, of added dental equipment and supplies.
I hope the minister will give this favourable consideration, because it is worth-while. These people are trying to do something for themselves, The municipality is paying so much, and the school board is paying so much. If the dominion government comes along with a few dollars we will then be able to take care of many more children.
While I am on my feet I should like to refer to the grants made by the federal government in co-operation with the provincial governments, and especially to those in my own constituency in connection with the mental hospital at Selkirk. I believe these grants justify the extra expenditures that are being made. Other smaller hospitals have been getting grants which have proved of great assistance. While these estimates are up $2-5 million I do not think the taxpayer is going to worry very much when that is being spent to provide better care for those who are mentally ill or those who are crippled and unable to earn their bread and butter. I would like the minister to do something for the West Kildonan clinic, and at the same time I want to thank him for what he has done for the constituency of Selkirk.


Mr.   Marlin.@: Perhaps the hon. gentleman and I can look at that matter again.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Could the minister indicate what is being done in connection with multiple sclerosis. While a good many diseases are referred to in the annual report, this one is not mentioned at all. I believe a survey was made at Winnipeg in which the federal government participated along with a United States agency, and perhaps there are other projects in which the government has had a part and about which we might be told. The hon. member for Lanark referred to the matter last night. As the minister knows, there is a great deal of interest in this disease, and many people hope its mystery will yet be solved.


Mr.   Marlin.@: In addition to the survey to which the hon. member has referred, we have made arrangements with the neurological institute directed by those eminent men, Dr. Penfield and Dr. Cone, to carry on

research work in this connection. In addition we have provided for two other research projects, one at Toronto and one at McGill.


Winfield Chester Scott McLure: Is anything being provided this year for the assistance of those who are incapacitated? The minister knows we have had this matter up so often that it is becoming almost threadbare.


Paul Joseph James Martin: That is a welfare problem which does not come under this item.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Welfare branch-
288.	Welfare branch administration, $35,846.
Stanley Howard Knowles: Yesterday the minister
promised the hon. member for Temiscouata that under this item he would reply to his question as to the possibility of increasing family allowances. Can the minister say whether consideration is being given to that and at the same time whether consideration is being given to increasing the payments under the Old Age Security Act? Perhaps he could also answer the question just asked by the senior member for Queens as to what is to be done for incapacitated persons.


Mr.   Marlin.@: When the hon. member for Temiscouata asked his question yesterday I asked him to display his usual patience and allow me to answer it under this item. He asked me to remind the committee that the Family Allowances Act had been placed on the statute books in 1944 on the initiation of this government. His specific question was whether it was the intention of the government to double family allowances.
I answered that question when we dealt with a question asked by the hon. member for Assiniboia. I pointed out that family allowances now represented an annual payment of $332 million; that the results of that program were very constructive indeed in their ensuing consequences and in the light of our over-all obligations both in health and welfare and our immense' defence projects it was not the intention to increase further the payments in connection with family allowances.


Stanley Howard Knowles: There were two other questions, one as to old age security and the other as to the incapacitated.


Mr.   Marlin.@: What was the question?


Stanley Howard Knowles: Is consideration being given to increasing the payments under the Old Age Security Act?


Mr.   Marlin.@: Not at this time.


Stanley Howard Knowles: So here again it appears
that we shall have to waif for the next step.


Mr.   Marlin.@: I have already made a calculation of the cost of the suggestions that have
Supply-Health and Welfare been made on these items alone, and I find that they would require $1,500 million in addition to what we are spending already in the field of health and welfare. We have to keep in mind the context and capacity in connection with these matters. There is no intention at the present time of doing anything further.


Stanley Howard Knowles: When the minister uses
these astronomical figures he should always point out, as he does sometimes, that he is including not only what is paid out of the federal treasury but what is paid out of the provincial treasuries. Sometimes I think he goes even further when he gets enthusiastic about what is being done.


Mr.   Marlin.@: It depends on my mood at the moment.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I was wondering if you are getting back into a good one.


Mr.   Marlin.@: I am a little fatigued.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I suggest that when these allegedly astronomical figures are used they should be considered, not in the light of what our budgets are or may have been in years gone by but in the light of our gross national product. Staggering though they may seem to the minister, when we ask for social security in the terms in which we do we are not asking anything out of the way for the people who produce the nation's wealth. We have received answers, unsatisfactory though they are, with respect to family allowances and old age security; it is time for the hon. member for Queens to get an answer to his question concerning pensions for incapacitated persons.


Mr.   Marlin.@: I always remember the
observation made in this house by the leader of the opposition, which I think was sound, that there are responsibilities that belong not to the federal government alone but also to the provincial governments. On that particular occasion he was reminding the house that it was the obligation of the federal government to recognize that fact.
The province of Ontario has taken the initiative among the provinces by providing a scheme of disability pensions on a restricted basis, but on a basis that merits examination. It is not our intention at this time to enter that field beyond what we are now doing. We are providing many other forms of benefits to a restricted group. In the light of our own over-all obligation I cannot go further at this time in the statement I am now making.


Winfield Chester Scott McLure: There is no survey being made-


Mr.   Marlin.@: Yes, there is.
3016	HOUSE OF
Supply-Health and Welfare


Winfield Chester Scott McLure: -to find out what it would cost to take care of this?


Mr.   Marlin.@: Yes. I am glad my hon. friend mentioned that. In the sickness survey, as I mentioned a year ago, we were including in our examination of the individuals being examined their income capacity, their income return, and also the nature of their disability. When the sickness survey results are made known I hope we will have a very satisfactory picture in that regard.


Howard Charles Green: Has the minister's attention been drawn to difficulties in connection with the establishment of Canadian residence for purposes of qualifying for old age security? I have in mind particularly the cases of two persons whose difficulties came to my knowledge. There was no question that they were Canadians. They had gone abroad before the recent war. They still had their assets in this country, but when they tried to come back during and immediately after the war it was impossible to get transportation with the result that they were tied up, in one case in Australia and in the other in South Africa. Now they find they cannot qualify because of the wording of section 3 of the Old Age Security Act.


Mr.   Marlin.@: You mentioned one of those cases to me.


Howard Charles Green: I notice there is wide power in that section to make regulations, and I am wondering whether it would not be possible to make a regulation to cover genuine cases of that type, where the person simply could not get back. It was a physical impossibility, because of the war situation and the transportation shortage after the war, for these people to get back to Canada.


Mr.   Marlin.@: My hon. friend brought one of those cases to my attention, and we have had several others. I have no power of course under the regulations section of the statute as it now exists to violate the substantive portions of the act. That matter is one we are studying.


Howard Charles Green: Consideration is being given?


Mr.   Marlin.@: We are studying that matter.


Howard Charles Green: I am referring only to cases where people were kept out by reason of the war.


Mr.   Marlin.@: That is right. You mentioned one case to me.


Howard Charles Green: I do not think I ever took it up with the minister. I did write to the deputy minister.


Mr.   Marlin.@: Then they brought it to my attention.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
[Stage Direction]

Family allowances and old age security-
289.	Administration, $2,519,943.
Stanley Howard Knowles: May I ask the minister two administrative questions. First, what has been the experience of the department in handling these two forms of security together, family allowances and old age security? Has it worked out well? It strikes me as the logical way to handle it. Perhaps the minister would like to say that for himself. Then I have one other question.


Mr.   Marlin.@: As my hon. friend knows, the family allowances personnel is carrying on the administration of the Old Age Security Act. I think the work of the director in Ottawa and the various directors in our family allowance bureaux, and their achievements in combining both functions, have been simply phenomenal. I am happy to say that we are now providing for two less individuals doing both jobs than we had doing the one because of certain experience we have been able to acquire. The integration of the staffs with regard to the two assignments has proved very satisfactory and very efficient indeed.


Stanley Howard Knowles: It would also seem to be the case that it is costing very little more.


Mr.   Marlin.@: Only $7,000 more.


Stanley Howard Knowles: That would include the cost of the cheques?


Mr.   Marlin.@: We are administering the whole old age security program, which is over $300 million, as well as the $332 million family allowance program, at a cost of only $7,000 more.


Stanley Howard Knowles: In other words, on a percentage basis you have cut the administrative cost in half. My other administrative question arises out of a number of letters I have received from persons in receipt of old age security. Would it not be possible for the cheques to go out a little earlier in the month, particularly when the month ends on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday? I say particularly when the month ends on those days because in those circumstances some people feel the need of having the cheque a bit earlier, and of course the easiest way to solve the problem would be to have the cheques go out earlier every month. To some people $40 may not be a great deal of money, but when that is all a person is getting it is rather tough to receive the cheque on a Friday, or on Saturday when the banks are closed, and be unable to get it cashed.
As the minister knows, family allowance cheques go out at different times during the month. Would it not be possible either to

stagger the old age security cheques throughout the month or, if that cannot be done, at least get them out a little bit earlier, particularly in months of the kind I have indicated?


Paul Joseph James Martin: I will look into that with treasury.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Thank you.


Mr. MacLean (Queens):: Would the minister care to state the approximate number of applications for old age pension which are still outstanding because it is impossible for the claimants to establish their age? I should also like to know what is the position with respect to old age pensioners who die. If the pensioner dies some time during the middle of a month when is the last payment made and to whom?


Paul Joseph James Martin: Out of 350,000 who had applied up to January 1 there are a little less than 1,000 outstanding.


William Alfred Robinson: Shall the item carry?


John Angus MacLean: I had a second question. I wanted to know what the position is with respect to old age pensioners who die. To whom is the last payment made?


Stanley Howard Knowles: And for which month?


John Angus MacLean: And for which
month? When is the last payment made and to whom?


Paul Joseph James Martin: Under the act the director has authority to designate the person. Usually it is the wife or the eldest child. That avoids the necessity of expenses in connection with probate and so on.


Stanley Howard Knowles: But the full cheque for the month in which the person died is issued?


Paul Joseph James Martin: Yes.


Winfield Chester Scott McLure: I should like to ask a question with respect to blind pensioners who have been receiving the blind pension and who, when they reach the age of 70-


Paul Joseph James Martin: That is the next item.


Winfield Chester Scott McLure: -lose their blind pension.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Old age assistance and blind persons allowances-
290.	Administration of the Old Age Assistance and Blind Persons Allowances Acts, $115,537.
Winfield Chester Scott McLure: The minister can answer my question now.


Paul Joseph James Martin: When they reach 70 they go on the old age security rolls.


Stanley Howard Knowles: At this time of night I will not start a discussion on the point just raised 5n704-190J
Supply-Health and Welfare by the hon. member for Queens, but it is a matter that I think should be gone into further. The hon. member for Cape Breton South dealt with it last night. I suggest that with universal old age security a new situation has arisen in respect of blind persons that did not obtain when there wa3 a means test. As long as there was a means test on the old age pension the blind person was given a slight advantage right across the board, but now that the means test has been removed as at age 70 the blind person, who does enjoy some advantage over sighted persons up to the age of 70 in that the means test provision is a little less strict, enjoys no advantage after he reaches 70. I suggest that it is a matter that will have to be gone into.
While I am on my feet, Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the minister the reason for there being no recipients of old age assistance in the province of Newfoundland, according to the sessional paper he tabled for me yesterday.


Paul Joseph James Martin: The agreement with Newfoundland was not in effect at that time.


Stanley Howard Knowles: In other words, Newfoundland had not yet come into the plan?


Paul Joseph James Martin: That is it.


Stanley Howard Knowles: What kind of a government have they down there?


Paul Joseph James Martin: A good government.


Louis-René Beaudoin: Shall the item carry?


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
293. Grant to Canadian welfare council, $16,000.
Stanley Howard Knowles: Under item 293, which reads: "Grant to Canadian welfare council" there appear in italics these words:
Appropriation not required for 1952-53, $100,000
When one looks at the details on page 347 one finds that the item which is allegedly not required for 1952-53 is a grant to schools of social work. I have already indicated to the minister earlier in the session my regret that these grants were withdrawn. His answer was that they were incorporated into the grants to universities out of the federal treasury.
It was unfortunate that this special assistance to these schools of social work in which the federal Department of National Health and Welfare had an interest was discontinued. This withdrawal was one of the factors in a very unfortunate development in my own province of Manitoba. I will not rehearse the details tonight; the minister is familiar with them. I know that a good deal of the trouble lay with certain persons in Manitoba

Supply-Health and Welfare itself. Some of the university authorities there took an attitude toward the school >of social work which many of us thought *was unwarranted. Indeed there was a pretty strong popular protest against the closing mf the school of social work in that province. That protest has resulted in steps iwiuch have made it possible for the school to be reopened on a tentative or temporary basis.
I certainly hope arrangements can be made for that school to continue. As the minister has said in previous years when we have been passing this item, these schools do very valuable work. One of the reasons they were able to do that work was the direct grant given under the minister's estimates.
I am sorry they were discontinued on that specific basis. In my view it was a mistake.


Louis-René Beaudoin: Shall the item carry?


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
294. To provide for the civil defence program and to authorize total commitments against future years in the amount of $575,000, $6,508,839.
Douglas Scott Harkness: Mr. Chairman, this is the item covering civil defence. I shall not at this time go into the arguments or remarks that I have advanced at various times during the past three or four years to indicate the extreme importance of civil defence. The fact that the government has finally realized that it is really a matter of some importance is indicated by the fact that some $4 million odd was appropriated last year and that figure is up this year by better than $2 million.
Although $4,196,202 was appropriated for this last year, in the list the minister gave yesterday of expenditures of his department, which appears at page 2967 of Hansard, I see that expenditures on civil defence are listed as being only $844,851. I would like to ask how those two figures are reconciled. It would appear from these figures that $4 million odd was appropriated but only $800,000 was spent on this extremely important matter.


Paul Joseph James Martin: As my hon. friend knows the estimate was higher than the amount actually spent. I think the house would generally agree that it is very fortunate that we have not had to spend more. I have had to make an assessment of the situation as we see it, in the light of the international situation and in the light of the action the provinces themselves are prepared to take. There were other factors, such as the difficulty of getting certain kinds of equipment.
What the situation will be this year, in the light of our assessment, I do not know. We

have budgeted, as my hon. friend has said, for a higher figure. We have also incorporated into that a provision which extends the proposed direction that the federal government has been willing to give in this matter. Instead of providing only for equipment, training material, training schools, paying expenses of trained personnel, directors and so on, we are going to extend by entering into a matching arrangement with the provinces, and we will be prepared then to entertain, on a fifty-fifty basis, any project which they feel should be undertaken in this field over and above what we have heretofore done.
I am sure the house will remember that we recently had a visit to Canada by the director general of civil defence training in the United Kingdom, Sir John Hodsoll, who perhaps has had more experience in civil defence than any other individual in the world, certainly in the western world. He has visited us several times, and our officers have visited him. We have modelled our civil defence organization pretty well along the lines that he established in England both during and after world war II. His contributions to us have been very helpful, and I would remind the house of the statement he made in London the other day when commenting on his visit to Canada and the United States. I quote from the Montreal Star of May 9:
Canada Tops U.S. in Civil Defence
Sir John Hodsoll, Britain's number one expert on the subject, said today he rates Canada ahead of the United States in civil defence. Back from a visit to Canada, where he watched a rehearsal of defence services, Sir John said much progress has been made in the last couple of years.
That is in Canada.
"They are rapidly catching up on our own organization," said the head of Britain's civil defence services. "The Americans on the other hand are more apathetic."
He said he hopes to see an exchange system for civil defence instruction arranged between Canada and the U.S.
I merely mention that as an indication of his general concurrence with the lines we have taken. I may say that at the recent conference we had with the provincial governments here we were able to arrive at a very considerable measure of agreement, and the general opinion was that in our combined efforts we were proceeding along sensible lines, building up the basis of an adequate civil defence organization not in its ultimate terms but in those terms which, in the light of circumstances as we see them, are practicable and necessary at this time.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I must say that the first part of the minister's remarks are quite amazing to me. I just do not think they make sense. Last year we voted $4,196,202, and I would take from the minister's remarks that $844,000

was the actual amount spent. Then he says that this year everybody in Canada should appreciate the fact that we did not have to spend more. He commented on the international situation and apparently indicated that it was not necessary to spend more than the $844,000. But even this year the sum of $6 * 5 million is appropriated, and only about $2 million was spent. The two things do not jibe. We have been told by the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for External Affairs and others that the international situation has improved during the past year. In the light of those statements the earlier part of the minister's remarks just do not make sense. If his defence for spending so little is correct, then there should not be as much as this appropriated for this year. If the amount appropriated for this year is required, then the amount that was estimated would be required for last year indicates that something is wrong in the way this matter has been handled.
I believe the minister stated he was sure everyone in Canada would appreciate that there had not been a greater expenditure than there has been. Personally I do not appreciate that fact at all. I think the money should have been spent; not only that amount, but that probably considerably more could have been profitably spent. I believe the fact that such a small amount was spent really indicates a lack of energy and a lack of leadership so far as the minister and his department are concerned in carrying out this phase of their work. I believe that instead of being applauded for saving money they should be censured for having done so little. The minister quoted certain remarks made by the British civil defence head following his visit to Canada. I do not think those remarks could be taken as an endorsement of what the minister has done, or perhaps I should say what he has not done. I believe it creates quite a wrong impression to quote those words.
To touch on a specific question, last year we had quite a long discussion on this matter, and at that time the subject of the discussion was the standardization of hose couplings across Canada. Part of the money that was voted was to be used to assist the municipalities in carrying out this hose standardization program. I should like to ask the minister how far that standardization program has gone, how much assistance was given, and how much remains to be accomplished.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I noticed what the hon. member said earlier about the lack of leadership, and that is his opinion. I put his opinion against that of Sir John Hodsoll. I am in the
Supply-Health and Welfare unusual position tonight of being criticized for not spending money. I am sure the country will be interested in that observation.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I am sure they will, too.


Paul Joseph James Martin: The reason a lot of this money was not spent, apart from the reasons I have already indicated, was that some of this program was predicated upon a matching arrangement with the provinces. The standardization of hose couplings is one such example; that is an arrangement which depends upon corresponding action by the provinces. The provinces of Ontario and Alberta are the only ones which, within the past few months, have agreed to take advantage of this matching offer. If they had come earlier or if the other provinces had come last year, the whole amount would have been spent. For one reason or another they did not come. These two provinces have done so, and that will represent an increased expenditure. If they had come last year there would have been another $900,000 spent. Unfortunately we could not get agreement with them until within the last few months.


Douglas Scott Harkness: The minister still has not said how much was used for the standardization of hose couplings.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I just said that last year there was none. We have entered into an agreement with the provinces of Alberta and Ontario. Pursuant to that arrangement Ontario will receive I think about $300,000 and the province of Alberta will receive one-third of the cost of their program.


Douglas Scott Harkness: It is a little difficult to get an answer from the minister which can be readily understood. He has said that these agreements have been entered into, which would naturally lead one to believe that if they had been entered into some of last year's appropriation would have been used. Apparently they were not entered into until last year's vote had lapsed; is that correct?


Paul Joseph James Martin: No, we only entered into the agreements with both these provinces since January 1 of this year. We were ready to do so last spring.


Douglas Scott Harkness: It still seems to me there has been something lacking in getting this done. I do not know that all the blame can be thrown on the provinces for the fact the agreements had not been entered into.


Mr.   Marlin.@: I was not blaming anyone; I was simply stating the facts.


Douglas Scott Harkness: That was the way I understood it.

Supply-Health and Welfare


Paul Joseph James Martin: I am sorry, but I cannot give you understanding.


Douglas Scott Harkness: It was the minister's suggestion as to why this vote had not been used. I should like to ask what progress has been made in regard to other equipment about which we heard a good deal last year. I remember there was quite a bit of talk about the provision of small wireless sets for communication purposes, which were going to be provided by the dominion government. As I remember, there was a provision for steel helmets and certain first-aid supplies. Can the minister tell us what has been done with regard to that equipment?


Paul Joseph James Martin: I am going to give the hon. member the picture in its entirety. I think perhaps that would be the best way to do it. The increase in this year's estimates reflects a development which has taken place in our program since the fall of 1950, when that year's estimates were prepared by the Department of National Defence. At that time the program was in its earliest stages, and it was impossible for the Department of National Defence to forecast accurately the trends the rate of development and the financial requirements to meet them. Sixty-five per cent, or an increase of $1,400,000, is to cover the provision of grants to the provinces for general civil defence purposes. Last year no such provision was made. It is proposed to offer to assist the provinces in meeting the cost of administration and the purchase of operational requirements for civil defence purposes by per capita grants on the following basis: target area populations will get 14 cents per capita and the non-target areas 8 cents per capita. These grants, as such, will be on a matching basis.


Howard Charles Green: What does the minister mean "on a matching basis"?


Mr.   Marlin.@: We will pay 50 per cent. Take the hon. member's own city of Vancouver, where they are concerned about the question ,of a communications control centre. There is some discussion between the province and the city concerning the financial responsibility for that particular item. If the province of British Columbia submits to us a project in respect of the building of a civil defence communications control centre in Vancouver, we would be prepared to give consideration to paying 50 per cent of the cost of that item; that is the way we would deal with it.


Howard Charles Green: The province is to pay the other half?


Mr.   Marlin.@: The province or the province and the municipality combined, but we would insist that some contribution be made by the


province itself whether it was the full 50 per cent or a portion of the 50 per cent. We would only pay 50 per cent of the cost of the project.
The second largest increase, $624,000, was for materials and supplies, and by far the largest item is $2,100,000 for stockpiling medical supplies. This is a program under which we are engaged in the stockpiling of medical supplies at a cost this year of $12,100,000. Those supplies will be stationed ait strategic areas or existing national defence depots. There will be no loss in the event of non-use of these medical supplies that will be so stockpiled. If they are not used-and we trust they will never be needed-for purposes of war disaster, then 90 per cent of them can be used for the normal purposes of our own department or the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Then with regard to perishable items such as penicillin, we have made arrangements with the drug houses for the storage of these in their own specially equipped warehouses. There is no financial commitment involved, except the assurance by them that supplies will be available in accordance with the program.
We have increased our educational information and materials program by $166,000 to meet requests of the provinces for films, manuals and so on.
An item of $90,000 is being provided for the lease of communications services. That is a communication system for the country as a whole. The attack warning system will cost $40,000, and the attack warning system extension another $40,000. The control system for broadcast services will be roughly $10,000.
There is likewise an increase of $80,000 for travelling expenses other than staff. These are to pay for expenses of individuals sent to us by the provinces and the municipalities, who go to our training centre at Ottawa for training. We pay their travelling and living expenses.
Then another $80,000 is being provided to subsidize the St. John ambulance organization. They are engaged in the process of providing first-aid training of individuals, apart from their normal complement.
Then we will have 32 per cent of this item or roughly $2,089,000, for the acquisition of equipment such as self-propelled fire pumps; our share of the cost in the standardization of hose couplings; radiation detection systems; stirrup pumps; additional sirens; 10 rescue vehicles for the distribution to the provinces for training purposes, respirators and the like.
Then to follow up the question of the hon. member, last year we provided 65,000 helmets

to the provinces, and through them to the municipalities.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Is that all that was provided in the way of equipment lined up last year?


Paul Joseph James Martin: Oh, no; we provided stretchers, blankets and gas respirators; we have provided manuals, films, instructors, and we have trained individuals. The total expenditures involved in civil defence are not to be calculated merely by this $845,000, because a lot of the work that goes into educational material, and so on, is the normal work that is carried on by the department itself, and includes the use of the staff. If we were, for instance, to calculate the work of the defence research board it would run into many millions of dollars. But I suspect that the way to judge the adequacy of civil defence is not merely by the expenditure of money.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Mr. Chairman, no one is suggesting that the civil defence program is to be judged solely on the expenditure of money. Nevertheless the situation is that last year we were given a considerable number of items by the minister when he pointed out all these things they were going to do with the $4 million voted at that time. It is rather shocking to find now that a total expenditure of only $800,000 was made, and that most of the things the minister said were going to be done last year were not done. He has just given us another statement of what will be done in the coming year, and it leads one to suspect that the same thing will happen again.


Mr.   Marlin.@: I will say this, that I will not authorize- the expenditure of any more money than the provinces and ourselves deem necessary. And I should think that would be in harmony with the policy the opposition has been urging for the last few months.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Mr. Chairman, that may sound like a very nice statement by the minister; but I happen to know that at least one province thinks a considerably larger amount is necessary than has thus far been authorized by the minister or his department. That is the province from which I come. The chief complaint I hear out there in regard to civil defence is the difficulty of getting the dominion government to provide funds or equipment, or to make any definite arrangement for damage that may arise. That is the sort of problem that is holding up the full operation of an efficient civil defence plan. So what the minister just said does not apply in that province. I do not know whether it applies in other provinces or not.
In any event it seems to me that if we are going to make progress in civil defence in
Supply-Health and Welfare this country, then the government which has to take the lead is the dominion government. So far as I have been able to see in connection with this civil defence matter, right from its inception one of the greatest difficulties in so far as making progress is concerned has been the uncertainty of the sphere of responsibility of the dominion, provincial and municipal governments. As a result there has been a great deal of what one might describe as buck-passing. In many cases one government thinks some other government should be doing this, that or the other thing. It seems to me there has not yet been a sufficiently clear delimitation of the respective responsibilities, or what agreements may be made with respect to those responsibilities. That is one of the things I believe are responsible for holding up the civil defence plan at the present time.
One of the things, for example, that I know cause difficulty is making payments to persons who are injured in the course of civil defence duties. If this is not so, then I hope the minister will correct me, and say what the situation is. So far as I know no definite arrangement has yet been made.


Mr.   Marlin.@: Yes, there is.


Douglas Scott Harkness: So far as I know no definite arrangement has been made as to who will pay for property damage which may be caused through, we will say, civil defence exercises, or from an actual raid. No decision has been made so far as I know as to who will pay for injuries caused to persons, or who will compensate them for the time they lose from their work.
For instance, I know that if reserve army personnel are on military exercises and while on those exercises are injured, they are hospitalized in a military hospital and receive pay and allowances during the time they are in hospital. But so far as I know there is no provision along that line for civil defence personnel. In the same way the government has a responsibility for property damage caused through army exercises, and generally without much question it pays the damage.


Paul Joseph James Martin: There are compensation agreements.


Douglas Scott Harkness: The minister has been attempting to say something for some time.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Yes, I have been trying to.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Then would he tell us exactly what the provisions are in regard to these two matters, namely property damage and compensation to civilian personnel suffering injury?


Paul Joseph James Martin: With regard to property
damage there is no agreement. The provinces
3022	HOUSE OF
Supply-Health and Welfare and ourselves thought the time had not come; and there is no such agreement in any country in the western world. Then with regard to compensation to civil defence workers, the situation now is that during 1951-52 a policy was established whereby the federal government would pay 50 per cent of costs incurred for compensation purposes under workmen's compensation acts for persons injured undergoing civil defence training. We anticipate that during the present fiscal year we will have an agreement signed with all the provinces. We discussed that at the recent conference and there was general satisfaction with the agreement. I think the one with Ontario is practically complete in all its terms. Provisions for compensation for civil defence workers are now under way.


Douglas Scott Harkness: I do not know whether I understand what the minister means. He said that compensation was going to be paid under the workmen's compensation boards of the various provinces, did he?


Paul Joseph James Martin: We are using the machinery of the workmen's compensation boards, and we will undertake to pay 50 per cent of the cost involved.


Douglas Scott Harkness: What I would understand by that is that a person who is in the civil defence organization and is injured in the course of his duties will receive compensation at the rate laid down by the provincial compensation board.


Paul Joseph James Martin: That is right.


Douglas Scott Harkness: Which will mean, so far as the average man is concerned, certainly the man in what you might call business or professional life, that he will be receiving compensation, if he is laid up in hospital for two or three months, we will say, as a result of injury received, at the rate of approximately $20 a week, or something along that line.


Paul Joseph James Martin: It would depend on the rates of the workmen's compensation board. That was the proposal of the provinces and we concurred in that, and I think it is a very satisfactory arrangement. It is the arrangement they have in the United States, too, by the way.


Mr. Macdonnell (Greenwood):: I find myself very perplexed about this question. I want to ask the minister one or two questions, not on points pf detail but on the broad situation. Are the people of Canada really taking this thing seriously? When I ask that question I begin to ask it of myself and I have the answer, I think; that I have not taken it very seriously, and I am not quite sure whom to blame for that. It seems to me 

that we either take it seriously or we do not. Now, translating it into the matter of expenditure, the minister had it pointed out to him that only a fraction of what was appropriated last year was spent, and he said: "Are you not glad we did not spend the money?" In one sense of course we are glad to save money; but surely it raises the question whether or not we are taking this seriously.
Secondly, when the minister was asked about the estimate appropriated for next year I think his words were: "We will not spend anything more than the dominion and the provinces think is sensible." All right, I agree with that; but that again does not answer my question. The minister knows what was spent last year. He knows, for example, whether it has been accelerating. He must have some amounts in mind as to what we are to spend this year as against last year. I should like to know something about that. But more than that, and to my way of thinking much more important, are we really taking this thing seriously?
The minister quoted an official from England who was here, and who no doubt is a distinguished person whose views are entitled to whatever weight they should receive, but we do know that people who come visiting officials, if they are wise, do not say anything critical about the country they are in, and they find it much easier to say things that are pleasant. Therefore I come back again to this, Mr. Chairman. This thing either is important or it is not. If it is important, it seems to me we are not taking it very seriously. If it is not important, let us face the facts. Will the minister answer?


Paul Joseph James Martin: I will do it now. This matter is important. There can be no question of doubt about the importance of civil defence. When the estimates were before this house last year we had about 9,000 civil defence workers in Canada. Today we have over 62,000. In England they have but 200,000 civil defence workers actually enrolled. The city of Winnipeg, for instance, has more than 3,500 civil defence workers. The budget for civil defence in the city of Montreal is over $200,000 a year. I just mention these instances now to show that we are taking this matter seriously. We have a training school here in Ottawa. We have trained over 1,200 individuals in the last year and a half.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: What do
they do?


Paul Joseph James Martin: They go back and act as civil defence directors and instructors in their own communities.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: Why have they not been to see me?


Paul Joseph James Martin: Some of them have been to see you. You and I had lunch with them, with no less than Sir John Hodsoll himself, and he was the one who told you-this was a social engagement, and I should not bring that in. But we had an adequate discussion. I brought the hon. member in there because I did feel that perhaps he was not taking this as seriously as I thought he should. I am glad to know that the hon. member is interested.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: I want to know who the man is in my district. He has not been to see me.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Oh, well-


James MacKerras Macdonnell: I do not know what I am to do when I get a bomb on my house.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Perhaps my hon. friend is not in his constituency sufficiently long for the man to see him. Mr. Welsh, the provincial secretary of Ontario, is in charge of the civil defence of Ontario. Air Vice-Marshal Lawrence is the civil defence director in the city of Toronto, and he has his staff. I am sure that under his capable administration the hon. member's district is being taken care of. I could find out in five minutes who the individual is and tell the hon. member who should call on hirh when he is next in his constituency.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: If he says he has been to see me I say he has not.


Mr.   Marlin.@: It is an extremely difficult problem. One has to take into account the possibility of immediate use, and the possibility of non-use for a long time. You can build an organization up away beyond capacity and have it suddenly fall. The expenditure that would be involved would be great and the resulting loss of morale and so on would be very considerable. My hon. friend may be assured that the appropriations that we are dealing with here represent the joint consideration of the provinces and ourselves, of what at this time we shall endeavour to do; and if equipment is available we shall be able to say next year, provided that the situation continues as we see it, that most of this money has been expended. That will depend on contingencies, however, that I cannot foresee. But my hon. friend may be assured that this matter is an important one and that the provinces, the municipalities and ourselves are so regarding it.


Douglas Scott Harkness: The minister spoke a moment ago about the danger of the loss of 55704-191
Supply-Health and Welfare morale through moving too quickly and then having things sort of peter out. So far as morale is concerned, I think the difficulty he is confronted with at the present time is just the opposite. It is that he is not moving nearly fast enough to keep up the morale of the people who have come forward up to date and been taking part in this civil defence work. Most of the people I know, at any rate, who have been taking an interest in this matter and have been trying to get something going in connection with it are now feeling full of frustration because of the fact that the equipment they thought they were going to get under the various arrangements they were making has not been forthcoming. To that extent they feel that they have been butting their heads against a very hard surface of some sort. If there is going to be any talk of morale then I think of the morale of those people who have come forward and given up their time in order to try to build this civil defence organization into something which will be efficient. Certainly I think their morale is suffering.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Alberta is one of the best provinces.


Harry Oliver White: Will the minister indicate the extent of the organization in the city of London?


Paul Joseph James Martin: Yes. I am sure my hon. friend knows Eric Harris who is in charge of the civil defence organization in that district. Under him there has been developed a network of organizations in the various municipalities. The province reports to us that that organization is working well; that it is doing an excellent job indeed.


Harry Oliver White: I am glad to hear the minister say that because I had some contact with them, and I was under the impression that probably they were the best organization in Ontario, if not in Canada.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Very good.


George Clyde Nowlan: Mr. Chairman, I have some questions to ask, and since it is eleven will you let this item stand?


An hon. Member:: Ask them now.


Paul Joseph James Martin: You do not want to ask them
now?


George Clyde Nowlan: No, I would rather not.
Item stands.
Progress reported.

Supply



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Alphonse Fournier: On Monday we will resume the debate on the motion to go into committee of supply and the amendment of the leader of the opposition, and then call two departments. Then we will report progress and ask leave to sit again later that day. Then we will take up Bill No. 308, to revise the capital structure of the Canadian National Railway Company; that should not take very long, as the bill is going to a committee. We will then take up Bill No. 305, respecting immigration; that also is going to a committee. We would then deal with the resolution of the Minister of Labour concerning an amendment of the Unemployment Insurance Act, 1940. At eight o'clock we will go into supply to consider the estimates of post office and mines and technical surveys.


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

[Stage Direction]
259.	Administration of the Quarantine and Leprosy Acts, $322,001.
260.	Immigration medical services, $1,198,360.
261.	Sick mariners treatment services, $588,129.
262.	Grants to institutions assisting sailors, in the amounts detailed in the estimates, $2,600.
Laboratory of hygiene-
263.	Operation and maintenance, $390,000.
264.	Construction or acquisition of buildings, works, land and new equipment, 424,000.
265.	Public health engineering, $164,065.
266.	Industrial health, $232,348.
267.	Civil service health, $262,457.
268.	Epidemiology (including the former venereal disease control), $96,492.
269.	Administration of the Food and Drugs and the Proprietary or Patent Medicines Acts, $917,832.
270.	Administration of the Opium and Narcotic Drugs Act, $160,372.
Indians and Eskimos health services-
271.	Operation and maintenance, $11,518,246.
272.	Construction or acquisition of buildings, works, land and new equipment, $1,814,400.
273.	Special technical services, $401,710.
274.	Health insurance studies and administration of general health grants, $74,305.
General health grants-
275.	To authorize and provide for general health grants to the provinces, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon Territory upon the terms and in the amounts detailed in the estimates and under terms and conditions approved by the governor in council including authority, notwithstanding section 30 of the Financial Administration Act, to make commitments for the current year not to exceed a total amount of $53,968,409, $27,500,000.
Grants to health organizations-
276.	Canadian Mental Health Association, $10,000.
277.	Health League of Canada, $10,000.
278.	Canadian Public Health Association, $5,000.
279.	Canadian National Institute for the Blind, $45,000.
280.	L'Association Canadienne Francaise des Aveugles, $6,000.
281.	L'lnstitut Nazareth de Montreal, $4,050.
282.	Montreal Association for the Blind, $4,050.
283.	Canadian Tuberculosis Association, $20,250.
284.	Victorian Order of Nurses, $13,100.
285.	St, John Ambulance Association, $10,000,
286.	Canadian Red Cross, $10,000.
287.	Canadian Paraplegic Association, $15,000. Welfare branch-
288.	Welfare branch administration, $35,846.
Family allowances and old age security-
289.	Administration, $2,519,943.
Old age assistance and blind persons allowances-
290.	Administration of the Old Age Assistance and Blind Persons Allowances Acts, $115,537.
National Physical Fitness Act-
291.	To provide for the administration of the act, the sum hereby provided, notwithstanding sections 8 and 9 of the said act, to be credited to a separate account in the consolidated revenue fund, to be subject to section 35 of the Financial Administration Act and to be paid out by the Minister of Finance upon the requisition of the Minister of National Health and Welfare, $65,540.
292.	Assistance to provinces, $146,100.
293.	Grant to Canadian Welfare Council, $16,000.
302S
[Stage Direction]
Monday, June 9, 1952