1954-03-22

[Stage Direction]
Kon. Lionel Chevrier (Minister of Transport):	Mr. Speaker, I desire to table the
following reports for the year 1953, in English and in French: annual report of the Canadian National Railways; annual report of the Canadian National (West Indies) Steamships, Limited; annual report of the Canadian National Railways securities trust, and auditors' report to parliament in respect of the Canadian National Railways system and the Canadian National (West Indies) Steamships, Limited.
By leave of the house I move:
That the annual reports for the year 1953 of the Canadian National Railways, the Canadian National (West Indies) Steamships, Limited, the Canadian National Railways securities trust, and the auditors' report to parliament in respect of the Canadian National Railways and the Canadian National (West Indies) Steamships, Limited, tabled this day, be referred to the sessional committee on railways and shipping owned, operated and controlled by the government, together with the following items of estimates for 1954-55:
Vote 4G5-Prince Edward Island car ferry and terminals, deficit;
Vote 469-North Sydney, Nova Scotia-Port aux Basques, Newfoundland, ferry and terminals, deficit;
Vote 474-Maritime Freight Rates Act, payment of difference between tariff tolls and normal tolls to the Canadian National Railways and other railways operating in the territory designated by the
Vote 475-Canadian National (West Indies) Steamships, Limited, deficit.
And that the resolution passed by the house on February 5, 1954, referring certain estimates to the committee of supply, be rescinded in so far as the said resolution relates to votes Nos. 465, 469, 474 and 475.
Motion agreed to.


Mr. J. H. Harrison (Meadow Lake) moved: that the third report of the standing committee on standing orders, presented to the house on Friday, March 19, be now concurred in.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.


Mr. Bell:: 1.	Have any investigations been conducted by the government during the months of February and March of this year into breaches of the customs regulations by incoming foreign ships to the port of Saint John?
2.	If so, what ship or ships and registry were involved?
3.	What were the results of the above investigations?


Mr. McCann:: 1.	Yes, all ships arriving from foreign waters at the port of Saint John are searched and where there is any indication of breaches of the customs regulations, these breaches are fully investigated.
2.	The names of innocent owners of vehicles or vessels used by their employees or others in the breach of customs regulations are not released by the department. Following the same practice, the names of ships abroad which customs infractions are committed by passengers, crew, or persons other than responsible ships' officers are not made public.
For the period February 1 to March 8 inclusive, 12 ships arriving from foreign waters had customs seizures effected aboard. These ships were of the following registry:
Registry	No. of Seizures
British	 4
Canadian	 4
Foreign	 4
3.	Seizures made in the twelve instances reported resulted in the confiscation of 4,270 cigarettes, 373 bottles of liquor, 26 bottles of wine, | lb. tobacco. Two persons were prosecuted for infractions of the Customs Act; one was fined $200 and the other $50. One vessel was seized and released on deposit of $400 pending decision as to penalty to be applied, if any, to owner.


GRAIN HANDLING CAPACITY
Mr. Argue:: 1.	What is the grain handling capacity of (a) Pacific coast ports; (b) Port Arthur-Fort William?
2.	At what percentage of capacity were grain handling facilities being operated at the above ports since August 1, 1953?


Mr. Dickey:: 1.	Below are listed as at March 11, 1953,
licensed storage capacity, which is the declared physical space, and the "effective

Questions
capacity", which means the peak usable storage space as estimated by the Canadian wheat board on the basis of maximum stocks, taking into consideration past records, multiplicity of grades, condition of grain and vessel loadings.
Estimated Licensed effective capacity capacity millions of bushels
(a)	Pacific ports
(i) Vancouver/New
Westminster ... .	,. 19-5	17-5(ii) Victoria 	. 1-0	[DOT]9(iii) Prince Rupert	. 1-2	1-1(b) Fort William/Port	Arthur 	. 93-2	80-02.	Grain handling as percentage of capacity since August 1, 1953 was constantly in flux. Stocks in store as percentage of "Estimated effective capacity" varied between August 1, 1953 and March 3, 1954, as follows: Vancouver/New Westminster, from 46 to 80 per cent; Victoria, from 11 to 78 per cent; Prince Rupert, from 9 to 82 per cent; Fort William/Port Arthur, from 49 to 100 per cent.


INCOME TAX OFFICES, SALARIES AND COLLECTIONS
Mr. Hansell:: 1.	How many income tax offices are there in Canada?
2.	How many are there in the four western provinces, and where is each located?
3.	What was the total of income tax office salaries in Canada in 1952?
4.	What was the total income tax collected in Canada in 1952?


Mr. McCann:: 1.	The Department of National Revenue, taxation division, has 27 district taxation offices in addition to head office.
2.	There are seven district taxation offices located in the four western provinces, as follows: Winnipeg, Manitoba; Regina and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta; Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia.
3 and 4. Fiscal year ended 31st March, 1953: Total salaries $18,859,816.57; total collections-income tax and succession duties $2,593,960,618.25.


PENSION COMMISSION-MEDICAL PERSONNEL
Mr. Dinsdale:: 1.	Who are the full time medical personnel of the pension commission?
2.	Where are they located?
3.	What is their salary?
iMr. Dickey.'
4.	Are any of these full time medical personnel permitted to engage in occupations supplementary to their duties on the pension commission?


Mr. Bennett:: 1.	J. F. Bates, M.D., C.M.; J. P. Laplante,
O.B.E., E.D., M.D., C.M.; W. L. Coke, O.B.E., C.D., M.D.; L. W. Brown, M.D., C.M.
2.	Ottawa.
3.	$9,000 per annum.
4.	Section 3(12) of the Pension Act, chapter 207, R.S., 1952, reads as follows: "Each commissioner shall devote the whole of his time to the performance of his duties under this act, and shall not accept or hold any office or employment that the governor in council may declare to be inconsistent with the performance of his duties under this act."


MIDDLE CARAQUET, N.B.  OWNERSHIP OF LAND
Mr. Robichaud:: 1.	Does the dominion government own a certain piece, parcel or tract of land at the approach of the public wharf at Middle Caraquet, Gloucester county, New Brunswick?
2.	If so, when was this lot of land purchased and at what price?
3.	What is the total area of this parcel or tract of land?


Mr. Bourgel:: 1.	Yes.
2	and 3. Two parcels of land were purchased on August 16, 1929, one parcel containing 0-2 acre for $100, and the other parcel containing 0-1 acre for $30.


SUBSIDY PAID PRODUCERS
Mr. Hansell:: 1.	Is there a subsidy paid to the producers of wool at the present time?
2.	If so, how is this subsidy paid?


Mr. McCubbin:: 1.	No.
2.	Answered by No. 1.


REPORT FOR FIRST FIVE YEARS
Mr. Stewart (Winnipeg North):: 1.	Has the Canadian government been asked to publish the report of the work of NATO in its first five years?
2.	If so, will the Canadian government publish this report?


Mr. Claxlon:: 1.	No.
2.	The secretary general's report on "Five Years of NATO" is still in the course of preparation. When complete, it will be printed by NATO and copies sent to the Department of External Affairs for distribution in Canada. Accordingly, it will not be necessary for the department to print copies of this document.


GRAIN SHIPMENT COSTS
Mr. Argue:: 1.	What is the amount of each of the various freight and other costs, both rail and water, going into the shipment of wheat via (a) Port Arthur; (b) Fort William; (c) Churchill, that were taken into consideration in the change in the price of wheat at Port Arthur-Fort William and Churchill, as compared to the Pacific coast ports?
2.	What are the corresponding costs for (a) oats; (b) barley?
3.	What is the present difference in selling price for (a) No. 1 feed oats; (b) No. 1 feed barley, at Port Arthur-Fort William, Churchill and Pacific coast ports?


Mr. Dickey:: 1.	The following costs of moving wheat via different outlets were taken into consideration prior to the board announcing price changes for wheat in store Fort William/Port Arthur as compared to prices in store Pacific coast ports:
(a)	Cost of moving wheat from in store Fort William/Port Arthur to f.o.b. St. Lawrence ports:
(i)	Via all water, 20-279 cents per bushel;
(ii)	Via lake and rail, 22-198 cents per bushel.
(b)	Cost of fobbing wheat at Pacific coast ports, 2 -625 cents per bushel;
(c)	Cost of fobbing wheat at Port Churchill, 2-920 cents per bushel.
2.	(a) The board does not move oats and barley from Fort William/Port Arthur to St. Lawrence ports. This movement is handled by the trade from whom the following estimates have been obtained:
Oats
(i)	Via all water, 15-486 cents per bushel;
(ii)	Via lake and rail, 15-986 cents per bushel.
Barley
(i)	Via all water, 18-853 cents per bushel;
(ii)	Via lake and rail, 20-523 cents per bushel.
(b)	Cost of fobbing oats at Pacific coast pts., 2-541 cents per bushel;
Cost of fobbing barley, Pacific coast pts., 2-587 cents per bushel.
(c)	Cost of fobbing oats at Port Churchill, 2-751 cents per bushel;
Cost of fobbing barley at Port Churchill, 2-809 cents per bushel.
3.	The present difference in the Canadian wheat board's asking price for No. 1 feed oats and No. 1 feed barley between Pacific coast ports and Fort William/Port Arthur is as follows: Oats, no difference; barley, 10 cents per bushel higher at Vancouver.
The Canadian wheat board does not have any oats or barley at Port Churchill.
83276-202J
Questions



COMBINES INVESTIGATION ACT


Mr. Fulton:: 1.	Has the attention of the government been directed to the evidence given in the recent contempt case in Cornwall, Ontario, to the effect that a magazine distributor was required by the terms of his contract to take all magazines supplied by a certain company and in turn offer them all to vendors for sale, on penalty of forfeiting his contract of distributorship?
2.	Has the government referred this matter to the unfair trade practices commission for investigation under the Combines Investigation Act?
3.	If so, with what result to date?


Mr. Garson:: 1.	The attention of the government has not been drawn to the evidence in question, but the director under the Combines Investigation Act noted it at the time.
2.	The government has not referred the matter to the director or the restrictive trade practices commission, which it is presumed is the body referred to in the question as the "unfair trade practices commission".
3.	See above. It will be remembered that the anti-combines legislation relates, generally speaking, to combines and monopolies in restraint of trade; to resale price maintenance; and to price discrimination. The director has in the past, as commissioner, given some attention to the magazine field and some years ago made preliminary inquiries into a similar complaint originating in a western city. He found that although the practice existed of requiring dealers to accept a complete "package" of magazines, they were entitled to return those that were unsold; and that opinion among dealers varied between those who favoured the system because it relieved them of the necessity of placing individual orders and those who objected to it because it required them to receive in the first instance and then take the trouble of returning unwanted lines. The commissioner came to the conclusion that, whatever the merits or demerits of the system, its nature was not such as to warrant formal investigation under the Combines Investigation Act and the matter is dealt with at some length in the commissioner's annual reports for 1951 and 1952 at pages 24 and 26, respectively. The director informs me that the newspaper report of Mr. Bryan's evidence indicated that the conditions he referred to arose out of a contract into which he had himself entered with the magazine distributor and that the incident did not, in the judgment of the director, in itself raise a case for investigation under the act.

Questions



GREATER VANCOUVER-NORTH SHORE BASIN

Mr. Green:: 1.	Has the government purchased property in greater Vancouver known as the north shore basin?
2.	If so, what was the extent thereof, when and from whom was it purchased and at what price?
3.	What use is to be made of this property?
4.	How much has been expended in the development thereof to date?
5.	Has a manager of north shore basin been appointed and if so, who is this person and what is his salary?


Mr. Bourgei:: 1.	Yes.
2.	On September 5, 1953, 4.44 acres of land was purchased from the North Shore Marine Basin Ltd., for $46,063.
3.	It is to be used as a fishing harbour.
4.	$27,822.85.
5.	No.



RESEARCH-BORACIC ACID IN TREATMENT OF INFANTS

Mr. Knowles:: 1.	Has the attention of the government been drawn to reports concerning possible ill effects from the use of boric acid (or boracic acid) in the treatment of infants?
2.	Has any research into this matter been conducted under the auspices of the Department of National Health and Welfare?
3.	If so, what are the results of such research?
4.	If not, will such research be undertaken?
5.	Has the Department of National Health and Welfare taken any other steps in connection with this matter?


Mr. Boberison:: 1.	Yes.
2.	Yes, an investigation of powders sold in Canada and recommended for use on infants was carried out. The literature on the subject was also studied.
3	and 4. Of the six baby powders investigated, three did not contain boric acid. The other three contained approximately 5 per cent of boric acid and its presence was indicated on these labels. Reports showed that unfavourable reactions in children resulted when pure boric acid or highly concentrated boric acid preparations, those containing 25 per cent or more of boric acid, were used repeatedly over large areas of abraded or damaged skin.
5.	Yes, pediatricians are being consulted on this matter.



COLOMBO PLAN-REQUESTS FOR ASSISTANCE

Mr. Slewarl (Winnipeg North):: 1.	What is the total amount required to cover the requests for assistance from countries being helped under the Colombo plan for this year?
2.	What is the total amount of money available to meet these requests and what are the amounts of money being subscribed by each country?


Mr. Claxton:: 1.	It is not possible to answer this question because under the Colombo plan requests for assistance are directed to individual governments and aid is worked out bilaterally on a continuing basis.
2.	It is not possible to say at any one time or for any annual period how much money is available to meet requests for assistance under the Colombo plan. The latest information on the amounts pledged by the various participating countries is contained in chapter XI of the Colombo plan progress report prepared by the consultative committee at its meeting in New Delhi in October, 1953. Copies of this report have been tabled.



AGREEMENTS BETWEEN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES

Mr. Leboe:: 1.	Have any trade agreements between United States and Canada been signed outside continental United States and Canada?
2.	If so, what was the purpose or reason for doing so?
3.	What would be the ratio to those signed on the continent?


Mr. Claxion:: 1.	The only bilateral trade agreement between Canada and the United States, signed outside continental North America, was one supplementary to the general agreement on tariffs and trade signed at Geneva on October 30, 1947. The general agreement on tariffs and trade, which is a multilateral trade agreement to which both Canada and the United States have adhered, is in force between Canada and the United States.
2.	Since this bilateral agreement was part of the multilateral arrangements under GATT it was signed at the same time in Geneva.
3.	There have been three other trade agreements with United States, from time to time in force. These agreements, dated 1935, 1938 and 1939, were all signed on this continent.



QUESTIONS PASSED AS ORDERS FOR RETURNS


Mr. McCullough (Moose Mountain):: 1.	What subsidies have been paid to millers on wheat milled in Canada each year since 1939?
2.	How much did this subsidy amount to per bushel?
3.	How much did the farmers receive per bushel on wheat consumed in Canada during the period since 1939?
4.	How much wheat has Britain bought from Canada each year since 1939?
5.	How much beef and other meat products has Britain bought from Canada each year since 1939?


Mr. Dickey:: Return tabled.


TERMINAL ELEVATOR WEIGH-OVERS
Mr. Argue:: 1.	At what terminal elevators have weigh-overs been made during the past 12 months?
2.	On what date were such weigh-overs made and what was the date of the previous weigh-over in each case?
3.	What overages or shortages were shown for wheat, barley, oats, rye and flax as a result of the weigh-over at each terminal?
4.	What disposal was made of the overages in each case?
5.	At what terminals has no weigh-over taken place during the past 12 months?


John Horace Dickey: Return tabled.


CARROLL COAL COMMISSION
Mr. Hansell:: 1.	What was the total cost of the Carroll coal commission of 1946?
2.	What recommendations contained in the commission's report have been put into effect, and to what extent?



GENERAL STORES


Mr. Cardiff:: 1.	Does the government operate any general stores in Canada?
2.	If so, where are they located?
3.	Do these stores sell at cost to customers?
4.	If not, what is the rate of mark-up?
5.	Do these stores extend credit or do a cash business?
6.	If the government does not operate any general stores, are there any such stores located on government property?
7.	If so, where are they located and under what arrangements do they operate?
8.	Has the government received any complaints from businessmen or dealers in the localities where these stores operate?



MOTIONS FOR PAPERS


Mr. Knowles:: For a copy of all letters, communications, briefs or memoranda received by the Minister of Finance, or received by any other minister and referred to the Minister of Finance, dated at any time since January 1, 1952, from associations or organizations representing superannuated federal civil servants, or from any officers thereof, together with a copy of the replies of the Minister of Finance thereto.


Mr. Benidickscn:: Return tabled herewith to this motion.
jehovah's witnesses-correspondence


Mr. Gagnon:: For a copy of all correspondence exchanged since January 1, 1948, between the international bible students, the watchtower and tract society, the Jehovah's witnesses and the national defence, justice and post office departments and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Motions for Papers


Mr. Pickersgill:: I wonder whether the hon. member would consent to allowing this motion to stand today?


Paul-Edmond Gagnon: Agreed.
customs act, section 35-interpretation


Stanley Howard Knowles: For a copy of a typical letter (or typical letters, if there are any significant variations in different letters written on the subject), dated since December 8, 1953, written by the Department of National Revenue, or any official, or division, or branch thereof, to any prospective importer, without necessarily giving the name of such prospective importer, with reference to the interpretation, implementation or enforcement of section 35 of the Customs Act, as amended by Bill 29 of this session.
LAST MOUNTAIN LAKE INDIAN RESERVE NO. 80a


Mr. Casileden:: For a copy of all correspondence, agreements, and other documents, since January 1, 1917, in connection with the surrender and subsequent disposal of the Last Mountain lake Indian reserve No. 80A.


Mr. Harris:: I have spoken to the hon. member for Yorkton, Mr. Speaker, and I understand that what he would like to have cn this motion is the original surrender, plus any correspondence there may be about it, as well as the list of those who have subsequently purchased some of the lands, the amount paid and the distribution of the moneys collected.


George Hugh Castleden: That was the understanding.


Mr. Speaker:: Am I to understand that the motion stands?


Walter Edward Harris: No, carried.


Mr. Speaker:: Carried, subject to the statement made by the minister.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.


Hon. Douglas Abbott (Minister of Finance) moved: that the house go into committee at the next sitting to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to bring in a measure to extend the benefits of the Municipal Grants Act and to provide for certain changes in connection with the administration of the act.
He said: His Excellency the Governor General, having been made acquainted with the subject matter of this resolution, recommends it to the house.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
3194	HOUSE OF
Inquiries of the Ministry CROWN CORPORATIONS

Douglas Charles Abbott: that the house go into committee at the next sitting to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to bring in a measure to amend certain acts relating to several crown corporations in order to prescribe the pension provisions and the manner in which such pension provisions are to apply to persons transferring from the public service to the corporations concerned.
He said: His Excellency the Governor General, having been made acquainted with the subject matter of this resolution, recommends it to the house.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. George A. Drew (Leader of the Opposition):: I had intended to address my question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs, but in his absence I should like to direct the question to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister make any comment to the house about the report appearing in today's press, and given wide circulation that the government, in addition to considering the recognition of communist China, is also considering supporting the application of the Mao Tse-tung regime for entry into the United Nations?
Right Hon. L. S. Si. Laurent (Prime
Minister): Mr. Speaker, I do not think there is any justification whatsoever for the suggestion implied in the hon. member's question. I know of no consideration being given to either of these questions at this time.


TRADING ON LONDON MARKET
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Rodney Adamson (York West):: May I
direct a question to the Minister of Finance? In view of the resumption of trading in gold on the London market this morning, will the Canadian government initiate a similar market or, better still, a completely free market in Canada? If not, is the reason


based on government policy or is the move proscribed by international agreement? Will Canadians holding sterling be allowed to buy gold on this market, and if so, will such gold be deemed to be "freely exportable gold" under the terms of the Bank of Canada Act, which is currently being amended?


Douglas Charles Abbott: I am obliged to my hon. friend for giving me notice of this question. I received it a short time before I came into the house. I shall try to give him an answer tomorrow.


DISABLED PERSONS
[Stage Direction]
INQUIRY AS TO REPORT IN WINNIPEG "FREE press"
On the orders of the day:
Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, has the attention of the Minister of National Health and Welfare been drawn to a report in the Winnipeg Free Press of Friday which suggests that the new pension for disabled persons will not come into effect until January 1, 1955? Is it not possible to bring in this legislation at an early date, so that it might come into effect as soon as possible?


Hon. Paul Marlin (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: I am glad, Mr. Speaker, that at long last the hon. member has evidenced some interest in this problem.


Mr. Coldwell:: That is grossly unfair.


Paul Joseph James Martin: This is the first time he has shown-


Stanley Howard Knowles: That is not correct. Let the minister answer the question.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I am dealing with his leader's interjection, and I think my statement will be found to be accurate. The hon. gentleman knows the government will not delay in introducing this measure as quickly as possible. We have to deal with all the provinces and the matter largely depends on them. The hon. gentleman may be assured that we will proceed with the matter with characteristic haste.


Stanley Howard Knowles: 
DOMINION-PROVINCIAL CONFERENCE SUGGESTED REAPPOINTMENT OF ECONOMIC COMMITTEE ESTABLISHED IN 1945-46
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. E. D. Fulton (Kamloops):: May I direct a question to the Prime Minister or possibly the Minister of Finance? Has the government made any decision as a result of the suggestion put forward recently by the premier of Ontario, that the dominion-provincial economic committee established by the 1945-46 conference should be reappointed?


Douglas Charles Abbott: Speaking for myself, I have not been able as yet to give any consideration to that suggestion.


REPORTED LACK OF SPACE IN MONTREAL ELEVATORS
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. W. M. Johnson (Kindersley):: Has the
attention of the Minister of Trade and Commerce been drawn to this morning's Canadian Press dispatch stating that the grain movement will remain almost at a standstill because there will be no space in Montreal elevators? What steps will be taken to improve this situation?


Right Hon. C. D. Howe (Minister of Trade and Commerce):: The situation in the grain elevators at Montreal is normal. At the close of the shipping season all the elevator space is filled. It is not customary to draw grain from these elevators during the winter period. The economics of the situation require that grain moving to Halifax be moved from the Georgian bay area rather than from Montreal. There is the usual accumulation of orders for export grain which will be filled at the opening of navigation. I suggest there is no cause for undue apprehension about any situation in that area.


DUMPING
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. J. J. McCann (Minister of National Revenue):: In replying, Mr. Speaker, to questions asked by the hon. members for Duf-ferin-Simcoe, York West and Kent (Ont.) on March 18, I referred to a seasonal tariff which is applied when our own produce comes on the market. This tariff takes the
Inquiries of the Ministry form of specific rates of duty to replace the ad valorem rate ordinarily applicable on fresh fruits and vegetables.
Under the provisions of section 13 of the Customs Tariff, the Minister of National Revenue is authorized to order the application of these specific rates on importations from countries other than those entitled to the benefits of the British preferential tariff and for periods not to exceed those specified in the tariff items covering the products involved.
In ordering the application of these specific rates of duty, I am guided by recommendations made by the growers, through their organizations, and approval of such recommendations by officials of the Department of Agriculture who, through their inspectors in the field, have access to information regarding crop conditions and the availability to the trade of the Canadian grown product.
In the case of celery and onions, n.o.p., the specific rate of duty provided for in the tariff is one cent per pound and the maximum periods during which this rate may be applied in any fiscal year are 24 weeks and 40 weeks, respectively. During the remainder of the year the rate of duty on both of these products is ten per cent ad valorem.
During the present fiscal year, the specific rate was applied on celery imported into Ontario and Quebec for two periods totalling the full 24 weeks, that is to say June 5 to July 16, and September 24 to January 27, inclusive. The specific rate was applied on onions imported into these provinces on June 23 and will be cancelled effective the 30th of this month, when the 40 weeks' period will expire.
There is no information before us which would indicate the dumping of United States celery or onions on the Canadian market. However, if such were the case, the ordinary provisions of the dumping clause of the tariff would apply.



PIPE LINES


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. B. R. Leboe (Cariboo):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask a question of the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe). Has the government information relative to the date that a decision may be reached by the federal power commission of the United States on the application of the Westcoast Transmission Company to bring gas from northern
319S

Emergency Powers Act British Columbia to the inland empire of the United States? If so, when is a decision expected?


Hon. Lionel Chevrier (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, I understand the hon. member sent me notice of that question some time ago. When I inquired-Friday of last week-no decision had been handed down, and there was no information as to when it was likely to be handed down.



EXPORT AND IMPORT PERMITS ACT


Clarence Decatur Howe: the third reading of Bill No. 374, respecting export and import of strategic and other goods.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the third time and passed.


Douglas Charles Abbott: the third reading of Bill No. 377, to establish an account for the replacement of government property lost, destroyed or damaged through fire.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the third time and passed.
Douglas Charles Abbott: that the house go into committee of supply.



EMERGENCY POWERS ACT

[Stage Direction]
Hon. George A. Drew (Leader of the
Opposition): Mr. Speaker, on different occasions during the present session questions have been asked of the government as to whether it was intended to continue the legislation now standing on the statute books under the name of the Emergency Powers Act. No answer has yet been given as to the intention of the government. Therefore it is appropriate, until we have information to the contrary, to assume that the government is contemplating the revival of legislation which has been discussed on a number of other occasions in the house. I submit it will be both helpful and appropriate if we consider the subject at this time, because if hon. members are prepared to indicate their opinion, that we should get back to government of the people, for the people, through their elected representatives in parliament, then subsequent time may be saved through the action of the government in acting in accordance with that expressed opinion.
TMr. Leboe.]
There are added reasons why the attention of the house should be drawn to the need for considering the grounds upon which sweeping powers of this kind have been taken by the government, with the support of a majority in parliament, and it is appropriate that everyone consider the tendencies indicated by some statements made within the last few weeks.
I know there are many hon. members who do not show any great interest when we discuss this subject, one which may be regarded as academic, but which in fact is anything but academic in its effect upon our parliamentary system and upon the future of government in Canada. There are those of us who believe that the supremacy of parliament and the rule of law mean more to us at this time than perhaps ever before in our history, since these principles were firmly established some three hundred years ago. We believe they are of vital and fundamental importance, because the supremacy of parliament and the rule of law more than anything else distinguish our parliamentary system from that authoritarian system against which the free peoples of the world are joining their strength at this time.
There is one principle of supreme importance if we are going to have government of the people, for the people, through their elected representatives in parliament; and that is the right of members and of the public to know the essential facts upon which decisions affecting the general welfare of our people or the economy of our country are made.
There is another principle of supreme importance which is at the root of the rule of law. That is the right of all people affected by any law to know in advance what the law is. We cannot expect everyone will know what every law is, in this period when there are so many laws. The principle however is at the very root of our freedom-the principle that the people shall have the right to know the law and, in turn, shall have the right to have an impartial and open trial, if it is alleged that they have broken any law. I know full well, without being reminded by any hon. member opposite, that this subject has been discussed in other sessions; it has not previously been discussed in this parliament. That is the reason I am bringing it forward today, so that not only in relation to the Emergency Powers Act, but in relation to other emergency measures, an opportunity may be afforded to hon. members to indicate their opinion in regard to the authority of parliament and the rule of law.
If I repeat today things that have been said before, I do so only because it is

necessary to repeat them through the failure of the government to act upon the arguments that have been presented to this house on earlier occasions. Added reason was given recently for considering very carefully what the attitude of the government is in regard to the rights of parliament and the people in connection with facts upon which public issues may be decided. I refer to a speech of the Secretary of State (Mr. Pickersgill) made on February 22 of this year. I intend to quote from that speech in view of the position under our constitution occupied by the Secretary of State. In quoting I am not relying merely upon newspaper reports but upon the text of the speech issued from his own office. Some of these statements bear careful examination in so far as they indicate the grov/ing belief of this government that it governs by its own authority, very largely, subject only to the subsequent approval of its actions by a majority of the members of this house. I now quote from the text of the speech by the Secretary of State:
It has frequently been stated that all documents in the possession of government departments deal with the public business, and that the public is entitled to know how its own business is conducted.
This is a very plausible doctrine, and one that is, superficially, quite attractive to most Canadians who believe in the democratic principle of government by the people. What is more natural than to say that if the people really control the government, the people are entitled to know about everything that goes on.
The Secretary of State regards this as a plausible doctrine and one with a natural appeal; but then he goes on to dispose of any thought that the government accepts that plausible doctrine, and he deals further with a motion before parliament in regard to papers and documents in the possession of the government, and he has this to say:
. . . this notion that parliament and the public are entitled to see every document in the possession of a government department is wrong, that it is contrary to the constitution; indeed it is subversive in the proper meaning of that word, by which I mean if it were accepted and applied it would upset the whole British concept of responsible parliamentary government.
Now, Mr. Speaker, we see the Secretary of State, the custodian of government documents, telling us that this plausible doctrine is not only not acceptable, but subversive. Those who might conceivably think that it was subversive of the parliamentary system to withhold facts are told on the contrary that it would be subversive if the principle were accepted that essential facts must be available.
John Whitney Pickersgill: On a question of privilege, if the hon. gentleman would not mind, would he use the word I used? I used the word "documents" not "facts".
Emergency Powers Act


George Alexander Drew: This statement says quite clearly that it would be subversive if the essential facts were presented to the house which are contained in documents in the possession of the government and for which the Secretary of State is peculiarly responsible, in view of the statutory position he holds.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Will the hon. gentleman read the phrase where it says "essential facts".


George Alexander Drew: I read it; it is correct. What I have read is the correct statement from the speech.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Read it, sir.


George Alexander Drew: I have read it, Mr. Speaker. Hansard reports excellently and I am sure they have it correct. I shall go on with another quotation:
I suppose there is always some tendency for parliamentary oppositions to try to give the impression that under our system parliament is the government.
That is the end of the quotation, in case the Secretary of State gets in any way disturbed by any subsequent statement. Apparently in the mind of the Secretary of State, Mr. Speaker, there is the really very subversive thought that some of us might believe that government of the people for the people through their elected representatives should be a reality. Not at all; the government must be the sole authority, the sole custodian and the sole deciding body in this case, subject of course to the subsequent approval or otherwise, and, Mr. Speaker, there is a surprising consistency in the measure of approval given by the acknowledged majority of the supporters of this government.
Then I go on with a further quotation from the statement of the Secretary of State:
Parliament Is not the government and the government is not even a committee of the whole of parliament, though there is a certain sense in which the government can be regarded as a committee of its own supporters in parliament.
But I think it is much better to use the old-fashioned description of the relationship between government and parliament which was invented right here in Canada, and that is that the government is responsible to parliament.
Yes, in our belief the government is responsible to parliament, and we believe that parliament has the right to examine the manner in which the government is acting upon the basis of facts available to parliament, available to the elected representatives of the people who sit here in the House of Commons.
I quote again from this very interesting speech:
And once that decision is made, it is the duty of those who were entrusted by the voters with the
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Emergency Powers Act
responsibility for government to carry on the government; and they should not share that responsibility with those who were not entrusted by the electors with the responsibility.
That is the end of the quotation, but it should have been the end of the speech. It should have been the end of any idea of this kind:
. . . they should not share that responsibility with those who were not entrusted by the electors with the responsibility.
There is a clear declaration of belief in the one party state.


Some hon. Members:: No.


George Alexander Drew: There is a clear declaration of belief in the idea that this is not a chamber where responsibility is jointly accepted throughout the whole house. Oh, I see some hon. members grimacing and shrugging their shoulders in surprise that this proposition should even be put forward.
This proposition is at the very root of our system. The government has the responsibility for initiating and presenting legislation to this house; and everyone in this house, under the basic principles of our parliamentary system, shares responsibility for what follows. May I add, Mr. Speaker, that those supporting the government are intended to inform themselves so that they may share that responsibility with some knowledge of the facts, as members of the opposition-or certainly some of them-seek to inform themselves.


Mr. Habel:: Why do you not inform yourself first?


George Alexander Drew: Mr. Speaker, I do not intend to pay any attention to all the remarks I hear, but I intend to pay attention to the remark I just heard because it is illustrative of the attitude of those on the other side of the house. "Why do you not inform yourself first?" was the question that was just shouted to me from a point in the house where apparently the loud speakers do not work so well.


Joseph-Alphonse-Anaclet Habel: I rise on a question of privilege, Mr. Speaker. I think 1 should tell the house that I was misinformed many times by the Leader of the Opposition while I was in the house in Ontario and I would not follow him for all the money in the world.


Mr. Speaker:: I think that hon. members should not rise on questions of privilege which, of course, are not questions of privilege. The Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Drew) now has the floor and should be allowed to make his remarks without interruption. If he is misquoting anyone or if he is making statements which, in the


opinion of certain members, are not in accordance with the facts, and if they are directly concerned with them, when the Leader of the Opposition is through they can rise and make the necessary corrections. But they should not do so in such a way as to interrupt the hon. member who has the floor.


George Alexander Drew: Mr. Speaker, I have no intention of asking, as I am sure I have the right to do, for the withdrawal of the remarks that were just made. I am placing before the house an argument and the interjection which was just made is one that should be withdrawn if that request were made. But after all, I shall not make the request for withdrawal unless I think that the hon. member who has made the interjection is of sufficient importance in this house for me to make such a request.


Joseph-Alphonse-Anaclet Habel: Big man.


George Alexander Drew: Mr. Speaker, I quite agree that this is not the first time I have heard the hon. member, and I know exactly the value to attach to his remarks now or on any other occasion.
Mr. Speaker, I referred to the statement made by the hon. member because it so aptly illustrated exactly the point I am seeking to make. He said "Why do you not inform yourself?". Mr. Speaker, that is what the opposition has been trying to do in many ways. I am pointing out that, in a speech made outside of the House of Commons but nevertheless one which expresses his opinion, the Secretary of State (Mr. Pickersgill) has clearly put before the people of this country his attitude toward parliament and the amount of information that should be available to members of parliament.
Mr. Speaker, this subject is one which does not arise here in Canada alone, and it is one for which this government alone need not accept responsibility. There has been a general tendency to move away from long-established principles of the supremacy of parliament and the rule of law, as a result of the effect of two world wars upon the administration of governments and parliaments similar to our own. This problem has been discussed in other parliaments similar to ours. This subject has been examined by great jurists as well as by members of this and other parliaments, and it has been examined by those with long experience in constitutional law. Mr. Speaker, the time has come-indeed it is long overdue-for the members of this house to assert a basic proposition which will change the trend and will start the members of parliament here

in Canada seeking some way, consistent with our increasingly complex society and economic system, that will nevertheless make it possible for parliament to have the essential facts in a way which will permit informed judgment by the members of parliament as well as by the people themselves with regard to subjects that are of public concern.
For that reason I hope that hon. members will not take to themselves the remarks that are made. In referring to any remarks that have already been made this afternoon, may I suggest to other members that they realize that this is a subject which is attracting great attention in every parliament within the commonwealth and that those in parliament and outside of it who have been studying this subject are seeking ways and means by which our complex economy and society may be efficiently informed while at the same time preserving those fundamental democratic principles of the supremacy of parliament and the rule of law.
Yes, Mr. Speaker, this subject has been discussed before. It was discussed in this house by the former minister of justice and I should like to read words spoken by him in this house on November 12, 1945, because they indicate a steady trend by this same government. They indicate that this is no suddenly developed attitude which we find expressed in the words of the Secretary of State. These are the words of the then minister of justice, the Right Hon. J. L. Ilsley, as reported at page 2020 of Hansard of November 12, 1945:
I should like to quote what the leader of the opposition said in this house on October 31, 1945, at page 1681 of Hansard:
". . . this House of Commons has the full and inalienable right to a disclosure of all actions of the executive. It has the right and the duty to review and pass upon all such actions. Except in some minor matters where the king's prerogative has not been abridged, the executive or cabinet acts properly only under authority delegated by this parliament. Thus, in order that we may be aware of the actions of the executive, I have placed this motion on the order paper."
Later in the same statement the hon. gentleman said this:
"I am determined to ensure, in so far as lies within my power, that Canada is governed by this House of Commons . . ."
Then the minister of justice had this to say about the words of the leader of the opposition at that time, to which he had referred and which he had quoted:
That statement is not historically or constitutionally correct. The house has not an inalienable right to the disclosure of all actions of the executive. Ministers may refuse to disclose matters if refusal to disclose is in the public interest and is so stated by the ministers.
Authority has been cited in support of that proposition. The house must accept the decision of a minister or withdraw confidence from the government, which it can do at any time. The authority 83276-2031
Emergency Powers Act of the government is not delegated by the House of Commons: the authority of the government is received from the crown. The membership of the government is not limited to members of the house. The true relationship of the House of Commons and the cabinet is a relationship of confidence. The essence of confidence is trust, not minute and detailed supervision of every act and every motive. Government cannot be carried on efficiently if every detail is subject to constant scrutiny.
There, Mr. Speaker, was a statement by the minister of justice at that time which did cause considerable surprise, as will be remembered by those who were interested in public affairs at that time, and who remember the comments which were made in the press and elsewhere about this. It is not easy to understand now how that statement was made without more serious challenge than was offered at that time. I want to read these words because I want to be sure they are correctly on record. I quote:
. . . the first step towards permanent recovery or reform in Canada must be the decisive repudiation by the Canadian electorate of the tendencies towards dictatorship manifested during the last five years, and an equally decisive repudiation of measures, by whatever party they may be advocated, which tend in the direction of Hitlerism, fascism or communism.
These words, Mr. Speaker, are clear. These words set forth in very definite and emphatic terms the attitude of those who do not believe that it is enough for the government to decide, and then at some subsequent time come back to the House of Commons and say, "Will you trust me? We have done this. The action has been taken and will you now vote in favour of what has been done?" These words, as I know members of the government are perfectly well aware, are the words of the man with whom the Secretary of State was so closely associated. I cannot help wondering at what point his thinking departed from the attitude of the man who spoke these words, because these strong words were the words of the late Right Hon. William Lyon Mackenzie King dealing with the suggestion that the government had the right to withhold from parliament the facts upon which decisions should be made to resort to emergency measures. I would also like to quote something else said by the then prime minister at that time.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the hon. gentleman would permit a question? Would he give the date, place and circumstance in which these words were uttered, because their relevance to the situation is rather important?


George Alexander Drew: Yes, of course. The relevance was very important. Mr. King, at that time, was leader of the opposition and he was expressing his views in regard to legislation
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Emergency Powers Act which was only a pale shadow of the kind of legislation that this government has put on the statute books.


John Whitney Pickersgill: That was in what year?


George Alexander Drew: 1935.


John Whitney Pickersgill: In relation to what, sir?


George Alexander Drew: In relation to parliament and the rights of parliament.


John Whitney Pickersgill: But in relation to what particular measure?


George Alexander Drew: Mr. Speaker, I shall give the references. I am placing various statements on record. The statement I have just referred to was a statement by a man who was later prime minister of Canada, the Right Hon. William Lyon Mackenzie King, who, during a period of opposition, supported certain principles in regard to the rights of parliament and supported them in words which will bear rereading by members of the Liberal party in this house today.


Mr. Si. Laurent:: Perhaps the hon. member,
in order to make the rereading easier, would not mind giving the references. I suppose these remarks can be found in Hansard. Perhaps the hon. member would give the exact reference.


George Alexander Drew: Certainly. But I am going to carry that statement further:
. . . there has been a further tendency of the gradual shifting over to irresponsible commissions, boards and delegates ... of a great deal of the business that should be carried on by the government itself . . . The country is being committed, directly and indirectly, to policies of which it has no knowledge, by persons who in no way owe responsibility to the people through their representatives in this house.
That last statement will be found in Hansard of March 1, 1920. The other one may be found in Hansard of 1935. I will give the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) the page number when I sit down.
Then on another occasion, to show the consistency of the views of the man who has put forward such a definite statement on this subject in years gone by, I would like to quote from another of the speeches by the Right Hon. William Lyon Mackenzie King:
The business of the country should be carried an in the open on the floor of this parliament in such a manner that the government will be obliged to take into their confidence not only members of parliament but the people of the country whose money they are voting to expend.
That statement may be found at page 4540 of Hansard dated June 30, 1920.
This is another quotation I would like to place on record:
It is impossible to imagine that the people of Canada will consent to pay the enormous sums


which they are being called upon to provide by way of taxation, ... or that they will sit silent under the government's refusal to give them any information as to how their money has been spent.
That statement will be found at pages 1292-93 of Hansard dated March 29, 1921.
And then, to bring us up to later years, I would also like to quote from another speech by the Right Hon. William Lyon Mackenzie King which will be found in Hansard of January 29, 1934:
The government has proceeded, in practically everything it has done, as if it were an executive wholly independent of the House of Commons rather than an executive which derives its powers from and is responsible to the House of Commons.
Compare that statement, Mr. Speaker, with the statement made by Mr. J. L. Ilsley. Here is a proposition that is consistent with the long tradition of parliament, stated by a man who has generally been accorded respect for his knowledge of parliament by members of the Liberal party. I would like to repeat these words because they are words which emphasize how far this government has departed from the proposition it has put forward itself on many occasions. I repeat these words:
The government has proceeded, in practically everything it has done, as if it were an executive wholly independent of the House of Commons rather than an executive which derives its powers from and is responsible to the House of Commons.
Then, on January 21, 1935, the Right Hon. William Lyon Mackenzie King had this to say, as found at page 32 of Hansard:
The whole spirit of the British system of government is that government is carried on, not by arbitrary powers secured by a mechanical majority, but by the consent of the governed as known . . .
You will notice in that quotation that the Right Hon. William Lyon Mackenzie King used a term which perhaps overcame some of the objection that has been registered with relation to other words used to describe a majority which votes with fascinating regularity in one particular way. He spoke of a mechanical majority. There is no record of objection having been taken to that word at that time by anyone in the house. I should like to quote further words of the Right Hon. William Lyon Mackenzie King from the same speech. He said:
I have said that one of the supreme efforts of this administration-
That of course was not a Liberal administration because it was not a Liberal administration at that time.
-has been stealthily to alienate the authority and control of parliament, to take power into its own hands and away from parliament with respect to many important affairs of the nation.


Mr. Garson:: Would the hon. member permit a question?


George Alexander Drew: Certainly.


Stuart Sinclair Garson: Does my hon. friend agree that the words he has been quoting were fitting words for the right hon. gentleman to have applied?


George Alexander Drew: Mr. Speaker, that is exactly the type of comment that I have come to expect from the Minister of Justice (Mr. Gar-son) . I was quoting the words of a man who has been recognized and acclaimed on other occasions by the minister who has just interrupted me as an authority on parliamentary procedure. I have pointed out on other occasions that, no matter what disagreement there may have been with regard to the many details of the things that were done, I did believe that the Right Hon. William Lyon Mackenzie King understood the principles of parliament, and it would be a very good thing for the present Minister of Justice to remember them when the time comes for him to draft any further legislation bearing on subjects of this kind.


Douglas Charles Abbott: Now try answering the question.


George Alexander Drew: I was just about to point out, when I was interrupted by the Minister of Justice, that the quotations I have placed on record are quotations which indicate that this is not a subject with regard to which members of only one party have been expressing concern. This is a subject about which members of all parties in this house and members of the different parties in the House of Commons at Westminster, in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and elsewhere throughout the commonwealth, have been expressing great concern in recent years.
I wish it were possible to examine this question as one of common concern. I wish it were possible to examine it with the idea that we might now start back toward some system that would have full regard for the vast and infinite variety of detailed subjects that must be dealt with but would at the same time make it possible to give hon. members of this house, as the representatives of the people, an opportunity to obtain essential information which would qualify them to pass judgment with knowledge of the facts. That, after all, was what the Right Hon. Mackenzie King was emphasizing. He wanted the facts to be known. He wanted the important details put before the house. He recognized that every single piece of information could not be brought before the house but he did want the business of the country carried on in parliament and not behind closed doors. That is the view we have been
Emergency Powers Act expressing. That is the hope with which we place this subject once again before members of the house.
I referred to the speech made outside the house by the Secretary of State (Mr. Pickersgill). An interpretation of his opinions certainly shows that he has gone several steps beyond the position taken by the Right Hon. J. L. Ilsley and that the position he takes is one which would never have been tolerated in silence by the man who was prime minister of Canada for so long and with whom he was closely associated. We have asked for assurance that under these changed conditions the government would reverse its course. A clear indication of that would be a statement by the government that it definitely will not seek the support of the majority in the house to continue the Emergency Powers Act on the statute books of Canada.
A consideration of this legislation is *appropriate at this time in so far as the intent behind the introduction of such an act may be examined. Now is the time to avoid unnecessary subsequent debate with regard to either this or any other emergency legislation. That can be done if hon. members will only make it clear that they wish no continuance of emergency legislation of that kind in a period when we are as close to normal conditions as any of us are likely to be for many long years to come.
Last year the Emergency Powers Act was renewed. It is still on the statute books and unless renewed again will expire on May 31 of this year. The terms of that act involve an attitude consistent with the view expressed by the Secretary of State, consistent with the view expressed some years ago by the Right Hon. J. L. Ilsley, but not consistent with the view expressed by the Right Hon. William Lyon Mackenzie King and not consistent with the view expressed by many people of different parties who today are seeking some new method to give real parliamentary responsibility to the members elected by the people and to restore the rule of law instead of the rule of dictate such as we have at this time.
It is not enough to say that no harm has been done. Great harm was done last year to the principles of parliament by something that was done under that act. Without reviewing the orders in council passed in 1951 and 1952, as well as in 1953, under the Emergency Powers Act, may I say that the most outrageous example of abuse of emergency powers occurred on Monday, April 20, last year. What happened then should be in the minds of the members of this house when we consider today the
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Emergency Powers Act attitude of the government towards the extension of any emergency measures which give to the government the power to legislate behind closed doors.
Those who were sitting in this house at that time will recall that the house met at eleven o'clock on the morning of April 20 last year. It was dealing with amendments to the shipping act, and that was the place where anything affecting shipping, and the rights of ship owners or others, could have been discussed, with knowledge of what was being done, by members of this parliament. It was very significant that while that act was under discussion that morning the Minister of Transport (Mr. Chevrier), under whose department the administration of acts of this kind must come, absented himself from the House of Commons during that discussion. In his absence the amendments were approved, and in due course the bill was given third reading in order that it could be passed on for consideration in the other place.
After the house had spent only a few minutes in the transaction of some other business, to the very great surprise of hon. members in this house, the Minister of Transport made his appearance in the house just before the one o'clock adjournment. He proceeded to ask for consent to revert to motions, and permission was given by unanimous consent. He thereupon tabled two copies, in English and in French, of order in council P.C. 1953-604, passed three days before that, on Friday, April 17, under the provisions of the Emergency Powers Act. This order in council, which had been passed three days before and had the effect of law, was of very great interest to many ship owners in this country and was presented here in that way. Earlier the same morning we had been discussing an act to which these changes could very properly have been amendments.
There was no reason whatever for the provisions of that order in council, because they could have been enacted as part of the provisions of the Canada Shipping Act. I just heard an interjection to the effect that is not so. It is so, Mr. Speaker. It is true we were told three days later that this was part of a general agreement of some kind, but there was no general agreement. I hope the time will never come when there will be general agreement that this government has the right to enter into any understanding with any other government which will deny to this parliament information to which it is entitled. It most certainly could have been made an amendment to the Canada Shipping Act, or failing that it could have been a separate piece of legislation introduced by


the minister who had been piloting the Canada Shipping Act through the house. Members who were sitting here could have passed upon those amendments in the ordinary way. Instead of that, an order in council was passed behind closed doors, given the effect of law, and in that way many people had their position substantially affected without the members of parliament having an opportunity to deal with the subject.
Let us go back to the time when this act was before the house on February 20, 1951. At that time the Emergency Powers Act was being considered, and the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) was explaining why this act was being presented. I quote what he said on that occasion from page 497 of Hansard for that date:
The question may be asked, what is the nature of the emergency we are facing? In the opinion of the government, it is as defined in the following language in the speech from the throne:
"The increased menace in the Far East reinforces the mounting evidence that communist imperialism is determined to dominate the world by force or the fear of force, and that the only hope of maintaining peace with freedom lies in the rapid increase of the combined strength of the free nations."
That was the reason we were given in 1951, Mr. Speaker. No one suggests today that we have passed the time when we need to be careful to maintain our strength against the threat of communist aggression. However, we have passed from the immediate emergency state which arose following the attack in Korea, and have entered a stage of longterm duration when we hope that, as a result of the mounting strength of the partnership of free nations, peace may in fact be preserved. There is a very real hope that the full horror of the kind of war that would result from the use of the new weapons which have been accumulated to meet the possibility of that threat may in themselves offer a hope of peace in the years ahead.
If it should happen, this will not be the first time in history, by any manner of means, that great military powers available for military action have, in fact, assured peace over a long term of years. I believe that the hope of every one of us here is that the money that is being spent for defence today will have that effect. Nevertheless, we have been told by the government here, we have been told by statesmen associated with us in this common effort, that this is going to be a long period of sustained effort. If we are to have peace, it will only be the result of carrying on for a long time under conditions which require from us very definite military preparations, and which also offer hope to us of peace through the might of the defence that is being built up.

This is a subject, Mr. Speaker, in which all have a common interest. I did not quote for the record here today the words of a former prime minister merely for the purpose of seeking to embarrass any minister of the present government or to establish the inconsistency of views that have been expressed. I did so to demonstrate to this house how far we have strayed from the position that was commonly accepted by most members of this house.
When I am asked whether I agree with words that were spoken at that time, may I say that it is most interesting to have anyone offer the suggestion today that the very limited powers in the hands of the government in the early part of 1935 bore even the slightest similarity to the immense emergency powers held by this government today. And yet, in relation even to those very limited powers, we found the then leader of the Liberal party using these strong terms:
The first step towards permanent recovery or reform in Canada must be the decisive repudiation by the Canadian electorate of the tendencies towards dictatorship manifested during the last five years, and an equally decisive repudiation of measures, by whatever party they may be advocated which tend in the direction of Hitlerism, fascism or communism.
Mr. Speaker, there were those who laughed at Mr. King when he spoke those words.


An hon. Member:: Oh no.


George Alexander Drew: Oh yes, there were. When an hon. member says, "Oh no", I say there were people who laughed at Mr. King at that time. And there are people who laugh today at the suggestion that there is any danger in a trend of this kind.
No, I am not going to suggest for one moment that the words of Mr. King as to the possibility of Hitlerism, fascism, or communism are appropriate. And I do not think those words were appropriate then. But I do think the statement he was making in regard to the principles of parliament-in spite of the giggling of the Minister of Justice (Mr. Garson) at the moment-I think those were important principles.


Stuart Sinclair Garson: On a point of privilege. My hon. friend, during the course of his remarks, is frequently in the habit of attributing giggling or the making of remarks to members of the government. When statements of this kind are not correct-and this is one of them, because I was not giggling; I forbore while listening to my hon. friend-some answer should be made.


George Alexander Drew: Mr. Speaker, on my responsibility as a member of the house I say the Minister of Justice was laughing and was
Emergency Powers Act giving every appearance of his customary giggling during remarks of which he does not approve.


Stuart Sinclair Garson: Mr. Speaker, I believe the rules of the house require my hon. friend, as a member, to accept the word of another member as to what he was doing. And I say to my hon. friend, when he makes the suggestion that I was giggling, that he is making a statement which has not an atom of truth in it.


George Alexander Drew: Mr. Speaker, I can only express my great regret at the pain which produced the grimace on the face of the Minister of Justice at that moment.
Mr. Speaker, I believe this is an opportunity for members in the house to express an opinion in regard to this subject, without testing the position of the government in relation to any legislation before the house. It is an opportunity for members to make their comments respecting emergency legislation of this kind. It is an opportunity for members in the house to give to the government a clear indication that the trend should be back toward greater responsibility on the part of parliament, and that there should also be a greater recognition of the principle of the rule of law.
Therefore, Mr. Speaker, so that this subject may be dealt with by hon. members, through the opportunity provided in this instance, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra (Mr. Green):
That all the words after "that" to the end of the question be deleted, and the following substituted therefor:
"this house desires to record its opinion that the powers granted to the governor in council under the Emergency Powers Act are repugnant to responsible parliamentary government."


Major James William Coldwell: Mr. Speaker, I was just about to say that I think we have listened to a speech this afternoon which does serve a useful purpose, because it brings before us a problem of government and parliament.
Last year we opposed the legislation now under discussion on the ground that the government had not used it as we anticipated it would have been used. The Emergency Powers Act was first placed on the statute books in 1951. In that year we understood that the legislation would be used in the interests of the Canadian people to prevent further inflation, to protect the people from the rising costs of living, and the like. This was not done. Consequently, when the measure came before the house last year we opposed it on those grounds.
I can see some circumstances under which legislation of this description is necessary;
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Emergency Powers Act but I do not believe that that necessity exists at the present time. I do not know-because one does not have the research facilities one would like to have-how many times this legislation has been used since last May, when the house approved its extension. I doubt very much whether it has been used to any extent. And if it has not, then that is the first argument why it should not be extended or continued at the present time.
What the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Drew) has said about the supremacy of parliament and the rule of law is certainly something of which we should take heed, wherever we may sit in the House of Commons. May I say particularly at this time that at least one public man in this country, in the person of the premier of Quebec, is challenging the supremacy of parliament; and, indeed, if reports can be believed, is challenging the rule of law, when he says that a federal act passed in relation to deduction of income tax for federal purposes will not be fulfilled by the government of the province of Quebec.
I say that every member in the house, no matter where he sits, should regard himself as a guardian of the supremacy of parliament and a defender of the rule of law, no matter whom it may affect, whether it be an individual, a corporation or a government.
As I listened to the Leader of the Opposition this afternoon, that was the thought that flashed into my mind. At the beginning of his speech he said that the supremacy of this parliament and the rule of law are of fundamental importance to this country, and, indeed, at this time, to the world. I would like to remark that we should keep that constantly in mind as we discuss measures of this description, and other problems, that face the country today.
We shall support the motion at this time because we believe that, since the Emergency Powers Act has not been used in the manner in which it should have been used, and perhaps has scarcely been used at all, its continuance is not consistent with responsible parliamentary government. I am one who believes in parliamentary institutions and the parliamentary system. I believe as a matter of fact that for the self-government of man- and I use that in the sense of including both men and women-no better plan has yet been devised by man. And I want to see the supremacy of parliament and the rule of law properly maintained. But I think the government will have to make a case for the retention of this legislation. I am not going to say very much today, but I will say, as we did last year, that we shall indicate our opposition to any proposed extension by 

voting for the amendment that has been introduced by the Leader of the Opposition this afternoon.
During the war years perhaps this parliament did grant to the government many prerogatives and rights which ordinarily should have been exercised by this house. We were forced to do so under those circumstances. I suppose there will be times during peace and in war when governments of all stripes will ask for powers that go beyond what is normally granted in a legislative body of this description. I say, under certain emergencies powers of this sort must be granted, but I do not believe that the situation exists at this time which warrants this parliament, under the circumstances, considering, if the proposal is made-it has not been made yet-extension of the powers that we gave to the government several years ago, and the more limited powers which we extended last May.
I do not wish to speak at any further length, but merely to express the point of view that I have just expressed and to say that I hope that every hon. member, wherever he sits, will heed the plea of the Leader of the Opposition for the maintenance of the supremacy of this parliament and of the rule of law throughout the whole of this country.


Mr. Solon E. Low (Peace River):: Mr. Speaker, it would seem unfortunate that such an important question as has been injected into parliament this afternoon should not have been known a bit in advance, because some of us would like to have made better preparation in detail so as to be able to cite specific cases to the point, and make of this debate what it really should be.
I look upon this matter as of the utmost importance, and it is because I do look at it as of the utmost importance that I said what I did, namely, it is too bad we did not have some indication that it might be raised this afternoon. However, the Leader of the Opposition has raised it, and I for one would not like to see the occasion pass without registering briefly views which I have with respect to the very important principles of the rule of law and the supremacy of parliament, which are the subjects of discussion.
For a good many years thinking men and women all over the world have been concerned about insidious attacks that have been made on these two important principles of democracy, the isupremacy of parliament and the rule of law. No less a person than Lord Hewart of Bury, a member of the House of Lords, began away back in 1927 to register his fears through various publications. He wrote a book known as "The New

Despotism" and he brought it up to date in 1949, when the second edition was published. I should like to indicate just briefly from Lord Hewart's book one or two of the important views which he held, and by doing so I hope to be able to show hon. members that as far back as 1927 Lord Hewart of Bury saw what was happening in parliament. He observed this gradual but steady decline in the rule of law and in the supremacy of parliament and the gradual increase in the use of executive order by order in council to govern the country, and to do it without the knowledge of the representatives of the people.
I am not going to quote at any length, Mr. Speaker, but I do want to use just a few of the statements made by Lord Hewart of Bury to illustrate the importance of this matter. He said:
A little inquiry will serve to show that there is now, and tor some years past has been, a persistent influence at work which, whatever the motives or the intentions that support it may be thought to be, undoubtedly has the effect of placing a large and increasing field of departmental authority and activity beyond the reach ot the ordinary law.
This has been done very largely through two methods, as far as I can understand: First, through the manner in which our various acts of parliament or laws are drafted by draftsmen who put into them certain clauses making it possible for the minister or the government, the executive council, to make regulations and even to go so far as to change the nature of the law and its provisions by regulations. That has been known. It has been done right here in this parliament over the years, and the process has gone on almost unimpeded for a number of years.
Lord Hewart went further and said this:
The citizens of a state may indeed believe or boast that, at a given moment, they enjoy, or at any rate possess, a system of representative institutions, and that the ordinary law of the land, interpreted and administered by the regular courts, is comprehensive enough and strong enough for all its proper purposes. But their belief will stand in need of revision if, in truth and in fact, an organized and diligent minority, equipped with convenient drafts, and employing after a fashion part of the machinery of representative institutions, is steadily increasing the range and the power of departmental authority and withdrawing its operations more and more from the jurisdiction of the courts.
In my experience in parliament we have never had a wide-open debate on this important matter. It would be very much in the interest of the country to have such a debate, where we could be better prepared for it, although the subject has been introduced here this afternoon by the Leader of the Opposition and it will serve a real
Emergency Powers Act purpose in alerting our people, not only in this house but across the country, to what is going on. Yet the full value cannot possibly be realized unless we are more thoroughly prepared for it than we are this afternoon. Lord Hewart pointed out in his thesis that to the average lawmaker, the average proponent of democracy, the continental system of administrative law was repugnant. I believe that is right; it is to me, although I must admit right out, Mr. Speaker, that the continental system of administrative law is at least a system, and it does provide for courts and law and hearings and adjudications and all that sort of thing, with which it attempts to preserve for the people their rights and liberties. Then, Lord Hewart went on to point out that although the continental system of administrative law is repugnant to the average proponent of democracy, yet it has some superiority over the kind of rule of law into which we have declined in these days.


Edmund Davie Fulton: The rule of lawlessness.


Solon Earl Low: Yes, the rule of lawlessness; it might be wise to say that, as the hon. member for Kamloops remarks. This insidious process -and I call it insidious because anything that saps the strength of the parliamentary institutions is insidious-has been going on for enough years so that the people of the country should be aware; but I say to you that the people of the country can hardly be aware of the process and its insidious nature unless they can get the facts. There is only one way in which they can get the facts and that is if the government of the day, which is supposed to be a democratic government in this country, will make those facts available to the members of parliament, the press and to the public generally. I say to you, Mr. Speaker, that that procedure has not been considered by the Liberal government, as long as I have been in the House of Commons, to be a responsibility of theirs. In fact, there have been times when the members of the opposition have sought for information and have been denied it. Why, I have never yet been able to learn.


Paul Joseph James Martin: May 1 ask the hon. member a question?


Solon Earl Low: Yes.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I know very well the book to which my hon. friend refers, and I am sure that in that book there is nothing that deals with this particular aspect of the problem. Lord Hewart was referring to excessive administrative powers given to administrative tribunals, where there was no right of supervision by the courts, and so on.

Emergency Powers Act I am sure that on that particular issue he did not express himself as my hon. friend implies he did.


Solon Earl Low: Oh, yes. I am sure the minister has not read the book recently or he would not say that.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Oh, yes; I have.


Solon Earl Low: The fact is that Lord Hewart dealt with the same thing we are dealing with here today. He definitely deplores the way in which parliaments have been denied their responsibility. I will see that the minister gets the book when I am finished so that he can read up on it.


Paul Joseph James Martin: 1 shall be grateful if my hon. friend will show us right now where Lord Hewart says that the kind of thing complained about by the Leader of the Opposition today is contrary to the well-known practice in the United Kingdom parliament, let alone in the other commonwealth parliaments.


Solon Earl Low: All right, Mr. Speaker. I do not mind doing so. If the minister will tolerate a few more quotations, I think I can give it to him. I am having to pick these quotations more or less at random as I have not had time to prepare for this debate as I should like to have done. At page 16 of his book he simply says:
It is not merely that in this instance parliament is being out-manoeuvred, or that in that instance the courts have been defied. It is that the whole scheme of self-government is being undermined, and that, too, in a way which no self-respecting people, if they were aware of the facts, would for a moment tolerate.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Yes. He was talking about administrative tribunals and royal commissions.


Solon Earl Low: No. He was talking about exactly the same thing we are talking about, namely the rule of law and the supremacy of parliament, just exactly the same things that were introduced in the speech made by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Drew). Lord Hewart goes on to say:
Much toil, and not a little blood, have been spent in bringing slowly into being a polity wherein the people make their laws and independent judges administer them. If that edifice is to be overthrown, let the overthrow be accomplished openly. Never let it be said that liberty and justice, having with difficulty been won, were suffered to be abstracted or impaired in a fit of absence of mind.
The paradox which is in course of being accomplished is, indeed, rather elaborate. Writers on the constitution have for a long time taught that its two leading features are the sovereignty of parliament and the rule of law. To tamper with either of them was, it might be thought, a sufficiently serious undertaking. But how far more attractive to the ingenious and adventurous mind to employ the one to defeat the other, and to establish a despotism on the ruins of both!

What else could he be talking about but the rule of law and the supremacy of parliament? That is quite plain to be seen.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Yes. That is what he is talking about.


Solon Earl Low: Speaking of some kings of old, he goes on to say this:
In those days the method was to defy parliament-and it failed. In these days the method is to cajole, to coerce and to use parliament-and it is strangely successful.
To use parliament. What for? To set up, Mr. Speaker, a despotism or a narrow type of oligarchy for the purpose of governing a country which is supposed to be democratic. Then Lord Hewart goes on and gives a lot more things which I do not believe I need to quote. I am going to help my friend the minister by giving him some of the recommendations which Lord Hewart made and which I think he will see apply to the very case in point. At page 147, in a chapter entitled "What is to be done?" he says:
If it be asked where the remedy is to be found for the mischief which is here deplored, the answer is not difficult. Is it too much to hope, in the first place, that the worst of the offending sections in acts of parliament-
I direct attention to the words "acts of parliament".
-may be repealed or amended? And, in the second place, is it not comparatively easy to prevent similar sections from being enacted in future? To this end what is necessary is simply a particular state of public opinion, and in order that that state of public opinion may be brought into existence what is necessary is simply a knowledge of the facts. At present, it is tolerably safe to suppose, only a small part of the electorate knows what has been and is being done, while it is a still smaller part that has any real appreciation of the meaning and effect of the statutory provisions which offer at once the occasion and the instrument of despotic power. Two methods at least may be adopted, easily and immediately, by those who desire to discourage the new despotism. One is to form in each house of parliament a committee,-
And I put this forward as a suggestion to the Liberal side of the house particularly because they are the ones that can do something about it.
-not too large, whose sole task It should be to examine every bill, as it is introduced, for the purpose of observing whether and in what respects its provisions may have the effect of increasing the power of bureaucracy, and whether and by what contrivance that power is to be made irresponsible.
If that is not a suggestion along the line that my hon. friend-


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


Solon Earl Low: Yes.


George Prudham: I have here a quotation from the Edmonton Bulletin of November 16, 1950.
I will read the quotation-


Solon Earl Low: Is the minister asking a question or making a speech?


George Prudham: I should like to know
whether the hon. member subscribes to what is stated in this quotation which reads as follows:
The argument that a strong opposition improves a government is incorrect.
If you want a man to do a job you don't hinder him. Political opposition is often a hindrance.- Premier E. C. Manning.


Solon Earl Low: Mr. Speaker, I have not the slightest idea what the minister thinks that has to do with the present case.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Solon Earl Low: Not the slightest.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Do you agree with it?


Solon Earl Low: As a matter of fact, I do not know what he was quoting from. I do not even know that the words were authentic. I do not know anything about the case, but I will say this-


Stanley Howard Knowles: It shows what this government would like.


Solon Earl Low: Yes; it certainly does. It indicates all too well where the minister's mind is. But let me say this. I do not subscribe to that idea at all. I subscribe to the supremacy of parliament and the rule of law. I think that a strong opposition is important to any government.


Mr. Hansell:: And so does Mr. Manning.


Solon Earl Low: So does Mr. Manning, I am quite certain.


Ernest George Hansell: He has said so many times.


Solon Earl Low: The situation is simply this. The government has not brought forward the Emergency Powers Act for discussion today; not at all. The Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Drew) injected this discussion into the proceedings of the house today.
I just wanted to make those observations because I want to use them to support the stand we have always taken in connection with these emergency powers. Let me make it abundantly clear once more. I recognize the fact that there are times when the government needs unusual powers. When the need is clearly expressed, when that need has been demonstrated, when the government comes to this parliament and asks for those powers, and when I am convinced that they need them to meet a situation which exists,
Emergency Powers Act I will not withhold my consent for whatever it is worth in this house. That is the position we have taken in years gone by and that is the position we take today. On the other hand, when the government year after year asks for an extension of the Emergency Powers Act and then does not use the powers that are given, thereby demonstrating that there has never been any real need for them, I for one do not intend to agree at any time to the extension of those powers unless once more it has been demonstrated, by logical argument, that the government needs them.
I do not know what the government is going to do about these emergency powers this year, but I do want to submit my view that we should have in this house a watchdog committee of the type suggested by Lord Hewart, which committee could make a very careful scrutiny of all legislation in order to see that bills are properly framed and do not contain the kind of clauses which will curtail or filch from parliament its right to control the government of the country, which is a responsibility placed upon parliament under a system of parliamentary government.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Mr. Speaker, I am not rising to speak in reply to the motion made by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Drew). I am not competent to do so, because the question is one of government policy which, as the Leader of the Opposition, and every other hon. member of this house, is well aware, has not yet been determined. The hon. gentleman was told this only last week by the right hon. gentleman who was then acting prime minister. I imagine those of us who believe it is important to maintain parliamentary traditions wonder in passing whether this attempt to anticipate a debate which might come before the house later on is altogether in accord with the usual parliamentary traditions. I do not think it is, though I do not believe it is out of order. But I shall not argue that point.
The only reason I am taking up any of the time of the house, Mr. Speaker, is that my name has been mentioned and the remarks I made in a rather modest afterdinner speech made in another place seem to have caught the eye of the Leader of the Opposition. I confess I am rather flattered that he should have read that speech. I am even more flattered that he should have considered it sufficiently important to be made the excuse or the occasion for a debate, because I stated in that speech-though the hon. gentleman did not see fit to read it- something to the effect that all politicians live on advertising and on having their names
3208	HOUSE OF
Emergency Powers Act before the public. I recognize this and I give my thanks to the Leader of the Opposition for bringing my name thus briefly before the house. But I am afraid my agreement with the Leader of the Opposition ends just there.


George Alexander Drew: Well, sit down.


John Whitney Pickersgill: No. I am now going on to
disagree with the Leader of the Opposition, which I believe is the proper function of an hon. member in debate.
I suppose there are some hon. members opposite of the mechanical minority-if I may use the word of Mr. Mackenzie King of which I was reminded by the hon. gentleman-who think that anyone who speaks in this house should not disagree with the Leader of the Opposition. Well, I do not agree with the Leader of the Opposition. I do not agree with the fundamental statement he made. He quoted from a speech made by Mr. Ilsley some years ago in this house, and also from a speech I made some days ago in another place, and referred to certain things which had been done by this government inside and outside of this house, and before I was a member of it, which he said indicated a tendency towards a one-party state. I do not agree with that at all.
I said in the speech from which the hon. gentleman quoted that I supposed there was always some tendency for parliamentary oppositions to try to give the impression that under our system parliament is the government, and then I went on to say:
Parliament is not the government and the government is not even a committee of the whole of parliament, though there is a certain sense in which the government can be regarded as a committee of its own supporters in parliament.
That is where the hon. gentleman said I should have stopped. But I am not going to stop there. I am going to say this to the hon. gentleman. I do not believe in, I do not want to see, and I am totally opposed to a one-party state. I believe an opposition which does not agree with the government should not support it. When the hon. gentleman says there is a joint responsibility in this parliament which should be accepted by all hon. members on both sides of the house for what the government is doing, I would then ask who is advocating the one-party state? Is it the people on the opposite side who say they want to share the responsibility for what the government is doing? Or is it those of us in this house who say that as long as the electorate and members of parliament give us their confidence it is our responsibility exclusively and we have got to take the blame? If the opposition can persuade the electorate they can do


better then they will be on these treasury benches. But if I cross over to the other side of the house I shall not wish to share their responsibility.
That, I believe, is a true parliamentary system, and this notion that in some mysterious way the opposition has a share in the responsibility for carrying on government is not. The opposition has a duty and a very important duty which, it seems, they sometimes forget. They have a duty to harass the government and to point out mistakes in government policy. They have a duty to give a coherent, responsible program to the public so that the public has a chance of electing an alternative government. I question very much if they have made much effort to do that since 1935.
I am not talking about emergency powers, and I do not intend to do so except to make one observation later on. I am talking about the reference made by the Leader of the Opposition to the speech I made. I believe the difficulty is, and it is a difficulty which is inherent in Conservatism, that it is impossible for a real Conservative to believe that the public could want anyone else to carry on the government. That is why, after an election, they always want to reverse the verdict of the electorate and to crawl into office even though the public has indicated they are really not wanted.
I believe the public has indicated that fairly decisively, particularly in the last two elections. All I was talking about in this speech of mine, which has been the occasion though not the real reason for this debate, was the question of procedure in parliament in regard to motions for the production of papers, and addresses to the crown for papers. There has been considerable discussion about this on the other side of the house and statements made have been, if I may use my own words, rather plausible, and rather misleading to people outside the house. I tried to give to a number of gentlemen and a few ladies, who did me the honour of asking me to speak, an explanation of what the ancient parliamentary practice was in regard to these things. The Leader of the Opposition, if I took his words down correctly, said there was a tendency to move away from these old practices.
I said I would not agree with the Leader of the Opposition. I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, but I have to agree with him in this instance. I believe there has been a tendency to move away from these old practices-on the part of the opposition. To illustrate my point I would like to read a passage on this question of motions for papers from Bourinot, who was a clerk of this house some time ago and

who, I do not think, can be accused of any of the latter twentieth century innovations we have had here.


Edmund Davie Fulton: What page?


John Whitney Pickersgill: I have the fourth edition, published in 1916, and in this copy it is on page 249. It reads:
Occasions may arise when the government will feel constrained to refuse certain papers on the ground that their production would be inconvenient or injurious to the public interests. A high authority writes on this point:
"Considerations of public policy, and a due regard to the interests of the state, occasionally demand that information sought for by members of the legislature should be withheld, at the discretion and upon the general responsibility of ministers. This principle is systematically recognized in all parliamentary transactions; were it otherwise, it would be impossible to carry on the government with safety and honour."
Consequently, there are frequent cases in which the ministers refuse information, especially at some stage of an investigation or negotiation; and in such instances the house will always acquiesce when sufficient reasons are given for the refusal.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Exactly, when sufficient reasons
are given.


John Whitney Pickersgill: I continue:
On this account, members will sometimes consent to withdraw their motions; or in case only a part of the information sought for can be brought down, they will agree to such alterations as the minister may show to be advisable . . . sometimes the government may be obliged to withhold all information at the time, or they may be able to put the house in possession of only a part of the correspondence. If the government objects to the production of documents on the ground that they are of a confidential nature, it is not usual to insist on their being furnished, except under peculiar or imperative circumstances, on the ground that it would be wholly without precedent to produce them.
I could read a lot more to the same effect. This is the ancient practice. That is all I was describing in this modest little effort of mine. I was not attempting to suggest that the executive should take the place of parliament or anything else. But I did give reasons why some of these documents should be refused, and in view of some of the other things that have been said in this chamber this afternoon, much as I dislike the practice of quoting one's self I am going to do so right now, and I will make the quotations as short as I can. In the speech referred to, I had just been quoting the privy councillor's oath with which the hon. gentleman who leads the opposition is, to my knowledge, familiar because I administered it to him myself, and it gave me great pleasure to do so. I then was in another capacity.
I had referred to the privy councillor's oath which I do not need to remind the hon.
Emergency Powers Act gentleman obliges ministers not to disclose what takes place in Her Majesty's council. I said:
Now the main reason why deliberations of the council are and should be kept secret is that privy councillors, like other human beings, sometimes have minds of their own and occasionally have differences of opinion about the course of action to be taken by the government. But the government itself can only take one course of action at a time-
I think I should have said "can take only one course of action".
-and since all ministers are responsible for every action taken by the government and are in duty bound to support the action of the government-
Or to resign.
-our kind of government would be impossible if differences between them which have to be resolved were not kept secret.
In view of certain experiences that some other countries have had, I think the salutary nature of our system will be appreciated. But I gave another reason which perhaps some hon. members would think I might be a little more touchy about than most members in the house. I said that on many occasions documents which are asked for in these motions are documents which pass between officials and ministers. I think it is known to every hon. member that, for quite a long time before I came into the house, I was a bureaucrat, and for most of that time I was very well treated as a bureaucrat.


Mr. Blackmore:: Hear, hear.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Yes, I agree with the hon. member.


Paul Joseph James Martin: But deservedly so.


John Whitney Pickersgill: But towards the end of my career as a bureaucrat I suffered something which some other public servants in this country, perhaps for less reason, have also suffered. An attempt was made to go behind the minister who was responsible for my conduct and to bring me into a controversy when I could not reply. I am not complaining about that in my own case at all. As a matter of fact I have taken means whereby I can now defend myself to the best of my abilities against any kind of attacks. But most civil servants-and I hope this will continue to be true-do not aspire to political careers. They do not want to have political careers and they should not be put in the position where they either have to have a political career if they want to defend themselves or they have to stop giving honest, courageous and sometimes disagreeable advice.
Under our system civil servants are not entitled to explain or defend themselves, their

Emergency Powers Act opinions or their advice in public, and they should not be allowed to do so. Because they are divorced from politics and because it is essential to the proper working of our system that they should continue to be divorced from politics, it is absolutely essential that the documents which they prepare for the advice of their ministers, setting out the arguments pro and con, stating the advantages of one course and the advantages of another, and sometimes tendering advice that some ministers do not accept-because that does happen -should not be made public. To protect civil servants, to protect the very system under which we operate, the rule has been established that parliament is not entitled to see documents passing between public servants and ministers. Such documents are, in the language of parliament, privileged.
That is all I was talking about in this attack on parliamentary institutions that I am supposed to have made. That is absolutely the only point I was making. I think it is the duty of a government to protect these documents, to protect the people who prepare them, and to do so is not denying to parliament any essential facts whatsoever. The facts that a government is obliged to produce here, that it has a duty to produce here, and that this government in my experience has always been willing to produce, are facts, and not opinions, not arguments as to alternative possibilities and that sort of thing, on which ministers, either individually or collectively, have to make up their minds.
The facts to which parliament is entitled are the facts on which the government reaches a conclusion. It is the duty of the minister to give them. It is his duty to give them in his own words and on his own responsibility, and if he does not do a good job of it the opposition should make his life miserable until he does. But they should not sneak around by the back door, if that is not unparliamentary, sir, and try to burgle the minister's briefcase and to do it by motions for papers in parliament. That was my only point and that is my only point.
In my opinion the sooner we get back to the ancient practices and the ancient ways and the sooner hon. gentlemen opposite return to the old fashioned practice of attacking ministers and of making ministers answer for their departments, instead of trying to get behind them to attack defenceless civil servants, the sooner we will have good debates in parliament, and the sooner we will have greater respect for parliament in the country. Now I, sir, am not going to give any lecture-


George Alexander Drew: Perhaps the minister would agree to tell the house at what point any

hon. member this afternoon made any suggestion that could be interpreted in the words he has just used?


John Whitney Pickersgill: I do not think I said any hon. member did, Mr. Speaker. As I recall it, I was describing what I had said at a dinner at the Chateau Laurier. I said that there were times when motions were put down here that would have that kind of effect. I did not say in the debate this afternoon any hon. member had said anything of that sort. At least, I do not think I did. If I did, I did not mean to do so. If I did, I withdraw it.
I was saying that it does not seem to me that the fact the government feels it has a duty to resist motions for the production of privileged documents is interfering with any of the rights of parliament or any of the rights of the opposition. I feel it is upholding the ancient parliamentary practices, upholding our way of doing things and making our kind of responsible government workable. That is my whole point. If any hon. member opposite wishes to read the whole of what I said, without just taking a fragment here or there-not that I object in any way to the way in which the hon. member used the quotation he made from my remarks, I only objected to the occasion when I thought he departed from my text and put in the word "facts". I have carefully gone over what I said and I found no occasion where I said anything about the denial of facts. I do not think it will be found anywhere in my remarks.


Major James William Coldwell: Will the hon. minister permit a question? We have not had that speech identified. Where was it delivered and when?


John Whitney Pickersgill: I would be delighted to do so. I apologize to the hon. member for not having sent him a copy.


Stanley Howard Knowles: We thought you made it in the Senate. You kept talking about "another place".


An hon. Member:: Not in the Senate yet, anyway.


John Whitney Pickersgill: The hon. member will have to pardon my inexperience in using terms of that kind. It is described here as "cabinet government and freedom of information." You know, they always ask you to give a title and I thought that one up. The title is not very bright or original. It was a speech delivered to the semi-annual meeting of the Canadian Weekly Newspapers Association at the Chateau Laurier hotel in Ottawa, on February 22 of this year.

In referring to the Emergency Powers Act, the Leader of the Opposition quoted from Mr. Mackenzie King. He gave one or two quotations, which he said he was not giving to embarrass anyone on this side of the house. I can assure the hon. member they did not embarrass me, and for two reasons. They did not embarrass me because they were taken from a period long before I had ever met Mr. King. They did not embarrass me because I agree fully with what was in them. I particularly noted, and took down so I would have them right, certain words he quoted from one of Mr. King's speeches. Mr. King said that the executive had derived its power from, and is responsible to, the House of Commons. That is precisely what I was saying here. It is precisely what Mr. Ilsley said. Mr. Ilsley said the power was not delegated by the House of Commons. Everybody knows it is not delegated; that is not the mechanical way it is done, if I may use the word "mechanical" here.
He said the power was derived from the House of Commons. We who sit on the treasury benches here are nothing-


Mr. Hodgson:: That is right.


John Whitney Pickersgill: -the moment we cease to have a majority of this house to support us on any question. Therefore, we derive our power from this house, and we acknowledge that. It is true that there are certain people in this house, quite a large number, who were elected to support us and keep us here. There were a certain number of members elected not to support us. We do not derive our power from those who were elected not to support us. Surely that is a self-evident fact.
What really makes this whole question rather difficult is the fact that, when motions are moved by the hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker), by the hon. member for Kamloops (Mr. Fulton) or the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles)-though the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre is usually more in order-asking for papers which they know quite well no government would give and which they themselves certainly would not give if they were in office or they would not stay in office very long, the newspapers frequently say the government refused information to the house when those motions are voted down. The twenty people who sit on the treasury bench cannot vote them down. It requires the majority of the house. The government is not refusing information to the house. We would not dare.
Emergency Powers Act
If the house, by a majority vote, asks for information we must either give the information or we get out of office. It is just as simple as that. That is what responsible government really means. It does not mean giving some information that some hon. member opposite would like to have in order to show there was a difference of opinion between me and the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Martin). I may say that never happens, but it might happen. It might even be reflected in a document or a letter I would write to him. If it did happen, I would not blame the hon. member for trying to get that correspondence. I mean, it is part of the game.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Who would be right then?


John Whitney Pickersgill: They are not right, however, when they say that if we will not give it to them we are defying parliament or destroying the rights of parliament, because we are not. That is my whole point.
I feel I can perhaps reinforce this a little by reading one paragraph of this speech that the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Drew) did not read. When I have read that, I think that is the only other quotation I shall inflict on the house. I recognize that I was talking to newspapermen, whose business it is to get information in any honourable way they can, and what I was saying was not very palatable to them. I tried to explain the case as well as I could, and then I went on to say:
I am sure that every true newspaperman is. by instinct, against secrecy. He makes his living by uncovering news and reporting all the facts to the public. No one would question the right of newspapers-
At least I would not, perhaps I was going too far when I said "no one". In fact, I am sure I was going too far because I seem to remember the Leader of the Opposition did question this right in the case of the radio on one occasion.
No one would question the right of newspapers to report any differences of opinion between cabinet ministers they are able to discover for themselves, or to publish reports or even speculation about the advice ministers have received from their officials or from experts they have retained, subject always to the ordinary laws of libel.
It is one thing for the press to discover these things for themselves, by any means they have at their disposal which they can exercise without falling foul of the law, and it is quite another thing to say it is the duty of the government to provide this parliament with such information. That is the point, and the whole point. If I can sum it up, parliament has the right to know what the government's decisions are, and it has the

Emergency Powers Act right to have reasonable justification lor those decisions and the best case the government can make for them from the government benches, but it has not the right to have all the papers which we have used in making up our minds. That is the essence of it; because those are not public documents at all.
Now, I do not think there is anything more I can usefully add to this subject. However there is one other point upon which I think, as an historian, I would like to make a slight correction. The Leader of the Opposition, in one of his quotations from Mr. Mackenzie King-and I did not take a note of it, I am sorry to say-when Mr. Bennett was in office, contrasted his statement with the situation prevailing under the Emergency Powers Act.
Now, as I recollect it, Mr. King's objection to that legislation of Mr. Bennett was that large sums of money were made available, without any specific appropriation, in a time of peace. That was the point. Appropriating money is a function of parliament. It is true that during the war there were huge general appropriations under wartime conditions; but I do not think this government has asked for any appropriation of that kind in peacetime. And under the Emergency Powers Act we have specifically excluded the power to appropriate money without a specific reference to parliament. In other words, I do not think the quotation was relevant to the kind of circumstances we are discussing in this motion.


Mr. Howard C. Green (Vancouver-Guadra):: Mr. Speaker, the Secretary of State (Mr. Pickersgill) has spent most of his time this afternoon trying to explain and to justify the foolish speech he made outside the house some weeks ago. He has said very little about the Emergency Powers Act; and so, if one is to be in order in following him, there is very little one can say about the hon. member's speech. I would like to make one remark, however, and it is this, that I think after he has had a little more experience as a cabinet minister and has been told a few things by senior cabinet ministers, he will not be so brash about making foolish statements outside the house, and will not come to the house and try to convince the rest of us that, after all, they were not foolish.
The amendment before the house is as follows:
this house desires to record its opinion that the powers granted to the governor in council under the Emergency Powers Act are repugnant to responsible parliamentary government.
It is worth while for us first to look at the attitude of members of the government with regard to this question. I refer for


example to the statement of the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe) on March 12, just ten days ago. He was asked this question by the hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker) when the orders of the day were called:
Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask a question of the Acting Prime Minister. With the approach of the Easter recess, is he in a position to say whether or not it is the intention of the government to allow the Emergency Powers Act to lapse, or will legislation be introduced to continue it?
One would have thought that the Acting Prime Minister would have treated the subject with great seriousness, and that he and other members of the cabinet would have given a great deal of time to consideration of this question, which is so vital to the parliamentary life of Canada. But here was the minister's answer:
Mr. Speaker, no decision on that point has been taken as yet. It will depend upon events between now and the end of the session.
That was the very offhand answer given at that time by the right hon. gentleman, showing how little weight he placed on this particular question.
And then today we have another evidence of the attitude of the government, in the very fact that instead of the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) of this country, or the Minister of Justice (Mr. Garson) leading off for the government in answer to the amendment, we have the Secretary of State (Mr. Pickersgill), the most junior member of the cabinet-or very close to it-getting up and leading off for the government, making a speech which ignored the Emergency Powers Act, and trying to show what a great fellow he is, himself.


Mr. St. Laurent:: Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member will allow me to interrupt; when the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Drew) was making these references to the speech made by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of State sent me a note asking me if I would object if he answered immediately. I said that I would not. As soon as he took his seat I was proposing to rise; but the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra got in ahead of me. That is why I am waiting until he finishes in order to state my case.


Howard Charles Green: The Prime Minister knows very well that it is not the practice in this house for one government supporter immediately to follow another.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: The Secretary of State declared he was not speaking for the government, but that he was dealing with references to himself.


Howard Charles Green: The Prime Minister, by his own remarks, has made it perfectly clear that he

considered the reputation of the Secretary of State of more importance than this question of emergency powers.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Oh well-


Howard Charles Green: Otherwise the Secretary of State would have been told, as he should have been told, to wait his turn, and to rise later in an attempt to justify the ridiculous speech he made a few weeks ago.
May I repeat that these actions show more clearly than words could do that the present government places very little importance on this question of the Emergency Powers Act, and very little importance on parliament- because it is the strength and power of parliament that is involved in this question. They show further that the government has lost all sense of the values in the democratic system of government.
Further, Mr. Speaker, I point out that during only four years of the life of this Liberal regime have we had a free parliament in Canada; and that was from October, 1935, to September, 1939 when the War Measures Act was brought into force. Ever since the fall of 1939, for a period now of almost fifteen years, there has been no truly free parliament in this nation. Parliament has not been supreme.
A year ago we had a debate with respect to the extension for a further year of the Emergency Powers Act. It was a hard-fought debate, all the opposition parties uniting to attack the government's proposal that the act be extended. As a result of that debate a column was written in the Vancouver Sun by the present member for Vancouver South (Mr. Philpott). I shall read two or three paragraphs from that column, because I think it shows very clearly what a Liberal thought a year ago about the Emergency Powers Act-and goodness knows there is far less cause for continuing it this year than there was last.
This is what the hon. member for Vancouver South had to say-and I shall be very interested to see how he votes on this amendment. The column is headed "Sees Liberal Mistake". It is dated February 25, 1953, and is as follows:
It seems to me that the Liberals at Ottawa are clearly in the wrong, and the Conservatives, C.C.F. and Social Credit clearly in the right about extension of the Emergency Powers Act. Under the regular constitution of Canada the government of Canada has all the powers that it needs to deal with any conceivable emergency. Moreover, in this age of air travel, it is possible to assemble parliament on 48 hours' notice or even less.
Why, then, ask parliament for what amounts to a blank cheque to by-pass parliament even when parliament is sitting?
Emergency Powers Act
It would be wrong at any time for a government to ask for the extension of the Emergency Powers Act, unless there was some clear and unanswerable case for such a request. But it seems doubly bad for a Liberal government to do so,-
Mr. Philpott did not know his Liberals then as well as he knows them now. I continue:
-for the most fundamental principle upon which historic Liberalism stands is precisely the supremacy of parliament.
When young Mackenzie King came into power in Canada after an energetic campaign in 1920 and 1921 when, day after day, he aroused the people of this land to the dangers of rule by order in council.
The principle he championed was right then-and it is right now.
And then he goes on:
A bad principle is a bad principle-and this is a very bad principle. A bad precedent is a bad precedent-and this is a very bad precedent.
On November 26 I asked, in my speech on the debate in reply to the speech from the throne, that this Emergency Powers Act be repealed. If I remember correctly, no attempt was made to answer that suggestion, and of course no move was taken by the government. We are now in a position where, according to the Minister of Trade and Commerce, the government does not know, the cabinet does not know, what they are going to do about the question.
It is worth while today, Mr. Speaker, to go back and have a look at this Emergency Powers Act. Of course we have on the statute books the War Measures Act, which could be brought in by proclamation even though war is only apprehended and not actually a fact. The War Measures Act was used during the war years, and I have heard no one quarrel with such action. In the postwar years modified measures were brought into effect. The War Measures Act was put back in cold storage, where it remains at the present time, and different acts were enacted to replace it. There was the National Emergency Transitional Powers Act, the Continuation of Transitional Measures Act, and then this Emergency Powers Act, which was passed on March 21, 1951. It is very interesting to analyse this act and see what it provides. In the first place it reads as follows:
Whereas an international emergency exists that threatens the security of Canada;
In other words, it declares an emergency. That is the first point I wish to deal with in connection with the act. The second point is this: It is based on preparations for defence. For example, the second recital reads as follows:
And whereas it is essential that emergency powers be conferred to enable measures to be taken as urgently required from time tc time to carry out adequate defence preparations,-
3214	HOUSE OF
Emergency Powers Act
There are the words I mentioned a moment ago. Then, the recital goes on:
-to regulate the economy of Canada to meet the needs of defence-
There is another reference to defence. The paragraph continues:
-and to stabilize the economy and to safeguard it from disruption that may result from defence preparations in Canada or from emergency measures taken in other countries, in order that defence preparations may not be impeded.
Therefore the second feature of the act that I wish to deal with in a minute is that it is based on defence preparations. The third feature is in the third recital which reads as follows:
And whereas it is preferable that the necessary emergency powers be exercised under special authority from parliament rather than that the War Measures Act be brought into force so long as-
And these are the words I emphasize:
-present efforts to avert war are continuing and, moreover, it is not desirable that the wide powers conferred by that act to interfere with the fundamental liberties of the individual should now be brought into operation.
The third feature I am emphasizing today is in these words:
So long as present efforts to avert war are continuing.
The fourth feature is the powers actually set out in the act.
First of all, to go back to the declaration of an emergency; as Your Honour knows, the very fact that parliament passes an act declaring an emergency widens the jurisdiction of this parliament. The result is that if a person attempts to attack an act which was passed by this parliament he may be met with the defence that parliament has declared an emergency. That is particularly true of an attempt by one of the provinces to attack the jurisdiction of this parliament to pass an act. Counsel for the defence will probably be met in court with the argument by counsel for the dominion that this Emergency Powers Act declares an emergency, and therefore the act in question is intra vires. That declaration of emergency gives the dominion power it should not have under present conditions; it is an inaccurate description of the situation at the present time, and I go further and suggest it is a deceptive description of conditions at the present time; the dominion is not entitled to have this extended jurisdiction which is gained by declaring that there is an emergency.
With respect to the second feature of the act, defence preparations, I challenge the Prime Minister or any minister of this government to indicate how this Emergency


Powers Act is needed for defence preparations. For the production of defence materials we have the Defence Production Act. When it was passed in 1951 I asked the Prime Minister whether or not that act gave the government all the powers it would require if a third world war were in existence. The question and answer are to be found on page 909 of Hansard of March 5, 1951, as follows:


Howard Charles Green: The Prime Minister has said that this bill as presented contains all the powers that would be required in the event of a third world war.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: I would not want to promise the house that if we ran up against something where the courts said this was not good enough we would not come back to parliament; if we thought it should be done, we would ask parliament to authorize it; but I think the law officers have drawn this in language that should be sufficient to cover all the enabling powers apt to be required.
Therefore for the purpose of defence production, even though we were in a third world war, nothing more would be needed than what is on the statute books in the form of the Defence Production Act.
Then, a day or two ago this house passed the Export and Import Permits Act, which again I suggest is an act which would be sufficiently strong, even though we were in a war. In any event, the Minister of Trade and Commerce, with this Export and Import Permits Act in his hands, has all the powers he requires. He does not need to get any further under the Emergency Powers Act.
The third feature of the act, namely, that it is passed to be effective so long as present efforts to avert war are continuing, leads me to say this. The act was passed in March, 1951. The fighting in Korea ended on July 27, 1953. The men in our forces, even though they are serving in Korea, are now being treated as though they were serving in a peacetime army. They are no longer entitled to the benefits that were available for men who served during the fighting in Korea. Our whole force now is on a peacetime basis. And, Mr. Speaker, if the emergency powers are needed now I wish the Prime Minister would explain when they would not be needed.
If this Emergency Powers Act is to be continued, then it is only too evident that emergency powers are from now on to be the regular thing in Canada, during the whole time that there continues in effect this present policy of remaining strong so that an aggressor will be dissuaded from commencing a war. That policy will probably be in effect for the lifetime of most of the members in this house today. Is parliament to be fettered with an Emergency Powers Act

under present conditions? If so, it is a rather bleak outlook for parliamentary government in Canada.
To come to the powers granted by the Emergency Powers Act, we find that they are contained in section 2 thereof. They are very wide. The section reads as follows:
The governor in council may do and authorize such acts and things, and make from time to time such orders and regulations, as he may by reason of the existing international emergency deem necessary or advisable for the security, defence, peace, order and welfare of Canada:	and for
greater certainty, but not so as to restrict the generality of the foregoing terms, it is hereby declared that the powers of the governor in council shall extend to all matters coming within the classes of subjects hereinafter enumerated, that is to say:
Then we have a list of these powers specifically covered by the act.
(a)	control and suppression of maps, plans and photographs;
(b)	control of communications and means of communication:
(c)	control of the harbours, ports and territorial waters of Canada and the movements of vessels:
(d)	transportation by land, air or water and the control of the transport of persons and things;-
In other words, all transportation across this country.
(e)	trading, exportation, importation, production and manufacture;-
I ask hon. members how you could have wider power than that.
-and (f) imposition and recovery, in connection with any scheme of control, of fees or charges payable to the Receiver General of Canada or into any fund or account established by order or regulation for the purposes of the scheme of control.
Then the section goes on to provide as follows:
All orders and regulations made under or pursuant to authority conferred under this act have the force of law while this act is in force.
That means, Mr. Speaker, that under this act legislation can be made by the cabinet over in the east block, behind closed doors, and can be enacted even while parliament is sitting. The Minister of Transport (Mr. Chevrier) smiles; and he is the right man to smile because, just about eleven months ago he walked into this house and tabled an order in council that under this act had been passed over in the east block with the doors shut and the blinds drawn.


Lionel Chevrier: That is what I was smiling at.


Edmund Davie Fulton: I hope they had the lights on.


Howard Charles Green: That order in council was
passed without any opportunity for debate in this house, without any opportunity for the press of Canada to report a debate to the public and without any opportunity for
Emergency Powers Act the public to know anything about it. That same power could be used today. The cabinet at six o'clock could leave this house, go over to the east block and pass legislation under the Emergency Powers Act, and it would be law just as though it had been passed here after debate.
Even with respect to this order in council which was tabled by the Minister of Transport and known as the "control of trade by sea for mainland China and North Korea", P.C. 1953-604, there has been in the intervening eleven months no attempt to place that law in statute form, even though this session it could have been brought in as an amendment to the Canada Shipping Act, and something of that kind should be done. Instead, this order in council, passed under the Emergency Powers Act, remains law today without there ever having been an opportunity for debate in parliament.
When the government did that, of course they were challenged. The following day I moved an amendment to the motion to go into supply and challenged that action. Here was the reaction of one of the senior ministers of the government who was in the house at that time. I refer to the Minister of Trade and Commerce. As reported at page 4197 of Hansard of April 21, 1953, he said:
If we have overstepped our powers, I make no apology for having done so.
That was the attitude then. In effect, these powers are a club in the hands of the government held over parliament, over the Canadian people and over the provinces.
As to the question of the rights of parliament, Mr. Speaker, clearly this Emergency Powers Act forces parliament into a secondary position subservient to the cabinet. It should be fundamental in Canada that parliament is supreme. After all, parliament is the people governing through their representatives under your direction, Mr. Speaker. That should be the foundation of parliamentary government in this country. Parliament should be supreme, debating laws openly, with the right to deal with them in the various stages as they go through this house and then as they go through the Senate, so that the people are able to know the problems, the remedies that are proposed, the objections made to the legislation and, perhaps most important of all, the penalties that are imposed by those laws.
Mr. Speaker, I suggest that this Emergency Powers Act should be repealed. Certainly it should not be extended beyond May 31. Any orders in council that are in existence under the Emergency Powers Act could be changed into statutory form by having them passed in the ordinary way by the house. If when
3216	HOUSE OF
Emergency Powers Act the members are not here any matter arises which is important enough to require legislation, this parliament can be summoned back quickly, just as was pointed out by the present hon. member for Vancouver South (Mr. Philpott) in the article that I read a few minutes ago. The government always has on the statute books the War Measures Act which can be used in the event of war or apprehended war. I do not believe there is one valid excuse for maintaining this act on the statute books at the present time.
The ministers will note that public opinion has been strongly expressed against the act. Last fall many papers across this country suggested in editorials-


Mr. Croll:: In August public opinion was expressed on this act.


Clayton Wesley Hodgson: It was expressed on the old age pension stories you were putting out around the country.


Mr. Speaker:: Order.


Howard Charles Green: After the subject had been raised in the house during a debate last November, there appeared in not a few of the Canadian papers editorials suggesting that the time had come to repeal the Emergency Powers Act. I do not believe there was one editorial in the country in favour of having it retained.
This amendment is a challenge to the private members of this house, whether they be on the opposition side or on the government side. If the private members of this house, who, after all, are the ones who should be most concerned about the rights of parliament, see fit to say that this act must go then it will go. The government dare not retain it on the statute books if that attitude is adopted by private members of this house.
The Liberal majority in the last parliament was very docile. Naturally they will not agree, but in my judgment-and this is my fifth parliament-Liberal private members in the last house were far more docile than any other group of Liberals in the other parliaments in which I have served. I hope Liberals in the present parliament will do much better. I believe they will, for government supporters in this house seem to be more open-minded on questions than were Liberal members in the last house. In any event, here is an opportunity for them to show us where they stand. If they believe in the rights of parliament, if they believe parliament must be supreme, then let them take steps to tell their ministers that this act must go.
The Progressive Conservative party stands for the supremacy of parliament. That has
[Mr. Green.l

been one of our fundamental beliefs down through the years. We believe in parliament being supreme rather than the cabinet, and we believe that only in that way can we have a free parliament in Canada.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Mr. Speaker, we have just heard a very interesting speech on the merits of the Emergency Powers Act, which is not before the house at this time. We have before us a motion to go into committee of supply, to which there has been moved an amendment which reads as follows:
this house desires to record its opinion that the powers granted to the governor in council under the Emergency Powers Act are repugnant to responsible parliamentary government.
It occurs to me, Mr. Speaker, that that is quite an unusual amendment to make on a motion to go into supply. It is an attempt to anticipate something which may or may not happen. The Emergency Powers Act, as everyone knows, is an act of temporary duration which will expire on the 31st of May, unless there is an attempt made to have legislation passed by this parliament to extend it for a further period. If that is done it should be within the powers of parliament at that time to decide whether the act should be extended.
This is an attempt to have that decision made at the present time so that there can be no bill introduced or dealt with by the house to extend the act. That does not seem to me to be required at this time. If we intended to do as the hon. member for Peace River (Mr. Low) seemed to believe Would be the right thing to do, namely, to set up the kind of committee which Lord Hewart recommended in his book, from which the hon. member read some very interesting quotations, there might be some point in dealing with it now. But this can have no other effect than to reflect upon what parliament did during another session, because it is a declaration by this house that what was done in this house by another parliament, and which received royal assent, was something that was "repugnant to responsible parliamentary government".
I do not know just exactly what is meant by the words "responsible parliamentary government". I assume the word "government" is used in its widest sense, to include everything that has to be done for the peace, order, and good government of the state through our parliamentary institutions. This amendment in effect proposes that this house declare that what was done is repugnant to responsible parliamentary government. I think that course is objectionable under standing order 41, and that which has been sanctioned by usage both in England and

Canada, namely, in effect, that an hon. member while speaking must not reflect on past acts and proceedings of this house.
There is a way of dealing with legislation which has been passed and which hon. members feel should not have been passed, that is by the introduction of a bill to repeal it, but here is an indirect move designed, I imagine, to put it beyond the powers of this house to deal with that kind of legislation were it introduced during this session.
I believe we are all very happy that in the course of the last few months there has been no occasion when we required the use of these powers, and I believe we will all be very happy if they never have to be used. It may be that between now and the time when it would be necessary to introduce legislation for an extension there will be happenings that will make it quite apparent to everybody that the powers granted under this Emergency Powers Act would not be required, and that they would be merely a standby to ensure that we would be in a position to meet events unlikely to occur. But parliament in its wisdom-and that is how we must regard the result of parliamentary action- decided last session that it was going to make these powers available up to the 31st of May, 1954, and not beyond that date unless the matter were again raised in the meantime.
The hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra (Mr. Green) seems surprised that the Acting Prime Minister (Mr. Howe) said that we had not yet decided whether we would ask parliament to extend that act. Why should there be anything surprising about that? It is something that does not have to be dealt with and does not require to be dealt with until the end of May. The world situation during these troubled years is subject to frequent changes. Why should we make any decision? No one would be happier than members of the government if the situation became such that parliament did not have to be asked to extend the Emergency Powers Act.


Howard Charles Green: I would like to ask the Prime Minister a question. Does the Prime Minister believe there is any need for the act under present conditions?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: I do not foresee any immediate occasion or any immediate reason for having to exercise the powers under the act. But when it was passed last year, rightly or wrongly, we felt our responsibility towards the Canadian public was such that it would be desirable to have that act in force, though we expressed the hope that we would not have to use it, and we have not used it. But at that time we felt the situation was
Emergency Powers Act such that it was a proper discharge of our responsibility to have the act available. Now it is available and will be available up to the end of May. On more than one occasion we have discussed what should be done about it, but we have refrained from making any decision to ask parliament to extend the act because we hoped that the situation might be such that we would not have to ask parliament to extend it.
In advance of that date why should there be this debate and an attempt to divide the house upon the matter except it be to try to get the same kind of reaction that the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra was so happy to cite from the writings of a distinguished newspaperman who has since become a member of parliament on this side of the house? Unless this legislation is brought forward for extension it will lapse. That, I assume, would be quite satisfactory to the hon. gentlemen opposite. On the other hand, perhaps it would be a disappointment to them if they found the situation was such that we did not have to ask parliament to renew these powers and they were thus deprived of this bogey, this cry of "wolf, wolf" against the supremacy of parliament and the rule of law.
No one disputes the supremacy of parliament, no one disputes the rule of law, but oppositions always take a different view from that of those who happen to have the responsibility of government at the time as to what is impairment of the rights of parliament. Strong language has been used today. If it ever became necessary for us to sit on the other side of the house I would not be at all surprised if there might be some occasions when we would use just as strong language as is now used by the opposition about these impairments of the rights of parliament. But nevertheless it is a fact in which I think the Canadian parliament and the Canadian people can glory that others than Canadians recognize that there is no country in the world where the practices of constitutional parliamentary institutions are better than they are in Canada, and that in spite of the fact that there have been these constant charges that those who are exercising the responsibility of government are becoming dictators or are resorting to methods that connote Hitlerism or fascism or communism.
There is no Hitlerism, there is no fascism and there is no communism, thank the Lord, in this country of ours. That is one of the reasons why, as the representative of the country, I was received in such a friendly and cordial manner wherever I went. That is why I found such admiration for this growing and developing nation and for the manner in which democracy is practised in this part
3218	HOUSE OF
Emergency Powers Act of the North American continent. I even heard favourable comparisons being made with respect to democratic practices in the northern half of the North American continent with some of the things which many of our friends to the south of us themselves deplore in the administration of their own system.
That being the situation, there is no application to parliament at this time to pronounce itself in favour of extension of the Emergency Powers Act. There is no necessity of making a formal decision at this time, and in spite of the charge that it may be docility on the part of members who were elected to support this government, I invite them to vote against the amendment because if they were to vote for it they would be doing something not required at this time, something which may never be required, namely, to make up their minds whether or not there are sufficient reasons to justify the extension of the life of that act.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Would the Prime Minister permit a question before he concludes with that point? I ask him to appreciate that I am seeking information. Can he tell us whether the order in council which we sometimes refer to as the secret order in council, and which was passed under the authority of the Emergency Powers Act, is still in existence?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: It is.


Stanley Howard Knowles: That being the case, what would happen to it if the Emergency Powers A.ct were allowed to lapse on the 31st of May?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: It would disappear; it would lapse. It may be that it will be possible to allow it to lapse and that there will be other provisions under which what this order in council wards against can be taken care of.


Stanley Howard Knowles: If any such other provisions are adopted in connection with that secret order in council, would there be a report to parliament that another basis had been found for it?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: There would not be
another order in council required. It may be that in dealing with the Criminal Code and in dealing with the Official Secrets Act there will be sufficient safeguards against that which is warded against by the secret order in council to make an order in council unnecessary. It would not be something that would have to be specially dealt with by order in council having the effect of law.


Stanley Howard Knowles: In other words, it might die without-


Jean-Paul Stephen St-Laurent: It would be a safeguard existing through the operation of the statute itself.


Stanley Howard Knowles: In other words the order in council itself-


Some hon. Members:: No.


Jean-Paul Stephen St-Laurent: Will you permit me? I should like to hear the hon. gentleman.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The order in council might die without our ever having known what it was about.


Mr.   Si. Laureni@: Yes, and I do not think that would be an infringement upon the supremacy of parliament or upon the rule of law. It was something which we felt was a necessary precaution, and if we can find legislation adopted by parliament sufficiently specific to ward against the danger which it was attempted to ward against by the order in council, then the order in council would appear unnecessary. It would certainly expire if the Emergency Powers Act itself expired because there is no other foundation for it to rest upon but the authority given by parliament to do so. If that authority lapses, it will lapse at the same time.
The situation is changing. An international conference is to be held with respect to which some hopes are entertained that it may bring about some easing of existing tensions. I refer to the Geneva conference to commence, I think, on the 26th of April. That is well before the 31st of May. On the other hand situations might arise out of the discussions of the Geneva conference which would appear to be quite otherwise. Although the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra said that the fighting ceased on the 27th of July, it must not be forgotten that that is only a ceasefire.


Howard Charles Green: The troops were put on a
peacetime basis.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: They were put on a peacetime basis, and I think the hon. member hopes, as I hope, that they will never be put on any other basis. But it is only a cease-fire. That has to be followed by something. I saw the very strong lines that have been provided in Korea, and I said the other day that the best intelligence our people had was that on neither side were offensives being prepared. But it would not be reasonable to anticipate that armies are going to stand there in these impregnable lines facing each other forever. There is going to be some solution some day to the stalemate represented by these two defence lines.
These are matters which will be dealt with in due course here. There is a provision in standing orders, Mr. Speaker, which does

not directly apply, but it does indicate the principle which should be applied when government business is being dealt with. It appertains to the government to decide in what order and at what time it will be dealt with.
This is an effort by the opposition to have something that is government business decided weeks and weeks in advance of the time when the government itself feels that it should be decided. If this house adopted the motion, then there is the principle that the same question cannot be again submitted at the same session. Citation 304 of Beau-chesne's second edition reads:
It is a wholesome restraint upon members to prevent them from reviving a debate already concluded; and it would be little use in preventing the same question from being offered twice in the same session if, without being offered, its merits might be discussed again and again.
If a bill to extend the emergency powers were offered, either Your Honour would rule that we could not answer the arguments made against that kind of bill this afternoon by the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra (Mr. Green) or Your Honour would rule that the same question could be debated twice during the same session.
There is a general rule that deals with amendments that can be made to the motion to go into supply, and it says in part:
. . . provided that the discussion and the amendment, if one is moved, shall not relate to any decision of the house during the current session, nor to any item of the estimates, nor to any resolution to be proposed to the committee of ways and means, nor to any matter placed on or whereof notice has been given in the order paper.
There is an indication that that principle should apply to this motion. There was no notice required on the order paper to make it abundantly clear that the Emergency Powers Act could not live beyond May 31, 1954, unless legislation were introduced to carry that out. I think it would be in accord with the general principles of the rules that no decision should be taken on this matter today. Should the general rules be too general to allow Your Honour to rule on this amendment, I think that the supporters of the government should wait to express their opinion as to whether the Emergency Powers Act should be extended until the government comes to the house with the reasons why it should be extended.
The government will not come to the house unless it has reason to feel it would not be discharging its responsibilities to the Canadian public without the act. I invite our followers in the house to withhold their judgment upon the sufficiency or insufficiency
Emergency Powers Act of the reasons, if reasons are brought forward, until those reasons are brought forward.


Mr. Speaker:: With regard to the citations the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) has read to the house I wanted to say that, as 1 heard the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Drew) speaking about existing legislation on the motion to go into supply, I thought that perhaps it was not the type of grievance that is customarily put before the house on the motion to go into supply.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Will you hear argument?


Mr. Speaker:: I am not going to make a ruling at the moment, I just want to deal with the procedure. I looked at the citations having to do with these amendments that are moved on the motion to go into supply. If hon. members look at citation 345 and then at citation 467 of Beauchesne's third edition, they will find that wide scope is given to amendments moved to the motion to go into supply.
At one point citation 467 says that amendments can be moved and it shall be permissible-I am not quoting verbatim-to discuss any public matter within the powers of the federal parliament. Then it says:
. . . provided that the discussion and the amendment, if one is moved, shall not relate to any decision of the house during the current session, nor to any item of the estimates, nor to any resolution to be proposed to the committee of ways and means, nor to any matter placed on or whereof notice has been given in the order paper.
I could not see how the matter being discussed at the moment was one which fell within the restrictions of citation 467 or 345. The Prime Minister has drawn my attention to a citation in Beauchesne's second edition, which in the third edition is citation 246. It says:
Besides the prohibitions contained in standing order 41, it has been sanctioned by usage both in England and in Canada, that a member, while speaking, must not:
(k) reflect upon the past acts and proceedings of the house;
The last few words of standing order 41 read:
No member may reflect upon any vote of the house, except for the purpose of moving that such vote be rescinded.
Now, if hon. members look at citation 246(k), they will see that this language is probably a summary of citation 244, which says:
A member may not speak against or reflect upon any determination of the house, unless he intends to conclude with a motion for rescinding it.
In my opinion the "past acts" referred to in citation 246(k) mean past acts in the same
3220	HOUSE OF
Emergency Powers Act session. I do not think we ought to rule out of order a declaration of principle embodied in an amendment to a motion to go into supply, because of the wide scope offered for such amendments; I do not think we ought to say that, because of this citation, members cannot criticize acts passed in previous sessions. The whole spirit of our rules pertaining to bills or motions which are not to be offered twice refers to the same session.
I might perhaps refer hon. members to May's Parliamentary Practice, the twelfth edition, at page 267, where it deals with the same question. It deals with this citation, which in Beauchesne's is the same in substance, and comes from May or Bourinot. It goes on to say how difficult it is for a member who wants to discuss the past action of a parliament in the same session to move a motion to rescind it because there has to be a new question put before the house. It is said that the house has even resorted to prorogation in order to rescind a decision made in the same session.
I submit that if hon. members look at the authorities they will see that a session of parliament is assembled by the summons of Her Majesty and continues until prorogation. In my opinion the limitation is to a debate taking place twice in the same session. I think that paragraph (k) of citation 246 refers to a debate in the same session.
Now, I was trying to see if there were any words in the amendment which perhaps might be offensive. I looked up the definition of the word "repugnant" and I find in the Oxford dictionary, which is on the table, that the word is defined as meaning "contradictory, incompatible with, refractory, resisting, distasteful". If we were to decide that "distasteful" is the proper definition of the word repugnant, then I should think hon. members would want to modify the expression. But if it means incompatible with responsible parliamentary government, which I think is the meaning, while in the ordinary sense it is considered a bit strong, I believe, upon looking at the definition, that we should not have such thin skins as to say that the word should be prohibited or, under our rules, eliminated.
I do not want to make a ruling at this moment. I have given my thoughts in the matter-perhaps given them too quickly- but, at first sight, looking over the authorities, that is my reaction. I promise hon. members that I will study the point further, and if I find any reason for changing my mind I shall communicate it to the house.


Mr. Elmore Philpott (Vancouver South):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege. I understand this afternoon when I was on the front lawn of the parliament buildings trying [Mr. Speaker.!

to count how many daffodils are pushing their way up through the snow, the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra (Mr. Green) referred to a newspaper article I wrote about a year ago. I do not know whether that was the first best or the second best article I wrote on that particular subject a year ago, but I am sure the hon. member would not want to leave with the house any misapprehension.
I wrote two articles about a year ago concerning the Emergency Powers Act.


Howard Charles Green: Mr. Speaker, I hesitate to interrupt the hon. member but-


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The hon. member for Vancouver South (Mr. Philpott) has just come into the house, and is rising on what is called a question of privilege. Hon. members generally do that either immediately after or while a speech is being made. In this instance I understand the hon. member for Vancouver South was not in the house.
He may do one of two things: If he knows what has been said he may explain the position briefly, without adding anything other than that required to make his position clear; or he may wait until he has an opportunity to take part in the debate, at which time he would be entitled to discuss fully the point brought before the house. But I do not think that at this time he can add anything that would not be considered necessary to making his position clear.


Elmore Philpott: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, I shall take my two minutes now. The addendum to the article which I understand the hon. member read this afternoon was to the effect that we needed the Emergency Powers Act last year, during the period when we had no parliament to call in an emergency session. And of course I still stand by that position. So, in answer to my hon. friend's query, he does not need to be in any doubt about how I shall vote tonight. I shall vote with the government. If for any reason the emergency powers were to be prolonged beyond that period, without justification, then naturally I would vote against the government. But tonight I shall vote against the opposition because it seems to me this is a vexatious move.


Mr. J. M. Macdonnell (Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, I am very glad of the ruling you gave because, so far as I can make out, the real difficulty is that the opposition is coming in too close and is making suggestions which are somewhat embarrassing to the government. Perhaps unintentionally the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) gave me a good deal of hope this afternoon that actually what we are asking is going to happen. And also he gave me a certain feeling of satisfaction

that although we did not succeed a year ago in having this legislation turned back, nevertheless we may have succeeded better than we knew in not having it used. Because we now find that the government saw fit not to use it at all during the year just past. To that extent I think we may be entitled to congratulate ourselves.
When we examine further into the use of this statute, and look back to the orders in council which were passed, the strange thing is that a great many of them seem to have very little to do with the actual reasons for which we understood the statute was passed. On that point I shall have something more to say after the dinner recess.
At the moment however I should like to go back to a year ago and to say a word or two about what the Prime Minister has said as to the inappropriateness of the resolution, inappropriate because the government has not yet declared its mind. I noticed carefully what he said to members of his own party.
I would ask him to go back to a year ago, and consider what happened. At that time, for the first time-I think almost for the first time-we felt that there was throughout the country some indication that people were becoming interested in this question of undue government power. The hon. member who has just spoken on a question of privilege, and who is going to vote with the government tonight, was one who did come out and express views in which he questioned seriously what was going on.
This year, with the legislation having still some months to run, we have been bold enough to seek to arouse public opinion and to influence the government, while there is still time. I suppose if we had been good little boys we would have waited, and would have done nothing until the government reached its decision. Then, in theory, we would have been able to put forward our arguments and if those arguments had been good enough, the government would have adopted them. I am a modest man, Mr. Speaker, and I, frankly, do not ever expect to be able to make arguments good enough so that, when the government has brought in legislation and has shown its hand, it will be persuaded by those arguments to change its procedure. Neither do I expect to live long enough to see members on the government side rise up and smite the government. That is something which, in the best of all possible worlds, might happen, but I do not believe it will happen in this world, or in this parliament.


Edmund Davie Fulton: We will go on winning all the debates but losing all the votes.
At six o'clock the house took recess.
3221
Emergency Powers Act AFTER RECESS
The house resumed at eight o'clock.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. During the recess I examined the point that was brought up prior to six o'clock and I want immediately to refer hon. members again to citation 246, paragraph (k), Beauchesne's third edition, which reads:
Besides the prohibitions contained in standing order 41, it has been sanctioned by usage both in England and in Canada, that a member, while speaking, must not:
(k) reflect upon the past acts and proceedings of the house.
I gave it as my opinion that past acts did not refer to any other act but those which had been previously passed in the same session. It appears from reading the various authorities on the subject that it may not be right that it refers only to the acts passed in the same session but also to previous acts passed in other sessions. I should like hon. members to listen to a paragraph which is found on page 194 under the chapter "Rules of Debate" in a book published by Sir Gilbert Campion in 1950. There they will find paragraph 5 which reads:
This rule applies also to insulting language against a statute as the work of parliament.
This question and others to follow are all linked to the language contained in our standing order 41, which has to do with offensive and disrespectful language. The exact meaning of the word "act" in all these citations is somewhat difficult to establish.
In May's fifteenth edition at page 436 you find under the heading "Words against Parliament, or either House" a subparagraph entitled "Against a statute" and the following:
Disrespectful or abusive mention of a statute would seem to be partly open to the same objections as improper language applied to parliament itself; for it imputes discredit to the legislature which passed it, End has a tendency to bring the law into contempt; though the necessity of the repeal of a law justifies, as an argument for that course, its condemnation in debate. A statement that the enactment of a law may justify an appeal to force is not within the cognizance of the chair.
I am now going back in the years because, as hon. members know, our standing order 41 dates back to 1867, and we have inherited it from similar standing orders which existed under previous parliaments in Canada and in England. In Bourinot's fourth edition, which was published in 1916, I find the following: "Rules for the preservation of order.-Parliamentary and Unparliamentary Expressions in Debate," and at page 361:
(x) or to reflect upon, argue against or in any manner call in question, the past acts and proceedings of the house.

Emergency Powers Act
If "past acts" mean a statute which is in force and has been adopted by a previous parliament at a previous session, Bourinot would certainly not like to see us discuss at this moment the powers in the Emergency Powers Act because he says:
Or to reflect upon, argue against or in any manner call in question, the past acts and proceedings of the house.
In Bourinot's third edition, which was published in 1903, I find at page 482:
Or to reflect upon, argue against or in any manner call in question, the past acts and proceedings of the house.
Then in Cushing, which was published in 1874, I find at page 672, citation 1740, which reads as follows:
It is irregular to reflect upon, argue against, or in any manner call in question, in debate, the past acts or proceedings of the house, on the obvious ground, that, besides tending to revive discussion upon questions which have already been once decided, such reflections are uncourteous to the house, and irregular in principle, inasmuch as the member is himself included in and bound by a vote agreed to by a majority: and it seems that reflecting upon or questioning the acts of the "majority" is equivalent to reflecting upon the house.
Hon. members would judge that in this citation he is referring to a vote previously made in the same session. I am at a loss to decide exactly what is meant by "past acts". It looks as if generally the latter part of our standing order 41 is to the effect that if one wants to criticize an existing statute he must propose a motion to rescind a decision which has been previously made. It looks as if that is the sense of it.
What I should like to submit to the attention of hon. members at this time is the following: If one wants to argue against a statute, what is the objection to his proposing a bill to repeal that statute? Why does he have to take recourse to an amendment to the motion to go into supply? I looked at precedents. By the way, it certainly does not involve any expenditure of money to propose a repeal of a statute. I find that in 1936 the hon. member for Temiscouata (Mr. Pouliot) proposed a bill to repeal an act to establish an economic council, which had been passed by a previous parliament. It appears at page 436 of Hansard, volume I. The hon. member asked for leave to introduce a bill, which was agreed to. Hon. members will find at page 578 that the motion was agreed to and the bill read a third time and passed.
The question before us at the moment is: Should we consider it a grievance and delay the examination of supply to move as an amendment to that motion what is tantamount to a repeal of an act? It seems to me that


this amendment, to be scrupulously in order, should be modified to read: "That the administration of the powers granted to the governor in council under the Emergency Powers Act is repugnant to responsible parliamentary government." I should like to submit this because I think we all want to respect the traditional rules of order in debate. I should like to submit to hon. members that in whatever we do we should always follow the best course, and the best course in this instance, it seems to me, is not to move an amendment to the motion that the Speaker do now leave the chair, but rather to present a bill to repeal the Emergency Powers Act, which could be done.
I do not want to add more to what I have just said. I just leave it to hon. members. The question in itself is one that is extremely difficult to deal with. I simply would not wish on this occasion to establish a precedent whereby, on a motion to go into supply, hon. members would propose an attack against a piece of legislation, something which they could do better by moving its repeal; that is, if we are to be guided by what is stated in our standing order 41, which reads in part as follows:
No member may reflect upon any vote of the house, except for the purpose of moving that such vote be rescinded.
We have always taken this rule to mean a vote in the same session. As I have said, there are doubts as to whether it is limited to votes in the same session. Then it has been seen that one cannot argue against or in any manner call into question a statute which is law because in doing so it imputes discredit to parliament. I submit these points to hon. members. Speaking for myself, I would prefer it if this amendment were to read:
This house desires to record its opinion that the administration of the powers granted to the governor in council under the Emergency Powers Act is repugnant to responsible parliamentary government.
There I would say it is a grievance that is complained of; you are complaining about the administration of the act. But to say that the powers granted to the governor in council are repugnant to responsible parliamentary government is, I think, to attack the principle of the Emergency Powers Act. It is a matter of attacking a statute or an existing law. If hon. members want to attack that act properly, I think they should do so by means of a motion to repeal the Emergency Powers Act.
I do not at this point wish to initiate a long debate on procedure. As I have indicated, the point is a difficult and complicated one. I do not wish to rule on the matter. I am simply asking those who have moved the

amendment to consider perhaps a rephrasing of their amendment. If they feel that they do not want to be as scrupulous as I would like to be at the moment, I am just going to let the matter rest and not deal with it any further.
The Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) earlier in the day dealt with standing order 17, subparagraph 2 of which reads as follows:
Whenever government business has precedence, government orders may be called in such sequence as the government may think fit.
I think this standing order applies to the business that is on the order paper rather than to business that has not yet been placed on it. I think that is rather the meaning of that standing order.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Mr. Speaker, I did not submit rule 17 as being directly applicable. I submitted it only as an indication of a general theory that government business should be dealt with in the order in which the government saw fit to put it before the house. You will have noticed that I concluded by saying that if Your Honour felt that the rules were in too general terms to make it necessary for you to declare this motion out of order, I would ask our followers to vote it down.


Mr. Speaker:: The other point about which I am concerned is this. Once debate on this amendment which relates to the Emergency Powers Act has been concluded, if later a continuation in force of the Emergency Powers Act is proposed, hon. members will then be up against a standing order which says that one should not indulge in repetition. Of course, we cannot anticipate points of order. We shall have to deal with that matter when we reach it. However, hon. members can see what my difficulty will be at that moment.
If we carry on this debate, which offers such a wide scope, and review the Emergency Powers Act in all its ramifications, then suppose, before the session ends-and I should like students of procedure to examine that point, not discuss it now; I just submit it-that legislation is submitted to the house, what will I do if someone rises on a point of order and says that the argument the hon. member is presenting is one which we heard on the motion to go into supply, on such-and-such a date, and he is therefore repeating his argument.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if you would permit a question at that point? I wonder if that would not make it necessary for Your Honour to look at the records of last session when we had two debates on emergency powers, the first one on the bill to extend the Emergency Powers Act and 83276-204i
Emergency Powers Act the second one on an amendment to the motion to go into supply which was moved by the official opposition with respect to the exercise of the powers under that act. I suggest that last session we had the same two debates that Your Honour anticipates is possible this session, only they were in the reverse order.


Mr. Speaker:: The fact that we had two
debates last year does not necessarily mean that we must indulge in the practice of having two debates on the same question this session.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Mr. Speaker, I think we can probably settle this matter quite shortly tonight in keeping with the course that you have indicated we should follow and that is not to enter into a long debate on procedure. Instead of rephrasing the amendment in exactly the terms which you have suggested, I wonder whether Your Honour would consider it would be satisfactory and would accomplish the purpose you had in mind if we rephrased it so that it would read:
This house desires to record its opinion that the exercise of the powers granted to the governor in council under the Emergency Powers Act is-repugnant to responsible parliamentary government.
It is a small modification of Your Honour's suggested wording.


Mr. Speaker:: Since the hon. member is in such a co-operative mood,-


Mr. Pouliot:: He has no power of attorney.


Mr. Speaker:: -may I suggest to him that
instead of the word "repugnant" he use the words "incompatible with"?


Edmund Davie Fulton: Quite.


Mr. Speaker:: Does the hon. member agree to that suggestion?


Edmund Davie Fulton: Yes, indeed.


Mr. Maclnnis:: Mr. Speaker, I wish to raise a point of order as to the changing of an amendment once the amendment has become the property of the house. If you had not read the amendment to the house, Mr. Speaker, but had drawn to the attention of the movers of the amendment that you thought that, in its present wording, it was out of order, in my opinion that would have been your prerogative and your right and then they could amend it if they so wished. But once the amendment is read by you, Mr. Speaker, it becomes the property of the house and it cannot be amended without the consent of the house. I wish to draw to your attention that point which I think is a valid one.

Emergency Powers Act
Ivlr. Speaker: The hon. member is quite right.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Perhaps we could request the consent of the house.


Mr. Speaker:: Once I have made my observations on the question of rules and have asked those who are responsible for the amendment to consider changing certain words and once they have agreed, I must of course ask the house if they will agree to the change. If the hon. member objects, it cannot be done. He is quite right in that regard. But when we are trying to avoid declaring amendments out of order and instead to compose the various difficulties which may surround a point, I do not see why hon. members would not agree to the minor changes which are being suggested.


Jean-François Pouliot: Mr. Speaker, before giving my consent to the change I should like to know what was the meaning of the word "repugnant" used by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Drew). That word has two meanings, a bad one and a philosophical one.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I have made my comments and I have suggested certain changes in the amendment to make it more in accordance with the spirit of our rules. The opposition has agreed to change it so that it reads:
this house desires to record its opinion that the exercise of the powers granted to the governor in council under the Emergency Powers Act is incompatible with responsible parliamentary government.
That is the suggestion. Do hon. members agree to this amendment being changed in the manner I have indicated?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Goode:: Mr. Speaker, I cannot agree.


Mr. Speaker:: If the hon. member does not agree then the amendment will remain as it is.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: Mr. Speaker, if the things to which we took exception were always brought forward by unpleasant men it would be so much easier always to do the right thing and turn thumbs down on them. If the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) was only an unpleasant bully, instead of a pleasant gentleman, it would be very much easier to argue against this measure. But I wish to stress the fact that we should not be led away merely because we think at the present time that the administration of this measure is in the hands of people who will treat it, as far as they can, with discretion.
I shall have occasion later on to quote from a speech by the hon. member for Vancouver South (Mr. Philpott) and I hope what I shall quote will be treated more sympathetically than the quotation made by the hon. member

for Vancouver-Quadra (Mr. Green). The quotation will be relevant and it will stress the fact that we should look at the relevant principle and not merely consider personalities.
I was very surprised at some of the words used by the Prime Minister this afternoon because it seemed to me that he was relegating the opposition to a position where we hardly counted in this house at all. One of the remarks the Prime Minister used in criticizing the resolution was that it was an attempt "to anticipate something which may or may not happen". I believe that is true. But I would suggest, with deference to the Prime Minister, that that is true of an extraordinarily large number of things we have to do in this life. In a very large number of cases we have to exercise discretion on something which may or may not happen.
Another remark by the Prime Minister which struck me very forcibly was this: "It may be that between now and the time when it would be necessary to introduce legislation there may be happenings which will make it clear to everybody that the power granted under this Emergency Powers Act would not be required." That, I believe, is very true and I think it is perhaps the greatest justification of all for the opposition to seek to intervene now, through a valid expression of grievance, to bring public opinion to the point where it will not wish to have this act on the statute books any longer. In other words, I hope that what we are doing today may be one of the happenings which will make it clear to everybody that the powers granted under this act will not be required.
The Prime Minister has suggested that the fact that the act was not used should be an endorsement of the sincerity of the government in this matter. I believe in a certain sense that that is true, but on the other hand it is an equally good argument that the act is not required at all. That is the argument I wish to put forward.
The third remark by the Prime Minister, to which I wish to refer, is this: "It appertains to the government to decide in what year and at what time it"-that is government business -"will be dealt with." That, I believe, is an unassailable proposition, but if the inference from that is that until that time the opposition must just wait and see, that we should not take the initiative, then I doubt if this proposition would be supported by the Prime Minister to the end. There was a famous British statesman who got into considerable difficulty because he practised the slogan of "wait and see". At least, he was accused of doing so. I can see no reason whatever why

we should do so, nor can I see any reason why we should not press this resolution which reads:
this house desires to record its opinion that the powers granted to the governor in council under the Emergency Powers Act are repugnant to responsible parliamentary government.
That being our view, I suggest that it is not only our right but our duty to try to make that view prevail. Surely one of the chief duties ox an opposition is to try to make the public stop, look and listen. We do not succeed in that as often as we would like, but we have occasional successes which help us on our way. We certainly cannot achieve any success unless we are able to try to attract public opinion to our standard.
I would like in that connection to quote from an authority for whom, in one respect, I have the highest admiration, because he is a professor at Queen's University. The only qualification I have in my respect for him is that he is a little unsound politically; I mean that he follows the Liberal standard. But I would like to read what he has to say and I hope it will commend itself to the gentlemen across the floor. I hope they will agree with me that the remarks I am about to quote fully endorse my view as to the duties of an opposition. I am quoting from page 108 of Professor J. A. Corry's "Democratic Government and Politics". He says:
-there are always two or more sides to a story and the majority party has not heard all of the other side until the opposition has had Its say. Concession to the arguments of the opposition follows oftener than is generally believed.
I would like to believe that. I think perhaps he is a little bit enthusiastic there, but at any rate I think we should always assume not only that what we say will be listened to with courtesy, but that it will be weighed; and even though we do not succeed as often as we would like, nevertheless what we do say does have an effect. The quotation continues:
The public, despite its disillusionment, gets from the dramatic clash of parliamentary debate a grasp of the great issues of public policy which it cannot get in any other way until much larger resources are thrown into political education.
I believe the following is very important:
Finally, the new laws made each year are only a tiny fraction of the old ones which are being administered day by day. Oppressive, wasteful, or neglectful administration will be a black mark against the party which presently controls the executive power if its behaviour can be given wide publicity.
I suggest that what Professor Corry outlines there covers fully the task we are seeking to discharge today, namely, to come to the House of Commons in the hope that public opinion is moving, in the hope that before long it will have moved to the point
Emergency Powers Act where, as the Prime Minister said, it may not be necessary-which in other words means the government will come to the conclusion it will not be necessary-to continue this legislation. I hope the fact that we have debated this today may have a very definite impact upon the government's attitude in this matter. If it has, then I think we shall have discharged our duty as an opposition successfully; and if it has not we shall have discharged our duty as an opposition not so successfully.
I want to read very briefly from the act itself just to remind people of the breadth of the authority. I think we all have to recognize that we have got used to the exercise of wide powers. There is a great danger that we in the opposition get far too used to it. I am quite certain that such powers must be very tempting indeed to any government because I am quite sure that busy ministers must find discussions in the House of Commons often very tiresome. They must often regard them as perilously near a waste of time. They would hardly be human if they did not feel they had an unusual allotment of wisdom, and so I think it is almost too much to expect that they will be always on the alert to cut down their own powers. I would think it would be unfair. I hope 1 never find myself, as a member of the opposition, suggesting that it is fair to expect members of the government to cut down their own powers. Therefore we are the only people who can bring the importance of their being cut down to their attention, always in the hope that we may have an effect, sometimes when we least expect it. But I do want to read one recital from the act which is as follows:
And whereas it is essential that emergency powers be conferred to enable measures to be taken as urgently required from time to time to carry out adequate defence preparations, to regulate the economy of Canada to meet the needs of defence . . .
Having just read those words, I find it extremely difficult, Mr. Speaker, to understand why some of the orders in council passed since 1951 needed to be passed. They do not seem to me to be terribly emergent. I will make reference to one or two of them, and I would have thought they were passed not because there was a great emergency, other than to save the time and effort of the ministers, but because it was a very nice convenient way of dealing with the matter through this act rather than through what I suggest was the relevant act, which would have had to be brought back into the House of Commons and debated, with a resolution and three readings and all the rights of the minority, which are so precious to the

Emergency Powers Act minority and so important to our constitution but which I am equally sure sometimes become a little tiresome to government.
I find that an order in council was passed on December 6, 1951 exempting from customs duties personal gifts of a value not exceeding $25 from members of the Canadian forces serving abroad and addressed to relatives or friends in Canada. It does seem to me that the proper place to have done that was not under the Emergency Powers Act but under the relevant act, which I suppose is the Customs Act. I find one or two other cases. Here is one dealing with the licensing of pilots under the Aeronautics Act. I would have thought the Aeronautics Act might have been wide enough to deal with that. I find an order in council extending the provisions of the Defence Services Pension Act, and so on.
I suggest that those are instances of what happens when you get powers nicely concentrated with such broad words that, as the lawyers say, you can do almost anything except make a man a woman or a woman a man. I suggest that such powers are not desirable except in times of great emergency. Nobody denies that we are living in a world which is not free from some emergency and if there were no other way, if there were no other power available I might find it much more difficult to argue against this measure and to say what I am saying. But of course we are all aware of the War Measures Act. We are all aware that power can be invoked but that it is suggested that to do so would perhaps create a condition of alarm which would be undesirable. That, at any rate, is the argument that has been put forward.
I referred to the fact that a year ago we sought to have this act not renewed. At that time we were given various reasons, some worse than others. When the Minister of Justice (Mr. Garson) asked us to be content because any orders in council passed would subsequently be tabled and we would then have every chance to have them abrogated if we wished, I thought he was attributing to us powers which we really do not seem to have because, as I said before the dinner recess, I cannot remember cases where, after the government has taken action in that way, they have been prepared to recede. I should think it extremely unlikely that I or anyone else in the house will live to see that.
Of course the great objection to orders in council, as has been said so many times, is that there is no publicity. No one knows in advance what is going on. After the event we are faced with publicity, yes, so that we know what has been going on, but I think


no one who looks at things in a matter of fact way will expect that it will be possible for us even to have such matters seriously debated. I think that would be far too much to expect.
We are asked to regard this power as something about which no one really needs to get very worried. The Prime Minister has told us that during his journey he found that a good many countries regarded our political enlightenment and our state of freedom with admiration. I can quite believe that. Of course one would need to know more about the state of the countries themselves. It may be it was not a very great compliment. But on the other hand no one is going to deny that we in this country do not live in a state of oppression or anything of that kind. But we come back to the fact that when legislation is left on the statute books which contains such great powers these powers may be quite innocuous in ordinary times and may be left there because nobody thinks it worth while to try to dispose of them, but we all know that in countries where freedom has been lost it was lost because people grew careless and because they did not take the trouble in more quiet times to see that such legislation was kept down to the minimum.
I want to refer briefly to a writer who has written something about the state of affairs in the United Kingdom. I always feel that the United Kingdom, with its centuries of common tradition, with its homogeneous population, with its traditions of freedom, with all the safeguards it has against loss of freedom, has an enviable position, and when I find that serious people in the United Kingdom are warning against the very same thing we are trying to warn against then I think it is well worth while to stop, look and listen. I propose to put a very short quotation on the record from a book I have in my hand entitled "The Passing of Parliament", the author being Professor Keeton, professor of English law at University College, London. I want to read briefly from page 199 of his book. In a way these are strange words coming from a serious Englishman, and I read them with surprise. I think we should take them seriously and I think they point a wise course for ourselves. He says:
The problem which therefore faces all peoples which are still attached to the democratic way of life is to find some means of curbing the power of the executive, and preventing it from usurping the entire functions of government. The nineteenth century assumption that this would be achieved by successive extensions of the franchise has proved completely fallacious.
I do not think a single man in this house would challenge that statement, the idea that by a mere extension of the franchise we were going to increase and make more strict the

public control over the executive. I do not believe anyone adheres to that idea today. I continue to quote from Keeton:
The executive, as it has ventured to interfere increasingly with the lives of its subjects, has at the same time taken care to ensure that its servants and dependents (including the state-monopolies) are removed from the sphere of popular control. Its techniques grow ever more audacious. Today, in Britain, it is not only that wide powers of legislation, in fact if not in theory immune from parliamentary control, have been granted to the departments. In addition, these powers in turn are habitually delegated by the departments to its own agents.
As I had occasion the other afternoon to point out when we had the export-import bill before us, the definition of "minister" included, as I recall it, anyone to whom he delegated the power.
Instances of sub-delegation to the fourth and fifth degree are not uncommon. In addition, the case of Earl Fitzwilliam's Wentworth Estates Co. v. Minister of Town and Country Planning illustrates how what has been called departmental quasi-legislation by circulars and explanatory memoranda, can acquire compulsive force.
I just want to add one more citation from page 201.
It is plain, therefore, that we are already approaching the dangerous half-light in which the boundaries of what is legal and what is not are barely perceptible.
I just want to go back for a moment, Mr. Speaker, to say that although we are assured there will be no trespassing on the powers given, I suggest that those orders in council to which I made specific reference were never intended to come under this act. They should have been dealt with under the relevant acts concerned. This just shows us how broad powers, which are such an easy method by which to do business, will be used more and more freely as time goes on.
As I tried to show a while ago, Mr. Speaker, I think one of the main duties of the opposition is to get the public to stop, look, and listen, and we try to make the public in this case believe that when we say this legislation is incompatible with responsible parliamentary government, we are saying what is true. We must hope that the public will come to our aid when we say there is no need for this kind of legislation. You can reach the necessary results in other ways. There is no need for leaving on the statute books legislation that it is quite clear is not necessary. I know the argument which has been used that standby legislation is good; that it is often useful to have a club behind your back. I do not think that is a sound argument for legislation. I hope that argument will not be made in this debate, although it has been made in this house. I can quite see that at times it might be convenient, but I believe it to
Emergency Powers Act be one of the most unsound reasons for legislation and one which we should regard with the greatest possible suspicion.
There is one other thing I want to mention, and this is where I can read from an article written by the hon. member for Vancouver South which appeared in the Vancouver Sun on February 19, 1953. I quoted from this article when I spoke on this subject a year ago, and welcomed the statement which had been made by the present member for Vancouver South. I quoted him with considerable satisfaction. I hope he is not going to let me down in what I am going to quote now. He says this, as it appeared at page 3309 of Hansard for March 26, 1953:
It is no doubt true that there will be no serious abuse of the emergency powers, if they are granted for another year. But it is worth remembering that neither this Prime Minister nor this government will last forever.
That is quite an admission from a member sitting on the opposite benches. I suppose he would never have said that if he had been a Liberal member at the time. Then he goes on:
Nobody knows who will head our government a year hence. A bad principle is a bad principle- and this is a very bad principle. A bad precedent is a bad precedent-and this is a very bad precedent.
Those words seemed to me to be wise a year ago, and I imagine that a year ago they seemed to be wise to him. I hope he will say nothing to undermine them in any way.
Now, Mr. Speaker, for myself I am glad this subject has been brought up. I only wish we had loud speakers loud enough so we could din this into the ear of every voter. I recall that a year ago this measure produced a phenomenon which has almost never happened in this house, and that is that two members sitting on the government benches voted against the government. It reminds me of a very interesting comment on our house that was made the other day by an observer temporarily here from England. He said one thing that interested me greatly. He had this comment to make about the government party. As I am going to tell in some detail what he said about the government, I perhaps had better be frank enough to say that what he said about the opposition was not entirely to my liking, either.
About the government, he said something that goes to the very root of parliamentary government. He said that if in the British house you had a majority such as you have in your house there would be all kinds of little ginger groups, all kinds of people with views of their own that they wanted to express. You could not possibly discipline them as well as they are disciplined in your house.

Emergency Powers Act
I mention that just to conclude with the hope that, as a year ago when this measure was before us there were members on the government side who voted with us, possibly that phenomenon may happen again because it seems to me it would be a healthy and wholesome thing to happen in this house.


Jean-François Pouliot: This matter, Mr. Speaker, is very easy to understand. The Emergency Powers Act will cease to exist on May 31 next unless it is renewed in the meantime. Those are the facts. What surprised me very much was that the first motion sponsored by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Drew) after the renewal of confidence that has been given to him by his supporters was this very motion which is untimely, in fact it is premature, uncalled for and futile.
What surprised me more than that was that it was supported by my very good friend, the hon. member for Vancouver -Quadra (Mr. Green), who was one of two Conservative members of parliament at the time who accompanied their former leader, Lord Bennett, to the union station. He had tears in his eyes. My hon. friend will remember that he was accompanied at the station by the late Dave Spence. They were the only two there; and poor Mr. Bennett had tears in his eyes, thinking that Dufferin-Simcoe was not there, Dufferin-Simcoe whom he had created a privy councillor.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I do not think that the fact that someone was accompanied by hon. members at the union station has much relevancy to the amendment now before the house. And, further, the hon. member should refer to another member by calling him "the hon. member for Dufferin-Simcoe" and not simply "Dufferin-Simcoe".


Howard Charles Green: On a question of privilege; I am sure my good friend, the hon. member for Temiscouata, would not wish to be in error. Actually there were three of us who saw Mr. Bennett off. It was very, very, early in the morning, and the rest of the party had said good-bye to him the night before.


Jean-François Pouliot: I thank my hon. friend for his correction, but I suggest that he look at the newspaper files and he will see that he was alone, with Dave Spence.


Howard Charles Green: The newspapers are not always right.


Jean-François Pouliot: I am through with the sad part of past recollections. Now, sir, at the present time we have legislation which may be repealed or which may be continued. To


act with wisdom it is necessary for the government to take matters under advisement, just the same as judges do before rendering their judgments.
The Leader of the Opposition is far from being a mind reader. He does not know at all what happens behind the closed doors of the privy council-unless he peeks through the keyhole; I do not insinuate that he does that-although some do, some from his own party. I am not going to dot the "i's" and cross the "t's", but I refer to actual facts which are well known to all members in the house.
Now, what was in the speech of the Leader of the Opposition? What was in the speech of the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra (Mr. Green) who supported the amendment? The only ground upon which the Leader of the Opposition based his argument was the fact that the Minister of Transport (Mr. Chevrier) had come with an order in council when the question of extending the Emergency Powers Act legislation was before the house.
Then, besides that, he spoke about the rule of law. What does he know about it? He spoke about the fundamentals of parliamentary practice. What does he know about them? He spoke about things which are foreign to him, and I shall prove it very clearly. The Leader of the Opposition quoted some extracts from speeches delivered in the house in 1921 by Mr. Mackenzie King when the Meighen government was in office, and in 1935 when the Bennett government was in office.
Mr. King was heaping anathema on the Meighen government and the Bennett government, which were supported by the Leader of the Opposition. Did he say then that Mr. Mackenzie King was a great man? No. He criticized Mackenzie King at the time-and I was supporting Mackenzie King. He now quotes and praises the anathema of Mackenzie King against the Meighen government and the Bennett government.
With the experience I have in parliament, an experience much longer than that of the Leader of the Opposition, may I give him a piece of advice. When I was fighting Bennett, he was an appointee of Howard Ferguson, holding the office in Ontario of commissioner of securities. I will give him this piece of advice: "Let the dead bury their dead".


Clayton Wesley Hodgson: You should have given them advice in Elgin and Peel.


Jean-François Pouliot: I will tell my hon. friend that the Leader of the Opposition, who has been

boasting that he would make progress, has made no progress at the by-elections today. It would be better for the hon. member not to interrupt too much, because-let me tell him that I can use a secret weapon more deadly or deadlier than the one Samson used when fighting the Tories of his time, the Philistines.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. It may be that the house would prefer to listen to the remarks of the hon. member, although they are somewhat foreign to the amendment before us. However it is my duty to call the attention of the hon. member to the fact that he must come back to the question under debate.


Jean-François Pouliot: I said it, sir, I used the word "Tory".


Clayton Wesley Hodgson: Get off the comic page.


Jean-François Pouliot: Now, sir, here is a gentleman -and I say that because, personally, as a private individual, he is a gentleman, and this gentleman-honourable gentleman-has used the denunciation of his party by the leader of the Liberal party as an argument in protest against legislation which is actually in force. He says: This debate is not academic. Well, where does his amendment lead? It leads to nowhere; it is a trip to nowhere. And if the hon. gentleman knew the rule of law, if he knew parliamentary practice, if he knew British parliamentary practice, he would have done as Your Honour suggested. Instead of sponsoring a silly amendment like this he would have sponsored a bill, and would have been on record to show his sincerity by asking for the repeal of the legislation he complains about.
Far from it. He went to great length to say that hon. members were grimacing; that the Minister of Justice (Mr. Garson) was grimacing. And he was very much high-hat with no less a gentleman than the hon. member for Cochrane (Mr. Habel). He may hear from him in due course. I am not the only one who can speak to him through the chair. Well, that was it.
The hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra made another excellent argument. He said that the speech of the Secretary of State (Mr. Pickersgill) was foolish. He said it two or three times. What arguments! What powerful arguments to crush the Liberal party! Imagine! And they are surprised that the people do not take them seriously. They have no political acumen, not the least bit of it. It is unfortunate. I will chide the opposition to be strong; I will chide the opposition to be worthy of its functions, to establish the rule of law and to maintain the best traditions of parliamentary practice.
Emergency Powers Act What can we expect? We had the performance this afternoon; grimacing, foolish, that is all.
There is more to it. It is the very designation of the act, the Emergency Powers Act. It is a very important one. Is the hon. gentleman who sponsored the amendment ready to say that there is no emergency in the world at the present time? Is the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra ready to say that there is no emergency on the coast of British Columbia when he has told us so many times that he is concerned about the invasion of the Pacific? Nobody spoke about it as much as he did, and it was a long time before the Korean war. Do they know what is an emergency? Do they realize that at the present time the condition of the world is giving concern to people who have more experience than both of them put together? And here just for political purposes they make an attack on the government. They come with an olive branch saying that they are like the doves that came out of Noah's ark. They come with an olive branch of peace. They are not serious. The Canadian people do not consider them serious. They realized at the last election that the leadership of the Conservative party was not-


Mr. Speaker:: Order. This is not the time to discuss what happened at the last election. I would again ask the hon. member to confine his remarks to the amendment which is before the house and which I know affords the hon. member ample scope for him to express his views.


Jean-François Pouliot: Mr. Speaker, the Leader of Opposition (Mr. Drew) said at a meeting of eight people in Verdun-Montreal that the supporters of the government were sheep. I want to show him that there are rams among the supporters.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Also bores.


Jean-François Pouliot: We are spoken of as members who follow blindly the dictates of the government. We have confidence in the government and we have no confidence in the official opposition. That is our position; we have no confidence in them. Why? Because they are not serious. If they used their judgment for one minute they would realize that in times like these it is essential for the government to be in a position to take action if action is needed. For instance, let us visualize the attacks that could be made by air in a very short time. Would the government have the time to call parliament together to discuss all these matters? Action would have to be taken at once in case of such an emergency, and then the action of
3230	HOUSE OF
Emergency Powers Act the government would be submitted to parliament which is supreme, as is acknowledged by all.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Will the hon. member permit a question?


Jean-François Pouliot: Yes.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Does he think that the
Emergency Powers Act should be continued beyond the 31st day of May?


Jean-François Pouliot: Wait and see. That was the victorious answer of Herbert Asquith to the Tories of his time and I am very glad that my hon. friend is not one. I say that in all sincerity. I am for the maintenance of the privileges of parliament, and not only of parliament as an abstract body but of each member of the House of Commons. To recall old memories, I remember when old Mr. Bruce of Toronto could not speak at one time, and I took his defence-although I did not agree with him-because I wanted him to have the right to say what he thought right, probably. We are all for the defence of our institutions, of the privileges of parliament, and it is precisely on account of that that it is my duty to oppose very strongly the futile amendment of the Leader of the Opposition.
I have said enough for the time being. My concluding words will be that as a Liberal I am glad to see him as Leader of the Opposition once more, because when the Tories select a leader they always choose the wrong one.


Mr. F. S. Zaplitny (Dauphin):: I always
appreciate listening to the hon. member for Temiscouata (Mr. Pouliot) who does enliven the house with his delightful humour. When he made reference today to the jaw bone used on a previous occasion I might say that his own would give great competition in that respect.
This debate, Mr. Speaker, in my opinion, has become very academic because what we have in essence is an amendment protesting a statute which apparently is not in practical operation. I was rather surprised to hear the hon. member who has just taken his seat say that the government requires this legislation in the case of an emergency such as an invasion of this country. Now of course that is stretching it to the breaking point because we all know that the War Measures Act is still in operation, or could be called into operation at any time, and that would be the statute under which the government could meet any emergency. The Emergency Powers Act, about which this amendment protests, apparently has not been used since it was last endorsed by this parliament. If I


understood the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) correctly, I understood him to say it has not been used since the last time it came before the house.
That being so, it seems rather strange that there should be such a great deal of breastbeating about the whole thing. In addition to that, I think it has now been made clear that the debate is getting to the point where the members on the government side and the members of the official opposition are ready to admit that it all depends on which side of the house you happen to be sitting which attitude you are going to take. First we have the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) saying, in his delightful manner, that he is not surprised that the opposition is criticizing the government for arrogating unto itself great powers because if he were in the opposition he would be inclined to do the same thing. Then a little later the hon. member for Greenwood (Mr. Maedonnell) made the statement that he is not surprised that the government does not wish to reduce its own powers, because if he were in their position he would not want to do that either. So there we have it. It depends on whether hon. members happen to be on the government side or in the official opposition as to the attitude they take.
On the point that would really matter, namely whether either the members who support the government or the members of the official opposition are prepared to use any of these emergency powers to bring about any changes which would be to the benefit of the country as a whole in order to meet any of the existing emergencies, I think it is now becoming clear that they do not disagree; they are both for the status quo, and it appears to me that they are almost in violent agreement on that point. For example, wide powers are given to the government under the act. I admit that. Let me also say-and I am speaking for myself -that I have no objection to wide powers being given to the government by this parliament or by any parliament provided those powers are used for the purpose of meeting real emergencies and bringing about solutions to them in the interests of the general public welfare.
Referring to the act itself, we find in section 2, paragraphs (d) and (e) and further down in subsection 3, powers that would enable the government to meet almost any ordinary emergency, with perhaps the exception of war. For example, in paragraph (d) such things are covered as transportation by land, air or water and the control of the transport of persons and

things. Then in paragraph (e) such things are covered as trading, exportation, importation, production and manufacture. Then in subsection 3 we find this provision:
All orders and regulations made under or pursuant to authority conferred under this act have the force of law while this act is in force.
That indicates that the powers granted there are fairly wide. But the question is this: What has the government done or what does it propose to do to make use of these powers in order to meet some of the emergencies which are before the country today?
I have not heard at this point whether the government intends to use any of these powers. We have been told that in the past year they have not been used; on such issues that face this country as inflation, for example, we have been told that the government has not the ordinary powers to reimpose price control. There are such issues as unemployment. Then again we are told that owing to our constitutional position the government lacks the power effectively to do anything about it. We are faced with a great grain surplus in western Canada. Again, no action. There is a question of social security.
Only today we have an example of the blinding speed with which the government moves, when the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Martin) tells us that, even though as far back as twelve months ago we had a forecast of certain legislation dealing with pensions for crippled persons, to date he is not able to say when it is going to come before the house; and it may not come into operation until the end of 1954. That situation indicates that the government is not using even the ordinary powers and procedures which they have at their command and that the Emergency Powers Act in itself is only an adornment. As far as I can see, the only purpose it has been serving in the past year has been to gratify the ego of the government because it certainly has not been used to meet any of the emergencies which have arisen and which are facing the country. That is why I say I believe this debate is academic in the extreme. With all due respect, I say that the official opposition are protesting against something which the government claims they are not doing.
Going back over some of the debates in the past we find, of course, that when the Liberal party was in opposition the speeches made by Liberal members on that occasion about some of the orders in council and some of the legislation passed by the then administration were almost word for word what we 83276-205i
Emergency Powers Act hear from the official opposition today. I submit that the real questions before us are being sidetracked and forgotten in the midst of this flurry of excitement about an inoperative piece of legislation. As I looked back, it just struck me that in 1951, when this act was being put through this parliament, or in the same year, there appeared in the Western Producer, which is a widely-read weekly paper in western Canada, an editorial which should almost be required reading for every member of the government. It is dated October 11, 1951. I should like to quote just one short paragraph in order to point out what should have been engaging the thinking of this parliament and of the government instead of pretending that something is going to be done under powers which they now tell us have not been used. Here is the opinion expressed by that paper:
It is only too distressingly evident that the talk of a better, a more just economic order has not gone beyond the talking stage. The present prosperity and the various large-scale government undertakings for aiding those in need are in reality a false front. They owe their existence to the huge and growing activities devoted to defence and preparation for war. We are living in a war economy. To realize this let the reader try to envisage what would happen if by some miracle sure and certain peaceful understanding between the nations of the world were suddenly established. That glorious news would be followed by so calamitous a depression that it is hard to believe that our economy would survive it. For it would mean a sudden halt to all armament production, thousands of factories would be closed, hundreds of thousands thrown out of work. We strive and pray for real and lasting peace yet ignore or are completely unprepared to meet the catastrophic shock to our whole economy which would be the inevitable result of real enduring peace.
That is a challenging editorial and I think it underlines what I have been leading up to or have been attempting to say, namely that unless the government is prepared to meet the emergencies of the day, to do some long-range planning to meet the situations which may arise, legislation of this sort serves no purpose. Those situations are already casting their shadows before them. The unemployment figures themselves indicate that what the editorial said in 1951 was only too true. We have cut back national defence spending by only a small amount, both in Canada and the United States, but its effect is already being widely felt. What has the government to put in its place?
Those are the real issues facing this country, not only today but in the years to come. Those are the things that we in this parliament should be debating and planning for, not wasting our time and energy fighting about an Emergency Powers Act which was

Emergency Powers Act passed in 1951, which was renewed year after year and which the Prime Minister now tells us was not even used. Why worry about something which is not even being used? So far as I am concerned, I feel that the government has not made the best possible use of the resources they have had at their command. For my part I would say that it is of no use to carry on the statute books legislation of this nature which appears to be only for the purpose of pretending that something is going to be done when there is an emergency, that the emergency is recognized, and that the government is prepared to do something about it. That is not the case.
I appeal to the government on the grounds that the issues facing the country today are small in comparison with what they will be in two years' time. I hope I may be proved wrong, but that is what I believe at the present time. Instead of cluttering up the statute books with emergency powers and acts of parliament which are never used, I say let us make use of the legislation which already exists, let us make use of the facilities we already have, and let us do some planning for the future. Let us prevent a catastrophe in which even wider powers may be sought by this government.


Mr. Gordon Churchill (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I believe there is a principle involved in this motion now before the house which requires serious consideration. I did not follow the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Zaplitny) who has just spoken in many of his arguments, and particularly in regard to that in which he claimed that if the positions were reversed in this house and the opposition sat on the treasury benches the same powers now reposing in the government would be sought by the opposition. I do not believe that suggestion has been made by any hon. member of the opposition so far. Nor did I follow the hon. member in his argument that because the Emergency Powers Act has not been frequently used we should pay no attention to it.
I believe it is the duty of parliament to examine anything in the nature of extended powers asked for by the government, and to examine whether these powers are necessary. The amendment now before the house is simply the medium by which a redress of grievance is being sought, and a medium by which the opposition may draw to the attention of the people of Canada the fact that the power vested in the executive is greater than it need be, and that that power should be checked.
There has been considerable criticism in recent years of the decline in the power of

parliament and the corresponding increase in the power of the cabinet. Many commentators on political affairs have written on that aspect of the matter, and it has been discussed, of course, in the House of Commons on many occasions.
Earlier this evening my colleague, the hon. member for Greenwood (Mr. Macdonnell), quoted from a work by Professor Corry. I would also like to quote a passage from page 649 of the same volume. The professor was dealing with the problem of whether the democracies are travelling along the road towards dictatorship, and he was also dealing with this problem of the decline in the power of parliament and the growth in the power of the executive. The professor has this to say:
Yet the democracies are still a long way from such a concentration of power-
That is, compared with a dictatorship.
-and it is open to them to halt these trends before they reach the monolithic state. There is now much more concentration of power in the democratic governmental structure than there was in 1900 and this is not without its alarming aspects. But it is not necessarily beyond human ingenuity to find improved methods of control as counterpoises to the aggrandizement of the executive and the growing predominance of national over local, and state or provincial, governments.
That, the professor says, is the crux of the matter. This particular act to which we have been referring simply points up the attitude of the executive as an attempt to encroach still further upon the prerogatives of parliament. It is the function of the opposition to draw attention to that encroachment.
This afternoon the Secretary of State (Mr. Pickersgill) dealt with some of the functions of the opposition as he saw them, and I believe that in many of his remarks he was perfectly accurate. He suggested it was the function of the opposition to harass the government, attack the ministers, and to criticize and oppose. In that statement he is on very firm ground.
Sir Ivor Jennings, who has written a very useful book entitled, "Cabinet Government" based on parliamentary experience in the United Kingdom, has something to say with regard to the function of the opposition. I believe what he says is of importance because there is often a misunderstanding in the public mind and sometimes in this house as to the function of the opposition. But this is what he has to say on page 439 of his book: It is not untrue to say that the most important part of parliament is the opposition in the House of Commons. The function of parliament is not to govern but to criticize. Its criticism, too, is directed not so much towards a fundamental modification of the government's policy as towards the education of public opinion. The government's majority exists to support the government. The function of

the opposition is to secure a majority against the government at the next general election and thus to replace the government. This does not imply that a government may not be defeated in the House of Commons. Nor does it imply that parliamentary criticism may not persuade the government to modify, or even to withdraw, its proposals. These qualifications are important; but they do not destroy the truth of the principle that the government governs and the opposition criticizes. Failure to understand this simple principle is one of the causes of the failure of so many of the progeny of the mother of parliaments and of the supersession of parliamentary government by dictatorships.
Another remark by the Secretary of State attracted my attention. He said the function of the opposition was to criticize and oppose, and he rejected any idea of joint responsibility. Yet I suggest there are occasions when there is some joint responsibility in the House of Commons. For example, we find a certain measure of that joint responsibility in the realm of external affairs, and the view has been adopted here that in order to present a united front to the rest of the world on external affairs there should be no marked difference of opinion in this house. That would be a sound approach if full information was given to the opposition.
Sir Ivor Jennings deals with that point on page 465 of his book and I would like to quote. Speaking of the opposition he said:
Sometimes, indeed, it agrees not to oppose. This is particularly true of foreign affairs. For the enmity within is as nothing compared with the enmity without. The suggestion that the nation is divided gives encouragement to enemies abroad.
He then goes on to give examples from the British House of Commons where the opposition was taken into the confidence of the government so that a united front in foreign affairs might be presented. Sir Ivor Jennings points out that the giving of information to the opposition was particularly necessary where secret agreements prevailed so that should there be a change in government the incoming government would be aware of these obligations. I therefore suggest that there are occasions on which there is a certain measure of joint responsibility. Sir Ivor also points out on page 466:
Further, agreement may be made with the opposition to secure the settlement of a question which has so long divided political parties that an agreed solution becomes necessary.
We in this country may not have had anything as critical as that, but that has been the English experience. There is another reference, and this is related to the whole question of the powers which the executive has gradually been taking to itself within the House of Commons. The Secretary of State said that the government derives its power from the House of Commons and modified it to say, from a group within the House of Commons, which is of course
Emergency Powers Act accurate. The government derives its power actually from the party. Parliamentary government as it existed in the nineteenth century has been modified in the twentieth century to become, as Professor Corry calls it, party government. That fact must be recognized. The cabinet is supported by the party system and is dependent upon it to maintain itself in office. For example, Jennings says on page 439:
It is said that the House of Commons controls parliament.
Theoretically that is so because measures have to be passed by parliament, but in actual fact the control rests elsewhere. He goes on to say:
But, in truth, the fundamental criticism of the proposition is that it ignores the party system and thus ignores the fact that, through the party system, it is the government that controls the House of Commons.
The Secretary of State, in dealing with the question of the government not disclosing certain information on motions for the production of papers, went on to suggest that it was not the members on the treasury benches who voted down such motions but that it was the house that did so. But surely that is ignoring the party system completely. Members who are supporting the treasury benches naturally are not going to vote against their leaders in the House of Commons unless they wish to face disaster. Our system depends on party government and the party must remain intact or the gover-ment fails to maintain its position. That, I think, is a fact which is sometimes overlooked. The power of the executive depends of course upon the solidarity that it can maintain within its party in the House of Commons. For example, consider this passage on page 441 of Mr. Jennings' book:
The member of parliament is thus returned to support a party. He recognizes his party obligations by receipt of the "whip"; if he disagrees with the party policy on a particular matter, he may abstain from voting. Occasionally, perhaps, he votes against his party. If he does so too frequently, he loses the "whip"; and this means probably, the loss of party support at the next election. Without that support, he will probably not be elected. Also, his party loyalty as well as his self-interest will induce him normally to vote with the party. . . Above all, a supporter of the government is very unlikely to take any step which will defeat the government. For, if it is defeated on a major issue, it will resign or dissolve parliament. If it resigns, he has assisted the formation of a government by the opposition, which is, ex hypothesi, worse than that which he was elected to support. If parliament is dissolved, he will have to undergo the trouble and possibly the expense of an election; and it may not be certain that he will be re-elected.
Consequently, as the Secretary of State said, the members of the treasury benches certainly do not vote down these motions

Emergency Powers Act themselves. They vote them down with the support of the party behind them. It is thoroughly understood here that that is what happens, and we would be the most surprised people on earth if the treasury benches rose in support of a measure and all their supporters took the opposite stand. The party system is thoroughly established as part of our system of parliamentary government, and it is on that party system that the executive is dependent for its support.
With regard to the Emergency Powers Act, I have never been able to see the necessity for such additional powers being sought by the executive. I have never been able to see any force in the argument, "Oh well, you can trust us; we will not misuse our powers." I see no force in the argument, "we have not used them very often". We had an example last year of the use of the Emergency Powers Act in the tabling of an order in council under that legislation while parliament was still sitting. We have the example of a secret order in council which apparently stands or falls with the Emergency Powers Act. It is my opinion that there should never be in Canada such a thing as a secret order in council. I do not think that under our democracy secrecy is necessary along that line.
If it is important that something should be withheld from public knowledge, then that would be one of the instances when at least the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Drew) and the leaders of the other opposition parties should have some information as to a matter of such importance. The government has power without passing legislation such as the Emergency Powers Act. The experience of the British house is a case in point. Jennings is very useful in directing our attention to that. At page 447 he says:
British governments are in tact expected to govern. If necessary, they are expected to act even when they have no legal powers. They can rely on their majorities and on the common sense of the house to rectify their acts. There is and can be no limitation on retroactive legislation. A government can act first and ask for approval afterwards. It can declare war though it has not the power to place the forces on a war footing though it is the duty of the government to summon parliament at once.
May I interject there to say that in 1939 the services in Canada were placed on a war footing almost two weeks before parliament assembled and declared war against the enemy. Was there any question at that time about the government exercising power that was not inherent in its prerogative? I do not think so. That met with the good sense of the people of Canada and of members of the House of Commons. The government has these powers without passing legislation


such as the particular act that has been mentioned tonight. But Professor Jennings goes on to point out that when such actions are taken by the government, the immediate summoning of parliament is necessary so that it may be informed and may give its approval of the acts of the government.
The weakness in the Emergency Powers Act, as I see it, is that the government may act without summoning parliament and therefore can keep from the people of the country information that should be available in a democracy. Surely, as we pointed out earlier this afternoon, there is no longer any difficulty about summoning parliament rather quickly. Transportation has developed to such an extent that the house can be called together with dispatch. Why, therefore, grant to the cabinet the power to act without parliament being called to pass on those decisions? It could so happen that five months might elapse after action taken by the cabinet under the Emergency Powers Act, and parliament would not receive the information until it had again been convened.
Under the practice as we have known it in the past, established over the centuries in the great tradition of British parliamentary democracy, governments are certainly expected to act and make decisions, then to have their acts ratified as quickly as possible by parliament. The information is conveyed to parliament, and through parliament to the people. It is against this seeking of power by the cabinet that we make this protest. We make this protest fulfilling the function of the opposition, and hopeful that we may influence the government to restrict its desire for power.
We are still more hopeful that we may catch the ear of the people and inform them of what is being done here; inform them that their liberties are in danger. It is essential that our parliamentary system be maintained, that our democratic institutions be maintained in their full vigour. It is the duty of the opposition to draw attention at any time that it observes the power of the House of Commons is being diminished in any way by an increase in the power of the executive.


Mr. Harold E. Winch (Vancouver East):: On
the amendment that is now before the house, Mr. Speaker, I find myself in the position of being on the horns of a dilemma. I am unalterably opposed to emergency powers being in the hands of the governor general in council. I cannot see the reason for any such need. It is my honour to come from a constituency in Vancouver. From Vancouver, on the far western coast, we can come to Ottawa by aeroplane in about thirteen

hours; by train, we can be here in four days and three nights. I cannot conceive of such an emergency as would require emergency powers in peacetime, or why any decision of the government could not be submitted to parliament itself.
I have an objection to special powers. I can remember back in 1934 when a Liberal premier in British Columbia introduced the special powers act, known as the S.P.A. Later it became known as the supreme provincial asininity. In that act every power of parliament was taken into the hands of a lieutenant governor in council in British Columbia. I want to admit that the powers were never once used in any way whatever, and several years later the act was repealed. But I cannot see any reason for these strict emergency powers being in the hands of the governor general in council.
Whilst I condemn very much in principle the transference of the powers of parliament on an emergency basis into the hands of the governor general in council, at the same time I condemn the method whereby the official opposition has drawn this matter to the attention of the house. It is my personal opinion that it has been done completely on the basis of political expediency. In my estimation it could have been done on the basis of principle by using other methods. This afternoon I was interested in listening closely to the remarks of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Drew). I agree completely with the principles that he espouses, but I do not agree with all the arguments that he used. If my memory serves me correctly, when he spoke about dictatorship and bureaucracy he should have recalled that the greatest instance we ever had of dictatorship and bureaucracy was under a Conservative government under the late R. B. Bennett. During the election campaign he told us he was going to blast his way into the markets of the world, and his word was accepted by the electors of Canada. The depression continued, and the only blasting was that he blasted himself into an earldom in Great Britain.
These remarks may seem rather strange coming from a member sitting in the opposition. I am not speaking from the brief experience I have had here, but from twenty years' experience as a public servant. I will admit that for perhaps the first three or four years that I had the honour of being a public servant I went after the government from the opposition side. However, I learned a lesson and a principle. The principle was, and I still maintain it, that I will never say anything from the opposition side in parliament, denouncing the government or demanding action from the government, that I do not
Emergency Powers Act think I could put into effect if I were on the opposite side of the house. I do not believe the official opposition is attacking this matter from that basis.
I was most interested in the remarks of the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) this afternoon. I want to say, Mr. Speaker, that on this matter of the amendment now before us I believe the Prime Minister made a statesmanlike reply. He stated that there is now on the statute books the Emergency Powers Act, and it will remain there until the end of May. The government has not yet made up its mind what it is going to do. I do not like to try to be a prophet, but I do not believe the government is going to ask for the continuation of that measure. As I said, that act will be in effect until the end of May. If the government in its wisdom does not introduce a bill that measure automatically dies.
So all the hours, and the thousands of dollars we have cost the taxpayers this afternoon, go out the window. If the government, in its stupidity, brings in a continuation, we will then have the opportunity, when it brings in the bill, to have a debate; when we know what they have in mind. We can debate it then, as we have been discussing the matter this afternoon.
So perhaps, Mr. Speaker, you will understand what I mean when I say that I am on the horns of a dilemma. In principle I am unalterably opposed to this transference of the powers of parliament to the executive, the cabinet. I am unalterably opposed to that. At the same time I am also unalterably opposed to the method in which this question is now raised in the House of Commons, and the hours of time it has taken up.
So, sir, I shall make my position clear: If the government does not bring in a bill for the continuation of this measure, then I say, "more power and more credit to them". I do not think it is necessary. If an emergency arises, parliament can be called inside of a week. Then if the government does bring in a bill, I intend to have something to say, and it will be at far greater length than I have spoken now.
However, an amendment is now before the house. It has not been ruled out of order. If I may say so, sir, that is the only criticism I have of the Prime Minister. I think he made an interesting, statesmanlike, practical and logical presentation this afternoon, but he did not carry it to its ultimate conclusion of asking you, sir, to decide whether or not the amendment is in order. I think he should have. However, that was his business, not mine.
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Emergency Powers Act
I do think, sir, that we should get to a vote. Let us wait until the matter comes up, and we will speak on the government's action at that time.


Some hon. Members:: Question.


Mr. Fleming:: Mr. Speaker-


Mr. Speaker:: Before the hon. member speaks, perhaps I should comment briefly on the last sentence of the speech of the hon. member for Vancouver East (Mr. Winch). It is the duty of the Speaker to make up his mind as to whether a motion is or is not in order. That is his duty, no matter who, from either side of the house, asks for a ruling. I do not think the hon. member's statement should remain without some comment on my part.
If I have not decided that the amendment is out of order, it is because I have not found sufficient grounds to do so. I think I quoted enough authorities to show that I was somewhat confused about what I had discovered. If I had found the amendment was out of order it would have been ruled out of order. It was not so ruled because I did not find justification for doing so.


Harold Edward Winch: I think you are a marvellous Speaker. I have enjoyed all your decisions.
I pointed out that you were not asked to give a decision. I think you are doing an excellent job.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member should know that I do not have to be asked to give a decision. When I receive an amendment it is my duty to examine it and, without a request from anyone, to make a decision; it is my duty to render one. Had the Prime Minister made no comment at all I was considering the amendment and would have made the comment I have made, in just the same way. That is what I wish to have clear.
The hon. member for Eglinton may proceed.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Speaker, it is about two minutes to ten. Perhaps we might call it ten o'clock.
On motion of Mr. Fleming the debate was adjourned.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Walter Edward Harris: the adjournment of the house.
He said: Tomorrow we will continue this debate, and if the motion to go into supply is carried we will take the estimates of the Department of Mines and Technical Surveys, and then the Department of Transport.
Motion agreed to and the house adjourned at 9.58 p.m.

Tuesday, March 23, 1954