1954-02-10

[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 199, for the relief of Lois Helen Kutzman Caplan.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 200, for the relief of Fernand Constant Daemen.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 201, for the relief of Mary Kazy-merchyk Senyck.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 202, for the relief of Rosalie Hetty Arbess Sofln.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 203, for the relief of Lucille La-fortune Wilson.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 204, for the relief of Wilfrid Cote. -Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 205, for the relief of Janca Fani Poliak Schlesinger.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 206, for the relief of Sadie Marie Ansingh Grosheintz.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 207, for the relief of Douglas Morrison Meldrum.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 208, for the relief of Alec Lenetsky. -Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 209, for the relief of Dorothy Lilian Asbury Davies.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 210, for the relief of Nicholas Krauchuke.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 211, for the relief of Esther Kohn Rosner.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 212, for the relief of Marguerite Jazzar Nassar.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 213, for the relief of Leona Bobby Denberg Wiseman, otherwise known as Leona Bobby Denberg White.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 214, for the relief of Marianne Roos Axelrad.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 215, for the relief of Margaret Jaunzen Dishler.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 216, for the relief of Pearl Witzling Socolow.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 217, for the relief of Jennie Chun Readman.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 218, for the relief of Gizella Szabo Herczeg.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 219, for the relief of Lilija Hedviga Treimane Jursevskis.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 220, for the relief of John Richard Maher.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 221, for the relief of Elizabeth McDonald Jones Roy.

Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 222, for the relief of Claire Viola Frechette Ainsworth.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 223, for the relief of Margaret Reta Dodge Parsons.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 224, for the relief of Estella Cluett Jensen.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 225, for the relief of Angelina Natale Beaucaire.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 226, for the relief of Dorothy Miller Osborough Davidson.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 227, for the relief of Marie Rose Gisele Houde Dionne.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 228, for the relief of Olga Pscheidt Arsenault.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 229, for the relief of Edward Robinson Harris.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 230, for the relief of Cathrine Pieternelle Wytenbroek Knight.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 231, for the relief of Anton Bliziffer. -Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 232, for the relief of Theodore Rolfsmeyer von Berzeviczy.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 233, for the relief of Agnes Broo Hammond Bailey.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 234, for the relief of Emma Antoinette Rachel Lauzon McDuff.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 235, for the relief of Idella Adeline Sharpe Cutler.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 236, for the relief of Walter Leonard Woodward.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 237, for the relief of Marion Shirley Barsky Burg.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 238, for the relief of Florence Elene Thom Ward.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 239, for the relief of William Jean Paul Powroz.

Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 240, for the relief of Lewis Swailes.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 241, for the relief of Shirley Good-lin Myrovitch.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 242, for the relief of Germaine Lafond Joyal.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 243, for the relief of Kenneth Charles Overbury.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 244, for the relief of Hazel Emily Louise Hunter Naud.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 245, for the relief of Pearl Agnes Harding Potvin.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 246, for the relief of Samuel Goldberg.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 247, for the relief of Nancy Elizabeth Borden Sise.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 248, for the relief of Audrey Madeline Crothers Walklate.-Mr. Hunter.
Bill No. 249, for the relief of Joyce Gowrie Kimber Kendler.-Mr. Hunter.
3950	HOUSE OF
Questions


Mr. Thatcher:: 1.	Has the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation recently set up a bureau of audience research?
2.	If so, (a) what is the purpose of such a bureau;
(b)	how many people are employed by the bureau;
(c)	what is the estimated annual cost to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; (d) was consideration given to utilizing experienced private agencies to do this work?


Mr. McCann:: 1.	Yes.
2.	(a) To direct and co-ordinate research to determine the size, composition and characteristics of listening and viewing audiences and to investigate the reaction and preferences

of Canadians to radio and television programs. The functions of the bureau will include qualitative as well as quantitative surveys; (b) Two; (c) Only a small staff will be employed. As a director was appointed only on January 1, 1954, there has not yet been sufficient time for the corporation to establish a definite budget on a yearly basis; (d) Yes. Several private agencies have been employed in the past and it is expected that the services of such agencies will be required in the future.



WAR VETERANS PENSIONS

Mr. Nicholson:: What has been the total pensions paid to Canadian veterans of (a) world war I; (b) world war II; (c) other war service?


Mr. Bennett:: Expenditures as at 31st January, 1954
Expenditures include those to pensioners and their dependents:
(a)	World war I	
$1,419,681,470	22(b)	World war II	
458,625,407	74*(c)	(i) Special force (Korea)	
786,241	49(ii)	Northwest rebellion (supplementary,	section	55)	
617,011	00)	approx.(iii)	South African war (supplementary,	section	54)	
360,117	00)(iv)	Newfoundland special awards	
141,471	84
Total

* Includes civilian war pensions.
Expenditures for the Northwest rebellion and South African war are not available; the expenditure shown here is approximate.



SEASONAL UNEMPLOYMENT

Mr. Knowles:: 1.	Is there a subcommittee of the national council on manpower dealing with the question of seasonal unemployment?
2.	If so, how long has this body been studying or investigating this matter?
3.	Have any other sections or committees in the Department of Labour been studying or investigating this matter and, if so, for how long?
4.	Have any recommendations yet been made with respect to the problem of alleviating seasonal unemployment?
5.	If so, what are such recommendations?
6.	Will any reports or recommendations on this question be dealt with during the present seasonal unemployment crisis?


Mr. Gregg:: 1.	Yes.
2.	The national employment committee was asked by the national advisory council on manpower on December 10, 1952, to examine the question of seasonal unemployment and report back to the council.
3.	The economics and research branch of the Department of Labour is assisting the national employment committee in conducting a survey of employers throughout Canada

in regard to seasonal unemployment. It is also conducting statistical and other related studies on the extent and nature of seasonal unemployment in Canada.
4.	A preliminary report on seasonal unemployment, including the results of the survey of Canadian employers, was considered at the last meeting of the national employment committee held in Winnipeg early this winter. This report which will contain recommendations for future action will be further considered at the next meeting of the national employment committee to be held in Ottawa on February 15, 1954.
5 and 6. See answer to No. 4.



UNEMPLOYED PERSONS, MANIWAKI, QUE.

Mr. Balcer:: 1.	How many persons were registered as unemployed on the lists of the unemployment insurance office at Maniwaki, Quebec, on December 1, 1953, January 1, 1954 and February 1, 1954?
2.	Also on December 1, 1952, January 1, 1953 and February 1, 1953?



UNEMPLOYED PERSONS, HULL, QUE.

Mr. Balcer:: 1.	How many persons were registered as unemployed on the lists of the unemployment insurance office at Hull, Quebec, on December 1, 1953, January 1, 1954 and February 1, 1954?
2.	Also on December 1, 1952, January 1, 1953 and February 1, 1953?


Mr. Gregg:: I am answering the first parts of both these questions. If the hon. member will repeat his question with regard to February 1, I will provide the answers as soon as possible. The answer to the first question, as far as it can be given, is as follows:
1.	Applications for employment: December
3,	1953, 360; December 31, 1953, 784.
2.	Applications for employment: December
4,	1952, 177; December 31, 1952, 287.
The answer to the second question is as follows:
1.	Applications for employment: December
3,	1953, 1,873; December 31, 1953, 2,835.
2.	Applications for employment: December
4,	1952, 1,491; December 31, 1952, 2,108.
FARM LOAN BOARD COMMISSIONER Mr. Zaplitny:
1.	Who is the commissioner of the Canadian
farm loan board?	, .
2.	When was he appointed to this position?
3.	Were any farm organizations consulted by the government before the appointment was made? If so, what organizations?
4.	Did these organizations recommend or approve the appointment?
5.	What qualifications and/or past experience does the commissioner possess which would recommend him for this position?
6.	Has the commissioner ever been a candidate for public office?
7.	If so, when and which political party did he represent?


Mr. Benidickson:: 1.	Frank L. Chester.
2.	January 25, 1954.
3.	No.
4.	Answered by No. 3.
5.	Thirty years of business experience in the four western provinces.
6.	Yes.
7.	Winnipeg city council 1947-50.
Manitoba legislature 1949-Liberal Progressive.
Federal election 1953-Liberal.



MOTION FOR PAPERS


Mr. Diefenbaker:: For a copy of all letters and telegrams which have passed since the 12th of November 1953, between any department of the federal government and the
United Nations
provincial governments of each of the provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba, together with reports made to the federal department of health by all officials, investigators or analysts of said department, relative to the pollution of waters of the North Saskatchewan river by the alleged dumping into the river at a point near Edmonton, Alberta.


Mr. Robertson:: As the hon. member has asked for copies of communications between this government and provincial governments it will of course be necessary to secure the permission of the provincial governments concerned, and steps have been taken accordingly. With respect to the reports made to the Department of National Health and Welfare by its officers, while these reports have always been considered privileged, in this instance we are pleased to bring these papers to the attention of the hon. member.


Mr. Coldwell:: I rise on a question of privilege. The parliamentary assistant to the minister said that it is necessary to get the permission of the provincial governments to table these documents. Is it not a matter of courtesy rather than an obligation to get permission? As I said the other day, the practice seems to have changed over the last few years, and I think it should be straightened out.


Mr. Howe (Port Arthur):: It has always been the practice to get the consent of the provincial government before tabling documents transmitted from that government to the federal government.


Mr. Speaker:: Subject to the remarks made by the parliamentary assistant, this motion is carried.



UNITED NATIONS


Mr. Angus Maclnnis (Vancouver-Kingsway) moved:: United Nations
period. I am afraid, too, there is a tendency to forget that the United Nations itself represents a new concept in international affairs. Briefly its purpose, as I see it, is to promote co-operation amongst its members, and along with that to encourage the wealthier nations to help the poorer ones.
I think the house will agree with me that is a relatively new concept in international affairs. The United Nations has created a number of agencies in order to accomplish the purposes I mentioned, among which is the technical assistance organization fund. It is really these agencies, and not the United Nations itself, that do the work for which the United Nations was brought into being. I consider the purpose of the technical assistance fund to be of the greatest importance. I believe the government of Canada should support the fund to the limit of our ability.
I should like to say a brief word about the history of the technical assistance program. It was approved by the general assembly in November, 1949, and was created to meet the great need of the underdeveloped nations for technical aid. It was intended to be a means of implementing economic and social cooperation, a fundamental task of the United Nations as set out in article 55 of the charter. Perhaps the progress made in this endeavour has not been as great as we would have liked. The program probably has not been assisted financially by a number of nations to the extent necessary, and perhaps this is a reason why Canada's aid has not been greater than it has. Whatever the reason may be, my purpose today is to urge that Canada give greater financial support than has been the case in the past.
The program got off to a rather poor start. The amount voted for its work in 1950 only amounted to $20 million. I can recall another $20 million that was voted for a certain purpose in this country. After the general election of 1930, when unemployment was the great issue in Canada, a special session was called to deal with that problem. A sum of $20 million, which at that time was considered to be a large sum of money, was voted to resolve the problems caused by unemployment. Needless to say, the $20 million proved to be totally inadequate for that purpose. When we think of such a sum in relation to the great problems that are facing what we are pleased to call the "underdeveloped countries", we must realize how paltry it is. This $20 million was to cover a period of 18 months, and Canada's contribution was $850,000. If my memory

serves me correctly, about 55 nations contributed, so that was considered to be not too bad a contribution by Canada.
For some reason our contribution in 1952 was reduced by $100,000 and was only $750,000. Probably the reason for that was that the total pledges of all countries was $19 million instead of $20 million. The economic and social council recommended a minimum of $25 million for 1953. Canada again promised to contribute $750,000, with an additional $100,000 on condition that the total of $25 million was contributed. I do not believe that the $25 million was raised, but in any case the Canadian government contributed another $50,000, bringing our total contribution for 1953 up to $800,000.
In my opinion, the expenditure under this heading should not be considered as a charitable handout. It should be considered as a part, and a very important part, of our defence program. I may refer to that again, but if there is one point I wish to get over to the house during the course of my remarks, it is that this contribution to the technical assistance fund should not be considered as a charitable handout, but what it is-that is if we make it of sufficient importance-a material factor in our program for peace. As a matter of fact, I believe government spokesmen at the United Nations agree with me in that contention. I am informed that the requests for economic and technical assistance from needy countries literally poured into United Nations headquarters in 1953, and that because of the lack of adequate financial means a large number of requests could not be met.
It seems strange to me that, although Canada's representative on the economic and social council in 1953 supported recommendations for a general increase in the United Nations budget for technical aid of approximately 31 per cent, Canada offered to increase her own share by only 13 per cent. To indicate how insignificant the total United Nations budget for technical assistance is-I have already made one comparison with the $20 million we voted for unemployment in 1930-I might state that in 1950 the city of New York spent nearly $57 million on garbage removal and street cleaning alone. The total appropriation for technical assistance during any year since the program was launched was considerably less than half of that amount.
In 1949 a committee of experts was set up by the economic and social council to investigate the problem of assisting backward countries. The report of the committee, a 108-page document, was issued in

May 1951. It dealt with the question of development in the underdeveloped countries. How unrealistic is the financial aspect of the United Nations technical program becomes clear as one reads the findings of this report.
The committee estimated that in order to increase by 2 per cent the per capita national incomes in the underdeveloped areas would require an annual capital import well in excess of $10 billion. This report is well worth reading, and if hon. members can get it I am sure they would be well repaid for the time taken to read it. I think copies are difficult to get. I know I borrowed one from the Department of External Affairs.
I shall quote briefly from this report at pages 84 and 86. At page 84 under the heading "Intergovernmental Grants" I find this:
The principle that the better off should help to pay for the education, the medical services and other public services received by the poorer classes of the community is now well established within every member nation of the United Nations. The idea that this principle should also be applied as between rich and poor countries is relatively new.
I emphasize this point, and I think it is something we must keep in mind. It is not only new for the countries that are trying to help, but it is also new for the countries that are being helped. Difficulties may arise there, in addition to the difficulty of finding enough funds from the countries that are helping. It continues:
It has however been put into practice on several occasions. The work of UNRRA is an outstanding example of United Nations collaboration in this sphere.
Then in the paragraph before that-and I read that one first because I felt it should be in that order-the committee of experts has this to say:
We therefore urge most strongly that some mechanism be created by transferring from the developed to the underdeveloped countries, by way of grants-in-aid, a sum of money which should increase rapidly, reaching eventually a level of about $3 billion a year. This would be equivalent to rather less than one per cent of the national incomes of western Europe, Australasia, the United States and Canada.
I imagine that the countries in this group are the ones that provide most of the funds for the purposes of the technical assistance organization. Then the committee goes on to say:
We do not suggest that aid should be given unconditionally to underdeveloped countries. This would not be wise. Each grant should be linked to a specific function, and there should be international verification that the funds are used only for the purpose for which they have been granted.
I think everyone will agree that that is an excellent recommendation.
United Nations
Then, here are some of the purposes for which the committee of experts indicated the fund could be used:
(a)	Research and education. This includes grants for agricultural extension services, technical schools, farm schools, local universities and for training technicians abroad, grants to departments of governments, research institutes or universities, wherever located, working on problems of underdeveloped countries:
(b)	Public health programs, emphasizing preventive medicine and nutrition rather than curative medicine;
(c)	Subsidization of medium- and short-term farm credit:
(d)	Improvement of rural public works. This includes grants for roads, rural water supplies, land reclamation, drainage, soil conservation, afforestation.
I am sure these are very practical purposes. There is nothing fancy, if I may use that term, in the purposes proposed by the committee of experts.
When the question of establishing a special United Nations fund for economic development was discussed by the economic and social council in October of last year, Canada's representative took the position that Canada was unable at the present time to consider contributing to a development fund, because of the heavy burden of our defence expenditures.
In discussing the proposal, Canada's representative, according to a report in the Montreal Star of October 28, 1953, made this statement:
When sufficient progress has been made in a world-wide scheme of disarmament the Canadian government will undertake to ask the Canadian people to devote any portion of the savings thus achieved to an international fund of the United Nations.
That is to me at least very heartening information. I hope the government means to carry out what its representative asserted on that occasion.
May I say at this point that when I first drafted the resolution to which I am now speaking, it contained another paragraph which I deleted before the resolution reached Votes and Proceedings. That paragraph was pretty much along the same lines as the assertion attributed to Canada's representative at the United Nations, according to the report in the Montreal Star of October 28, 1953.
I believe it was at the same meeting, that of October 28, 1953, the Canadian representative at the United Nations announced that the Canadian government, subject to parliamentary approval, was prepared to increase its contribution to the 1954 expanded program of technical assistance up to a maximum of $1,500,000 U.S. It was stated that this

United Nations
increased contribution would be made if the support for the 1954 program by other countries warranted such action, and if the total of the contributions was sufficient to make a reasonable and workable program.
This may not be an exact quotation, but I took it from the monthly bulletin of the Department of External Affairs for the month of November 1953, at page 323. I regret very much however-the minister may be able to give a reason for it when he speaks-that the item in the estimates for the year 1954 is only $850,000.
As I said, the suggestion made by Canada's representative at the United Nations of increasing the amount that we contribute to technical assistance as soon as the burden of military preparedness is lessened, because of the easing of world tension, is an excellent one, and I do hope, as I know we all do, that the lessening of world tension may enable the government to act on it without delay. I really believe that a start could be made at this session. Indeed I hope-and "hope" is not too strong a word-that the government is not going to renege on that intention.
I hold in my hand the text of a statement made on November 12 by the Canadian representative at the fourth technical assistance conference, and I wish to quote from it because it meets I think in its entirety with my complete approval. It reads:
I am sure that we all agree that the war on want Is the road to peace.
If war on want is the road to peace-and may I say that I agree; I have already indicated that in what I said-then we should consider any contribution under this head not as something to aid people over a difficult period but as something to raise the standard of living of people in less favoured countries than our own, and thus build the sort of atmosphere that makes for peace rather than war.
The statement continues:
The United Nations technical assistance program, by helping to improve standards of living and thus increasing the sense of security and brotherhood among the peoples of the world, is a considerable factor in the building of firm foundations for world peace. In another way, too, it helps in achieving this same purpose. We all know that changes in methods of production, in industrial technology and so on, are likely to hurt someone, even though in the long run the great majority may benefit from them. Our technical assistance program, by providing training and guidance where they may be most needed, can facilitate adjustment to the new ways and reduce to a minimum the temporarily harmful effects of too rapid industrial change. It is of course in the nature of a pilot plant-an experiment, but so far a successful one; . . .
[Mr. Maclnnis.j
May I interject here that this has been in my opinion so successful that we should not hesitate to increase our contribution to it. The statement goes on:
-successful not least because all countries can contribute something useful to others. In fact, and from a selfish point of view, though we do not expect to be the direct recipient of technical assistance ourselves, we are sure that we, like others, shall share in the benefits of the program as a whole.
I said I was reading this because it is an excellent statement which every hon. member can approve. Before this debate on the resolution concludes I hope we shall have an expression of opinion, if not by a vote, at least by word of mouth, from those who are supporting the resolution that we do believe in this approach to this very important problem.


Mr. F. T. Fairey (Victoria, B.C.):: I rise
to give my unqualified support to the resolution just introduced by the hon. member for Vancouver-Kingsway (Mr. Maclnnis). I do so because I have had some experience in underdeveloped countries, and I can testify to the value of this particular program. In my opinion the resolution suggests a form of assistance to underdeveloped countries, particularly those in the Far East or the Asian countries, which far exceeds in effectiveness any other proposal that has ever been made.
It must be remembered that while I support this suggestion, that Canada should be generous in the amounts set aside for this particular program, she is already, in company with many other countries of the commonwealth and indeed other members of the United Nations Organization, contributing and doing much in this field. One has only to learn something of the work of such organizations or agencies as UNESCO, the world health organization, UNICEF, the international labour organization and many other agencies. All of them have done work of this kind to improve the conditions of those people who live in countries which we are describing as underdeveloped. It must be realized, too, that all of them are based upon the fundamental concept that the best form of assistance is that which helps a person or a country to stand upon its own feet, and to stimulate a desire for self-development and improvement, to the end that self-support and independence may be the final result.
It is important, too, to understand that no self-respecting nation wishes to be the spasmodic or even the constant recipient of gifts in the form of charity. It does not matter in what form those gifts may be made, unless there is a program which will stimulate the

self-development of those people, then it fails just by that much. There is in all these countries the hunger for that kind of help which does no violence to individual or national pride.
It is well known that throughout all those "have not" countries there is a stirring of national consciousness and pride. This is desirable because it is accompanied by a desire to improve standards of living, which can only come about under two conditions, in my opinion: One, the absence of war and rumours of war; two, by receiving advice from those countries better developed, and continuing to give technical assistance so that the industries and resources of those countries may be developed by the use, or the implementation of suggestions leading to the use, of better techniques.
I would assert, Mr. Speaker, in fact, I know from actual experience, that assistance of the kind anticipated by this resolution is the only kind likely to achieve the thing we have in view, namely, the lifting up of our unfortunate brethren to a fuller and more satisfying life. I think Canada is especially placed in this regard and in a position to take the lead in this respect. I say frankly, and once again from actual experience, that there is no suspicion of ulterior motives attached to the name "Canada". In this we are unique. No matter how much they do or for how long other countries have been participating in these programs, there has always been a suspicion in the minds of some people: "What is the aim of this system?" No such suspicion attaches to Canada. That is why I think we are in a favoured position. We can move along and do what we can to help these people. Our ultimate objective is not questioned.
It was my good fortune in 1950-51 to represent Canada as a member of a three-man educational mission to Burma, one of the Asian countries. I spent six months in that delightful country travelling from north to south and from east to west. Our mission was educational in character. We were to investigate all aspects of the educational system of that country and make such recommendations as we thought proper for its improvement.
My own particular assignment had to do with the subject matter of the resolution which we have before us; it was in the field of technical and vocational education. It was my good fortune to see something of the conditions in India, Pakistan and Thailand from brief visits. I was also able to consult with scores of people representing varied groups, all with the same object in view- giving technical advice of one kind or 83276-124J
United Nations
another and assisting in various ways. I mention this trip of mine only to support my views as being based upon experience. In other words, I think I know what I am talking about and that is useful.


Mr. Gillis:: And unusual.


Francis Thrower Fairey: Burma is typical of other countries in that part of the world. It is a potentially rich country with most delightful people. But they are badly educated; they are wrongly educated in that their education has not fitted them to develop their own resources and to make their contribution where they live. Here we have a people with a national consciousness who feel constantly that they want to run their own show but who are frustrated because they feel unable to do it. They are rich in resources but poor in their ability to develop those resources.
I stated earlier that in my opinion the best form of assistance is one in which we take the long view. By hastening slowly we can put these people in a position, by training and education and guidance and help, to develop their own resources and to exploit them for themselves. Thus and thus only they may be able to raise their standards of living and contribute to the progress of society.
Of course the first thing they want is peace, because it is only under a condition of peace that they can obtain those skills which we hope to impart to them. You hear the cry throughout the Far East, India for the Indians, Burma for the Burmese, and so on. They do not want gifts from above unless they are given with the distinct understanding that the country is to be developed by its own people.
In my opinion it is useless to send out technicians and engineers unless they are going to institute a training program to train the people in those countries to become engineers and technicians. How can I do otherwise than urge a more generous attitude on the part of my own country when I have made certain recommendations in connection with Burma? I should like to quote some of the recommendations which I made. They are as follows;
1.	That a director of technical education be appointed to serve in the department of education. That he be responsible for the over-all organization and direction of all forms of practical education.
2.	That an advisory board of leaders in industry and engineering be appointed to act in a consultative capacity on technical education.
3.	That at least two officials be appointed to plan and supervise actual instruction and to organize and conduct instructor-training courses.
19SS

United Nations
4. That the Insein Technical Institute be reopened and furnished with the necessary equipment and teaching staff.
The institute was in a state of disrepair.
5.	That consideration be given to the establishment of additional technical and vocational schools as soon as possible.
S. That the apprentice-training centre be reorganized in more suitable buildings.
7.	That practical shop courses be planned for the secondary schools.
8.	That consideration be given to the organization of mobile instruction units to instruct persons engaged in cottage industries in more efficient methods.
9.	That agricultural colleges investigate the possibilities of extension work by the use of short-term courses or demonstrations by teams of competent instructors.
Perhaps I might develop one or two of those recommendations, particularly the one with respect to cottage industries. May I presume to explain to the house the conditions under -which the people live in countries such as I am describing. This is an agricultural country, as most of them are, with a one-crop economy, that of rice. Between the harvesting of the crop and the planting of the new crop there is a long period of time. In most villages the people engage in cottage industries. That is to say, in their own homes they make a variety of articles. They weave silk, they make articles of apparel, ornaments and tools of various kinds.
If I may digress for a moment, I found boys and men making with very crude tools, cigarette lighters which they sold for seven rupees or $1.50 per dozen. They do very nice work in all these cottage industries; in fact they do marvellous work, but their tools are very crude and their output is limited. In other words, these people are living under substandard conditions. It is most certain they could increase their production and the saleability of their goods if they had proper instruction in more modern techniques, and particularly if they could be supplied with the proper tools and equipment. That is why one of the recommendations was that mobile units go around to give proper instruction. We felt, and I used this expression before, that we should make haste slowly.
That brings me to another point in connection with finance. I have supported the idea that Canada and other countries should be more generous in the provision of financial help to increase the ability of these people to develop their own resources. But I submit that it is not only the voting of money that will be effective. You can use only so much money at a time. We should vote sufficient money to initiate a program capable of being carried out and gradually increase it as we go along.

If I may summarize what I have said, Mr. Speaker, I would say, in conclusion, that there is a great need. There is no doubt about that. We have vast numbers of people living in conditions under which we could not survive. They are ignorant of modern methods in regard to almost anything you could mention.
I was particularly struck with the efficiency and valuable work done in this regard by the world health organization. When you see the conditions under which so many people live and eat, you are appalled that any of them are alive. I am thinking of one country in particular where the infant mortality rate is 50 per cent up to the age of 10, and that I believe is due to the fact that they are absolutely ignorant of any notion of sanitation, food preparation, food care, child care, and care of expectant mothers.
In my opinion the best organization we have in the whole gamut of world organizations is the world health organization, because unless people are living healthy lives you cannot do much for them. However, here we have a need and an urge from the people themselves. They want to develop their own country themselves. They want to be shown how to do it and then left alone. They do not want someone dominating them and telling them, "This is the way we do it in Canada and therefore you must do it in this way." In assisting these people we should recruit the type of person who understands them, their desires and aspirations and who will help them to build themselves up. It will be a slow process.
These people have a desire for peaceful development in order to become self-supporting. They have inadequate finances. In the country which I have described, the national budget was U.S. dollars $118 million, and they have an army, a navy and an air force. Perhaps I should complete the picture by stating that the total population is about 18 million people.
So far as Canada and the other western nations are concerned, it is essential that these people be persuaded that we have the very best of intentions. There is no doubt about it, Mr. Speaker, that to a program of this kind, while it has all the qualities we attach to it, among them being the idea of helping our fallen or underprivileged brethren, there attaches another practical and unquestionable value. It is no good talking to people who have very little to eat and ask them to choose between democracy and communism. They do not care two pins about that. They do not understand what

we are talking about. The thing to do is to show them by example and precept that we are interested in them and that our way of life is the better way of life.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, what do we get out of it as a nation? I believe we get the satisfaction of doing with our abundance something which will help those in poorer circumstances. That is about all. But we will make friends and surely this is an opportunity not to be neglected.


Mr. Elmore Philpoli (Vancouver South):: Mr. Speaker, I want to give all the support I can to the resolution moved by the hon. member for Vancouver-Kingsway (Mr. Maclnnis), except in regard to one or two small details. I cannot agree with his split infinitive because I do not think that would get by my editor. Apart from that I am 100 per cent in accord with this resolution, which calls for a substantial increase in the technical assistance grant.
I believe it is typical of this government that when the question first arose at the United Nations last fall, and when there was some suggestion that some of the other countries might cut down their grants for technical assistance, many people in Canada, solidly behind the United Nations, began to get nervous and make inquiries of the government, and one of the clearest-cut answers we ever got about extra spending of money by the government was that perhaps there would be extra funds forthcoming for this purpose.
I myself, Mr. Speaker, have written quite a few letters to the Minister of Finance (Mr. Abbott) on various subjects, each suggesting that perhaps a little more money could be spent on this or that, and it was like trying to get blood out of a stone. But at least we did get a little blood out of the stone in this particular respect.
Seriously speaking, though, I believe this is one of the most important matters to come before the house and before our whole generation. In connection with my own duties as a newspaper writer over the past few years I have had the great privilege and responsibility of travelling a good deal in many of the countries with which these technical assistance grants are chiefly concerned, namely those countries along the northern shores of Africa, that part of the world we call the Middle East, and out into Pakistan, India, Ceylon, and so on.
I came home from these trips, Mr. Speaker, convinced that we are living at a great turning point in history, and at the end of that three or four hundred year period of history which we know as the age of the white man's rule; although why anyone should refer to
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us, dirty greys or pale pinks, as whites I have never been able to figure out. However, the historical age of the white man's domination has come to an end. Those particular circumstances which existed for three or four hundred years, and under which the part of the human race which we represent happened to have a supremacy over the rest of the human family, which it never had before and will never have again, have gone. The great and fundamental question of our time is how the transition is going to be made from the age of white man's supremacy to the age of partnership and equality between all the great racial sections of the human family.
There was one minor point, perhaps of emphasis, which the hon. member for Vancouver-Kingsway made and with which I would slightly disagree, to this extent, that we' should consider this, as I understood him to>
say, as part of our national defence.
I believe we have to be very careful when we begin to think of technical assistance grants in terms of our national defence. In my opinion, in countries such as India there is one thing they are afraid of more than anything else, and that is that organized benevolence from western countries is tied up with some ulterior purpose such as defence. I believe one of the terribly unfortunate consequences, for example, of the attempt to establish American bases in Pakistan and its repercussion in India arose more from that simple fact, because the nations of Asia are fearful that there may be ulterior motives in these great humanitarian purposes.
As I said, Mr. Speaker, when I came home from these crucial parts of the world I came home with the belief that we are at a great turning point in history. In countries such as, say, Egypt, or the Arab states, or any of these Moslem countries

what might be called the whole brown belt of the earth-you see these depressed and ignorant people just pushing up as it were through a thin shell, and one can see that they are determined to have a larger share of the good things of life. Surely we have a great opportunity to give them that in a new guise. As far as I could see, nothing in that part of the world has so changed the opinion of the peoples of those countries and helped to dissipate their suspicions. I would say that the greatest contribution there has ever been to a better understanding between Asia and the west is our own Colombo plan, and I would certainly hope that either in this debate or on an early occasion the Minister of Fisheries (Mr. Sinclair) would report on his inspection of the Colombo plan projects, because I have heard him speak on it and it is one of the

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finest speeches I have heard, so far as a firsthand account of what the Colombo plan means is concerned.
I think, however, there is a very real point implied in the suggestion of the hon. member for Vancouver-Kingsway (Mr. Maclnnis), that we should be extremely careful not to suggest to the people of these backward or so-called underdeveloped countries that we are holding out a helping hand to them only to keep them alive long enough so that they may be able to fight on our side in some future war with Soviet Russia. I think there is a very real and vital purpose involved and that we have a very real basis of self-interest in making sure that these great undecided countries of that crucial part of the world do receive effective assistance from the West in .time.
I travelled through many of the countries that our Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) is going to visit, and I came home from the East convinced that the peoples of these undecided countries in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia are not so ignorant that they do not realize the situation. All of them are looking to the two greatest and most populous nations of the East. The most populous nation, and potentially the greatest nation on earth, is of course China, which has gone communist. The second most populous country in the world is India, which is trying to adapt western democracy to that Asian soil. To my mind the most heartening and gigantic landmark of that area, of such great promise for the future of democracy, lies in the fact that that country, which had never known any democracy and where only a tiny fraction of the people know how to read and write, could stage its great national election and render a verdict with just as much intelligence and orderliness as has ever been rendered in our own mature democracies of the West.
That is a lesson to us. But make no mistake that all of the undecided peoples of the earth in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia are looking to the two great nations of the East. One of those nations has gone communist. One of them is trying to adapt our western form of democracy and make it survive and thrive in that Asian soil. Make no mistake, Mr. Speaker. If what is called totalitarianism, with all its suppression of freedoms and the brutal shortcuts that it takes, can deliver for the great mass of these people a better standard of living than is provided over a period of years in India, which is trying to use our western techniques and our voluntary system, then regardless of anything we say here or that is said anywhere else it is my opinion that the balance of world
[Mr. Philpott.l
power is not going to fall on the side of democracy but on the side of totalitarian communism. In my opinion that would be a tragedy not only for the great undecided parts of the earth but for us.
I am heartily in accord with all the technical and similar assistance that we can promote. Finally, I would interpret the term "technical assistance" in the widest possible manner. If I were in a position of any power I would not only be sending out engineers to build big water power dams and so on, but even to both sides of the iron curtain I would be sending those who for example practise the art practised by Barbara Ann Scott in order to demonstrate to these people some of the arts, sciences and amenities of our western world. In other words, I would interpret the term in the widest possible sense in order to send to all corners of the world, but primarily to our own potential friends, all of the good things from this western land with which we can help them.


Mr. Ray Thomas (Weiaskiwin):: Mr. Speaker, I too rise to give my wholehearted support to the resolution in the name of the hon. member for Vancouver-Kingsway (Mr. Maclnnis). I do so because of the experience I had when with the Canadian delegation to the United Nations in New York last fall. I was struck by the fact that the most successful of all works carried out by the United Nations were in the social field, and more particularly in the field of aid to underdeveloped countries. As we all know, the United Nations does not legislate. It simply recommends, and it is only to the extent to which the member countries will cooperate that the work of the United Nations can be successful.
I found that in the field of assistance to underdeveloped countries the United Nations was accomplishing something concrete, that there was something going out of the United Nations which carried weight. On the other hand, I am afraid that many other branches of the work of the United Nations are not nearly as successful. So far as aid to underdeveloped countries is concerned, I think the most important field is that of technical assistance. As often as I could I attended the meetings of the committee which was dealing with this matter. I was there when all the countries were making their pledges, and I thought that the technical assistance organization was making a marvellous contribution towards the welfare of the world as a whole. I am glad to say that I am not the only one who holds that opinion. In the booklet,

"Canada and the United Nations 1952-53", published by the Department of External Affairs, I find the following on page 30:
The most notable achievement of the United Nations in this field-
The reference is to the social field.
-has been in the provision of technical experts, training and demonstration equipment to the underdeveloped countries.
I might give a few more figures from this report in addition to those already given by the hon. member for Vancouver-Kings-way. I continue:
In 1950 the expanded program of technical assistance was undertaken, to finance which 55 countries pledged the equivalent of $20,070,260 for an eighteen-month period ending December 31, 1951.
For the second period of twelve months $18,795,355 was pledged by 65 countries, and for the third period (1953) 67 governments pledged $21,278,575. Canadian contributions for each of these periods were $772,727, $750,000, and $800,000 respectively. Within the framework of the Colombo plan, Canada has also made available $400,000 each year over the past three years for technical assistance to south and southeast Asia.
I will be the first, Mr. Speaker, to say that the Canadian contribution to the United Nations for technical assistance and to the Colombo plan is to be commended. I am of the opinion, however, that it is not enough. If we look at the populations of the various countries, perhaps we can say we are doing a good job. We must consider more than the population and the size of the countries, however; we must consider the capabilities and natural wealth of the countries. If we take that into consideration, Canada is one of the wealthiest countries, and has probably about the highest potential of any country in the world. These facts have to be considered when we think about the amount of the contribution we must make to the various international organizations.
As hon. members know, the various countries, many of them not United Nations countries, gather together and pledge so much money towards the work of the technical assistance organization. This money is then spent in sending specialists, scientists and technicians into the various needy countries to discuss production problems and difficulties. I might say that these problems relate not only to production, or any one field of production, but cover communications, highway projects and so on. I feel that this is extremely important in that it does not give direct relief to these countries. It does make them more self-sufficient by giving them the knowledge to extend their own production and make them more and more self-sufficient.
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It gives them a greater feeling of national pride and a greater incentive to go ahead on their own.
We have found that the greatest hardships occur, as we would expect, in the most densely populated countries. Almost invariably these countries are backward in their production methods. This fact, coupled with the dense population, makes it practically impossible for them to maintain any worthwhile standard of living. We want to assist them to increase their production to the point where they can at least give the people within the country something to eat. We are making a great success of that.
There is one point, however, about which possibly the minister might make some sort of recommendation. I know that during 1953 many of the countries made pledges but contributed not one cent towards the fund. I do not know how many years that has occurred, but I can recall at least two or three countries which did not fulfil their pledge. I shall not name them in this house. This situation adds considerable weight to the burden on the shoulders of those countries that are living up to their pledges. I do not know whether the minister can give us any indication of how much of the money or assistance goes behind the iron or bamboo curtains. I am a little bit concerned about that.
I do not want the people of the communist-dominated countries to have too poor a standard of living, nor do I want them to be refused any assistance. The very terms of the Russian pledge make me ask this question. When the Russian delegate made his pledge, I think it was $2 million for the coming year, he attached a condition that this money was not to pass through the hands of the organization but was to be spent within the communist countries. In other words, the Russian pledge amounted to no pledge at all. The Russians agreed to give assistance to their own communist people, but no aid whatever to any other country. I believe the conditions attached to that pledge are a good indication of the Russian attitude throughout the United Nations. During the time I was at the United Nations I could not find any indication of a co-operative spirit on the part of Russia or its satellites. In every committee and in the general assembly, their speeches followed exactly the same lines. The Russian delegate made a speech and the satellites followed one after the other making practically the same speech.
As a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker, I was told, somewhat in jest, that when anything comes up in the United Nations to be discussed



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either in committee or before the general assembly, the Russian research people are told to write six speeches on that particular subject. Then, the Russian delegate chooses the best one and hands out the rest of them to the satellite delegates. I do not know how much truth there is in that. As I said a moment ago, it is not only Canada's contribution that is insufficient, but the total contribution to the technical assistance organization is insufficient. I find that the Secretary General of the United Nations agrees with me wholeheartedly.
In his annual report on the work of the United Nations from July, 1952, to the end of June, 1953, he says on page 95:
It may be that in comparative terms, the program-
That is the technical assistance program.
__is a modest one. It may be that the total amount
of assistance it has been able to render is, in relation to the needs of the underdeveloped countries, pitiably small. But whatever its scale, it is now a co-operative venture that has great appeal and motive power . . .
The indication is that the amount of assistance given under the program is pitiably small when compared to the need throughout the world. I would urge that Canada, with the wealth we have, lead the way in getting the contributing countries to build up their contributions in order to give these underdeveloped countries at least a small amount of security, and thus enable them to avoid falling into communist slavery.
Hon. L. B. Pearson (Secreiary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in the discussion of this resolution; and I am also grateful, as I am sure the house is, to the hon. member for Vancouver-Kingsway (Mr. Maclnnis) for making that possible.
After all, this resolution deals with a subject the long-range importance of which may well be very great indeed for international co-operation, and indeed for international peace. Because, though history does not prove that a nation consisting of people with full stomachs is necessarily a peaceful nation, certainly history does prove that a nation consisting of people with empty stomachs will be a troublesome one.
This purpose of United Nations technical assistance is to improve material conditions in what, sometimes a little glibly, we call the underdeveloped countries of the world. I always like to use the expression "materially underdeveloped" when referring to these countries because, in some ways, they are quite as highly developed as we are.
I agree wholeheartedly with the thoughtful and constructive speeches which have been
IMr. Thomas.]
made by those who have spoken in the debate, especially in the importance that has been attached by the speakers to the problems and possibilities presented to us, in the western world-that west which, as Professor Toynbee has reminded us, is now surrounded by the world. These problems are particularly affected by the emerging importance of Asia into the new world of industry, and of technique, of the atom and the jet.
At the United Nations we are often reminded by Asian and African speakers that Asia and Africa are on the march, and that they will not be stopped. That of course is true; and there is no reason why we should want to stop them. But we should of course do our best to assist that march toward peaceful co-operation and free progress. And the kind of work referred to in the resolution is one way in which we can help direct that march in the right direction. That is why the subject is such an important one.
In its terms, the resolution is restricted to the United Nations technical assistance organization, and suggests that the government-
-should consider the advisability of introducing legislation at this session to substantially increase Canada's contribution to the United Nations technical assistance organization fund.
I do not myself mind the split infinitive particularly.
I would hope, in view of what I will be able to say about our contribution to that work, that it may not be necessary to divide the house on a matter concerning which I think there is such substantial and, indeed, unanimous agreement.
In the first place, we must make clear the distinction between relief, economic development, and technical assistance itself. So far as relief is concerned-and that is not mentioned in this resolution-the United Nations of course is doing important work in this field, especially at the present time in Korea, where Canada has I think played a respectable part.
Then, also, if you like, under that broad category of relief you might consider our contribution to the UN children's fund. We have also made a worth-while contribution to that.
Then there is economic development, which of course is something beyond and apart from technical assistance, and which consists of making loans through international agencies, or through a national agency, and making available credits and investment funds to other countries to help them in their capital and economic development.

The first international agency which comes to mind in that field of course is the international bank. Canada has made available to the international bank, for purposes I have just indicated-lending and re-lending-the whole of her original dollar subscription to the bank's capital, amounting to some $58 million. That is the largest subscription for this purpose of any member of the bank, except the United States. Up to this point the bank itself has advanced by way of loans and credits somewhat over $1,700 million. So something is being done through international agencies in that field.
Then there is technical assistance proper, which is the subject of the resolution before us. There are of course two kinds of technical assistance. There is technical assistance w'hich is worked out bilaterally between the contributing government and the receiving government. There comes to mind in this connection the United States point four program, and our own commonwealth Colombo plan under which contributing governments work out plans bilaterally with the receiving government. I am sure my colleague the Minister of Fisheries (Mr. Sinclair) will be able to give information on this. I believe this plan is now working very satisfactorily.
Canada has contributed in the first three years of the Colombo plan something over $75 million for capital assistance and over $1 million for technical assistance. And this year the government will ask parliament to vote $25,400,000-I believe that is the amount tentatively agreed upon-of which a portion will be for technical assistance proper.
Then there are the multilateral schemes for technical assistance, one of which is referred to in the resolution before us. United Nations schemes for technical assistance can, in their turn, be divided first into the ordinary United Nations program, which comes out of the annual budget of the United Nations, and the budgets of the various specialized agencies, through which Canada has already made a pretty respectable contribution in terms of money and in terms of men. And second, there is the scheme which I think the author of the resolution has particularly in mind, that known as the United Nations expanded program for technical assistance.
That program, and the other United Nations program, is carefully organized and controlled by various international bodies. There is, first, the technical assistance committee, under the economic and social council, which represents the 18 governments on the council. It has a sort of general supervisory jurisdiction over all United Nations schemes of this kind. And then there is the technical assistance administration, the administrating body of
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the secretariat, which looks after particular schemes, and which now is presided over by a distinguished Canadian, Dr. Keenleyside, who has served in our external affairs service. And, finally, there is the technical assistance board, which includes representatives of the various specialized agencies, and which meets periodically to co-ordinate the work done by these various agencies and by outside agencies in order to keep overlapping and duplication to a minimum.
That is a very important function; because, as hon. members know, it is very easy in schemes of this kind, especially internationally organized and administered schemes, to duplicate and to overlap. It is very important that the various programs should be balanced, that they should be co-ordinated under wise central direction, and that business judgment should be used to the maximum extent possible in their implementation.
One thing of course that has to be determined by the supervising agencies-and this is also of importance-is the absorptive capacity of a country for technical assistance or for economic aid, so that money will not be poured into a country that cannot be productively used for particular projects, and that the applications of the various governments for help and for funds are carefully scrutinized. As Professor Frank Scott of Montreal, who was concerned with a particular technical assistance program of the United Nations in Burma, has reminded us in a pamphlet "World War Against Poverty", published by the Royal Society of Canada, it is customary for governments, being human, to ask for more than they can usefully spend in a limited time. All these things have to be considered before work can start, or else the work will not be done as effectively as it should be.
Now it is true, and it has been pointed out by previous speakers, that while this may be one of the most important aspects of United Nations work, it is not a phase of that work which gets very much publicity or very many headlines, and that is unfortunate. Too often do we interpret the United Nations in terms of political controversy and not in terms of constructive social and economic activity. It is true and it is too bad that conflicts and controversy are their own publicity agents, but very constructive, quiet social and economic work has no one to sing its praise. Those of us who have been at the United Nations know from experience that if there is a speech by Mr. Vishinsky, which is bound to be controversial, or if there is a discussion of the admission of communist China to the United Nations, the galleries will be filled, the delegates' seats will be filled, the television cameras will all be running and the

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headlines will appear the next day in bold form. But a meeting which may have been held in a committee room in the same building to discuss how to increase food production or eradicate malaria in some Asian or African country will not, I fear, get very much attention or very much publicity. Nonetheless this is important work and we should, I think, be proud to make our contribution to it, as we in this country are doing.
This kind of international technical assistance work and economic aid suffers from two weaknesses, or at least it gets opposition from two sides. There are those who are cynical about it, who are un-co-operative, who do not believe in throwing our money around in foreign countries for what they would call international charity-though it is not charity-and who react in the wrong way to schemes of this kind, the advantage of which is very often long-range rather than immediate. But this work sometimes suffers also from a surfeit of sentimentality and a shortage of practicality on the part of those who would pour funds into projects which would do no good to the people whom they are meant to assist, and might under certain circumstances even do them harm.
There is a danger in this field of attempting to do too much in the wrong way, as has been pointed out by the hon. member for Victoria, British Columbia (Mr. Fairey); to do it our way because it is our way, not because it is necessarily the right way. Those dangers have been emphasized in a very useful and interesting publication which has been printed under the auspices of UNESCO and edited by Dr. Margaret Mead of New York, called "Cultural Patterns and Technical Change". She has this to say about the wrong approach to technical assistance:
To introduce change effectively, it is necessary to know existing conditions. Where it involves implementation by people, it must first be accepted. Otherwise the new proposals, however simple, will be defeated. When pest control is imperative, people will nevertheless release the rats from their traps. Where immunization of cattle is necessary farmers will hide their cattle. And where land reform is introduced without accompanying measures for a reform credit system, the land will again be concentrated in the hands of a few within a few years. And since change is proposed in the interests of human welfare, it is important to see to it that it is introduced constructively or, at any rate, with a minimum of disruption and destruction of established inter-relationships and values. Basic attitudes, concepts, and values are, therefore, here considered.
Then she quotes some very interesting examples of what follows when these right

principles are not applied to technical assistance and aid. I again read from her publication:
In Burma, deep ploughing introduced by European agricultural experts broke up the hard pan that held the water in the rice fields. The weeding of rubber plantations reduced the sap. The new tomato, which the Burmese were persuaded to grow (by technical assistance experts) because it was more productive, had a flavour they did not like, (and they would not eat it). In Turkey, experts trained abroad persuaded some of the younger peasants to remove the stones from their tilled land; when the grain sprouted, the fields of the old men had a better crop, since, in that dry climate, the stones served the function of preserving moisture. In Greece, the wheat in fertilized fields did not resist the drought as well as the wheat in other fields, and the experts realized that earlier-ripening varieties should be planted if the fields were to be fertilized. Mistakes of this sort are acceptable to people who are willing to take the risk of trying the new; but they shake the faith of those who believe in tried and proven procedure alone.
Therefore, as we all agree, it is not only necessary to have the resources to do this work; it is necessary that the work should be done in the right way and on the right principles. In that connection the principles that should underlie technical assistance work were very well and impressively outlined the other day in Washington by the director of the foreign operations administration of the United States, Mr. Harold E. Stassen, when he said-and this has also been emphasized by speakers in this debate-we should not consider this activity as a form of handout or charity. Mr. Stassen said:
Technical assistance is not a "give-away" program. To conduct it as such would be the quickest way to destroy it. Projects undertaken should therefore be co-operative in nature and every single program and project must be based on a careful study of local needs, local conditions, local resources available and desires of the host governments.
The aim of such programs is not to subsidize, not to bolster weak spots, but to lay foundations for self-improvement through work on the elimination of debilitating diseases and the control of conditions endangering health and life; through dissemination of knowledge regarding better farm methods; through the improvement of education; through providing technical advice on matters of transportation to enable people to bring the product of their toil to market, and to break the insulation of mind and body in which so many still live.
When these right principles are applied to practical projects the experience of the United Nations already-and it is a short experience -shows that some astonishingly productive results can be achieved from small expenditures and very small changes.
A year or two ago the United Nations sent a technical assistance mission to Afghanistan. In that mission were technical experts from 14 countries covering an extensive range of

skills. They were sent to help the Afghan people move toward economic and social betterment. The mission included a public administrator from France, a geologist and a nurse from the Netherlands, a plant entomologist from the United Kingdom, a sericul-turalist from China, a Polish statistician, a Danish pediatrician, experts in teacher training and agricultural development from the United States, a public health adviser from India, and a Finnish obstetrician. I suppose obstetrics could be considered a form of technical assistance.


Mr. McCann:: Very much so.


Lester Bowles Pearson: One simple and inexpensive change was introduced into Afghanistan by Mr. John Dickenson, a farmer from Arkansas, who obtained great results by introducing the hitherto unheard-of common hoe. Mr. Owen, who is in charge of the UN technical assistance board, reported on this as follows:
Traditionally the Afghan farmers have broadcast their cotton seed like wheat. But our agricultural expert proved, on his 34 demonstration plots, that if the cotton is planted in rows and if the farmer will use the hoe instead of the heavy mattock, then production will improve. In fact the first demonstration produced a yield two-and-a-half times greater than by the traditional methods, and the government promptly ordered 30,000 hoes, as well as encouraging their manufacture by local blacksmiths. By such very simple, indeed almost primitive, means as these, a small but decisive revolution is being brought about in Afghan production.
In addition to this kind of technical help, as has been pointed out already today, these people need sympathy, understanding and a knowledge of their local customs. In some respects that kind of approach and that kind of understanding are just as important as material support. Having said that, I should add that material support must follow sympathy and understanding or they cannot be effectively used. Perhaps for a moment we might look at what has been contributed by the United Nations in the way of material support.
I know that the amount has been put on the record already, and I know also that it is small indeed in terms of the astronomical figure devoted to armaments. It is also small indeed in terms of the need and necessity of these people, but it is not quite so small in terms of the practical results which can be accomplished in the early stages of this new international work. We have already had proof of that in our experience with the Colombo plan. I do not think it is wrong to say that if we had contributed twice as much to the Colombo plan in the first two years we would not have been able to effectively spend that total amount.
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Having regard to those circumstances, the record shows that in the first 18 months of the expanded program of technical assistance a total of $20,070,000 was contributed by members of the United Nations. Canada contributed $850,000. In 1952 the total was $19,000,000, and our contribution was $750,000. In 1953 the total amount went up to $22,000,000 while our contribution went up to $800,000. We have been trying to keep what we think is a fair relationship between our contribution and the total amount contributed by the United Nations. While what we contribute should not necessarily be determined by what others contribute, nevertheless that is a factor which has to be taken into consideration, even if it is not the overriding consideration.
In the current year 1954, according to the latest information which we have been able to secure, and it is as of yesterday, 70 countries, partly as the result of an intensive campaign which has been put on in New York, have pledged themselves to contribute to the technical assistance fund. The amount firmly pledged is something over $24 million.
The hon. member for Wetaskiwin (Mr. Thomas) has asked whether we could not do something ourselves to ensure that these pledges are converted into payments. We have through our delegation to the United Nations played a very active part in trying to have the pledges increased. In fact in 1952 my colleague the Minister of Northern Development and National Resources (Mr. Lesage) was the chairman of the pledging committee. We also played a most active part in the pledging committee last autumn. We did what we could to get the amount up, and as an earnest of our endeavour in that regard we indicated through our representative to the United Nations, Senator McKeen, that we would increase our amount this year from $800,000 to $1,500,000. That is, we would ask parliament to increase the amount provided the support from other contributors warranted such an amount, and provided the total amount pledged was such as to keep the program at an economically sound level.
We made that offer last autumn, which represented a considerable proportionate increase, and I think it had something to do with the other countries increasing their amounts. At least I hope it had. As a result there has been pledged already this year some $24 million. It seems clear that the conditions which we have laid down in regard to the increase in our contribution are to be fulfilled, and therefore it will be the intention of the government when that is confirmed to

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include an amount of $700,000 in the supplementary estimates to bring our total contribution to this program up to $1,500,000.
The hon. member for Wetaskiwin asked in his speech whether I could give any information as to the expenditures from this fund behind the iron and bamboo curtains. So far as I know, and I think I have the facts, no United Nations funds contributed to the expanded program of technical assistance have been expended in those countries to which the hon. member referred. Of course they have their own schemes for technical assistance. We do get information, for instance, of Soviet help in the way of technical assistance programs in China, but that is quite apart from the United Nations program.
As was indicated, last autumn the Soviet representative made a pledge of approximately $1 million to the United Nations scheme for the current year 1953 but, as pointed out, that pledge was hedged around with certain conditions which were not satisfactory to the United Nations technical assistance administration because they violated the principles which govern technical assistance and which were laid down by the economic and social council. However, that matter is being taken up with the Soviet government by the United Nations officials in charge of this activity, and it is hoped that those conditions will be withdrawn so that this amount can be used in the way in which it should be used, without strings attached.
The Canadian contribution to technical assistance has been exceeded only by that of the United Kingdom, the United States and France in the past. If parliament votes the amount which probably will be requested this year in the main and supplementary estimates, Canada's contribution will be the third largest of the members of the United Nations. I do not think that is anything we should say boastfully, but it does at least show we are playing a respectable part in this very important effort.
We are also playing a part not only in the contribution of funds but in the contribution of experts through the United Nations. In Canada today there are 217 United Nations technical assistance trainees out of a total of 300; the rest of them come under the Colombo plan program. And there are 96 Canadian experts now serving abroad in the United Nations.
Under the Colombo plan program it has been difficult to find as many qualified people as we have been asked to provide and as we would have liked to provide because experts of the kind required are in

great demand in this country. Some of them have had to make considerable sacrifices to take part in this important UN work. The training of experts, in the last analysis, is just about as important as supplying capital assistance, because eventually this kind of work has to be done by these people in their own countries. When we can get them to come here and learn our technical methods and send them back to do the work themselves, that is the kind of help that really matters.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I would like to express my agreement with the spirit and indeed the content of this resolution, and to emphasize that we are doing something to carry out the advice contained in it. I also express the hope that it will commend itself to all hon. members in this house because, as has been said more than once, the war on want and backwardness, on deprivation and distress, is a road to peace.


Mr. J. M. Macdonnell (Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a few brief comments on this matter. It is, of course, terribly difficult to really arouse much interest in this chamber in matters on which we all agree. I do not know whether it is because we have a lurking suspicion that when we agree with those we have found to be wrong so often we ourselves must be wrong in agreeing; but whatever the reason, it is always difficult to arouse the kind of interest there should be.
Speaking seriously, I suppose it is obvious that when we do agree on something we have a fair chance of being right. I feel it is a pity that we get so used to living in a world of tension, a dangerous world that we inevitably have to take in our stride. In discussing a matter such as this this afternoon we are really facing a fact that we are in a world where there is a battle going on for men's minds. That sounds easy to say, but it does not really carry much conviction with anyone because we have heard it so often. But it is very true that as well as the material defences of NATO on which we spend so much and from which we hope for so much this battle for men's minds is going on and that in the long run the success or failure of our civilization is going to depend on who wins this battle.
If we look back even a few decades to our relationship with the rest of the world, or at any rate the Asian world which is now coming to bulk so enormously in international affairs, we realize that our contact with these nations was almost wholly through soldiers and missionaries. The next contact, I think it will be agreed, was through physicians. The missionaries began

to find they really had to have a medical training in order to do their best work. Finally we begain to realize that the whole relationship had a material aspect, and that the have-not nations were not going to go on forever quite content to be infinitely worse off than the rest of us.
In the last few years this attitude of acquiescence, which I imagine used to amaze us because it lasted so long, has largely disappeared. I think the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) was wise in the remark he made when he left Ottawa, when he described his visit to those countries in Asia which used to be just a romantic concept over the horizon. The Prime Minister said, among other things, "We will not get anywhere unless we treat them as equals".
I want to refer for just a moment to what I might call our legalistic relationship with the nations of Asia by reason of a covenant in the United Nations charter to which we are a party. I want to read articles 55 and 56. They are quite short. Article 55 reads as follows:
With a view to the creation of conditions of stability and well-being which are necessary for peaceful and friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and selfdetermination of peoples, the United Nations shall promote:
a.	higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development:
b.	solutions of international economic, social, health, and related problems; and international cultural and educational cooperation; and
c.	universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.
And article 56 contains this sentence:
All members pledge themselves to take joint and separate action in cooperation with the organization for the achievement of the purposes set forth in article 55.
We have formally assumed these obligations, or the government has assumed them cn behalf of our country. We have all approved them, and however much we may be inclined from time to time to forget them, they are there, they are staring us in the face, and I suggest that if we neglect them we shall do so at our peril.
I would like to read a few paragraphs from a pamphlet I have here entitled "Stories of Technical Assistance". The paragraph I wish to read was written by Mr. David Owen, executive chairman, technical assistance board. Then I would like to read some rather astonishing figures bringing to your attention the situation of a country which has not been favoured as has our own, because the contrast is so dramatic.
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First of all, from page 1 of "Stories of Technical Assistance" by Mr. Owen:
At the beginning of 1952, I made a journey that could only have been made in this century. It was a long journey, about 8,000 air miles, from Geneva to Indonesia and back. But it was also an absurdly short journey, for I visited Lebanon, India, Ceylon, Burma and Thailand, and yet had returned to Geneva about 30 days after I set out. This in itself would have bewildered the imagination of a Marco Polo. But what is more revealing is that few people today would feel anything surprising about such a journey. Marco Polo's wanderings through Asia amazed his contemporaries to the point of incredulity, and they had an important influence on firing the zest of renaissance man for venturing to the corners of the world. My own journey, as a feat of transportation, amazes no one, but what amazed me and ought surely to amaze others is the disparity between the kinds of development for which mankind is responsible. For though I, as a 20th century man, was travelling about Asia at a speed inconceivable to Marco Polo, I was looking at a world in which many of the human skills and social customs that he described 700 years ago have barely changed at all. To a remarkable degree we were visiting the same human landscape.
Having said that I want to quote a word from page 39 of this same pamphlet in regard to Libya, which we heard so much about recently. I wish to draw attention particularly to the extraordinarily low economic condition of that country. At the beginning of the Christian era that country was one of the granaries of the world, but it has been allowed to deteriorate. Although governmental services are on a very modest level, it is very doubtful whether Libya can keep up even its present standards. The pamphlet goes on to say:
Thus the Libyan economy cannot maintain even the present low standard of living, which averages in income per capita not much more than $30 a year.
I mention that to try to underline in our own minds the almost tragic contrast we find. If we are going to win this battle for men's minds it is perfectly obvious that we have to take a long view, and that we have to render assistance.
I am not going into the details. The minister has given us a good deal of information in that regard. All I wish to do is express my own view that this is a matter which we should all be regarding as of absolutely primary importance to us all, and that we should take a long and broad view. If we are to win it must be in the long run by convincing the nations of Asia that, as the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) said, we are treating them as equals.
In that connection I should like to close these few remarks by reading briefly from the communique issued at the close of the conference in Australia the other day. Hon. members will recall that in the Colombo plan we
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in the commonwealth have been showing our recognition of the need of assisting nations in the commonwealth who have been less favoured than some of the rest of us, and I wish to read part of the concluding words of the communique, which indeed seemed to me one of the most happily expressed and impressive political documents that I have read for some time. After speaking of the commonwealth and the relations of the various parts to each other, the communique goes on to say:
Our congress, however, does not end there. We are not a commonwealth of nations arrayed against the rest of the world. We are for the world. The free world is built upon freedom. Freedom is built upon strength.
Here is the concluding portion:
We even venture to look forward to the day when the developed wealth of our own nations will serve all others; when trade and prosperity will know no inhuman barriers; when the raising of living standards will be the common endeavour of all; and when the friendly brotherhood which we have experienced in this conference will have become the common lot of mankind.
We should remind ourselves that in signing the United Nations charter we have pledged ourselves to a course of action exactly as described, and happily described in my opinion, in these words which I have read. For that reason it seems to me that, following the course of reason and common sense, we should be ready to go along with technical assistance which after all, if it is wisely and co-operatively done, can do perhaps as much toward the winning of the battle for men's minds as any other kind of action we can take.


Mr. H. A. Bryson (Humboldt-Melfort):: Mr. Speaker, I am very glad to have the opportunity of speaking in support of this resolution because I am convinced that its importance cannot be overemphasized. I am sure also we can all agree that the problem of hunger in the world is the greatest problem we have to face in this day and age. I have maintained, and still maintain, that in the last ten years it has been proved beyond any question in Canada and the United States that we are able to solve the problem of hunger. I am not going to speak about our record in Canada since, because of our small population, it is not at all relative, but I am going to use the United States as an example to prove my contention that we have solved the problem of hunger.
We are not sure just how much we can produce because we have never really tried. I sometimes think we have more agricultural land in Canada going to waste in fence corners and fence rows than is under cultivation in the whole island of Britain. As I say, we have proved beyond doubt that we have

found a solution to poverty, and because we have been able to do this for ourselves we should pass on to underdeveloped areas in the world the technical advances and technical knowledge that we have brought into play to do the things that we have been able to do.
We realize what the problem is, and we know that we have a solution for it. But I think this is important. Although we know what the problem is and what the solution is, I am convinced that we have not yet reached the stage where we realize that we need to solve the problem. I do not really think the western world feels that there is as yet a need to solve the problem of poverty. A little later I shall quote from a statement that would seem to substantiate the remarks I have just made.
As yet we refuse to believe that we are living in one world. If I may use a slang expression with your indulgence, Mr. Speaker, how long is it going to be before we smarten up to the fact that we are living in one world, a very small world, and that what happens in any one part of it is immediately reflected in every other part? We must accept our responsibility to hungry people in underdeveloped areas of the world if we ourselves are to survive.
I think I can say without any worry about being challenged that foremost in the minds of men and women throughout the world today is the fear of a third world war, a war of extermination which will engulf all peoples in all lands. I believe that fear is real. We in this group at any rate believe that there is an alternative to war. We believe that we do have a choice. By accepting our responsibility and putting into effect the terms of the resolution we are now discussing, furnishing economic aid to underdeveloped areas of the world and providing them with the knowledge and assistance they need to produce food for themselves as we have been able to produce, we will be moving in the direction of peace. Certainly we will not move in that direction unless we are first of all prepared to assume a renewed conscious and moral responsibility to the underprivileged people of the world. We would do well to remember the words of Bertrand Russell when he said:
We must banish certain ideas and substitute others. For love of domination we must substitute equality. For love of victory, we must substitute justice. For love of brutality, we must substitute intelligence. For love of competition, we must substitute co-operation.
I mentioned that we could help solve the problem of hunger because we have done it here at home. According to the food and

agriculture organization of the United Nations, during the last ten years United States food production has increased by 25 per cent, while the population has increased 12 per cent. This is a startling fact that I think will surprise hon. members as it surprised me. In those 10 years the United States increased food production by twice the amount the population increased. During those 10 years the population in the United States increased faster than the population of India in the corresponding period. I feel that is significant.
It is not what we do on the land, Mr. Speaker, that in a large measure is responsible for this great production we have seen in the last 10 years; it is what we do to the land. Our food production increases have been possible because of technical advances in connection with fertilizer, crop rotation, contour farming, drainage, insecticides and soil conservation, to name only a few. These things, rather than the advancement in machinery or long hours tilling the soil, are responsible for the phenomenal increases which I have just mentioned. It is our duty to pass along this technical knowledge, in so far as we can, to the backward countries throughout the world.
I should like to quote from memory what Paul French, who is general manager of CARE, had to say when he returned to the United States after visiting 60 countries. Speaking of the inroads that communism and dictatorship have made and are making throughout the world, he said, "We are losing the race because of poverty. These people are being subjected to such economic injustices they are easy prey to dictatorships, whether of the communist variety or of the fascist variety". It is important that we should never lose sight of the fact that today the world is too small for the extremes of poverty and prosperity to live side by side, if we are to survive.
There are many people who say, why all the emphasis on food when there are other values that must be taken into consideration? I agree that there are other values, but I believe that Sir John Boyd Orr stated the problem in its true light when he mentioned that people who are hungry are more interested in four loaves of bread than they are in Roosevelt's four freedoms. I believe that is fundamental. As a matter of fact, the first law of nature is self-preservation. In our morning prayers we ask for bread before we ask for the forgiveness of our sins.
According to the FAO, one-third of the people in the world have an income of less than $1 a week; another third have an income of less than $4 per week. In other words,
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two-thirds of the people of this world manage on less than $120 per year. These conditions will not change if we follow the ideas expressed by Benjamin F. Fairless, president of the United States Steel Corporation, who is reported in the press to have said-and I quote from memory-that rearmament and economic prosperity for the free world can best be maintained through contributions of raw materials from the underdeveloped countries in exchange for needed American materials. In other words, Mr. Speaker, his hope is to keep these people in the underdeveloped areas in their historic role of hewers of wood and drawers of water. Surely our best interests are not served by following such a plan. Surely we can do much better than that.
The money spent in economic aid would be largely self-liquidating, and we would be making friends instead of enemies throughout the world. I will agree that food production has always been an important matter of government concern. Food has always been planned by governments, both here and abroad, in the interests of something or other. Food is planned in the interests of our foreign trade and our foreign investments. It is planned in the interests of the distributor and sometimes it is even planned in the interests of agriculture, as it was in this country some years ago. When I say that food is planned in the interests of agriculture, I mean that we were paid for not growing food. We hope that will not happen again. The results are always the same. These plans are the plans of scarcity. Food has not been planned in the interests of the people. These plans have always resulted in a limitation on food.
I sincerely believe that the only sound basis upon which to build prosperity with peace throughout the world is to support to the limit the principle laid down in the resolution we are discussing. I believe, too, we must agree with Robert Hutchins when he says that civilization is doomed unless the hearts and minds of men can be changed. Unless we can bring about a deep and drastic moral reformation throughout the world in regard to the underdeveloped areas, and unless we are prepared to sacrifice something, we shall have neither peace nor security.


Mr. Maurice Boisvert (Nicolet-Yamaska):: The resolution which is before this house today, Mr. Speaker, raises a most important international question, because its aim is to promote technical aid to the underdeveloped countries, through the United Nations, in agriculture, mining, industry and commerce.
Three international bodies are dealing with this problem. The first is the international

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bank for reconstruction and development. The second is the Colombo plan, and the third is a body of the United Nations which provides technical assistance to underdeveloped countries. This latter body acts under the economic and social council, one of the most important committees of the United Nations. This committee has jurisdiction over several United Nations agencies concerned with labour, agriculture, scientific and cultural education, health and many other activities.
There is no doubt that civilization is no longer enclosed within one or two continents. It has become world-wide. It is more with technical assistance, maybe, than financial assistance that we will uplift the populations of these countries whose natural resources are bountiful but whose technology and tech-nography are deficient from the state of inertia in which they have been dwelling during many centuries.
Christianity transformed the former civilizations, engendered a new faith, culture, science, and established, step by step, a world which was dominated by the great industrial and commercial powers. This was the distinctive feature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Faith was the basis of Christian relations and a religious mind through its universal character predominated. Culture born out of the teaching of mediaeval philosophers favoured the development of letters, fine arts and scientific research, to which we owe the great inventions and material progress which were the prerogatives of these pioneering countries who conquered immense territories, acquired wealth and domination over large territories whose population realized, surprisingly late, that their future was quite promising.
In the French revolution, and even before, in the teachings of the philosophers who preceded and prepared it, we can see the germs of the rupture between the principles of the spiritual doctrine, and those of purely materialistic and realistic doctrines. Then it seemed that materialism was the victor, at least in the scientific and material domain. While science was endeavouring to find a new truth out of the physical and tangible resources, at the same time countries, deprived of freedom, were endeavouring to overthrow foreign domination. This was done in the name of a new kind of nationalism which was quite natural, but nevertheless revolutionary. Most of the countries which we call underdeveloped wished to free themselves of foreign domination by appealing to this urge of nationalism. The political organizations of those countries range from total dictatorship to the most advanced democracy, which sometimes looks like anarchy.

We may assert that two-thirds of our world today may be considered as countries which need economic assistance in order to develop their immense resources and raise the morale of their populations. Progress and improvement in the standard of living of these populations, millions of which are nearly starving, constitute a greater international danger than the wars which we have known since the beginning of this century. We hope that finally, if we come to help them, this world will establish a stability and peace and security forever.
The western world dominated humanity by its faith, by its letters, its fine arts, and by its inventions which mastered the forces of nature. This permitted exploitation of mines, the source of industrial power, the development of hydroelectric power, the source of all these inventions which are narrowing more and more the gap in human relations by the use of the telegraph, telephone, radio, television, telecommunication, aircraft, etc.
Tremendous progress, which is ever increasing, was achieved in this field. But it seems to have been restricted to those countries which enjoyed the benefits of Christian civilization.
Our world is not divided any longer according to geographical areas but into two groups of countries, those from which derive material inventions, and those which need the same inventions to rid themselves of the shackles which have held them after centuries of neglect, carelessness and intellectual laziness which breed fatalism.
If I seem to have wandered from the subject matter, it is because I believe that the western powers, to which Canada and the United States belong, are called upon to fulfil a Christian and enlightening part which will change this world and transform it into a new community. Our civilization will survive only if it gives moral and technical assistance to those countries seeking our knowledge and our methods creative of progress.
In support of this opinion I would like to quote the Russian philosopher, Berdyaev, who said:
The triumph of capitalism has created a total economic system and placed the economic life of each country under the domination of this system. It contributed to bring nations together to the utmost, in the economic domain, and it can be said that it has an inherent original internationalism. On the other hand, socialism soon assumed an international character, and, in the international communism, the old principle of compulsory universalism rises once more, but in a corrupted form. The fallen world of modern history, torn by bloody struggles between nations, classes and individuals, and with a disposition to suspicion and hatred, aims by all means to universalist unification, to victory over this exclusive national

particularism which has led nations to their downfall and disintegration . . . Internationalism is the abject caricature of universalism. But the spirit of universalism must awaken among Christian nations, the will of a free universalism must reveal itself.
And he goes on to say:
Russia has the most universalist spirit among all nations of the world. This quality is part of the very structure of its national spirit. Working towards universal unification, towards the formation of a single spiritual cosmos, this must be the vocation of the Russian people.
Russia occupies a central position among the countries which look to the western world to obtain the necessary assistance for their recovery. Asia has a population of 1,300 million, Europe has 398 million, North and South America have 333 million, the U.S.S.R. has about 200 million, and Africa about 200 million.
From those figures it will be seen that almost half the total population of the world lives in Asia. But it happens that Russia, which belongs to both Europe and Asia, presently dominates economically the whole of Asia. The prestige of the western world will only diminish unless we can convince the Asiatic populations that we have no imperialistic ambitions, no ambitions of conquest or destruction, and that all we expect from the assistance we are willing to give them is a reciprocal exchange of commercial advantages which will integrate them into this concept of universalism, based on common comprehension and co-operation.
Our Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent), before leaving for his world tour, said on January 29, as reported at page 1582 of Hansard:
Our interest in Asia has also been increased as a result of the desire of our people to assist our Asian friends to improve their social and economic conditions.
Then he went on to say:
Canada, I think, has welcomed the opportunity to share in the encouragement of freedom and economic improvement in Asia because we realize the importance of maintaining good relations between the western world and the hundreds of millions of our fellow men in these ancient nations of Asia.
I feel that we can maintain good relations with them only as long as we treat them on terms of complete equality, with respect for their older and perhaps somewhat less materialistic culture and achievements, and in a spirit of genuine understanding and co-operation. We must deal with them in the realization that while we may seem to have much to give they too have a very important contribution to make to the general welfare of the world.
May I say that what is true for Asia is also true for Africa, Indonesia and also some countries of South America. In the annual report of the secretary general on the work
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of the United Nations, Mr. Hammarskjold wrote:
Of the multitude of the United Nations programs in the economic and social field in which the government members have joined their efforts for their common benefit, none is more significant or less costly in the building of a better world community than the sharing in what is universally known as technical assistance.
Let us for a few minutes examine what was done by the United Nations in this respect. The economic and social council have set up a board called the technical assistance board. In 1950 an expanded program was made effective. In 1952 a fulltime executive chairman of the board was appointed with the duty of supervising the program of technical assistance, and the appraisal of the activities of the participating organizations. A special account was set up, and the earmarking and allocation of funds were to be decided by the chairman after approval of the program by the technical assistance board.
In 1952 the general assembly recommended a contribution of $25 million suggested by the economic and social council. Programs were elaborated for 1953 and for 1954. Those programs are not an easy undertaking on account of the wide range of the meaning of technical assistance. It comprises economic development, industrial development, transport and communications, public finance and fiscal policy, public administration, statistics and population questions, and not the least, social welfare and development.
What were the realizations of the United Nations with respect to those items? First, with regard to the industrial development program, the United Nations have brought help to 23 governments who received advice from experts. Fellowships and scholarships were awarded in a wide range of manufacturing industries, in handicraft industries, industrial planning, in the exploration and exploitation of oil and other mineral resources, and in the field of hydroelectric development.
Second, with regard to transport and communications, a survey group in 1952 and 1953 made a critical appraisal of transportation in many countries. During the year expert advice was given to ten governments.
Third, with regard to public finance and fiscal policy, the governments of six nations received the advice of experts. A team of economic and financial experts visited Iran and Indonesia. Some comprehensive training programs in fiscal matters were developed for the benefit of those countries requesting a considerable number of fellowships and scholarships in fiscal matters.
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Fourth, with regard to public administration, training activities have continued to form the most important element of the program of technical assistance carried out under a resolution adopted by the general assembly. A course of public administration was opened in Rio de Janeiro; a public institute for Turkey and the Middle East was opened in March, 1953; a training course for government accountants began to function in Libya in March, 1953. At the end of the year there were requests from four countries for similar courses. Expert advice was given to six nations.
Fifth, with regard to statistics and population questions, the experts of the United Nations are organizing a uniform method to establish demographic statistics and also to serve on statistical assignments in 16 countries to study general statistical organization or specific subjects such as national income statistics, statistical methodology, economic, financial and fiscal statistics, import and export statistics from census operations.
Sixth, with regard to social welfare and development, the ground covered includes general social welfare questions, policy, administration and training, family, youth and child welfare, community development and social research, rehabilitation of the physically handicapped, housing, town and country planning, social defence. This is a very wide and complicated organization.
I might take one minute to say a few words about one cruel problem which comes within the framework of social welfare. It is the problem of the youth of the world. Children are the heritage of nations. They deserve consideration, and they should be taken care of at every stride of their lives. The life of children in an underdeveloped country is a sad story. There is a need for maternal and child welfare, children's hospitals and wards, school health services, clinics, laboratories, and so on; and what I could say about the need for equipment, drugs and medicines of all kinds is just out of this world.
What I have said is just a sketch of the activities of the United Nations in the field of technical assistance. Let us ask now, where does Canada stand with respect to this problem? The population of Canada is 15 million people today, and the contribution of * our country has been within the reach of our possibilities, if we take into consideration our contribution in the Korean war, to the Colombo plan and to the international bank for reconstruction and development. The Canadian government is well aware of the importance of technical assistance, and the Secretary of State for External Affairs is 
to be commended for his participation in technical assistance to underdeveloped countries. I would like to quote from "Canada and the United Nations, 1951-1952" at page 45:
One of the most significant developments in international affairs since the second world war has been the emergence of the idea of technical assistance to underdeveloped countries. The technical assistance activities of the United Nations, the United States "Point Four Programme" and the Colombo plan have all grown from the concept that the underdeveloped countries of the world should be helped to help themselves, that they should be able to call on the more economically advanced countries for the technical knowledge and skills which would enable them to make the best use of their own resources.
From this quotation it is evident that Canadian policy is in favour of giving assistance to underdeveloped countries. Now, let us see what was accomplished to implement this policy. The total pledged, as was said by the hon. member for Wetaskiwin (Mr. Thomas), by 52 countries, members of the United Nations, was equivalent to about $20 million for a period of 18 months, ending December, 1951. For the second period of 12 months a sum of about $18 million was pledged by 65 countries; and for the third period, 1953, 67 governments pledged about $21 million.
The Canadian contributions for each of these periods were $772,727, $750,000 and $800,000. I should add to this that within the framework of the Colombo plan, Canada spent $400,000 each year, over the past years, for technical assistance to south and southeast Asia. From 1950 to June 1953, Canada provided training facilities for 177 fellows and scholars under the United Nations program, and 116 under the Colombo plan. During the same period we provided almost 150 experts for United Nations technical assistance projects, and 24 under the Colombo plan.
If we consider that Canada has contributed $25 million in each of the last three fiscal years to the Colombo plan, we must admit that our share is one to be praised by all Canadians. We must also add our subscription to the international bank for reconstruction and development. Canada acquired 3,250 shares representing $325 million. This international bank is also giving technical assistance to the member countries of the organization, and also to countries which are not affiliated with this international bank. This institution is now eight years old, and in 1952 it made available 19 loans to nine countries, representing a sum of nearly $179 million. Since its origin the bank made nearly two billions of dollars of loans and 29 countries benefited. The bank has given

technical assistance to many countries, especially with respect to economic development. That is not all. Canada contributed to the reconstruction of South Korea and to many other projects which could be classified as technical assistance.
I do not think it is necessary to elaborate much more. The facts I have given make it clear that the policy of Canada is in accordance with the one adopted by the United Nations. I am sure that is still the policy of the government, and in my opinion, it is the right one. Of course it would be unfair to our people, at a time when we are building up the defences of our country and establishing an organization to assure peace and security to the whole world, to increase too much our contribution to technical assistance.
We must bear in mind that industrial countries, and Canada is one, provide the biggest share of the money required by the fund to bring technical assistance to underdeveloped nations. Every citizen in Canada is in favour of it. Every citizen is well aware of his duty to people living in the underdeveloped world. Every citizen realizes that such technical assistance is a path to peace, freedom and security. There is only one restriction to our will to give more and that is a restriction which concerns ourselves-our own protection, our own development, our own security.
In conclusion may I say that I hope our prosperity will last forever, and that it will be possible soon to draw larger amounts of money from our taxpayers for these huge populations living in vast areas, which need so much when we are limited to giving so little. Let us then give what is stronger than money, the spiritual spark of an old civilization bound to survive only if we, as free men, are able to show that progress derives more from moral strength than from the bulge of capital investment.


Mr. Colin Cameron (Nanaimo):: Mr. Speaker, there used to be a saying in my childhood applied to people of my race who had a habit of talking of themselves: "Here's to ourselves. Who's like us?" As I listened to the speaker who has just taken his seat I realized that that was not entirely a Scottish characteristic. I really must decline his invitation to join in his paeans of praise about Canada's contribution to technical assistance and to the Colombo plan. I must do that because he spoke on behalf of all Canadians who I am quite sure view this with what he considered pardonable pride.
I was pleased to hear the minister of external affairs take part in the debate and also say that he considered this question one of the most important facing the world today.
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I think that is the only way it can be regarded. We spend a great deal of time in this chamber on matters that seem of worldshaking importance, but I have an idea that when this particular era of history is viewed in perspective the most important question will be, what did the people of North America do with regard to the situation of the vast majority of the human race?
Several reasons for taking this action have been advanced this afternoon. It has been suggested to us that it is an alternative to other and more conventional defence mechanisms. It has been suggested to us that it is a way to promote world peace. I suppose one could suggest also that it might lead to greater economic stability for us at home.
One of the troubles that face us at the present time, in the middle of the twentieth century, is the unfortunate habit we have acquired of dashing about the economic and social scene fastening neat little notices on various features of it which in our innocence we imagine explain the situation that we are labelling. We are told that this would be an excellent way in which to fight communism. It is suggested quite often that the major feature in recent years of the development in Asiatic countries has been their unfortunate tendency to swing toward totalitarian communism.
I am going to suggest that that is altogether too easy a simplification. What is about to take place in those parts of the world is a process which took place in the western world some century and a half or two centuries ago. I refer to the accumulation of capital. In fact that is a fundamental requisite for the development of anything in the nature of a high material level of civilization.
We in North America have certain rather unique responsibilities with regard to other peoples in the world who are now facing this necessity of accumulating capital. There are only two ways in which people can accumulate capital. One is by a desperately hard and bitter exploitation of the people themselves, a process which took place in Great Britain some 250 years ago and continued over a long time during one of the most brutal and bitter periods of British history. It can take the form it took in the Soviet union, which was a savage and bitter exploitation of the mass of the people; or it can take the course it took in North America, which was perhaps the most comfortable form and possibly the most comfortable example in the history of the accumulation of capital.

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Here in North America we were enabled to build up our substantial capital because of the sacrifices and the miseries of the people who had gone before us. We in North America owe a debt to those people in Great Britain who underwent the horrors of the early industrial revolution, and to those who accumulated the first stocks of capital there. We owe a further debt. We owe a debt to those people in the Asiatic countries, with whom we have been dealing here this afternoon, who in the beginning made their heavy contribution to the capital accumulations of Great Britain and western Europe. From each in turn the economies of North America were able to benefit without our people having to go through the grim and bitter period that the peoples in Asiatic countries and Great Britain had to undergo during their periods of capital accumulation.
It would appear, Mr. Speaker, that we have a very heavy moral responsibility to explore every possible avenue of technical aid and assistance to these people. The nature and magnitude of the problem are of course displayed in figures which are released from time to time by the various subsidiary organizations of the United Nations. I believe one of my colleagues here this afternoon pointed out that people in a very large part of the world have incomes of less than $100 per year. That compares with the average per capita income in Canada of $900 per year, and in the United States of $1,450 per year. Fifty-four per cent of the world's population have incomes of less than $100 per year, and the people in Indonesia have an average income of less than $25 per year.
If we look at other figures which have been released by the food and agriculture organization we can perhaps understand why these people have incomes which, expressed in monetary terms, are as meagre as those I have quoted. The food and agriculture organization informs us that in comparison with Canada, where we have a ratio of 800 acres of improved agricultural land per 100 of our population, Indonesia has a ratio of only 35 acres of improved agricultural land per 100 head of population, and in Burma the figure is only 104 acres. That I believe demonstrates as well as is possible the urgency of our problem. It indicates the work that has to be done.
The next question is what is the most effective way of tackling this problem? I was very interested in the suggestion made this afternoon by the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Pearson) to the effect that there is a limit to the absorptive capacity of these countries as regards capital or 
technical aid. He is perfectly correct; but on the other hand I should like to quote to the house the remarks of a very distinguished Canadian, Dr. Hugh Keenleyside, director of the United Nations technical assistance program. Dr. Keenleyside, almost precisely a year ago, had this to say in the city of Victoria:
It is at this point that I believe our present Canadian policy to be gravely inadequate. It seems to me to be unreasonable to devote $100 to direct military defence for every $1 we give to the saving of the underdeveloped areas of the world. Although Canada does more than most countries, her annual contribution to the T.A. programs of the United Nations is about equal to the cost of one bomber. Even adding the amount we are providing under the Colombo plan the total is still just about what we spend on a single destroyer.
That, Mr. Speaker, appears to me to reveal a most shocking lack of sense of proportion. While it is perfectly true, as the Secretary of State for External Affairs suggested, that we cannot hope to solve this problem merely by pouring money in by the bucketful, on the other hand I think we should not put too narrow an interpretation, as the hon. member for Vancouver South (Mr. Philpott) suggested, upon technical assistance. 1 believe, Mr. Speaker, that if we are going to send someone to these areas to teach an illiterate Indonesian peasant how to read and write, then we should also be prepared to put a pen in his hand and a book on the bench beside him. Otherwise what we have done for him is useless. If we are prepared to teach a primitive agriculturist in India modern methods of agriculture, then we should also be prepared to make that teaching of some value by providing him with modern agricultural machinery.
If we adopt that interpretation of technical assistance, then I believe we will find the absorptive capacity of these people very much greater than some people imagine. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I was disappointed although not surprised when I found that the Secretary of State for External Affairs considered that an important yardstick for our contribution to this scheme should be the relationship of Canada's contribution to that of other nations. For the life of me I cannot see any reason why that should be the yardstick. The yardstick surely can only be the need and our capacity to fill that need.
This attitude on the part of the government-because I presume the minister's colleagues agree with that attitude-seems to me to savour of an all too common Canadian approach to world affairs, an approach which might be boiled down to this, that under no circumstances whatever should Canada take the risk of leading in an approach to world

affairs. Always we shall take the safe course of following the policy of "me-too-ism," giving no more and no less than others.
I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that Canada has the capacity to play a very much more inspiring and effective role in world affairs than it is now tied to by that attitude on the part of the government. In particular, Canada can and should be, in this problem of assistance to underdeveloped areas of the world, playing one of the leading roles in the world; because, while it is true we are not the wealthiest nation in the world, we are I believe per capita the second wealthiest nation in the world. Moreover, we sometimes pride ourselves on combining our material prosperity with a more sophisticated and advanced political philosophy than is to be found in perhaps other and wealthier countries. Here surely is the place where we should be employing that sophisticated political philosophy which tells us that the path to peace, the path to security, is in aiding the people of the underdeveloped countries to emerge into the modern world. I can think of no more inspiring field for young Canadians at this juncture in world history.
A few weeks ago the national film board showed in this building a picture of the work done by the United Nations Organization in precisely these areas. As I looked at that picture this thought occurred to me. While in the past we have tended to dangle before the eyes of young people the rather meretricious prizes of military glory, here we can hold in front of their eyes a really worthwhile prize for national and individual service.
I trust that the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Pearson) and his cabinet colleagues will be prepared to take a rather sharp look at the $2,000 million we are going to spend on conventional defence measures, and an even sharper look at the million and a half that has been conditionally promised to be spent on technical assistance provided that it does not place Canada in an embarrassingly, conspicuously generous position.


Mr. A. W. Stuart (Charlotte):: Mr. Speaker, this resolution would appear to be supported by members in all parts of the house and, of course, for very good reasons. I noted today that the hon. member for Greenwood (Mr. Macdonnell) made reference in his remarks to the fact that the knowledge we have of conditions in the countries of Asia and Europe has been to a great extent brought to us by missionaries and by the boys who were over there during the war. With that I agree. In my opinion our great weakness today in
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that respect lies in the fact that too few Canadians have firsthand knowledge of conditions in many of these countries, and for a brief period I want to refer to the experience I had in 1948, after having been chosen a delegate to the parliamentary association, of visiting several countries in Europe and, a few days before we came home, of visiting Greece.
In the short time I was in that country I got a full realization of what total war means to a country, particularly in these days of modern warfare. I travelled throughout a great part of the country and gained firsthand knowledge of conditions. We flew up to the Albanian border. At that time the guerrilla warfare was being carried on, and I saw thousands and thousands of Greek people living in American army tents on practically nothing. Thousands of their children had been stolen and taken into the mountains. I began to realize the destruction of warfare, and just what people in countries so devastated had to contend with.
The destruction in Greece in a three and a half year period cost them about 400,000 homes in a country with a population of seven or eight million. This destruction was created by bombing, by explosives of all kinds, by fire and by pillage. Churches, schools, hospitals and all other dwellings were in the same category. There was no distinction at all. There were 1,770 Greek villages which were totally destroyed, and when I say "totally destroyed" it was estimated that they were 90 per cent destroyed.
Their hydraulic developments, which meant so much in the irrigation of the land-and they have very little land to irrigate-were totally destroyed. Their telephone and telegraph cables and long distance communications were completely destroyed. Nearly all the big harbours in that great country were a total loss. When the Germans invaded Greece they came with their planes and bombed and destroyed and created all the disturbance they could. Then after the allied nations invaded the country they had the job of trying to drive the Germans out of Greece, and Greek cities were bombed and destroyed not only by the Germans but also by the allied nations.
The railway rolling stock of the country deteriorated to such an extent that when the country was liberated there was not a single train moving. The bridges were practically all destroyed. The engines and cars had been stolen and taken to Bulgaria and other countries. Their railway stations had been destroyed. The machine shops in which they repaired their rolling stock had been destroyed, and when the war was over the supply of engines and rolling stock was completely nil. There was nothing left.

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Prior to the war their merchant marine fleet amounted to 2 million tons, but by the end of the war 75 per cent of the fleet had been destroyed. At the beginning of the war they had 713 sailing vessels and they lost 472, or 66 per cent. The same spirit of destruction affected the big Greek canal which joined the Aegean and Ionian seas. All the carnage of war that could be collected was dumped into the canal, and I am doubtful if it is open even at this date. The canal had been of great benefit to the people. It was practically destroyed, and will take many years to repair.
The forests of the country were also completely destroyed; in fact even the olive trees were burned for fuel. There is no coal in Greece, and it was found necessary to get fuel of some sort. For that reason everything that would make fuel was cut down and destroyed. After the war their forests were completely gone. When we were there in 1948 a few of their olive trees had begun to produce again, but it will be years and years before the production will compare with that of the pre-war period. Livestock was destroyed almost to the same extent. In fact their beasts of burden were completely annihilated. They did not have any kind of animal with which to do their plowing and till the soil.
After three and a half years of German occupation the country was liberated, When we on this continent read about liberation we get the impression that the worries of these people are over, but from my short visit to that grand country I could see that their troubles had just started. Having gone through four years of destruction, it will perhaps be fifty years before the country is restored. If more Canadians had firsthand knowledge of such conditions perhaps our feelings with respect to assistance might be different. We read, but we do not realize what these people have had to contend with. I believe that anything we can do to assist these noble people is a step in the right direction.
I have no idea how far it is possible for us to go, but I for one support the resolution introduced today, knowing that anything we do will be appreciated by the people in these countries, and will be one of the greatest steps we can take in order to bring about that feeling of respect which we hope may some day result in world peace. In my opinion the benefits that may be provided can never be reckoned in dollars and cents, and we must look forward to those benefits. I see that the hon. member for Eglinton (Mr. Fleming) is in his seat. He could give you a further description of the conditions we witnessed nearly five years ago.

Before resuming my seat I want to say again that if it were only possible for more Canadians to see the conditions under which these people are trying to survive, I believe our generosity might be greater.


Frederick Greystock Robertson: I welcome this opportunity, Mr. Speaker, of speaking to the resolution proposed by the hon. member for Vancouver-Kingsway (Mr. Maclnnis), namely:
That, in the opinion of this house, the government should consider the advisability of introducing legislation at this session to substantially increase Canada's contribution to the United Nations technical assistance organization fund.
Practically every speaker who has taken part in this debate has indicated his support of the resolution. Personally I believe that our Canadian government has a creditable record in this regard, especially when we recall the amount of money being spent on the Colombo plan as well as the various specialized agencies of the United Nations, all of which involve technical assistance to a very large degree. I believe we can say that we are playing our full part.
We all appreciate, of course, that this is an important feature of United Nations work. In fact we cannot do too much to help the underdeveloped countries of the world. I believe when we see the amount of money being spent, which in itself is not a modest amount, and when we compare it with what is being spent by other countries, then we have no reason to be ashamed of the part Canada is playing.
I listened with much interest to the speeches of all hon. members this afternoon. The speeches delivered by the hon. member for Victoria, B.C. (Mr. Fairey) and the hon. member for Vancouver South (Mr. Philpott) were based largely on their own experience in the underdeveloped countries. The experience of the hon. member for Victoria, B.C., was a result of his work as an official of a technical assistance program in Burma, whereas the experience of the hon. member for Vancouver South resulted from travelling through the underdeveloped countries. I am sure we all felt they made a worth-while contribution to the debate today.
I was particularly interested in the speech made by the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Pearson). As usual he gave us a very able and comprehensive report. I was particularly impressed by the fact that, in stressing the need of the underdeveloped countries, he made a point of the fact that we should speak of these countries only as being materially underdeveloped. He pointed out that some of these other countries were, in many ways, as well equipped as we are. This fact was underlined for me today

because I had the pleasure of having lunch with a distinguished visitor from one of our sister commonwealth nations, the deputy minister of health for India. I can assure you that he was a man of great charm, culture and high professional training. This certainly brought home to me the wisdom of the minister's remarks.
I listened also to the speech made by the hon. member for Greenwood (Mr. Mac-donnell). For a moment I thought he was going to agree that the government was doing a good job. In fact I believe he almost got around to that point, and his characteristic remark that the government is doing the right thing in the wrong way was not made today. I think we can assume this resolution has the wholehearted support of the majority of the members in this house.
I had the pleasure of attending the United Nations as a member of the economic and social council in June, 1952. At that time the Canadian delegation was headed by the present Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources (Mr. Lesage), who did a very able job in directing the work of that delegation. The present Minister of Fisheries (Mr. Sinclair) was also a member of the delegation, attending in his capacity as assistant to the Minister of Finance. He took part in the discussions concerning the financial arrangements of the United Nations. I was greatly impressed with the work of the other delegates	representing	the	Department	ofExternal	Affairs and	the	Department	ofFinance.	I think it is	safe	to say that	the
expenditures made by Canada for United Nations purposes are carefully scrutinized by the finance department. We will all agree that is as it should be, for no matter how worthy the objective may be we want to know that any money we spend is being wisely spent. I believe that is one of the characteristics of this government, they make sure that any money they appropriate is well spent.
I am one of those who believe that the United Nations is a worth-while organization and is making a real contribution to the peace of the world. In common with the hon. member representing the Social Credit group who spoke earlier, I believe that the most beneficial results of the United Nations work are in the social and welfare field. However, I am sure he would be one of the first to admit that political and military matters are most difficult to deal with. While in many instances it would appear that we are getting nowhere in military and political matters, I believe the United Nations has also made a real contribution in those fields.
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I was very much impressed with the work of such specialized agencies as the world health organization, the food organization, the international bank, UNESCO, and so on. In all these agencies technical assistance plays an important part, and we are spending huge sums of money in offering technical assistance to the underdeveloped countries through these agencies.
I should like to bring to the attention of the house, Mr. Speaker, some of the remarks of the Canadian representative at the eighth session of the United Nations general assembly, parts of which were also quoted by the hon. member for Vancouver-Kingsway. I do not believe these quotations were given; if they were, I believe they are worthy of repetition. I quote from the remarks made by our representative on September 28, 1953, at the eighth session of the United Nations:
I do not propose, in this general debate on technical assistance, to make a long speech or to go into time-consuming detail. I simply wish to reaffirm my country's belief in and continued support for the technical assistance programs. The concept of mutual aid and enlightened self-help which is the basis of all these programs-that of the United Nations, the Colombo plan sponsored by several countries of the commonwealth, and the United States bilateral arrangements-is one of the most fruitful and significant developments in international affairs since the second world war. Certainly, none gives to those peoples of the world who are still living in comparative poverty greater assurance that others more fortunate stand ready to co-operate with them in their struggle towards a future free from material want and unnecessary suffering; none gives the underdeveloped countries themselves a better opportunity to help one another by exchange of skills and training; none contributes in a more useful and constructive way to the achievement of the objectives set forth in articles 55 and 56 of the charter.	.
Then I should like to quote further from the remarks of the same gentleman on October 27, 1953, at the same session of the general assembly, when he said:
Many delegations, in speaking of the contributions which their governments hope to make to the 1954 expanded program, have stressed the benefits which their own countries have derived from technical assistance and their belief that, by the further exchange of technical skills and know-how, extensive and enduring progress can be made towards prosperity and improved standards of living all over the world. The Canadian government shares this belief. Canada has been, and still is, a country which depends greatly upon the export of primary products. But our recent and rapid industrial growth has been based upon technical developments and upon the exploration of improved industrial and agricultural techniques which we have pursued in our own country and which we are ready to share with others.
In accordance with our belief in the fundamental importance of the kind of work which is being done under the expanded program of technical assistance, I am authorized to announce that if, in our view, the support given to the 1954 program by the other contributors warrants such

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action, and if the total of the contributions is sufficient to make a reasonable and workable program on a sound economic basis, the Canadian government, subject to parliamentary approval, is prepared to increase its contribution to the 1954 expanded program of technical assistance from $800,000, as it was in 1953, up to a maximum of one million five hundred thousand dollars (United States). I should further add that if the total of contributions falls below what we regard as reasonable, the Canadian contribution would be reduced accordingly.
It is our hope that when the pledging conference meets in two weeks time, the response from delegations will be such as to ensure the continuance at the maximum possible efficiency of what we regard as one of the most valuable contributions the United Nations has so far made to international economic co-operation and progress.
Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I believe the Canadian government has already taken substantial steps in the spirit of this resolution. Subject to the approval of parliament we are proposing that we practically double our contribution to the technical assistance fund.
Technical assistance means the sharing with underdeveloped countries of the advanced knowledge and skills of the industrialized and more highly developed countries. The idea of international technical assistance on a large scale is relatively new. It was proposed first by President Truman in his inaugural address to congress in 1949. I expect to refer to this matter later in my remarks. This suggestion was quickly taken up by the United Nations, which organized an expanded program of technical assistance in 1950.
There are various arguments one might use to support technical assistance in underdeveloped countries. I think the one that comes to mind first, in fact the most important one, is on ethical and moral grounds. The rich countries should be prepared to help the countries with lower standards of living, so that their standards of living can be raised.
We have already heard in the house figures showing the difference in real income as between rich countries and very poor countries in the world. Those contrasts are indeed very striking, and they underline the necessity of being ready to help these people. I think it is also important to point out how the life expectancy in developed countries compares with that in the underdeveloped. In Canada and the United States a child may look forward to an average life of 60-plus years. In the underdeveloped countries an average life expectancy is in the neighbourhood of 30 years. By improving their living conditions we should be able greatly to increase their life expectancy.
The measure of the poverty in much of the world is best understood not by figures but

by descriptions. I have read that in parts of Africa over 90 per cent of the people are infected by one or more kinds of worms. This shows a great need for modern health standards. Seven per cent of the world's people enjoy 40 per cent of the income, whereas another 54 per cent of the people enjoy only 13 per cent of the income.
More than that, there is a strong tendency for extremes of poverty and affluence to diverge. That is, rich countries, with their great capabilities, tend to get richer while poor countries, with no technical skills, tenid to become even poorer. And I do believe that in many of these so-called impoverished nations there is an even greater cleavage between the classes living in those countries. We find a small minority of very rich people while the great majority live in abject misery.
I remember one of the most striking occasions at the meeting of the United Nations I attended was a speech delivered by a delegate from one of these underdeveloped countries. As I remember his remarks he said, "In our country it is not a matter of enjoying some little luxury. It is more a matter of finding a crust of bread for a starving son, or finding some simple drug to relieve the agonies of death of a loving mother".
I would stress again that the main reason for helping underdeveloped countries is the moral one. Nevertheless, political considerations do enter into the question. These, we will admit, are possibly of a selfish nature but, in our present international situation, it must be admitted that they are realistic.
On motion of Mr. Robertson the debate was adjourned.



RESEARCH


[Stage Direction]
On the order:
Notice of motion: Mr. Murphy (Lambton West) - That, in the opinion of this house, the government should consider the advisability of setting up a special committee representative of all parties, with the power to call witnesses and send for documents and papers for the purpose of examining and reporting upon the advisability of providing inducements to promote and accelerate activities in the field of research.
Mr. J. W. Murphy (Lambfon West):: Mr. Speaker, before you call it six o'clock may I have the consent of the house to have my motion withdrawn from the order paper?

Business of the House


Mr. Speaker:: Has the hon. member leave to withdraw his notice of motion appearing as No. 5 under that heading? It can be withdrawn only by unanimous consent.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
Order discharged and motion withdrawn.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Harris:: I outlined last evening the
agenda for tomorrow. Meantime the suggestion I made has been accepted, and on Friday we shall consider the Criminal Code.


[Stage Direction]
At six o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
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[Stage Direction]
Thursday, February 11, 1954