1953-01-13

Mr. Speaker:: Perhaps I should remind the house at this time that at the last session standing order 15 was amended. In previous sessions private and public bills have been called between 8 and 9 o'clock on Tuesdays and Fridays. Under the amendment, private and public bills are called between 5 and 6 o'clock on Tuesdays and Fridays.



FAIR EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES


Hon. Milton F. Gregg (Minister of Labour) moved: for leave to introduce Bill No. 100, to prevent discrimination in regard to employment and membership in trade unions by reason of race, national origin, colour or religion.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



CRIMINAL CODE

[Stage Direction]
REVISION AND AMENDMENT OF EXISTING STATUTE Hon. Stuart S. Garson (Minister of Justice) moved the first reading of Bill No. 93 (from the Senate), respecting the criminal law. Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.


[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 94, for the relief of Jane Louttit Dormer.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 95, for the relief of Roger Loiselle. -Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 96, for the relief of William Oscar Gilbert.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 97, for the relief of George Magner. -Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 98, for the relief of Teodora Szablity Szentirmai.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 99, for the relief of Arthur Piche.- Mr. Winkler.
68108-59J


Right Hon. L. S. St. Laurent (Prime Minister) moved:: That a select committee be appointed to continue the examination of all expenditure of public moneys for national defence and all commitments for expenditure for national defence since March 31, 1950, and to report from time to time their observations and opinions thereon, and in particular, what, if any, economies consistent with the execution of the policy decided by the government may be effected therein, with power to send for persons, papers and records and to examine witnesses; and that notwithstanding standing order 65. the committee shall consist of twenty-six members to be designated by the house at a later date.


Hon. Brooke Claxton (Minisier of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, as I was away attending the meetings of the North Atlantic treaty council when the Currie report was presented to this house and discussed on December 15, 16 and 17 I feel that it would be the wish of hon. members, and indeed of others throughout the country, in view of the wide interest attached to this important document, that I should take advantage of the first opportunity of dealing with it on the motion to set up this committee and in the course of my remarks to indicate in support of the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) the reasons why I believe this report should receive the consideration of that committee, if and when it is set up.
In the debate which took place between December 15 when the Currie report was tabled and the Christmas adjournment on December 17, reference was also made to a number of other matters relating to national defence about which I may have something to say on another occasion. But today I intend to confine what I have to say to the Currie report itself and to matters relevant to it.
Before entering into this subject I should like if I may to make a personal reference. For the affairs of the Department of National Defence and the three armed services of Canada I am responsible under the statute under which I was appointed. I have accepted and have endeavoured to discharge that responsibility to the best of my ability. I have no intention of trying to dodge that responsibility. There has not been and there will not be any effort made to find a scapegoat. When we found that there had been wrongdoing, we laid prosecutions. When it appeared, as I said in the house on April 21, that there had been "grave irregularities", I

Committee on Defence Expenditure appointed Mr. Currie to investigate the causes and to suggest some means to prevent their recurrence.
As he says, in the investigation he was given every facility. He made his report and by the time we had received it action had already been taken which anticipated the majority of his recommendations. The report shows that a good system of accounting had been worked out, approved and adopted, but was not carried fully into effect. No government department, no commercial enterprise, no large-scale undertaking can be perfect. In an operation of the magnitude of the expansion of the defence effort of Canada there are bound to be mistakes, just as by the law of averages there are bound to be some thefts and some fires. We have had these in the past and most certainly we will have them in the future. As I said in the house in 1947:
While much progress has been made, no one appreciates more than myself that there is still a lot of work to be done in reorganization before we can provide a proper organizational and administrative basis for the defence forces that we may have in the future.
Perhaps I have been overenthusiastic in the defence of the armed forces against what I felt to be unjustified charges, and sometimes I may have been overoptimistic; but it is pretty hard to work with the armed forces of Canada without having high admiration for their fine record of achievement and without having faith in their capacity to do what is expected of them.
When things happened which were wrong and when they were brought to my attention I tried to take whatever action appeared to be most likely to put matters right. As long as I have the responsibility of speaking in this house for the armed forces of Canada 1 shall try to deal promptly with wrongdoing and to correct situations that need correction; but I am not going to blame others for shortcomings unless I am satisfied that they are responsible for them.
Some confusion has arisen regarding the handling of the report itself. First of all, let me emphasize, as the Prime Minister and the Solicitor General (Mr. Campney) have done, that there was only one report, and that is the report signed by Mr. Currie himself. He did not make any other report. There was no interim report.
The only report Mr. Currie made was the report he signed. That was given to the deputy minister of national defence on Monday, December 8. Unfortunately, the fact that the signed report was dated November 26 seems to have given rise to some confusion.
LMr. Claxton.l

However, no copy of the signed report was received by the Department of National Defence prior to December 8, 1952.
Here I should point out that throughout this whole investigation Mr. Currie and those associated with him worked closely with the department and the army. Mr. Currie referred to "the ready and full co-operation" accorded to him. I am sure that he would be the first to say that a large part of the information he and his associates received came from the department and the army works services.
As regards the presentation of the report, most of the information I have was given to me by the deputy minister of national defence, Mr. C. M. Drury.
From time to time Mr. Currie's representatives, and on two occasions Mr. Currie himself, discussed with Mr. Drury the form in which the irregularities at Petawawa would be presented in the report. I believe that this was back in September or October. Mr. Davey, an associate of Mr. Currie who had been doing a large part of the investigational work, indicated to Mr. Drury that he proposed to list extracts from the R.C.M.P. files, attributing to the R.C.M.P. the information so given.
Mr. Drury was concerned as to how such information was to be handled, and this for several reasons. Its appearance might be taken to prejudice the criminal or military cases which were still pending. It might damage innocent persons, and it might compromise other police investigations. Mr. Davey showed Mr. Drury a typewritten draft showing the form in which it was proposed to present this information. Mr. Drury pointed out that the publication of R.C.M.P. investigation reports was something that the department had always endeavoured to avoid. These reports were confidential, and if they were not treated as such future police investigations might be hampered. Mr. Davey undertook to have consideration given to changing the form of presentation.
In a later discussion Mr. Davey said that changes had been made and Mr. Drury suggested to Mr. Davey that he might have a look at the revised form of presentation of the irregularities. Mr. Davey said that this was now embodied in the draft of the whole report and it was not Mr. Currie's intention that anyone review the draft before presentation of the report. Mr. Drury reported this conversation to me. I told Mr. Drury that in the interests of Mr. Currie, as well as of the department and the army, it would be desirable that the report should be as factually accurate as possible, and I thought

that he might suggest to Mr. Currie that he let him see a draft of the report to check it for factual errors.


Mr. Diefenbaker:: What date was that?


Brooke Claxton: This would be about the 25th or 26th of November. Mr. Currie of course was perfectly free to follow that course or not as he wished. As he himself says in the letter to me of December 29:
On the 26th November, before the checking and final consideration had been completed by me here, Mr. Drury, the deputy minister, called on the telephone from Ottawa. During his telephone conversation with me, Mr. Drury mentioned the minister and went on to intimate to me that it seemed desirable that the final text of the intended report be submitted to him (before the report was actually signed and delivered) in order that purely factual matters dealt with in the report could be verified as to their accuracy. I gathered that his reason for this was that in such connection there had been instances in the Mainguy report where purely factual matters of this nature had not been properly dealt with.
While, during this conversation with Mr. Drury, I expressed some disinclination to follow such a course, the upshot was that it was understood that I would submit to him one of the two print reproduction copies above referred to, but solely for the purpose of enabling verification of factual matters and data dealt with in the report as so formulated. I decided that I would ask my partner, Mr. Cleary, to personally deliver the said copy to the deputy minister. I called Mr. Cleary, who was in Ottawa, and described the situation to him. That afternoon I had one of the two print reproduction copies which I had received from the printer mailed to Mr. Cleary, who, on the following day, the 27th November, delivered it in person to the deputy minister.
On Monday, December 1, Mr. Drury met Mr. Cleary, another of Mr. Currie's associates, and Mr. Davey, as has already been outlined by tne Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent). As a result Mr. Currie made some minor changes, signed the report and forwarded it to the deputy minister under cover of the letter dated December 8.
It has been suggested in the house that it was wrong for anyone in the department to look first at the draft of the report, and the hon. member for Vancouver East (Mr. Maclnnis), who is generally very fair, has even suggested in a radio broadcast that Mr. Currie should perhaps be blamed for showing the draft to the deputy minister. I cannot see anything wrong in what was done. I think that the suggestion that it was wrong arises from a misconception of what Mr. Currie was asked to do and what he was doing. Mr. Currie was not carrying on a criminal investigation. That was being done by the R.C.M.P., the army provost corps, and the Department of Justice. Mr. Currie was not investigating the Department of National Defence, and he was not investigating the Minister of National Defence.
Committee on Defence Expenditure
As Minister of National Defence I had asked Mr. Currie to make an investigation for me of the causes of a bad situation which had been found at Petawawa and to recommend to me how that bad situation could be cleared up. I was afraid the bad situation might be more widespread in the army works services, and that is why I asked Mr. Currie to look at that whole branch of the army right across Canada. I wanted the truth and I wanted the kind of report which nobody would question. I did not want errors of fact anywhere in the report which might discredit the whole report and make it more difficult to implement any recommendations it might make to improve the situation.
I am glad, and I am sure the house is glad, that Mr. Currie accepted Mr. Drury's correction and took out the reference to the soldier who had been accused of stealing materials and using army labour to build a cottage because that soldier had already been acquitted in the courts and it would have been unfortunate to have done him the injustice of leaving in that reference. I am sorry the report contained the reference to the Canadian National rails which turned out not to be there, and I am sorry it contained the reference to the horses, though I am glad they were not on the payroll.
At the same time I can understand why Mr. Currie did not consider it necessary to check the irregularities at Petawawa very carefully. He was not carrying on the criminal investigation. He had another job altogether, to find the causes and recommend means of preventing their recurrence. That is what the report is supposed to be about. I am glad, and I know other hon. members are glad, that Mr. Currie found no new evidence of extensive irregularities and that he felt justified in cautioning us not to blame the whole army works services for the conduct of a "handful of crooks".
I still believe that the report would be a better report if these errors of fact I have mentioned, and a number of others, had not been left in it. That was what I wanted to have prevented when I told Mr. Drury that he might suggest to Mr. Currie that a final check be made for errors of fact. Of course it was up to Mr. Currie to decide whether to have that check made, and he did decide to do so, and he did make a few changes. But they were made on his own responsibility, and Mr. Drury did not even know which of them had been made until he received the signed report on December 8.
Like other hon. members, I was astonished to find that another copy of the draft, apparently a duplicate of the copy shown to Mr. Drury,

Committee on Defence Expenditure .had got into the hands of the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell) and had been referred to by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) in the house on December 15. This copy was seen by the Prime Minister and the Solicitor General (Mr. Campney) I believe on the same day. It appeared to be an exact duplicate of the report itself except that in the latter some pages had been reprinted.
The only copy of the draft received by the Department of National Defence was the copy handed to the deputy minister on November 27. That copy was returned to Mr. Currie's representative on December 8 at the same time that the signed report was presented. Consequently the draft in the hands of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre could not have reached him from the Department of National Defence. As the release to unauthorized persons of a draft of a report of this character is a matter of great concern, I wrote Mr. Currie a letter on December 22, 1952, and received from him replies dated December 24 and December 29,
1952.	I wrote Mr. Currie again on January 2,
1953,	and received from him a letter dated January 7, 1953. I also wrote the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre asking if Mr. Currie could see the copy of the draft received from the hon. member for Kosetown-Biggar, and I received a reply dated January 5, 1953. Meanwhile one of Mr. Currie's associates examined the copy of the draft given to the hon. member for Kosetown-Biggar and examination made it plain that this copy was in fact one of the drafts prepared by Mr. Currie's printer. Mr. Currie wrote me to this effect in his letter of January 7, 1953. In the concluding paragraph of that letter Mr. Currie said:
Everything which I have done by way of inquiry and investigation negatives the possibility that the copy in question could have got out in any stage or step between the printer's shop and my own organization and the department; but I still, of course, welcome any further investigation which the department or any other authority may deem it expedient to make from any angle or direction.


John George Diefenbaker: Would the minister put that entire exchange of letters into the records?


Brooke Claxton: I would be glad to do so.
While the explanation as to how a copy got into unauthorized hands was the responsibility of Mr. Currie and remains his responsibility, it seemed to me and it seemed to the Minister of Justice (Mr. Garson) that the theft or other improper act by which the copy got into unauthorized hands was of such a general concern that it should be followed up and the R. C. M. P. were accordingly instructed to investigate and report.
(Mr. Claxton.]


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Brooke Claxton: On January 8 I wrote the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar and on January 9 I telegraphed Mr. Currie to that effect. To these messages I received a reply from Mr. Coldwell dated January 10, 1953. If I have leave of the house I would now like to table all of the correspondence to which I have referred. I may say that, whether it was necessary or not, I have asked Mr. Currie and the hon. gentleman if they had any objection and they said they saw none.


Mr. Knowles:: Do I take it that you mean they will be reproduced in Hansard?


Brooke Claxton: Is that necessary?


An hon. Member:: It should be on Hansard.


Brooke Claxton: As an appendix to Hansard.


Mr. Speaker:: Do I understand that these letters are to appear in Hansard or in Votes and Proceedings?


Some hon. Members:: In Hansard.


Mr. Si. Laurent:: As an appendix to Hansard.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
(For text of correspondence, see appendix, pages 974-978.)


Brooke Claxton: Mr. Currie has since been in communication with me about the investigation which is still proceeding and about which it is not possible to make a further report at this time.
During the spring and summer of 1951, the Canadian Provost Corps was engaged in investigations at Petawawa military camp and during the same period, as a result of inspections carried out by the chief auditor and the inspector of quartermaster services, deficiencies were found at Petawawa indicating the need for increased supervision. At that time there was no evidence of any criminal act requiring prosecution.
On October 12, 1951, the anonymous letter referred to in the Currie report was received by the R.C.M.P. at Ottawa. There is nothing unusual about this-as everyone knows, a large proportion of crimes are reported and solved in consequence of tip-offs. The letter was forwarded to headquarters central command on October 16, 1951, and as a result, on October 29, 1951, the R.C.M.P. were requested by the deputy minister of national defence to carry out a complete investigation. This investigation was carried out in conjunction with the Canadian Provost Corps. It was commenced immediately and pushed through as rapidly as possible.

During this period no less than thirty-seven major construction projects were being carried out at Petawawa by employees of twenty-four different contracting firms. Anyone with any experience knows how difficult it is to enforce security over building supplies or the disposal of scrap in those circumstances. To be effective the investigation had to be carried on as secretly as possible. Moreover, as the alleged operations had extended over a considerable period, some officers and -men had been posted to other units and the investigation had to be carried on at a number of different places across Canada, including Halifax, Vancouver and Churchill.
Those investigations indicated that some service officers and men and civilians had conspired together to commit a number of thefts and frauds in connection with the disposal of stores and with other operations going on at the camp. By March 10, 1952, the investigation had proceeded to the stage where prosecutions could be laid. A detailed summary of the reports of the R.C.M.P. and the provost corps was put before me. The thoroughness of the investigation can be judged by the results of the prosecutions and from the fact that neither in the court proceedings nor in the Currie report was any substantial additional information disclosed.
Mr. J. W. Pickup, Q.C., was engaged as special counsel and, on his appointment as Chief Justice of Ontario, he was replaced by another distinguished counsel, Mr. T. N. Phelan, Q.C. Five service personnel and ten civilians were prosecuted in the civil courts. Four service personnel and eight civilians were convicted.
The first prosecution was that of Staff Sergeant Young and it began with his arrest on May 13, 1952. The cases were pressed on with all possible expedition and despite intervention of the two months in the summer when the court did not sit all cases and appeals were disposed of by Monday, December 1, when the last case was dealt with in the military courts.
In addition to giving instructions that prosecutions might be laid, consideration was from day to day being given to the steps that should be taken to follow up disclosures made in the police investigation. The result was my appointment of Mr. Currie to make an investigation and report. In the telegram dated April 21, 1952, which already appears on Hansard of that day, Mr. Currie was asked to determine the causes and make recommendations to prevent a recurrence of the irregularities that occurred at Petawawa. His recommendations are contained in
Committee on Defence Expenditure parts II, III and IV of his report. They contain many constructive recommendations with which I will deal later.
It has been suggested that reading the report from the end rather than from the beginning makes a very different impression. However, most people started, as one would expect, at page 1 and I am afraid that a good many of them stopped when they came to the horses. The first point I want to emphasize is that Mr. Currie says in his report that it was only at Petawawa that extensive irregularities over a long period of time took place. Now, Mr. Currie does not say in his report that he discovered any of the irregularities at Petawawa. Most of the irregularities there had already been discovered and that is the reason Mr. Currie was asked to make his investigation, and, in the words of my telegram, "to determine the causes and make recommendations to prevent a recurrence".
Since most of the irregularities referred to in this part of my report were already known to the department, and steps had been taken to deal with them before the investigation began, it would scarcely be necessary to -mention them at all if they were not referred to in the report-
So far as I can discover the summary of nineteen cases given in the report was largely derived from confidential police reports to which, of course, Mr. Currie had access.
The Prime Minister gave the house on December 17 the information he had received from the deputy minister to the effect that page 7 of the draft had contained a paragraph stating that an army corporal had had a cottage built valued at $1,700 out of army materials and army labour for which no reimbursement had been received, or words to that effect.
Mr. Drury pointed out that this soldier had been already acquitted and consequently, as I have mentioned to the house, that passage in the draft was omitted in the report.
Yesterday the Prime Minister dealt with the question of horses. Now, there are a number of other cases in which the account given by Mr. Currie is not fully in accordance with the facts as they have been established in the course of our further investigation or in the courts. However, there is included among these examples of irregularities one statement about which I think I should say something, and that is the reference to the dam.
As the report has it, "a dam was built on Tucker creek at a cost estimated at some $3,000 or $4,000. Its utility is not clear to me and it was in any event not authorized by
936	HOUSE OF
Committee on Defence Expenditure army headquarters". That is Mr. Currie's reference to this instance in his report. According to the information furnished to me by the chief of the general staff, the dam was built as a training exercise to create a source of water to fight fires. This dam was built on Tucker creek, which is a creek of roughly 15 feet to 20 feet in width, and during the summer it dwindles to a very small trickle. It happens that it runs at the western end of one of the target area ranges where live ammunition may cause fires. The closest other source of water is two and a half miles away. Tucker creek would provide a source of water for fire fighting, provided enough water is stored to permit mobile pumps to be used.
The construction of a dam there was advocated as far back as 1927, and again in 1931-32. Early in 1949 a dam was constructed there out of logs and earth with sand bags, but it washed out during the spring freshets in 1950. The following year, as a training exercise for the pioneers of the Royal Canadian Regiment and to build up a reservoir of water for fire fighting purposes, the area commander, with the approval of the general officer commanding central command at the time, had the dam rebuilt of cement. The cost of materials and civilian labour was about $2,000.
This project involved the restoration of the dam which had been washed out by floods. Now, under the regulations applicable at the time, such projects costing not more than $5,000 could be approved by the area or general officer commanding. That is the information given to me by the chief of the general staff.
These, and other cases mentioned by Mr. Currie, are the kind of thing that could be gone into further by the committee, if that is its desire. In the department, and in the army, we want to see that everything is done that can be done to discipline those who have been at fault, and so far as is humanly possible to prevent a recurrence. If I do not refer to the other cases at Petawawa, I hope that no one is going to say that I think what took place at Petawawa is not serious. After all, I do happen to be the person who, on April 21, informed the house that there were grave irregularities. I was also the one who took the view that the situation required a thorough investigation, who had an investigation made, and who had the result made immediately public.
I now turn to the constructive part of Mr. Currie's report, his recommendations as to what could be done to improve the situation in the army works services. It seems to me, in all fairness, we should put the


report and its recommendations in proper perspective, and relate them to the problems and difficulties which the department, the army and the army works services particularly have encountered since the termination of the second world war-facts which are well known to everyone. I should like also to draw attention to some very important differences between the Department of National Defence and other government departments or indeed the work of the Department of National Defence and any civilian activity. These differences result from our form of government, as well as from the nature of the defence operations. They exist in every democratic country.
In other government departments there is a single line, a straight line of responsibility proceeding from the minister, usually through the deputy minister, to all the employees and agencies of the department. In defence, in addition to this chain of responsibilities on the civilian side, there is also the chain of command and the chain of responsibility on the service side. Since the new defence act came into effect in 1950 the service chief heads his service, and each service chief is responsible to the minister for the control and administration of the service. So far as service operations are concerned, each of the services is under the direct control of the chief of staff, who is responsible to the minister-subject, of course, to the scrutiny- and where required the action-of the deputy minister, particularly in matters of estimates, appropriations, financial control and accounting.
Now, let me point to another fact in the organization of the Canadian army which has some importance. The Canadian army, as is the case in most countries, is divided into corps. There are fourteen in all, and they include armour, infantry, signallers, etc. One of the corps is the Royal Canadian Engineers. The engineers, in turn, have two components, the field units which do the engineering work in the field and the army works services which have to do with accommodation and services at static establishments. The Currie report has, of course, to do with this latter branch, that is the army works services and this branch only.
In 1946, the army works services comprised twenty-nine works companies and detachments. The service was reorganized in 1948 into sixteen works companies comprising thirty-three major works detachments across the country extending ultimately from Newfoundland to Vancouver, north to Whitehorse and the Yukon and into the Northwest Territories and the Arctic. The responsibility of the army works services includes: (a) providing buildings for the active and reserve forces,

whether by way of construction, purchase, lease or the renovation of existing buildings;
(b)	works for defence training and operations;
(c)	custody and care of army lands and buildings; (d) maintenance of buildings, training facilities and utilities; (e) operation of water, sewage and electric plants; (f) fire prevention and fire fighting services; (g) preparation of designs and specifications for buildings and other services; (h) planning of buildings and services required for mobilization; (i) handling of salvage for renovation or disposal-and that for all corps in the Canadian army.
The operations of works services from 1946 on extended to all the property the Canadian army had acquired before or during the second world war. This property was located in every part of Canada, and it was in every kind of condition. The buildings and installations constructed in wartime, which were being retained, were deteriorating rapidly. Most of them were designed to have a life of about five years. The army works services were responsible for the custody and maintenance or the renovation or disposal of all of this property.
An additional responsibility was placed upon the army works services with the decision to create "emergency married quarters", and between 1946 and 1948 a total of 4,500 of these were provided through the army works services. During this time too the Alaska highway was taken over from the United States army and the Royal Canadian Engineers army works services had to assume responsibility for its upkeep. The highway covers a distance of 1,250 miles to be kept open twenty-four hours a day the year round. Many of its bridges and culverts, etc., had to be replaced. For each year from 1946 to 1949 the program for the acquisition, construction and maintenance of army property amounted to approximately $20 million. That is the financial measure of the scope of the operations of the army works services during that period. For 1952-53 the program for the same purposes was in excess of $250 million, or more than ten times as much. The strength in 1949-50 was 806 service personnel and 2,936 civilian personnel and in 1951-52 it was 765 service personnel and 3,334 civilian personnel. Hon. members will observe how the civilian personnel outnumbered the service personnel in both years by three to one, or more. With this relatively small increase in personnel the army works services had to carry on the following operations:
(1)	Continue their ordinary peacetime activities of maintaining existing active and reserve buildings and services;
(2)	Continue to handle large stocks of surplus from the second world war;
Committee on Defence Expenditure
(3)	Supply personnel for the 25th brigade in Korea and the 27th brigade in Germany;
(4)	Provide services to meet the additional needs of the army due to its increase from the figure of 20,300 before Korea to a figure of 49,800 two years later;
(5)	Provide training facilities; and
(6)	Have to do with the addition of buildings and permanent services such as roads, sewers, lights, etc., totalling in contracts placed or works undertaken, in the two calendar years subsequent to Korea, the sum of $125,283,905. This amount was represented in no less than 285 different construction contracts, and an estimated 4,100 additional projects involving a total of 7,268 buildings. Heavy as was the burden placed on all branches of the armed forces, it is fair to say that the outbreak of the Korean war placed on the army works services one of the heaviest burdens of the subsequent expansion.
Let us now direct our attention to the accounting system used by the army works services and which Mr. Currie calls a good one. Late in 1947 the quartermaster general decided that a system of cost accounting should be introduced into the army works services. In response to his invitation, a senior officer of the quartermaster corps of the United States army came to Ottawa to give the benefit of his advice. Shortly afterwards an officer of the directorate of works and accommodation was sent to Montreal to discuss cost accounting systems with Anglin-Norcross Limited and the Foundation Company of Canada Limited. This officer was then sent to Washington to study in detail the system of cost accounting used by the United States army corps of engineers.
As a result of this study, it was decided that a modification of the system employed by the United States army corps of engineers would most nearly fit the needs of the army works services and work was put in hand to prepare the details of a system for introduction into the army works services. The new system was developed and introduced in the army works services in 1949.
At about the same time, the British and Australians also studied the United States army corps of engineers cost accounting system and we believe that they are introducing similar systems into their own army works services.
This cost accounting system had the following main objectives: (a) accounting for materials and supplies; (b) job costing; (c) real property records; (d) installed engineer fixture records; (e) work feature cost accounts.
938	HOUSE OF
Committee on Defence Expenditure
This system was approved in April, 1949. It was estimated that it would take at least a year and probably two years to put it into effect, provided, of course, that adequate staff would be available; so that if it had been possible to keep to the timetable the system would have been fully introduced by 1951. As it turned out, however, in June, 1950, Korea intervened and its challenging requirements had to be met.
The army works services was faced with the alternative of meeting that challenge with the resources available to them, or diverting their efforts in an attempt to achieve administrative perfection at the expense of operational performance. They really had no choice. They adopted the course which any soldier would choose and which I believe any Canadian would support. They met the operational requirements.
Both departmental audit reports and the Currie reports have indicated the presence of irregularities in the application of the accounting system. Difficulties have existed -and continue to exist-which have prevented the accounting system for the army works services from working satisfactorily. As is clear from the Currie report, the main difficulty has been to obtain qualified personnel to administer the system. This matter was referred to by the Solicitor General (Mr. Campney) in his speech on December 17.
The army works services experienced the same problems as those of private industry in obtaining graduate engineers and other qualified technical and accounting personnel. There was and is a shortage of engineers throughout the country; and with both industry and the armed forces expanding, the shortage has become acute and still is acute. In addition to this difficulty, the army was handicapped by the salaries which it could pay graduate engineers as compared to those offered by private industry. How significant is this shortage of qualified engineers may be appreciated when I tell you that in the army works services today there are 111 officers and that out of those 111, 53 are university graduates.
Consequently, the army works services was unable to obtain as rapidly as desired the service and civilian staff needed to do the job and also to keep the accounts in the way they should have been kept. In February, 1952, a special team of representatives of the civil service commission, the chief auditor's branch of the Department of National Defence and the Canadian army was set up to make a survey of the army works services establishments in order to arrive at the numbers and qualifications of the staff required to operate the system and to determine the rates of pay


which would have to be offered to attract the right type of person. Of course in the period following the institution of the system in 1949 there was not a moment when efforts were not being made both to create the right establishment and to recruit and enlist the staff required. This team to which I have referred completed surveys of the engineer detachments at Montreal, Ottawa, Kingston, Picton, Toronto and Camp Borden. As the Currie report indicates, and as our experience shows, this is a very necessary operation. It will be seen that in this particular respect the department and the army took action ten months before the report was delivered to me. However, Mr. Currie's investigation intervened, and as he was making a similar survey, and as there was urgent need for the service of the personnel involved to carry on with their own urgent regular tasks, this operation was suspended.
Since the Korean war began we have been short in the Department of National Defence at least 10 per cent of the civilians required at any time to fill the approved establishments-that is, within the whole department. That means that we have at all times been short between two thousand and four thousand civilian personnel.
A system of internal audit of the Department of National Defence was instituted in the month of February, 1948. It resulted from a study and report by representatives of treasury board, the comptroller of the treasury, the civil service commission and the department.
The position of chief auditor was advertised by the civil service commission and, in consequence of a competition which was held, Mr. J. A. Kidd was appointed. Mr. Kidd is a chartered accountant who had carried on his work in Saskatchewan before entering the service of the Auditor General. For some nineteen years he has been in the public service, mostly concerned with the Department of National Defence.
It should be emphasized that the chief auditor's branch carries on an internal audit of the work of the armed forces on behalf of the deputy minister. At the present time the chief auditor has a staff of 49 auditors and 19 others. Since the office was established the chief auditor has made a total of 1,185 reports. During the current fiscal year it is expected that about 350 audits will be made. Those audits are made of all units of the navy, army and air force, of the defence research board and of the inspection services.
The procedure is that the chief auditor prepares a report on each audit to the deputy minister. With respect to the army, a letter

is then sent to the chief of general staff in the name of the deputy minister, drawing attention to any matters which require action.
Prior to August 1950 these letters were addressed to the quartermaster general. Since then they have been addressed to the chief of general staff. Prior to January 1952 the practice had been to forward these reports through engineer channels, to the command engineer concerned, instructing him to take corrective action and report. Since January 1952 these reports have been forwarded by the chief of general staff to general officers commanding who have been reminded of their personal responsibility in this connection.
The general officer commanding is required to take corrective action and report. His report is reviewed by army headquarters and the staff of the deputy minister. Naturally it is not possible in an operation of this size for these reports or correspondence to be handled or even seen by the minister, or for that matter even by the deputy minister himself. It is only the really serious cases that the deputy minister can be expected to review personally.
On March 24, 1952, the chief auditor made a general report to the assistant deputy minister who has to do specially with financial matters. This was of course before Mr. Currie was asked to undertake an investigation, which was on April 21. In this memorandum to Mr. Armstrong, the assistant deputy minister in charge of financial matters, Mr. Kidd said in part:
The new system appears to have been well thought out and with proper supervision and staff should have been quite successful, but as indicated in a number of our audit reports, supervision has been almost entirely lacking and the quantity and quality of the staff inadequate. In five of the units visited it was claimed by officers in charge that insufficient and untrained staffs precluded carrying out the instructions properly while in seven other units tradesmen and labourers were observed performing accounting and stores duties. Some 95 officer positions on the establishment are said to be vacant.
Mr. Kidd then referred to corrective measures in progress:
Following the submission to the C.G.S. in February 1932 of an analysis of these general conditions, action was initiated which it is anticipated will eventually remedy the major faults.
(a)	The chief instructor of the R.C.E. school at Chilliwack, B.C., has been instructed to visit all commands to advise and assist works companies with respect to the accounting system.
(b)	At the request of the quartermaster general a survey team of three investigators from the civil service commission, assisted by representatives of the chief auditor, the D.C.P. (that is, the director of civilian personnel, an official of the Department of National Defence, Mr. Lavergne, reporting to the deputy minister) and the R.C.E. has been set up to
68108-60J
Committee on Defence Expenditure review the organization and staff requirements of the directorate of works and accommodation and works companies (Appendix B). It is understood that the civil service commission has been approached with a view to having the 95 vacant officer positions filled by civilian engineers, which in our opinion is a progressive move as the presence of one or more civilians in this capacity at each works company will make for continuity in the administrative staff and increased efficiency throughout the corps.
(c)	To meet the responsibility of internal audit and inspection required of the service, an establishment for a civilian inspection staff of seven has already been approved by the civil service commission.
(d)	It is understood that the D.W.A. (that is, the director of works and accommodation in the branch of the quartermaster general) on the instructions of the Q.M.G. is to prepare an analysis of our reports on which a general directive is to be prepared and sent to all works companies over the signature of the C.G.S.
It is therefore considered that everything possible has been or is being done to remedy the adverse conditions presently existing.
That is the end of the quotation, and the end of the memorandum. Mr. Currie himself said of Mr. Kidd that the chief auditor of the department had performed his functions conscientiously.
Attached to the report of Mr. Currie, as appendix B, is a table prepared by Mr. Kidd. Mr. Currie did not prepare it, and no changes were made in it after March 24,	1952,
although this table is the main evidence, apparently, of the breakdown given in Mr. Currie's report. You will recall that table. It has a column down the left, showing works companies and across the top are twenty different varieties of observations with X's underneath indicating the incidence of the observations.
Personally, I do not think "breakdown" as used in Mr. Currie's report is the right word. What we were trying to do was to work out an effective system of accounting. We simply did not have enough personnel to do that, and also to do the jobs which they were appointed to do. The system was only begun in 1949; but since the Korean war intervened in June of 1950, it was never possible for the army works services properly to implement the system, and at the same time to carry on the additional load imposed by the Korean war and sending the 27th brigade to Europe.
The breakdown to which Mr. Currie referred was, after all, a breakdown-if it was a breakdown-in keeping accounts, and not a breakdown in providing services and doing the essential work for which the army works services exists.
This table prepared by Mr. Kidd was attached by him to the memorandum dated March 24, 1952, to which I have just referred. Its purpose was to illustrate and emphasize the points he was making in his report,
940	HOUSE OF
Committee on Defence Expenditure ordinarily a confidential report, to the deputy minister, particularly the need tor additional supervisory staff. If you count the number of X's in this table, there being one X for each incident noted, you will see that altogether there are 154. They apply to most of the period during which the chief auditor was making audits of the units of the armed forces, including the army works service companies, and cover the work being done by 33 different detachments.
On my instructions the chief auditor and the judge advocate general have prepared a list summarizing the chief auditor's remarks in each one of these cases and then giving the explanation obtained from the unit and the resultant action taken. I have also had the judge advocate general look at these cases to see whether any further criminal prosecution should be laid or disciplinary action taken. He advises me that in his opinion there are only some 15 cases where there is evidence of the commission of a service offence. On my instructions the chief of the general staff is following up each one of these cases in the commands to see in what cases, if any, disciplinary action should be taken. So that you may see the character of the irregularities involved in these 15 cases let me read the note summarizing them, which is as follows:
Materials obtained or work started prior to authorization of project.
Requisitions on D.D.P. or L.P.O.'s split to keep within financial limits.
Accumulation of materials from completed works or materials removed from buildings not brought on charge in stock records.
Non-expendable stores issued to buildings without recording on installed fixture cards.
Unauthorized issue of stores and materials.
Failure to carry out stocktaking as required by the instructions.
Adjustment of discrepancies without reference to higher authority.
Estimated costs exceeded without review.
Cost of labour or materials charged against approved work orders not used on other jobs.
You will see that judged in the eyes of the civil courts and under criminal law these are not very serious crimes. But on the other hand they constitute things which should be stopped and which will be stopped in so far as it is possible.
However, right through, whether it be in the reports of the chief auditor, in the replies of the units or in the report of Mr. Currie, if I read them correctly and read his recommendations correctly, the main cause for all this has been a shortage of staff, particularly civilian staff, and in the services a shortage of engineering and accounting officers. Today in the army works services alone we are short approximately 1,700 civilian and 250 service personnel. That
[Mr. Claxton.l

is under the establishments as they were increased following the review to which I have referred.
Until we have this personnel on the strength it will not be possible to rectify the situation fully as you and I would like. Of course this shortage of staff has been known to the army, to the department and to the civil service commission. It has continually been a source of great concern. Both the department and the civil service commission have been making continuous efforts to obtain the staff that was needed to do the job. An effort was made to get technical staff from other government departments, but without marked success. In addition to the usual advertisements of vacancies the civil service has repeatedly made special efforts to obtain applicants. As recently as September 4, 1952, the commission advised the department as follows:
It is felt that your technical directorates must be prepared to carry on with a shortage of staff in these fields since industrial agencies at the moment are required to do so.
The device mentioned by the Auditor General in his report of borrowing qualified personnel from civilian firms under special contract is possible on a limited scale in order to get special jobs done, but cannot work satisfactorily in accomplishing routine continuing operations in the works service, even if the personnel could be obtained.
The fact is that the expansion of the armed forces, the partial introduction of a new accounting system, the shortage of qualified personnel to administer it, the activities of 24 civilian contractors engaged on 37 major contracts at Petawawa during 1950-51 and 1951-52 combined to create a situation at Petawawa of which, as Mr. Currie says, a handful of crooks took advantage.
May I turn now to the recommendations made by Mr. Currie in his report.


John George Diefenbaker: Before the minister does that, will he permit a question?


Brooke Claxton: I am following a consecutive order. I will answer the hon. member's question later.


John George Diefenbaker: This question has to do with responsibility. Has the minister any information in answer to the $48 question as to who changed the words "at or near the top," which were so singularly altered?


Brooke Claxton: That does not arise out of anything that I have said. If there was any change of that character made it was made by Mr. Currie on his own responsibility before he signed the report. If my hon. friend has confidence in Mr. Currie, then he cannot have

it both ways. If Mr. Currie decided to make the change it was because he decided that that change was desirable to be made.
May I turn now to the recommendations which are to be found at pages 728 to 730 of Hansard. They are 44 in number and were referred to by the Solicitor General in his speech. But perhaps I should bring the information on them up to date.
As I have said already, I believe that Mr. Currie, his associates and those in the department and the army regarded this whole operation as a co-operative effort to arrive at the causes and prevent their recurrence. The extent to which this project has been carried out by the department is indicated by the action which was taken before the delivery of the report. The extent to which the recommendations had already been put into effect was referred to by the Solicitor General.
Of the 44 recommendations made, 27 were being put into effect before the report was made or received by the department. Four more recommendations are regarded as urgent and will be carried out as additional manpower becomes available. Eight recommendations involve additional manpower and also involve very considerable sums of money, possibly more than any potential advantage would justify. These will be subject to further consideration. Three recommendations do not involve additional manpower and money but will require further study. One of the recommendations is not considered desirable to implement except in respect of new major developments, and one other appears to be unsuitable as it is phrased.
Having given a summary, it seems to me that hon. members might wish me to give, under the five main divisions already mentioned, Mr. Currie's recommendations and the comments of the department in each case. It would be very convenient if these could be printed in Hansard in parallel columns, but I am aware that that is really not in accordance with the practice of the house and I am not going to ask for unanimous consent that it be done. But I do inform the house that the comments on these recommendations which have been made in detail by the officials of the department are available and will be put before the committee on defence expenditure when it meets.
I do not need to tell hon. members that most of the recommendations will entail considerable increases in manpower and expenditure. With regard to the appendix in the Currie report proposing an increased staff at Petawawa, the new establishment for Petawawa, with the exception of the estimator recommended by Mr. Currie, was designed in November, 1951, by the department in cooperation with other government agencies,
Committee on Defence Expenditure and the only addition of consequence made by Mr. Currie is that of the office of estimator. The establishment at Petawawa was increased from 23 military and 142 civilians to 35 military and 223 civilians. The increase in the army works services establishment at Petawawa was necessary because of the expansion of the army which led to the creation of home stations for two regiments and ancillary units at the station.
The increases in the army works services establishment at Petawawa and elsewhere were not in consequence of the Currie report but were initiated prior to the report to bring the army works services up to the strength required to do its job. Altogether these increases and those recommended in the report, because Mr. Currie incorporates these increases in his own recommendations, resulted in an increase from 1,088 military and 3,436 civilians to 1,109 military and 5,123 civilians, an increase of 21 military and 1,687 civilians. But at the present time, as I have indicated, on other establishments within the army works services in round figures we are short a total of 1,700 civilians and some 250 service personnel.
The increases involve an annual expenditure of approximately $5,246,000. The major portion of this increased engineer work load was due to the large number of civilians required for the operation of utility plants. The need to provide central warehousing was provided for in the approved 1952-53 annual estimates and new accommodation for companies and detachments was provided for in the approved 1951-52 estimates.
The report makes a number of recommendations regarding additional security measures. Many of these have already been put into effect and, of course, they will all be given consideration. I would be surprised, however, if we do not find that in some cases the cost of the full measure indicated would be out of all proportion to any reduction in losses which might result, and this of course is an important practical consideration. The theft at Farnham is a striking example of what I mean. The cost of providing good security over the period of six years after the camp ceased to be used would have been about forty times the loss suffered by the public through the theft of the property for which prosecutions were laid. It is always necessary to strike a balance between the cost of security and the possibility of loss.
Leaving aside such recommendations in the report as involve the complete relocation of gates, campsites, roads, compounds, et cetera, most of which are out of the question, and taking into consideration only those directly
942	HOUSE OF
Committee on Defence Expenditure related to storage and safekeeping of engineering supplies and equipment, we have estimated that the additional cost merely for security fences at Petawawa alone would be $286,000 with an annual recurring cost for additional guards of $119,000. We have also completed estimates for another typical company at a similar establishment, namely, Camp Borden, where we estimate that the capital cost for fences would be $346,000, with an additional annual recurring cost of $139,000.
Applying these figures on a proportionate basis to other army works establishments, we arrive at an estimate of the capital cost for additional security and safekeeping facilities for army works services installations alone of $1,774,000, with an additional annual recurring cost for guards alone of $1,106,000. It may be pointed out also that, as we have said, in none of the cases at Petawawa was the loss attributable to lack of physical security. The degree of security must of necessity be related to the nature of the stores. Here the materials stolen were scrap, build-ding materials, salvaged articles, et cetera. To what extent that additional manpower and expenses would be justified by the results may be open to question. Certainly, as I say, we must see to it that every justifiable measure that can be taken is taken to safeguard the people's property.
In addition to the steps to which I have referred which are in line with Mr. Currie's recommendations, I might mention a number of other things which we have done in connection with the army works services.
(a)	A revised establishment has been created in the quartermaster general's branch regarding works and quartering.
(b)	New establishments have been created for each works company and new stores depots.
(c)	The army works services detachment at Petawawa has been raised to the status of a company, which has the effect of putting it under command headquarters and eliminating the channel through the area headquarters at Kingston.
(d)	The civil service commission has approved the establishment for civilian personnel officers in the field directly responsible to the director of civilian personnel in the Department of National Defence.
(e)	A board has been set up consisting of three senior army officers, a representative of the civil service commission and of the director of civilian personnel, which will visit army units with a view to examining their establishments and arriving at much more speedy decisions.


(f)	The quartermaster general's branch has established a travelling inspection division which will follow up reports made by the chief auditor to see on the spot that desirable recommendations are immediately implemented without waiting for correspondence.
I come now to the series of 33 regulations which Mr. Currie says were broken. Reference is made to these at page 715 of the report as it appears in Hansard. Mr. Currie does not say when these breaches of regulations occurred but one can assume from the context that he relates them to the irregularities at Petawawa, though some of them may also have occurred elsewhere. I have asked the judge advocate general and the Department of Justice if there is anything in the report of Mr. Currie or anything brought out at the trials or in the police reports which would justify instituting additional prosecutions of service or civilian personnel, or taking any additional kind of disciplinary action in this connection. I have an opinion as regards criminal prosecutions from the deputy minister of justice and as regards disciplinary action and criminal prosecutions from the judge advocate general that, apart from the cases I have mentioned and some others that are the subject of further investigation, the only thing that might be indicated would be further disciplinary actions.
In concluding my reference to the Currie report, I should like to draw your attention to the paragraph with which he begins part IV, "Conclusions and Recommendations". He says:
My report, I fully recognize, contains many discouraging features. The over-all situation is. however, by no means discouraging because of the fact that the cure for what has gone wrong in the past can be and, in fact, is being applied.
In my remarks I have endeavoured to give you the background so that you can understand the circumstances through which the grave irregularities which occurred at Petawawa did in fact take place. In giving this explanation do not think for a second that I wish to excuse or condone either the fact that the irregularities did take place or the fact that they could have taken place.
There are in this house a great many veterans of the two wars. They know, and the veterans all over this country-and there are a lot of them-know, and I think the public has a pretty good idea too that an army is not a Sunday school and soldiers are not saints. That does not mean that we should condone wrongdoing, but neither does it mean that you can expect to have an army in which all the officers and men behave perfectly. There are bound to be occasional

misdemeanours and unfortunately there is also bound to be a certain amount of wrongdoing just as there is in the rest of the population.
Canadians have won for their arms a fine record in the first and second world wars- and now in Korea. What they have done has been accomplished because of their qualities, and that includes the quality of their leadership. Field leaders are selected because of their qualities of decision, of command, yes, of courage and initiative, and not primarily because of their superior ability as storekeepers or accountants. Yet each one of these has to have, in addition to his responsibilities for training and leading the formations under his command, responsibilities for the administration of what in civilian life would be a very large business operation.
Mr. Currie in his report has said that the amounts involved at Petawawa were probably not large. The estimate given to me by the police was that the total involved was probably less than $50,000. That is still their view. A very large part of all that was stolen has been recovered and the guilty have been prosecuted and punished.
What remains to be done is to ensure that any steps which are likely to bring results sufficiently important to justify the men and money involved should be taken and taken without delay and as fast as qualified personnel can be obtained. That will not ensure a complete cessation of irregularities and pilfering and even fraud and theft in operations of this magnitude. Unfortunately, we all know that these things do go on in civilian as well as military activities.
I would like to add, however, that the records put before the defence expenditure committee at its last session, and the information made available to me, indicate that the scale of losses due to service activities having regard to the value of the property involved are not any larger than those commonly experienced in civilian activities of a similar character.
Despite the fact that our operations are many times larger, I think you would find that the loss by thefts and pilferage in the armed forces is no larger than that in the major commercial undertakings of the country. When any one of these suffers a loss very little is said about it in the press or parliament, but it is seldom indeed that a loss occurs or a member of the armed forces commits a crime that it is not blazoned in print across the country.
Now, in consequence of this report and of the action we have taken and of the actions we will take, I hope that we can both improve the organization and increase the personnel
Committee on Defence Expenditure so as to reduce our losses to the lowest possible figure. That is our constant aim and goal.
However, irrespective of the action we shall take, we shall continue to have losses, losses which, because of the size and nature of the operation, will appear to be very considerable indeed, but which, when viewed fairly and with a sense of proportion, will not be unreasonable. And if I may say so, we shall continue to have those losses no matter who is minister of national defence, even if the hon. member for Nanaimo (Mr. Pearkes) were minister of national defence, or the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles).


An hon. Member:: It won't be long now.


Brooke Claxton: I believe that the view I have just expressed will be confirmed by an experienced accountant like the hon. member for Winnipeg North (Mr. Stewart).
We shall also continue to try to find ways and means of improving the organization of the armed forces and of the Department of National Defence. Now that the great majority of contracts for construction and orders for equipment have been placed and that we have so large a proportion of the manpower required throughout the armed forces as a whole, we will have more time, I hope, to spend on examining and improving and streamlining still further.
In view of the importance attached to this report and for the reasons already mentioned by the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent), I move, seconded by the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Pearson):
That the motion be amended by inserting after the words "March 31, 1950", in the fourth line thereof, the following:
"and initially to give priority in their examination to the expenditures and commitments of the Canadian army works services as dealt with in the report of G. S. Currie, Esquire, chartered accountant, tabled in the House of Commons on December 15, 1952."


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, may I raise a point of order? May I make it clear that my point of order relates only to procedure and not to the substance of the proposed amendment. I will deal with that later.
My point of order is as to whether or not the amendment of the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Claxton) is in order. I draw Your Honour's attention to a citation in Beauchesne's third edition which you have often read against us on this side of the house when we have sought to move an amendment to motions setting up committees. Citation 546 reads:
When the house is engaged in nominating the members of a committee, it is not competent for an hon. member to open the whole subject.

Committee on Defence Expenditure
I read that paragraph in order to put the whole citation on the record although it is the next paragraph which counts:
When the house is considering a motion, of which notice has been given, for the appointment of a select committee, a member cannot move in amendment that the committee be given wider powers than those which were set down in the notice. On the 13th March 1938,-
I interject to say that there is an error at that point; it should read 1939-
__a minister moved that a special committee be
appointed to study the question of redistribution of electoral districts and to enquire into the methods whereby the source of campaign funds may be traceable. Two amendments were moved: one proposed that the committee's powers be extended so as to investigate amounts of contributions over $100 for the past ten years; the , other proposed to investigate the methods whereby lumbermen, fishermen, seamen and miners in British Columbia may be enabled to exercise their franchise.
The Speaker ruled both amendments out of order on the ground that they raised new questions not contemplated in the notice of motion and proposed to extend the committee's powers far beyond those set down in the notice, and also that the necessity of giving notice will be nullified if such notice is not used as a guidance for the decision of the house.
If I had thought, Mr. Speaker, that any attempt would be made at this point to move an amendment of this character I would, of course, have had a number of references ready to quote by page number, and by chapter and verse. I did not do that. But in my own mind I can recall that when the motion was made to set up a committee to go into the question of old age security an attempt was made from this side of the house to move amendments to that motion, and Your Honour ruled those amendments out of order on the basis of the citation that I have just read. Similarly, a year or so ago, when there was a motion to set up a special committee on veterans affairs, the terms of reference of which were more restrictive than they had been on previous occasions, an attempt was made by the member for Royal (Mr. Brooks) and by my deskmate the member for Melfort (Mr. Wright) to move amendments. Those amendments were ruled out of order, again on the basis of citation 546.
I recall also that in the session of 1952 the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) had on the order paper a motion for the setting up of a special committee on redistribution. I recall that after he had given notice of that motion there were certain changes he wanted to make in it. If my memory serves me correctly, he stated in the house that the reason he withdrew his motion and submitted another one through the usual channels of giving notice was that he was aware of this very citation and of the difficulty, if not the


impropriety, of amending a motion to set up a committee once it has been placed on the order paper and had been moved in the house. As I say, Mr. Speaker, it was because of the action the Prime Minister took with respect to the motion for a redistribution committee last year that I could not imagine that any member on the government side would try this today. I did not, therefore, assemble these references page by page, but I am sure that Your Honour recalls them and they can be found if necessary.
I believe it is obvious, whether or not we agree with the substance of the amendment, that what happens when an' amendment is moved in this way is that the question is placed before us without the required forty-eight hours' notice being given. At the same time, I may say that I do not see that the amendment is at all necessary, which is another procedural argument. After all, you are not supposed to move amendments that are unnecessary. I submit there are already sufficient powers contained in the motion as it is worded to enable the committee to send for papers and records, one of them being the Currie report. They can also send for persons, including Mr. Currie himself. So, Mr. Speaker, on the grounds of citation 546, and the ground that no notice has been given of this, I think it is out of order. There is also the ground that it is unnecessary because the power to send for persons, papers and records is already contained in the Prime Minister's motion.


Mr. Drew:: There is another consideration that I would submit should be borne in mind, Mr. Speaker, in giving consideration to this amendment. We have had on the order paper now for some considerable time a notice of motion in the name of the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent). The Prime Minister did not choose to speak when the motion was called and the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Claxton) spoke on behalf of the government. Every hon. member in this house has had reason to assume that the motion we would be considering this afternoon as presented by the government would be the motion on the order paper. The effect of this is to place before the house a new motion by the government without notice.
I would point out also to Your Honour the fact that on a procedure of this kind the notice stands in the name of the Prime Minister, but the Minister of National Defence addressed his remarks to that motion and then moved an amendment which every hon. member knows will be supported by the members of the party who have shown a

strong disinclination to show any independence of opinion in their voting in this house.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Mr. Speaker, is that kind of reference to the whole of the members, who belong to any other party but that of the hon. gentleman, in order in this house?


George Alexander Drew: I regret-*


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: I addressed a question to the Speaker and I should like to have the Speaker's ruling on the question. I would rather have that than the ruling of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Drew).


Mr. Speaker:: I understood the Leader of the Opposition was going to withdraw his remarks. The reason I did not rise at the time the Prime Minister spoke was that the Leader of the Opposition stood up immediately, and I understood he was going to withdraw any reflection he had cast upon members generally.


George Alexander Drew: I do not propose to make a blanket withdrawal. Will you kindly indicate what words should be withdrawn?


Mr. Speaker:: I understood the Leader of the Opposition to charge the leaders and members of certain parties in this house with having no independence of thought. I think those were his words. That, of course, is a reflection on those members. Every member must -come into this house and be considered as being independent and not the servile follower of any party or of a leader. I believe that is the only meaning one can take from the words.


George Alexander Drew: I did not use the words you have quoted, and I am asking you that you name the exact words that I am to withdraw before I am able to do so.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: I shall assist you, Mr. Speaker. I understood the Leader of the Opposition to say he had no doubt that this amendment submitted by the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Claxton) would be supported by all the usual followers of the government in the house who have never shown any inclination to exercise any degree of independence.


John George Diefenbaker: What is wrong with that?


George Alexander Drew: The words I used were that the motion would doubtless be supported by those who have shown a strong disinclination to vote against the government.


Jean-Paul Stephen St-Laurent: We will have a transcript, and we will see whether my memory or that of the Leader of the Opposition is the more reliable.


George Alexander Drew: I shall leave it to Hansard.
Committee on Defence Expenditure


Mr. Speaker:: I think the Leader of the Opposition went further than that. I am sure the Leader of the Opposition did go further than that. I would not ask him to withdraw the remarks he has just quoted, but his remarks with respect to the members of this house showing no inclination to independence-it is the word "independence" to which I object.


George Alexander Drew: Mr. Speaker, the Hansard
record is there, and I shall withdraw no word that is not indicated by you as being the word that I should withdraw.


Mr. Speaker:: I shall have to have the Hansard record read. The word to which I object is the word "independence". The phrase to which I object is the reference to a lack of independence.


Some hon. Members:: Withdraw.


George Alexander Drew: Mr. Speaker, I ask you to have the record presented to you and to indicate to me the words t;o which you object.


Mr. Speaker:: Then I would ask the Hansard reporter to read the remarks of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Drew) immediately preceding the objection which was raised by the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent).
Is a member of the Hansard staff walking out of the chamber? Will the Sergeant-at-Arms fell the member of the Hansard staff not to withdraw. Is the Hansard reporter in a position to read the remarks of the Leader of the Opposition- immediately preceding the objection which was raised by the Prime Minister?


Mr. Abbott:: He is not allowed to speak.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hansard reporter has indicated that he is not in a position to read those remarks. I wish to assure him that I will not consider them unparliamentary so far as he is concerned. I do not like to hold up the proceedings of the house unnecessarily in connection with this matter. Has any hon. member any suggestion to make in order to get me out of this dilemma?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: If the Hansard reporter is allowed to withdraw, Mr. Speaker, I am sure that within a few minutes he can give a transcript of his notes. I can appreciate his reluctance to do a thing which would be unique in the annals of the House of Commons, namely to speak while the house is in session. I have no doubt that a transcript can be obtained in a few minutes, if Your Honour wishes to have one.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Why not deal with the matter at eight o'clock?
946	HOUSE OF
Committee on Defence Expenditure


Mr. Speaker:: Under the circumstances it will be necessary for me to deal with the matter at a later time this day.


Mr. Fleming:: When you do so, Mr. Speaker, will you permit discussion in the house as to whether the words which the Prime Minister contended were said are actually offensive according to the rules of the house? I wish to make a submission that, even if the words which the Prime Minister says were used were in fact used, they are perfectly proper words to be used in this house. We must be becoming exceedingly thinskinned around here if words like those cannot be used. It is one thing to make some reflection upon the independence of parliament. But to discuss the independence of members and independence of thought seems to me to be perfectly proper. It seems to me that is a perfectly proper matter for discussion in the house and always has been. So far as my study goes, I know of no rulings to the contrary.


Mr. Speaker:: I will consider the whole matter later on.


John George Diefenbaker: Are you going to allow argument on that, question? I think it is a matter that is deserving of argument.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. At the moment no one is quite sure of the exact words used. Perhaps I should not say that no one is, but at any rate I am not quite sure of the exact words which have been objected to. When we know what those exact words are, we will consider the whole matter.


John George Diefenbaker: Will argument -then be allowed?


Mr. Pearkes:: Mr. Speaker, is it your intention to allow the debate to proceed or are you going to make a ruling?


Mr. Speaker:: I think the Leader of the Opposition was submitting an argument in connection with the point of order -that was raised by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles). I will allow him to continue.


George Alexander Drew: Mr. Speaker, I would point out that we have before us now an amendment to the motion of the government which, in effect, presents a new motion of the government with certain clear instructions. In the event that the Prime Minister should be surprised by getting the support of the members on his own side for this amendment, then of course-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Mr. Speaker:: Order.
rMr. Knowles.]


George Alexander Drew: -the result would be that it would not be possible to introduce any amendment which might have the effect of proposing a more expeditious course than that which has been placed before the house by this government. The device of having a member of the government move, without notice, an amendment to the government's own motion produces the effect of devising another gag for this parliament in which a majority shows some inclination at least to support the government.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


George Alexander Drew: Under a motion of this kind, if it receives that support which the Prime Minister seems to think is in some doubt, I would point out -that there is no way in which the ordinary procedure in debate can be followed whereby the opposition is able to place before the house an alternative method to that which is put before it by the direct motion itself of which we have notice. The consequences of this procedure are simply to limit still more the rights of this parliament under the domination of the government which does not believe in the freedom of parliament.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


George Alexander Drew: When the Prime Minister rises with such great indignation, as he did a few minutes ago-


John George Diefenbaker: And it was a little bit synthetic.


George Alexander Drew: -and exceedingly synthetic indignation it was, I wish that he would take the time to read some of the Hansard records of the debates at Westminster from which we are supposed -to draw many of our precedents.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


George Alexander Drew: If he sat in that house-


Mr. Speaker:: Order. It seems to me that we are getting away from the point of order. The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre has raised the question whether the amendment is in order. He has given reasons why he thinks it is not in order. At this time I cannot hear an argument on the rules generally and on what is the effect of the amendment. The only thing I can consider at this time is whether the amendment is in order or not, and nothing else.


George Alexander Drew: Mr. Speaker, you will be called upon to consider the importance of the decision you make and its effect upon the procedure in this house because of the fact that your ruling in this case, as in others, will

create a precedent. In examining that question I submit that it is appropriate to place before you the consequences of a procedure of this kind under which there is an effective blocking of the ordinary opportunity afforded to the opposition to place before the house alternatives which might produce a more expeditious examination of the Department of National Defence.


Mr. Speaker:: Would that not be a matter for the house to consider and to decide? If that is the effect of it, would it not be for the house to consider and to decide whether the rules should be changed? I do not think it is a question which I should decide at this time. The matter which concerns me is whether this amendment would give the committee wider powers than those which were set out in the notice. Frankly I may say that if the discussion so far has been in order-that is a discussion of the financial sections-it would seem that this amendment would be in order. In fact, the argument went further than that, but even limiting it to that extent, if the discussion in the house with respect to the expenditures mentioned in the Currie report is in order, then it would seem to me that this amendment would be in order. Either they are both out of order or they are both in order. I am prepared to hear further argument. But I thought I should draw the attention of the house to the way the matter occurs to me at the present time. I would ask the Leader of the Opposition to direct his remarks to the point of order at this time.


George Alexander Drew: Well, Mr. Speaker, I will point out to you that in giving consideration to the effect of an argument in relation to a procedure which is something not fully dealt with by the rules as they now stand, I believe it is both in keeping with the practice, and that it is extremely important, that you have full regard to the consequences of any decision Your Honour may make.
I would point out that already it has been clearly indicated that we do not believe the Currie report needs to be referred to another inquiry. This amendment, added to a government motion now before us, has the obvious intention and purpose of embalming the Currie report. That is something which-


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I do not think that has anything to do with the point of order; it deals with the question of the amendment itself. If the Leader of the Opposition and other hon. members in the house feel that way about the amendment, they can vote against it.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.
Committee on Defence Expenditure


Mr. Speaker:: That argument goes to the very root of the amendment itself, not to the point of order, and at this time I can hear only arguments on the point of order.


George Alexander Drew: Well, I shall leave this thought with Your Honour, that we had notice of a government motion standing in the name of the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent). That was the motion we came here to debate; that was the motion of the government that we had the right to expect to deal with, as an opposition. There is no notice of any other.
If this procedure becomes the accepted procedure in this house, then at any time the government can prevent the ordinary rights of the opposition being exercised by the device of introducing a motion in the name of one minister, having another minister offer the motion, and then introducing an amendment to the government motion, without notice, thus taking away all the alternatives which would ordinarily be open to the opposition.
This will quite rewrite the rules of the house, and is still another attempt to limit parliament in the exercise of its functions on behalf of the people of Canada.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: I should like to speak to the point of order, and I do so because the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) pretended to invoke as authority something which I had done or said in connection with a motion to set up the committee on redistribution. I understood him to say that I had recognized that it was improper, or that I had recognized the impropriety of attempting to amend a motion to set up a committee. It is not the first time the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre has misunderstood or extended things that I, or other members of the government, have said in the house.
What I said, and what I repeat, is that you cannot without notice expand the reference to a committee, and that you cannot, even with notice, do something that is futile and that does not add anything at all to-


Mr. Rowe:: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order-


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: I am speaking to a point of order. There is one before the house now.


Mr. Speaker:: Order.


William Earl Rowe: On a point of order-


Mr. Speaker:: I cannot allow two points of order at the same time.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was saying that I quite admitted that you cannot, without notice, move to expand the
948	HOUSE OF
Committee on Defence Expenditure reference to a committee, for the setting up of which notice has been given; and that you cannot regard as in order a motion that adds to or takes nothing from the terms of the general motion.
The two arguments submitted by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre are, first of all, that this would expand the scope of the reference to the committee or, alternatively, if it did not, that it would be quite useless.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Either one or the other.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Well, it does not expand the terms of reference, which will have to do with all the expenditures and commitments of all the branches of the armed forces in every respect since the date mentioned in the resolution itself. And it is not useless because, though it does not empower the committee to do something they cannot do without being thus empowered to do it, it does direct them initially to give priority in the examination they have to make of the expenditures and commitments of all the branches, to those that are referred to in the Currie report.
Now, they would have the right to do that without an amendment. They would not be obliged to do it without an amendment. And the house certainly can direct them, if it sees fit, to do so, and initially to give priority to the examination of those items.
I suppose the hon. member will not be satisfied with my answer; but that is my answer.


Stanley Howard Knowles: For once I agree with you.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: That is the answer to both branches of the hon. member's objection.
Now, I said I would speak only to the point of order. I shall have to reserve to some other occasion an explanation of language which the Leader of the Opposition has not understood, or has chosen to represent as being rather ambiguous. I never said I did not expect that there would be others who would be voting as I vote in this house- but not because they are not independent. It is because they, too, would feel that that was the right way to vote.


Stanley Howard Knowles: If I may have a further word with reference to the main point of order,
I should like to say something in the light of what Your Honour said and what has been said just now by the Prime Minister. If I may say so, I think the Prime Minister is getting close to the point-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Stanley Howard Knowles: -when he says that the amendment of the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Claxton) is either one thing or 

the other. Either it is an enlargement of the powers of the committee, or it is not an enlargement of the powers of the committee.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: I said that was your argument, that the amendment would be out of order if it were either an enlargement of the scope of the main motion, or proposed something that was useless.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Well, Mr. Speaker, we might be misunderstanding each other; but in my view we are saying the same thing, namely that this amendment moved by the Minister of National Defence does one thing or the other-


Some hon. Members:: No, no.


Stanley Howard Knowles: -either it enlarges the
powers of the committee, or it does not enlarge the powers of the committee.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Just a minute, now-


Mr. Speaker:: Order.


Stanley Howard Knowles: And in saying that I am only saying the same thing that was said to us when we moved to enlarge the powers of the old age security committee. I wanted to enlarge them with reference to the means test, and the hon. member for Macleod (Mr. Hansell) wanted to enlarge them with reference to disabled persons. We had the same argument again in setting up the committee on veterans affairs.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. Surely the hon.
member for Winnipeg North Centre would agree that to include disabled persons would have enlarged the powers it was proposed to grant to the committee.


Stanley Howard Knowles: My point is-


Mr. Speaker:: My difficulty is-and this is the aspect on which I would like some help- is the consideration of expenditures mentioned in the Currie report within the competence of the committee without this amendment and, secondly, is it within the powers of the house to in any way direct the committee to consider these expenditures?


Stanley Howard Knowles: On the very point you are raising, I suggest that if it is giving the committee power which it does not have, it is out of order under citation 546.


Mr. Speaker:: To help the hon. member may I read citation 407 in Beauchesne, third edition.


Stanley Howard Knowles: That is just what I was going to read.


Mr. Speaker:: This reads:
An instruction is a motion empowering a committee to do something which it could not otherwise do-
So far as that is concerned, I would suggest that such an amendment at this time would be out of order because no notice had been given. Then we read on:
-or to direct it to do something which it might otherwise not do.
Does not this amendment direct the committee to do something which it might otherwise not do? It might do it or it might not do it. The point is that it might otherwise not do it, and the proposal in the amendment is to direct the committee to do it.


Stanley Howard Knowles: If it is a direction, in other words if it is something new, I submit that it requires notice. If it is not a direction I suggest that Your Honour go on and read further from the citation you are just now referring to, No. 407, where it says:
If the subject matter of an instruction is within the scope of the question referred to the committee then such instruction is useless and irregular.


Mr. Speaker:: That must be read in connection with the words which I have read, that an instruction can direct a committee to do something which it might otherwise not do. Those words mean something. I do not think you can read the words which the hon. member has now read and say that the words which I read mean nothing. I should like to dispose of this matter, but if any hon. member has any other suggestion which has not been raised I will hear it.


Mr. Adamson:: Mr. Speaker-


Mr. Fulton:: If I may with respect-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Donald Methuen Fleming: May we have a little order?


Edmund Davie Fulton: It seems to me that the rule we are considering here, No. 407, has been devised and worded in this way for a very particular purpose. Going back to what the Prime Minister said, if the committee might not give first consideration to the matters referred to in the Currie report, the amendment would direct that they should do so. Is not the wording put in that way so that so long as the matter is within the power of the committee to consider, then the order in which they consider it is a matter for the committee itself to determine? Therefore if the matter is within the scope of the subject matter referred to the committee, then an instruction to the committee that they proceed to consider that matter is useless and irregular.
It seems to me that is the reason those two sentences are used in citation 407.
Committee on Defence Expenditure Therefore an instruction directing a committee to do something which it might otherwise not do is clearly out of order. It seems to me that once this house sets up a committee, the agenda of that committee and the time at which it will direct its attention to various matters or the matter which it has been asked to investigate is something for the committee itself to determine. The government has a majority on the committee, and the chairman is always a government member.
Therefore I submit that those two sentences in that rule, which Your Honour has suggested conflict, are perfectly consistent, and that if the subject matter of the proposed amendment is an instruction to the committee to do something which is already within the scope of its reference, then although the committee may do that if it chooses, nevertheless such an instruction is useless and irregular.


Mr. Pouliot:: Mr. Speaker, I am surprised that those who are so anxious to hear from the report should object to the amendment.
I cannot understand it. It is just splitting hairs. The motion has a very wide scope and the purpose of the amendment is only as a reminder. It is similar to a memo to notify the committee not to forget to do that. Hon. members who have just spoken have a short memory; and I think it is necessary to do that.


Agar Rodney Adamson: Mr. Speaker, I do not often get into arguments on procedure, but as this happened in a committee of which I was a member I feel that if amendments of this nature are allowed they will have the effect of so refining and prescribing the terms of reference in motions setting up committees as to make the work of such committees almost meaningless.
If this amendment is allowed to stand what can happen is that a motion to set up a committee with certain terms of reference may be brought down in the house by a minister. The terms of reference may then be considered too broad and another minister may get up and make a substantive motion to reduce and limit the terms of reference. You would then have the possibility of making the work of the committee almost meaningless.
Surely in this case it is obvious that the Currie report is going to be one of the first things that will be discussed by the committee. Therefore the motion is redundant. The motion itself is quite broad, but it is out of order and would have that effect.


Mr. Churchill:: Mr. Speaker, I should like to draw your attention to Sir T. Erskine May's Parliamentary Practice, fifteenth
950	HOUSE OF
Committee on Defence Expenditure edition, which may be helpful to you in reaching a decision on this. I would refer you to pages 592, 593 and 594. There is a reference to the setting up of a committee at the bottom of page 592 which reads:
If it is thought desirable that a committee should extend its inquiries beyond the limits laid down in the order of reference, the house may give the committee authority for that purpose by means of an instruction.
You were mentioning a minute ago the question of instruction. Then I quote again from page 593:
If, on the other hand, it is deemed advisable to restrict the scope of the inquiry, or to limit the committee's powers, an instruction may be given to the committee requiring it to refrain from considering the matter, or doing the act which forms the subject of the instruction; and, if so desired, instructions may also be given to committees prescribing their course of proceeding.
I draw Your Honour's attention to the footnote at the bottom of page 593 which is explanatory of that last sentence which I have read, "prescribing their course of proceeding". .
The final quotation at the bottom of page 593 reads:
Instructions may be given to committees at the time of their appointment, or at any time thereafter before they have presented their final report. Where an instruction is proposed to be given to a committee on its appointment, it may be moved immediately after the committee has been appointed; but it is more convenient to move it after the members have been nominated, and the quorum has been fixed and the committee given power to send for persons, papers and records. Notice of an instruction can be placed upon the notice paper, to be moved after the appointment of a select committee, or after the nomination of the members, or as an independent motion.
I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that you might find some assistance there in determining this question, because it is obvious from what I have read that the practice as outlined by Sir Erskine May is to give instructions to a committee after the committee has been set up, and not during the course of the setting up of the committee.


Mr. Applewhaite:: I hesitate to add my small voice to those of the experts who have already spoken, but it occurs to me that one quotation which I think is pertinent has not yet been submitted to Your Honour. We have before us and are discussing a notice of motion. Citation 315 of Beauchesne, third edition, reads as follows:
A modification of a notice of motion standing upon the notice paper is permitted, if the amended notice does not exceed the scope of the original notice. A new notice must be given in the Votes and Proceedings under standing order 45, when a material change is to be made to a notice of motion before it is taken up by the house.
The question here seems to be whether or not a material change is to be made. As one


who sat through the sessions of a very similar committee constituted under a very similar original notice of motion at the last session of this house, it was most noticeable that a great deal of the time of the committee, set up to examine all expenditures of public moneys for national defence, was taken in examining the details and the circumstances of pilferings, irregularities, losses, fires, etc., matters such as I think we all agree are the main subject of the Currie report.
Therefore to refer the Currie report to this committee is surely not exceeding the scope of the original notice of motion in the name of the Prime Minister, at least not exceeding it as it was interpreted by the committee during the last session. If that is the case, then surely it is in order unless it is so valueless as to be useless, and I would suggest that the word "might" in citation 407 does not involve a question of compulsion but refers to the opportunity of the committee to do or not to do something.
The other point that has been raised in this connection, and which worries me because I do not know very much about it, is the suggestion that if a notice of motion of this sort stands on the order paper apparently no one on this side should move an amendment because presumably-if this is not the argument I do not know what it is-by doing so the chance is lost to the opposition of moving an amendment. If I understand this discussion correctly, that surely does not make sense because it certainly seems to me that all that has to be done is to dispose of the first amendment in order to move another or at the moment, provided it is legally competent for some member to do so, to move a subamendment, dispose of the subamendment and the amendment, and move another one.
Surely no one is trying to suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that once a notice appears on the order paper the sole right to move any amendment to it must rest with those who, because of circumstances, represent the minority in the house. I do not think that can be the intention at all of the rules or of those who have made that point.


George Alexander Drew: Mr. Speaker, may I point out that what the hon. member has said he quite correctly has stated makes no sense. What was pointed out was that there is a government notice of motion that has stood on the order paper for some weeks as the expressed intention of the government. Instead of the member of the government, in this case the Prime Minister, in whose name the motion stands rising to present his argument in connection with the motion, another minister does so. He then moves an amendment. In the ordinary course of events the

minister in whose name the motion stands would make- his remarks in support thereof and then, in accordance with the custom of the house, the opposition would have the right to speak in reply and on that occasion would then have the opportunity to present the first amendment which would be related to the motion itself.
Nothing I said can in any way be interpreted as suggesting that those independent members supporting the government who wish to move an amendment to a government motion are not perfectly free to do so. I have sought to point out that our procedure recognizes the division of the house into the government side and the opposition side. I sought to point out that the government in presenting a motion puts forward a proposition. It is then customary for the opposition to have an opportunity to deal with that primary motion and to attach to that motion such modifying amendment as in their opinion will improve the subject matter before the house.
The procedure now before you would change that course. I have only sought to indicate to you the effect of a decision in accordance with the argument that has been made, but under no circumstances would I wish to leave the impression that I was in any way limiting the independence of members on the other side of the house, which I would wish to see increased greatly day by day.


An hon. Member:: Funny.


Mr. Speaker:: I am prepared to make my ruling, but it is five o'clock. Shall I call it five o'clock or make my ruling?


Some hon. Members:: Make your ruling.


Mr. Speaker:: I wish to thank hon. members for bringing out so clearly the arguments for sustaining the amendment and also for declaring it out of order. The hon. member for Winnipeg South referred to the time in the proceedings at which the directions or instructions should be given, but I would also refer him to the fifteenth edition of May, page 593, where it states:
Instructions may be given to committees at the time of their appointment, or at any time thereafter before they have presented their final report.
Therefore instructions can be given to the committee at this time.
The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre referred to three instances in which I did not allow amendments to a motion to set up a committee, but I think

in fact I am sure-that if he looks up the records he will find in every instance where I have not allowed the amendment it has been because the amendment would have widened the powers set out in the notice. If I thought that this amendment widened the powers of the committee I would have no hesitancy
Committee on Defence Expenditure in declaring it out of order. The Minister of National Defence (Mr. Claxton) spoke for a considerable time this afternoon referring to the expenditures and commitments dealt with in the Currie report. Not one member in this house rose and suggested that he was out of order. I think all hon. members will agree that he was in order. If it was in order for him to discuss those matters at this time, in my opinion it is within the competence of the committee to consider those expenditures and commitments, and in the first instance I would rule that this amendment does not widen the powers of the committee as set down in the notice of motion.
Another question was raised by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Drew) as to the effect on the procedure in this house if this amendment is allowed to stand. May I say that many hon. members may agree with him; but if so, and if the amendment does stand, is that not a question for the house to decide? Is not that a question that the house must consider and decide, whether the rules should be- amended so that such an amendment cannot be made? That is not a matter which I must determine at this time.
Another point was raised-in fact I suggested it-with respect to the value of the amendment and whether it added anything to the motion or directed the committee in its procedures; but from the citation in May you will notice that the house has power to direct a committee as to its procedure. The point therefore that remains to be determined is the reference made to citation 407 in Beauchesne, third edition, which reads as follows:
An instruction is a motion empowering a committee to do something which it could not otherwise do.
I would state again that if in my opinion this amendment empowered the committee to do something which it otherwise could not do I would rule it out of order. But an instruction may be in the nature of a motion to direct a committee to do something which it might not otherwise do. This committee has wide powers. It can consider the expenditures, etc., set forth in the notice. I think it is agreed that it can consider the expenditures and commitments referred to in the Currie report. However, the committee might not see fit to consider those things. This motion would direct the committee to consider the expenditures and commitments mentioned in the Currie report.
In my opinion this house has the power to direct the committee to do so, and for the reasons I have stated I must rule that the amendment is in order.


George Randolph Pearkes: Mr. Speaker, I believe it is now five o'clock and that you wish to proceed with other matters?

Private Bills


Mr. Speaker:: Under the rules I am required to call private and public bills.



PRIVATE BILLS


Mr. C. E. Bennett (Grey North) moved: the second reading of Bill No. 41, respecting Interprovincial Pipe Line Company.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to the committee on railways, canals and telegraph lines.

Mr. David A. Croll (Spadina) (for Mr. Winkler) moved: that the following bills be read the second time:
Bill No. 63, for the relief of Robert Gordon. -Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 64, for the relief of Helen Isabelle Hammond Dadson.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 65, for the relief of Harold Gordon McFarlane.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 66, for the relief of Dezso Ferenc Cross.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 67, for the relief of Eric Ernest Auelair.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill	No.	68,	for	the	relief	of	Napoleon
Jean-Paul Chayer.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 69, for the relief of Marie Josephte Gilberte Belanger Byrne.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 70, for the relief of Nina Difiore Statner.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 82, for the relief of Kathleen Mary Wilkinson Paraskiewicz.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill	No.	83,	for	the	relief	of	Georges
Chaput.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill	No.	84,	for	the	relief	of	Florence
Anna Carsh Laing.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill	No.	85,	for	the	relief	of	Beatrice
Miriam Kert Beloff.

Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 86, for the relief of John Alexander Stronach.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 87, for the relief of Raymond Gelinas.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 88, for the relief of Anna Madeline Patterson Cotter.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 89, for the relief of Claudia Marie Boudreau Leblanc.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 90, for the relief of Lily Belzberg Bigman.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 91, for the relief of Joseph Arthur Lesage.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 92, for the relief of Minnie Gruhn Boon.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 71, for the relief of Tillie Tietle-baum Victor.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 72, for the relief of Elina Iacurto Floyd.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 73, for the relief of Jennie Miller Solomon.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 74, for the relief of Elia Kuczerian. -Mr. Winkler.
[Mr Pearkes.]
Bill No. 75, for the relief of Ruth Audrey Lorraine Beauchamp Laderoute.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 76, for the relief of Phyllis Newman Lunan.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 77, for the relief of Helen Doreen Cave Crawshaw.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 78, for the relief of Armand Frenette.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 79, for the relief of Florence Brown Boyaner.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 80, for the relief of Eileen Mercedes Hudson Walsh.-Mr. Winkler.
Bill No. 81, for the relief of Madeleine McCartney Ratcliff.-Mr. Winkler.


Mr. Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the house to adopt the motion?


Stanley Howard Knowles: Before this motion is put may I again draw attention to the fact that it covers quite a number of bills. Indeed in this case the motion is for the second reading of thirty divorce bills. It is not my intention today, any more than it was yesterday, to take time to discuss these bills at this stage, but I do wish to register my continuing protest that we are still handling divorces in this way.
As hon. members know, it is my hope that some day we will decide to do it in some other way, and I take a little encouragement from the fact that at least one improvement seems to have developed out of the attention that some of us have been drawing to these divorce bills. That reform or improvement is that so far in this session every time a divorce bill has been called for second reading, at least it has been the case that the evidence has been printed and placed in our hands. That was one minor point that we used to complain about, namely that we were asked to proceed with these bills before we had the evidence. I hope the fact that that has been overcome means that attention is being given to the whole problem and that it will not be long before these and other divorce bills are dealt with in a more proper way.


Mr. Speaker:: Shall the motion carry?


Some hon. Members:: On division.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bills read the second time and referred to the standing committee on miscellaneous private bills.


Stanley Howard Knowles: the second reading of Bill No. 2, to amend the Industrial Relations and Disputes Investigation Act (voluntary revocable check-off).

He said: Mr. Speaker, if I had hope that this bill would pass as readily as did the first private bill which came up today, or as readily as the thirty divorce bills just dealt with, I would refrain from saying anything at this time. I do hope that one of these times this bill will be given its second reading and referred to the standing committee on industrial relations so that progress may be made in writing into our national labour code a provision for the voluntary revocable check-off.
As I have indicated on previous occasions when this bill has been before the house, it is a measure which asks for a legislative enactment to provide the very minimum of what is known as union security. There are a number of ways in which union security can be provided, and I want to say that for my part I would like to see something even more effective and more useful than what is asked for in this bill. But at least this is a minimum form of union security, and it is already in effect in the labour codes of a number of provinces in this country. I have reminded the house on previous occasions of the fact that all parties in this house have, on various occasions, expressed their support of the principle of union security. In fact, all the opposition parties have been voting for this bill for several years now, and indeed there have been a fair number of members on the Liberal side of the house who, when a vote has been called, have stood up and voted for it. I am only surprised that the number of Liberals has been so few-it got as high as 17 two years ago-for at the last national Liberal convention, the one held here in Ottawa in 1948, it was made part of that party's platform that it stood for union security.
Now, Mr. Speaker, the provision in the bill is quite simple. It specifies that where a union is certified under the provisions of the Industrial Relations and Disputes Investigation Act, that union may request the checkoff. If it does it means that the company is required to deduct from the pay of employees their trade union dues, and pay them over to the union, but, only in the cases of those individual employees who indicate in writing that it is their desire that it be done. In addition to that provision, it is stipulated that after any person has directed that his dues be checked off in that way he can, at a later date, revoke that decision if he wishes to do so. In other words, that is the reason for the way in which this provision is defined, namely as the voluntary revocable check-off.
As I have already said, this is only a minimum way in which to guarantee union
Industrial Relations
security, but at least it is a beginning. I have pointed out on previous occasions that this matter has been requested year by year by the major labour congresses in their representations to the government. I have no doubt but that it will be included in the representations they will make to the government again this year. I point out also that this is a provision in many of the provincial labour codes.
The only active opposition to this provision, so far as the federal law is concerned, of which we have been aware in recent years has been the occasional mimeographed circular distributed to the members of this house by the Railway Association of Canada. This association is, of course, an association of the employers, and that association from time to time has objected to this bill. The objection has been largely on the ground that it would involve considerable bookkeeping. It has been pointed out in this house, not only by myself but by the member for Spadina (Mr. Croll) and others who have supported this measure, that that is really a rather specious argument, particularly in view of the fact that employers make a great many other deductions at the request of their employees.
Well, to me it is significant that no such protest against this bill has been received as yet this year from the Railway Association of Canada. I dare to think that the reason no such protest has come is because of the ruling of the board that dealt recently with the railway dispute between the railway companies and their non-operating employees. Hon. members will recall that that board was headed by Mr. Justice R. L. Kellock, and the other two members were Mr. Paul S. Smith, appointed by the employers, and Mr. David Lewis, appointed by the employees. Majority and minority reports were presented. In other words, there were many points on which there was disagreement between Mr. Justice Kellock and Mr. Smith, on the one hand, and Mr. Lewis on the other. However, at least this question of the checkoff was one upon which they were agreed. Mr. Lewis, in his minority report, pointed out that he would like to see an even greater measure of union security for railway employees than just the check-off, but at least he was glad to join with Mr. Justice Kellock and Mr. Smith in recommending that the check-off, so far as railway employees are concerned, be instituted.
Reference to this provision in the majority report is found on page 43. The significant sentence reads as follows:
With regard to the check-off, the board is of opinion that, as every employee now has the same

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right as any other creditor to assign the whole or any part of any debt, present or future owing to him, the proposed clause is one that should properly form part of the new agreements.
I understand that on the basis of that report the check-off will shortly be in effect so far as railway employees are concerned. There is some question as to whether it will be on the basis of the Rand formula. At least what we are asking for in this bill is being accepted now by the railway companies of Canada, and in this case by their non-operating employees.
I submit, Mr. Speaker, that since this group of employees constitutes perhaps the largest number of employees who come under federal labour jurisdiction, there is now no reason at all why there should be any reluctance or any resistance on the part of the government to writing this measure into the federal labour code. The wording of the section that would be added by the terms of my bill is, in fact, the wording that was drawn in the Department of Labour. The story behind that, briefly, is that in 1948 when the industrial relations committee was dealing with the federal code it was moved by the hon. member for Spadina, as a member of that committee, that the check-off provision be written into the labour code at that time. His motion carried, although it was on a very close division. After his motion carried, although it did not have the support of Mr. Mitchell, then minister of labour, the minister had one of his officials come back the next day and suggest that if this provision were to be written into the code perhaps it would be well to have it written in language that the legal advisers of the Department of Labour thought most appropriate.
The hon. member for Spadina accepted the language drafted by the legal officers of the Department of Labour, and it is that language which forms the main part of the bill now before us. Some members may wonder what happened to that provision which was written into the labour code in 1948. The fact is that when the bill came back to the house to be considered in committee of the whole, a private member on the government side moved that that clause which had been written into the bill in the committee be deleted. After considerable debate in this house that amendment carried and the provision which we thought we had won was stricken from the national labour code.
As I have already said, support for this measure has been growing. The number of members who voted to keep that clause in the bill in 1948 was 35. The next time there was a vote on this proposal was in 1950, when 45 members voted for it. The next vote came in 1951, on February 28, when
IMr. Knowles.]
67 members voted for it, and included in those 67 were all the members of the opposition groups who were present and 17 members on the government side of the house plus the hon. member for Comox-Alberni (Mr. Gibson).
I am encouraged by that growth in support for this measure from year to year. I am encouraged also by the fact that this principle has now been accepted by the railway companies and by the employees. I hope that on this occasion we will not have the kind of argument against it that we have had on previous occasions, but that the house will agree to the second reading of this bill so that it may go to the standing committee on industrial relations for consideration by that committee.


Mr. A. F. Macdonald (Edmonton East):: Mr. Speaker, I have listened with a great deal of interest to the remarks of the sponsor of this bill on the revocable check-off. Two years ago a similar bill was introduced by the same hon. member. At that time I had occasion to make a few comments in this house with regard to the provision not only of the check-off or the nature of the checkoff that was introduced in the bill at that time, but also with regard to my interpretation of the thinking of trade union people as to the type and the character of the check-off they required to give them the kind of union security they would need in order to have a healthy trade union organization.
I do not wish to be insular in again speaking on a trade union subject in this chamber, but I believe at this time we should review some of the matters that have been discussed on this question. I should like to take this opportunity to say that I was greatly impressed by the remarks made in the previous debate by our present Minister of Labour (Mr. Gregg). On this occasion I desire to place on the record what I believe to be pertinent information with regard to the Industrial Relations and Disputes Investigation Act, and I am going to take a couple of minutes to read into the record from page 639 of Hansard for February 23, 1951, an extract which I believe indicates responsible thinking with regard to the check-off. At that time the Minister of Labour had this to say:
If today parliament steps in to legislate on such matters as the check-off, another parliament at another time may attempt to settle the issue in quite a different way. Present legislation adequately promotes free collective bargaining and parliament should consider carefully before going beyond this point by resolving issues which parties to collective bargaining can best resolve themselves.
The ideal behind any industrial relations legislation, I believe, in a free enterprise economy is the promotion of sound industrial self-government. We

may not possibly come nearer to that goal by legislating on such substantive terms of employment as the check-off.
Then the minister went on to say:
The more I study it, and the more I see the operation of our Canadian Industrial Relations and Disputes Investigation Act, the more I like it and the more I feel that we should go slow in unnecessarily making it a policeman for either bargaining party. It may not be a perfect act, but there are not many things in the world that are perfect-
I agree with those words of the Minister of Labour. I would say that the act may not be perfect, but I would also say that in its present form it is the best means yet devised to produce a good climate for labour and management to meet in and to decide their differences responsibly.
In 1951 I said that I believed in the checkoff that was negotiated, not one that was legislated. No one knows better than do trade unionists and management that there must be good will in every document that is executed and signed by both parties. At that time, of one union for which I had a great deal of respect, I said that when they again opened their contract for negotiations with management, they would be able to negotiate the kind of check-off that would be acceptable to the people embraced by that agreement, both at the management level and at the employee level. I do not like to take this occasion in the House of Commons to say that at that time I was right, as has been proven by the fact that just recently 17 major railway organizations were able to meet management around the bargaining table like gentlemen, to discuss their problems, to find ways and means of settling their differences, to include a checkoff which goes far beyond the kind of innocuous check-off that is suggested in the bill before us, then to sign an agreement for a stipulated period of time and to work under that agreement with good will.
Now that it has been proven to the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) that matters of this kind can be negotiated, I am surprised that he should still pursue this question and persist in endeavouring to persuade the members in this chamber to support an innocuous kind of check-off that is not nearly as good as that which trade unionists and management have been able to agree on in recent months. In other words, if this provision is written into the Industrial Relations and Disputes Investigation Act, it would not only be a floor but a ceiling, and it certainly is not as good as what the unionists themselves and management have been able to agree on.
I am grateful to the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre for affording me the
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opportunity of saying, two years subsequent to 1951, that what I said in the chamber at that time has borne fruit and that my thinking on this question has been proven to be correct. Because I have the confidence of many trade unions people and am able to interpret their thinking correctly, I was able to suggest that subsequent to 1951 an agreement, which the men and management would say embodied good will, would be signed by both parties and would include a proper form of check-off.
I believe I said in 1951 that discussions of this type are useful. This one certainly serves a useful purpose in allowing me to tell Mr. Speaker and hon. members, and particularly the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, that the Industrial Relations and Disputes Investigation Act has worked very well since 1948. I am confident that it will work well in the future, and that it allows the widest possible scope for labour and management to meet in a healthy atmosphere, and to arrive at agreements with good will. It will allow those in industry, including those engaged in transportation services, opportunities to work under collective agreements, and to enjoy the very best of working conditions made possible by legislation placed on the statute books by a federal administration.


Mr. Pierre Gauthier (Portneuf):: Mr. Speaker, this is the second time I have taken the opportunity to speak on a measure of this kind. I recall that when a similar measure was discussed last year I said that to a certain extent it would diminish if not extinguish the sovereignty of unions. I saw a smile on the face of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles), and even on the face of the hon. member for Spadina (Mr. Croll). I have not forgotten those smiles.
During the recess I took the trouble to find out if I was the only one who thought as I think in this matter. To my support I bring the good opinion of a very strong socialist in France, Daniel Guerin, who has written a book in two volumes entitled Ou va le Peuple Americain?-"Where are the American people going?" In this book I found valuable information. If I am not too far out of order I would say that from the book I learned that the first sit-down strike occurred in 1914, and that a second one developed in 1923 by Mussolini in Milan and Turin. However, I must not go too far in making reference to the information I got from the book, because in doing so I would be out of order.

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I should like, however, to place on record Mr. Guerin's opinion of the check-off. At page 217 of the first volume he says:
The employers deduct from the payroll of the workers belonging to a syndicate the amount of syndical contributions, and send it to the syndicate. This combination is eminently favourable to syndical bureaucracy-
And this from a socialist!
-because it insures the latter, in a comfortable chair, the regular coming in of funds. But the check-off has the worse inconvenience of deepening the ditch between the base and the direction of the syndicalized world.
Again I say that this is a socialist speaking.
It establishes the employer, as Daniel de Leon said, as some kind of treasurer of the United States.
And Daniel de Leon was another socialist in the United States.
The worker is under the impression that the fists, the patronate and the syndicate are but one and the same immense, anonymous machine, firmly installed above him, and against which he can do nothing. In not paying his contributions directly to the syndicate, or to his agent, on the very place of labour, he loses the habit, if he had it, of going to the office of the organization. He does not look at it as if it was his, and his connection with the syndicate's agent in the manufacture stays weak.
That is the opinion of a good socialist who has spent two and a half years making a survey in the United States. He looked into the capitalist world in that country, the formation of workers' unions, the situation of the coloured people, and the agricultural situation in the southern part of the United States. This is his opinion, an opinion absolutely unfavourable to the check-off. As my hon. friend has just said, I am not against the voluntary check-off, the check-off that develops after a getting together of employees and employers, after friendly discussion and friendly agreement within the union, when employers are prepared to accept the check-off and to bring it within the bounds of a special industry.
I think favourably of that procedure, and for this reason, that when there is an understanding between employers and employees there is at the same time a development of that friendship that is so greatly needed between these two groups in the community. We need that friendship and that perfect understanding because in the world, in Canada, there are those who live on misunderstandings between employers and employees. There is a philosophy that thrives on social unrest and misery. It thrives, too, on misunderstandings between employers and employees. It is certainly worth-while if employers and employees can get together more often and come to an understanding on points affecting an industry or a syndicate. It is beneficial to all concerned if a

spirit of friendship can be developed between them, so that the syndical and the employers' worlds may understand each other better.
That is what we need, and that is why I ask at this time that the check-off be not given approval through a law passed by parliament, but rather that it be permitted to operate in certain industries on a basis of free and friendly understanding. This is the second time I have given my opinion in this connection. I was more interested, however, in placing before the house the opinion of a socialist who shares the philosophy of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, and to point out that even the advocates of that philosophy entertain differences of opinion as to the desirability of imposing by force of law the provision for check-off in this country. I hope the measure will not pass this year.


Mr. Paul E. Cote (Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Labour):: Mr. Speaker, on several occasions I have voiced my views on the principle of this bill. In fact this is the fourth time that a bill to amend the Industrial Relations and Disputes Investigation Act has been presented for this purpose. I should like to make a few remarks tonight which I did not have the opportunity to develop at any length in the past.
At the outset I wish to assure my hon. friend that I have nothing against the checkoff of union dues, in itself, or against any stronger measures of union security. On the contrary, I fully approve the principle of those measures. If there is anything within my control that I can do to increase the number of contracts in industry containing provisions for union security or the check-off of union dues I shall never hesitate to do it.
May I say to the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) that I think the criterion which should guide this chamber in deciding whether this bill is desirable should be this. Is the underlying principle of this bill consistent with the basic principles of the act it intends to amend? From the arguments which have been advanced in support of the passing of this bill I am inclined to believe that this important aspect of the question has not been examined as it ought to have been and that no convincing case has been made to justify the change which it advocates in the statute at this time.
The Industrial Relations and Disputes Investigation Act embodies basic principles which should not be altered without reasonable cause or without applying the same measure of caution which was applied in the

drafting and passing of that act. Those principles are freedom of association, certification of bargaining units, free collective bargaining on all matters subject to agreement between employers and employees, and compulsory compliance by both parties with the machinery set up for the settlement of all disputes.
Union security provisions, including any measure of check-off of union dues, have hitherto been considered as matters for collective bargaining. It is true as some hon. members have said, more particularly in this debate the sponsor of the bill, that in six provinces the labour relations acts include provisions for the voluntary revocable checkoff. But in discussing the bill no one has given any indication as to what procedure was followed, whether management was consulted and had agreed or what was the situation as far as the check-off was concerned, in the provinces where such provisions were included in the labour acts.
Four important provinces, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec-the last two being the most highly industrialized provinces-have not yet deemed it to be in the best interests of good labour-management relations to enact such a provision. In the attitude which these provinces have taken, to stand by the principle of free collective bargaining, they are in complete accord with the federal act. They still believe that the time has not yet come to introduce any compulsory feature in the field of collective bargaining, that if they did this without previous consultation and a certain measure of agreement with and by both parties in industry they would be setting a precedent of unilateral if not arbitrary statutory action which might become dangerous in the future, in that it could be invoked by some other government for legislative action which might not be in the best interests of trade unions and of labour-management relations in this country. Once a legislative body has determined by statute and made compulsory a provision which is normally dealt with by collective bargaining it opens the door for more and more intrusions of the same kind by the state in a field which ought to belong exclusively to labour-management negotiations.
I have in mind to say a few words this afternoon on the recently-concluded agreement between the railroad companies and the employee brotherhoods, but I shall leave this until the concluding part of my speech.
I should like to remind my hon. friends that trade unions have gained in importance, in strength and in influence during the past decade to an amazing degree. If one reads the Labour Gazette today he will have an
Industrial Relations
opportunity of realizing each month what this increased strength of the trade unions has brought by way of benefits to their membership. This is a clear indication that through the bargaining process the unions have succeeded in getting what was in the interests of their rank and file.
The principle of free collective bargaining is the cornerstone of the federal labour relations act. That should not be altered, any more than any other major provision in the act, without consultation with and at least a certain measure of agreement by both parties who will be affected by the change. That was the purpose of the then minister of labour, the late Hon. Humphrey Mitchell, when he submitted the initial draft of his legislation to the national bodies of management and labour.
On the one hand there was the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada, the Canadian Congress of Labour, the dominion legislative council of railway transportation brotherhoods and the Canadian Confederation of Catholic Syndicates, representing labour. On the other hand there was the Canadian Manufacturers Association, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Railway Association of Canada and the Canadian Construction Association, on the management side. The measure of agreement on the major provisions of the act which was then obtained from both sides was indeed gratifying. This consensus of opinion gave the assurance that the legislation was initiated on solid ground and should not be altered in its major provisions without determining and following the best possible procedure which would tend to safeguard the prerogatives of all concerned.
The initial draft of the labour act was submitted to and approved in its broad principles by the provincial ministers of labour. There was no necessity to do this, but the late Humphrey Mitchell showed wisdom in availing himself of the opportunity provided by a conference which was taking place with his colleagues in the provinces on other matters to seek their views and secure their agreement on the main features of the bill which was then being considered. This consultation has paved the way for the inclusion of section 62, which tends to promote as much uniformity of legislation as possible between the two levels of government and to make possible the administration of any provincial act by the federal Department of Labour if any province so desires.
These consultations with the provinces, management and labour organizations brought out valuable suggestions which contributed to the improvement of the initial draft of the

Industrial Relations
bill. A second draft was prepared which was introduced here during the session of 1947, and was referred to the standing committee on industrial relations. It received serious consideration. The organizations which I have already mentioned were invited to appear before the committee. They did so and submitted their considered views on the proposed legislation. The bill was redrafted and reintroduced in 1948, thoroughly examined by the committee, and finally adopted and brought into effect on September 1, 1948.
The administration of this statute has given good results so far. It would be unfair and unwise, I submit, to amend an important feature of such legislation without seeking that measure of previous consultation and concurrence with all parties concerned, and not only a few of them. The Department of Labour is not and must not become identified with the interests of one of the parties in industry to the exclusion and seemingly against the will of the other. The minister and his officials have always striven to uphold and safeguard their position as mediator between the two parties, and in their legitimate effort to hold that balance they must be inspired and assisted by legislation and regulations which have been enacted in the same spirit of impartiality as between management and labour.
If parliament were to enact the bill sponsored by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles), what stand could it take if and when management organizations would attempt to obtain, by legislative action, provisions which might react against organized labour as has occurred in other countries? I should like, if I may, to cite here a few words of the late Humphrey Mitchell, which may be found in Hansard for 1947 at page 4231. He said:
. . . may I say that we have received representations for the inclusion of measures severely curtailing union activities; from others have come suggestions which would involve, under certain conditions, the compulsory application of the principle of union security in collective agreements and the adoption of other innovations.
We have not given effect in this legislation to such representations, since it is not the desire of the government to place impediments in the way of free collective bargaining between employers and their organized workers, or to legislate conditions or terms of employment that properly lie in the field of collective bargaining.
In the same speech on June 17, 1947, the late Mr. Mitchell had this to say:
Human nature cannot be corrected by a law, and in the final analysis the major consideration in improving human relations between employers and employees is the simple matter of trying to see each other's point of view and developing mutual understanding.
(Mr. Cote (Verdun-La Salle).]
There are other quotations from the same gentleman which would be of interest in discussing this subject, but I would hurry on to a reference which I should like to make to statements by my hon. friend and by others who supported him in the presentation of this amendment in years past. I refer to the debate which took place on the bill to put an end to the railway dispute which had resulted in a nation-wide strike in 1950. On August 30 the leader of the C.C.F. (Mr. Cold-well) said that the house must try to "ensure that free collective bargaining and social justice will remain fundamental parts of our Canadian way of life". The hon. member for Vancouver East (Mr. Maclnnis) had this to say, as found at page 39 of Hansard of the same date:
Nevertheless the workers are fearful-and I believe they have every reason to be-that if this bill passes employers will take it as a precedent and that whenever workers make demands there will be no further bargaining in good faith because employers will expect the government to make the same provision for them.
My good friend and practically my desk-mate in the house, the hon. member for Spadina (Mr. Croll), had this to say, as found at page 39 of Hansard for that session:
Yet this bill could be construed as saying to the trade unions that in such and such circumstances you are no longer free to exercise your rights.
Further on he said:
Neither today's government nor today's opposition in this house can undertake to say what the effect of passing this bill will be, though we say it is confined to a particular strike in 1950. There it is for all of us to see in the future. We ask ourselves the question, will it not be extended in the future by administrations less friendly to labour than our own?
As a matter of fact the hon. member for Spadina made a very thought-provoking speech on that occasion, and I should like to quote more of what he said. Further on he had this to say:
I believe it would be nothing short of a national calamity if we were to substitute something else for the collective bargaining process . . . Compulsion can force the parties to submit to a given procedure. It may even force them to accept unwillingly certain results. But I think this house knows very well that forced obedience generates resistance and hostility. Far from being a cure, it is a source of further conflict and it multiplies strife instead of preventing it. Compulsion never removes the cause of the strife.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: As it is six o'clock, the hour for private and public bills has expired. At eight o'clock the house will resume consideration of the business which was interrupted at five o'clock.
At six o'clock the house took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The house resumed at eight o'clock.


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. St. Laurent for the appointment of a committee to examine defence expenditures and commitments, and the amendment thereto of Mr. Claxton.
George Randolph Pearkes: Mr. Speaker, in rising to take part in the debate in connection with this resolution which was in the name of the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent.) and introduced this afternoon by the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Claxton), which calls for a select committee to be appointed to continue the examination of all expenditure of public moneys for national defence, etc., I would first like to call attention to the fact that members on this side of the house have for many years been pressing for committees to be set up to discuss and investigate the handling of moneys which were allocated to the Department of National Defence out of the public treasury in order to provide for the essential services for the defence of this country and for the fulfilment of those obligations which Canada has undertaken in the international field.
The reason we have been pressing for the establishment of those committees was that we felt there was sufficient evidence to indicate that the taxpayers' money was not being spent to the best advantage. I remember quite clearly that in my first session in this house after I had been elected in 1945 this question of the establishment of committees was raised. I am not going back to quote from the record as far back as that, but I would just like to put on the record a statement which was made by the present leader of this party in April of 1949, when at page 2322 of Hansard these words were used:
In past years requests have been made for a select committee to examine this subject-
That is the question of national defence.
*-and to report to the house upon the basis of information of that kind. Without the delay involved in submitting any formal resolution I urge upon the government, in all earnestness and seriousness, the immediate setting up of a special select committee to examine the present state of our national defence and to make recommendations in regard to future organization and requirements.
In the year 1951, on May 8, the hon. member for Calgary East (Mr. Harkness) used these words, at page 2840 of Hansard:
I think the only way we can do it at all reasonably is by means of a committee on defence. We
Committee on Defence Expenditure
have asked for such a committee every session during the past several years, and every session the minister has produced a number of what I would call excuses as to why such a committee should not be set up. I think there is no question but that this is the only way a real scrutiny of defence estimates and expenditures can be made by this House of Commons, and I would again urge the minister to set up such a committee.
In 1950 and again in 1951 I moved resolutions in this house to appoint such a committee. The wording of the resolution I moved on March 14, 1950, is to be found on page 730 of Hansard and is to this effect:
It is expedient to appoint a special committee of this house to examine and report upon the Department of National Defence and the armed services of Canada; and that such committee have power to call for persons, papers and records, and to report from time to time to this house.
Again the following year I moved a similar motion. In every case these motions were defeated by the supporters of the government casting their vote against them. Even though the committee which was set up a year ago, and the select committee which is being set up now to continue the work of that committee established a year ago were not entirely the type of committee that we were recommending in those days, I believe it is fair to say that that committee has achieved beneficial results to this country. This has been done even though the committee has found difficulty in obtaining all the information that it required, and even though at times its full endeavours, as I shall show later, have been restricted.
The main results accruing from the endeavours of this committee have been that there has developed in all service establishments across this country a general tightening up of the administration, undoubtedly due to the light of publicity which has been thrown on their system of organization and administration as a result of the researches made by this select committee. We are in favour, therefore, of establishing another select committee to continue the work which the select committee of last session started. We hope that a full opportunity will be given to that committee to investigate all the operations and expenditures of money by the defence services, as outlined in the resolution which is before us at this time.
This afternoon the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Claxton) dealt at some considerable length with the report that has been submitted by Mr. Currie, who had been asked by the minister last spring to inquire into certain alleged irregularities that it was suspected had occurred at the great camp at Petawawa, particularly in connection with the army works services. The minister read from a prepared statement of some considerable length, which took up some hour and a

Committee on Defence Expenditure half of time this afternoon. I believe that the house expected a full and complete statement, because the minister had not been present when the Currie report was tabled. He was away in Europe on government duty. I should like to make an interjection here to welcome him back to the house, and to express my pleasure that he survived the flights across the Atlantic and the other perils to which he was exposed. We welcome him back in safety and in good health. Perhaps he would not mind my saying that it might have been just as well that he was not here when the report was tabled, because I doubt very much whether we Should have gotten home for our Christmas recess.
However, the long report the minister has made requires further study, and I cannot hope to deal with it adequately this evening though I shall do my best to reply to some of the remarks he made. To begin with, he told the story of the works services and of the corps of engineers of the Canadian army. He pointed out that these works services had been reduced to very small strength a few years ago before the Korean operations started, and because they were understaffed they found that they had a tremendous amount of work to undertake. In his report Mr. Currie refers also to the same difficulties that the units of the works services experienced.
I should like to point out at this time that the reduction of those units, as well as the reduction of many other units, both fighting and administrative, was the direct result of Liberal government policy adopted a few years ago. This policy reduced these units to mere skeletons. The works services found that they were ill-equipped to play their part in providing that reasonable security which the Department of National Defence, under this government, was charged with providing in fulfilment of its obligations. It is no disgrace to the soldiers of the works services that they were few in number. I should like to emphasize the point that the reduction in the strength of these units was the direct result of the government's policy. When these units were faced with the rapid expansion which was required in order to meet the crisis which had gradually developed in Korea, they found that they had neither the equipment nor the personnel to provide that rapid expansion. These disturbances in the Far East were like the writing on the wall, and could well have been foreseen. These units, however, ran into difficulty because of the faulty government policy of those days.
Personnel had been demobilized and many of the old reliable works foremen, warrant officers, petty officers and so forth, had been


let out at the end of the war. There was difficulty in providing personnel who were trained in administration, personnel who, through years of having to stretch the very scanty funds which were provided for national defence in those days, had grown up with the psychology that the taxpayers' money must be carefully guarded and made to go as far as possible. This psychology has perhaps a great many points which the younger soldiers have not as yet appreciated.
Then because of the hasty demobilization the various training camps across the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific had been allowed to deteriorate, with some of the equipment being looted, and some camps like that at Farnham finding that huts had been completely removed.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. May I ask hon. members to preserve silence. Otherwise it is exceedingly difficult to hear the hon. member who has the floor.


George Randolph Pearkes: These camps had been
allowed to fall into a state of disrepair, and so an extra burden fell largely upon the works services.
Then the minister went on to explain the table, appendix "B", which is at the end of the Currie report. He referred to a good many figures which I have not been able to study or check. In fact at one time I felt that I was almost back in school again dealing with some problem in algebra which went something like this:	If X equals 154, and Y
equals 33, then X over Y equals 15. I think those were the figures given by the minister, although he did not refer to the Y's. We shall have to inquire into those matters in further detail.
Then he went on to assure us that the Currie report had received1 consideration and that many of the recommendations had already been adopted. We forecast that possibility when this matter was under discussion before Christmas; and we can only express satisfaction that some action has already been taken on the recommendations made in the report.
To sum up that part of the minister's remarks, it would seem to me that he was once again giving us assurances that all was well. In fact, he almost appeared to be defending the army. Mr. Speaker, the army does not need any defending. It is the government which needs to be defended. It has been clearly demonstrated that, while there were opportunities for theft, fraud and dishonesty elsewhere, the army still refused to march through the door which had been left open to the would-be pilferer. No, Mr. Speaker, the army does not require any

defending. It is for the government to defend itself and to explain, how it has taken care of the $2 billion of the taxpayers' money which this department has been called upon to expend in the cause of national defence.
Last spring, as reported at page 2334 of Hansard of May 19, 1952, the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Claxton) said:
Our job is to use every means possible so as to ensure that the utmost care is taken in safeguarding public property and in preventing loss, whether it be by fire, theft, fraud or any other means.
With that statement we most heartily agree, but it has to be shown that at the time the government was exercising every means it had at its disposal in order to prevent this loss through fire, theft and fraud. In the Currie report, almost at the beginning of it, when discussing the discovery of the irregularities at Petawawa Mr. Currie uses these words:
-it is an unhappy circumstance that the beginning of this investigation lies not inside the Department of National Defence and its full complement of regulations and supervising personnel, but with the receipt of an anonymous letter couched in the following terms:
Then he gives the terms of the letter which called attention to the losses and which aroused the interest of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Then Mr. Currie in his report goes on to use these words:
Before reciting the irregularities and their circumstances uncovered by the R.C.M.P.-with the assistance later of the provincial police and the army provost corps-it must be said that internal warnings had not been lacking in the Department of National Defence. The chief auditor of the department had performed his functions conscientiously. Time and again he had reported unsatisfactory conditions.
Then he goes on and refers to appendix "B" which I have already mentioned, and he closes that paragraph by saying:
Aside from reports being delayed for considerable periods of time, the record shows the next audit revealing conditions similar to those previously reported, and in some cases, worse. The process is then again repeated.
These matters have been brought to the attention of the Department of National Defence. Surely the serious implications of a report by the chief auditor of the department should have been brought to the attention of the minister and government. It is for these reasons that I feel the government is charged with the responsibility; and the government has shown that it has not taken every possible means to safeguard the taxpayers' money, in spite of the fact that in that very spring the Minister of National Defence was declaring that his job was to take care of the taxpayers' money by every possible means.
Committee on Defence Expenditure
Then the minister went on to say that nobody wished to question the report, but he himself proceeded to do so. First of all he raised the question of the horses, which has become a laughingstock and the gibe of every cartoonist across the country. He declared that the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) the day before had announced that there had been no horses on the payroll. However, I could not help remarking that the Prime Minister himself based those remarks partly upon information supplied by a man who had been convicted of dishonesty and placed in a penitentiary. He seemed to prefer the statement of a criminal to that of his own appointed investigator, Mr. Currie; because Mr. Currie distinctly says there were horses on the payroll under the names of non-existent labourers. Then the minister went on to say:
There are a number of other cases in which the account given by Mr. Currie is not wholly in accordance with the facts which were established.
I do submit that Mr. Currie was sent to establish the facts. And no doubt Mr. Currie did establish those facts, even though they may not be particularly welcome facts for the government.
There is some question about a dam being built at Tucker creek at the cost of some $3,000 or $4,000. The minister explained that that was carried out as an exercise by the engineers. Well, I have no doubt that the engineers would be required to be exercised in the construction of dams. It is a fortunate fact-perhaps I should say it is a peculiar circumstance-that Tucker creek was in the centre of an area which many years ago was a favourite rendezvous of the Petawawa fish and game club.
Then the minister went on to explain about the Canadian National Railways, and the spur which Mr. Currie said had been taken up to replace the rails of the Canadian Pacific Railway spur, after the rails of the C.P.R. had been stolen, or at least after officials of that railway had protested against the sudden disappearance of those rails. The minister referred to these C.N.R. rails by saying: "I am sorry the report contained a reference to the Canadian National Railways. It turned out not to be so. I am sorry it contained a reference to the horses, though I am glad they were not on the payroll."
Regarding the C.N.R. track, there is a spur which leads from the Canadian National line into Petawawa Camp. It has been there for years and years, and everyone refers to it as the C.N.R. spur. If the rails had been laid by the government, instead of by the C.N.R., then I suppose in general terms it would be correct to say that they were not
962	HOUSE OF
Committee on Defence Expenditure C.N.R. rails. But tor years and years that spur has been referred to as the Canadian National spur.
Then we were admonished to view the report in its correct perspective. I do not wish to go into every detail of the report, because there is no time for that; but I think one of the general and main points in connection with what Mr. Currie found is that there was a general breakdown in the system of administration, supervision and accounting. Those are the words which are to be found very near the beginning of the report, at page 2 of the typewritten copies. It is said that this resulted in or created a generally lax administrative situation. From that Mr. Currie deduced that such a situation would give rise to waste and inefficiency far more costly in loss than that covered by the actual dishonesty.
Then, dealing with Petawawa camp itself, he referred to a small group of crooks-and they were a small group-who did take advantage of the door which the government had left open for them so they could loot and pilfer from that camp. I think the majority of hon. members know what was taken from the camp, because it has been mentioned many times in the press across the country. One need only refer to the 550 tons of so-called scrap, which included many things which were far from being scrap, such as serviceable kitchen ranges, shower stalls and the like.
Then there was a question as to lumber which had been stolen during the process of clearing large sections of the camp. Cement had been taken or had not been accounted for to the extent of some 18,000 bags. I am told that about a thousand bags of cement go to make one carload, so one might almost say that 18,000 bags would be approximately a trainload of cement which was missing altogether.
Contractors had been paid for work which had not been done, or which was completed with the loan of army equipment and personnel.
In the attempt of the government to belittle what took place-and there has been a very definite attempt on the part of the government to belittle the general breakdown in the system of administration, supervision and accounting, as reported in the Currie report -this process of belittling has taken the form of trying to refer to these very considerable losses as being relatively small matters. It is possible that they may be relatively small matters when compared with the possible losses elsewhere, in areas which have not been submitted to the scrutiny of Mr. Currie and his team of accountants,


because Mr. Currie's endeavours were limited to the relatively small field of the army works services, mainly at Petawawa camp, though he did investigate and did find some irregularities in other camps serviced by the army works services.
These are not relatively small matters if viewed in regard to the actual loss of taxpayers' money, and the lowering of morale that has been caused by all these losses, through the light of publicity that has been thrown upon them. When Mr. Currie was first appointed the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Claxton) said:
We felt that no better man could be found to do this job if we searched the length and breadth of the country.
Then he went on to point out that Mr. Currie was an ex-officer who had served during the first world war with distinction, that he had been a deputy minister of the Department of National Defence for a number of years, and that he was also a member of a very prominent firm of chartered accountants. It is certain that nobody on this side of the house, or anywhere in the house, disputed the fact at that time that Mr. Currie appeared to have all the qualifications which were necessary to carry out such an investigation. Now we are asking ourselves, why has Mr. Currie fallen from grace; because it is quite obvious that in their endeavour to play down and belittle his report they have not stopped even at casting reflections upon Mr. Currie himself. I wonder whether, when they made the appointment, they overlooked the fact that Mr. Currie, besides his qualifications as an ex-officer, a deputy minister of national defence and a chartered accountant, was also an honourable and honest gentleman.
I said that an attempt was being made to belittle this report. It started when the Solicitor General (Mr. Campney) replied just before Christmas. In referring to quotations which have been made from the report by hon. members on this side of the house he described them as exaggerations, as irresponsible statements. Then last week on Vancouver island the Minister of Fisheries (Mr. Sinclair) referred to the Currie report merely as "threshing old straw." On Vancouver island the Solicitor General also referred to the report and said that it would not "cut much ice." The Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe) was a little more emphatic, and when speaking at Kingston he is reported as having said that "it was a rehash in lurid language" of matters already dealt with by the courts or by the department.
I have read out some extracts from this report. It has been made available to every hon. member; it has been published in the

papers. I defy any hon. member to point to any lurid language which is used in the report. The report is written in the most moderate terms, but it has stated honestly and exactly what the conditions were as they were found by Mr. Currie when he was making his investigation. Even though the Solicitor General may laugh, I think he will find it very difficult, with his knowledge of the English language and the meaning of words, to point to any sentences which really can answer to the description of being lurid in language.
Well, after drawing attention to these irregularities and to the losses which had been sustained at Petawawa camp, Mr. Currie draws various conclusions and makes these observations:	Although the Department of
National Defence auditors were warned again and again over a lengthy period that supervision and accounting were inadequate, no effective action was ever taken, with the result the situation grew progressively worse and the discovery of thefts, following investigation, came not from the department itself but from an anonymous letter to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; and again:
No reliable estimate of the total loss can be prepared. . . How many more there may have been will never be known.
And again:
There was, in addition, a serious collapse in security. There was little to prevent or to detect the organized plundering of military stores on a systematic scale. . . If there is excuse for inefficient accounting, there is none for the failure of security which is, after all, a prime military consideration. I take a serious view of this breakdown.
Perhaps the Solicitor General considers that lurid language. I do not know. I do not think it would answer the description of the word "lurid" as given in the Oxford dictionary, or in any other reliable dictionary.
Then there is a paragraph which has been quoted before in this house, and which is found on page 17 of the report, which summarizes the conditions to which I have already referred this evening. These are the lurid words of the framer of this report, Mr. Currie:
The situation was complicated by still another factor. The Department of National Defence (including the army works services) was largely staffed and manned by men whose military training had been received in wartime. Its establishment and administrative practices reflected more clearly the urgent needs and exigencies of war, when speed is everything and costs count not at all.
That is again the direct result of government policy. The government had seen fit to remove many of the more senior, perhaps more elderly, staff officers of 1946-1947, and they had been replaced very largely by the younger commanders who had quite naturally 68108-61J
Committee on Defence Expenditure grown up in this war psychology. I remember pointing out at the time the dangers of this policy. I made this statement in this house on the 6th day of February, 1947, when speaking in the debate on national defence, as reported at page 173 of Hansard:
I suggest that all the substance has been taken out of our defence force and that today there remains only the wreckage of the overhead framework.
In those days the government had reduced the services to such a state that they were not in an efficient position to carry out their responsibilities. And even in those days attention had been called by the Auditor General, and by the auditors of the department as well, to the unsatisfactory accounting conditions which had existed. At the same time we were receiving solemn assurances that all was well, and that there were no irregularities or deficiencies in the various construction projects at Petawawa camp. Mr. Currie shortly afterward was carrying out his investigation, and he was reporting that there were unauthorized projects, that there were improper loans of material and that the rental of army equipment was taking place to civilian contractors.
In the recently published Auditor General's report for last year these irregularities are confirmed, and other cases have been cited that deal not only with Petawawa camp but with other army establishments throughout the country. He complains of the complicated accounting system which has prevented losses from being reported and brought to the attention of those responsible for the safeguarding of the taxpayers' money. I might cite as an example of that the mixing of gas and fuel oil at Churchill which, according to Mr. Sellar, seems to have cost the taxpayers somewhere in the neighbourhood of $75,000 or $80,000.
I do suggest that if the government were really determined to safeguard the taxpayers' money it would not have adopted the policy of belittling the Currie report. I think it is one of the tragedies of this whole unfortunate episode that the government should have adopted the attitude of ridiculing and belittling the report. It would have been far more seemly if they had swallowed the pill and decided that they would investigate the conditions thoroughly. It would have been far more seemly if they had, with a contrite heart, accepted all the recommendations made by Mr. Currie. It is a pill that they must swallow. It may be an unpleasant one, but unless all the ingredients of the pill are taken we shall never get the patient well again.


William Earl Rowe: They are choking on it now.

Committee on Defence Expenditure


George Randolph Pearkes: It was proposed by the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Claxton) this afternoon, and was also mentioned by the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent), that the report would be referred to the select committee which is now to be set up. I suggest that it is action that is required, and not the referring of the report to a committee. We might well examine the constitution of the select committee to be set up to continue the work of last year's committee. It is to consist of some 26 members. According to the constitution of the committee last year, 17 of its 26 members were members or supporters of the government. In other words, 17 out of 26 were Liberals. Six were drawn from the ranks of the Progressive Conservative party and three from all other groups in the house. Therefore if the representatives of the Conservatives and the other groups all voted together they were only able to marshal 9 votes against the 17 of the supporters of the government on the committee.
I do not think it is going too far to say that the committee was really a one-party organization. If members from the opposition groups wished to find out about certain matters and it was not the wish of the government that details along those particular lines should be revealed then these matters were a closed book to the committee. It was suggested that the committee should take up the question of Petawawa camp. That was refused. It was said that we must not go into the matter of Petawawa camp because the Currie commission was investigating it. There was some question about making inquiries regarding item No. 87(a) on a list provided for us, which item dealt with aircraft for the R.C.A.F. and the navy. One would think that a defence expenditures committee would be permitted to investigate the expenditure of a sum which at that time was listed at no less than $668,986,840, of which over $100 million was to be spent in that year. But no; the committee must not investigate any spending in connection with such a large sum of money as $668 million odd.
Obviously when the government does not like its actions to be queried it finds means in that committee and elsewhere to limit the investigations which the committee would like to carry out and the disclosure of information which should be brought to attention elsewhere. It is fairly obvious that no sooner had the Auditor General's report been tabled than officials of the Department of National Defence, unnamed of course, rushed into print and started to comment upon the remarks made by the Auditor General. This department is following the pattern set up by the government. It is resentful of any criticism


which may be offered of it. We are uncertain whether the committee now to be appointed will be able under the circumstances to carry out the duties that have been assigned to it. Immediately after the house rose for the Christmas recess the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Drew) communicated with the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent).


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I hesitate to interrupt the hon. member, but it does occur to me that he is coming close to questioning the independence of the members of the committee.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Mr. Speaker:: He has not gone quite to that extreme, but he is close to it. There is a rule of the house that every member is an independent member.


Mr. Cleaver:: They are the only honest members.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I felt that I should bring the rule to the attention of hon. members at this time.


William Earl Rowe: Let us be careful not to hurt anybody's feelings.


George Randolph Pearkes: Mr. Speaker, when you rose to point out that you thought that I might be questioning the independence of members I was about to read a letter written by the Leader of the Opposition to the Prime Minister just before Christmas. I have the permission of the Leader of the Opposition to read it. In fact I think the letter has been published, and I do not think you will find anything in it that questions the independence of any member of the house, myself or anybody else. These are the words which were used in the letter:
You said that the Currie report would be submitted to the committee on defence expenditures. One of my reasons for writing this letter is to point out that this procedure is neither necessary nor desirable. Members of the opposition who sat on the committee made a determined effort last spring to inquire into the situation at Petawawa. They were denied any opportunity to do so with the explanation that this might prejudice the trials of those already charged with theft, and also that Mr. Currie had been appointed to conduct an inquiry, which would deal fully with that situation.
We need no inquiry into the report of another inquiry. We need action on the report now before us. It makes positive recommendations. You have expressed your confidence in Mr. Currie's integrity, ability and good judgment. We share that confidence in every respect. I submit that it is the duty of the government to act on those recommendations without delay. I further submit that it is the duty of the government to conduct a similar inquiry into every aspect of the organization and administration of the Department of National Defence. I repeat my request that Mr. Currie be given this authority.

Now, if those words were pertinent, as they were before Christmas, they are very definitely underlined now that the Auditor General's report has been received. We fear, as we have said before, that the defence expenditures committee may not be able to go into all the details of operations and expenditures of money that it would like to go into. Petawawa camp has been cited as one case and it is possible that the committee, in its final report or in its actions which will produce that final report, will reflect the will of the government rather than the rights of the citizens because, whether we would like to feel we can be independent or not, we do know that there is party discipline and that it is such that the government can rely upon the majority of its supporters to support it in anything it does. In fact, I would go so far as to say that in some respects we have travelled a long way on the road to Moscow and that we do live on the edge of a dictatorship.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


An hon. Member:: It is the return trip that is tough.


George Randolph Pearkes: In case the committee cannot fulfil all the functions that it would like to fulfil or that it is called upon to fulfil by the Prime Minister's resolution, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Calgary East (Mr. Harkness), a further amendment which reads as follows:
(a)	By striking out the words of the amendment, namely: "and initially to give priority in their examination to the expenditures and commitments of the Canadian army works services as dealt with in the report of G. S. Currie, Esquire, chartered accountant, tabled in the House of Commons on December 15, 1952", and,
(b)	by adding at the end of the motion as amended the following words:
"and inasmuch as the report of G. S. Currie on the Department of National Defence is a matter of prime importance to the people of Canada this house is of the opinion that the said G. S. Currie should be authorized to continue his inquiries and conduct a similar investigation to that already undertaken into all aspects of organization, accounting and administration of the Department of National Defence."


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I think the first part of this motion, part (a), is out of order because it is merely a negative of the proposal that these words be inserted in the motion. It is nothing but an expanded negative, and those who believe that the proper course would be not to have the words of the amendment in the motion have only to vote against the motion to insert them.
As to the second part, it is certainly not an amendment to the motion and certainly not the kind of proposal that can be put before the house without notice.
Committee on Defence Expenditure


Some hon. Members:: Ha, ha!


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: My hon. friends may say "ha, ha" all they like.


William Earl Rowe: What a difference a few hours
make.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: I would not like to be out of order but I am afraid that the horse complex is having some influence upon the expressions that we have just heard.


An hon. Member:: We know all about horses.


William Earl Rowe: And so do you fellows.


Mr. Speaker:: Order.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Perhaps I should sit down and allow the hon. gentleman to have his say.


William Earl Rowe: I will proceed if you wish-at any time.


Mr. Speaker:: Order.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: This is something that proposes an alternative to the setting up of a committee and that, I submit, is not the kind of thing that can be done by amendment. I think that Your Honour made it quite clear this afternoon what the ruling that had been cited to you did apply to and what it did not apply to. You said that it did not apply to an instruction to do something in the committee that it would have the right to do but would not have an obligation to do if the amendment were not made. This is entirely different. This is the expression of an opinion:
"and inasmuch as the report of G. S. Currie on the Department of National Defence is a matter of prime importance to the people of Canada this house is of the opinion that the said G. S. Currie should be authorized to continue his enquiries and conduct a similar investigation to that already undertaken into all aspects of organization, accounting and administration of the Department of National Defence."
That, I submit, is not an amendment to a motion to set up a committee. It is something that is entirely foreign to the subject matter of what is now before the house.


Mr. Harkness:: Technicalities.


George Alexander Drew: Mr. Speaker, I would point out that this is not a negative of the proposal to set up a committee. It leaves the motion to set up the committee intact.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Mr. Speaker, I made that reference only with respect to part (a) of the motion which is a negative of the amendment to the motion. I did not say that the whole thing was a negative of the original motion, it is a negative of the amendment to the motion.

Committee on Defence Expenditure


George Alexander Drew: Mr. Speaker, it leaves the motion to set up the committee intact, and puts forward an amendment related to the subject matter of that motion. It provides a method by which there can be a real inquiry in accordance with the needs demonstrated to this' house. I submit it is both in order and desirable that the amendment stand.


William Earl Rowe: It should stand, even though it is dangerous.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: The hon. gentleman is not as dangerous as he thinks he is.


William Earl Rowe: Wait and see.


Mr. Chevrier:: We have been waiting for a long time.


William Earl Rowe: Let the public tell you. It will not be long now; they are waiting to tell you.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The amendment to the amendment proposes to strike out entirely the words of the amendment, and to substitute other words which are not relevant to the amendment. I do not think there is any precedent for that.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Speaker, are you giving a ruling now or will you hear argument on the point of order?


Mr. Speaker:: I was starting to give my
ruling.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I did not know whether you were delivering your ruling or whether you were stating a point for discussion.


Mr. Speaker:: I do not want to abruptly cut off the hon. member if he has any representations to make. I have made one statement respecting my ruling, that the first clause of the subamendment is out of order because it proposes to strike out the entire words of the amendment and to substitute therefor words which are in no way relevant to the words which were struck out.


Donald Methuen Fleming: May I say a word with respect to that, sir? The amendment which was offered this afternoon by a minister of the crown to a government motion, proposes that certain instructions be given to the committee with reference to the Currie report. The Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) says that the amendment just now introduced by the hon. member for Nanaimo (Mr. Pearkes) is an expanded negative with reference to the subject matter of the first amendment offered this afternoon. With respect, Mr. Speaker, I submit that it is not an expanded negative but an alternative method of dealing with the same subject matter, namely the Currie report. The subamendment proposes that Mr. Currie, the author of that report, be instructed to extend the report and the inquiry upon which he has already embarked.
TMr. St. Laurent.]

Now, with respect, Mr. Speaker, that is not an expanded negative. In order to come within the rule the Prime Minister is invoking it has to be an expanded negative and nothing more. This is a great deal more. This deals with the same subject matter, and with great respect I submit that on the first point the Prime Minister's objection is not well taken.
On the second point, sir, the Prime Minister raises the ground that this is a new subject matter that is introduced. I take the view that, in its essence, the amendment introduced by the hon. member for Nanaimo is clearly in order if the amendment introduced this afternoon by the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Claxton) was in order on the original motion. There cannot be any distinction in principle between these two amendments as to their being in order with reference to the motion that was introduced by the Prime Minister today. If it means that this amendment to the amendment is to be ruled out now by this appeal of the Prime Minister to subtlety, I think it will be clear to the house and the public just why it was that a government minister this afternoon introduced this amendment to a government motion.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Could I ask the hon. member who moved this subamendment if the language is not somewhat erroneous. He speaks of striking out the words of the subamendment, and there is no subamendment. There is a motion and an amendment. I think the hon. member-


George Randolph Pearkes: It should be "the amendment".


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: I think the hon. member meant the words of the amendment, and the word "sub" should be taken out.


Mr. Speaker:: As I said this afternoon, I cannot be concerned with what the effect of either allowing or disallowing an amendment will be. If the rules of this house provide that the amendment should be allowed, then I will allow it to stand. If, on the other hand, they provide that it should not be allowed then I cannot allow it to stand. If hon. members are dissatisfied with the rules of the house then it is for the members of the house to change them, not for the Speaker of the house.
The hon. member for Eglinton (Mr. Fleming) has referred to the amendment which was moved this afternoon, and stated that if that amendment was in order then the subamendment should be in order. I think the contents of the amendments are entirely different. The amendment which was allowed this afternoon directed the committee to give priority to a certain matter. I think
9G7

all hon. members, upon reading the rules and upon reflection, will agree that such an amendment is in order.
I am now concerned with the subamendment that has been moved. The (a) clause of the subamendment purports to strike out all the words of the amendment and to insert other words jvhich are not relevant to the words that art struck out. To that extent, the subamendment is out of order. The (b) clause of the subamendment proposes that this house is of the opinion that the said G. S. Currie should be authorized to continue his inquiries. The motion before the house is to set up a committee to do certain things. It does seem to me that the (b) clause is foreign to the motion which is now before the house.
Probably the mover of the motion had in mind the procedure on the second reading of a bill. On the second reading of a bill a motion can be made that the bill be not now read a second time but that certain further information should be sought, etc. I know of no such procedure with respect to the setting up of a committee. I have no alternative but to declare the subamendment out of order.
Probably at this time I should refer to certain words which were used by the Leader of <the Opposition (Mr. Drew) this afternoon. Before doing so, however, I should like to say that the Hansard reporter was correct in not endeavouring to read, on the floor of the house, the report which he had made of the proceedings in the house. I hope I did not embarrass him by suggesting that he should do so. I think the house will agree with me that in our service there are no more faithful or efficient public servants than the members of the Hansard staff. The only thing I can say is that he missed the opportunity of being the first Hansard reporter to make a speech on the floor of the house.
With reference to the words that were used this afternoon, may I say that I have here a copy of the Hansard report. I have had an opportunity of reading it and on doing so I find that no one-myself, the Prime Minister (Mr. St.. Laurent) nor the Leader of the Opposition-recalled exactly what had been said in the heat of debate. Under the circumstances I am satisfied that I should accept the words which the Leader of the Opposition recalled that he had used. In those words I can find no intention to reflect on the independence of any hon. member. Accordingly the incident should be considered as closed.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, I am sure the house
Committee on Defence Expenditure will be interested to learn that it is my intention, at the conclusion of my remarks, to move another subamendment. I believe that my subamendment will be recognized as being in order. It has been drafted with a close consideration of the discussion that took place this afternoon, and I believe it meets the conditions that were laid down when the amendment of the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Claxton) was accepted as being in order. However, Mr. Speaker, before I get to the subamendment which it is my intention to move, I wish to say a few things with respect to the motion and the amendment now before the house.
We of this group support the idea of there being established once again a special committee on defence expenditure. We are fully conscious of the shortcomings of that committee, particularly because of the fact that it is composed of too large a majority of supporters of the government. If a committee of this type is to be effective, we feel that here is one place where the committee should be divided fifty-fifty between supporters of the government and opposition members in this house. In addition, I should like to see an independent chairman; but I am not just sure who is an independent member in this present House of Commons.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I say that with all due apologies to the hon. member for Comox-Alberni (Mr. Gibson). At any rate, Mr. Speaker, we hope that this committee will be able to make inquiries that will be useful, and that some progress will be made in tightening up the administration-and in particular the financial administration-of the Department of National Defence.
Likewise we have no quarrel with the substance of the amendment moved this afternoon by the Minister of National Defence, which suggests that the defence expenditure committee should give priority to consideration of the Currie report. In saying this we have no illusions as to what is likely to happen. We are satisfied that there will be an attempt by the government members of that *committee to whitewash that report. Nevertheless, in our view the report stands on its own feet and an attempt to whitewash it, though it may be done by a majority vote, will not be effective or successful in the eyes of the Canadian people who have been shocked at the disclosures which have come about as a result of the investigation made by Mr. Currie.
Having said that, Mr. Speaker, I want to say that in our view the speech of the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Claxton)

Committee on Defence Expenditure this afternoon, while it covered a great many aspects of the matter now before us, was one in which he completely overlooked what to us is one of the most serious aspects of this whole question. Not only did he, in our view, overlook what we regard as of serious concern, but he made comments which seemed to me to suggest that he would not appreciate the seriousness of the point even if it were drawn to his attention. The point that we feel is most serious about this whole business is the question as to the proper place of the armed forces in a democracy. Are they the servant of the state, of the people of the country through their elected representatives, or are they in charge? Are the armed forces entitled to dictate to the government and to push other people around? In our view there has been too much evidence of that attitude throughout this whole business, and that is our primary concern at the present time.
I may say, Mr. Speaker, that during the last month several things have happened which have underlined our concern as to who is running the show, the heads of the army or the elected government of this country. Our first concern over that matter arose on the morning of December 15 when the Prime Minister tabled the official copy of the Currie report. Hon. members will recall that, when he tabled the report, he placed on Hansard at the same time a memorandum from the chief of the general staff. During the course of his remarks at that time he stated that he was giving us that memorandum because the chief of the general staff thought that the views contained in that memorandum should be given publicity at the same time as the revelations contained in the Currie report itself. When the Prime Minister was questioned by my deskmate, the hon. member for Melfort (Mr. Wright), during the course of debate in the next day or so as to why he had done this, the Prime Minister interjected to say that he was prepared to give the answer right then and there. He said he did it because he was requested to do so by the chief of the general staff. In our view, Mr. Speaker, the chief of the general staff had no right to ask the elected Prime Minister of this country to table that memorandum, and in our view the Prime Minister had no right to accede to that request. We take a strong view of that whole incident as indicative of a state of mind on the part of the top officers in the army which is not consistent with democratic practice.
It should be made clear, Mr. Speaker, that though what we say seems to be by way of levelling blame at the chief of the general staff, it should not be forgotten that it is the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Claxton), it is the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent),

it is the government which is responsible for the kind of set-up that they have in the general staff, responsible for the attitude that the heads of the army display in a situation like this. They have to take the responsibility for it; and as the heads of a democratic state I submit that they are missing the whole point.
Now, that was the first evidence in this present story of the domineering attitude on the part of the military staff. The second evidence, in our view, was the fact that a draft of Mr. Currie's report was shown to the deputy minister of national defence, and perhaps was seen by others, with the result that suggestions were made as to changes that might be made in that report.
I shall have something to say a little later about the fact that a copy of the first draft of this report came into the possession of my leader, the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell). But let it be made clear right now that no one doubts the authenticity of this draft which my leader received, and no one denies that changes were made.
Between the first draft and the second draft changes were made. For instance, on page 17 the words "at or near the top" were deleted and in their place were put the words "higher up".
The Prime Minister confirmed on Wednesday, December 17, that a copy of the first draft of the report had been given to the deputy minister of national defence, and that at least one other official in the department had seen it. When I asked whether the chief of the general staff had seen it, he said that he did not know. This afternoon the Minister of National Defence likewise confirmed the fact that that first draft of the report was placed in the hands of the deputy minister. And we learned one further item this afternoon from the minister, namely that prior to that first copy of the report in multilith, there was a typewritten copy showing the form in which the report was to be set up, and that that, too, had been shown to the deputy minister.
The Minister of National Defence said this afternoon that he could not understand why we were at all concerned about the fact that the earlier draft, or earlier drafts, were shown to the deputy minister. He made great play on the fact that it was he who had appointed Mr. Currie, and that it was his desire and wish that there should be this report.
I suggest to the Minister of National Defence that what this parliament and this country thought when Mr. Currie was appointed to do this job was that we would get a completely independent report-and I

hope I can still use the word "independent" in this house. We had hoped it would be a completely independent report, objective and without any influence being brought to bear on the investigator by those being investigated.
Now, how anyone can imagine that there would be a complete lack of such influence, when earlier drafts of that report were taken to the people being investigated, is beyond my power to understand. The Minister of National Defence, although he is the minister and thus the head of the department and responsible for it, seems to partake of the attitude of his top officials and officers, because he told us this afternoon that when Mr. Currie objected to showing Mr. Drury the first copy-the first multilith copy-he, the Minister of National Defence, suggested to his deputy minister that further conversation be had about this, and that perhaps Mr. Currie could be persuaded to let a copy of his report in that form be seen by the department.
In other words, the Minister of National Defence is part and parcel with his military heads, and all the rest of them, in this feeling that in connection with any investigation that is being made into the affairs of that department, any report to be made upon the basis of that investigation can be seen by them before that report is put in its final form and presented to the minister for presentation to parliament.
In other words, along with the earlier incident to which I referred, here you have what to me is proof positive of the fact that in the military heads of this country today we have this feeling, that somehow or another it is their show, that they have the right to say what is to be done, that they have the right to run it, rather than it being the right of the elected people, or of the government chosen by the people of this country.
Mr. Speaker, to us this is a matter of principle which is extremely important, and we feel that this government has been in power so long that it has forgotten some of the basic principles of democracy. It has forgotten the relationship that should exist between the government of a democracy and the armed forces.


Mr. Ferrie:: You sure have forgotten the principle.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Now, after that part of the story, the next item which was of interest to me was to read in the press a day or two after we left here for the Christmas recess that the same chief of the general staff- and if I mention his name repeatedly, I 68108-62
Committee on Defence Expenditure say again it is the Minister of National Defence who is responsible for what the chief of the general staff does, and who is responsible for the whole attitude of the people who come under him-had issued certain orders.
Indeed as I have said, I was amazed to read in the press that the chief of the general staff had issued orders that members of the armed forces and employees of the Department of National Defence were requested not to discuss the Currie report. Well, Mr. Speaker, the more these things come to light, the more one wonders just how well those on the government benches understand the meaning of democracy. Surely it is inconceivable that employees of the Department of National Defence and, in fact, people in uniform, should be denied the right to discuss the Currie report. Well, it is inconceivable; but we have had so many displays of this arrogant and domineering attitude on the part of the top military people who do not seem to realize that this is a democracy, that perhaps it is all of a piece that they seek to deny the right to free discussion.
But while the chief of the general staff denies to the people to whom he can issue orders the right to discuss the Currie report, he does not hesitate to discuss it himself. One need only mention the memorandum he requested the Prime Minister to table on December 15, when the Currie report was first tabled. But there is now before us the December issue of the Canadian Army Journal. This issue is dated December, 1952, but apparently it came out only within the last day or two. So far as I can ascertain it made its appearance only yesterday.
I find on pages 2 and 3 of this issue a message to the Canadian army from the chief of the general staff. It is over the signature of G. G. Simonds, lieutenant-general, and chief of the general staff. Hon. members are aware of what is in this message, because it has been given wide publicity in the press of today. It is a very nicely worded document. It does not say members of parliament have been saying some things they should not have said, but the reference is very clearly to the discussions which have gone on in this House of Commons. It says, for example:
In recent weeks and months the army has been the target of unremitting attacks from many sources. We have been criticized for the indiscipline of Canadian soldiers. We have been criticized for too much discipline. We have been criticized for extravagance and criticized for not providing a whole host of things which cost a very great deal of money. We have been criticized for lack of morale and accused of complacency and arrogance when we have shown or proclaimed a pride in the Canadian army.

Committee on Defence Expenditure
Then he goes on, after a few more sentences, to say:
Some of this criticism has been, and will continue to be, unfairly biased and irresponsible-
That is what the chief of general staff is saying about what members of parliament, in discharging their responsibilities to their constituents, have been saying here in the House of Commons. He says:
Some of this criticism has been, and will continue to be, unfairly biased and irresponsible but that will be as clear to the citizens and taxpayers outside the army as to those that serve in it.
Perhaps it would not have been quite so bad for the chief of general staff to take to himself the right to make these comments about discussions that have taken place in parliament, if he had not already been responsible for an order requesting those to whom he can issue orders not to discuss the Currie report. The concluding sentence in this message from the chief of the general staff reads:
I charge every soldier to apply himself in all those matters where we clearly need improvement but not to be discouraged or depressed by criticisms which are neither founded on truth nor justified in the light of our positive achievements.
Whose criticism is he referring to as neither founded on truth nor justified? The criticisms made in this House of Commons; the criticisms made by Mr. Currie? Apparently it is both. I submit, Mr. Speaker, that it is high time the minister, who accepts responsibility for all that goes on in the armed forces, took a look at this kind of thing and asked the question as to where it fits into the whole concept of democracy under which, in our view, the armed forces should be the servants and not the masters of the state.
Well, still another bit of evidence of this attitude has already been referred to by the hon. member for Nanaimo (Mr. Pearkes) who took his seat only a few moments ago. As hon. members know, there appeared yesterday the public accounts and the Auditor General's report for the year ending March 31, 1952. In this report there are a number of references to things that had been happening in the financial administration of the armed forces. There is reference to a brigadier who for three months was drawing two government pay cheques, one for his service as a civil servant seconded to duties here in Ottawa and one for his rank in the army. There is reference to an area commandant who had something to do with having a house improved to the extent of $15,000, when the amount approved for those improvements was only $800; and incidentally, it comes out now in the press at any rate that that particular person was

Brigadier Connelly who was recently retired, and we in this house were not given at that time the information as to why he was retired. It raises another question. Why was this brigadier posted to Tokyo, if it was after the disclosures contained in the Auditor General's report with respect to his part in going beyond the financial regulations under which the Department of National Defence is supposed to function?
The Minister of National Defence said clearly, and I was not surprised-I would expect him to say what he said this afternoon, in view of his academic knowledge of democracy-that he is responsible for what goes on. Well, he is responsible for this. Immediately we get the tabling of Mr. Watson Sellar's report we get a blast from the officials of the Department of National Defence against Mr. Watson Sellar. Well, it is not the first time that the Auditor General has been criticized. The Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) has criticized him on the floor of this house, and it is his right to do so; but I submit that the heads of the army are in a little different position, particularly in the light of what has been going on. When the same people who have been taking this attitude in all of the instances I have indicated here, again take that attitude today in the light of Mr. Watson Sellar's report, that is a clear indication that we have to check this kind of thing and ask the question whether or not the general staff of our army is getting out of hand and seeking to run the show which should be run by the democratically elected people of this country.
I could say more on this whole question, Mr. Speaker, because of our deep concern about it, but despite the fact that my forty minutes will not be up at ten o'clock I should like to finish by that time. As I indicated earlier, there are at least two other things I want to do. At the end of my remarks I have an amendment to move. But before I do that I wish to say something in reply to what the Minister of National Defence said about the earlier copy of the Currie report which came into the possession of my leader, the hon. member for Rose-town-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell).
The Minister of National Defence expressed the view that it was a matter of serious concern as to how the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar got that earlier copy, and I am not surprised that there would be interest in that question on the part of hon. members opposite but I suggest to them that they will fail if they try to make a red herring out of that issue and try to blow it up and becloud the real issue, so far as our getting a copy of that report is

concerned, which is the fact that changes were made, and that they were made after suggestions had been given to Mr. Currie's representatives by officials of the Department of National Defence, and perhaps by officers of the general staff.
However, this afternoon the Minister of National Defence said that he would like to table certain correspondence between himself and Mr. Currie, between himself and myself, and between himself and the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar. I expressed the desire that that correspondence not only be tabled but that it appear on the pages of Hansard. That request was granted. I had a particular reason for expressing the hope that that particular correspondence would appear on the pages of Hansard. My reason was that I wanted everyone to be able to see what it was that the Minister of National Defence wrote to the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar. The correspondence with me is of no particular significance, but it is on the record. I have not yet seen the correspondence with Mr. Currie, but I shall read it with interest. The Minister of National Defence wrote the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar on January 8, 1953, and after expressing the hope that my leader's health would soon be better-and I am glad to report that he is making a splendid recovery following his recent operation-he went on to say that Mr. Currie had indicated that he would welcome any further investigation which the department or any other authority might deem was expedient to make from any angle or direction. Then after that the Minister of National Defence says:
The R.C.M.P. are being instructed accordingly.


An hon. Member:: Why not?


Stanley Howard Knowles: The letter continues:
Before, however, they start, it would be of assistance if you could make available to me any information that you may have bearing on this.
I thought that threats in the House of Commons, threats from one member of parliament to another, were out of order in this democratic set-up, Mr. Speaker. But here we have a veiled threat from the Minister of National Defence to the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar that if he is not prepared to give information as to how he got his copy of the report the R.C.M.P. will be put on the job.


Some hon. Members:: Why not?


Stanley Howard Knowles: All those hon. members who are shouting "why not" are simply revealing that they have no understanding of the importance of the independence of parliament, which is definitely threatened by this attitude on the part of the minister.
68108-62J
Committee on Defence Expenditure


Brooke Claxton: May I ask just one question?
I have interrupted no one in this debate, but does the hon. member know that the letter received by the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar, his leader, was not stolen?


Edmund Davie Fulton: That is a sensible interruption!


Mr. Speaker:: Order.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I have been in touch with my leader, the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar, since I came to Ottawa and he has given me the letter which he received from the Minister of National Defence and also a copy of the reply which he wrote to the minister. I only regret that my time is running out and that I have not time to read the full terms of that letter.


Some hon. Members:: Go ahead.


Stanley Howard Knowles: It is not necessary because it will be on Hansard. It was put on Hansard this afternoon and hon. members can read it. In my view it is an excellent letter when one realizes that my leader dictated it in hospital without having any chance to refer to the authorities in connection with this whole question. Now, Mr. Speaker, by way of contrast with this-


Mr. Marlin:: Question.


Some hon. Members:: Answer the question.


Stanley Howard Knowles: What question?


Murdo William Martin: The Minister of National
Defence asked a question.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I thought I answered the question.


Mr. Speaker:: Order.


Brooke Claxton: I thought the loudspeaker apparatus was very good, Mr. Speaker. The question I asked was this: Was the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre aware of the fact that the letter received by his leader and referred to by him in the house, which is the subject of his present remarks, was not stolen?


Mr. Hees:: So what?


Edmund Davie Fulton: The question is not improved by repetition.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I am sorry; I misunderstood the Minister of National Defence. When he said "letter" I thought he was referring to the letter from the Minister of National Defence to my leader.


Brooke Claxton: I beg your pardon. I made a mistake there. It is a draft of the report. I am sorry I used the word "letter". I was referring to the draft of the Currie report, of course.
972	HOUSE OF
Committee on Defence Expenditure


Stanley Howard Knowles: The minister admits that he made a mistake. It was a report that my hon. leader received and not a letter. There was no letter with it whatsoever.


Brooke Claxton: That is right; the report.


Gladstone Mansfield Ferrie: Who stole the report?


Mr. Speaker:: Order.


Stanley Howard Knowles: It had been my hope to conclude my remarks by ten o'clock.


Mr. Cannon:: Will the hon. member permit a question?


Stanley Howard Knowles: Yes.


Charles-Arthur Dumoulin Cannon: Will the hon. member tell the house who stole the copy of the report and who received the stolen goods on the part of the C.C.F. party?


Stanley Howard Knowles: May I ask the hon. member if he has stopped beating his wife?


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


An hon. Member:: That's the way to go.


An hon. Member:: Isn't that bright?


Stanley Howard Knowles: I am afraid I shall have to renege on my promise to try to finish by ten o'clock. I will have to take a bit of time to conclude what I have to say on the next occasion this matter is before the house, but between now and ten o'clock I do want to-


Mr. Larson:: Will the hon. member permit another question?


Stanley Howard Knowles: Save it for the next day.


Frederick Hugo Larson: Is he prepared to answer the question put by the hon. member for Iles-de-la-Madeleine (Mr. Cannon)?


Stanley Howard Knowles: I wish to let the house see how differently matters of this kind are dealt with in another parliament. I refer to the parliament of the United Kingdom, often referred to as the mother of parliaments, a place from which we still have a great deal to learn. I have in my hand a copy of the Hansard of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom for June and July, 1938.


An hon. Member:: Answer the question.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Hon. members may recall a very interesting and significant incident that occurred during that year in the United Kingdom when a member by the name of Mr. Sandys put a question on the order paper-


Charles-Arthur Dumoulin Cannon: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, if a member permits a question does he not have to answer it?


Mr. Speaker:: It is in the discretion of the hon. member who has the floor.


An hon. Member:: He used it.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker-


An hon. Member:: Answer the question.


Mr. Dickey:: He answers if he has an answer.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Sandys, as hon. members may recall, placed a question on the order paper of the United Kingdom House of Commons which revealed that he was in possession of certain information that the government thought he was not entitled to have. As a matter of fact it was information covered by their official secrets act. The report that came into the possession of my leader was not covered by any official secrets act. It was not a government document. The minister himself said today that there is only one official Currie report, the one that was tabled in the house on December 15. The document that came into the possession of my leader was not a government document at all. I submit that the government has no right to question my leader with respect to how he got it. If Mr. Currie wishes to do so that, is his business, but it is not a government document that we are talking about when we refer to the report received by my leader.


Mr. McCann:: You have contended all day that it was a government document.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The Minister of National Defence said today there was only one.


James Joseph McCann: You have contended all day it was a government document. You said it was a government document.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The first draft of a document which was later presented to the government.


James Joseph McCann: You did not say that.


An hon. Member:: Don't bother with that backbencher.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, getting back to the story of Mr. Sandys, when that question appeared on the order paper of the British House of Commons he was called into the office of the attorney general, corresponding to our Minister of Justice (Mr. Garson), and asked to disclose the source of his information. He refused. The attorney general of the United Kingdom government of that day-


Donald Methuen Fleming: A Labour government?


Stanley Howard Knowles: No, 1938.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I thought you said 1948.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The Chamberlain government, a Tory government, very much Tory. The attorney general of that day told Mr. JANUARY 13, 1953
Sandys what the law was and that he was liable to a certain fine or to imprisonment for two years. Mr. Sandys said he would seek advice on the matter. Within a few days he was up on the floor of the British House of Commons raising a question of privilege over the fact that he had been interrogated in that way by the attorney general. I am sorry that time does not permit me to read what took place.


Some hon. Members:: Go ahead.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The result was a very interesting procedural and constitutional debate in the mother of parliaments over the rights and privileges of members of parliament. A motion was moved by the then prime minister, the Right Hon. Neville Chamberlain, and such well-known figures as the Right Hon. Clement Attlee and the Right Hon. Winston Churchill took part in the debate. The remarks of Sinclair, Churchill, Attlee, Henderson and others-and I shall give the quotations the next time we come back to this matter-were all to the effect that the government had the legal right to take action against a member of parliament but in the name of the rights and the privileges of parliament it should not do so.
It was made crystal clear by men like Churchill, Attlee and others that if you told members of parliament that they would have to disclose their sources of information you would strike at one of the very springs of the whole democratic process. I invite hon. members to read that most interesting and important debate and then to compare what happened there with what is happening here. There in the mother of parliaments they respect the privileges and the freedom of individual members of parliament. They have an idea of the independence of members and they expect members of parliament to be free to serve their constituents and to do what they think is best for the well-being of the country. Not only was there this interesting debate on the floor of the house, but a motion was passed to set up a corn-
Committee on Defence Expenditure mittee to go into the whole question. The committee made a report which is contained in a document from which I could also quote. Look at the difference.


Gladstone Mansfield Ferrie: May I ask a question?


Stanley Howard Knowles: No; next time. When I finish my speech I will be glad to answer a dozen questions from the hon. member for Mackenzie (Mr. Ferrie). Note the difference, Mr. Speaker. Over there the whole concern is to protect the privileges and the freedoms of members. Here when a member like my leader, the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar, receives information whioh he feels it is his duty to have brought before the House of Commons, he gets a letter-while he is in hospital-threatening the use of the R.C.M.P.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I believe I have another eight or ten minutes, Mr. Speaker, and I will reserve the conclusion of my remarks until I come back to the subject at the next opportunity. Before I close, however, perhaps I might indicate, so that you will have it, sir, and so that other members will know what it is, the terms of the amendment that I intend to move, and which is to be seconded by my colleague the hon. member for Cape Breton South (Mr. Gillis), at the conclusion of my remarks. The amendment will read as follows:
That the amendment be amended by adding thereto the following words:
"and to give consideration to the desirability of recommending that Mr. Currie be asked to conduct a further inquiry into any other expenditures and commitments covered by the terms of this resolution."
On motion of Mr. Knowles the debate was adjourned.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Fournier (Hull):: Tomorrow is private members' day. We will proceed according to standing order 15.


Mr. Fraser:: The government will be glad of that.


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

[Stage Direction]
Ottawa, December 22, 1952
Air Mail
Special Delivery
George S. Currie, Esq., C.A.,
McDonald, Currie & Company,
507 Place d'Armes,
Montreal, Quebec.
Dear Mr. Currie:
Having returned over the week end from the meeting of the North Atlantic council, I take this opportunity of acknowledging personally the receipt of your report on investigation of army works services which was handed to Mr. C. M. Drury, deputy minister of national defence, on Monday, December 8, and which reached me in Paris on Sunday, December 14.
I find from Hansard for December 15 that Mr. Stanley Knowles, member of parliament for Winnipeg North Centre, stated in the House of Commons that he had been comparing some of the pages in your report which had been tabled in the house that morning with, and now I quote from Mr. Knowles, "the same pages in another printed copy of the report" which had been in the possession of his leader for a few days.
The Prime Minister and Mr. Campney inspected the document in Mr. Knowles' possession which bore the same date as your report and appeared to be the same in form and type as the report itself, though it was unsigned and had textual differences referred to by Mr. Knowles. This would lead one to believe that what Mr. Knowles had in his possession was a duplicate copy of the draft of your report dated November 26.
As you know, your representative on November 27 left with the deputy minister one copy of a draft of the report bearing the date November 26 and reproduced in the same manner and by the same process as the report itself, for the purpose of checking for errors of fact. The deputy minister had conversations with your representatives on December the 1st, and pointed out what he felt to be some errors of fact in the draft, and on Monday, December 8, when your representative delivered five signed copies of the report to the deputy minister of national defence, the deputy minister handed back the draft he had received on November 27.
I am informed by the deputy minister that to the best of his knowledge this was the only
copy of the draft received by the Department of National Defence, and as it was returned to you, I would therefore conclude that the one in the possession of Mr. Knowles cannot have come from the department.
On December the 8th, five signed copies of your report were handed to the deputy minister, with a letter of transmittal dated December the 8th. The signed reports are dated November 26, though they contain some textual changes which would appear to have been made after December the 1st. What has been a source of some confusion is that the signed report submitted on December the 8th and the unsigned draft submitted to Mr. Drury and the unsigned document in the hands of Mr. Knowles are all dated November the 26th.
I am sure you were as surprised as I was to learn that this document should have got into the hands of Mr. Knowles, or his leader, before the signed report was delivered to the Department of National Defence, and I should be grateful if you would cause inquiry to be made and advise me how it happened that a draft of your proposed report came into the hands of anyone not authorized to receive it.
Yours sincerely,
Brooke Claxton
McDonald, Currie & Co.
Chartered Accountants
507 Place d'Armes Montreal 1
24th December, 1952
The Honourable Brooke Claxton, D.C.M.,

[Stage Direction]
Minister of National Defence,
Ottawa, Canada.
Dear Mr. Minister,
On my return from New York this morning I am in receipt of your letter of the 22nd December relative to the situation therein referred to in connection with my report on the investigation of the army works services.
I had, of course, seen from Hansard and from press reports of proceedings in the house the mysterious developments in connection with some copy of the report invoked by Mr. Knowles as being in the possession of his leader.

At the moment, this whole situation is beyond comprehension, and I have been having and am continuing to have the fullest possible inquiry and investigation made at this end, with a view to getting to the bottom of it, if possible.
I shall advise you more fully at the earliest possible date.
Yours sincerely,
G. S. Currie
McDonald, Currie & Co.
Chartered Accountants
507 Place d'Armes Montreal 1 29th December 1952
The Honourable Brooke Claxton, D.C.M.,

[Stage Direction]
Minister of National Defence,
Ottawa, Canada.
Dear Mr. Minister,
With further reference to your letter of the 22nd December and my acknowledgment thereof dated 24th December, I now give you further particulars in regard to the print reproduction and submission of my report.
Some time prior to the completion of my report in the form to have it print reproduced, I asked my partner, Mr. Davey, to call upon the deputy minister of national defence and to tell him that I did not propose to show him a copy of my draft report. On the 5th November 1952 Mr. Davey called upon the deputy minister of national defence and told him that, notwithstanding our exchange of factual data from time to time for purposes of verification, I had no intention of submitting a draft of the report in final form prior to the actual signing and delivery of the report itself. Mr. Davey reported that the deputy minister agreed they should not see any draft report.
On the 19th November there was delivered to the printer in Montreal (later referred to) a typescript of my report for the purposes of print reproduction thereof. On the 25th November two print reproductions of my report were delivered by the printer to my office for checking and final consideration. Under the offset print reproduction process used by the printer, it is the practice to run off all copies required to complete the anticipated final full order, which in this case was one hundred copies. This he did, but only ten (10) copies were actually assembled as units, of which two (2) were delivered to my office as already stated, and the other eight (8) stayed with the printer and were at all times so kept and were there when the final prints (with all changes and/or additions) were required by me. If changes or additions
are necessary, the pages involved are reproduced in their entirety. I had promised that the report would be delivered to you on or before 30th November, and, had not the delay occurred through sending a copy to Ottawa, I feel I would have been able to sign the report on the 26th November. This accounts for the final report being dated 26th November.
On the 26th November before the checking and final consideration had been completed by me here, Mr. Drury, the deputy minister, called on the telephone from Ottawa. During his telephone conversation with me, Mr. Drury mentioned the minister and went on to intimate to me that it seemed desirable that the final text of the intended report be submitted to him (before the report was actually signed and delivered) in order that purely factual matters dealt with in the report could be verified as to their accuracy. I gather that his reason for this was that in such connection there had been instances in the Mainguy report where purely factual matters of this nature had not been properly dealt with. While, during this conversation with Mr. Drury, I expressed some disinclination to follow such a course, the upshot was that it was understood that I would submit to him one of the two print reproduction copies above referred to but solely for the purpose of enabling verification of factual matters and data dealt with in the report as so formulated. I decided that I would ask my partner, Mr. Cleary, to personally deliver the said copy to the deputy minister. I called Mr. Cleary, who was in Ottawa, and described the situation to him. That afternoon I had one of the two print reproduction copies which I had received from the printer mailed to Mr. Cleary, who, on the following day, the 27th November, delivered it in person to the deputy minister.
The printer already referred to has been in business in Montreal for many years and enjoys a reputation of meticulous care in maintaining the confidential nature of his business. This I had ascertained from sources which I considered reliable, before entrusting the work to him. I have attended at his office and plant and have examined the manner in which he handles his business, and I cannot believe that the copy in the hands of unauthorized third parties could have been obtained from him.
I am most anxious that this matter should be cleared up as soon as possible. If I could have an opportunity of examining the copy referred to by Mr. Knowles as being in the possession of his leader, I feel there are certain characteristics peculiar to the first print reproduction copies received from the printer which would enable me to determine
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whether the copy in the possession of Mr. Knowles or his leader could, in fact, have emanated from that source. Failing being given an opportunity to examine this copy, I would welcome an investigation by some competent authority as to the origin of this mysterious copy.
Yours sincerely,
G. S. Currie.
Ottawa, January 2, 1953.
G. S. Currie, Esq., C.A.,
McDonald, Currie & Co.,
Chartered Accountants,
507 Place d'Armes,
Montreal 1, Quebec.
Dear Mr. Currie,
Following the receipt of your letter of December 29, I made inquiries and found that Mr. Knowles was in Winnipeg. Accordingly, I am writing to him by air mail, but it may be a few days before I get a reply and I hope that in the meantime it may be possible for you to trace the means whereby a copy of the report reached Mr. Coldwell.
Questions which naturally arise are the following:
Am I correct in understanding from your letter that all the ten copies that were put together have been accounted for?
Have the other ninety copies also been accounted for?
Has the printer been able to satisfy you that no other copies were made?.
Yours sincerely,
Brooke Claxton
Air Mail Registered Special Delivery
Ottawa, January 3, 1953.
Stanley Knowles, Esq., M.P.,
485 Dominion Street,
Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Dear Mr. Knowles:
Following my return from the meeting of the North Atlantic council, I told Mr. Currie that the information given to me by the deputy minister of national defence made it seem impossible that the copy of the draft of Mr. Currie's report which was given to Mr. Coldwell could have come from this department. I asked Mr. Currie to explain how a copy of the draft could have been given to Mr. Coldwell.
In order to help trace this, Mr. Currie has now asked if he might see the copy of the draft held by you.
I would be glad if, to facilitate this inquiry, you could either let me have the draft for Mr. Currie or hand it to him direct, so that this check might be made and the draft returned to you.
The draft will, I assume, be available for production in parliament if that is required in connection with the work of the house or its committees.
Yours sincerely,
Brooke Claxton
485 Dominion Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba,
January 5, 1953.
Hon. Brooke Claxton,
Minister of National Defence,
Ottawa, Ontario.
Dear Mr. Claxton:
Thank you for your letter of January 3, with reference to the copy of the draft of Mr. Currie's report which was delivered to Mr. Coldwell. I note your request in connection therewith, and I shall be glad to discuss the same with Mr. Coldwell. As you know, he is at present in hospital, so that unless I hear that he is discharged therefrom in the meantime I would prefer to wait until I return to Ottawa on January 12 before taking this matter up with him.
Trusting this will be satisfactory, I am, Sincerely yours,
Stanley H. Knowles
McDonald, Currie & Co.
Chartered Accountants
507 Place d'Armes Montreal 1
7th January 1953
The Honourable Brooke Claxton, D.C.M., Q.C.,
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Minister of National Defence,
Ottawa, Canada.
Dear Mr. Minister,
I have your letter of the 2nd instant.
In reply to the specific questions which, as you say, naturally arise the answers which result from my detailed investigation here are as follows:
You are correct in understanding that all the ten copies that were put together have been accounted for.
As regards the further 90 unassembled prints of each page

to be used eventually to make up the 100 complete copies (as per order) I have ascertained as a result of detailed inquiries in the printer's establish-

ment that it is impossible to account for an even 90 of such prints. The reason is that, as per the printer's usual practice, they make some over-run to allow for defects or spoilage in any of the pages or sheets of the order; and in the circumstances I have found it impossible to have them account for each so created sheet or page which might be put to make up a complete copy.
The observations above made cover your third question as to whether the printer has been able to satisfy me that no other copies were made.
As you are aware, my representatives had an opportunity yesterday afternoon of seeing in Ottawa the mysterious extra copy. Having regard to its physical attributes and characteristics there appears to be no doubt that this copy is one of the first offset prints made in the printer's shop here; and I have today so informed the printer. How it got from the printer's shop into the hands of unauthorized third parties is still a complete mystery.
Everything which I have done by way of inquiry and investigation negatives the possibility that the copy in question could have got out in any stage or step between the printer's shop and my own organization and the department; but I still, of course, welcome any further investigation which the department or any other authority may deem it expedient to make from any angle or direction.
Yours sincerely,
G. S. Currie
Ottawa, January 8, 1953
M. J. Coldwell, Esq., M.P.,
House of Commons,
Ottawa, Ontario.
Dear Mr. Coldwell:
I have learned that Mr. Currie is satisfied that the copy of the draft of his report received by you is one of the offset prints made in the printing shop in Montreal.
Mr. Currie has made an investigation, at the conclusion of which it is still a mystery to him as to how the copy of the draft in question got into the hands of an unauthorized third party.
He writes me:
"Everything which I have done by way of inquiry and investigation negatives the possibility that the copy in question could have got out in any stage or step between the printer's shop and my own organization and the department; but I still, of course, welcome any further investigation which the department or any other authority may deem it expedient to make from any angle or direction."
The R.C.M.P. are being instructed accordingly. Before, however, they start, it would be of assistance if you could make available to me any information that you may have bearing on this.
It is greatly to be desired that as full information as possible be placed before the house when it meets next week and this is why I am writing you, although I understand that you are still in the hospital. If it would assist in any way, I would be only too glad to call on you or to have anyone else do so.
I hope you are having a speedy and complete recovery.
Yours sincerely,
Brooke Claxton
Ottawa, January 8, 1953.
Confidential
G. C. Currie, Esq.,
Aldred Building,
507 Place d'Armes,
Montreal, P.Q.
Dear Mr. Currie:
I have been studying your report to me on the army works services with a view to ascertaining whether there has been negligence or incompetence of which I have been unaware and regarding which action should be taken.
Unfortunately, the report has not been of such assistance to me in this regard.
You say at page 17-"The carry forward of this war psychology must be coupled with inadequate training and resultant ignorance on the part of personnel of their administrative duties and responsibilities. There was, in addition, indifference and reluctance on the part of military personnel to concentrate on administration to the degree required... But if this spirit permeated the lower echelons of the army, it is more difficult to condone the same attitudes higher up. There, a higher degree both of intelligence and responsibility is essential. It was not always present in the degree required."
From what I have heard of the conduct of your investigation, and from the language of the report, I conclude that you were more concerned with assisting the army to rectify an undesirable situation than with attempting to fix responsibility, but your remarks quoted above are open to the possible interpretation that there came to your knowledge evidence of incompetence or irresponsibility on the part of particular senior officers or officials. In order to assist me in determining what action should be taken, .1 would be grateful if you
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would advise me whether you have any such evidence and if so if you would let me have it.
Yours sincerely,
Brooke Claxton
(Canadian Pacific Telegram) January 9, 1953
G. S. Currie, Esq.,
McDonald, Currie & Company,
507 Place d'Armes,
Montreal, Quebec.
In your letter of January seven received yesterday you say that you would welcome any further investigation which the department or any other authority may deem it expedient to make from any angle or direction. As your letter indicates that the copy of the draft received by Mr. Coldwell is one of the first offset prints made for you in Montreal, you will no doubt wish to continue your own investigation of how a document belonging to you should have fallen into other hands. In view of the wide public concern and of the desirability of fixing responsibility I have asked that the R.C.M.P. should make their own investigation and report and I feel sure that you will give them every assistance.
Brooke Claxton Minister of National Defence
Ottawa, January 10, 1953.
Honourable S. S. Garson, P.C., M.P.,
Minister of Justice,
Ottawa, Ontario.
My dear Colleague,
Confirming our conversation yesterday, I will be glad if you would have the R.C.M.P. investigate and report on the way in which a copy of the draft of the report by Mr. George S. Currie got into unauthorized hands.
I sent you yesterday copies of the correspondence with Mr. Currie, Mr. Knowles and Mr. Coldwell in this connection.
You will appreciate the desirability of having as much information on this as possible to give the house when the motion to set up the committee on defence expenditures comes before the house on Tuesday.
No doubt officers of the R.C.M.P. will begin their investigation by ascertaining the name of the prints#*' and how the matter was handled from Mr. Currie and members of the staff.
Yours sincerely,
Brooke Claxton
House of Commons Canada
Ottawa, Ontario, January 10, 1953.
Hon. Brooke Claxton,
Minister of National Defence,
Bldg. 'A',
125 Elgin Street,
Ottawa, Ont.
Dear Mr. Claxton:
Thank you for your letter of January 8 and for your kind words wishing me a speedy recovery.
I have been making satisfactory progress since my recent operation and expect to be out of the hospital very shortly. I regret, however, that I shall be unable to return to my regular duties for some time.
With regard to the copy of the Currie report in my possession, I cannot disclose the name of the person who gave me this report without betraying the confidence and trust he has seen fit to place in me.
I believe that I have the right, indeed, a duty, as a member of parliament, to place before the house a matter pertaining to the public interest. I think that you will agree with me that I could not have carried out this duty if I had felt obligated to reveal the identity of the person who handed me the report. Indeed, for me to divulge this information now would have the effect of deterring members of parliament in the future from bringing to the attention of the house matters in the public interest because they were not in a position to disclose the source of their information.
Yours sincerely,
M. J. Coldwell
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Wednesday, January 14, 1953