1955-05-20

[Stage Direction]
Second report of standing committee on external affairs.-Mr. Picard.


[Stage Direction]
Hon, L. B. Pearson (Secretary of Slate for External Affairs): I wish to table copies in English and in French, Mr. Speaker, of an exchange of notes between the Canadian ambassador in Washington and the Secretary of State of the United States of America, dated May 5,	1955, constituting an agreement
between the Canadian and United States governments covering the construction and operation of the distant early warning system.


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Stanley Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, may I ask a question of the Minister of Finance? Has the minister now seen press reports that the government is sounding out other GATT countries regarding an increase in the tariff on mixed fruits and that this is one of the one or two other items, along with ethylene glycol, which he mentioned in his budget speech? Are there any other items slated for a tariff boost at this session?


Hon. W. E. Harris (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, I think the house will have appreciated the manner in which my hon. friend beclouds the issue by the wording of his question. He asks, has the minister now seen press reports. The answer is yes. Then he goes on to say, "and that this is one of the one or two other items... which he mentioned in his budget speech." I presume if I answered yes to that in connection with one question he would say I had then agreed that mixed fruits were in fact among those being discussed at Geneva, and I have no intention of saying that. So if my hon. friend would drop the "and" I could answer the question.
Then as to the second question, "Are there any other items slated for a tariff boost at
50433-250J
this session?" I made it clear in my speech as reported at page 2738 of Hansard that there were in fact two items by name. I also said at page 2739 that it may be necessary to introduce those items-that is, the question of ethylene glycol and possibly one or two others -into the resolution as amendments at the time we are in committee. And, sir, we will give the house notice of any such resolution in the normal way.


Stanley Howard Knowles: May I ask a supplementary question? Does the minister care to answer my first question with the word "and" deleted?


Walter Edward Harris: The answer I gave yesterday was that these negotiations are secret.



NATIONAL DEFENCE


Mr. J. G. Diefenbaker (Prince Albert):: Arising out of the action of the Secretary of State for External Affairs in tabling these agreements between the United States and Canada, is the minister in a position to advise what is Canada's proportionate share of the cost, in respect of the distant early warning line, the mid-continent line and the "Pinetree" line? What is Canada's proportion of the expenditures being made, and in the construction work done by the United States to what degree is Canadian sovereignty maintained?


Hon. L. B. Pearson (Secretary of Stale for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I am not in a position to give the exact proportions of cost borne by the two countries in respect of the three lines, because the total cost has not yet been determined. However, I might make a short statement on the point raised by my hon. friend in the last part of his question.
Hon. members will recall that the statement on the over-all joint Canada-United States warning system, published as appendix B to Hansard of February 22, 1955, emphasized that experience has shown that projects of this nature can be carried out most effectively by vesting responsibility for all phases of the work of construction and installation in a single authority. Accordingly it had been agreed that Canada would construct the mid-Canada warning line and the United States the distant early warning line.
3956	HOUSE OF
Inquiries of the Ministry
This exchange of notes establishes conditions which will enable the United States to build the distant early warning line as rapidly as possible in the interests of the defence of the two countries. At the same time it preserves the principle enunciated in the joint declaration of February 12, 1947, on defence co-operation, that all co-operative arrangements will be without impairment of the control of either country over all activities in its own territory. In particular the agreement provides for the effective participation by Canada in the operation of the distant early warning system, the character of such participation to be determined on the basis of studies to be carried out during the construction phase. These studies are already under way, but I should point out that they will not be completed for a considerable time and for the present there is nothing to be added to the statement made by the Prime Minister on the matter in this house on February 22 last.


John George Diefenbaker: May I ask a further supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. Is there anything secret about the cost of the midcontinent line, or the McGill fence, which is being constructed by Canada? Now that we know that the cost is being borne by Canada, what is to be the total cost of this line?


Lester Bowles Pearson: As I understand it, Mr. Speaker, there is nothing secret about the cost of the mid-continent line, which is being borne by Canada, but I have not the figures. Indeed I am not sure whether the total figures are available yet, because all the costs of construction are not known. There is nothing secret about the matter, however, and as soon as the costs are known they can be made available to the house.



TAXATION


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. T. S. Barnett (Comox-Alberni):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Finance, based on his speech of April 5 at page 2739 of Hansard. Has he any words of comfort or advice to give to the car dealers of the country in the matter of a rebate of excise taxes on stocks then on hand?


Walter Edward Harris: Mr. Speaker, I think I answered the question, perhaps not adequately, in the answer I gave the other day in reply to the request of the hon. member for Kamloops (Mr. Fulton).



CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAYS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. E. G. McCullough (Moose Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Transport. Have investigations been made into the two accidents which occurred on the Canadian National main line near Melville, Saskatchewan? If so, have any special precautions been taken to prevent further accidents?


Mr. L. Langlois (Parliamentary Assistani to the Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Transport is out of town today on official business. The intention of the hon. member to ask this question was brought to my notice as I was coming into the chamber. Since it is necessary to obtain part of the required information from the management of the company in Montreal, I am taking this as notice.

The house in committee of supply, Mr. Robinson (Simcoe East) in the chair.



DEPARTMENT OF LABOUR

[Stage Direction]
173. Departmental administration, $685,605.
The Chairman:: When the committee rose last evening we were discussing resolution 173. Shall the resolution carry?


Mr. Pouliot:: Mr. Chairman, before this
resolution is carried I have just a few remarks to make concerning the debate of yesterday. It is not often that a cabinet minister is described by members of the opposition as being sympathetic. That fine word was used yesterday with reference to the Minister of Labour. The greatest tribute paid to him by hon. members who engaged in the discussion was the friendliness of that discussion. For the first time during the session the matter of unemployment was considered objectively, with a view to bringing relief to the unemployed. I am not going to refer to all the speeches that were made, but all members seemed to be in good disposition and made many useful suggestions for the improvement of labour conditions throughout the country.
I believe the real advisory council and the real board of inquiry is just this House of Commons. Hon. members belonging to all parties, who are familiar with conditions in their own constituencies and in the country at large, are in a much better position to offer suggestions and perhaps are better qualified than supposed economic experts or even

judges. I sympathize with the minister because so many suggestions have been made, and naturally he must make a choice. That will take a little time, because the more suggestions that are made, the more time it will take to make a selection.
The hon. lady member for Hamilton West suggested that the advisory council should resume its activities. Then the Leader of the Opposition followed her and suggested that a board of inquiry should be set up. The two suggestions are entirely different. I was surprised to hear one suggestion being made by the labour expert of the official opposition and the other by the Leader of the Opposition himself. They should discuss things together before making such pronouncements, in order to present a united front to the House of Commons.
I have always advocated that members of parliament should have the widest possible opportunities not only to make suggestions but to make recommendations to the government. This can be done in many ways, but it can be done particularly at the meetings of the industrial relations committee, where members of all parties gather to study labour problems and the labour situation at large.
Besides what may be said to him by members of the House of Commons, the minister has the advantage of having an organization in his own department dealing with these matters. I refer to the unemployment insurance commission, which has offices spread right across the country. They report not only on unemployment but also on employment. My personal experience, and this must be the experience of my colleagues, has been that the work done by the employment offices is most useful, not only to the government because of the information conveyed to them but mainly to those who are without work and who obtain employment through the services of the employment branch of the unemployment insurance commission.
Some years ago those engaged in lumbering did not come under the unemployment insurance commission. Some hon. members, and I was one of the first to join with them, insisted that these men should enjoy the benefits of the Unemployment Insurance Act. It has worked out that way. The former minister of labour listened to our requests and made a favourable decision; therefore in my constituency there are many people who enjoy the benefits of the Unemployment Insurance Act when they are engaged in the lumbering business.
It is precisely on account of that fact that the number of unemployed has increased. It is to be regretted, of course, but it is due to the seasonal nature of the occupation, and
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those men, with their families, are very fortunate in getting the benefits of the Unemployment Insurance Act when they are out of work. I am most appreciative of what is done by the Minister of Labour for them.
Along with other members I have the responsibility of dealing with quite a large correspondence. When those men expect an answer from the unemployment insurance commission and it does not come as soon as they would like, they write their member of parliament in order that he may put pressure on the bureau to see that they get what is due them as soon as possible, because they are in great need. Then the member of parliament writes on their behalf to the unemployment insurance office, to the chief commissioner of the unemployment insurance commission, or to the minister, in order to give them satisfaction. It gives us an opportunity to familiarize ourselves with those problems. I do not complain about it, though it represents a good deal of work.
Without deprecating the speeches that were made by all the hon. members who spoke yesterday, I wish to say that the hon. gentleman who has put his finger on the spot is the hon. member for Cape Breton South. He said yesterday that unemployment was due in large measure to automation. He defined it, at page 3919 of yesterday's Hansard, as "the displacement of man by the machine". It is true. At the time we discussed the matter before the railway and shipping committee some years ago it was very unfortunate that some miners in Nova Scotia were deprived of work because of the dieselization of the Canadian National Railways. That was due to new machines.
At that time I joined the hon. member for Cape Breton South in protesting against that measure because I thought the old locomotives, which were good enough to haul large numbers of cars from coast to coast, were still of use, and it was important that they should burn coal in order to provide work for the miners of Nova Scotia, who deserve a lot of sympathy. But it was decided that the company had to go ahead with the times, that it was important to have diesel locomotives and to lay aside the good old iron horses that had done such a good job. This is one case where many good men of the railway were laid off. Some of them were transferred elsewhere, and some became unemployed.
There are many causes for unemployment. I do not intend to mention them all today. I mention only a few of which I have personal knowledge. For instance, in my county we have a branch of Canadian Arsenals Limited. Work there depends on the contracts that are

Supply-Labour
given to the company for the manufacture of munitions. When peace is advocated throughout the world it is only natural that the manufacture of munitions will decrease accordingly. We cannot have peace and war at the same time. Most of the munitions were sold to other countries, and when contracts expired it was only natural that the number of men employed should be reduced. It is very unfortunate, but this is the way it works. I understand quite well that it was not the fault of the government. There again I am in a difficult situation. I have explained it to the men, who understand it is much better to make progress toward peace than to have a war that would destroy homes and people and leave the country in a complete mess.
There is the question of good understanding between employer and employee. In that regard a very apt suggestion was made by the hon. member for Cape Breton South, and I am the happier to mention it because he is not in the chamber at the present time. He suggested that industrial councils be established for various industries, in the same fashion as there are councils in the building trades.
This is a very good suggestion. The government cannot impose drastic conditions of employment on employers. It cannot be done. Employers must show good faith and a willingness to co-operate with the staff and personnel of their organizations. To me it was one of the ablest suggestions offered during the discussion yesterday. The same thing exists already in the building trades, and it is satisfactory. Why not use it in other industries?
It cannot be done tomorrow. It will take some time to do it. Persuasion must be used to make both parties understand the situation and finally come to an understanding that would be for the benefit of the country. But if employers were aroused against employees, if the employers were to believe that the employees' requests were extravagant, it could not work. I hope there will be good understanding between the employers and the employees in all branches of industry in this country. I am sure the best man to bring about such a happy conclusion is the Minister of Labour himself. He has done so much.
If we look at the estimates we see all the items that are mentioned under the Department of Labour. It is quite astounding to see all that is done by this department, ' including vocational training and all that sort of thing. I wish the minister good luck and I know the future will not be as dark

as it was painted at the beginning of the session, because there must be peace on earth to men of good will.


Mr. Bell:: Most of the remarks on this first item, Mr. Chairman, have followed the general pattern of praise for the department in various degrees and then suggestions, also I suppose in various degrees. I should like to say that I personally recognize that the labour department has been going through rather strenuous times these last few years, with the unemployment situation as it is and with the increase in legislation that has been necessary. I feel that these extra duties are being handled in very fine fashion, and a word of praise from me along the lines I mentioned earlier is in order.
So far as suggestions go I have one personal gripe against the department, and if the few remarks I propose to make could be considered as suggestions I should like to just leave them with the house. I say there is a great tendency in Canada, on the part of the labour department and the other groups and associations who compile statistics of various kinds in connection with labour, to consider the over-all national picture too much and leave out the regional aspect. It is a recognized fact that unemployment is regional. There are many other phases that affect the labour department which have also been unanimously considered as regional. Naturally I have a personal gripe, in that the maritimes and the Atlantic regions, which have very particular and peculiar problems with respect to labour, are being ill-considered in this respect.
Having said that I believe we are getting away from the regional aspect to a certain extent in our consideration of labour and its problems in Canada, I should like to reflect on some of these small matters in the maritimes which I feel present a particular regional aspect as contrasted with any sort of national study that might be presented by the department and these other agencies.
First of all, I suggest that we have a particular problem of low wages in the maritimes. In a recent issue of the Financial Post figures were given showing wages in the construction industry and pointing out that they are climbing. The table setting out these figures is divided into the principal metropolitan areas in Canada, showing the various trades as well as unskilled labour. I am not going to put these figures on record because I am embarrassed by the low wages that are listed for Halifax and Saint John. If hon. members will just take my word for the fact that the figures are so low I am embarrassed to put them on the record, that will serve to illustrate my point.

Second, I should like to refer to the older citizens who are coming into a position of increasing importance in our life today. The problems of people over 45 who are attempting to obtain work are well known to everybody. The older people in the Atlantic region are a definite problem, even more than in the central region, because jobs for which they are fitted are not available. Such jobs as night watchman and other supervisory jobs are only connected with large industry and large buildings which, as a result of our small-scale economy, are not found in that region.
Third, I think the fishermen present a definite regional problem. They are now being considered for unemployment insurance. While I do not wish to go into that question, I feel that any arguments concerning the administrative difficulties that would prevent any sort of unemployment insurance being extended to these fishermen should not weigh too heavily. These fishermen will always be in small organizations, and they will be in various areas. There is no possible chance there will ever be a great concentration of them.
The coal industry of the maritimes is another industry that needs special consideration. It definitely presents a regional problem. I believe it is today that a meeting is taking place in Halifax, to which reference has already been made in this debate, in an attempt to alleviate this situation.
Then, Mr. Chairman, I want to refer to the general geographic conditions that would make the labour situation in the maritimes, and its interrelated fields, a special consideration. I would mention briefly the immobility of labour that exists down our way, and the difficulties that have to be considered in this respect. I refer also to the small markets that exist in this region, and the tremendous drawback that factor is to any attempts at manufacturing in that area.
Having said that we have these various regional problems, and having said that I feel the various people who compile labour statistics are not giving us adequate consideration from a strictly regional standpoint, I throw out these few suggestions to the department and other groups that may, in the future, compile such statistics.
First of all I feel that we always seem to wait too long before attempting to catch up with a problem. There are two very good examples of this in New Brunswick that are of recent date. I refer to the Marysville textile shut-down of two years ago, at which time we lost one of the main industries in
Supply-Labour
our community. When the mill was finally shut down, through the combined efforts of provincial, federal and local authorities it was possible to relocate most of the workers through a vocational training plan.
I feel that the situation in this case has been righted to some extent. But why was it that we had to wait until the thing had dragged on and dislocated so many people? Why could not plans have been made in advance to meet this special problem, a problem which was really unique, though I realize that other textile plants have been closed down in Canada. I doubt, however, if there have been many other cases in which a community has been dependent upon one mill.
I would refer also to the Milltown textile mill which, as hon. members may know, has been able to continue in the area due to some sort of unique co-operative plan. It has been another experiment, and I believe a fairly successful one. However, their production is not what it was.
The various co-operative measures of all authorities have been appreciated. I suggest that here are two regional matters that could have been dealt with, and concerning which plans could have been made. It was not necessary to wait until a difficult situation developed. Plans and research could have been carried out long ago to cope with these problems.
It would be interesting to have a statement from the Minister of Labour about these two matters when he sums up in closing the debate, because I think they are unique experiments in Canada and we could probably get some helpful information if we knew just what had been done. Incidentally, vocational training grants were very helpful in Marysville. We hope that any reduction in the estimates will not affect these regions in the Atlantic provinces, which depend so much upon assistance of this kind.
Then I would refer to the various articles, particularly those dealing with research, compiled by the Department of Labour. I have before me a most commendable article dealing with labour research to which reference has been made by other speakers. This is prepared by the Canadian Congress of Labour, and I seem to detect in it the hand of Mr. Forsey. It purports to be a survey of economic trends in the Atlantic provinces. This work is startling and revealing, and I suggest that perhaps officials in the Department of Labour might work along similar lines. It may be that they have done research work that is just as good, dealing with regional aspects of the matter, but I must say they have not come to my attention. I just mention this in a friendly way.

Supply-Labour
Then I noticed in the press a few days ago that on the occasion of his trip to Nova Scotia to accept an honorary degree at Acadia University the Minister of Finance referred to the economic survey being planned. He said, and I have no reason to doubt his word, that special consideration will be given to the economic aspects and problems of the Atlantic region. We hope this purpose will be carried out. It serves as an illustration of what I have been saying, that special attention should be paid to the regional aspect of the matter.
Then I have two other points in mind. I believe many will agree when I say there should be closer co-operation among various departments of government. This lack of cooperation has a particularly unfortunate effect on labour when one considers that in connection with such matters as immigration and labour, for example, there are so many overlapping duties and responsibilities. Yet we do not know of any co-ordination between these branches of government. I imagine that there is a considerable amount of co-operation; but surely the time has arrived when we must really get together. If this were done it would eliminate much of the trouble we now have in connection with the distribution of immigrants.
For instance, it was only a few days ago that the hon. member for Quebec West referred to the surplus labour force available at Seven Islands. I am not saying anyone is responsible for this; I am simply pointing out that if there had been a close liaison between the immigration branch and the Department of Labour this condition at Seven Islands might have been avoided. It would seem that this is another suggestion falling within the ambit of those special duties which, it seems to me, rest with the Department of Labour.
Then it would seem that there could be closer co-operation between the Department of Finance and the Department of Labour. I was interested reading the other day in a United States newspaper about a method used in the United States to eliminate labour surplus areas. I do not know whether it would be possible to implement such a plan in Canada but, briefly, in the United States it appears that groups interested in finance and labour are charged with the responsibility of getting together and making decisions as to whether certain areas are labour surplus areas. The labour surplus condition could develop from a local economic condition, such as the shutting down of an industry, or for some other reason. Under this scheme, when an area is declared labour surplus it is given official assistance by the federal

authority. In this way defence and other industries can locate where labour surplus is in evidence, and thus receive federal assistance.
I would like to apply that principle to the maritime provinces and, in particular, to the situation at Marysville. At that point there was a shut-down of industry, and a special problem developed. However, a very skilful labour surplus was available there. Why would it not have been possible for some other industry to come in and make use of that labour surplus? I suggest, further, that it might have been possible for the department to work out with the Department of Finance some scheme of special tax concessions, perhaps involving amortization over a period of 20 years and permitted as a deduction from the federal taxes imposed on an industry.
Had such an inducement been offered an industry may have been able to come in and locate. As the situation stands today the municipality must bear the responsibility. It must offer various tax concessions and assessment relief and, as we know, the municipalities cannot afford special assistance at that time. I do urge, therefore, that there be closer contact and co-operation among departments of government.
There is one further matter I would discuss with the minister, and that is the matter of local advisory committees. We have in Canada many complex problems in local areas. In that connection I think immediately of the national harbours board, which today is big business. With the approval of the department, local advisory committees are being set up in the different ports to advise the permanent officials as to local needs and plans. I understand that for some time there have been local advisory employment committees in various areas of Canada.
I suggest, however, that the responsibility for the organization and co-ordination of these local committees should not be left to the local unemployment insurance officer. The department should make definite plans for co-operation, and should advise how a group could function. I realize that there may be some interdepartmental advice and assistance in this connection, but I do feel there should be a greater measure of guidance and co-operation. For instance, recently the department published an interesting and useful booklet on the subject of older workers, setting out the problems of this group. I believe that publication was well received and probably was helpful in assisting those charged with the responsibility of looking after those workers.
In conclusion I should like to refer to an article to sort of tie in the suggestions I have

made. The article is entitled "This Changing Canada". It is taken from Canadian Business, published by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and is dated May, 1955. It is mainly concerned with industrial growth and manufacturing, and was written by Richard L. Edsall. He is referring to employment in manufacturing and the increases that have taken place across Canada, and says:
Going 'way back, of course, you find a sharply different picture. In 1870, when the first Canadian census was taken. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick employed 18 per cent of the country's factory workers; by 1952 this figure was only about 4 per cent. Even more surprising, those maritime provinces had a greater number of manufacturing employees in 1870 than they had 69 years later, in 1939. In the same 69 years, manufacturing employment in Quebec rose to 330 per cent of the 1870 level, and in Ontario to 365 per cent. The 1870 figures are not completely comparable with later ones, but even so they show in startling relief both the relative and absolute decline of manufacturing in the maritimes.
Further on, Mr. Speaker, the author has this to say:
This points up, once again, the need to study regional as well as over-all national changes. It may be clear enough on a national scale, for instance, that the food and beverage industries have slipped in relative importance. But if you unthinkingly assume that this applies more or less equally to all areas including the maritimes and prairies, you will miss seeing the true impact that this industry's rate of growth can have locally.
I leave that with the minister and his department. I should just like to say that the economic picture in the maritimes is very good. We are quite optimistic about the future. But I do feel that some of our modes of life and regional considerations, particularly labour, must be given that extra help we need to put us back on a very good national footing.


Mr. Philpoli:: I have no intention of holding up the passing of this item, but I wish to take a few minutes chiefly to correct the history of the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre.
Before I spend a few moments on the history of the Leader of the Opposition, may I take a minute or two to congratulate him on his fine television performance last night. It was as expert a performance as I have seen, at least since I saw the Minister of Fisheries a week or so ago. If they both keep on improving they will soon be in the class of Anne Francis, who is also very photogenic.
The history of the Leader of the Opposition that I particularly want to refer to was not so much the particular point he made last night, but rather the remarkable statement he made the other day that the Conservative party in Canada was entirely responsible for bringing about confederation. That amazed me for
Supply-Labour two reasons; first because of where I sit in this house, and second as a former associate editor of the Toronto Globe, I am sure that particular statement would have been news indeed to the founder of that paper, the late Hon. George Brown. Therefore I want to suggest in all kindliness that I hope the next time we have a party in the railway committee room I shall have the privilege of pointing out to the Leader of the Opposition that sitting right in the middle of the fathers of confederation is Hon. George Brown, who certainly was not a member of the Conservative party. If I remember correctly, the reason the Conservative party for about 60 years used the title "Liberal Conservative party" was the contribution made by the Liberals as well as the Conservatives to the confederation of Canada.
I do not intend to go into the rather remarkable version of history given yesterday by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre in regard to the Winnipeg strike. I happen to know a great deal about that strike, because I had partly written a novel about it. I think it was about the worst novel ever written in Canada. It was so bad I threw it away. In any event, I had to do a lot of studying of the Winnipeg strike to write it.
Without labouring the point, apart from the fine speech I mentioned in the house yesterday, made by the dean of the house the hon. member for Quebec South, if the hon. member will look at the speech made by the uncle of the present member for the Magdalen islands, the late Lucien Cannon, he will see that the version of history he gave yesterday was certainly not complete. There were voices raised in the house at that time about the mistakes that were made.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Will the hon. member permit an interjection?


Elmore Philpott: Certainly.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I went only so far as to say that on June 6, 1919, there was no opposition offered by the Liberal party. That was the only point being discussed at that time.


Elmore Philpott: I welcome that interjection. It is because I know the hon. gentleman opposite has such a high regard for accuracy that I did not think it was a good thing that a mistaken impression should go into the records of this house.


Mr. Dufresne:: On a question of privilege, I should like to remind the hon. member that when he spoke of the late Hon. Lucien Cannon as being the member for the Magdalen islands, he never was.

Supply-Labour


Mr. Boisveri:: No; you should listen more carefully.


Elmore Philpott: I may tell the hon. member for Quebec West that I was referring to the uncle of the present member for the Magdalen islands.
There are two other points I wish to discuss for a minute or two, Mr. Chairman. The first is to give what support 1 can to the very eloquent plea made by the hon. member for Vancouver-Burrard, namely for a study of ways and means to help fit into the Canadian picture the people who have got beyond the age when they find it easy to get steady employment. That is something which should be close to the hearts and should be engaging the minds of all members in this house. The second point is to give very definitely qualified support, strictly qualified support, to the recommendation made not long ago by the hon. member for Spadina, with whom I almost always agree, on the question of a study of the guaranteed annual wage. I say I give it qualified support because one of the reasons I believe it should be very carefully studied is that I am by no means convinced that the guaranteed annual wage, as it has been advocated so far in Canada, would be on balance a good thing for all ordinary working people in Canada.
Perhaps it could become a good thing for certain industries. On another occasion some time ago the hon. member for Hamilton West referred to the stop and go system in the manufacture of railway cars. Perhaps through better planning and more systematic purchasing by the two railways we could have something more in the nature of steady employment, which in turn would help to give in effect a guaranteed annual wage. It does seem to me that in any industry where the workers and the management could get together and could show how, by stabilizing employment, they could cut costs and give consumers of Canada products at lower prices, then of course you could justify the guaranteed annual wage on that basis.
But, Mr. Chairman, I am frank to say that the great danger I see is the rather indiscriminate and unstudied advocacy of the guaranteed annual wage as a mere slogan. I would think any large employer of labour in Canada who was compelled to accept the principle of a guaranteed annual wage when he felt it was not in his own interests to do so, who was compelled to keep on his payroll all year round a certain number of workers whether or not they could be profitably employed, would feel inclined to cut back or drastically reduce the number of workers he -would retain on his payroll.

I am not stating that as my studied conclusion. I am simply stating it as a reason for urging upon the Minister of Labour that before too long a proper body be set up to study all the effects of the guaranteed annual wage. I for one do not believe we will ever get ahead in this country if this guaranteed annual wage is brought about as a result of the coercion of one side or the other in industry. I do not believe in the coercion of workers, and in the state of society in which we live I do not believe in the coercion of the people who provide employment. I think a guaranteed annual wage would be a great mistake unless it was shown to the employer as well as to the worker that it was to their mutual interest.


Thomas Speakman Barnett: Mr. Chairman, obviously the discussion on the first item of the estimates of the Minister of Labour has opened up quite a wide field of debate. Naturally I am tempted to pursue the line which has just been followed by the hon. member for Vancouver South with reference to what he has termed as the guaranteed annual wage but which I think is being more aptly termed in some quarters as the guaranteed employment year. The danger he mentioned of a cut-back in productive activity is undoubtedly an important consideration in that connection. I was pleased to note that this was a subject for considerable study in the research carried on by the U.A.W. union. If the hon. member has not studied some of their proposals I commend them to his attention.
At the beginning of his remarks the hon. member for Vancouver South gave us another chapter in the history lesson we have had during the course of this debate. I do not intend to participate in that history lesson, but I am rather tempted to move for a few moments into the realm of philosophy which was being pursued last night by the hon. member for Prince Albert. Those hon. members who heard his remarks will recall that at the beginning of his speech the hon. member gave us quite a philosophical discourse upon the ramifications of the industrial revolution as it affected employment. He referred to some remarks that had been made earlier by the hon. member for Cape Breton South. The hon. member for Prince Albert had this to say in part, and I quote from page 3939 of Hansard of May 19 as follows:
While each generation fears that mechanization will reduce employment, each generation in succession has found that while mechanization has expanded to a degree beyond the belief of anyone of even 50 years ago, nonetheless employment has been extending by the extending field of other production.

The hon. member had prefaced that general statement by suggesting that he felt the hon. member for Cape Breton South had but repeated a rather old fear which has always been with men since the beginning of the industrial revolution, that as inventiveness makes possible a greater production it also brings about a continued and extensive unemployment.
I would venture to suggest that when it comes to making a philosophical analysis of our industrial society the hon. member for Cape Breton South penetrated just as far into those implications as did the hon. member for Prince Albert. The hon. member for Cape Breton South is quite aware that over the course of years new fields of productivity have been opened up. I think that problem was very much in his mind, and I should like to quote his words as recorded on page 3919 of Hansard, as follows:
Within the next few years we are going to find that automation will be putting more and more men on the street and we will be faced with the problem of retraining men for some other gainful occupation.
Earlier the hon. member had posed the question of whether man was going to be master of the machine or the machine master of man. It would appear to me that in that statement and in his reference to the need of retraining the men who are going to be replaced he was pointing out to this house that in the process of the industrial transformation which is proceeding, as he suggested at an ever-increasing pace, we must not lose sight of what that process has done and is doing to the human beings who are involved. That seemed to me more to the point in a discussion of the estimates of the Minister of Labour than to ramble into philosophical generalities indulged in by the hon. member for Prince Albert. Unless the Minister of Labour and every hon. member of this house are concerned with what is happening to the human beings involved, an expanding productivity does not mean a great deal.
I shall pursue this matter only to the point of using one illustration of how we cannot disregard the effect this changing technology has on the lives of human beings. An event took place in my own district within the last year or two. At various times there was a suggestion in the local press that the Department of National Defence had plans to build something like 100 houses to provide accommodation for the personnel of the air station. The fact that this was in contemplation was a matter of great interest to those concerned in the construction trades. As these
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reports continued they anticipated, and I would say quite rightly, that when that construction project was undertaken they would have an opportunity for employment. As individuals they may have qualified for benefits under the Unemployment Insurance Act, and as people with homes in that district they naturally made their plans according to the prospects. Rather than leave their homes and go to some distant part of the country they said, "We will stick it out; we have this prospect of a period of useful employment before us, and we are going to stay put."
Then a decision was made that these houses were not to be built directly under the auspices of the government, but rather that a plan setting up a limited dividend housing corporation would be the best way to deal with that situation. I am not suggesting at the moment that was not the best way of dealing with that particular situation, but the point I am trying to make is that once that step was taken the opportunity for employment in that area where this action had been anticipated suddenly vanished into thin air. It was announced that the houses were going to be erected as prefabs, and that the prefabs were going to come from another part of the country.
That is an example in a small way of the unnecessary uncertainty which individual workingmen have to face as the technology of production changes. Somehow or other it should have been possible for those men to have been forewarned that their prospective means of livelihood was going to be whisked out from underneath them because of another method of housing production. The fact that it may be a more efficient and economical method of housing production is small comfort to those tradesmen, who because of that situation have lost some work at wages that would have enabled them to live in comfort and decency. That is the kind of problem I, as a member of this house, have in the back of my mind.
I heard the hon. member for Cape Breton South suggesting the need for retraining, and I would add the words "and reorientation", of the working people of this country to meet these changing conditions. One of our responsibilities in this house is to apply our minds and our thoughts to how that can be done, and that is one of the responsibilities which we hope the Minister of Labour and his department will be increasingly willing to assume as time goes on.
This debate has gone on at some length, and I intend at this time to mention only one other point. I should like to add a few words in support of what was suggested

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by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre in respect to the need for consideration of a wider coverage, tied in with unemployment insurance, for unemployment resulting from illness. I suggest that increasingly the normal pattern for coverage against loss of income from sickness is becoming closely allied to the pattern which has been followed under our unemployment insurance plan. I know that in the area from which I come a very large number of workers are covered for that purpose by various local arrangements between employers and employees and various insurance companies. The pattern in its application is very close to that of the present unemployment insurance plan. Employer and employee each contributes half the cost of that plan; the premium is paid by a payroll deduction, and benefits payable are in many instances somewhat comparable to those which are made out of the unemployment insurance fund. So, Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that it is becoming increasingly evident that a much more logical, efficient and economical arrangement would be to have that type of coverage closely allied with our present unemployment insurance arrangements on a national scale.
I have heard the Minister of Labour discuss and advocate the need for greater mobility of labour in this country. I suggest that one of the greatest disadvantages of the present type of plan which covers people for loss of income through sickness is that it tends to make labour more immobile, that a man is not able to move from one employer to another without losing the coverage for sickness that he may have enjoyed in his former employment. The only logical way such a plan can be developed is through some such agency as we have in our unemployment insurance commission.
I suggest that there is really no great reason why any serious objection to that development should come from the employing interests. I know on a good many occasions I have heard people in management, particularly in the office end of management, complaining about the time-consuming efforts in which they have to engage in order to make the multiplicity of payroll deductions involved. Here is a manner in which great economies, taken in total, could be effected. All deductions and all arrangements and correspondence involved could be combined and simplified to bring about a broader basis of coverage, both for unemployment through loss of a job and unemployment because of sickness. These two could be combined in one simple deduction plan that would cover workers not only in a particular firm at a particular time but 
also wherever they might be called upon to go in the course of finding useful work within our Canadian economy.


Mr. Hees:: Mr. Chairman, as we all know, each month the dominion bureau of statistics and the Department of Labour issue a news release showing the unemployment for the previous month. In May, 1953, this release was made on the 20th day of the month. In May, 1954, the release was made on the 19th day of the month. Last month, April, the release was made on the 19th day of the month. Today is the 20th day of May, and there has been no sign-


An hon. Member:: Yesterday was a holiday.


George Harris Hees: -of the appearance of any news release showing unemployment in April. The material that goes into these news releases is available for several days before the news release is made. If you look at the news release, you will see the heading states that it is to be made available at ten a.m. on a certain date. The material is not just made available on that date, of course; it is known several days before, and there is no doubt that the Department of Labour is familiar with that figure today.
Now, Mr. Chairman, I believe we are entitled to ask why this release has not been made public. I think it is for the same reason that consideration of the estimates of this department was pushed forward ahead of the estimates of the Post Office Department, so the government could try to get the labour discussion out of the way before it became necessary to publish what are obviously going to be embarrassing figures regarding the unemployment situation.
Seeing that the government does not choose to make these important figures available at the time they should, when this debate is in progress, I think it is only fair that we should examine past figures and try to estimate what the figure is likely to be. If you examine the figures for the past three years you will notice there is a fairly consistent pattern of increases and decreases in unemployment, as employment ebbs and flows during the periods of relatively high and low employment in these years.
Let us take, for example, the first four months of the last two years and compare them. In 1954 unemployment in February increased over January by 7 per cent. This year unemployment in February increased over January by 8 per cent. In 1954 unemployment in March increased over February by 2 per cent. This year unemployment in March increased over February by 3 per

cent. So you will see there is a fairly consistent pattern month by month, and it holds good if you go back several years.
In 1954 unemployment in April decreased from the March figure by 3J per cent. In estimating what the figure may be for April of this year, I think it is fair to assume that as unemployment increased this year at a slightly greater rate for the two previous months, it would decrease at a slightly greater rate than last year for the month of April. Therefore, instead of assuming that unemployment would decrease from March at the same rate as last year, 3J per cent, I think it is fair to assume it would decrease by 4J per cent from March. Applying that figures to the March unemployment figure of 633,000, I arrive at an estimated unemployment figure for April of 605,000.
That is the situation, Mr. Chairman, which I believe the government are most anxious to hide. They are most anxious to hide it because they described the unemployment situation as merely seasonal and regional in referring to it in the speech from the throne. When the suggestion was made to the Minister of Labour that he might extend supplementary benefits beyond April 15 his reply was, "Well, after all, there will not be many unemployed at that time."
As I have pointed out, there are a great many unemployed as of this time, and there were a great many unemployed during the whole winter when the Prime Minister refused to deal with the matter. He brushed it aside as something of no consequence and finally, when he did come to deal with it because of the great pressure brought to bear on him by opposition members of parliament and the provincial premiers, he put forward to the provinces a proposition that can only be termed a cheap substitute for the proposition put forward in 1945 by this same government. It is a cheap substitute put forward by a government which in 1941 and 1945 accepted the principle of federal responsibility for unemployed employables.
The offer put forward by the Prime Minister at the dominion-provincial conference is very inadequate, because it places far too heavy a load on the provincial and municipal levels of government, which do not have the sources of taxation available to bear these very heavy costs.
I think the most important thing of all in the handling of the unemployment situation by the government to date is the fact that the government has refused to make any attempt to meet the need of providing more jobs in the country today. If the government refuses to face this need, then it is up to opposition members of parliament to make
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suggestions in the hope that perhaps in a year or two, after the government is sure that no credit will accrue to the opposition for such suggestions, they might possibly be adopted.
Let us look at the possibilities in this country for increasing job opportunities. We live in a country that can produce enough food to support several times our present population. We have almost limitless sources of hydroelectric power, coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium from which we can produce atomic energy. We have also almost limitless supplies of timber, iron ore, copper, zinc, lead, nickel and practically every other mineral that is used in manufacturing industries today. Yet for some unknown reason we in this country seem perfectly satisfied to ship most of our mineral wealth out of the country in its raw state, and buy back much of it in the form of finished articles which have been processed in other countries, thereby giving employment to foreign workmen.
I think it is about time we asked ourselves why we do not process far more of our raw materials right here in Canada and provide jobs for Canadian workmen, instead of being content to go on month after month with unemployment figures in excess of 600,000 and not be willing to face the fact that something must be done about this critical situation. You cannot keep on passing it off, as the government seem determined to do, as something of no consequence, something which is merely, to use their own words, seasonal and regional.
In addition to the raw materials we have right here in Canada, and the almost limitless sources of power of one kind or another, we also have large supplies of capital; and we have proved we can attract it from outside. We also have the supply of brains necessary to make an important industrial expansion possible. Why do we not do something about it? I am going to make some suggestions to the government as to what they can do to get this thing moving.
First of all, Mr. Chairman, we must realize that in a free country we cannot simply issue a command and have industrial expansion start. The government must create an attractive economic atmosphere within the country or new industries will not be started and present industries will simply not expand. You cannot just command them to do it. Unless we do create an attractive economic atmosphere in the country we are going to continue to be primarily a producer of raw materials to be shipped out of the country to provide work in foreign factories for foreign workmen,

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and then buy back many of these finished products in Canada. That, to me is the ultimate in stupidity.
What should we do to create this attractive economic atmosphere? I am going to make five suggestions to the government, and I think they are practical suggestions. First of all, to encourage new industries to start and present industries to expand, I say we must make it easier for new industries to show their first profit. We can do that if we will reduce taxation on the first profits an industry makes.
As a suggestion, I urge that on the first $20,000 of profit, before taxes, we reduce the rate of tax from the present 18 per cent to 15 per cent, and raise the ceiling from $20,000 to $25,000. I believe the fact that the present rate of tax jumps, from 18 per cent on up to $20,000, to 47 per cent on the next $1,000 of profit is a severe handicap to the expansion of small industry. I believe the government would induce a great many small industries to expand beyond their present limits by making the increase beyond the top of the lower bracket, at the present time $20,000, to up to say $50,000 at an even rate instead of making a sudden jump to 47 per cent.
It is obvious that if two men who are in business are making $20,000 today, who by taking some chance could expand, find that by doing so they will have to give the government half of the next $1,000 they earn, they will go on producing at the same rate and not expand. However, if there were a steady rate of increase in taxation from say $20,000 up to $50,000 it would encourage the expansion of small industries which might turn into big industries.
Second, I suggest we make it possible to sell more goods, both here and abroad, by lowering our costs as a result of the reduction of sales taxes by at least 25 per cent. The government argue that this cannot be done because there will be a loss of revenue. Any businessman knows, Mr. Chairman, that if his cost is so high that he is losing business it becomes advantageous to him to reduce his selling price to the point where people will buy considerably more of his goods. He knows that the greater volume of goods sold, multiplied by a smaller unit profit will, if it is properly worked out, give him larger total net returns than formerly. In the same way, if we reduce the cost of the goods we sell by reducing our sales and excise taxes materially, it will make it possible to sell more goods. The larger volume of goods sold, multiplied by a smaller unit tax, may, I believe, very easily equal or exceed the present total tax revenue.
[Mr. Hees.l
The third suggestion I make is that we should make a really worth-while reduction in income taxes. The last income tax reduction was simply a token reduction. It amounted to less than 25 cents per week for a married man with two children earning the average income for Canada. Such a reduction is not going to do very much by way of stimulating sales or plant expansion. It is not going to make people rush out and buy goods or expand their plant.
I suggest that a substantial reduction in income tax be made in the interests of making it possible for people to buy more goods. If people buy more goods, more goods will be produced; more people will be employed producing those goods, and the government will be collecting more tax revenue on more goods sold. The government will also receive more income taxes as a result of more people being employed, instead of paying those people unemployment insurance benefits or direct relief. It is simply a matter of dollars and cents arithmetic in which this government seems unwilling to indulge.
The fourth suggestion I make is that we should reduce the risk involved in starting new enterprises by doubling the rate of depreciation on plant and equipment. If a man who is thinking of going into a new enterprise, which he believes is perhaps risky, knows that his money is only going to be tied up for half the length of time it would otherwise be, he will be more likely to take the chance. We have to make it attractive for people to put money into new enterprises. We cannot force people to invest money and start new enterprises. Unless people are willing to invest money, new enterprises simply will not get started.
The fifth suggestion I make is that we make it easier to sell our goods to other countries, and to attract tourists to Canada, by stabilizing our dollar with the United States dollar.
As I have said, the government claims that taxes cannot be reduced because that would result in a loss of revenue. I say the only way we are going to solve this unemployment problem, the only way we are going to make it possible for Canadians who want to work to have productive jobs, is to create economic conditions in this country which will make it attractive for people to start new enterprises, and for people who are in small enterprises to expand. Unless people want to do these things they will not be done and our country will remain primarily a producer of raw materials which will be shipped out of the country to provide employment for people elsewhere.
When speaking last September the Prime Minister said that if the government was not

smart enough to arrange its affairs so everybody could have a job, then it was incompetent. Having made some suggestions here today in a very serious frame of mind, to which I hope the government will give serious consideration, I believe that by following these suggestions the government could cure the incompetence which the Prime Minister, on their behalf, has admitted exists today.


Mr. Mclvor:: I should like to ask the hon. member a question. He has suggested reducing income taxes substantially, and reducing sales taxes. Where would he get some revenue to enable the government to carry on its business?


George Harris Hees: I have tried, Mr. Chairman, to explain to the hon. member for Fort William and other members in the house how this would be accomplished, but I shall do it again. If you are making a limited volume of sales because your costs are high-this is the sort of thing any businessman has to calculate every day of the year-then you must reduce your costs and increase your sales. I am suggesting that by lowering the sales tax materially we would lower the cost of the goods we have to sell, thus making them more competitive with the foreign goods that are entering the country today. If we can sell more goods, then we will be able to tax more goods and the greater volume of goods sold multiplied by the smaller unit tax will possibly equal or exceed the present total tax revenue. If you make it possible to sell more goods you have more people employed. Instead of drawing unemployment insurance or direct relief, these people will be earning incomes on which they will be paying income tax, and that would be added revenue to the government.
I suggest that by adopting the ideas I have put forward you will create conditions in the country which will attract capital investment in new enterprises and enable present enterprises to expand, and create a condition in the country which will mean the employment of many more people and the production of a great deal more goods. By so doing we will increase the sources which produce taxes, increase the number of income tax payers and the volume of goods sold, and I believe by careful operation we can in the long run considerably increase our tax take. Surely this is well worth trying.


Daniel (Dan) McIvor: But it is not so easy.


Mr. Stewart (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Chairman, I should like to refer to a matter which perhaps could be discussed more properly under item 178. However, I shall bring it forward now so the minister may give it
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consideration during the dinner hour and be in a position to state the government's position.
There is being circulated within the ranks of the government a document which I find stupid and utterly obnoxious, and which conceivably could be used in a wicked way. To my way of thinking it is a document which is quite illegal, because we have passed legislation banning this sort of nonsense. I hold the minister responsible because there is no one else I can hold responsible. In saying that I am not saying I believe for one minute that he has connived at what is going on or, indeed, that he condones it. However, he is responsible to the house for what I consider to be a violation of the law.
Two years ago all parties joined in hailing the Canada Fair Employment Practices Act. The minister will remember the acclaim it received and the manner in which is was passed through the house because it filled a need, in the view of many of us. We think, too, that it has proven its usefulness.
I, for one, have never seen any sense in these application forms for employment in which questions are asked concerning the nationality and racial origin of applicants. I have always assumed that a person would be given a job because of his or her inherent ability, and not for any other reason. Now we find that in this act it says in section 4(5):
No person shall use or circulate any form of application for employment or publish any advertisement in connection with employment or prospective employment or make any written or oral inquiry in connection with employment that expresses either directly or indirectly any limitation, specification or preference as to race, national origin, colour or religion unless the limitation, specification or preference is based upon a bona fide occupational qualification.
That is the law of the land. Yet I have in my hand this document which, I assume, is circulated throughout all departments of government. I make that assumption because no one particular department is named. This purports to be a personal history form. What are the questions asked? They are those which parliament agreed should be banned from such forms.
For instance, the applicant is asked to give his nationality. Yet in the subsection I read that is forbidden. The applicant is here asked to give his racial origin; again the subsection forbids it. Surely the government is not going to continue to violate the statute.
Then the document becomes even more stupid, because on the next page it asks for the names of immediate relatives, wife, husband, sons or daughters over 16. It asks for the names of the father, mother, brothers and sisters, including blood relatives and deceased parents. Then the government

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wishes to know the country of birth of a deceased parent. The government wishes to know the country of birth of step-relatives and blood relatives. What conceivable use can it make of such information? And if it cannot make use of that information, why ask such stupid questions? If it is going to use the information, then why is it to be used?
Aiter all, what has my father's birthplace to do with my capacity to hold down a job? What has my mother's birthplace to do with my ability to do a job? What has the birthplace of my in-laws to do with my loyalty to Canada? Yet these questions are asked here. And not only are they asked in respect of the applicant, but also his wife-parents, wife or husband, date and country of birth.
I maintain that these questions are utterly unforgivable, in view of the legislation passed by the house and also in view of the protestations made by various members of the government. I bring the matter up because I would like the minister to find out during the dinner hour just what the government's policy is, whether it is going to pay any attention to the statements which were made in parliament two years ago, or whether it is going to continue issuing what I described earlier, and I suggest most correctly, as a stupid and obnoxious document.


Mr. Cameron (Nanaimo):: Mr. Chairman, I am sorry the hon. member for Prince Albert is not in his seat, because at the outset of my remarks I want to comment on some expressions he used the other day. I wish I could share his optimism when he suggests that what we are witnessing in our industrial society is merely a repetition of what has happened before, and that the massive displacement of human labour that we see immediately ahead of us carries no more dangerous implications for our society than did the more primitive developments of past years.
I would point out, too, that even during those periods when much slower and much less fundamental changes were taking place, the consequences of which the hon. member for Prince Albert dismisses so cavalierly, there were many thousands of people whose lives were ruined, many thousands of people who faced a complete blank wall so far as earning their livelihood was concerned. It was not a light matter with them.
But today we are facing something much more fundamental and much more important than that. I heard the other day about a plant in Ontario in connection with which it was revealed that a couple of years ago, after all taxes and costs were paid, it had more funds in net profits than were paid out in wages and salaries. This was not because
[Mr. Stewart (Winnipeg North).)
the wages and salaries were low because, in fact, they were not; they were among the highest in industry. It was because the human element of production in that particular industry has become such an unimportant factor.
Out in my own constituency we have a similar development. I want to deal with this in detail, because I think it illustrates the real nature of the problem the government and the people of Canada face today. We have in my constituency one of the largest wood pulp factories on the Pacific coast. A few years ago it was doubled in size. Just before that doubling process took place there was a merger between two very large forest products corporations. At the time the merger took place the company to which I am referring sent a prospectus to all its employees, respecting the two merged companies, explaining their plans for the future. They were very frank about their plans and their financial position, and told their employees they were going to build an addition to the plant at a cost of $17 million. All of this was to be paid out of surplus earnings of the previous few years. They said that when this addition, costing $17 million, was completed, there would be work for 100 more employees.
That, I suggest, gives some idea of the sort of problem we are facing today. When we break this down we find that it represents an investment of $170,000 per man employed. And when we realize that the cost of that investment, and the returns, must be paid by the labour of those employed in the plant, we find this rather startling picture.
The average wage in that industry was at that time $3,600 a year. Each of the 100 workers would have to produce $3,600 worth of wealth to pay his wages, to start with. He would then have to make enough to pay the depreciation on a new plant. If you put that at the very modest figure of 5 per cent for buildings and equipment-and I am quite sure it would be very much more than that- then he would have to produce, in addition to the $3,600 for wages, $8,500 worth of wealth to pay for the depreciation charges. Then presumably there would be some return on the investment, and if you put that at another modest 5 per cent we would have another $8,500. So each of these 100 new workers must produce $20,600 worth of wealth during the year, otherwise that plant cannot function.
I am mentioning this not with any suggestion at all that the workers in that industry are hard done by, or are being exploited or robbed; they are not. They are well paid,

and the jobs are not very arduous. But I want to point out the discrepancy between the volume of wealth produced and the volume distributed in wages for its production, which creates for us the most appalling problems for the future.
The developments we have had in the past and the developments we have today differ not merely in degree but actually in kind. I hold in my hand a book published five years ago by Dr. Norbert Wiener, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a man who had a very large part to play in the development of the modern computing "machines of judgment", as they are now called. In this book he has some very interesting comments to make on the effect on society of the sort of machines that are now being produced. He points out that hitherto our technological developments had been confined to replacing human muscle power, or animal muscle power, but now we are producing machines that take over many of the functions of judgment that have hitherto been exercised by human beings.
He has this to say with regard to the completely automatic production unit that he sees for the future, and he suggests that the period that will elapse between the time this book was written five years ago and the time when such completely automatic units of production will become a commonplace in American industry will be from 10 to 15 years, provided we do not get involved in a war, and provided that we survive a war. He points out that if we got engaged in a war there is no doubt whatever that we would have almost a complete automation of industry within five years, from sheer necessity. He puts the figure at about 10 to 15 years. Five of those years have now gone and he has this to say about the effects:
I have spoken of the actuality and the imminence of this new possibility. What can we expect of its economic and social consequences? In the first place, we can expect an abrupt and final cessation of the demand for the type of factory labour performing purely repetitive tasks. In the long run, the deadly uninteresting nature of the repetitive task may make this a good thing and the source of leisure necessary for man's full cultural development. It may also produce cultural results as trivial and wasteful as the greater part of those so far obtained from the radio and the movies.
Then he has this to say:
Let us remember that the automatic machine, whatever we think of any feelings it may have or may not have, is the precise economic equivalent of slave labour. Any labour which competes with slave labour must accept the economic conditions of slave labour. It is perfectly clear that this will produce an unemployment situation, in comparison with which the present recession and even the depression of the thirties will seem a pleasant joke. This depression will ruin many
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industries-possibly even the industries which have taken advantage of the new potentialities. However, there is nothing in the industrial tradition which forbids an industrialist to make e sure and quick profit, and to get out before the crash touches him personally.
I suggest, Mr. Chairman, that this is the real nature of the problem we are facing; that it is not merely a temporary displacement of labour and its reabsorption in some other part of our economy. I suggest we are facing something much more fundamental, because hitherto all our assumptions of the way in which we should operate society have been based on this, that every man has to some degree or other something of value to exchange for a livelihood. Maybe he has not very much, and he gets a very poor livelihood.
Today we can see the virtual displacement of the man who has nothing but his untrained muscular power. He is the man who lands on our relief rolls at the first touch of a recession. We are beginning to see the displacement of men with semi-skilled abilities, and now we see right in front of us the imminent certainty of the displacement of men with skilled abilities for whom there is now no opening in our industries in the production of goods and services.
I feel, Mr. Chairman, that our Department of Labour should be making a very intensive study of the possible effects of the distribution of goods and services, the distribution of wealth in this country, by the development of these new types of "machines of government", as a French scientist describes them, because it is something entirely new. It is not merely an extension of the old machines we have seen in the past, and it is literally going to bring us to the point where we will have goods produced and no one in receipt of income to consume them.
I was interested the other day to hear the hon. member for Cartier deal with this problem. He obviously realizes as well as anyone that we are faced with the danger of being strangled in the enormous volume of our own production, and our danger lies in the fact that we cannot get it distributed and consumed. His solution was that we should bring more immigrants into the country to consume the goods. That sounds like a reasonable proposition, but unfortunately there is a bit of a catch in it. There was a time when it might have been considered, shall we say, an economic nuisance that people who produced had also to consume; that we had to let the worker have a certain amount or he would die on us and would not be able to produce anything more. Today the picture is completely transformed, and it is a considerable economic nuisance to society that the

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person who consumes has also to produce. The new immigrant the hon. member for Cartier wants to bring in to absorb the surplus products will, unfortunately, be obliged, by the very conditions under which we operate our society, to himself produce, and add further to the flood of goods.
No, Mr. Chairman, we are not going to find a solution to this problem by the old assumptions. We are not going to find it by the reduction of taxation, by the reduction of income tax and sales tax and exemptions from taxation to encourage new investment. We are up against a fundamental change in our society even more profound than that which began to take place 150 years ago.
I would hope to see the government provide for the Minister of Labour a considerable sum of money to enable him to do necessary research into this problem before we are flooded with a mass of unemployed for whom we have no hope and whose conditions we are unequipped to help. I see the minister smiling agreement with that. I would suggest, however, that when he undertakes this inquiry and this investigation he should not be deterred by the fact that it is going to reveal to him that the old assumptions of free enterprise have gone by the board forever.


Mr. Gregg:: I was just smiling at the many demands of yesterday and today that I have the Department of Labour conduct studies on so many matters.


Mr. Hamilton (Notre Dame de Grace):: have a comparatively few words to say. Most of them will be directed to those gloom gatherers over here to my left, because some things have been said in this house in the last couple of days that display such an astonishing lack of confidence in this country of ours and this system of ours that it is about time somebody rose in his place and pointed out some of the weaknesses and fallacies in their arguments. Goodness knows, if we tried to point them all out, even those contained in the one speech we have just listened to, we would be here for the rest of the afternoon and well into the evening. I think their ideas were summed up pretty well yesterday afternoon by the hon. member for Bow River, who started the crepe-hanging procession when he said, and I quote from page 3923 of Hansard of May 19, as follows:
There is only one result that will follow from the increased use and increased efficiency of machines, and that will be increased unemployment. There cannot be any other answer.
I wonder if there has ever been a more unrealistic statement made in a labour debate. Such a statement simply flies in the face of every experience we have had in

the past and everything we know. I was tempted to reply to it yesterday, but I did not think that anyone could make a statement like that. I decided to wait to read Hansard to see whether the hon. member had said what I thought he had.
Down through history we find that the more mechanization there has been, the greater production and the more jobs there were for people. We find that the more machinery we put into use the higher our standard of living. Now the hon. member for Bow River and the hon. member for Nanaimo and goodness knows how many others down there-


Colin Cameron: May I ask the
hon. member if he would consider that Dr. Norbert Wiener of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was a crepe-hanger or would he consider that his opinion might be worth something?


An hon. Member:: He would not know.


William McLean Hamilton: It
so happens that I have great respect for Dr. Wiener, some of whose books I have read. I also have a tendency to read all of a book and not just pick out certain words to bolster my argument.


Colin Cameron: Has the hon. member read this book?


William McLean Hamilton: No.


Colin Cameron: I thought not. Have you read any of his books?


William McLean Hamilton: Yes. I have heard arguments advanced by members of the C.C.F. who used quotations from a book, but then I find it best to go and read the rest of the book. Maybe that is the reason I am making the observations I am.
I can just imagine what the hon. member for Bow River would have said had he been in this house during the days when we were passing from the horse and wagon to the automobile. I can just imagine his worries about that. We were moving toward the use of modern machinery and he would have contended that that would produce unemployment. He would be concerned about those people who were making carriages and who would be thrown out of work, who could be put out on the streets to starve. I dare say that if the hon. member for Nanaimo had been in the house in those days he would have voiced the same opinion.
Of course their hindsight is much better than was their foresight. They are ready to stand up here and say that the things which have happened in the past have no relationship to those which are going to

happen in the future. In other words, they wanted to throw history out the window. Maybe that is why they are so shortsighted, in my opinion.
I suppose when the telephone first came in they might not have objected because new jobs were being created, but when they came along and proposed to use the dial telephone instead of the manual telephone they would consider that an absolute disaster.
I can just imagine them making speeches about how the telephone operators would be thrown out of work with the use of the dial telephone. We all know what has happened. Telephone service became so reasonable, the use of telephones increased to such an extent that we now find that more girls are coming out of the long distance exchange in Montreal alone than were employed servicing the manual installation throughout the city.


Mr. Johnston (Bow River):: How many
more telephones have they now?


William McLean Hamilton: They have a tremendous number more, and that is what I am telling you. The more mechanization we have, the more goods and services we have, the happier we will be and the higher will be our standard of living. I am doing my best to answer some of the observations which the hon. member made yesterday.


Charles Edward Johnston: The hon. member has not answered any yet.


William McLean Hamilton: think I am making some progress toward dealing -with that statement of yours.


Charles Edward Johnston: What about the Conservatives?


William McLean Hamilton: Apparently the hon. member for Bow River is trying to reduce this to the political level and I cannot see any point in that. The only reason why I referred to parties was primarily to locate them in the house and then, secondly, to say how I thought their party thinking was reflected so stupidly.


Mr.   Johnsion@Bow River: Tell that to the unemployed.


William McLean Hamilton: think we have done pretty well during the past hundred years in this country under Conservative and Liberal government. If you really want to see some unemployment- I keep getting excited and am afraid I will use terms which are unparliamentary-just put some of these crackpots down here in office and we will soon have a good example of what unemployment means.
Supply-Labour
This is something that goes back a long way in history, almost to the beginning of time. It shows how foolish, how shortsighted, how senseless these arguments are about the introduction of machinery. I think it was the hon. member for Nanaimo who said something about the effects of primitive developments of previous years. In other words, he seemed to feel that the developments which are now taking place had no counterpart in the past, that this was something vastly different from what had gone on before.
I suppose he has forgotten about such things as the steam engine which brought us from the days when people did everything with their hands, which was about all they had in those days, to the complex industrial economy we have today. I suppose he has forgotten about electric power, the conversion of water flowing down a river into energy to turn the wheels of industry. I have a hunch that he has not read history far enough back to hear about the invention of the wheel. I do not suppose that he knows that for thousands of years after the time when men stopped-I do not want to get into any Darwin-Darrow-Bryan dispute-jumping through the trees and dropped down to the ground and commenced their upward climb to where they are today they had about one method of moving things, to drag them along the ground.
Eventually man figured out that he could pull a burden up an inclined plane. Then, if these hon. members had been around thousands of years ago when someone first got the idea of the wheel I know they would have said that that was an absolutely dangerous thing because it would mean, in the case of the thousands who had been put to work building the pyramids, that only five people would be needed to pull up a piece of stone instead of 500. I can go on-


Mr. Nicholson:: What about the wheelbarrow?


An hon. Member:: Pick and shovel.


William McLean Hamilton: I do
not want to spend more time demolishing their arguments. Our ideas are shining very brightly at the moment, particularly in comparison with some of the very dull and uninteresting ones we get from all sides of this house.


An hon. Member:: Where would they be?


William McLean Hamilton: love these interruptions, because they show you are making an impression.


An hon. Member:: What kind of impression?

Supply-Labour


Stanley Howard Knowles: The only relation to labour estimates is that you are labouring hard.


Mr. Hamilton (Noire Dame de Grace):: There is an interesting point here they may have forgotten. From 1941 to 1951, when we saw the greatest mechanization and industrial development in this Canada of ours, we also increased our employment from 4-2 million people to 5-2 million people. That is another indication of what comes in the wake of machines. When I look at these labour problems that face us and I hear some of the suggestions that have been advanced by these brakes on the wheels of progress down there, it seems to me that they all boil down to two classes: the Social Credit group say it will all be well if we have some funny money, and the C.C.F. group say that it will all be fine if we can go in for a stiff dose of socialism rather than the pallid dose that the Liberal party are giving us at the present time.


An hon. Member:: The Conservatives would have concentration camps for the unemployed. You might as well give us the whole story.


An hon. Member:: What is going on here?


Mr. Gardiner:: We are back in the days of Ishmael.


William McLean Hamilton: wish to point out, Mr. Chairman, that all through history the greatest progress has come-


Mr. MacDougall:: Under Liberal governments.


William McLean Hamilton: The
greatest progress has come-


An hon. Member:: In the province of Alberta through a Social Credit government.


William McLean Hamilton: pause at the right moment I can get an interruption from every member of the house, about his own party or something of that nature.


An hon. Member:: Carried.


William McLean Hamilton: The
greatest progress in our history has come in the last hundred years and under a system of genuine free enterprise. Too many people forget today that free enterprise has a stake in this country and in keeping people at work, and that all these peculiar ideas and untried theories which I referred to before and which I come back to-crepe-hanging prognostications-seem to assume that this country is going to hell in a handbasket, thanks to free enterprise. It simply is not so; and anybody who walks the streets of the country

today can see that. Because of weaknesses, stupidity and shortsightedness on the part of the government that sits over there today, we have more unemployment than we should have. We have more problems than we should have, but it is no indication that we are going to solve them by taking people who know even less than the present government, if that is possible, and carrying out their ideas.
I wish to say, Mr. Chairman, that industry and business of this country have their biggest stake in keeping people at work and keeping their purchasing power up. Having said that, I wish to say that I have not the slightest fundamental worry about the advent of automation, the increased use of machinery and the other problems which face us. I have confidence in the businessmen of this country to find the solution to these problems.


An hon. Member:: What did you do during the thirties?


William McLean Hamilton: I
know that these changes, which are bound to come and which we see coming, are not going to come overnight. That is the basis of all these arguments we have heard advanced in the last day and a half. They seem to think that these changes are going to come overnight. They are not going to come overnight; they are going to come gradually; and the opportunity will be given to our workers and to our people to retrain themselves, to relocate themselves and to prepare themselves for a greater economy and a higher standard of living than anything we have ever known.
Let my last sentence be that the most serious obstacle which stands in the way of our progress to bigger and better things in this country today is the crackpot theories and the peculiar ideas-


An hon. Member:: Of the Conservative party.


William McLean Hamilton: -which are being advanced by these two heterogeneous collections of individuals on my left and the poorly administered government of this country, for which the gentlemen who sit opposite me must take the blame.


Mr. Byrne:: I had not intended to take up the time of the house this afternoon, Mr. Chairman, but after sitting here for several days listening to the various arguments on the minister's estimates, I think I should add my voice.
Some hon. members have said to me, "You are a labour man; are you not going to speak on this question?" I have answered that I do not think it is necessary on every occasion, and I cannot at this time be asking for too

much for labour after hearing the very soulful and heartrending stories of how the farmer has been faring in the last year or two. It is certainly time that we did take a look at the variation in farm income and those in industry. Farm income is steadily declining, and for that reason, as I have said, I feel that labour is faring not too badly. I note that we have had speaking this afternoon the hon. member for Broadview, an ex-brigade major and a manufacturer, certainly not in the labouring class; we have had the hon. Leader of the Opposition, P.C., Q.C., and the former president of the chamber of commerce; and we have also had speaking on this question the hon. member for Hamilton West, a P.A.
So now we come to the member for Kootenay East with "M.M." after his name, which simply stands for master mucker. I have had some connection with labour and have had calluses on my hands many times. I watched the hon. member for Broadview this afternoon using his hands to try to chop down the taxes on profits and income, and I could see the calluses plainly on the palms of his hands even at this distance. I have gone through the mill as a mucker, even up to the position of miner. "M.M." also stands for master of mineralogy. I can tell the members of the house that I do not share the anxiety of the hon. member for Nanaimo that automation or mechanization is going to do anything to injure the miners, the lumber workers or the farm workers. I did some mining and I can say with conviction that mining is really hard work.


An hon. Member:: You never quite recovered from it.


James Allen (Jim) Byrne: Quite obviously there is still a stoop to my back. The hon. member says I have not recovered from my efforts. That may be quite true. In the last 15 years I have seen very great changes in mining methods, and I think I can say, without being accused of bragging, that I have assisted in some ways in bringing about these improvements in methods. I can recall that not so long ago it took a crew of four miners four full shifts to drill a round in what we call chert, a very hard rock, and sometimes as high as eight shifts. The cost for labour ran as high as $50 a foot. The cost for powder and so on was of course very small, but in terms of actual labour effort and the return the cost ran into hundreds of dollars compared with the situation today. With the improvements in machines and the type of steel used, two miners today can drill the same round in four hours.
Supply-Labour
I had not intended speaking on this matter today but it so happens that only a day or two ago representatives from the miners' union were down here, and I asked them if they had any figures for last year as to the earnings of miners in the Sullivan mine. I recall that 15 years ago miners, working in the manner I have indicated and taking up to four days to drill a round, were earning about $8 a day. Mechanization has improved to the point where they can drill a round in four hours, and the figures given to me show that miners doing that particular type of work averaged up to $28 a day for the year.
That is an instance of mechanization not only making the work much easier but resulting in a great bonanza to the miners so far as remuneration for their work is concerned. To say that automation or mechanization is going to have a far-reaching ill effect is, in my opinion, simply nonsense. True, there are going to be some dislocations, but think of the people in the underdeveloped countries, such as in many parts of India, where there is no mechanization. There are beggars on the streets of the cities whose only way of making a living is to beg for 24 hours a day. The people in the rice fields sowing rice by hand are not unemployed, but I venture to say their circumstances are very much less favourable than those of any person in Canada. It is not that I do not have sympathy for those who are unemployed, but I think it is a very narrow view to take to fight mechanization and automation as the people in the textile industry did years ago in Great Britain.


Colin Cameron: May I ask the
hon. member a question? I just want to get this clear. Did he have the idea I was opposing automation and this development?


Mr. Weir:: That is what your speech sounded like.


Colin Cameron: I was merely pointing out it would have very serious consequences. While I am on my feet, may I ask another question? How does the number of employees today in the mine to which the hon. member referred compare with the number 15 years ago, and what has happened to those who were displaced?


James Allen (Jim) Byrne: There are two questions. Dealing with the first one, I certainly felt the hon. member was facing the future with very grave misgivings because of what he termed automation or mechanization. I say he should not do that, particularly so because the ideas of a man in his position will be listened to throughout the country and if he creates an impression of fear it will do no service to the country.

Private Bills
The Depuiy Chairman: Order. I am sorry to have to interrupt the hon. member-


James Allen (Jim) Byrne: I should like to answer the second question.


The Deputy Chairman:: -but it being five o'clock the house must proceed to the consideration of private and public bills.
At five o'clock the Speaker resumed the chair.



PRIVATE BILLS


Mr. E. D. Fulton (for Mr. Michener) moved: the second reading of Bill No. 373, respecting the Commercial Travellers' Association of Canada.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to the standing committee on banking and commerce.

Mr. F. T. Fairey (Victoria, B. C.) moved: the second reading of Bill No. 374, to incorporate Petroleum Transmission Company.


Mr. Green:: Mr. Speaker, would the hon. member give the house an explanation of the bill?


Francis Thrower Fairey: The bill we are asked to approve is for the incorporation of Petroleum Transmission Company. This company is associated with Pacific Petroleum Limited, one of the pioneers if not the pioneer in oil and gas exploration in Alberta and Northern British Columbia. This company operated originally in the Turner valley field and later in the Leduc field and still later in the Red-water and other fields in Alberta. It now has substantial production of oil in Alberta from the Leduc and Redwater fields. Since 1949, the company has been particularly active in the exploration and development of oil and natural gas reserves in northern British Columbia and the adjoining areas of northwestern Alberta, particularly in that block known as the Peace river block which, as we know, comprises an area of northern Alberta and northern British Columbia lying astride the interprovincial boundary.
I have seen the operations of this company near Pouce Coupe, which as we know is very close to Dawson Creek, and also at Fort St. John, which is approximately 75 miles north of Dawson Creek on the Alaska highway. It would appear that the explorations of this company tend to move generally in a northwesterly direction towards the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. At the present time the company and its associates control

approximately four million acres of proven lands for potential oil and gas development.
It is the purpose of this Petroleum Transmission Company to build what might be called a grid or collection system to collect their products from these wells which are now operating and bring the products down for delivery to the main transmission lines such as Trans-Canada or Westcoast. It is because of the success and development of northern British Columbia that it has been possible to promise the supply of natural gas to Vancouver and parts of the northwestern United States. I might say, too, that much of the gas is wet gas and the liquid by-products such as propane and butane must be collected at a central point and delivered to a transmission system.
At the moment there is no intention of building a straight transmission line but just a collection grid system. With the future development it may be necessary, and they are asking authority, to build a transmission line themselves. I believe that is about all I need to say at the moment, Mr. Speaker, as I understand this bill will go to one of the standing committees where more details can be given.


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

Mr. G. J. Mcllraiih (Ottawa West) moved: the second reading of Bill No. 375, to incorporate Yukon Pipelines Limited.


Howard Charles Green: Would the sponsor explain this bill?


George James McIlraith: It will be noted from the bill, Mr. Speaker, that the persons seeking incorporation are in the main officers of the White Pass and Yukon railway which was built at the time of the Klondike gold rush and extends from Skagway to Whitehorse, a distance of approximately 110 miles. In the year 1942 the United States army authorities built a pipe line along the railway right of way. After the end of the war the United States army continued to operate that pipe line to supply fuel oil from Skagway through Whitehorse and through a continuation of that line to their own forces in Alaska. In addition, they permitted the take-off of fuel oil at Whitehorse for Canadian needs.
Recently the United States authorities have built a pipe line from Haines, Alaska, to supply their own forces in Alaska. This new pipe line does not go through Whitehorse or the Yukon area. The agreement under which oil is taken off the line which comes over the railway route can be terminated on 30

days' notice. It is expected that when the new United States army line is brought into use, this one will be discontinued. The significance of that is that the people in the Whitehorse area and the Yukon area will be without any convenient supply of fuel oil. The incorporators are seeking authority to have a corporate capacity to negotiate to take over that pipe line if and when it is abandoned.
This bill is in the same form as other pipe line bills, but it is different in this way, that what is sought to be transported by this company is fuel oil in a refined state for use by consumers as opposed to the usual crude oil problem we have in connection with these pipe line bills. The bill itself also contains a geographical limitation to the British Columbia-Yukon area in Canada, but does contain a provision for the building of a pipe line outside of Canada. The reason for that, of course, is that the line does go through some 20 miles of Alaska. There is in the bill also a technical provision to which perhaps I should refer, and that is the power to build a line outside of Canada for the transmission of gas. This power is not limited. It would be the intention of the incorporators when the bill is in the committee stage to submit a limitation similar to the one put forward in another pipe line bill a few days ago, limiting to Canada the right to construct a pipe line for the transmission of gas.


Mr. J. A. Simmons (Yukon):: It is my understanding, Mr. Speaker, that this proposed legislation is to provide a corporate vehicle for the operation as a common carrier of the existing pipe line between Skagway, Alaska, and Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. This pipe line is now owned and operated by the United States army, and is shortly to be de-activated and declared surplus. No doubt it will be disposed of through the Crown Assets Disposal Corporation.
The applicants for incorporation, as the hon. member has just said, are officers of the White Pass and Yukon Corporation Limited, who have had much experience in the operation of these facilities. I might mention also that the cheapest method of moving oil and gasoline into the Yukon Territory and surrounding area of northern British Columbia at the moment is by ocean tanker up the west coast to Skagway, Alaska, and thence by the existing four-inch pipe line through the mountains a distance of about 110 miles to Whitehorse. If this legislation is enacted it will provide for the continued operation of the existing four-inch pipe line between Skagway, Alaska, and Whitehorse, used for the transportation of
Private Bills
fuel and diesel oil, and for the eventual construction and operation of a new pipe line between the same points for the transportation of gasoline and petroleum products.
The opening up of the pipe line as a common carrier will make it possible for any other oil company that so desires to move its products up the coast and into Whitehorse on a competitive basis. The existing pipe line between Skagway and Whitehorse runs along the White Pass and Yukon railway right of way through precipitous and difficult mountain territory, winding its way to a height of over 3,000 feet in a matter of only 18 miles, crossing mountain bridges, through tunnels and under the protection of numerous snow sheds along the railway right of way.
The White Pass and Yukon road has been intimately associated with the operation of this line from its inception. The employees of the White Pass road are fully familiar with pumping and the other operating facilities of the system and are of course completely equipped to take over its operation.
When the United States army ceases to operate the line it appears natural therefore that the White Pass and Yukon route should function in its place, in view of the fact that the installations are chiefly on the railway right of way. I am, therefore, pleased to support this bill for the reasons given.


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

[Stage Direction]
On the order:
Second reading of Bill No. 376 (Letter U-12 of the Senate), intituled: "An act to authorize TransPrairie Pipelines, Ltd., to construct, own and operate an extra-provincial pipe line".-Mr. Weaver.
William Gilbert Weir: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Churchill (Mr. Weaver) has asked me to move this bill a further stage, and I am very glad to do so. However, as there are two other bills of importance to those concerned, I would ask that this bill be considered at a later stage, after the others have been dealt with.
Order stands.



EQUITABLE FIRE INSURANCE COMPANY OF CANADA

Maurice Boisvert: the second reading of Bill No. 377, respecting Equitable Fire Insurance Company of Canada.


Howard Charles Green: May we have an explanation?


Maurice Boisvert: I do not think this bill requires much by way of explanation. The company-petitioner is seeking by this bill an

Private Bills
extension of time in order to obtain registry from the Minister of Finance. The company was incorporated a few years ago, and when it came time to transfer the assets from the provincial to the federal company, some difficulty was encountered. Therefore the company requires one more year to complete the transaction of transforming from a provincial to a federal company.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to the standing committee on banking and commerce.
S & M PIPELINE LIMITED
George James McIlraith: the second reading of Bill No. 378, to incorporate S & M Pipeline Limited.
He said: Mr. Speaker, it will be noted that the incorporators seeking incorporation by this bill are the officers of Canadian Devonian Petroleums Limited.
In southeastern Saskatchewan there has been considerable development in oil production and oil exploration work. Canadian Devonian Petroleums Limited have producing wells in that area. The problem arises of getting that oil from the wells to a main pipe line where it will be transported to the refineries. If the bill is passed, it is the intention of the incorporators to consider as their first scheme the building of a pipe line to serve the area in which those wells are situated.
By reason of the amendment to the Pipe Lines Act in 1953, any company seeking to build a pipe line, in the event of such pipe line crossing a provincial boundary, must be incorporated by special act. It is therefore necessary for the company, by reason of that provision, to seek incorporation by special act in this instance.
It will be noted that the bill is limited to the four western provinces and the Northwest Territories. The bill provides for the construction and operation of pipe lines for both gas and oil. One of the early schemes contemplated by the company has to do with the building of a branch pipe line to serve producing lines in southeastern Saskatchewan in order to get that oil to the refinery. The provision for gas pipe lines is not limited in the bill as presented, as there is in the bill as presented authority for building gas pipe lines outside of Canada as well as in the four western provinces in Canada.
It is the intention of the incorporators, when the bill is before the committee, to submit an amendment for consideration by the committee limiting to Canada the right to build main gas lines.
(Mr. Boisvert.)


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: Mr. Speaker, I was glad to hear the concluding paragraph in the speech of the sponsor of the bill, because I had noted in the bill as drafted an objectionable feature, one which led to a good deal of discussion when another bill was before the committee. However, in the light of the hon. member's statement, I should think the committee would be interested in giving favourable consideration to this bill.


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

William Gilbert Weir: the second reading of Bill No. 367, to authorize Trans-Prairie Pipelines, Ltd., to construct, own and operate an extra-provincial pipe line.


Howard Charles Green: Could we have an explanation?


William Gilbert Weir: Mr. Speaker, the situation with respect to this bill is somewhat similar to the one with which we have just dealt. The applicant, Trans-Prairie Pipelines, Ltd., was incorporated under the Companies Act of the province of Manitoba by letters patent dated August 5, 1954, for the purpose of acquiring, constructing, owning and operating oil pipe lines and gathering systems.
The applicant in particular was incorporated to acquire and operate a short pipe line and a gathering system connecting the Daly oil field near Virden in Manitoba to Cromer, a pumping station on the interprovincial pipe line, and also to construct an extension from the Daly field to the Virden Roselea and the North Virden Roselea oil fields. The extension to these latter fields was completed and put into operation late in 1954.
Portions of the present pipe line serving the Daly field were laid approximately eight miles from the Manitoba-Saskatchewan boundary.
The purpose of the present application is to secure authorization in the applicant company to extend its activities across the Manitoba-Saskatchewan boundary into southeastern Saskatchewan, as the progress of oil development in the area makes feasible the construction of pipe lines.
The applicant is particularly considering the possibility of constructing an oil pipe line to serve the Alida and Frobisher oil fields in southeastern Saskatchewan, and a possible extension from such an oil pipe line back into the province of Manitoba to serve the Tilson and Pearson oil fields in southwestern Manitoba.
As was mentioned in the discussion on the previous bill, under the Pipe Lines Act, the

applicant cannot construct or operate pipe lines crossing provincial boundaries without the authority of an act such as is asked in this instance.
I might add that the bill has been before the Senate and dealt with by the Senate committee which deals with these matters. It now comes to this house in its present form and, of course, will be submitted to a committee here, for further consideration.


Howard Charles Green: Mr. Speaker, unfortunately this bill is not similar to the others which were read a second time this afternoon. If hon. members will refer to the three preceding bills, namely to incorporate Petroleum Transmission Company, to incorporate Yukon Pipelines Limited and to incorporate S & M Pipeline Limited, they will find that those bills are in the nature of charters incorporating companies.
They have extensive provisions. For example, they name the applicants for the charter; they provide for the first directors; they also regulate everything having to do with the capital stock. Then they go on to outline in detail the powers of the company which is to be incorporated by the bill, and deal with the question of loans to shareholders or directors and with the application of certain provisions of the dominion Companies Act. They also deal with the redemption or purchase for cancellation of paid up capital, and finally they deal with the paying of commission on subscription for shares, bonds, debentures and so on. In other words, they constitute the charter of the company.
On the other hand, the bill which we are now considering does not do that at all. It merely authorizes the company which has been set up under the Manitoba companies act to go into the pipe line business. If hon. members will refer to the bill they will find that there are none of these provisions that are contained in the other charters. This bill simply says that this Manitoba company has the power to construct pipe lines for both oil and gas. Nothing whatever is said about the people who are behind the bill. There are no restrictions on the capital structure of the company; there is nothing said about its powers. We have no idea what the powers of this company are. That will be contained in the papers filed in the office of the registrar of companies in Manitoba.
Nothing is said in the bill itself about where the pipe lines are to be built. Hon. members will notice that the other charters specifically set out that the pipe lines are to be built in certain parts of the country. For example, I take the S & M Pipeline Limited charter.
Private Bills
It says that the pipe lines are to be built in the Northwest Territories and in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and outside Canada; but in the bill we are now considering absolutely no mention is made of where the pipe lines are to go. There is nothing to show that the company will be subject to the provisions of the dominion Companies Act, to which the other companies which have been given charters must submit, and there are none of the other restrictions which are contained in these other charters.
I do not see why one group should be able to come to this house and get a bill of this kind authorizing them to do everything that the other companies can do, which have come in and told their whole story and asked for charters of which we have the details. That appears to me to be discrimination, and also it opens the door wide to companies incorporated under a provincial companies act of any province of Canada. If TransPrairie Pipelines, Limited, can get authority in the terms set out in this bill, then 50, 100 or 1,000 provincially incorporated companies can do the same thing.
It opens the door wide, and in my opinion breaks down the whole basis set up by the Pipe Lines Act for the chartering of companies to go into the pipe line business. This is very big business, and very important, and the companies are given very extensive rights under the Pipe Lines Act. They have power to take lands, and all that sort of thing. They are given practically as wide powers as the railways. I submit that the intention of parliament, when it passed the Pipe Lines Act, was that in each case the people who wanted to go into the pipe lines business must come to parliament and get a charter. There has been only one case in which that was not done, and I intend to refer to it in a moment or two.
The Pipe Lines Act is chapter 211 of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1952. We find there that "company" is described as meaning:
A person having authority under a special act to construct or operate pipe lines for the transportation of oil or gas.
A "special act" is described as meaning:
An act of the parliament of Canada that authorizes a person named in the act to construct or operate pipe lines for the transportation of gas or oil or that is enacted with special reference to such pipe lines.
I suppose that technically the Trans-Prairie Pipelines, Limited, would be considered as a person and therefore technically this bill would come under that definition of a special act; technically getting an act through such as we are debating this afternoon might be

Private Bills
sufficient; but I do suggest that it would be against the whole spirit and intent of the Pipe Lines Act.
When we were discussing the amendment to the Pipe Lines Act in 1953 we were questioning the then minister of transport. I now quote from page 621 of Hansard of December 4, 1953, where Mr. Chevrier had this to say:
As I understand this amendment, it is still necessary for extra-provincial or interprovincial pipe lines to seek authority from this parliament by way of a special charter in order to apply to the board of transport commissioners for its location.
This shows clearly what the minister had in mind at that time. Mind you, there is no objection to a provincial company building a pipe line within the borders of that province. If Manitoba wants to incorporate a company to build a pipe line in Manitoba, then the Pipe Lines Act of the dominion does not apply. But that is not the case here. Presumably this company has already built lines in Manitoba and now intends to cross a border-I think the hon. member said the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border. Well, they may just as well want to cross an international border so far as the Pipe Lines Act is concerned. They should come to parliament and get a full charter in the same way that the other applicants have done over the last six years. It is six years now that applicants for charters have been coming here and complying with what I suggest is the real meaning of the act.
It is true that in 1954, a little over a year ago, the Niagara Gas Transmission Limited came here with a bill of the kind we are considering today, and I presume it is because that was done that Trans-Prairie Pipelines, Limited, are asking today for the same treatment. But the conditions were entirely different when Niagara Gas Transmission Limited came to parliament. They had been incorporated under the Ontario companies act. This company was a subsidiary of the Consumers Gas Company of Toronto and the Tennessee Gas Transmission Company of the United States. The parent companies had entered into a contract under which United States gas was to be imported into the greater Toronto area and part of the transmission of that gas was to be done by Niagara Gas Transmission Company. They were to pick up the gas in the middle of the Niagara river and bring it into the city of Toronto.
There was a great deal of discussion in the house. Hon. members will remember that the whole question of our gas policy was involved. It was felt that if Niagara Gas Transmission Limited went ahead as originally planned the result would be to prevent the construction of a trans-Canada pipe line

by Trans-Canada Pipe Lines Limited. In the final analysis an agreement was reached under which Trans-Canada Pipe Lines Limited built a pipe line in Canada from the middle of the Niagara river into the greater Toronto area.
There were all these special considerations behind the application for permission to Niagara Gas Transmission Limited to go into the pipe line business, but the fact that the charter was granted at that time should not establish a precedent for ordinary gas line charters. I do suggest that if this present policy is to be adopted, that is if this bill is passed by the house; if we allow these provincial companies to go into the interprovincial or international oil or gas transmission business merely by coming here and getting a bill through which permits them to go into business subject to the provisions of the Pipe Lines Act; if we are to be satisfied with a private bill of that kind, then we are opening the door wide to leaving parliament with practically no control over what such companies may do. We would be granting them the extremely wide powers contained in the Pipe Lines Act and in addition would be discriminating in a most unfair manner against Canadians who have followed the spirit and letter of the Pipe Lines Act by coming into this house with a bill which constituted a proper charter.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: Mr. Speaker, in view of the fact that the sponsor of this bill is not present in the house and that the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra (Mr. Green) has made an excellent argument as to why the bill should not be proceeded with in this form, I wonder if the hon. member for Portage-Neepawa (Mr. Weir) would recommend that the bill stand until another time. I do not think we should waste too much time debating it when the sponsor is not here. In my opinion a good case has not been made out for giving such wide powers to Trans-Prairie Pipelines, Limited, to approve the incorporation by letters patent without any more information than we have. We required the Westspur Pipe Line Company to tell us who are responsible and also something about the capital and their general plans. I wonder if the hon. member for Portage-Neepawa would indicate at this stage whether he would recommend that the bill stand until the hon. member who is sponsoring it is here to give further explanation.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member has not raised this as a point of order. I suggest to

the hon. member for Mackenzie (Mr. Nicholson) that he is too late in raising this point; he should have raised it when the motion for second reading was proposed.


William Gilbert Weir: Mr. Speaker-


Mr. Speaker:: If the hon. member speaks now he will close the debate.


William Gilbert Weir: I understand that the objection to this bill raised by the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra is purely as to the form of the bill.


Howard Charles Green: That is right.


William Gilbert Weir: Does the hon. member feel that that matter could be straightened out when the bill got to the committee?


Howard Charles Green: If it could be I think that would be perfectly satisfactory. There is only one of the usual sections in this bill, but if ten other sections could be added, provided that could be done, that would be perfectly satisfactory.


William Gilbert Weir: Perhaps it might be better if someone moved the adjournment of the debate.
On motion of Mr. Dickey the debate was adjourned.



SENATE AND HOUSE OF COMMONS ACT


Stanley Howard Knowles: the second reading of Bill No. 379, to amend the Senate and House of Commons Act.
He said: Mr. Speaker, the first comment I wish to make in moving the second reading of this bill is that I do so because of an interest in the principle raised by this bill. It would be useless for me to deny, even if I wanted to, that recent events have played some part in my bringing this legislation before the House of Commons at the present time. Nevertheless, my interest is not in any particular personality that might be involved but rather in a principle which has concerned this parliament and other parliaments for a great many years. That principle is set out in the question; should a cabinet minister at the same time be a director of a private company?
My interest in this question did not begin only two or three weeks ago. As a matter of fact when I first came to parliament in 1942 I was concerned to discover that it was not an absolute rule that a minister give up his directorships when he joins the cabinet. Accordingly, in an effort to draw attention
50433-251J
Senate and House of Commons Act to this fact and thereby to suggest, at least indirectly, that such a rule should be laid down, I have placed questions on the order paper of the House of Commons on at least three occasions. The first time I put those questions on the order paper, they were answered by sessional paper No. 296-A which was tabled in the House of Commons on June 5, 1943. That shows an interest of mine dating back some 12 years. The second time was a few years later when a sessional paper was tabled in response to certain similar questions of mine; this one was sessional paper No. 160-D, which was tabled on February 11, 1948. More recently I placed another set of questions on the order paper which was answered by sessional paper No. 173-A, tabled on April 8, 1954. I shall have occasion in the course of my remarks to refer to some of the information contained in these sessional papers, but I wanted to make it clear at the outset that my interest in this question is one of long standing.
I should like also to remind hon. members that this matter has been discussed in the Canadian House of Commons on quite a number of occasions. On most of those occasions the discussion has arisen out of some other matter, but on at least two occasions the matter was discussed on substantive motions. The first of those two occasions was in 1921, when Mr. A. R. McMaster introduced a bill to amend the Senate and House of Commons Act which was designed to have the same effect that my bill has at the present time. As that bill did not pass, I have not yet been able to find a copy of it, so I do not know whether my bill is exactly the same as that one.


Walter Edward Harris: It is not.


Stanley Howard Knowles: At any rate the description of the bill which can be found in Hansard during the course of the discussion of the bill suggests that there is a striking similarity between Mr. McMaster's bill of 1921 and my bill of 1955. The second major debate on this matter was in 1922. Again it was Mr. McMaster who initiated the debate, but on that occasion it was on a private member's resolution rather than on a bill.
I invite hon. members to look at the debates of those two years of 1921 and 1922. They will find some very interesting reading. Hon. members will recall that in 1921 the Conservatives were in power and Mr. King was the leader of the Liberal opposition. Mr.. McMaster, who introduced the bill, was a Liberal and had played a very prominent part in the party; indeed I find he played a prominent part in the Liberal convention of
3980	HOUSE OF COMMONS
Senate and House of Commons Act
1919. He was very close to Mr. King, and I would point out that in 1921 he had Mr. King's support on his bill. That support was indicated by interjections by Mr. King in the debate and it was also indicated in a very concrete way by the vote which is recorded on page 665 of Hansard for March 8, 1921. It is always interesting to us who are now members of the House of Commons to look back over some of these ancient records and And there the names of great men of days gone by. Actually, the only person who is today a member of the House of Commons and who voted on that occasion is one whose name I am happy to mention, even though I do not agree with the way that he voted, because this gives me the opportunity to say how sorry all of us were to learn of the illness of the hon. member for Grenville-Dundas (Mr. Casselman) and how pleased we have been to learn that he is making good progress. The hon. member for Grenville-Dundas was, as I say, the only present member who voted on that occasion. He happened to vote against the bill.
But one other member who is still a member of the house, although he did not record his vote on that occasion, was present, because he indicated that he was paired. In this instance I refer to the hon. member for Quebec South (Mr. Power) who said he was paired with the then junior member for Cape Breton South and Richmond (Mr. R. H. Butts). The hon. member said that had he voted, he would have voted against the bill. In other words, the hon. member for Quebec South disagreed with Mr. McMaster, the sponsor of the bill, and he disagreed with his leader, Mr. Mackenzie King, on that occasion. Indeed it was not the only occasion when there was a difference of opinion between Mr. King and the hon. member for Quebec South. I find that Mr. Lapointe, the father of the present Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. Lapointe), and late minister of justice, was present on that occasion and along with Mr. King voted for this bill of Mr. McMaster's which would have had the effect of amending the Senate and House of Commons Act so as to prevent cabinet ministers from holding directorships in private firms.


Daniel (Dan) McIvor: They were then in opposition.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The hon. member for Fort William is helping me out or anticipating what I am coming to. He says that they were then in opposition. He probably knows that when in 1922 these gentlemen crossed to the other side of the house they sang a different song. There is another name that interests me as I look over this list. I find that in 1921 there was a member for the

north riding of Oxford by the name of Mr. Nesbitt. He was a Conservative member of the House of Commons at that time, and he voted against the bill. That name suggested to me that there might be some relationship between him and the present member for Oxford (Mr. Nesbitt). So I looked up the present Parliamentary Guide and I found that the present member for Oxford is a grandnephew of the Mr. Nesbitt who was the member for North Oxford in 1921. I hope the present member for Oxford will redeem the family name when the vote is called on this bill.
I invite members to look over this debate. As I say, it was introduced from the Liberal side of the house and very strong and cogent speeches were made by Mr. McMaster and others. Let me read one or two quotations from the speech of Mr. McMaster. I turn first of all to page 586 of Hansard of March 4, 1921:
I say that no man who is a minister of the Crown in this country has any time left to fulfil the duties of a director. That is my first proposition, and I think it is a proposition which will appeal as a reasonable one to members of this house. We have the best of authority for the statement that no man can serve two masters. Either he will have to neglect his duty as a minister or he will have to neglect his duty as a director, if he holds both positions at one and the same time.
On page 587 Mr. McMaster is recorded as having said:
Now, we should be, and I trust we all are, jealous for the good name of this House. We are told by authority, almost as great as the authority I have just quoted, that we are to "abstain from the very appearance of evil". Years ago Tennyson wrote about "the fierce light that beats upon the Throne".
Well, I do not think that light is comparable to the fierce light that beats upon men who enter parliament at this time of the world's history. I do not think that I am using the language of extravagance when I say that all governmental institutions are on trial and are being subjected to criticism which is not only strong but often bitter and often unjust.
That was not said yesterday, although it might have been. It was said 34 years ago by the sponsor of a bill similar to the one now before the house. I could go on with excerpts from the debate of March, 1921, but I will not take the time of the house to do so. I invite hon. members who are interested to get that volume of Hansard and read it. It is very interesting and very informative.
As the hon. member for Fort William (Mr. Mclvor) has invited me to inform the house, the next year the large number of Liberals who had voted for the bill when they were in opposition sang a different song when they were on the government side of the house. There was still one Liberal of course who

adhered to the principle that cabinet ministers should not be directors of private companies, namely Mr. McMaster, who himself introduced the resolution in 1922. It was a lengthy resolution.


Mr. Macdonnell:: Was he the only one?


Stanley Howard Knowles: The only Liberal who stuck by his guns? I am sorry, I have not yet taken the time to check all of the 59 who voted for Mr. McMaster's resolution in 1922 to determine whether any other of the 59 was a Liberal. Most of them appear to have been Progressives who had come into the house, together with men like Mr. Woods-worth and others. Mr. McMaster was amongst those who voted for the resolution in 1922. Mr. King and Mr. Lapointe voted against it that year. If I may offer this little bit to please the hon. member who has asked the question, I might say that the gentleman whose name I had occasion to mention yesterday was at least consistent. He voted against the proposition on both occasions. I refer to Arthur Meighen. He voted against the bill in 1921 and he voted against the resolution in 1922.
Mr. King had quite a time, as one would imagine, trying to explain why he took a different position in 1922 from that which he had taken in 1921. The gist of his argument was that he was now prime minister, that he now had about him some men in whom he had great confidence, and he just felt differently about the matter. After all, he even pleaded youth. He felt if he waited until he was an old man he might then tell the younger men in his cabinet what to do, but as long as he was just a young man that was not what he felt he should do. In fact, as found at page 1103 of Hansard for April 24, 1922, he said-


James MacKerras Macdonnell: Were they to be the keepers of their own consciences just like today?


Stanley Howard Knowles: I leave that for others to interpret, although I may come to it later. As reported at page 1103 of Hansard for April 24, 1922, Mr. King said:
There are times and places for everything. I have spoken of the Gladstone, the Campbell-Bannerman and, if you will, the Asquith tradition. May I remind my hon. friend that it was 1868 when Mr. Gladstone first became prime minister of England. He was then 59 years of age, and had had a long parliamentary experience. It was not until 1892, a quarter of a century afterwards, when he was past 80 years of age, that Mr. Gladstone sought to impose any self-denying ordinances upon his colleagues. If my hon. friend will give me time, and the occasion demands it, I shall be glad to follow the Gladstonian tradition.
That, Mr. Speaker, is just one quotation I have picked out from the interesting and
Senate and House of Commons Act much longer debate that took place in 1922 when, as I say, the resolution was defeated. I have already indicated it had the support of Mr. McMaster, the Liberal who had proposed the legislation the year before. It had the spoken support and the vote of my predecessor as the member for Winnipeg North Centre, Mr. J. S. Woodsworth, and the other Labour and Progressive members who were in the house. Some others among the 59 may have been Liberals or Conservatives. I have not been able to check all the names.
At any rate, Mr. Speaker, I think this does establish the point I made at the outset, that this is not an issue that has arisen to disturb the minds of public men or to disturb the writers of editorials in newspapers only in recent days or weeks. It is something that has been a cause for concern across a great many years, and I feel it is a matter of principle. I freely admit some things that have happened recently have brought the question out into the open and have attracted public interest to it, but I raise it as a matter of principle which I feel should concern the House of Commons.
Someone is going to say I am talking out my own bill. I regard the bill as too important to try to rush. There is more I want to say than can be said in the time remaining before six o'clock, so that in just a moment, Mr. Speaker, I shall be adjourning the debate. The next time we come to this matter I hope to have something to say about the practice followed in the United Kingdom. I shall make reference to something that happened recently in the United States. I shall also cite the Canadian practice in terms of what our prime ministers have done about the matter across the years, particularly from Sir Wilfrid Laurier's time to the present. I shall also deal with the arguments that have been advanced against my proposal such as the argument that it is something to be left to the conscience of individual ministers, and so on. That is a preview of what I will say when I get the chance to continue my remarks. In the meantime I hope all hon. members will recognize that this matter involves a very important principle, and I hope very serious attention will be given to it. On that basis, Mr. Speaker, I should like to move the adjournment of the debate.
On motion of Mr. Knowles the debate was adjourned.


Mr. Speaker:: At eight o'clock the house will revert to consideration of the business that was interrupted at five o'clock. Since the business then is to be in committee of supply, would the house agree that I do now

Supply-Labour
leave the chair and let the chairman call it six o'clock from the committee?


Stanley Howard Knowles: By leave.

The house in committee of supply, Mr. Applewhaite in the chair.
At six o'clock the committee took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The committee resumed at eight o'clock.
DEPARTMENT OF LABOUR 173. Departmental administration, $685,605.
James Allen (Jim) Byrne: The interruption in my discussion has allowed me an opportunity, which normally I would not have had, Mr. Chairman, to rectify something in the early part of my speech. Evidently I have left the impression that miners are not working under arduous conditions these days, but that is not the impression I wanted to give to this house at all. I simply wanted to show that with the improvements in methods, material and equipment, and by extra effort a great showing was accruing to the industry. I did not want to create the impression that there have been only one or two improvements in the mining industry. The instance that I cited is general throughout the entire industry so that almost every type of employee working underground on production in the particular mine to which I referred receives pay ranging from an average of $20 per day to the $27 that I mentioned.


Mr. Gillis:: You are talking about the metal mining industry.


James Allen (Jim) Byrne: The base metal mining industry. Production has certainly increased. I believe it would be correct to say that, despite these improvements in income, the actual cost of production has not increased. A ton of ore is being produced just as cheaply today as it was 10 years ago.


Thomas Speakman Barnett: Would the hon. member permit a question?


James Allen (Jim) Byrne: I have not as yet answered the question asked by the hon. member for Nanaimo. After answering that, I would be pleased to take another question from the hon. member for Comox-Alberni.
The hon. member for Nanaimo asked what had become of the miners who were displaced, and how many were displaced by these improvements in machinery and methods. As I said, I had not intended to make any contribution to this debate so I do not have the actual figures. However, for a few months each year I work in the mine and I am fairly well acquainted with what

has taken place. I would think that the actual labour force underground has been reduced by 75 to 100 men. This mechanization and improvement in methods has provided an opportunity for the mining company to work a very low grade of ore.
I am not a mining engineer, so I cannot say exactly what the savings have been. I know they are able to mine a very low grade ore and for that reason there has, been a certain measure of conservation. This has prolonged the life of a mine around which a large community has been built up and, in fact, up to very recently the community has been almost a single industry community.
In addition the same company, using these improved mining methods, has opened two additional mines. One I believe is producing up to 600 tons a day and the other one, which will be in production this year, will be producing around 500 tons. About 500 miners have been absorbed and employees from other areas have been engaged. At the Sullivan mine, where the original operations are located, a fertilizer industry has been introduced. A number of men from the mine have been re-employed, and I might say retrained, for the operation of the fertilizer plant. All in all, therefore, there has not been any grave dislocation of the men in the industry, and I can assure you that they are enjoying a considerably better standard of living. I appreciate the fact that it is not good enough, but as I said earlier I have no fear of improved methods and automation.


Thomas Speakman Barnett: Would the hon. member
permit my question now?


James Allen (Jim) Byrne: Yes.


Thomas Speakman Barnett: I was wondering if the hon. member would care to relate the purchasing power of the wage rates which he cited the miners as receiving today to the purchasing power of the $8 per day he cited them as having received a number of years ago?


James Allen (Jim) Byrne: Well, the hon. member's interjection has given me an opportunity to say again that this rate is the result of a contract system. The base rate would be $14 and some workers would go as high as $27 worked out between the company and union. Where the base rate is $13.59, the earnings go up as high as $20 per day. As to the value of the dollar compared with 15 or 20 years ago, I believe the hon. member is as well informed as anyone, and has probably done more research on the question because I understand he prepared himself for a speech on this question. I believe the generally accepted figure is about 50 cents on the dollar.
I said the original earnings were around $8 and if you double that they would be $16.

It is not every worker who would receive the $27, but there are people who are earning $27 per day. It is interesting to note that even during the time when the United States authorities seemed insistent upon a higher tariff on lead and zinc, there was no great concern. I feel that Consolidated would have survived that while some of the other companies would perhaps have gone under. There is no reason to believe that these improvements are not real. As I say, the hon. member can relate the actual value of the dollar as he wishes, but I would point out to him also that the miners are working a 40-hour week. They have more leisure time to spend fishing and so on and other pursuits.
However, I am being diverted from the point. I was going to say that the Minister of Labour should not be held entirely responsible for the unemployment we have today. There are many other factors, and the minister's job is more the finding of a solution, the administration of the labour code, unemployment insurance and so forth. However, in my view the Department of Trade and Commerce, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Finance have more important duties in maintaining balance in the economy.
Some hon. members have referred to the fact of the Prime Minister's stepping in at the time of the threatened railway strike in 1954, and have said that his efforts to bring the union and the railways together in an agreement reached the point of compulsory arbitration. They have also referred to the fact that at the time of the railway strike in 1950 the unions were forced to arbitrate with management in the settlement of their dispute.
I have some misgivings about the trend in this particular; but I think we must remember that employees in the transportation industry are in a different position from those who are working for industries in which prices and rates are allowed some measure of flexibility. When railway employees request wage increases, then whether we like it or not there arises the necessity for an adjustment in freight rates. Otherwise it seems almost impossible to increase wages. There is a measure of control by parliament over freight rates in Canada. Although that control is not completely rigid, when increases are authorized by the board of transport commissioners we hear a hue and cry in the House of Commons. For that reason freight rates are influenced by the action of parliament, and in this way there is not the same measure of flexibility in negotiations between railway employees and management. We should keep this
Supply-Labour
in mind, and try to work out some method of settlement of disputes so that there would be an understanding that, when necessary, rates would have to be increased.
Railway workers should not be expected to subsidize other industries as, in my opinion, they have done in the past. The hon. member for Prince Albert pointed out that high freight rates had caused a certain pulp company to which he referred to abandon plans to establish in northern Saskatchewan. Therefore high freight rates was one of the reasons for unemployment. However, the hon. member must know as well as anyone else that freight rates for export wheat from the prairies are set at a figure that was considered adequate in 1897, and the railways are still required to carry export wheat at those rates.
I have advocated a better way of providing for this discrepancy, by way of a subsidy paid by all Canada. To this point however I have not received much support. But when this very large amount of freight must be carried at a very low rate, some other commodify must pay the shot, with the result that freight rates make impossible the development of other new industries.
However, these are some of the conditions we must face. Simply to say in the House of Commons that freight rates are to blame for many of our difficulties, and simply to blame the minister for unemployment, is just not facing up to the facts.
I believe, Mr. Chairman, that is all I have to say at the moment.


Mr. Low:: Mr. Chairman, the debate on the first item of labour estimates has been somewhat long.


An hon. Member:: Too long.


Solon Earl Low: There are some who think it has been too long, but I am not one who feels that way about it. I think the discussion has been well worth while, every bit of it-even the speech made this afternoon by the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace. Because while it was completely barren of ideas, and while the hon. member showed an utter bankruptcy of intellect with respect to matters we are facing, it did issue a challenge which ought to be taken up by hon. members who are trying to face these issues. Therefore I believe the debate has been exceedingly valuable.
In the course of the past two days a number of speeches have been made indicating just how seriously some members have been thinking, and how they have studied this matter. Also it seems to me some speeches have been given which show how completely at

Supply-Labour
sea so many members seem to be when faced with the challenging problems of today, particularly those related to unemployment and distribution.
I pause here for a moment to pay tribute to the Minister of Labour. Over the years, since I came to the House of Commons, and since he came as Minister of Labour, I have observed his work. I think he takes it seriously. 1 have never yet taken a problem to him without receiving his help, nor has there been any time when I have gone to him with a problem when he has not tried to find some equitable solution. Therefore I believe he is doing a good job in his department. I have nothing but sympathy and understanding for him in the work he is doing; and I do not think it is going to help him or anybody else to solve the problems of his department by simply trying to throw on him the blame for any situation -or, for that matter, on any one member of the government. Out of the sensible discussion that can and should take place in this forum of the people can come solutions, if we are ready to seek that which is right instead of standing here day after day and taking so much time to prove who is right or who is wrong.
Therefore I hope we will bear with the minister and try to give him some help. That is why I have felt like saying to him that I feel the discussion thus far has been good because a number of positive and forward looking proposals have been made. The members have asked him to give careful study and consideration to things which they hope will be solutions to the problems we face.
I have been interested in labour problems for many years. I might tell the minister that it was because I started studying problems relating to employment and recurring recessions that I was led into the Social Credit movement. I felt as I now feel that we had, if not a complete and full solution, certainly elements of solution which, if applied, will go a long way toward reaching a satisfactory solution. We are living in a most interesting and challenging time. We are living in a time, as has already been pointed out, of a rapid expansion of the use of automatic machinery in the productive enterprises. A good deal has been said about automation in this debate, not, I feel sure, in any way that would justify any reasonable member referring to it as a spread of gloom or blue ruin.
In his speech yesterday, the hon. member for Prince Albert, in referring to mechanization, said, not in exactly these words, but I think I got the sense of what he did say,
fMr. Low.]
that if any generation fears mechanization because they think that it will throw too many people out of work, the next generation finds that mechanization has tended to expand employment and to bring a higher standard of living. Well, that might be so, but I point out to him, and those who think as he does, that the second generation found that it was pretty slim going while the first one was passing away; and during the time that they were doing little or nothing to find a solution to the maladjustments that came as a consequence of mechanization, people- and my sympathies are with them-were the victims of, what shall I call it, a futile effort, if you want to call it that, or an attempt to find a satisfactory solution.
I am not for one moment saying that eventually we do not find a solution in answer to the problem, but I do not believe it is necessary to allow human suffering to continue as it has been allowed to continue over so many years at times in the past. If human ingenuity, brains and willingness to face facts were applied sensibly to the problems we would not have a lot of people suffer very long; they would not have to remain hungry very long in the midst of abundance; but- it is just that attitude, that everybody who puts forward an idea is a crackpot, that causes a continuation of human suffering. Anybody who disagrees with me and does not go along with the idea of laissez-faire is a crackpot. I am sorry to say that the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace, who I am glad to see is in his seat tonight, feels that way. His whole talk this afternoon was nothing but that, and I am very sorry to see those ideas put forward in this day of all days when the lessons of economics and of human suffering should have borne in upon him, as on us all. What solutions are possible, and how should we set about to find them?
As I say, it might possibly be that the second generation after the one that fears mechanization might find a solution. But the second generations did discover, I am quite sure of that, in every case that they required an adjustment of thinking. It required new ideas and fresh approaches to social and economic behaviour and attitudes, and then changes for the better came.
The hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace says all you have to do is have faith. If that is all it takes to bring adjustments, then we should have had adjustments a long time ago, because we all have faith. We do not lack faith over here any more than you do. I just remind the hon. member that faith without works is dead. What we stand for is

faith with works, and intelligent works, at that, and a little bit of courage and vision and a little less of this silly business of calling other people crackpots because they come up with ideas. If you are going to discourage anybody who comes forward with a new idea by saying that he is imbued with the idea of funny money, well, for goodness' sake, how far are you going to get?
I heard the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace described this afternoon as an innocent abroad. Well, bless my soul, I hope there are not too many innocents abroad, if we are seriously and earnestly trying to find some way to cure the problem of unemployment. I am not going to indulge in namecalling because I do not think it helps; but he particularly engaged in ridicule and referred once or twice to the crackpots in this corner of the house.


Daniel (Dan) McIvor: Will the hon. member permit a question?


Solon Earl Low: Yes, indeed.


Daniel (Dan) McIvor: We should have a definition of "crackpot" to know whether it is parliamentary or not.


Solon Earl Low: Yes. I am not quibbling about it; it does not matter to me what it means at all. If by crackpot the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace and others like him mean someone who is really and seriously trying to find solutions to problems, I shall gladly take the name of crackpot.
The hon. member made special reference to my colleague, the hon. member for Bow River, and to what he said in this debate yesterday. He referred to him as a crepe-hanger and a crackpot. The hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace mentioned how senseless those arguments are about the results of the introduction of machines. Well, now, I took the trouble to look up what my colleague, the hon. member for Bow River, did say, and for the life of me I cannot understand how the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace reached the interpretation he did. I want to quote from page 3923 of Hansard, to show what the hon. member for Bow River did say:
I am not one who would suggest for a moment that we should decrease the use of machines in order to keep people at work. I do not think that is the purpose of civilization. I believe we should increase the use of the most technical machines to the point where, if the whole operation can be performed by pushing one button, so much the better.
I do not see anything to suggest crepehanging about that, or blue ruin. Bless my soul, that looks as though my hon. friend is not a bit afraid of mechanization or automation, as it has been so often referred to here.
Supply-Labour
The whole vein of my hon. friend's speech yesterday was like that. Therefore, I say it is hard for me to understand how the hon. member could possibly get from what the hon. member for Bow River said yesterday the interpretation that he tried to put upon it today; and yet my hon. friend did ridicule all of us in this corner, including the C.C.F. group. He called us crackpots, and he said that it would be swell if you have some funny money.
My hon. friend says that he has done some studying-perhaps he has. I would not deny that; but I shall take just a few moments to refer to the question of unemployment which we are discussing, and mechanization. I am going to take him back briefly through a little bit of history that he should have studied before he spoke this afternoon, because I think it will do him good to face facts which he did not face when he rose to his feet. Perhaps he did not think too much when he was on his feet today. Perhaps that is his trouble. Sometimes people's minds are so linked up that when they stand up the mind will not work. It is like that old steamboat that used to ply up and down the Mississippi in Lincoln's time. The stern wheel that drove it was so linked up with the whistle that when they blew the whistle the boat stopped. Compare that with the situation here.


Clarence Gillis: He may be a sternwheeler.


Solon Earl Low: He probably is a sternwheeler.


Edmund Davie Fulton: My hon. friend blows the whistle and goes straight ahead.


Solon Earl Low: That speech this afternoon was entirely a sternwheel speech. As I said, I should like to take the hon. member back through a little history which I am sure he would like to forget. I would like to refer for a few minutes to the labour and unemployment situation which existed during the Conservative regime of 1930-35. I am going to admit right off that in 1930 the Conservative government did inherit from the Liberal regime a very serious unemployment and recession problem.
There is no question about that. But they faced their responsibility with what policy? Just what was their policy? Was it automation? Was it progression? Was there a real effort to find a solution? I think I can describe their policy with regard to employment during the depression by saying that it was a case of push the steam shovel into the bush, bring out the wheelbarrows and shovels, put the unemployed into isolated camps and pay them 20 cents a day for digging a hole in one place and filling up a hole in another.

Supply-Labour
That was the kind of thing they offered to the people of Canada as a solution for the depression and unemployment problem. A serious situation developed over the years. The prices of primary products declined to a disastrous level and huge piles of products came into being. But many people who wanted those products found that they could not get them because they did not have purchasing power in their pockets and did not seem able to get any.
Every time anybody said to the Conservative government, "Why don't you get some purchasing power in circulation to start the wheels of industry going again?" the answer he got was, "There is not any money". They kept on saying that all through their regime up to 1935 when they were pitched out by the people of Canada largely because they had not found a solution or begun to find a solution for the unemployment problem.
The provinces tried in every way to persuade the Conservative government to do something to start the wheels of industry turning again so that salaries and wages would flow into the pockets of consumers. We felt that that was the answer. I was associated with a provincial government in those days and I know the problems we faced. I know how difficult it was to get the government down here moving on any project because the only answer we could get was, "There is no money". No matter how much we tried to show them how money could be obtained the answer always was that no money could be obtained.
I should like to refer to a specific instance and I do this for the edification of the hon. member from Montreal. I am not angry with him, not for a minute, but I think it would be a good thing to take his pants off and let him wander around here without them for a little while. I was living in Raymond in southern Alberta when the Conservative regime first came to power in 1930 and we went into the very serious part of the depression.
I was a teacher in the high school along with the hon. member for Lethbridge. We went through the whole of that year without having one five-cent piece by way of salary from our school board. I do not know just how we lived. There were plenty of goods and services but we could not get at them because we did not have money. We had to resort to a whole lot of things such as raising gardens, marketing eggs, borrowing milk from farmers and all that sort of thing. It is true we got along, and perhaps in some respects we were the healthiest, fattest and nakedest people in the world. But I want to tell you right 
now that it was tough going and I would not like to have to go through it again. I would not want my son to have to go through such a thing.
The school district could not pay our salaries because they discovered they owed the bank $67,000. They could not pay because they could not collect their taxes and the arrears of taxes had been hypothecated to the bank. Then the bank said, "No more". You could not blame them under the circumstances, but when they said "No more" we faced the problem of keeping the school running with 700 children and 18 or 20 teachers with no money available.
That was quite a problem but the people faced up to it and I think with some vision. I am wondering what the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace and his party would have done under the circumstances. Here is what we did. We realized that the goods and services were there in abundance in the community; we realized there were people willing to work, willing to apply their efforts to making more goods from the raw materials; prepared to give their efforts in distributing what was already in existence. We realized there were people prepared to teach the schools, to work for the city, to continue to give their services provided they could get goods in return. Willing workers and goods and services were available. The only thing that we needed was tickets of claim. Instead of sitting there wringing our hands, waiting for the next generation to solve the problem-


Mr. Blackmore:: Like the Conservatives.


Solon Earl Low: -we had the faith of work. What did we do? We simply went to the town hall and had a chat with the mayor, the council and the secretary treasurer of the town who was a pretty forward-looking fellow. We said to him, "We will be prepared to continue teaching your school provided you will issue some tickets of your own; if you cannot get money at least you can provide some intermediary in the way of tickets or scrip."
They went to the Raymond Recorder and gave them a job of printing those tickets, which read, "The town of Raymond will pay to the bearer on demand $10 toward taxes, light rates or water rates." Those were handed out to us in payment for our services. We took them to the local storekeepers, the coal people and others, and said, "Will you accept these things in return for groceries and other things we need." They said, "What good are they?" "Well, you can take them to the town hall and pay your taxes with them; you can exchange them for your water rates; you can buy sugar with them from the sugar factory." We had arranged with the sugar

factory to accept them in payment for sugar and also with the coal men to accept them for coal.
When these storekeepers saw that it was possible to get these things they said, "Certainly, we will accept them." What happened? When they made a sale for one of these $20 or $10 pieces of scrip, quite often they had to make change in cash which began to dry up their scarce supply. So they went to the aluminum company and had them punch out aluminum disks saying, "We will pay to the bearer on demand 50 cents in groceries", or in hardware and so on. They passed those out. So with a pocket on one side filled with paper and a pocket on the other side filled with aluminum disks we walked the streets and were happy.
We even went so far as to establish foreign trade relations with Lethbridge twenty miles away. It was not very long until the stores, dealers and even the restaurants in Lethbridge and other places were accepting Raymond scrip because they knew they could exchange it for sugar from our town, for eggs, for butter and that sort of thing that came from the farmers in our district. They had no trouble over them. I remember the time when they gave me my first salary in over a year in this scrip. My wife and I went on a real tear. We went into the city of Lethbridge, 15 or 20 miles away, and proceeded to go to a picture show and go to the Greek restaurant for a meal-the first time we had been able to do such a horrible thing for well over a year. How joyful everyone was when goods began flowing in!
The upshot of it was that Raymond and district became a veritable oasis in an economic desert. All the teachers wanted to go to teach in Raymond because at least they were getting something with which to buy goods. This went on for several years. Let me first tell you that the only ones in the district who were not happy were the bankers, who sat in their offices and saw business bypass them and go to the town hall, which became the banker. All we did was recognize that the goods and services were there, that willing people were there and the consumers were there. The only thing that was not there was the tickets to claim those goods. We said that, if the country would not do something about it, this district would do something on its own and provide its own tickets. So tickets were distributed for services rendered and the goods were automatically distributed.
I cite that for my hon. friend and his colleagues who think as he does, to show them that it takes a good deal more than just faith to move goods, as it takes more than faith
50433-252J
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to move mountains, but you will move mountains of goods if you use good sense as well as good faith. I would not advocate for one second that the same kind of process that was used in the town of Raymond be used in every community in Canada, but what I do point out to my hon. friend and his colleagues is this. The principle of what was done in the town of Raymond could have been applied on a national scale by the Conservative government with the same result that we had in the town of Raymond, but they did not have the imagination or the courage. They had the Bank of Canada, and they could have used it. The whole trouble was that they were going to sit there and let faith do the job, and faith just did not do it. As a consequence people suffered.
We have demonstrated without doubt that the ideas we put forward are not new and untried ideas; they are not crackpot ideas; they are ideas that have succeeded. Believe me-I point this out to my hon. friend- they have succeeded so well and we were getting along so beautifully in that district that a nurse in the city of Calgary, 170 miles away, a nurse we had never heard of, went to the courts and took out an injunction against the town of Raymond to prevent it from using its own form of purchasing power.


An hon. Member:: Funny money.


Solon Earl Low: It was not the nurse who was interested in it. There were men who were hiding behind a woman's skirts, as they often do

people who saw in what we were doing a danger to their best vested interests. That is what was happening. As I said, it was only the bankers of the day who were unhappy about the situation. Yet, I say, a representative of a do-nothing party now stands up in this house and has the temerity to call the Social Credit group crepe-hanging prognosticators. Some of us have made a deep and realistic study in connection with the increasing use of automatic machinery to replace manpower in the chores of production. I am sure my hon. friend from Notre Dame de Grace will admit that the use of automatic machines does make it possible to produce things faster and cheaper than ever before. If he does not, he had better do some more reading, because that is the effect of it.
Now, what happens when, through the use of automation, things are produced faster and cheaper than ever before? It was that very question which I faced at university when I came face to face with the Social Credit solution. I was working on a project that had been given to me by the professor of economics at that school. This was the project. I saw some possibility through my

Supply-Labour
studies that the frequency of major depressions was accelerated by the increase in the speed with which things could be produced. So the professor suggested to me carrying on some studies in this respect. In the course of my studies I discovered this when I developed two graphs. One graph that I drew, based on exactly historical fact, indicated the space in years between major depressions. Then I superimposed upon that graph another one indicating the results of scientific studies with respect to the increase in percentage in the productive capacity of the economy through mechanization.
I was surprised, and so was my professor, to find that as the speed of production increased the time between major depressions in years declined almost exactly in inverse ratio, indicating that as we increase our speed of production we find it much more difficult to distribute the abundance that we can produce. I sought for and discovered this, which my hon. friend ought to discover in his reading: that the process of producing goods and services today, especially through the use of machinery, does not succeed in distributing salaries and wages, dividends and profits and compensation in all forms of purchasing power in sufficient quantities to enable the people to buy back what they have produced. As a consequence, gradually surpluses pile up, and when those surpluses have piled up to a certain point and big inventories have accumulated, the wheels of industry stop. When the wheels of industry stop people are thrown out of work, there are less salaries and wages to distribute, and as a result we fall into a depression. We do not get out of a depression until we take corrective action of some sort. Thus far, I point out to my hon. friend, the only way we have pulled out of major depressions in the past-that is, really major depressions- has been through war. That is the only way we got out of the depression of the thirties. We came out of it as a consequence of war and producing things for war purposes. During that wartime fully a third of all we produced, the top third, was skimmed off and sent abroad and given away as gifts to our enemies. We prayed that they would not send it back in the forms in which they wanted to send it. We also must remember that the purchasing power generated in producing those goods remained at home.
My hon. friend ought to take note of these things and do a little careful study.
Let me just point out briefly, in closing, something that my hon. friend should also have kept in mind. I have said a good deal about the period of the Conservative regime from 1930 to 1935, during which little or
[Mr. Low.l
nothing was done to haul us out of a depression. Now let me remind him of some of the things that have been done since. I have already pointed out that the war had done more than anything else to bring us out of the depression and restore purchasing power. I certainly decry the idea of waiting for wars to bring us out, but that is what will have to happen if we have many people with the mentality of my hon. friend from Notre Dame de Grace, because he will wait for the war.
We will never pull out any other way with his scheme of laissez faire. What else happened? What happened was that a very astute politician who used to sit across from us on this side of the house listened to this talk, listened to these ideas that were being put forward by those whom my hon. friend calls crackpots and said: There is something politically worth while in this. What did he do? He said: When these two million people who are now engaged in military effort come back and are rehabilitated into civil life and productive effort in Canada, what in the world are we going to do with all the production? We have not been able to any more than distribute what we have produced during the war without these two million.
He recognized that mechanization was going on apace, that automation was appearing, that the very things the hon. member spoke about this afternoon, automatic telephone exchanges and all that sort of thing, would soon be here in an increasing amount. So he said that something had to be done. How did he tackle the problem? He brought into being the family allowance program which has done a great deal to stabilize the economy and provide purchasing power to cover that part of production for which salaries, wages, dividends and profits just were not distributed and could not be distributed under our mechanized method of production.
He went further. He increased old age pensions to do a similar thing for people who had got beyond the years of productive effort. He also brought in increases in war veterans allowances and the like and, furthermore, developed what I think is one of the most balanced programs to look after unemployment that I know of, the unemployment insurance program of this government. All of that has served to distribute purchasing power to keep economic activity at a high level. But I point out to my hon. friend that, in spite of all these things, with the increasing rate of automation and the increasing displacement of manpower by automatic machines, in spite of the fact that we are spending billions for defence purposes to help

our neighbours and allies, in spite of all these things we have developed this year 600,000 unemployed.
Well, for goodness' sake, it is about time somebody woke up to the facts. That alone is an indication that automation is catching up on us, that we are in a period of serious dislocation, and that we are going to have to face this situation sooner than my hon. friend thinks. We are going to have to put our minds to this whole business and study ways and means of making a proper adjustment of purchasing power so that our people can continue to buy.
Let me point out to my hon. friend that machines do not get married and raise families. They do not have to have wages and salaries to keep going, and they can work for a fraction of a cent an hour where it takes $1 an hour at the very minimum for a man to keep body and soul together. It is about time we began looking at these things sensibly. I say to the hon. member that it is a dangerous thing for him or anybody else to stand up on the floor of the nation's forum and call people who have put forward positive ideas about how to meet these difficulties and adjust our dislocations, crackpots, funny money artists and all that sort of thing. They have no solution at all.
I think it is necessary for the Minister of Labour, his unemployment insurance commission, perhaps others in his employ, and certainly all of us in the house to give very careful study to what we can do to make proper adjustments in the economy consequent upon automation. In my judgment it is a question of adjustment and the maintenance of a free flow of purchasing power to keep economic activity at a high level. If the Conservatives ever do come to power with the same attitude as that portrayed by the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace I predict that Canada will suffer the most tragic and intensive depression ever dreamed of by a frightened people.
But I say it need not be. It will be utter stupidity if it is allowed because depressions come about as the consequence of foolish policies of foolish men and can be cured and prevented by the positive policies of thinking men. Out of intelligent discussion of our problems solutions can be developed, but I say that no solution is to be found in silly ridicule or name-calling such as we had this afternoon. We have faith. We believe this country can slide into the golden age if we use our God-given brains to make the adjustments we ought to be making to meet the social and economic dislocations that occur through ever-increasing automation.
Supply-Labour


Mr. Ellis:: Mr. Chairman, when the previous speaker rose he referred to the speech of the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace as being barren of ideas and then he proceeded to spend all his time answering barren ideas. I find it difficult to understand how one can go about refuting ideas that were never presented.


John Horne Blackmore: Did you overlook that scrip?


Alfred Claude Ellis: I feel I should show some deference, Mr. Chairman, in entering into the family quarrel between the two sections of the Conservative party in Canada, the Social Crediters in the west-


Solon Earl Low: Do not forget you were classed among the crackpots.


Alfred Claude Ellis: -and the Conservatives in the east. I did feel in listening to the hon. member for Peace River that he put forward some very cogent ideas, but I was not unaware of the fact that the ideas he presented were more in line with socialist philosophy than anything I have ever read in Social Credit publications. If the hon. member were to get up in the house some time and explain to us the A plus B theorem I think he would be getting closer to basic Social Credit philosophy. But what he does is to pick out a few ideas which are actually basic criticisms of the free enterprise system. He referred to the fact that only in time of war has the free enterprise system provided full employment and in the next breath he defended free enterprise. It seems to me that to be consistent one cannot criticize the banking, financial and economic systems of Canada in one breath and in the next breath proclaim himself as a great champion of the free enterprise system.


Solon Earl Low: I am a free enterpriser first, last and all the time.


Alfred Claude Ellis: He told us about what the Social Crediters did some years ago, but in view of the fact that in the province of British Columbia a former Conservative is premier, a former Conservative is finance minister-


Solon Earl Low: Even they see the light once in a while.


Alfred Claude Ellis: -and a former Conservative and director of one of the Canadian chartered banks is financial adviser, it seems rather strange that the speeches made by the hon. members to my left at that time are still being made at this stage in 1955 long after they have shed any Social Credit mantle they ever possessed. I will not pursue the

Supply-Labour
matter further at this point. My only comment regarding the speech made by the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace is that, apart from being barren of ideas, I think it was typical of the attitude of mind of-and we should be thankful for it-a small segment of our population, the attitude that business can do no wrong, the old idea once expressed by Charles E. Wilson that what is good for General Motors is good for the United States. I think A1 Capp dealt the death blow to that in his comic strip. He had a character known as General Bullmoose who stated on quite a number of occasions, "What is good for General Bullmoose is good for everybody." I thought that when the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace was speaking this afternoon he took the attitude that whatever was good for business must of necessity be good for the workers and the farmers. Business was out to take care of the working people of this country; business was out to maintain high wages and so forth. I need make no further comment on that point.
During the course of this debate we have been treated to a number of lectures on history, and as a teacher of history I find it very difficult to resist the temptation to refer to one point of fact that perhaps elaborates the comments made the other day by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre. He referred to the labour difficulties in the city of Winnipeg, and to the fact that at that time a Conservative government, with indecent haste, passed a statute with the connivance and support of the Liberal opposition which had the effect of denying to Canadian citizens the fundamental rights which have always been considered to be part of the rights of British subjects. It was a government of the same party to which the hon. member for Prince Albert belongs. From time to time that hon. member has spoken in this house on the need for a bill of rights, and I agree with him 100 per cent. Certainly, however, the action taken by the Conservative government at that time would be in defiance of any bill of rights contemplated by any member of the house.
I can come closer to the present day with a little history. This morning I received a copy of the 128-page edition of the Regina Leader-Post, published of course in connection with our golden jubilee to be celebrated this year. In this special edition of the Leader-Post some of the history of Saskatchewan and the history of Regina is outlined. There is on page 10 of the third section a little bit of history in connection with an event which occurred in the city of Regina on July 1, 1935.

Hon. members will recall that under a Conservative regime the answer given to the single unemployed men was to put them away in relief camps, as they called them, for an indefinite period of time. In some cases it certainly went on for four years. The single unemployed men were expected to stay in enforced idleness, removed from their families and friends, taken out of the ordinary community life which I think all young Canadians would hope to enjoy, and with absolutely no hope for the future. These men, after being incarcerated in these relief camps or concentration camps for a period of time, decided that they wanted what we all believe to be the right of every Canadian, the right to work for a living. They took the only measure open to them and decided to come to the foot of the throne at Ottawa to lay before the government of this country their reasonable requests.
What were the requests of this group? The Regina Leader-Post story sums up the requests of the strikers at that time. There were six requests that they had to make of the Conservative government. The first was work at 50 cents an hour for unskilled men and at union rates for skilled men, for a five-day 30-hour week. In other words, they would work by the hour. They were anxious to spread the work around. It was not a question of making a great deal of money. All they asked was the establishment of a work and wages program to give them employment, even if it was a question of employing them on an hourly basis for only 30 hours per week. Then, they asked for compensation, social and unemployment insurance and the guarantee of their right to vote; recognition of the leaders of the strikers for negotiation purposes and an end of military control of relief camps.
No hon. member would suggest that these requests were unreasonable or out of line. When these men set out for Ottawa they got as far as Regina and, according to the bit of history in the Leader-Post, when the advance party arrived at Regina, they made a favourable impression. At that time the present Minister of Agriculture was the premier of Saskatchewan. These men made a good impression in the city of Regina, and when they came to the city every effort was made by the citizens of Regina to meet with them and to extend hospitality to them.
After a period of protracted negotiations the leaders of these single unemployed went to Ottawa to talk with the members of the Conservative cabinet. One newspaperman gives this report of an interview between one

member of the delegation and the late Prime Minister Bennett. Mr. Bennett is quoted as saying:
I ask you if you think you are playing the part of good citizens when you work against a country that is doing the best it can for you?
Now, there was an example of the attitude of the prime minister of Canada. Don't you fellows realize we are doing the best we possibly can for you? Ingrates coming to us and complaining! The thing is fantastic. These men were presenting their requests to the Conservative government at that time and they asked for a reasonable audience from the government. They were told by the Prime Minister that this country was doing all that it could, meaning the government was doing all it could, for them, and therefore they should be satisfied, be good citizens and go back to their relief camps where they should wait until the end of the depression. Here was the old idea that prosperity was just around the corner. If you waited long enough some day we might have a return to good times.
When the negotiations broke down, we know that on July 1-I am going to quote from the newspaper historical account-the following happened:
Then without warning steel helmeted police, mounties and Regina city police among them, moved in on the meeting at 8.20 o'clock. Five or six of the "strike leaders" were arrested and were being led away when some stones were thrown.
In other words they arrested a number of men who had previously announced in the city of Regina that they were ready for arrest at any time. As a matter of fact, they might have welcomed it in order that they might present their case before the courts. They would not have damaged their case by being arrested for the simple exercise of their right as citizens to request action from the government. We know that as a result of that riot one man was killed and over a hundred people were injured, most of them Regina citizens. Most of the relief camp strikers never left the Regina stadium where they were billeted. There were over a hundred injured and a great deal of property was damaged in the city of Regina. There is the story. When the single unemployed men in Canada asked for work and wages, the Tories gave them bullets and tear gas. Is it any wonder that the attitude of the people in my part of the country towards the Conservative party underwent a dramatic change? Our people will never forget the brutality and callousness of the last Conservative government in this country.
When I heard the Leader of the Opposition, the leader of the Conservative party in
Supply-Labour
Canada, get up and make some trips back into the history of this country to try to present the Conservative party as the friend of the workingman, I could not help but cast my mind back over those last days of the Conservative administration in this country from 1930 to 1935. Then, of course, according to Liberal spokesmen the depression was supposed to have ended in 1935. The other day in this house the hon. member for Vancouver South spoke of the great depression from 1930 to 1935. Let me tell him that there were over half the people of Saskatchewan on relief in 1936. Nothing the Liberals did at that time helped to bring about a solution of the unemployment problem. I mention this simply because the Leader of the Opposition has seen fit to go back into history to try to do the impossible, that is to try to portray the Conservative party as the friend of the workingman. A number of references along the same line were made by other speakers for the Conservative party. The hon. member for Greenwood the other day made an interjection with regard to the Winnipeg Labour trouble, and the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre answered, and I think rightly, by naming some of those people involved at that time, some of the people who were the most respected citizens in the city of Winnipeg. There was John Queen, who became mayor of that city, and Mr. J. S. Woodsworth who was perhaps the most respected man who ever sat in this House of Commons.
But I was surprised to hear the hon. member for Greenwood make some reference to those gentlemen in terms which indicated that they were communists of that time; I believe he said something to that effect.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: Would the hon. member permit a question? If he will read what I said he will see that I said nothing of the kind. There is no man in the House of Commons who respected Mr. Woodsworth more than I did. I am glad to say here he was in my house as a guest.
What I did point out was that at that time what they were faced with, here at Ottawa, was signs of disorder such as there had never been. I read the clauses in the amendment, and I asked whether anyone would doubt what kind of men those clauses were directed against. It was communism. I do not care how good were the men the hon. member has mentioned; they were not the only people concerned. And the things that went on-well, if he will read them he will see that they were very different from those which would have been done by men like Mr. Woodsworth.

Supply-Labour


Alfred Claude Ellis: Of course I appreciate the remarks made by the hon. member, but I certainly did not say that he mentioned those names in particular. But I think he will agree that the law certainly was applied, and as a matter of fact those gentlemen spent time in jail. Whether we now say that was an injustice-that may be. But, nevertheless, as a result of the law of tnat time certain men who certainly were not criminals or who were not guilty of any crime did spend time in jail. As a matter of fact, I believe one of them was elected to office while he was in jail.


Jean-François Pouliot: And there was Arthur
Meighen's telegram.


Alfred Claude Ellis: To get back to the question to which I was referring, following the period of 1935, it would seem that the hon. member for Vancouver South was under the impression that the depression ended in 1935. I have here the number of people who were on relief in 1936, and there were 1,310,000 people on relief at that time. And yet the hon. member for Vancouver South seems to think that the depression was over, and that we had reached that corner around which prosperity was found.
I wish to make one reference to the remarks made the other day by the hon. member for Prince Albert. This is not the first occasion upon which he has made reference to the unemployment situation as it affects his province, and mine. In view of the fact that he has placed on the record two references to Saskatchewan which I think are inaccurate and misleading, to say the least, I wish to place a couple of figures on record, and to stress the fact that in Saskatchewan the problem of unemployment is related directly to farm income.
Saskatchewan is not an industrial province whatsoever. It is strictly an agricultural province. Secondary employment in Regina, for example, is related directly to farm income. I have received a communication from my own city regarding the unemployment situation there. I might say that the Trades and Labour Congress and the Regina labour council of the Canadian Congress of Labour in my city formed a joint committee to make a further investigation of the local situation, and they will be making a recommendation in due course. I wish to point out that in Canada as a whole we find that less than 14 per cent of those in the labour force are agricultural workers, whereas in Saskatchewan the reverse is true. There are not more than 25 per cent in the labour force of that agricultural province who could be classified as industrial, manufacturing or construction

workers. And to get that 25 per cent figure you have to add in a number of store employees.
So you find that essentially Saskatchewan is an agricultural community. You cannot possibly compare the unemployment picture, for example in the city of Regina, with that in an industrialized city like the city of Windsor. And of course it is utterly fantastic to draw a parallel of that kind.
At no time have I or any member of this group made any effort to attach blame to any one part of the country so far as unemployment is concerned. It is a national problem. Unemployment is something that affects the entire dominion. But I do wish to repeat and to stress once again that in Saskatchewan unemployment is related directly to falling farm income.
I know the hon. member for Prince Albert will agree with me when I say that unemployment in Saskatchewan is directly related to farm income. And farm income is one of those things over which the provincial government has very little if any control. In our province our farmers are engaged in the production of agricultural commodities for overseas markets. Very little of our wheat is consumed here; we are on the export market. Consequently the policy adopted by the Minister of Trade and Commerce will determine the condition of agriculture in Saskatchewan. And indirectly of course it affects the employment picture in my own city. I have the figures here-


James Garfield Gardiner: May I ask the hon. member a question? Apparently he is going to base his argument on the fall in income of the farms in Saskatchewan last year. Was that not entirely due to the fact that there had been crop failures, and that the elevators had no room in which to put the wheat that had already been produced in other years?


Alfred Claude Ellis: Well, Mr. Chairman, the reason there was no room was that the wheat was not being sold-wheat which should have gone out of the country to overseas markets.


James Garfield Gardiner: The reason there was
no room was that we had had the three biggest crops ever grown in Saskatchewan in the three preceding years.


Alfred Claude Ellis: Well, I am not going to get into an argument over that just now.


Edward Turney Applewhaite: Order. In interrupting the hon. member for Regina City I realize that he could quite easily say that the same type of interruption might have been made earlier in the debate. However, may I take this opportunity to point out to the committee that recent interjections would seem to

show we are in grave danger of passing from a debate which should deal with labour to a debate based very largely on the Department of Agriculture, and possibly on the Department of Trade and Commerce. I realize the hon. member for Regina City is entitled to refer to anything which he considers has had an effect on labour; but I would ask him, and hon. members who follow him in the debate, not to go into detail about causes of conditions concerning an entirely different department to any greater extent than is absolutely necessary. It must be kept in mind that we are now discussing the estimates of the Department of Labour.


Alfred Claude Ellis: I have no intention of pursuing the matter further.
I have in my hand a news release issued jointly by the Department of Labour and the dominion bureau of statistics showing the number of unplaced applicants at employment offices in various regional and local offices throughout Canada. I would note, incidentally, that this information is for February 17, which apparently is the latest information available. It reveals increases in many offices throughout Canada. If we get into the figures I would point out that in the prairie region, with special reference to the city of Regina, there was from January 20, 1955, to February 17, 1955, an increase of 135 in the number of unplaced applicants. In the city of Calgary there was an increase of 687 and in Edmonton an increase of 1,693.


John George Diefenbaker: What about a comparison with the year before?


Alfred Claude Ellis: The other evening the hon. member for Prince Albert was challenged by the hon. member for Winnipeg North to put figures on the record, and he refused to do so.


John George Diefenbaker: No, Mr. Chairman; just a moment. On a question of privilege, I said I had already done so; and I repeat that now.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: Where did you do it?


John George Diefenbaker: Look at Hansard.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: I have, and I cannot find it.


Alfred Claude Ellis: I happen to have Hansard here, and-


John George Diefenbaker: The percentages are there.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: Percentages?


Alfred Claude Ellis: I note the percentages are, yes. However, I do not think there is much point in going into that.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.
Supply-Labour


Alfred Claude Ellis: I am not going to take the time to go through Hansard. The hon. member for Prince Albert was not prepared to be interrupted in the middle of his speech for two or three minutes.


John George Diefenbaker: Read the percentages.


Alfred Claude Ellis: However, I shall read the figures that I have in my hand from the dominion bureau of statistics. I note that as of February 17, 1955, there were applications for employment on hand in the national employment service offices as follows:	In Regina, the
figure was 5,160; in Fort William-Port Arthur, 7,391; in Edmonton, 14,592. I am not going to try to prove that the unemployment situation is any worse in Alberta than it is in Ontario, or that it is worse in British Columbia than it is in some other place. That is not the point I am trying to make. My point is that unemployment is a national problem. I do not think any useful purpose is served by some hon. member trying to cast aspersions on some particular provincial government. I would say to the hon. member for Prince Albert that if he has not enough confidence in the leader of the Progressive Conservative party in his province to let him carry on the provincial battle in that province, we of the C.C.F. have full confidence in our premier and the members of our government and the members of our legislature to carry on the provincial battle in the legislature.
There is not much to be gained by trying to malign a provincial government during the course of a debate of this kind. I realize that an election is taking place in Ontario, and perhaps some of the remarks of the hon. member might have been pointed in that particular direction. But I do want to refer to one other point which he made. It was not a point so much as it was a sort of inference; but the inference was sufficiently obvious that the hon. member for Temiscouata was able to get it right at the moment. He tried to convey the impression that the reason why there were so many unemployed in Saskatchewan was that the crown corporations have been laying off their employees, and these employees have been crowding the ranks of the recipients of unemployment insurance in that province.
I am going to put on the record some pertinent figures in that regard. I am going back two years. There is no use in going back a month or so. Let us go back a couple of years at a time when unemployment began really to surge ahead and become an increasingly serious problem in that province. In 1953 there were some 408,000 unplaced applicants at unemployment offices throughout Canada. At that time there were 3,700

Supply-Labour
employees of crown corporations in Saskatchewan. In 1955 the number of unplaced applicants in the national employment offices throughout Canada had risen to 632,913, as of March, 1955. And during that same time, when unemployment was increasing, the number of employees in crown corporations went up to the present figure of 4,000. Therefore, we find this picture. In 1953, there were fewer employees of crown corporations; there were fewer unemployed in Canada.
1 am not going to argue whether unemployment has gone up. I say it has gone up, actually. Be that as it may. To leave the impression that the unemployment situation has been aggravated by wholesale dismissals of crown corporation employees of course is utterly absurd and not in accordance with the facts.


John George Diefenbaker: Will the hon. member give us the figures?


Alistair McLeod Stewart: Will you give the figures?


John George Diefenbaker: I will give the figures.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: You have never done it yet.


Alfred Claude Ellis: I was sitting in my seat in the house when the hon. member for Winnipeg North asked the hon. member for Prince Albert to put the figures on record.


John George Diefenbaker: See March 15, 1953 Hansard at page 2033.


Alfred Claude Ellis: He referred to the speech he had made in this house and I shall not take the time to look up the debate. I should have thought it would have been quite in order to place the figures on the record.


John George Diefenbaker: What about the box factory employees?


Alfred Claude Ellis: With respect to the Department of Labour, I want to re-emphasize the comment made by an hon. member on the other side of the house a short while ago that the Minister of Labour is in a very unenviable position as Minister of Labour. In view of the very serious unemployment situation in Canada, it is only natural that the public mind would be thinking of the Minister of Labour as being the chief villain in the piece so far as unemployment is concerned.
Some hon. members have already pointed out that the Department of Labour does not possess the powers to deal effectively with the general question of unemployment. Unemployment is something which must be put on the doorstep of the Prime Minister and the entire cabinet. Certainly the Minister of Labour is not in a position in his own

department to deal effectively with a problem of that magnitude. Therefore, any criticism that we have made in respect to unemployment is certainly not levelled at the Minister of Labour. I am quite certain that the Minister of Trade and Commerce and the Minister of Finance possess far more powers to deal with the general questions of unemployment and related economic problems than the minister of the labour department who is charged with very limited responsibilities in this connection. But I do want to refer to one question that was raised by my colleague, the hon. member for Cape Breton South, the other evening, and it is the only one I want to emphasize. I refer to the question of vocational training.
For some time we have been a little concerned about the future of vocational training in Canada. I believe questions have been asked in the house with respect to the future of the vocational training program, and the answers were not too satisfactory. It would appear that vocational training is not getting the proper consideration that it deserves from the government. At a time like this vocational training is of more importance than ever before.
A great deal has been said about automation and technological advances in general. As we approach closer and closer toward this perhaps ultimate goal of automation, there is less and less room in the labour force for unskilled labour. There might have been a time a few years back when a part of our labour force consisted of largely unskilled labour; but gradually the numbers of unskilled labourers required in our labour force have been diminishing and as our requirements of unskilled labour diminish it is all the more important to get skilled persons to take on the various jobs as they arise throughout the country.
We know that throughout Canada a great many of our young people are leaving school at an early age. Not too many of them are going on to college and university. These young people have to be equipped to take jobs in the increasingly greatly industrialized era that we are entering. It is not something that is just starting; it has been going on for a long period of time, but there is an acceleration of that tendency today. Certainly now is the time when we need greater emphasis on vocational training, not just for our young people. What about our older citizens, particularly those over 40 years of age?
Yesterday, my colleague, the hon. member for Cape Breton South, referred to the closing of 1-B colliery in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. He pointed out that 60 per cent of the men

who were put out of employment in that mine were 40 years of age and over. What is going to happen to those men? Mining has been their life work. Certainly, employment opportunities have to be provided for them somehow or other. If a man has been brought up as a skilled craftsman in his own particular line of work and suddenly he is denied further access to that type of work, he has to be given the necessary opportunity to adapt himself to a new type of employment. Now is the time when we should be giving an increasing emphasis to vocational training, not only for our young people but for our older people, those people who are being displaced day by day through this whole process of automation.
It seems to me that the government has taken a retrograde step. I do not know the reason for it. Has the Minister of Finance something to do with it? Has he figured that he has to lop off expenses by cutting down vocational training grants? If so, it is a shortsighted policy.


Walter Edward Harris: It is always the same. If you do not cut expenditures you are doing something wrong. If you do, then you are shortsighted.


Alfred Claude Ellis: Mr. Chairman, I do not think there is any question in the minds of people throughout this country that at this time there is a need for the extension of vocational training facilities rather than a curtailment. If the minister knows some other answer, if he knows how we are going to fit workers, particularly older workers, who have not had an opportunity to learn the types of skill necessary to take on a different type of employment, perhaps he has the answer; but it seems to me that you have to provide employment for these men, and to be perfectly realistic about it you have to fit them to take new types of employment. Rather than cutting down on vocational training we should be extending it. I am quite sure that the board in my own city would be most happy to co-operate in the extension of vocational training facilities in that area to take care of this great need.


Walter Edward Harris: Can my hon. friend tell me how much money was spent in his city out of this grant for the elderly people he is talking about?


Alfred Claude Ellis: I am referring to this vocational training grant for the training of tradesmen.


Walter Edward Harris: That is what the hon. member was talking about.


Alfred Claude Ellis: I do not want to be led off the path by an interjection from the Minister of
Supply-Labour
Finance. I am satisfied that the minister is fully cognizant of the need for the extension of vocational training. I think it is a question of convincing his colleagues in the government that now is the time to extend the vocational training facilities in this country rather than to curtail them.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: Mr. Chairman, I want to make one or two comments upon the remarks made by the hon. member for Regina City. It seems to me that there ought to be certain decencies in the political life we are engaged in, and I think it is a poor piece of business, particularly for a teacher, to spend his time sneering at one of the great public servants who toiled for this country as few people have toiled. I refer to the man who was prime minister from 1930 to 1935.
Let us be honest and admit that the period from 1930 to 1935 was a time when not only did world trade dry up but western Canada dried up. I was in business during those years and it was my duty to go to western Canada and I saw things there during the drought that I never thought possible. I saw sights that reminded me of what I imagined the Sahara desert looked like. But for people to come along now and criticize the men of those days, overlooking the situation as it existed then, and overlooking that we have new financial tools-we have the Bank of Canada which was set up by the Right Hon. R. B. Bennett-is not good business.


Mr. Quelch:: The hon. member must have forgotten that 1932 was one of the heaviest crops western Canada ever had but the price of wheat was only 19 cents a bushel.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: I said the years from 1930 to 1935. There may have been one good year and I did not say that all the years were drought years. So far as the price of wheat is concerned, I pointed out that world trade had dried up as well as western Canada. The only thing I want to say is that for anyone to sneer at the men of those days who were doing the best they could in the light of those days is a poor piece of business. As a matter of fact it was R. B. Bennett who took the pioneer action of guaranteeing the price of wheat.


Alfred Claude Ellis: Would the hon. member permit me to make a statement. I did not intend to create the impression that I was sneering at R. B. Bennett. I was criticizing him, not personally, but as one of the leaders of the Conservative party.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: If the hon. member says that he was not sneering I accept his word, but that was the impression I got. That is

Supply-Labour
why I rose to my feet because I considered R. B. Bennett to be a great citizen who served this country in times of incredible difficulties and it is a poor piece of business to be trying to diminish his reputation.


William Alfred Robinson: Shall the item carry?


Stanley Howard Knowles: Is the minister not going to answer some of the many questions?


Milton Fowler Gregg: Mr. Chairman, I have followed this far-flung discussion yesterday and today and have made a great many notes. I think it would add to the orderliness of the discussion if I were to state that as we reach the particular items in my estimates I shall do my utmost to answer the questions and comments and criticisms that have been made with regard to those items. I would make one reservation in that I did promise that I would reply to a criticism made before dinner by the hon. member for Winnipeg North. I would like to do that. If we do not reach the fair employment practices item, which is only the third or fourth item, before 9.58 o'clock I shall answer his comment then.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
175. Annuities Act-administration, $1,015,522.
Mr. Bryce:: Mr. Chairman, I have had some correspondence recently in connection with annuities. The trouble seems to be that there is no cash surrender provision in connection with annuities. I think it was 1951 when the government introduced a bill containing a cash surrender clause. I am sure the minister must remember this. As I say, if a man takes out an annuity he cannot possibly get his money back. This is what the department tells me.
I should like to ask the minister if the government has any intention in the near future of amending the annuities act so that under extenuating circumstances the annuitant would be able to get back his money. In the case I have in mind a man has lost his car and is forced to sell some of his household effects. He has an annuity but he cannot touch it. Perhaps the minister can answer me now, or even later. Apparently the bill that the government brought down before to which I have referred was dropped by the wayside somewhere.


Milton Fowler Gregg: It is not the intention of the government, at this session at any rate, to bring in an amendment to make the equity in an annuity refundable. The whole act has had consideration, but the particular provision just suggested would seem to be out of harmony with the original intention of the annuity plan which was to encourage thrift for old age.


Mrs. Fairclough:: When the supplementary estimates were up for consideration in March they contained an item of $26,000 on which very little explanation was given. I believe I intimated to the committee at that time that when the main item came up I would ask some questions about it. If my memory serves me well, I asked what that $26,000 was for and was told that additional commissions had had to be paid because of additional sales of annuities which had not been anticipated by the department. At that time, again I am trusting to my memory, the Minister of Finance agreed with that statement. Despite that and the fact that I gained the impression that he expected this picture to continue and that there would be more annuities sold this year than there were last year, I find the same amount in the estimates appropriated for commission to agents as there was in the estimates for last year, that is $270,000. I should like to know just what the situation really is. If the trend is towards greater and greater sales, that is poor budgeting. If, on the other hand, it was a once-in-a-lifetime sale, I would be interested to know just what it was that caused the additional expenditure of $26,000. Was it a general increase in business, was it industrial coverage for a large number of people, or just what did occasion that $26,000 additional appropriation?


Milton Fowler Gregg: Mr. Chairman, the explanation given in regard to the supplementary estimates was correct, that the sales that were made last year had accrued commissions for which we did not have enough money. Perhaps my hon. friend would permit me later on to refer more definitely to her inquiry with regard to comparing the amount set out for commissions this year, $270,000, with the $296,000 for last year. I should be glad to do that.


Ellen Louks Fairclough: I asked this question of the Minister of Finance. The Minister of Labour not being in the house at the time this item was passed. He did not have the information at his fingertips. I intimated that I intended to ask the Minister of Labour whether this was a general increase; was it one large coverage that was sold, or just what did occasion that amount of $26,000? I am sure the minister follows me. If there was a general increase in business, why is that amount not appropriated for this year also? If the sale of annuities is becoming so popular and the agents so active that they are gradually increasing business, then why is an increased amount not in the estimates this year?


Milton Fowler Gregg: That is the point I should like to make sure about. I can say that the increased amount of commission asked for in the supplementary estimates was due to a general increase in business last year. I cannot for the moment say why we were a little pessimistic about future business in making up what is here our main estimates for this year.


Ellen Louks Fairclough: I understand that there are two groups of agents, ordinary salesmen and postmasters.


Milton Fowler Gregg: Our sales force is pretty steady.


Ellen Louks Fairclough: I notice also that in this department, quite apart from the commission, last year there was an expenditure of $1,009,597, as against an appropriation of $997,528. I suppose that the increase of $26,000 would be included in that. Despite that, the appropriation for this year is even another $6,000 higher than the expenditure. It is hard to reconcile these figures without taking out the $26,000. You really have to add the $26,000 to the original appropriation of last year, and you get $1,023,000. The estimated expenditure is $1,009,000. I do not want to pin the minister down at this time of night to a full statement on expenditures, but I rather think that if we got to the bottom of the $26,000 we would get an idea of what the rest of it is about.


Mr. Thatcher:: I too do not wish to hold up these estimates at this time of night but I do want, for the third consecutive year, to object to this expenditure. In my opinion it simply cannot be justified. During 1955 the government is proposing to spend $1,015,000 on the administrative costs of annuities. I think it is worth while noting that such an amount is about $18,000 more than last year. I think hon. members, as they look at this expenditure, should keep in mind the original purpose of this annuities legislation. The original Government Annuities Act was passed in 1908. The reason it was passed was to help people of moderate means to put away money for their old age. Since that time of course old age pension legislation has been passed. Despite that fact I still think there is a place in our over-all social security system for annuities. As a matter of fact, I am one who thinks that probably the ceiling should be increased from $1,200 to $2,400. At the same time, I feel very strongly that this annuities department should be placed on a self-sufficient basis. There is no earthly reason why the taxpayers of Canada should be subsidizing these annuities. It is worth
Supply-Labour
while noting that, in addition to this administrative item, the government is paying out a substantial sum each year to keep the fund on a sound basis. During 1955, I believe, it is about $250,000. In past years the sum has been considerably higher.
That means that this year the taxpayer of Canada is subsidizing the annuities branch, or to be more exact, those who hold annuities, to the extent of $1,265,000. Since this legislation originated, the over-all subsidy now totals more than $32 million. Now, I contend, as I have contended in the past, that government policy in this respect should be changed. I am all in favour of government annuities being sold at cost; I think that is sensible. I do not think the government should try to sell these annuities at a profit. But I certainly do not think that the government should continue to sell annuities at a loss.
If such a policy were followed the annuities branch could still sell these annuities at less than insurance companies could sell similar policies. I take this attitude tonight particularly because so few people are benefiting from this subsidy. Last year a total of 18,466 individual and group contracts were issued. That means, in other words, that the taxpayer of Canada subsidized each and every contract, for administrative costs alone, to the extent of $54. As I see it, the Minister of Labour, and the Minister of Finance, should give serious consideration to changing government policy, so that these annuities are sold at a price which is sufficient, first of all, to cover administrative costs, and secondly, to keep the fund solvent.
I can see no reason whatever why the taxpayer of Canada should be called upon to subsidize a scheme which is used by only a small minority of our population, most of whom are in no need of such government assistance. Moreover, I see no reason why the government must employ 174 people at the taxpayers' expense, simply to sell an article at below cost and in competition with existing companies. Today it is not always- indeed, very frequently it is not-people in low income groups who buy annuities. Quite often it is people who are in the higher wage category who buy the annuities.
Many people say that the cost of government should be brought down. If hon. members believe that fact, I suggest that this is a good place where they could start trimming. Therefore I move:
That item 175, on page 31 of the estimates, which calls for an expenditure of $1,015,522, be reduced to the sum of $1.
If I need a seconder, the hon. member for Chicoutimi will second this motion.


Mr. Sinclair:: Party solidarity.

Supply-Labour


Charles Edward Johnston: I should like to say a word or two about the amendment now before the committee. First of all, may I say that I do not hold any annuities. I have never been able to buy any, but I can see the advantage of having them. I would agree with the mover of the amendment to the extent of saying that the department, particularly the annuities branch, is overmanned. I think some economy could be practised in that regard and maybe they could save enough money to balance the accounts. But I do not think it would be a good thing to do away with the government annuities branch. I maintain this is one instance where the ordinary working individual has an opportunity to make an investment which gives him a fair and decent return.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: I think so too.


Charles Edward Johnston: The hon. member for Moose Jaw-Lake Centre says he agrees with that.


Wilbert Ross Thatcher: Just make it self-sufficient.


Charles Edward Johnston: It seems to me that to give the ordinary little man a place to invest his money so that he can draw a fair amount of interest on it and have some security is a worth-while thing to do. It is the sort of investment that is not available to him from any private organization I know of at that rate of interest. I have investigated the matter with the insurance companies and I find that what they have to offer cannot compare with government annuities.
I want to take exception to the suggestion made by the hon. member for Selkirk. I would be very sorry indeed to see any cash surrender clause provided in the annuities legislation whereby the money could be withdrawn. To me that is a safeguard to be retained. I do not think any person who has worked hard to save enough money to invest in an annuity so that he can have some form of benefit in his later years should be allowed because of financial stress or simply because he wishes to do so to withdraw that money and then live in poverty after that. I can understand the hon. member's concern. There might be an elderly person who had a doctor bill that should be paid, but I would be the last one in the world to say that they should cash in their annuity in order to pay a doctor bill, much as I would like to see them pay it. My experience is that the doctors probably can get along a little bit better than the person who is in such need that they want to cash their annuity in order to pay the bill. Then they would not have the benefit of a monthly annuity payment to assist them in their old age.

No, Mr. Chairman, I would not sanction a cash surrender provision being put into the annuity legislation. I think it should be left exactly as it is. If a person has an ordinary straight annuity they should be protected against all claims so that they will be able to draw their monthly cheque to assist them in their time of need and be able to make use of the assistance which they worked so hard to provide.


Mr. Harkness:: Possibly I should not even speak on this particular subject because I happen to possess one of the annuities which I took out in the year 1928. In view of what has happened in Alberta in the last three or four weeks it may be I am disqualified from sitting in the house because I have one of these annuities. I am not too sure of my position from that point of view. My main reason for rising was to ask, with reference to the very considerable amount of $475,177 estimated for this year for staff wages, and being part of the total of $1,600,000 odd, whether it is all charged against the general annuities scheme or whether it is a straight contribution by the people of Canada towards the plan.


Milton Fowler Gregg: It is a straight contribution of the taxpayers towards the annuities plan. I should like to refer to the question of the hon. member for Hamilton West. In both cases, for 1954-55 and for 1955-56, the answer is that it was a case of underestimating at the time the main estimates were prepared. We are called upon in October to make up our estimates, and at that time it was not clear how much would be needed for commissions. We asked for $26,000 more last year, and I have to tell the Minister of Finance that we will be asking for $35,000 in the supplementary estimates this year. If I have permission, I should like to refer, before ten o'clock is called, to the very special question raised this afternoon by the hon. member for Winnipeg North. He charged that the government is violating the Canada Fair Employment Practices Act. He based his charge on a document which he held in his hand and which he indicated called for certain information that was contrary to the spirit and the letter of the act. I should like to tell him and the house that the unemployment policy of the government is of course conducted by the civil service commission-the employment policy, I mean. I have heard so much about unemployment!


Stanley Howard Knowles: The truth will out.


Milton Fowler Gregg: The carrying out of the policy of the federal government in employing staff

is the task of the civil service commission, and the commission does attempt to carry out fully the letter and the spirit of the Canada Fair Employment Practices Act. Needless to say, the government believes that should be done.
The hon. member kindly sent me the document he had in his hand this afternoon, and I was glad to see that it was not an application for employment in the civil service at all but rather a confidential questionnaire used for security purposes only. It is used in connection with personnel occupying vulnerable posts so far as security is concerned. I am told that only with persons holding or applying for posts that may give access to vital information or some other similar matter is this form used.
In view of what I have said, I hardly think its use in this way is contrary to section 11 of the act which reads as follows:
Nothing in this act shall be construed to require a person to employ anyone or to do or refrain from doing any other thing contrary to any instruction, direction or regulation given or made by or on behalf of the government of Canada in the interests of the safety or security of Canada or any state allied or associated with Canada.


Alistair McLeod Stewart: Mr. Chairman, I must take issue with the minister on this subject. In the first place, the act deals with something more than with forms of application for employment. The act states in subsection 5 of section 4:
No person shall . . . make any written . . . inquiry in connection with employment that expresses either directly or indirectly any limitation. specification or preference as to race . . .
And so on. This is a written inquiry. It certainly is not a questionnaire concerning employment. It is a written inquiry, and the minister tells me now that this inquiry is only used in those tender, soft spots where security may be at stake. But how is the security of Canada safeguarded by finding out what a civil servant's father's nationality was? How is the security of the state furthered by finding out the nationality of the dead parent of a civil servant? I may say I did not get this document from the person who received it originally from whatever branch of the government it was he was in. I got it from an intermediary. I am informed on what I consider to be good authority that the position this person was seeking was as sensitive as that of member of parliament, and members of parliament are not allowed to know too much.
I am quite certain that despite the belief of the minister this form has been used in other departments of government. I have no objection at all to the most stringent security
Supply-Labour
regulations. After all, they are necessary. I cannot imagine, from the point of view of security and protecting Canada against possible treachery-


Edward Turney Applewhaite: Order. At the moment, the committee is entirely out of order, for which I am responsible. I understood that for some particular reason it was the sense of the committee that the minister should be given an opportunity to reply today to a question asked earlier. Apparently the minister's reply is of such a nature or the item is of such a nature that it is going to provoke quite a debate which obviously belongs under resolution No. 178 dealing with the administration of the Canada Fair Employment Practices Act. I am afraid it cannot be continued under an amendment to reduce the item for the administration of the annuities act. There is an amendment before us on item 175. Is the committee ready for the question?


Some hon. Members:: Question.


Some hon. Members:: Ten o'clock.


Ellen Louks Fairclough: I believe that some of our members wish to speak to this question and since it is now past ten o'clock I ask you to call it ten o'clock.
Item stands.


Edward Turney Applewhaite: It being ten o'clock, shall I report the resolutions and ask leave to sit again?
Resolutions adopted in committee of supply this day reported, read the second time and concurred in.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Walter Edward Harris: On Monday we shall take the committee of the whole on Bill No. 188, the Government Employees Compensation Act, committee of the whole on Bill No. 279, the great lakes fisheries convention; the second reading of Bill No. 351 respecting Canadian National Railways; second reading of Bill No. 352 respecting the inspection of meat and meat products; the resolution stage of the bill with respect to national standards for agricultural products; the resolution with respect to the Yukon Quartz Mining Act; the second reading of Bill No. 5 to amend the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act; the second reading of Bill No. 350 to amend the Blind Persons Act.
If I might have the indulgence of the house for just one moment, I would ask the serious consideration of all members to the business of the house for the next few weeks. We had all, I think, hoped earlier, if I may say so, that we might conclude the session some

Supply-Labour
time about the middle of June. I should like to point out that there are six or seven committees still functioning and meeting two and in some cases three times a day. It would be desirable to get the committee work cleaned up, I would hope, during the course of the next week, if at all possible, so that very shortly after that it would be possible to meet in the mornings in the house.
What I say now is not by way of criticism at all of anyone or any group, but often we find, sir, that in the last two weeks we have to do more contraction perhaps of what members would like to say and do than should be necessary if we started a little rationing a little earlier. I should like to point out that in this particular debate on labour we took almost nine hours, I think about eight and three-quarter hours, to carry the first item. We took a little over three hours to carry the first item last year, and I do not think there is any particular reason for that. We had a long unemployment debate in both sessions, so I just appeal to hon. members to bear in mind that if we would have the time to give full consideration to all the business that is going to come before parliament we might consider, beginning on Monday, endeavouring to find a way to state party positions and individual positions with perhaps a little less debate than we have had.


Ellen Louks Fairclough: If I could comment on the minister's remarks and his reference to the fact that the debate on the first item of labour estimates last year took but three hours, I would remind him that it was about the next to the last day of the session and
the whole thing was considered very quickly with the co-operation of both sides of the house.


Walter Edward Harris: That is my point. If, beginning on Monday, we would state our positions of course on all legislation and on all estimates, but nevertheless keeping debate down to a minimum, we would not have to contract an important debate in the last week.


Stanley Howard Knowles: May I ask the minister a question? Will the business on Tuesday be a continuation of that which is not concluded on Monday?


Walter Edward Harris: I hope we will take the remainder of the legislation on the order paper, having disposed of all that I mentioned for Monday.


Howard Charles Green: May I ask the minister what he intends to do about setting up the committee on atomic energy?


Walter Edward Harris: I am not in a position to say. I shall try to answer that on Monday.


[Stage Direction]
It being nine minutes after ten o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.
[The following Items were passed in committee of supply]:

[Stage Direction]
A-Department-
General administration-
173.	Departmental administration, $685,605.
174.	To provide for expenses of the economics and research branch. $549,517.
[Stage Direction]
Monday. May 23, 1955