1956-02-23

Right Hon. L. S. St. Laurent (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, 1 feel sure that hon. members have been pleased to learn that the President of Italy, His Excellency Giovanni Gronchi, has accepted an invitation extended by the government to visit Canada during his North American tour. Mr. Gronchi will be arriving in Ottawa on Saturday, March 3, and will remain until Monday, March 5. Mr. Gronchi will be accompanied by his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Gaetano Martino.
His Excellency the Governor General has invited the President and Madame Gronchi, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Madame Martino to be his guests at Government House during their visit.
Hon. members will also be pleased to learn that Mr. Gronchi has consented to address both houses of parliament in this chamber on Monday, March 5, at 2.30 p.m.



REQUEST FOR CALLING OF STANDING COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. H. O. While (Middlesex Easl):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the government. Does the government intend to call a meeting or meetings of the standing committee on agriculture during the present session of parliament to study the economic problems of agriculture other than those arising out of wheat, with particular reference to the ever-increasing costs and declining prices and markets?


Right Hon. C. D. Howe (Minister of Trade and Commerce):: Mr. Speaker, the committee on agriculture and colonization is a standing committee of this house. It is my understanding that the committee decides what it will discuss, and I presume that will be so in this case.



ST. LAWRENCE SEAWAY REQUEST FOR INTERVENTION ON BEHALF OF CAUGHNAWAGA INDIANS

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. E. D. Fulton (Kamloops):: I should like to ask a question of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. Will the minister intervene on behalf of the Indians of the
Caughnawaga reservation near Montreal and arrange to halt the entry into and destruction of homes and property of those Indians by contractors of the St. Lawrence Seaway Corporation at least until the question of compensation and alternative housing accommodation is settled?


Hon. J. W. Pickersgill (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration):: No, Mr. Speaker; the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration will not intervene. This matter has proceeded according to law, as provided by this parliament at the last session, and everything that has been done about this matter has been done in accordance with the law. Every Indian whose property is affected has been seen individually by the legal adviser of my department, and the whole situation has been thoroughly explained. Proper and appropriate arrangements are being made between the seaway authority, my department, the band council and a committee appointed by the band itself to deal with this matter. I think it would be quite improper, sir, to give any impression that anything else was the case.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Does the minister recall that on June 27 of last year-


Some hon. Members:: Order.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Does the minister recall that on June 27 of last year he gave an undertaking to this house, the spirit of which seems to be completely denied by his present attitude? In the light of that previous undertaking, will the minister not reconsider and at least arrange that houses be not destroyed until alternative housing accommodation is provided in the middle of winter?


John Whitney Pickersgill: No houses are being destroyed until alternative housing accommodation is provided.


Mr. G. H. Caslleden (Yorkfon):: Mr. Speaker, this question is supplementary to the question asked by the hon. member for Kamloops (Mr. Fulton). Will the minister inform the house what compensation has been given to the people who live on the Caughnawaga reserve whose homes and property have been confiscated for the construction of the St. Lawrence seaway through that reserve?


John Whitney Pickersgill: Mr. Speaker, I am sure the hon. gentleman was quite inadvertent in using the word "confiscated". There is no

Inquiries of the Ministry question of confiscation; it is an expropriation for which full and adequate compensation will be paid.
It was suggested that an interim payment should be made but I am informed that the Indians would prefer to have the final value determined before being paid. A valuation has been made on behalf of the seaway authority and a separate valuation has been made by my department. At the present time my department, in consultation with the council of the band, is engaged in discussions with the seaway authority with a view to seeing whether an agreement can be reached which will be satisfactory to each individual Indian who is in possession of land being expropriated. If such agreement cannot be reached, of course, the issue will, as is always the case with expropriations, be decided by the courts.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for York West (Mr. Hamilton).


Edmund Davie Fulton: Mr. Speaker, may I ask a supplementary question?


Some hon. Members:: The hon. member for York West.


Edmund Davie Fulton: May I ask the minister-


Mr. Speaker:: Is the hon. member asking a supplementary question?


Edmund Davie Fulton: May I ask the minister if he saw a delegation yesterday made up of members of this band and, if so, what did they come to see him about?


Some hon. Members:: Order.


Mr. Speaker:: I do not think we should start having questions and answers as to who comes to this building and what for.



EXTERNAL AFFAIRS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Stanley Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Prime Minister? Will the Prime Minister enlarge upon the Canadian Press report that he plans to go to Washington at Easter? Will he tell us what subjects he intends to discuss with President Eisenhower, and whether any other cabinet minister will be going with him?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Mr. Speaker, it is true that I have received an invitation from President Eisenhower to visit him and I have been very pleased to accept the invitation, but I think it would not be courteous for me to give
[Mr. Pickersgill.l
any details of the proposed visit until there has been an announcement from the White House.


POSSIBLE RETALIATION FOR ACTION OF STUDENTS OF QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Roland Michener (St. Paul's):: Mr. Speaker, is the absence of the Secretary of State for External Affairs an indication that the government is expecting massive retaliation from Watertown, New York, because of the recent flag-raising episode indulged in by students of Queen's University on Washington's birthday?


ATOMIC ENERGY
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. A. M. Nicholson (Mackenzie):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Prime Minister. Has the Prime Minister noted in this morning's Globe and Mail the report to the effect that the United States will make available $1 billion worth of uranium 235 at home and abroad for promotion of peaceful uses of atomic energy? Will the Prime Minister indicate whether or not similar consideration has been given by Canada?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Mr. Speaker, I have noted the report but I would prefer not to comment until we have received the text of the announcement in the ordinary course of events.


CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Donald M. Fleming (Eglinton):: Is the
Minister of National Revenue now in a position to answer the question I asked him on February 15 as to who it was within the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation who made the decision that the program on "The Age of Mackenzie King" by Ferns and Ostry should not proceed? The question is to be found at page 1198 of Hansard.


Hon. J. J. McCann (Minister of National Revenue):: Mr. Speaker, the answer is that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation takes full responsibility for their attitude.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Speaker, that is not an answer to my question. I point out to you, sir, that that is what the minister said, as

reported on page 1198 of Hansard, on February 15. It was because of that answer that I asked my question. May I read his answer, sir?


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I remember the answer. The reason I interrupt the hon. member at this time is to remind him that the minister takes responsibility for the reply he has just given to the question by the hon. member. I am looking at citation 307 which says:
A minister may decline to answer a question without stating the reason for his refusal, and insistence on an answer is out of order, no debate being allowed.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Speaker, quite within the terms of that citation I would just point out to you, sir-


Some hon. Members:: Order.


Donald Methuen Fleming: On page 1199 the minister said this when I asked him the same question:
In answer to that question, I shall take the matter up with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
I took it that he meant he was going to bring back an answer to this house and that is the reason for my asking that same question again today, and I ask the minister the same question now.


James Joseph McCann: I have done as I said I would; I have taken it up with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the answer I was given is the one which I have just made.



POTATOES


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. G. W. Montgomery (Victoria-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Agriculture. Has the government received any recommendation from the agricultural prices support board in reference to any change in the potato starch program in New Brunswick within the last week?
If so, will the minister state what the government's decision is in the matter and what the government is prepared to do.


Right Hon. J. G. Gardiner (Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member was kind enough to send me notice of his question.
The first question is: Has the government received any recommendation from the A.P.S. board in reference to any change in the potato starch program in New Brunswick within the last week? The answer to that question is yes.
Inquiries of the Ministry The question continues: If so, will the minister state what the government decision is in the matter? They asked for an increase in the spot grade price from $1 to $1.20 and it was indicated to them that that could not be done. They asked for a tolerance in connection with the spot grading, a guaranteed tolerance of 20 per cent. There is a tolerance now in the fact that it is an estimate as to what the proportion of grades of potatoes certain truck loads would be and they are asking to have that guaranteed. The answer they received to that was that it would be given consideration.
The other request was to set the date at June 30 instead of April 30. It was intimated to them that the decision on that could not be made until we approach the date of April 30. Consideration is always given as the time in the agreement is reached and will be given again.



DEFENCE PRODUCTION

[Stage Direction]
CF-105-INQUIRY AS TO PRODUCTION PROGRESS On the orders of the day:
Mr. John B. Hamilton (York West):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the right hon. Minister of Defence Production. Is the minister in a position to confirm the report that production of the CF-105 at A. V. Roe Canada Limited is two years ahead of schedule and that the prototype will be coming off the assembly line by the summer of 1957?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Mr. Speaker, apparently my hon. friend has better information from inside Avro than I have. I cannot answer the question.



PIPE LINES


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. J. W. Noseworthy (York South):: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Minister of Trade and Commerce in view of the financial arrangement that the government is proposing to enter into with Trans-Canada Pipe Lines Limited. Has the government secured a list of the shareholders of the company showing how many are Canadians, and will the government table that list?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Mr. Speaker, all the information that I have about the shareholders of Trans-Canada Pipe Lines Limited has been placed on the table, some of it recently

Inquiries of the Ministry at the request of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Drew). Correspondence with the company has been tabled on the request of other hon. members. I have no information in addition to that.



IMMIGRATION


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Daniel Roland Michener: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration what progress has been made in providing facilities in Israel to deal with prospective immigrants to Canada, and also what relatives of Canadian residents will now be considered for such immigration?


John Whitney Pickersgill: Mr. Speaker, I think that perhaps this question should have been put on the order paper, but I do know there is a great deal of interest in the subject and I might just as well reply now. The government has made no progress in providing facilities for immigrants from Israel and has no intention of making any progress in that direction because the government of Israel, which is a country seeking immigrants, does not wish us to do so. We have provided consular service in Israel which is available to my department to assist in dealing with applications of certain categories of close relatives of Canadians who are admissible and desire to come to Canada.
Those categories are, in the case of residents of Canada, the wives or widows and minor children of residents, men over 65 years of age, women over 60 years of age, duly ordained ministers of religion and other persons whose normal and full-time vocation is devoted to the service of a recognized religion, husbands and parents, and humanitarian and compassionate cases. In the case of Canadian citizens resident in Canada, the list also includes children of any age, married or single, and fiances.


Daniel Roland Michener: May I ask a supplementary question. Would sisters come within the categories being considered?


John Whitney Pickersgill: I understand that normally applications would not be considered unless there were special compassionate or humanitarian grounds.


Mr. G. R. Pearkes (Esquimalt-Saanich):: May I ask a supplementary question. For purposes of immigration and citizenship are the people of Israel classified as Asiatics?


John Whitney Pickersgill: No, they are not.



LIVESTOCK


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. H. A. Bryson (Humboldl-Melfori):: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the right hon. Minister of Agriculture is prepared to comment upon the question I directed to him yesterday?


James Garfield Gardiner: Mr. Speaker, the question which I took as notice yesterday was:
Would the minister suggest to packers that they fill out in the space provided on return statements to producers the extra costs connected with settlement in order to clear up any doubts in the minds of the producers as to the basis of settlement?
I have inquired into the matter and I find that, as I have stated in the house on a number of occasions, the place at which the floor price can be obtained is at the stockyards. When hogs are delivered to the stockyards, that space is filled in there. If they are not delivered to the stockyards, of course, there are no charges in getting them from the stockyard to the plant, and they would not be filled in by the packers.



PROVISION FOR GUARANTEE OF BANK LOANS TO PRODUCERS IN PRAIRIE PROVINCES, ETC.

[Stage Direction]
The house resumed, from Wednesday, February 22, consideration of the motion of Mr. Howe (Port Arthur) for the second reading of Bill No. 82, to provide for short-term credit to grain producers in the prairie provinces to meet temporary financial difficulties arising from inability to deliver all their grain, and the amendment thereto of Mr. Nicholson.
Mr. Claude Ellis (Regina City):: Mr. Speaker, yesterday, during the discussion of this amendment, the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe) placed on the record an excerpt from a report published on February 3 of this year on "Agricultural Markets and Prices" by the provincial royal commission on agricultural and rural life in Saskatchewan. I drew the attention of members of the house to the fact that the minister had seen fit to place this one excerpt on record, yet had neglected to read further in the report and deal with the conclusions and recommendations made by that commission.
It was the minister himself who introduced this document into the debate, and it was simply for the purpose of setting the record straight that last evening I read into the record a portion of a conclusion arrived at by that commission with respect to the subject now under discussion. Hon. members will recall that last evening there was such

Grain
a babble across the way that I and other members in this group found it almost impossible to determine what hon. members on the other side were objecting to, although we could well judge from their behaviour that they found the remarks most unpalatable. Now I have had a chance of reading Hansard, and I note the requests of hon. members opposite to read all the sentences in the particular conclusions I placed on the record yesterday. In conclusion No. 17, found on page 207 of the report, the commission states as follows:
Delayed deliveries of wheat, necessitated by lack of storage space, result in high farm storage expenses and delayed returns to producers. For farmers with limited resources the resulting financial hardship is serious. The proposal that farmers be paid storage for farm-stored grain has considerable merit.
At this point I should like to draw the attention of hon. members to the fact that, when the Minister of Agriculture went to the press after the house adjourned, he himself did not place all the sentences on record. He just took one sentence out of that conclusion to buttress his particular point of view, but I draw to your attention this reference in the part I had not read yesterday:
The proposal that farmers be paid storage for farm-stored grain has considerable merit.
Then it goes on to say:
In addition, the provision of emergency credit by banks and credit unions-
Once again I want to draw to the attention of hon. members of the house that this legislation has completely ignored the credit union movement in the country.

guaranteed by the federal government, would be a useful part of any long-term agricultural program.
This is the part I put on the record yesterday, and note that the legislation before the house is presumably to take care of an emergency. It is temporary legislation. Yet the commission states:
In the meantime, advance payments could be made by the wheat board on properly stored grain on the farm to ease the farmer's immediate cash shortage.
If the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe) had been interested in giving a comprehensive picture of the report to the house he could have gone on further from the conclusions to the recommendations, and on page 216 he would have found recommendation No. 14, which reads as follows:
That, in view of the grain producers' immediate need for cash and their present difficulty in selling farm stocks of grain, the federal government promptly establish, on an emergency basis, a system of cash advances on farm-stored grain.
May I draw attention to the words "on an emergency basis", because, if you will recall,
the earlier part I placed on the record uses the words "in the meantime". In other words, what the commission is actually doing is suggesting that there is a place in a longterm program for reenactment of the 1951 type of legislation, but nowhere in the report does it suggest that type of procedure as a solution to the present emergency situation.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Would my hon. friend mind reading recommendation 15, since he is in the mood for confession?


Alfred Claude Ellis: I think we could go on reading from the report for hours, but in my opinion the Star-Phoenix summed it up very neatly in its editorial of February 14 when it suggested that so far it looks like a draw between loans and cash advances. We will admit to the minister that there are excerpts he may take from the report which may give him some solace and comfort-


Stanley Howard Knowles: He needs it.


Alfred Claude Ellis: -but by the same token we can produce far more valid quotations from the report to prove our point. I suggest to the minister that this last-minute effort to clutch at the report as a means of alibiing for the impasse in which the government finds itself is not too convincing, and in that regard I should like to refer to what the minister said in his speech yesterday. As found at page 1447 of Hansard he said:
The bill was recommended by the farm leaders of the province. It is endorsed by a commission of the provincial government-
That was a deliberate effort to create the impression that because the commission, in an omnibus study of farm problems, happened to mention this particular issue, which was not such a serious problem at the time the commission was holding its hearings, somehow or other what they said represents the viewpoint of the provincial government. The minister went on to say:
-but it is opposed by this little group who represent perhaps some opinion but, if my opinion is correct, it is a small portion of the public opinion in the province of Saskatchewan.
I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that some time next June hon. members will have a chance to see, through the surest method possible, just how public opinion stands in that province. However, in view of the fact that the minister stated in the house yesterday that we do not represent public opinion in the west, I think the time has come to reiterate and place in proper perspective the recommendations of farm organizations throughout the west. I ask hon. members to weigh them in the balance and to decide just who is speaking for the farmers of western Canada. There are in the province three organizations which represent

Grain
the vast majority of the farmers there. I refer to the Saskatchewan wheat pool, a member of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, the federated co-operatives, with membership throughout Saskatchewan and the province of Manitoba, and the Saskatchewan farmers' union. What do we find? I mention this in connection with the remarks of the minister yesterday. The Saskatchewan wheat pool held its annual convention last November and in their publication headed "Wheat Policy-1956" they have this to say: This stems from or is contained in the report of their 1955 convention held last September:
The current problem of a shortage of farm cash was considered as soon as the annual meeting opened. The delegates went on record in favour of a system of cash advances against farm-stored grain to be paid out by the Canadian wheat board through elevator companies with the federal government assuming the interest on the loans involved.
That is the announced policy of the Saskatchewan wheat pool. Yet the minister suggests that we are not speaking for organized agriculture in western Canada. Surely neither the minister nor any hon. member on the government side of the house can argue that the Saskatchewan wheat pool does not represent the vast number of farmers on the prairies. Then we have the 150,000 members of the federated co-operatives in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. They have gone on record in this connection. In a resolution which was sent to the Prime Minister they state as follows:
Whereas we consider the recently announced plan to place cash into the hands of grain producers through government guaranteed bank loans is entirely inadequate and most unsatisfactory for the following reasons:
1.	The amount available through the proposed plan is not nearly sufficient to meet such immediate items as taxes, harvest operating costs and living expenses for the average grain farmer.
2.	It is unfair to ask farmers to pay interest on loans against their production when they are not responsible for the inadequacies of national policies that make it impossible for their grain to be sold on world markets.
Therefore, federated co-operatives, representing 650 consumer co-operatives with a membership of 150,000 in the province of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, request the federal government to arrange interest-free advances on farm-stored grain.
That is another argument. Does the Minister of Trade and Commerce suggest that the federated co-operatives are wrong? He has intimated that the wheat pool is wrong, that the federated co-operatives are wrong and that the Saskatchewan farmers' union is wrong.


An hon. Member:: You are wrong.


Alfred Claude Ellis: I am interested in the interjections that are being made. I am suggesting that contrary to the statements made by the

minister yesterday, these organizations represent agriculture on the prairies. The Saskatchewan farmers' union made their presentation to the government just a week or two ago and I am sure that members from Saskatchewan, in their meeting with that organization, were left in no doubt as to how the Saskatchewan farmers' union felt. They state:
Therefore, the Interprovincial Farm Union Council is continuing to press for adoption of its original proposal-
I think the hon. member for Rosthern ought to pay attention to that statement.
- (which has been endorsed at the three wheat pool delegate meetings) that the government arrange for interest-free cash advances by the Canadian wheat board on farm-stored grain to the value of 50 per cent of the initial payment on an estimated delivery of eight bushels per cultivated acre.
Three organizations representing the vast mass of the farmers of the west, particularly in Saskatchewan, have gone on record.


Clarence Decatur Howe: My hon. friend will surely give us the conclusion of the fourth organization that he mentioned, namely the Canadian Federation of Agriculture.


Alfred Claude Ellis: Mr. Speaker, the Saskatchewan wheat pool is a member of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. As some other hon. member pointed out, no mention was made of this particular problem by the Canadian Federation of Agriculture.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Oh, yes.


Alfred Claude Ellis: As far as the prairie farmers are concerned, we can only conclude that the wheat pools as members of the federation are expressing the considered opinion of their membership on the prairies.
Then we can go beyond that to the legislature of Saskatchewan. I note that this year the C.C.F. member for Gravelbourg in the provincial house put forward a resolution calling on the government to implement cash advances. Mr. Walker, the member for Gravelbourg moved:
That this assembly, recognizing that the federal government guaranteed bank loan scheme is inadequate to meet the serious financial crisis now confronting the western grain farmers and the entire prairie economy, deplores the failure of the federal government to provide a pre payment on the initial price of grain in the form of a cash advance on farm-stored grain.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Alfred Claude Ellis: Some hon. members are saying "oh, oh". I am going to make a guess. I am willing to make a wager with any hon. member opposite that when this resolution goes before the legislature, every Liberal in the legislature will vote for it. I shall be

glad if anyone wants to take that wager. I am convinced that when that resolution comes up for a vote, every Liberal M.L.A. will be voting for it. I am not alone in making that prediction. Why? Because there was a similar resolution in 1953 when the hon. member for Rosthern was the leader of the opposition in the Saskatchewan legislature. In the votes and proceedings of the legislature of Tuesday, April 7, 1953, Mr. Walker, the member for Gravelbourg, moved this resolution:
That, in view of the fact present public grain storage and transportation facilities seriously fail to meet present day conditions arising in part from farm mechanization and inequalities in the quota system, this assembly urges that, in the interests of orderly marketing and the stabilising of farm income, the federal government make immediate provision for:
(a)	storage payments comparable to elevator storage charges on grain suitably stored by farmers:
(b)	substantial advance payments on grain stored in approved bins.


An hon. Member:: Who voted for it?


Alfred Claude Ellis: Who voted for it, someone asks. The hon. member for Rosthern voted for it. That was the western Tucker. But when he comes down to Ottawa it is a different matter. He is the chief apologist for the government. In 1953 when this matter was before the provincial house-and I am glad to see that the hon. member for Rosthern has returned to his seat-this resolution was passed unanimously by the Saskatchewan legislature. I repeat that when the present resolution comes before the house I am satisfied that every Liberal M.L.A. in the house will vote for it just as they did in 1953. But out west the Liberals have one story. They have one voice out there. When they get down here it is an entirely different matter. I know that the hon. member for Rosthern in a recent broadcast which is printed in the Saskatchewan Valley News, a Rosthern paper, goes to bat for the Minister of Trade and Commerce. He does not try to beat about the bush. He comes out and parrots exactly the words of the Minister of Trade and Commerce. In this broadcast he quotes the minister as follows:
We looked at the possibility of advances to producers by elevator agents on behalf of the Canadian Wheat Board. At first glance this seemed to be a logical procedure, but the more we looked at it the less we liked it.
Then a little further on he quotes the famous passage from the speech of the Minister of Trade and Commerce:
You must be careful about lending on grain where only limited security can be had. The grain on the farm would be the only security the board would have. It may be said that the farmer would have to market the grain and bring it to the country elevator eventually, when the board
Grain
would be able to recover its loan; but I suggest that the farmer does not necessarily have to bring it to the country elevator.
In other words the hon. member for Rosthern is parroting the accusation made by the Minister of Trade and Commerce that the reason they cannot bring in cash advances on farm-stored grain through the wheat board is that you cannot trust the farmer. When the hon. member for Rosthern will go on the air and say to his own constituents that the reason you people are not getting what the farmers want in the west, namely cash advances, is that the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe) does not trust the people of western Canada, he suggests that once the advance is made, they are going to cheat the wheat board and that they are going to try to peddle their grain elsewhere. Even if that were possible I think it is shocking that a statement like that should be made by the minister and even more shocking that those words should be parroted in the province of Saskatchewan by the hon. member who is in effect insulting his own constituents.


Mr. Cresiohl:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. On three separate occasions the hon. member has said that the hon. member for Rosthern has parroted the language of the minister. Under the rules of the house, Mr. Speaker, I find that the hon. member should not be permitted to make the statement-and this is covered under paragraph 299 of Beauchesne-that he does not believe a statement he himself has made. The assertion that the hon. member for Rosthern has parroted the minister is a clear implication that he does not believe the statement which he himself has made and it is my respectful submission that the hon. member should be made to withdraw those remarks.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, on the point of order, does it follow that if an hon. member quotes a minister he does not believe what the minister says?


Mr. Harris:: There is quite a difference.


Mr. Speaker:: I note that the hon. member has cited citation 299 of Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms, second edition, in which are given samples of unparliamentary phrases which were ruled out of order. I do not know in what year, but on a certain occasion in the past. If the word "repeated" had been used in the expression perhaps it would have been better and the hon. member would have preferred that. The word "parroted" has been used on three different occasions. It has been used before. It is perhaps in line with a lot of other expressions that have been used since the beginning of the present session.

Grain


Mr. Tucker:: Mr. Speaker, I am not rising to make any objection to what the hon. member for Regina City said because it has been pointed out to him over and over again that he is putting a wrong interpretation on what the Minister of Trade and Commerce said and on the words which I quoted from his speech. He persists in repeating those misinterpretations and misrepresentations. I do not want to waste the time of the house, because 1 am sure the house will realize from whom it comes and how little attention it should pay to it.


Alfred Claude Ellis: Mr. Speaker, I think it is a sad commentary on the condition in which the Liberal party finds itself when Liberal spokesmen find their own words so difficult to take just a few days after they are spoken. I think I have put a proper interpretation on what the Minister of Trade and Commerce said. If the hon. member takes, exception to that interpretation, that is his privilege. I am quite prepared to let the record stand and let the people judge for themselves on that score. I do suggest that the hon. member who has just taken his seat has shown quite clearly why the Winnipeg Free Press was quite correct in characterizing him as having a western face and an eastern face, because when he was leader of the opposition in the Saskatchewan legislature he stood up and voted for the very thing he is now attacking and opposing. It all depends where he is located when he is forced to take a stand on a matter of this kind.


Stanley Howard Knowles: He suffers from schizophrenia.


Alfred Claude Ellis: I have referred to the Saskatchewan wheat pool, the Saskatchewan farmers' union, the federated co-operative and the legislature of Saskatchewan. I could mention the Liberal politicians of the west. Mr. McDonald made the statement that this legislation was as effective as a stirrup pump in a forest fire. Mr. Prowse damned it with faint praise recently on a television program. Private members go out to their constituencies and label this legislation as being unpalatable. And yet, the Minister of Trade and Commerce tells this house that we are not accurate and are not voicing the feelings of our people back home. But beyond that, Mr. Speaker, I am quite willing to look into the grass roots to the thousands of people throughout the province who are sending in their representations.
A return was brought down in this house just recently, sessional paper No. 193, containing certain correspondence that was received in this connection. You will find that

those communications are from rural municipalities in the province of Saskatchewan, many of whom have reeves and councillors who are not supporters of the C.C.F. Many of them are quite active supporters of the Liberal party. I have been going through this return and I find communications from the Easton board of trade, from the rural municipality of Moosomin, from the constituency represented by the hon. member for Qu'Appelle federally, and also from the constituency represented by the leader of the Liberal party in Saskatchewan, from the rural municipality of McLeod, from the rural municipality of Buchanan, from the international woodworkers of America, the Prince Albert branch. We have representations from the Saskatchewan farmers' union, the wheat pool committees, and so on.
The following resolution was passed by the wheat pool committee held in Lanigan:
The Lanigan wheat pool committee unanimously agree that the proposed bank loans available to farmers, up to $1,000 at 5J per cent interest is definitely unsatisfactory and unjust.
This came in before the details of the new legislation were known. I continue with the letter:
The Lanigan wheat pool committee strongly recommend:
That the dominion government make an advanced payment of $1 per bushel on a 4-bushel quota on the 1955 crop.
The rural municipality of Manitou Lake wrote a letter along the same lines. There is a telegram from the farmers' union, subdistrict 5. There is also a letter from White-wood, Saskatchewan, containing a resolution of the east central motor dealers association. Quite naturally, the central motor dealers association are concerned about payments on their cars. They want to sell cars, and they know that so long as the farmer is not able to get cash for his wheat he is not going to be able to pay his bills.
There is a letter from Stoughton, Saskatchewan; there are resolutions from municipal councils and from the rural municipality of Happyland.
One could go through these letters by the hour and read over the resolutions that came from rural municipalities. There were so many representations, Mr. Speaker, that when this return was asked for permission was granted to summarize some of them. If that were not done we would have received a mountain of a return.
There were approximately 35 telegrams. This is a sample telegram from North Battle-ford, and reads as follows:
Resolved that the council of the rural municipality of North Battleford No. 437 go on record as

favouring cash advances on specified acreage of farm-stored grain in preference to guaranteed bank loans . . .
Thirty-five telegrams along that line were received. I find here a sample letter which more or less summarizes 165 letters received by the government along the same lines. I note here a letter from the rural municipality of Sutton, Saskatchewan. There were approximately 165 letters of this type received, Mr. Speaker. This letter is dated November 7 and reads, in part, as follows:
At the meeting of our council on November 1 the following resolution was passed unanimously:
"That we protest the proposed plan of guaranteed bank loans to farmers as being totally inadequate . . .
Then, there were petitions to the government of Canada. One hundred and nine of these were received containing 3,256 names in connection with the matter now before the house.
The other day the Minister of Trade and Commerce suggested that we are representing only a small group from the prairies. In the light of the representations that have been made from every responsible farm organization in my province-and they have asked in each instance for cash advances to the wheat board-and in spite of this mountain of evidence, the minister still persists in his attitude and belief that the government has some support for this measure on the prairies. I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that the silence of their own supporters is mute testimony of the unpopularity of this legislation. Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Speaker, that if we were wrong, that if we were sticking our necks out, we would not be jumped on by private members from the prairies? We have not heard from some of them. One or two have taken part in the debate. I say this with all respect to the hon. member for Ros-thern. He has been carrying the load for the government in this respect. He has been the work horse for the party in trying to put this unpopular measure across in the house. All credit should be given to the hon. member. But I find it very difficult to believe the Minister of Trade and Commerce thinks that we are in the wrong and they are in the right in view of the silence, whether it is enforced silence or voluntary silence on the part of his supporters, because if there was any great doubt in their minds about the feeling back home they would not lose any opportunity of jumping into this fight with both feet and belabouring the members of this group.
This debate has brought out only too clearly the fact that we have conscientiously, and I think faithfully, interpreted the wishes of agriculturists, the people who are represented by many members of this group. Although
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we were the only group to vote against the resolution I am very pleased to see that as a result of our leadership we have been able to persuade other opposition members to join with us in opposing this measure at this time.


Clarence Decatur Howe: They follow anybody.


Stanley Howard Knowles: In due course maybe the Minister of Trade and Commerce will follow our leadership, too.


Alfred Claude Ellis: Mr. Speaker, I think the minister and his supporters would find it extremely difficult to argue now that the wheat pool is not for cash advances through the wheat board, that the farmers' union is not opposed to this legislation in principle and in favour of cash advances through the wheat board or the federated co-ops; and I suggest when this matter is brought before the Saskatchewan legislature within the near future every member in that legislative assembly will be standing up, and that includes the 11 Liberals in the house, and voting for the amendment to be moved by Mr. Ed. Walker, the C.C.F. member. When that time comes it will be the best testimony there is-


Mr. Speaker:: May I point out to the hon. member that he has already made the point which he is repeating now-


An hon. Member:: Four times.


Mr. Speaker:: -and besides repeating a point that has already been made I think he has been dealing and he is now again dealing too much with matters that refer to provincial legislatures.


Alfred Claude Ellis: Just to set the record straight, may I say that that was my concluding sentence. I simply summed up in one sentence and had taken my seat. That was my concluding sentence.


Mr. A. B. Weselak (Springfield):: Mr. Speaker, this debate is now in its tenth day and I can sympathize with the hon. member for New Westminster (Mr. Hahn) when he wonders who is right and who is telling the complete truth. I can also sympathize with the hon. member for Selkirk (Mr. Bryce), who spoke in this debate and placed the problems of his constituents before the house. Our two constituencies in the last two or three years have suffered comparable crop losses. Our problems are, I think, far more serious and far more difficult of solution than others which have been placed before the house.
The opposition has repeatedly stated before this house that there was unanimous agreement among the farm organizations and farm leaders as to how this money should be made

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available to the farmers. I think that, in order to bring this debate into its proper perspective, the events leading up to the meeting with the federal cabinet in October should be reviewed, because the decision of the government concerning cash advances was made as a result of a delegation which came to Ottawa to present the problems of the western farmer to the federal cabinet.
When I think of this problem I recall a meeting that was held in Beausejour in December and was attended by the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Zaplitny) and the hon. member for Brandon-Souris (Mr. Dins-dale). At this particular meeting Mr. James Patterson, president of the Manitoba farmers' union, spoke at length on the matter of cash advances. I made rather comprehensive notes at that meeting and have since reviewed them. Mr. Patterson stated that the farm leaders were far from unanimous when they came to Ottawa to meet the federal cabinet. He stated they were far from unanimous when they discussed the matter at the Saskatoon conference.
Concerning the Saskatoon conference a special dispatch appears in the Winnipeg Free Press of September 28 which reported what transpired at the meeting. The following is reported:
Bank loans up to $1,000 based on grain to be delivered to elevators and guaranteed against loss by the federal government was suggested by President J. H. Wesson of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool as the means to alleviate the emergency financial problem of western farmers. He said the federal government should be asked to pass an act similar to that of 1951 which provided emergency financial assistance to farmers in difficulties. That year the crop was snowed under and farmers could not harvest.
Mr. Wesson said the Wheat Pool did not agree with the suggestion of interest-free loans to farmers, but the interest should not be exorbitant. The banks would grant some loans now, but were "choosey" of their debtors and the five per cent interest was too high. He thought the government should pass the legislation and there should be an arrangement between the Bank of Canada and the chartered banks whereby the loans to farmers be on a two or 2J per cent interest basis. The loans could be made on the basis of the grain the farmer would probably deliver and entered in his quota book. The federal government should take the loss, if any.
The following day a further dispatch appeared which reads as follows, and I quote from the Winnipeg Free Press of September 29:
The farm conference here Wednesday urged the federal government to make immediate provision for advances to farmers on grain they had in store, up to the value of half the normal delivery expected, or four bushels per cultivated acre. These should be repaid on the basis of one-half the value of each delivery made by the farmer.
The two-day conference was attended by governmental officials and representatives of farm, municipal and business groups from the three

prairie provinces. It was called by the Interprovincial Farm Union council to discuss grain marketing and possible financial assistance to farmers.
The resolution as originally presented contained a reference to not more than three per cent interest be charged on the advances to farmers. Jake Schulz, president of the Manitoba farmers' union, tried to amend the resolution by striking out the reference to interest and inserting a clause that the advances to farmers be interest-free.
Incidentally, I would state that was the farm union's original proposal and they have since stuck to it.
Others disagreed with the substituted clause and all reference to interest was deleted in the final draft. It was generally agreed the resolution should be broad so the federal government would understand the conference favoured the principle of advance and the method was under the government's jurisdiction.
Warren Burgess, who I understand is also an ex-C.C.F. member of the Saskatchewan legislature, had this to say:
.	.	. interest-free loans would give some big
farmers a chance to make money. Under the system as proposed by Mr. Schulz, a farmer not in difficulties, could apply for interest-free loans and then put the money advanced into government bonds.
For this reason J. E. Brownlee, president of the United Grain Growers, suggested there be a flat maximum for these loans or advances. Only those in need of the emergency assistance should get it. J. H. Wesson, president of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, had made the same suggestion Tuesday when he proposed re-enactment of the 1951 act which allowed loans up to $1,000.
Mr. Brownlee said time was the essence. The proposal should be presented at the federal-provincial conference next week.
A report appeared in the Winnipeg Tribune on the same date and the following observation was made:
It was generally agreed the resolution should be broad so the federal government would understand the conference was in favour of the principle of advances but wanted to leave the method up to the government.
At the meeting in Beausejour to which I previously referred, Mr. Patterson stated that when the delegation came to Ottawa they expected only to meet the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) and the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe) but they were pleased when along with the two ministers they met the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) and the other senior ministers of the cabinet and received a very sympathetic hearing.
He stated the only thing the delegation could agree on was that cash was needed. When asked by the Prime Minister how much, they simply were unable to tell him. When it was asked how the money was to be made available to them they could not tell the Prime Minister, either.
The truth of this statement is borne out in the Canadian Federation of Agriculture News

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and Information Bulletin of September-Octeber 1955 which in referring to the brief presented to the cabinet states:
The brief urged the government of Canada to "make immediate provision for advances to farmers on grain in store on the farm, and further that these advances should be up to one half the value of each delivery (of grain) made by the farmer".
The brief did not recommend any one way in which they thought these advances could best be made. Bank loans, wheat board advances, a special credit agency, and a system of advances through rural municipalities have been some of the alternative methods suggested.
It was recommended also that regular bank interest rates were higher than should be charged on such advances, and that the interest rate "if any", should be kept to a minimum.
This is also borne out in the press report of a speech made by the Minister of Agriculture for Manitoba in addressing the Union of Manitoba municipalities as reported in the Winnipeg Free Press of November 24, 1955:
Some idea of the confusion which existed at Ottawa when representatives of the three prairie governments and prairie farm groups met Prime Minister St. Laurent and some members of his government to discuss the western wheat crisis was given to the Union of Manitoba Municipalities by Hon. R. D. Robertson, minister of agriculture, Wednesday.
Mr. Robertson said when the prime minister asked him for suggestions, he had to admit they did not have one definite suggestion to make. As a result the representatives of 15 groups presented their personal views on the matter and most of them were different.
Mr. Robertson said he had attended a meeting in Saskatoon before the Ottawa meeting, but many of the resolutions could not be accepted by the representatives of the governments or other groups because they had received no instructions on them.


An hon. Member:: What was your idea?


Anton Bernard Weselak: I am just putting the record straight. The report continues:
"It is too bad", he said, "that so many must speak in public-


Mr. Wylie:: Mr. Speaker-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Do I understand that the hon. member is rising on a question of privilege?


William Duncan McKay Wylie: Mr. Speaker, when you were in the chair yesterday I tried to quote much the same material as we are hearing today and I was called to order. I do not see why another member should be allowed to quote the same thing.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: There seems to be some confusion on this point and perhaps I should do what I can to clear it up at the present time. The citation upon which such interruptions are based is citation 265 which reads:
It is not in order to read articles in newspapers, letters or communications emanating from persons outside the house and referring to, or commenting
on, or denying anything said by a member or expressing any opinion reflecting on proceedings within the house.
At the present time we are discussing the second reading of Bill No. 82 and any outside reflection upon proceedings in this house with respect to Bill No. 82 would be out of order under that citation. It is not out of order to read short extracts-I emphasize the word "short"-in support of an argument or a motion as long as they do not offend citation 265 or any other rule of the house. There comes a point however when if one were to read at great length-I am sure hon. members will agree-the assumption would be that the hon. member who has the floor was not making his own speech but, as I believe another citation in Beauchesne's third edition points out, was introducing another member into the chamber which of course our rules do not allow.
These rules are difficult to administer and the Speaker or Chairman gives a great deal of latitude to the hon. member who has the floor before interrupting him in order to be sure in his own mind that no injustice is being done to the hon. member. On the other hand, whoever is occupying the chair must consider that there are 265 members of this house and must try to preserve the rights and privileges of all members and keep everyone within the rules.
It was I who interrupted the hon. member for Medicine Hat (Mr. Wylie) yesterday, but I did so because in my opinion I thought the article which he was attempting to read was reflecting upon the proceedings of this house and, under citation 265, was contrary to a line of rulings which have been delivered by Speakers.
Of course, the interpretation of any rule is open to argument at any time, but fortunately or unfortunately, as the case may be, I am the person charged with making the decision. Since I did not interrupt the hon. member for Springfield (Mr. Weselak) it was because I had decided in my own mind that he had not transgressed that particular rule. I trust that this somewhat extended explanation, for which I apologize, will go to some length to clear up this particular point in hon. members' minds.


Anton Bernard Weselak: Mr. W. J. Parker is president of the Manitoba pool elevators and also vicepresident of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. His opinions are highly respected in western Canada.


An hon. Member:: He is a rat.


Anton Bernard Weselak: He had this to say in regard to the position of the government:
Credit unions and banks provide the only practical machinery for making the loans. The wheat

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board has no machinery to make the necessary advances except through country elevator agents. And, he added, "Elevator agents cannot be turned into bankers overnight".
During the debate yesterday the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Argue) stated that the Trades and Labour Congress and the Canadian Congress of Labour had expressed unqualified support for the proposition that interest-free cash advances should be made on farm-stored wheat. I should like to put the whole statement on the record as it appeared in the press because it has a bearing on the problem.


An hon. Member:: What is your own idea?


Anton Bernard Weselak: You have been talking for ten days and I think I can take half an hour. This article which appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press of February 20 had this
to say:
Prairie farm unions, driving hard for cash advances on farm-held grain, now have powerful allies-spokesman for some 1,000,000 organized workers.


An hon. Member:: Who said that?


Anton Bernard Weselak: The article continues:
The heads of the two national labour bodies- the Trades and Labour Congress and the Canadian Congress of Labour-Saturday agreed with farm unions that the need of such payments should be recognized.
TLC chief Claude Jodoin and CCL head A. R. Mosher-whose organizations are soon to amalgamate-agreed also that farmers should get "equitable" or parity prices on all farm products.
In turn, the farm unions, which claim to represent some 200,000 farmers, agreed with the labour chiefs that:
1.	All governments should consider legislation to reduce work weeks if automation gains ground in factories, workshops and offices.
2.	Minimum wage levels should be raised through federal-provincial co-operation to boost incomes in depressed areas.
3.	There should be federal-provincial government studies to make sure that workers and farmers get a "fair share'' of the national income.
I thought that both sides of the report should be placed on the record. In placing these facts on the record I am not suggesting that there is unanimous support or unanimous opposition to this legislation. On the other hand, it is quite obvious that when this matter was brought to Ottawa there was very little agreement among those who spoke on behalf of the farmers. The government has been urged repeatedly by opposition members to accept the advice of farm leaders and it has accepted their advice on the matter on which they agreed, namely: that cash advances be made available, repayable on the basis of 50 per cent of deliveries.
In addressing the meeting at Beausejour, to which I have previously referred, Mr. Patterson expressed the opinion that because

of the disorganized approach to the problem by farm leaders the government had no justification for doing otherwise than to bring in the legislation it has proposed. In closing I should like simply to say that in the time I have taken I have merely attempted to give a factual record on the matter before the house. I would suggest that hon. members draw their own conclusions in the light of these statements as to whether the government has acted in complete disregard of the unanimous wishes of the farmers of western Canada.


Walter Adam Tucker: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, when Mr. W. J. Parker, president of the Manitoba wheat pool, was referred to by the hon. member who has just spoken, I distinctly heard a statement from the C.C.F., "He is a rat." I think it is shameful that a man of the high standing of Mr. W. J. Parker should be characterized in this house by any hon. member as a rat. I think that should be struck from the record.


An hon. Member:: Hear, hear.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. May I draw the hon. member's attention to citation 247 of Beauchesne's third edition, which reads as follows:
If a member should say nothing disrespectfully to the house or the Chair, or personally opprobrious to other members, or in violation of other rules of the house, he may state whatever he thinks fit in debate, however offensive it may be to the feelings, or injurious to the character, of individuals; and he is protected by his privilege from any action for libel, as well as from any other question or molestation.
In view of that citation, I have no authority in the matter.


Mr. Weir:: Mr. Speaker, on a question of privilege, I want to join my hon. friend from Rosthern (Mr. Tucker) in protesting vigorously against that type of language. Mr. Parker is an old classmate and neighbour of mine-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member, but in view of the citation I have just read there is nothing I can do in this connection. It is not a question of the privileges of this house.


William Gilbert Weir: The hon. member should be big enough to withdraw.


Mr. J. M. Macdonnell (Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, in one way I try to imitate the Minister of Trade and Commerce, and that is in being an optimist. I am going to allow my optimism to run to the length that I am not going to abandon hope that even yet this government may see fit to reconsider its decision and that even yet it may adopt the

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course of what I consider to be common sense and what I think an increasing number of people in Canada are considering to be common sense.
We have had the word "filibuster" bandied about. I am not much worried about that. We heard that last summer. We were told last summer it was impertinent for an opposition to take itself seriously. Well, we took ourselves seriously then and we got results.


Clarence Decatur Howe: No one else does, though.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: It is interesting to observe that some of the things that happened last summer are happening now. That is to say, as time goes on, evidence is accumulating that more and more people are sharing the view we have put forward. I refer not only to the press, though there is evidence from there; I refer particularly to what has been already mentioned, the attitude of a large bloc of labour. I read from the Ottawa Journal of February 20:
Prairie farm unions, driving hard for cash advances on farm-held grain, now have powerful allies-spokesmen for some one million organized workers.
That is the kind of language that I am quite sure the government understands. It may be that even yet we may see, as I say, some more accommodating spirit introduced. We do not raise much grain in Greenwood but we have many common-sense people there. After all, I only represent them here and I am only here because in a large democracy we cannot all gather together as they used to in the old days. What a time the government must have had in the old days when all the citizens of a democracy were present and when government were not able to confine the whole authority to themselves.
I have been just imagining to myself a conversation with one of my constituents in Greenwood. I think that, when he found out the story, he would say to me that we in this parliament are being asked to act as no sensible men in consideration of their own businesses would ever be asked to act-in other words, without the evidence and without talking to the people concerned.
Let us consider the situation at the moment. The question of this bill being referred to a committee if it receives second reading was raised the other day by the hon. member for Acadia (Mr. Quelch), who said, briefly, this:
We have heard hon. members from all sides of the house give different interpretations of how the farmers really feel about this matter.
How true that is. We have spent almost the whole afternoon arguing about the evidence given by people who are not here and to whom we cannot talk, when it would be
infinitely more sensible if we could get them to express themselves. I shall read the rest of this. The hon. member suggested the following:
I suggest that instead of having to get this second-hand, we should get it first-hand. Let us refer this bill-
At that point the Minister of Finance, who certainly was Johnny on the spot, said:
If my hon. friend would permit me to answer his question, the answer is no.
There is a bare, bald, stark, unco-operative answer. No reason is given. That is of a piece with the situation at the moment, as I shall try to indicate. As I said, I have imagined myself talking to a constituent and I have imagined him trying to find out what has happened. I can imagine him asking, "What is this bill really about?"
My answer to him: "The wheat farmers of western Canada find themselves in difficulties and they regard the situation as being due to a failure on the part of the government. Representative after representative of farm constituencies has complained."
My constituent asks, "How are you personally going to decide what action to take on this?" My answer: "Well, the matter is being debated between members of the government and members of the opposition, mostly members of farm constituencies, and if the bill is passed it will go to a committee of the whole house."
The constituent: "I suppose the committee will be able to have those interested before it, so that you can form first-hand an impression of the farmers' needs." Myself: "No, there will be no witnesses before the committee. We shall have to take the statements of the Minister of Trade and Commerce and of the representatives in parliament of the farmers."
The constituent: "Do you mean to say there will be no direct contact between the members of parliament, other than the government, and those who are interested in this? Do you mean to tell me there is a curtain between you and the interested parties when legislation is being passed, so that you have no direct evidence, so that the evidence is rationed and filtered? Does that always happen? Do you have no committees that get evidence?" My answer: "We have a large number of committees, and a very usual practice is to refer subject matters to committees. For example, take the revision of the Bank Act. Nobody would ever suggest that that should be done without a committee. As a matter of fact, there will be two or three, perhaps more, bills, even in this very session, that will be referred to committees by the Minister of Finance himself."

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The constituent: "How do you explain the Minister of Finance's attitude here?" Myself-


Mr. Byrne:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point -of order. I believe the hon. member is referring rather too often to his copious notes. I would be willing to take the part of the constituent if he will give me his notes, and it would make this dialogue more interesting.


Donald Methuen Fleming: How funny you are. Maybe then you will advocate that it go to the committee, where you will have the chance to ask your questions.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: I use some notes, but I do not believe anyone in this house will accuse me of reading. I am not able to see any reason whatever for the present course that is being followed. To me it is just silly that we are not to have a committee, apart from the committee of the whole house, which will-


An hon. Member:: It has been decided.


Stanley Howard Knowles: It has not been decided.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: I think the hon. member Is at fault.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Perhaps I should also clear up any misunderstanding there may be on that point. The question that has been decided is as to whether or not the subject matter should go to a committee. The actual reference to a committee has not, I think, been decided by the house.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That is what I hoped was the case.


Mr. Dickey:: How is this relevant to the bill?


Donald Methuen Fleming: You would not know.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: Let me suggest one or two things that happened here that made this seem so silly. It is only an old-fashioned word that will describe it. Last night we had a long controversy as to the effect of the report of the Saskatchewan royal commission on agricultural and rural life. As I say, we had a long dispute between the hon. member for Regina City (Mr. Ellis), the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe), and particularly his parliamentary assistant. It was a battle of quotations. I thought that the hon. member for Regina City won but that is not of any significance. The point I am making is that the sensible thing would be to have these people here if they are going to be quoted so that we will not have one member saying they meant one thing and another member saying they meant something else.

I thought it was a most unedifying and stupid performance, and I will bet my shirt, if that is not unparliamentary, Mr. Speaker, that when the Minister of Trade and Commerce was in business he would never have entered into a business arrangement on somebody else's say-so of what somebody else believed. He would want to talk to the parties concerned. As a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker, it almost seems to me, if I am correct in my analogy, and it may appeal to a professional man like you, like having a case in law where the plaintiff is not allowed to appear and give evidence and where counsel go on arguing and arguing and talking to the jury without the real people being allowed to be there.


Clarence Decatur Howe: May I ask my
hon. friend if there is any better representation of the farming community than the elected representatives from the area?


James MacKerras Macdonnell: That, I suggest, is not
the point.


Clarence Decatur Howe: You want to pick them.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: My point is that we want to have a committee of the house investigate the matter. The committee then won't have to hear a dispute between the Minister of Trade and Commerce and the hon. member for Regina City- as to what somebody else meant when he said something nor all these references to page this and that. They want the man himself so they can cross-examine him. Incidentally, the calling of the committee will result in more evidence being made available to the public, and the public are interested.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Will the hon. member permit a question? In view of the interjection of the Minister of Trade and Commerce, I wonder whether he would ask him if he would have the matter referred to a committee consisting of the members from the three prairie provinces and let them make the decision.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: I am a co-operative man and I am always glad to get assistance. I associate myself with that question. There is another thing which seems to me equally silly, and I apologize for using that old-fashioned word. The other day we were actually asked to give weight to and act on a pure negation. We were told, and of course I take the word of the hon. gentleman, that some farm organization-I forget the name of it and it does not matter-had been here, had been in touch with the ministers and had not said a word about this matter. I do not know what that was expected to prove. I do not know what we were ex-

pected to do as a result of that statement. We would need to know a whole lot more about the discussion. We would need to know a whole lot more about who were there. We would need to know a whole lot more about the attitude of the two ministers because the Minister of Trade and Commerce and the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) are pretty cocky roosters when they are on their own dunghill. I would say they might be very difficult to stand up against and I would have been very interested in being present at the conference although I would not expect to have my evidence taken as a fair report of everything that had happened there.
But that is the kind of evidence we are given and that is what makes me say again that this is silly. Why this bill should be picked out, why witnesses cannot be heard when they will be heard in perhaps half a dozen other cases this session, I do not know, and I have not heard any explanation being given for that action. As a matter of fact, though I know that hon. gentlemen opposite are triple-proof against really taking an interest in what we take an interest in, namely, the position of parliament, I think anyone as intelligent as my constituent in Greenwood, although my friend from Kootenay East did not think I was really representing them properly, would take this matter seriously.
As I have said, here we are asked to take an action that no reasonable man would take, to decide something without the evidence and merely have the evidence presented to us by somebody else. No sensible man would do that. In any other context of life no one would be asked to do that. So I say this is further evidence that parliament has sunk pretty low, and I am going to venture to read two or three sentences from the great parliamentarian of our age. I would ask hon. members to listen to this and particularly to one or two phrases of what I shall read. I would ask them to ask themselves honestly whether we are in that position or in anything like that position.


Mr. Sluder:: Is he talking about bank
loans?


James MacKerras Macdonnell: No, he is talking about
parliament and I am venturing to talk about parliament too.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. May I remind the hon. member that after all we are talking about bank loans and Bill No. 82. I was forced to interrupt another hon. member on the same point the other day, and I hope the hon. member for Greenwood will co-operate with me.
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James MacKerras Macdonnell: Well, Mr. Speaker, I do want to co-operate, and I am hoping that even yet the refusal of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Harris) the other day, which did not seem to me really down his alley and was not worthy of him, may be changed. Quite frankly, I have very little more to say, but I am trying to make the point that what is being done now is another act of disrespect and disregard for parliament. The fact that my friend wishes to stop me makes me realize how far we have gone. I propose to quote two or three sentences from Churchill.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. The hon. member has indicated in advance that the quotation he proposes to read deals with abstract ideas of parliament, and after all we are dealing with a bill, the principle of which is very confined. I must ask the hon. member to co-operate with me and confine his remarks to the principle of the bill.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: Well, Mr. Speaker, of
course I must do what you say, but may I suggest to you that everything we do is governed by abstract ideas and that all I am hoping to do is to suggest an abstract idea which, if put into effect, might cause a change of action on the part of the government. As I said, Mr. Speaker, I wanted to refer to a few words of Churchill, and unless you prohibit me I should like to read them. They are very brief.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: If the hon. member will give me an assurance different from the assurance he has already given the house and will say that this extract has some bearing on Bill No. 82 then of^course I cannot interrupt him in advance. However, it seemed to me he indicated quite clearly that his extract would deal with another matter, and that is the reason I rose.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: Here it is, and it is very short.


Some hon. Members:: Order.


An hon. Member:: Oh, let us hear it. Get it on the record.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: He said:
I see the houses of parliqjnent-and particularly the House of Commons-alone among the senates and chambers of the world a living and ruling entity; the swift vehicle of public opinion . . . I regard these parliamentary institutions as precious to us almost beyond compare. They seem to give by far the closest association yet achieved between the life of the people and the action of the state.
It is that last phrase on which I want to comment.

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Mr. Deputy Speaker:: In order that these questions may be cleared up as far as possible, and I seem to be doing a lot of clearing up this afternoon, may I say that now that I have heard the quotation I think the hon. member for Greenwood was right when he first said that it dealt with an entirely different matter and I cannot see that it had any relevancy to the bill before us.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: Mr. Speaker, I do not
think I said that it dealt with an entirely different matter but I am not going to persist further. I should simply like to say that I believe the points I have been trying to make, even though they sound like idle tales in the ears of some gentlemen here, are practical. I believe they have a great practical bearing here. I believe they have a great bearing on what we are going to do with this particular bill.
It may take time. I would say that the fact that these suggestions are regarded as of no value, that people do not want to hear them, shows how right we are when we say that the conception of parliament is fading and becoming very dim. I believe the time will come when these things will be practical. I still hope that the government, in what I hope will be a venture into wisdom, may decide in this case that they will not treat us like a lot of children but rather that they will have a committee which can see the parties interested in this matter and not have a curtain drawn down between those who are trying to act and those who should be given the information on which they are acting.


James Garfield Gardiner: Mr. Speaker, it is now so long since I spoke on the* resolution that I can hardly convince myself-in spite of what I hear-that we are still discussing the question and if I may be permitted to say so, are straying about as far away from it as we can. At that time I took half an hour to try to convince the house that there is only one matter under consideration when we are dealing with Bill No. 82. It was not before the house then and I could understand the position taken at that time-the bill had not been seen-namely that there was a special condition which arose last fall and which required to be dealt with.
The government ^decided that the better way in which to deal with the question was to have loans made by the banks. The government decided that was the quickest, the cheapest and the most effective way of dealing with the question. There never was any decision made, when that point was reached, as to whether the final way to deal with the wheat question was to have advances made

on the grain that is on the farms. That question was not under consideration by the government at that time at all. The question under consideration was the quickest way of getting into the hands of the farmers cash which they could use in order to pay their accounts.
It was also well known that there were many who said that the quickest, the cheapest way and the best way from all points of view to have that done, was to have these loans put out by the banks. There were, of course, others who said otherwise. There were those who said that perhaps it could be done in some other way better than that. But the question that had to be decided by the government was this: Are we going to do it in some other way or are we going to have that particular thing done in the manner provided in this bill. It had no relation whatsoever at that time to the long-term policy of the government in relation to the handling of wheat or in relation to the handling of the surplus of wheat and so on.
As I stated, the decision was made to do it through loans obtained from the banks.
Back in 1951, there had been on the statute books an act which made certain provisions to do the same thing,-not for the same reasons but to do the same thing-namely to provide with cash the farmers who desired it and had to have it. Because there were very few of them who took advantage of it and because not a very considerable amount of money was involved-I think some $600,000 went out under that system-some suggestion was made that it did not do any good and had not any particular purpose. After all, some $600,000 is quite a lot of money. If put out in sums of less than $1,000, it takes care of a considerable number of farmers. From that point of view this legislation naturally suggested itself to a great many people. They said, "We have already had experience under it in 1951, and now it can be brought into effect again."
It is true that that legislation, as it was drafted at that time, was not functioning fully when the matter was discussed last fall. It was still in existence, and still on the statute books, but there was a termination date with respect to the time that it would operate. Hence it was suggested that we operate on a similar principle. That was at once taken to mean many things. Some people said, "It means that you can borrow only $1,000". Some people said, "The interest rate is going to be 5J per cent". As was indicated a few minutes ago by the hon. member for Regina City (Mr. Ellis), when he started to read his letters he found that some of those letters were written under those

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circumstances when the question which was being discussed was not the question which is now before the house.
The present bill makes provision for loans up to $1,500. The present bill states that the interest rate is 5 per cent. The present bill also indicates a method by which the money is to be paid back, namely that half of the money obtained for the wheat from month to month over the period that the loans are out can be retained by the farmer with which to carry himself along. In other words, it is not the same legislation as that which was being discussed in those earlier days. This legislation is now known to the farmers and is understood by them. I therefore do not think we are gaining very much by going back and discussing what people thought at that time.
As a matter of fact, hon. members also know that-and probably I used the wrong term, as I am accused of doing sometimes- _ in the earlier part of the discussion when I made reference to regulations, somebody asked a question afterwards whether there had been any change in regulations and the answer was no. The fact is this, and everyone who knows anything about the situation out west knows it and if they presume to discuss the question from the western point of view they should know something about it, the fact is that the first statement which came out, and which was submitted by the banks to the farmers who applied for loans, was not satisfactory.
The Department of Finance called together a meeting in the city of Winnipeg. That meeting was attended by finance officials, by the solicitor for the wheat pool in Saskatchewan and by many others. They redrafted the statement which was put out to the farmers and reconsidered some of the conditions that had been put on under the first statement. One of them was as to whether the applicant agreed to pay taxes out of this loan before it would be made. Another one was as to whether loans that had been made by banks for other purposes should be taken under consideration. One was as to whether they had to examine the records at land title offices throughout the prairie provinces before they could make the loan. Those inconveniences were all removed within a few days and a new form was gotten out. Most of these resolutions that are paraded here in connection with this discussion were resolutions passed prior to the bringing out of these new forms, and the attitude today in the western part of Canada is not the same as it was at that particular time.
Then again it has been said that farm organizations believe this and that farm organizations believe that, and that you ought to call the farmers in here before a committee. There are 250,000 farmers growing wheat. To conceive of the idea of getting in a hearing before a committee of the house a sufficient representation or a more complete representation than is sitting in this house is just a proposal that could not be carried out in spite of the good intentions of my friend the hon. member for Greenwood (Mr. Mac-donnell). It might be good in theory but I venture to say that when you consider an organization that has 11,000 members-and that is true of one of the organizations that has been quoted-from among 250,000 farmers and when you figure that sometimes there are two or three out of the one farm house who belong to the farm organization, even an organization like that does not necessarily speak for the farmers of western Canada. Then, when you take another organization, as was done a few moments ago, which is not farming at all, as a matter of fact an organization which a very few months ago passed a resolution to the effect that they ought to be making oleomargarine, and quote it as an organization that speaks for farmers on every point, I would like to hear something that is a little more in line with what we would expect to decide our vote upon when we are considering a bill of this kind.


Mr. Diefenbaker:: What was that organization?


James Garfield Gardiner: Oh, if my hon. friends will think back far enough they will all know. I do not need to tell them who it is.


John George Diefenbaker: Why is it being made anonymous?


James Garfield Gardiner: There is only one of them in Saskatchewan, so the hon. member will be able to find out all right.
The other matter which is of concern is this, Mr. Speaker. A few moments ago the hon. member for Greenwood (Mr. Macdon-nell) asked who were those people who were here to see the government. Well, it was the Canadian federation of agriculture, the largest farm organization in Canada and the most representative. After all, the farm organization that was mentioned a few moments ago has organizations in only four provinces of Canada. The federation of agriculture has organizations in every province in Canada. Not only have they organizations in every province in Canada but every single phase of agriculture from one end of Canada to the other is represented in that organization. When someone on the other side of the house said a few moments ago that that

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organization is financed by the wheat pool, well, that answers a lot of the arguments that have been put forth in the house in the last few days. If that organization is financed by the wheat pool-and I am not saying it is -or by all the wheat pools of western Canada-


Alfred Claude Ellis: Who made the statement that it was?


James Garfield Gardiner: A speaker only within the last few minutes. The statement to the effect that it is financed by the wheat pools proves only one thing, namely, that if they were expressing the views of the wheat pools when they were down here, hon. members on the other side of the house have not been expressing them. I have not any doubt as to what the opinion of the wheat pool was as an organization.


Alfred Claude Ellis: What about their convention?


James Garfield Gardiner: I attend their conventions every year on invitation. I am a member of the wheat pool and I discuss all their questions with them for at least one afternoon every year. I know what their views are. I would call the attention of some hon. members to the fact that one of the members of this royal commission is a member as a representative of the wheat pool. Another is a member because he is president of the farmers' union, or was president when he was put on the commission. These men are members of the commission which brought out this report.
Some suggestion was made by the hon. member for Regina City (Mr. Ellis) that the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe) had tried to leave the impression that the government of Saskatchewan was in favour of these bank loans, because of what he said last evening. The Minister of Trade and Commerce did not say anything last evening which would give anyone justification for even making such a statement. He said that this report was being made to the government of Saskatchewan.


Alfred Claude Ellis: He used the word "endorsed".


James Garfield Gardiner: He said that this report was being made to the government of Saskatchewan by a royal commission which had been appointed by the government of Saskatchewan. I might say, in addition to that, if hon. members opposite think there were meetings held last fall they should have followed this commission around the province. This commission visited practically every hamlet in the province of Saskatchewan. It met farmers everywhere who would come and talk to them. After having done so IMr. Gardiner.]
they made the report which is on hon. members' desks, and it was submitted to the legislature in Saskatchewan since it met in its present session only about two weeks ago. That is about as up to date as anything one can get on the question.
Let us come back to where we were last evening. With respect to the result of the discussions which took place while they were out on the road interviewing everybody they could, doing just exactly what the hon. member for Greenwood says ought to be done, they say this, in arguing out the question:
The payment of advances on farm-stored grain would, in effect, be a prepayment of all or a portion of the initial price by the wheat board. Such a program would resemble, in a number of aspects, the commodity loan program of the United States.
They go on to say this:
One undesirable feature would be the questionable wisdom of making advances freely available to all' producers whether or not they are in need of financial assistance.
There could be nothing clearer than that. They say that is the objection to following the system, but then they go on to say:
The principal objection, however, lies in the field of administration. Provision would have to be made for inspection to determine adequacy of storage facilities, to verify quantity, and to determine grade. The additional costs involved would appear to make the proposal of doubtful value as a long-term program.
What hon. members are discussing more than half the time on this_ particular bill is the question of long-time policy. They are discussing that. This organization says that that particular thing might be most difficult to apply. I repeat, after having done that, after going out and hearing evidence all over the province, hearing all the farmers, that is the summing up of the matter. Then they say this:
Perhaps a more workable proposal is to reestablish the prairie producers interim financing act of 1951 on a permanent basis.
Well, if my hon. friends think that that is not good for the immediate time, are they prepared to accept it as a permanent policy of this government as something to be applied out west for all time ahead of us? Well, if they are, they ought to be very much more in favour of having it applied for the next six months to try it out. They pretend to be speaking here for the farmers of western Canada in saying that the farmers of that part of the country are opposed to this bill. Then they take this particular report of the commission and quote from it to try to prove that is the fact. I was somewhat astounded last evening when my hon. friend opposite the member for Regina City refused to read the opinion of this organization on the

question that was under discussion. He would read anything else but this. At the end of the quotation I have read, the commission goes on to say:
Therefore, the existing need could probably be met through re-enacting the prairie producers interim financing act as permanent legislation.
They refer to the existing need, not the permanent need. They say the existing need could be met by bringing that legislation into effect.
Let me turn to the conclusions at page 207 of the report. I am going to read all of conclusion 17.


Alfred Claude Ellis: I put it on record last night.
Mr Gardiner: No, you did not. You left out two sentences last night and ' you left out one today. I am going to read it all just as it is on page 207.


Mr. McCullough (Moose Mountain):: May I
ask a question?


James Garfield Gardiner: I will put it all on and you can follow it as closely as you wish.


Alfred Claude Ellis: It is already on the record.


James Garfield Gardiner: No, it is not, not in the form in which I am going to put it on. I am going to put it on the record just as it is written in the report. Conclusion No. 17 reads:
Delayed deliveries of wheat, necessitated by lack of storage space, result in high farm storage expenses and delayed returns to producers. For farmers with limited resources the resulting financial hardship is serious. The proposal thai farmers be paid storage for farm-stored grain has considerable merit. In addition, the provision of emergency credit by banks and credit unions, guaranteed by the federal government, would be a useful part of any long-term agricultural program.
A survey-
Here is where my hon. friend came in last night and left out all that precedes this. He comes in with this:
A survey of present storage facilities is urgently required to determine whether new storage is needed and, if needed, where it should be built. In the meantime-


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, hear, hear. My hon. friend referred that "in the meantime" to the statement he did not read last night but that "in the meantime" does not refer to that at all.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Go ahead and read it.


James Garfield Gardiner: It says while they are making this survey of present storage facilities-
-advance payments could be made by the wheat board on properly stored grain on the farm to ease the farmer's immediate cash shortage.


Mr. Argue:: You are splitting hairs.
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James Garfield Gardiner: I have not split any hairs, and if my hon. friend will sit down until I get through he can make any speech he likes providing he has not worn out his welcome already.
Now, the other statement which the hon. member for Regina was asked to read today and which he did not read-


Alfred Claude Ellis: What sentence did I not read?


James Garfield Gardiner: I am reading from page 216. Recommendation No. 15 (b) with regard to emergency credit is set in the commission's report:
(b) the recommendations with regard to emergency credit as set forth in the commission's report on agricultural credit be implemented or, alternatively, the federal government re-establish, on a permanent basis, the Prairie Producers1' Interim Financing Act of 1951.


Alfred Claude Ellis: Alternatively.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is the final recommendation that is made.


Alfred Claude Ellis: Read No. 14 now.


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, "or"; and my hon. friend goes on saying that the farmers are all against us. Well, I have had some very prominent farmers in my office within the last two days. Perhaps I should not say farmers, but very prominent individuals from Saskatchewan have visited me in my office within the last few days. These are men who are having farmers from the communities in which they live drop into their offices hour by hour and by the score, people who are doing daily business with them; and they tell me that the argument that is being put up here on the floor of the house is not correct at all.


Alfred Claude Ellis: Bank managers?


James Garfield Gardiner: None of them are bank managers at all. The main objection I heard was the objection I heard when I was in the west. I was in the west myself at the end of the week.


An hon. Member:: You certainly were.


James Garfield Gardiner: I was in Winnipeg, Regina, Lethbridge, Cardston, and in the Blood Indian reserve. I covered practically all of western Canada in my trip. The chief objection I heard to anything that is going on down here in the house was voiced by a gentleman in Winnipeg, who said the people in Melfort were hostile because the hon. member for Melfort refused to come home to discuss the on to the bay movement and was wasting his time down here making the kind of speeches he has been making. That is at least the opinion of a few farmers.

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Alfred Claude Ellis: Well, he was elected to come down here.


James Garfield Gardiner: 
Clarence Decatur Howe: Eight thousand.


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, 8,000 went before
Christmas and received loans amounting to some $7 million. Well, $7 million is not something to be laughed at. What is the effect of this bill in relation to that?
I might have agreed last fall with some of the things that were said, including the suggestion that perhaps we ought to call the house together, although there were not a sufficient number of people saying that to have placed a great deal of emphasis upon the contention that we ought to call the hon. members from all across the country to consider the terms of the new bill that was going to be brought in. However, I am quite convinced that the people back home and the hon. members who come here from all across Canada would have considered that 
a great waste of money not only by the government of Canada but by the individual members who had to come here to decide on one particular matter.
Therefore the government said to those concerned, "Well, in all probability when the house does meet it will pass this legislation", and in spite of what has been said and all the fighting that has been done I know it is going to be passed and there is no question about it.


An hon. Member:: Crack the whip.


James Garfield Gardiner: My hon. friends wonder how we can say that. We can say that as a result of the last election in Canada, and we will still be able to say it after the next election. So I want to say to my hon. friends that it was not considered to be the best policy or in the best interests of this country to call in over some 270 members of this house and the members of the Senate in addition in order to determine a matter which everyone knew at that time would be passed by this house.
We are here now asking hon. members to pass this bill and our hon. friends by talking for ten days on it-


Donald Methuen Fleming: It has not been ten days.


James Garfield Gardiner: -and by saying they are going to go right on talking as long as they have breath left with which to talk about it and remain within the rules of the house, are serving no particular purpose. I do not like to sit here listening to them; nevertheless I do it.


Mr. Mclvor:: Wasting time.


James Garfield Gardiner: We have to hear what they say in any case in order to be absolutely certain they do not say something different when they go home; therefore we sit here and listen to them. Hon. members opposite are here endeavouring to tell this house that the farmers out west are raising a terrible row about this. There is no one in this country I know of who opposes the government who hesitates to say to me all the nasty things he can whenever he has occasion to do so.


An hon. Member:: Give them a chance.


An hon. Member:: But you keep moving around.


James Garfield Gardiner: Give them a chance? I went right across the prairies last week end and I am going back again right across the prairies out as far as Calgary. I expect I will hear some more comments concerning the fact that my hon. friends are wasting their time and ours in Ottawa when they might have been getting this bill through

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and into operation. The only thing they are accomplishing at present is to make bank managers hesitate here and there across western Canada before making loans. That is all they have accomplished in the last ten days. A farmer goes into a bank and says, "I want a loan," and the manager says, "Those members of yours in Ottawa are not going to put the bill through".


Alfred Claude Ellis: I thought you said it was going to go through anyway.


James Garfield Gardiner: I am sure it is, but hon. gentlemen on the other side of the house have been doing everything they possibly can to make sure that it does not go through. They are trying to convince the farmers back home that it is not going to go through. I would like to suggest to you that one of the reasons some of the farm organizations are losing membership so rapidly is because the farmers do not agree with what some hon. members are saying.


Alfred Claude Ellis: We are not worried.


James Garfield Gardiner: The farm organizations in western Canada are not raising a row about this legislation. The only place I have ever heard any row raised about it was when some of my hon. friends of the C.C.F. group on the other side were getting meetings organized. They say that they did not organize them, that they just sprang up, but the fact is that they were getting them organized out there all across the country and were talking against loans. There have not been any other meetings of farmers in western Canada where resolutions have been passed.
The farmers of western Canada want to make use of this bill; not all of them of course, because all of them do not need the assistance provided by this bill. But the farmers in western Canada who are in greatest need of assistance want this bill and they want it as soon as it can be put through. I see the hon. member for Humboldt-Melfort (Mr. Bryson) shaking his head. Well, I saw people in Melfort shaking their heads back in 1931 when they got $5 per acre when they had grown a lot of wheat. I know that farmers up in that section of the country are not supporting the position which is being taken by members in this house.
When the election is held in western Canada, as it will be sooner or later, I imagine that there will be fewer words said about this legislation than about anything else that has been under consideration in this country. Why will that be? That is if it is left to my hon. friends opposite to say the words. They are saying that members from Saskatchewan, from Manitoba and from Alberta ought to 67509-94
get up and talk about this legislation. They are simply telling you, Mr. Speaker, that they have not convinced the rest of the members of the house that they are giving us a proper report on western Canada. They are appealing for support of hon. members on this side of the house in order to put over a plan which they have in their minds. When they go back and try to explain the fact that for ten days they have asked the people of Canada not to provide loans to the farmers out west, that for ten days they have been threatening somebody that they should change their minds down here those members will change their minds.
A few minutes ago the hon. member for Greenwood (Mr. Macdonnell) spoke and said that they do not grow much wheat in his constituency. I think he could have said that they could not grow any wheat in his constituency. The wheat growers of the west are dependent upon men in his constituency. Most of the men interested in the financial institutions of western Canada live in Toronto and Montreal. Those men have looked over the whole situation and they are prepared to lend money to farmers under this bill.
Now we are told that we should not do it, that the farmers should not get it, that we should bring all the farmers down here before a committee to say what they think. If that were done there would be a lot of Tories who would be going back home and keeping quiet for the rest of the session. These farmers in the west have members here to express their point of view. If my hon. friends on the other side of the house are not able to express that themselves and are appealing to Liberals on this side of the house to express their views on the question, well may I say that I have expressed mine in a previous address on the resolution and I am expressing them again. The hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Argue) was kind enough to say yesterday that I always have sufficient nerve-he called it courage but I will call it nerve-to speak to any meeting. I would not hesitate to go to any meeting in western Canada and meet any group of farmers and lay my point of view before them.
I repeat that the gentlemen who formed this royal commission were looked upon by the government of Saskatchewan as being the outstanding agriculturists in that province. They wrote this report and I have not any doubt that this report will be referred to in the debate that is going to take place as a result of the resolution introduced into the legislature which the hon. member for Regina City (Mr. Ellis) read a few minutes ago. But

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1 am just as sure that when the resolution is discussed this report will be discussed too. I have no doubt that there will be more support for this report in the legislature of Saskatchewan on both sides of the house than for what members are saying here.
This is a reasonable report got out by people who represented different organizations of farmers. One was a professor of agriculture at the university. Another member was a leader of one of the co-operative organizations that were referred to. Another was a member of the board of the wheat pool. Another was the president at one time of the farmers' union in Saskatchewan.


An hon. Member:: And a farmer's wife.


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, and a farmer's wife. That is a pretty good committee and they have made some very sound recommendations. One of the soundest recommendations was that there should be provision for farmers getting guaranteed farm loans from the banks in western Canada. That is what this bill proposes, and it proposes nothing else. My hon. friends go on discussing all kinds of things. The hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Zaplitny) laughs at that, but I have said on one occasion before that this is not a laughing matter. This is a very serious matter with the farmers out west.
By this method they will be able to get money, and yet there are those who are trying to prevent them getting that. I repeat, no one on this side of the house, no one in the government, no one connected in any way with this measure has ever said that it will solve anything else but the matter of getting money quickly into the hands of farmers.
Then it will be found by the bill which comes up next that the government has gone on to say that it will pay storage on anything over the average amount of wheat which has been in the elevators for a term of years. Has anyone on the other side of the house made any objection to that? Of course they have not. They have all said they are going to vote for it. As a matter of fact I would rather expect that if some day some time there was some provision made for some kind of support for grain that has to be left on the farm, they will all support it. They will go even farther than that and say that when this bill was before the house they gave the government all the ideas that there are in existence in connection with this particular trouble.
I have watched them in operation. That is the way they always operate. They try to bring up everything they think the government may do some day so that they will

be able to say that they thought of it first. I am accustomed to that kind of argument, but the quickest way to satisfy the farmers of western Canada is to put this bill through and get it into operation so that when a farmer walks into a bank and asks for a loan the banker can say that with this legislation in effect he can give the farmer the assistance he requires.
The sooner that is done the better it will be for C.C.F. members. I should not say that because it might be worse for Liberal candidates if the C.C.F. members showed a little sense from now on, but nevertheless I give them that advice for what it is worth. Put the bill through, get it out of the realm of discussion among some 20 members of the house. Let us get on with our business.


Mr. J. A. Smith (Battle River-Camrose):: Mr. Speaker, in taking part in the debate on this amendment, following as I do one of the greatest orators, or I would like to say politicians Canada will ever know, I feel rather humble. But I am not prepared now, nor have I ever been and I hope I never will be, to accept his advice. I am ready to agree that if we must have a Liberal federal Minister of Agriculture perhaps the hon. gentleman holding that portfolio at the present time is one of the best we can ever expect to have.
I would like to point out to the right hon. Minister of Agriculture that you do not find many farmers interested in bank loans around the Bessborough hotel or the Fort Garry hotel or the Palliser hotel or the other larger hotels in western Canada. For that reason I was not too greatly impressed with the observations he made regarding the contentment that exists among the farmers of the west at the present time.


An hon. Member:: Not flying by T.C.A., either.


James Alexander Smith: I would also like to point out to my hon. friends to my immediate right that we in the Social Credit group have not yet reached the position where we are prepared to take too much guidance from them. We did support this particular bank loan legislation in the resolution stage because in our opinion that was the proper thing to do. We did so because at that time we did not know the terms of the bill. When the terms of the bill were exposed to us, we ourselves changed our course and no one gave us any guidance. Let us keep that point clear. It was suggested that perhaps our position had changed. I would point out that on January

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16, speaking in this house, I quoted from a report of the Social Credit caucus held in Edmonton, as follows:
The present federal policy with respect to loans on farm-stored grain is entirely inadequate and the proposal to put the farmers further into debt at 5 per cent interest is unfair and unjust when all the circumstances are taken into consideration. Not many farmers will be able to qualify for the full amount of the loan. Even if more of them did, the amount would not be sufficient in many cases to take care of the debts incurred in putting in and taking off the crop.
We believe the, federal government should make it possible for the Canadian wheat board to make cash advances to farmers against grain stored on the farm.
I maintain that that was our position at the opening of this discussion and has continued to be our position all the way through. We are in favour of this amendment which proposes to give it the six months' hoist, simply because we do not feel that the bill meets the wishes of the farmers of the west. Regardless of what the right hon. Minister of Agriculture has to say about farmer opinion in the west, we are not prepared to agree with him on that score.
We do not like the bill for several reasons. We feel the interest charge on these loans is far too high. Taking into consideration that the wheat board, for example can borrow at 3 per cent, we cannot see why farmers of the west should have to pay 5 per cent.
Again, the penalties for non-payment of the loan are in our opinion far too severe. Again, the bill itself does not give money to the younger farmers of the west who are just getting started. The other day I was able to convince even the Minister of Trade and Commerce that this was true.
During the course of the discussion, however, one very interesting thing has occurred. I am referring now particularly to the admission the right hon. Minister of Trade and Commerce made the other day in reply to the hon. member for Acadia (Mr. Quelch). The hon. member for Acadia was speaking about the storage problem under this bill, and he had this to say, as recorded on page 1315 of Hansard:
However, under this act he is not allowed to put that wheat into storage. Therefore, any farmer who has borrowed under this legislation, and who in order to get a fair grade tries to put his wheat into storage until such time as a grade has been arranged, puts the elevator agent in the position where he can be prosecuted if he allows the grain to be stored.
In reply to this comment by the hon. member for Acadia the Minister of Trade and Commerce had this to say:
I should like to say, if I may, that the department has taken cognizance of that fact and an
amendment will be offered if and when we get: the bill into committee which will make it possible to put grain in storage.
That did help some. On the other hand we still feel there are many features to this bill that are not worthy of our support. We are-still hoping, by the way, that the government will see fit to agree to the suggestion made by the hon. member for Acadia to refer this bill to a committee so that representations regarding it can be made by farmer organizations from the west.
This afternoon we have heard quite a debate as to what constitutes a farmer organization. The Canadian Federation of Agriculture, the wheat pools, the United Grain Growers, the-farmers' unions, and so on, have been mentioned. I maintain that if such a committee were established it would be only right and proper to ask all organized groups of farmers to come before that committee and submit evidence, and in that way this cross-fire we have to listen to here in the house would be eliminated.
In that connection, I have in my hand a copy of The Organized Farmer, which by the way is the official organ of the farmers' union of Alberta. We have been told that the farmers of the west are in favour of bank loans. With that statement I do not agree. I know the farmers of the west were opposed to bank loans from the day they were mentioned. Just to bring this point before you at the present time, I wish to quote briefly from the president's report in November issue of The Organized Farmer. I might point out that the farmers' union of Alberta is not a small organization of farmers; it is an organization that is composed of over 63,000 members, which is a good percentage of the farmers of Alberta. The president had this, to say:
The new plan for advances to farmers against, grain stored on farms has recently been announced. While this will be some help to farmers, the interest rate of 5 per cent is unreasonably high. There is a growing resentment among farmers against the idea of paying any such rate oi. interest for an advance on our own goods. Many farmers are strictly opposed to taking on a new debt and by so doing making more money for the banks. Why should not our government supply the money through our own Bank of Canada at cost? To go further, why should the wheat board not have access to the money at cost from the same source. It may be objected that this idea is "Social Credit" but so what.
The president went on further:
Of course the federal government will have to take the responsibility for the plan which they put out. If farmers refuse to use it the government will, of eourse, say that farmers don't need money. At the Saskatoon conference in September-

Grain
By the way, we have heard a tremendous amount about what happened at that particular conference. Here is the impression of this president:
At the Saskatoon conference in September, farm union representatives and the Saskatchewan minister of agriculture wanted to write a limit of 3 per cent into the plan to be presented to Ottawa. In fact most of them would have preferred to present a demand for a plan without interest at all. However, other opinions prevailed, and the brief presented asked for immediate advances without specifying any particular interest rate. I am now convinced that we should have stuck to our original idea and if the federation of agriculture and wheat pools, etc. would not have agreed, we should have presented our own plan to the government. In this case we conceded the point in order to present a united front for immediate action. In the long run, the other course might well have done our farmers more good.
Some fear has been expressed in parts of the house, Mr. Speaker, that in opposing second reading of the bill we are doing a great disservice to the unity of Canada. With that I cannot agree. All through the years this group has stood for all-out support to the primary industries of Canada. I am certain that throughout the years we have fought hard to improve the plight of eastern farmers. I am certain that we have supported the fishermen and others, and will continue to do so. It just so happens that the particular bill before the house is one that strikes primarily at the pocketbook of the wheat producer of the west. In that regard I ask the house to consider the fact that when the pocketbook of the wheat farmer of the west is affected it does not take very long for this influence to seep right down through the whole of the Canadian economy.
Why must we discuss bank loans? The reason is simply that the farmers of the west cannot market their wheat. We have been told time and time again that one of the reasons for the failure of the farmers to market their grain is the fact that there is a shortage of box cars in western Canada. I have in my hand a letter which I received in the mail this morning, and I wish to quote from it. It reads in part as follows:
The issue is rather confusing. Some places the [DOT]quota is 2 bushels per seeded acre, others claim 3 bushels. It doesn't matter very much what the quota is. Before a car can be shipped a permit has to be issued by the board, before the railways can supply cars. In talking with one of the C.N.R. operators-
This is a railway employee to whom he is referring.
-I was told that there wasn't any shortage of grain cars, permits to move grain was the hold-up. This fellow also said that not very long ago there were some 800 cars of grain sitting on sidings west of Edmonton waiting for orders to be .moved.
.
We are told, Mr. Speaker, that there is plenty of vacant space in the terminals on the west coast, so in my opinion this adds up to nothing short of inefficiency on the part of somebody, and perhaps even bungling. This afternoon the right hon. Minister of Agriculture was very impressive in pointing out to us that we did not know the opinion of the western farmers. Perhaps we do not know. Maybe he does not know, but I do know that last week a delegation came to Ottawa representing the interprovincial farm union council. In my opinion the interprovincial farm union council represents the best organized opinion of the farmers in five provinces of the dominion, and I only hope the day is rapidly approaching when this organization will represent the opinion of the farmers in the ten provinces. Here is what they had to say about this particular piece of legislation we are now discussing, first of all by way of review of what has happened:
Scores of mass protest meetings, resolutions and petitions that have developed spontaneously throughout the west accurately indicate the degree of dissatisfaction felt in rural areas regarding the guaranteed bank loans on farm-stored grain. It is felt almost unanimously that farmers should not be asked to burden themselves with added debt and interest charges because wheat is not being sold at a sufficient volume to enable the farmer to maintain his cash position.
They go further and discuss the bank loan program in detail. The bank loan program is not being used for a variety of reasons, and they mention such things as banking facilities. They say:
(a)	Banking facilities are not readily available in many parts of the prairie provinces.
I know that is definitely true in the province of Alberta. I also know that when the facilities of the Alberta government treasury branches were offered to the federal government, that offer was refused. They go on to say:
(b)	The amount of red tape involved in securing acceptance of a bank loan application is so great as to discourage all but the most persistent, and eliminates a good percentage of those who might otherwise qualify.
I should like to add one thing. Those who are most hungry have to go through this red tape as well.
(c)	Many prairie farmers today conduct their banking business with credit unions, and the government apparently has made no provision for loans through this source, but has limited its guarantee to the chartered banks.
(d)	The practice of banks deducting the value of any grain sold under the initial unit quota or additional small acreage quotas from the maximum face value of a loan means that most farmers can only qualify for amounts so small that they are not worth applying for.
(e)	Many farmers dread credit dealings with banks and mortgage companies due to past foreclosures . . .

They certainly do dread such dealings because they only have to recall what happened 15 or 20 years ago to realize just what it meant to them and their families to have hanging over their heads a bank loan which could not be paid.
It has been mentioned that the farmers of Canada are a wealthy group, that there is no need for the people of Canada as a whole to have to subsidize them, and so on. If that statement were true I would not suppose any hon. member would be arguing here for cash advances on farm-stored grain. Of course the truth of the matter is that as a group the farmers of Canada are far from being wealthy.
In the same brief presented to the federal government by the interprovincial farm union council I should like to refer to a table found on page 9 which deals with agriculture and total national income in Canada, 1945 to 1954 inclusive. I have every reason to believe that the table is backed up by authentic statistics, and in it we find that in 1945 the farmers received 11..8 per cent of the national income. In 1946 they received 13 per cent, in 1947 12-8 per cent, in 1948 13-6 per cent, and in 1949 12-8 per cent. Let us go down to the last three years for which statistics are available. In 1952 the farmers of Canada received 11-4 per cent of the national income. In 1953 they received 9-9 per cent and in 1954, 6-8 per cent.
Yet we have some hon. members still trying to convince us that the farmers of all Canada are receiving that which they justly deserve. I trust that other hon. members will get up and speak with feeling on this bill. May I say finally that I would not wish the right hon. Minister of Agriculture to feel for one moment that his harangue had one bit of influence upon my thinking, because I know the feelings of the farmers of my area. I have lived with them all my life. I know their thoughts, and I know that in the west at the present time there is a drastic shortage of money and that bank loans at 5 per cent are far from the answer to the problem.


Edward George McCullough: Mr. Speaker, we are discussing an amendment by the C.C.F. group to give the six months' hoist to Bill No. 82, which provides for bank loans. In listening to the Minister of Agriculture a few minutes ago, I was most interested in his statement that this measure had been introduced to deal with special conditions. I agree with that statement, and I want to say that the fiasco facing agriculture in the country at the present time lies right at the doorstep of the Liberal party. The reason for this legislation coming before this
Grain
house is simply and solely the lack of adequate policies on behalf of this government in relation to agriculture in this country.
I do not think the minister convinced anybody in this house by his attempt to place on the record the statement that western farmers were not against this legislation. He took the opportunity of saying that he had just come back from a trip to western Canada. In the Regina Leader-Post I notice some comments in respect to the minister's trip out there. Incidentally I might say that he made a statement, or there is attributed to him a statement, with respect to the flood damage. He is reported to have said:
They waited-
That is the Saskatchewan government.
-for us while the other provinces went ahead with what they had to do and billed us later.
This discussion is not within the orbit of this debate, Mr. Speaker, but I want to say that the minister made this statement either deliberately or not knowing the facts. It is a fabrication; and if he knew the facts it is a deliberate lie.


James Garfield Gardiner: Mr. Speaker, I do not like the hon. gentleman's language and I do not think you will like it either. It is not a lie and it is not deliberate.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Applewhaite):: think the hon. member for Moose Mountain' (Mr. McCullough) will agree that on all sides of this house it has always been accepted that the expression "deliberate lie" is not used in connection with speeches or statements by other hon. members. I feel quite sure that the hon. member will be willing to withdraw the expression.


Edward George McCullough: Mr. Speaker, I am quite willing to withdraw it if the hon. member wishes me to do so.


James Garfield Gardiner: Make it outside the house.


Edward George McCullough: As I
stated, Mr. Speaker, perhaps he was not familiar with the situation prevailing and with the work which the Saskatchewan government has done in respect of it.
Now we have the picture of the fanner being asked to accept bank loans as a measure to relieve his present cash situation. I believe that is an indignity to the farmer. It places him in an extremely difficult position, because it is only going to add to his present financial problem. The Minister of Agriculture stated that to date some $7 million had been loaned under the proposal of the Minister of Trade and Commerce. In my opinion, Mr. Speaker, this is only another load and another debt on the western farmer. If the farmer has t&

Grain
take a year to pay back that $7 million it is going to impose a load of another $350,000 on the already harassed and debt-ridden farmer of western Canada.
Mr. Speaker, there has been a great deal of talk in the house as to what the farmers in western Canada want. The Minister of Agriculture stated that, when they were undertaking to make some proposal, bank loans seemed to be-and he gave three reasons for the provision-the quickest, the most effective and the cheapest method. I want to say that he never said it was the fairest method, and that is an important issue in this debate.
The present situation facing the farmer is the result of the lack of adequate agriculture policies by this government. I am sure that anyone who is fair-minded, after a perusal of what has taken place, will agree that the western farm organizations and the western farmers generally do not accept this legislation. Last evening the Minister of Trade and Commerce quoted what he called "hot off the griddle" submissions made by the royal commission investigating the position of agriculture in the province of Saskatchewan. As reported at page 1447 of Hansard he said: The bill was recommended by the farm leaders of the province.
I want to say that statement is not true. It is not endorsed by the farm leaders of the province. If there was any confusion in the early stages leading up to the present situation, then it could have been said that there *was not complete unanimity. However, I believe that as discussion in this house and in the country has taken place, the submissions made now by all the main agricultural organizations and farm spokesmen are to the effect that they are asking for cash advances as opposed to bank loans. When the Minister of Agriculture was speaking I asked him to read recommendation No. 14 appearing in the report of the royal commission on agriculture and rural life from which he had been quoting. I now want to quote that recommendation for the record:
That, in view of the grain producers' immediate need for cash and their present difficulty in selling farm stocks of grain, the federal government promptly establish, on an emergency basis, a system of cash advances on farm-stored grain.
In addition to that, among the people who were on the commission making this submission we have Mr. H. L. Fowler, secretary manager of federated co-operatives. Mr. Fowler now is backing cash advances for farm-stored grain. In addition there is Mr. Charles W. Gibbings, who is another member of the commission and is second vice president of the wheat pool. He is another person (Mr. McCullough (Moose Mountain).]
who is supporting cash advances. Then there is Mr. J. L. Phelps, president of the farmers of Alberta economic committee. He is supporting cash advances. In addition to that, I want to say that the resolutions which the Minister of Trade and Commerce read last evening were not necessarily final recommendations. It should be noted that in the beginning they said:
Perhaps a more workable proposal is to reestablish the Prairie Producers Interim Financing Act of 1951 on a permanent basis.
Then later on they say:
. . . the existing need could probably be met through re-enacting the Prairie Producers Interim Financing Act as permanent legislation.
They were no final conclusions whatsoever. I think I have read into the record the final recommendations which these people made, which is more to the point.
Just recently the interprovincial farm union council came to Ottawa and made their submissions to the government. In an unmistakable way they pointed out that they were asking for cash advances and not for farm loans. I read from page 15 of their brief submitted to the government:
Therefore, the interprovincial farm union council is continuing to press for adoption of its original proposal (which has been endorsed at the three wheat pool delegate meetings) that the government arranged for interest-free cash advances by the Canadian wheat board on farm-stored grain to the value of 50 per cent of the initial payment on an estimated delivery of 8 bushels per cultivated acre.
I have here also, Mr. Speaker, the Saskatchewan wheat pool's brief and I want to quote from it as follows:
The current problem of a shortage of farm cash was considered as soon as the annual meeting opened. The delegates went on record in favour of a system of cash advances against farm-stored grain to be paid out by the Canadian wheat board through elevator companies with the federal government assuming the interest on the loans involved.
I think we can all surely agree that we have a preponderance of farm leadership and farm organizations asking for cash advances at this time. I think the debate should rest on the merits or demerits of that proposal, namely whether or not the farmer is entitled to cash advances or whether he should pay interest on any alleviation of his present financial crisis.
I said at the beginning that the present farm economic problem should be laid right at the doorstep of the Liberal party. There has been confusion in respect of deliveries; there has been confusion in respect of box cars. We find that the Minister of Trade and Commerce has made a number of statements in this respect. On January 11 he said:
The weather is improving and I may say that car loadings are improving.

On January 16 he said:
The movement of box cars in the west has improved very considerably in the last two weeks, largely as a result of improved weather conditions.
On January 27 he said:
Our big problem now is not selling, but transportation. If deliveries of wheat by producers this crop year do happen to fall behind last year, it will be because rail transportation is not adequate.
Then of course the Minister of Justice (Mr. Garson) had some comment to make over a Winnipeg radio station. He said:
Our great problem is box cars. Of these there is a great shortage both in the United States and in Canada.
When the Minister of Agriculture was in the west the other day he made the comment to the press that there was still a shortage of box cars. He went on to say that one company making wheels for the box cars was going full blast. That certainly shows a lot of confusion, a lack of planning and a lack of knowledge on the part of this government. They are not interested in trying to get the grain off the farms into box cars and into elevators.
Then we have the comment of the transport controller, as it appeared in the Gazette of February 16. He said:
There is no shortage of box cars holding up prairie grain shipments.
It would seem that there is a lot of confusion somewhere. The net result is that this year the federal government has failed to move the grain off the farms and to pay the farmers anything for their labour. That is the crux of the whole situation. That is why the farmer has the right to demand that some cash be put in his pocket so he can pay his debts and carry on.
In my constituency I have a number of organizations. The Saskatchewan farm union district convention was held in Estevan. We had around 200 delegates. At that meeting they passed a resolution asking that cash advances be paid to farmers. In addition, at all the public meetings I held resolutions were passed, and there was unanimity in asking for cash advances as opposed to bank loans. The farmers are justified in asking for cash rather than paying interest on loans. I know that in my constituency the average young farmer who started to farm in the last seven or eight years is so short of cash that he cannot pay his fuel bills, his debts, and carry on.
I was at a large livestock feeder sale and talked to a number of young farmers. These farmers wanted to buy some cattle, put them on feed and perhaps make some money during the winter. They had grain on their farms, but simply because there was no movement of grain those young farmers
Grain
were forced to watch the big feeders come in and buy up the cattle, take them out and put them on feed lots, while they sat back and watched the auction take place without any money to buy livestock.
I remember that a year ago the Minister of Agriculture told the western farmers that if they wanted some ready cash to start raising some more hogs.


James Garfield Gardiner: Mr. Speaker, that statement
has been made quite often. I did not say any such thing. In reply to a newspaperman's inquiry I said that I raised hogs. I did not ask anybody to raise them.


Edward George McCullough: Mr. Speaker, on another occasion I am going to quote exactly what the minister said. He said he was misquoted at the time. He said to some farmers who wanted ready cash, produce livestock. I am suggesting now that the Minister of Agriculture is afraid-


James Garfield Gardiner: I did not even say that.


Edward George McCullough: -to
suggest that western farmers feed some of his grain to hogs and cattle, particularly hogs, because he knows right now the Canadian picture in hogs is pretty blue. He knows also that if the western farmer started to raise hogs it would undermine eastern agriculture to that extent.
We in this group favour justice for all our people in the field of agriculture. We want to see the eastern farmer receive the same justice as the western farmer. We feel that indirectly the subsidy on feed grain going to eastern Canada so the eastern feeder can feed hogs and cattle is of some benefit to the western farmer, but it is mainly beneficial to the eastern farmer.
In respect of the production of hogs, naturally the eastern farmer has an advantage of perhaps around $6 per grade A hog produced over and above the western farmer. We do not mind that. I say to the Minister of Agriculture, if there is a shift in the production of hogs in Canada and the western farmer goes heavily into hog production, he will undermine the eastern farmer who ordinarily is a raiser of hogs. If he does that it will be simply because of the lack of an adequate policy on the part of this government.
In addition, we have the local problem facing many sections of the prairie provinces. We are not going to sit here, Mr. Speaker, and allow this government's policy to go unchallenged. The Minister of Agriculture says he knows this legislation is going to be passed. Of course he does. They have a preponderance of over 70 members in this house

Grain
over all opposition members combined. They could send 50 of them home and still carry the legislation.
As a matter of fact, two and a half days after this debate started the Minister of Trade and Commerce said he was sick and tired of it. He said he was prepared to withdraw the legislation until the latter part of the session and then bring it on. He would have to go to the banks and tell them that this bill was off for the present. I know full well that there is a group on the Liberal benches, the private members, who are afraid to rise m their places and speak. As a matter of fact, we have not heard from the Minister of Justice. He has not told us what he thinks would be a good thing for his constituency. Perhaps the Minnedosa meeting, which he attended last fall, has frightened him a bit. I challenge him to tell us what he thinks is the opinion of organized agriculture or of the individual farmer.
The hon. member who spoke before me said that when the Minister of Agriculture goes out west he goes by plane and stays at the big hotels, at the Bessborough in Saskatoon and so on. When he is at these big hotels he is not talking to the farmer who is frozen out in the back concessions and cannot deliver his grain.


James Garfield Gardiner: You should follow me.


Edward George McCullough: He
may be talking to the bankers, but he is not getting the opinion of the farmers. We have had a profound silence from the Liberal members on the other side of the house. I notice that we smoked out a few of them. The hon. member for Qu'Appelle (Mr. Mang) has spoken. It is all to his credit. He did not deal with bank loans. He did not try to give us the farmer's financial position. We have not been able to get the hon. member for Swift Current-Maple Creek to rise.


Irvin William Studer: On a point of order, if the hon. member will sit down I will make his speech for him; I know it by heart.


Edward George McCullough: That would be the first sensible speech the hon. member ever made. We are always quite prepared to listen to what the hon. member has to say.


Irvin William Studer: Sit down long enough.


Edward George McCullough: Mr. Speaker, the agricultural position today is a complete fiasco. I think we have a definite right to try to put the facts before this government. They are stubborn; they do not want to listen. Nevertheless they cannot deny the facts. They cannot deny from 1951 to 1955 agricultural income in all sections of

the country has deteriorated. It has gone down in the west more than 3 per cent over the general farm economy. It has gone down over 46 per cent in the prairie provinces. Today the western farmer's dollar stands at a parity level of about 46 per cent as compared with the purchasing power of the 1945 dollar.
In other words, Mr. Speaker, since 1945, the time of decontrol, the policies of this government have put the western farmer in an impossible financial position. His costs have gone up and up and the price of his commodities has gone down. That is why today the western farmer is in a cost-price squeeze. There is nothing the individual farmer can do, and there is nothing organized agriculture can do except to come down here and put before this government their plea that we have some kind of planning in this country by which agriculture will get a fair deal.
I noticed a press comment which stated that presumably the Minister of Trade and Commerce is indifferent or will not see the light and take into consideration that because western agriculture today is in such a financial crisis, it will eventually affect the whole Canadian economy. We have heard a lot of optimistic statements from various hon. members of the cabinet but when we ask for adequate policies we get such policies as the one we are presently discussing, namely that the farmer must be expected to go to the bank and be subjected to that indignity, and he must give a lot of information as to his financial position.
This is reminiscent of the hungry thirties. I remember the period in the thirties after we had had a Conservative government and the Liberal government was again in power. Neither of them was able to help the farmers, and I suppose the people of Saskatchewan and the prairie provinces in general were the worst hit. It got so that farmers had to sign this paper and that paper, and I remember a story concerning one farmer who when taking a load of wheat to town jumped off the wagon when he saw a piece of paper floating by and put his signature on it.
That seems to be the behaviour this government expects of the farmer in order to obtain a little bit of cash, in spite of the fact that he has farmed well and has produced wealth for this country and for hungry people abroad where we can perhaps meet the challenge of communism. The farmer is trying to provide adequately and he has done a good job. Despite the fact that he has done this he is faced with nothing short of a ridiculous and unfair policy which says in effect that after he has produced his wealth and put it in the granary he must now go and borrow on it.

I wonder how many hon. members of this house, perhaps in the year 1945, were earning $4,800 a year. I wonder too how they would react if their income today was to drop to $1,800 in terms of purchasing power, and if at the end of the year their employer said, "You are not going to get $1,800; you will have to go to the bank. We will set up a plan whereby you can go to the bank and borrow on your $1,800". That is exactly what the western farmer has to do under this policy.
The western farmer favours an orderly marketing system, he is in favour of the Canadian wheat board and he does not want speculation on food stocks. However, he does believe that this government should get busy and endeavour to sell some of the grain in storage, and that for the welfare of the whole Canadian economy we should have a policy of storing our grain somewhat akin to that which exists in the United States, where the farmer is paid as soon as he produces his grain and places it in approved storage. At that time he can obtain 90 per cent of parity for his grain. In this country we have nothing like that.


Irvin William Studer: He reduces his acreage first.


Edward George McCullough: We
have nothing like that. The farmer is left without any assistance whatsoever. The Minister of Agriculture indicated that the government was prepared to bring in legislation which would provide for some payment on farm-stored grain. The Liberal government will never have any difficulty when we shove them along toward better legislation for the people of this country. That is one thing which we in this group have been advocating since 1945 when I came into this house and I presume hon. members of this party were advocating it before then. Instead of taking an average delivery of 10 or 15 years the government should set up the principle of the normal granary, where we store in the years of plenty for years of scarcity; but no such program is forthcoming.
In closing I just want to say that this government, in spite of its numerical strength in this house; in spite of the threats of the Minister of Agriculture; in spite of what I think is the twisting of the facts of the support of this bill on the part of the Minister of Agriculture, we in this group feel the farmers of western Canada do not support bank loans. They do not want to be forced to go to the banks and pay interest on their money; in fact, they feel it is an injustice.
I am happy to have had the pleasure of being one of those people who have stood 67509-95
Grain
up in this house and put forth what I believe to be the contention and the stand taken by the western farmer.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Applewhaite):: Is
the house ready for the question?


Some hon. Members:: Yes.
The house divided on the amendment (Mr. Nicholson) which was negatived on the following division;
YEAS Messrs:
Aitken, Miss	Knowles
Argue	Leboe
Barnett	Lennard
Bennett, Miss	Macdonnell
Blackmore	Maclnnis
Blair	MacLean
Bryce	McBain
Bryson	McCullough (Moose
Cameron (Nanaimo)	Mountain)
Campbell	McLeod
Cardiff	Michener
Castleden	Montgomery
Charlton	Murphy (Lambton West)
Diefenbaker	Nesbitt
Dinsdale	Nicholson
Drew	Nickle
Ellis	Noseworthy
Fairclough, Mrs.	Pallett
Fleming	Patterson
Fulton	Pearkes
Gillis	Quelch
Green	Regier
Hahn	Rowe
Hamilton (York West)	Small
Hansell	Smith (Battle River-
Harkness	Camrose)
Herridge	Trainor
Hodgson	Tustin
Holowach	White (Hastings-
Howe (Wellington-	Frontenac)
Huron)	White (Middlesex East)
Johnson (Kindersley)	Wylie
Johnston (Bow River)	Yuill
Jones	Zaplitny-65.
Knight
 NAYS Messrs:	
Anderson	Dechene
Applewhaite	Denis
Arsenault	Deschatelets
Balcom	Deslieres
Batten	Dickey
Beaudry	Dumas
Benidickson	Eudes
Bennett	Eyre
Blanchette	Fairey
Boisvert	Follwell
Bonnier	Forgie
Bourget	Fraser (St. John's East)
Bourque	Gagnon
Breton	Gardiner
Brown (Essex West)	Garland
Bruneau	Garson
Buchanan	Gauthier (Lake St. John)
Byrne	Gauthier (Portneuf)
Cameron (High Park)	Gingras
Cardin	Girard
Caron	Goode
Carter	Gour (Russell)
Cavers	Gourd (Chapleau)
Crestohl	Gregg

Grain
Habel
Hanna
Hardie
Harris
Harrison
Healy
Hellyer
Henderson
Henry
Houck
Howe (Port Arthur)
Huffman
Hunter
James
Jutras
Kickham
Kirk (Antigonish-Guysborough)
Kirk (Shelburne-Y armouth-Clare) Lafontaine Langlois (Berthier-Maskinonge-Delanaudiere)
Langlois (Gaspe)
Leduc (Gatineau)
Leduc (Jacques Cartier-Lasalle)
Lefrangois
Legare
Lesage
MacEachen
MacKenzie
MacNaught
McCann
McCubbin
McCulloch (Pictou)
Mcllraith
Mclvor
McMillan
McWiHiam
Maltais
Mang
Marler
Masse
Menard
Meunier
Michaud
Mitchell (Sudbury) Monette
Murphy (Westmorland)
Pickersgill
Pinard
Pommer
Poulin
Power (Quebec South)
Power (St. John's West)
Proudfoot
Purdy
Rateile
Reinke
Richard (Ottawa East) Richard (St. Maurice-Lafleche)
Roberge
Robertson
Robichaud
Robinson (Simeoe East) Rochefort
St. Laurent (Quebec East)
St. Laurent (Temis-couata)
Shipley, Mrs.
Simmons
Sinclair
Smith (York North)
Stick
Stuart (Charlotte)
Studer
Thibault
Tucker
Viau
Villeneuve
Weaver
Weir
Weselak
White (Waterloo South)-128.


Mr. Speaker:: May I inform the house that in future paragraph 2 of standing order 12 will be strictly enforced. It reads as follows: When Mr. Speaker is putting a question, no member shall enter, walk out of or across the house, or make any noise or disturbance.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak for just a few minutes before the vote is taken on the second reading of this bill. I imagine most hon. members would prefer to have the vote after eight o'clock, anyway.


An hon. Member:: No.


Stanley Howard Knowles: However, my purpose in
rising is to urge the government to reconsider its announced refusal to send this bill after second reading to the committee on agriculture and colonization or any appropriate committee which the government might choose. Bearing in mind the dislike of the Chair and the dislike of the house for repetition at this stage of the debate, I shall not repeat the arguments for such a course. I merely make the appeal. In fact, I think one might well rest such an appeal on the arguments already made by members of this [The Acting Speaker (Mr. Applewhaite).]
group, as well as other members, particularly that of the hon. member for Acadia and the argument made this afternoon by the hon. member for Greenwood.
However, if the government feels it cannot send the bill-I am not referring to the subject matter, but to the bill itself

to committee, then serious consideration might be given to the proposition that was enunciated this afternoon by the Minister of Trade and Commerce. He made an interjection during the speech made by the hon. member for Greenwood, which I took down-and I hope I took it down correctly-when he said something like this: "May I ask my hon. friend if there is any better representation of the farming community than the elected representatives from the area?"
The point the minister was making was that we do not need to send this bill to a committee to have representatives from various organizations there because, as he put it, the best representatives of the farming community-the community affected-are the elected representatives on the floor of this house. I made the suggestion, by way of a question which I put to the hon. member for Greenwood, that the minister might then consider seeking the advice of the elected representatives who he has said in his own words are the best representatives of the farming community.


An hon. Member:: Please make it snappy.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I remind the minister that the area to which he referred consists of the three prairie provinces. There are 48 constituencies in those three prairie provinces, represented in this house by 48 members. There are 14 of them from Manitoba, 17 from Saskatchewan and 17 from Alberta. Judging by the way those members have been voting on the last two amendments that have been before the house, those 48 members would vote 32 to 16 against this bill.
I submit, therefore, that on the basis of the minister's own pronouncement this afternoon he should not be calling upon the government's majority in the whole house to support a bill which he says might be subjected to the best representation from the farming community, namely the elected representatives from the area concerned. Some hon. members might say that suggestion is not put forward too seriously. I do not recall any occasion on which a committee of the house was set up on the basis of representation from a particular province or particular provinces. Therefore it might not be an appropriate precedent to establish, namely the actual appointment of a com-

Grain
mittee representing members from the three provinces named. Nevertheless, in spirit-


Mr. Trainor:: An ad hoc committee.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The hon. member for Winnipeg South (Mr. Trainor) says it should be an ad hoc committee. Well, the members of such an ad hoc committee have already spoken in the house. They are two to one against the bill. In view of that fact it seems to me that the bill should not be allowed to pass. But if the government insists on putting it through with its majority, then it does seem to me that the case is unanswerable that it should be referred to the standing committee on agriculture and colonization.
I offer just one other objection to the bill. Although I have not sat here every minute of the debate on this legislation I have tried to follow it closely, and I believe this objection has not yet been voiced. In making this objection may I point out that one of the main reasons we from the prairie provinces oppose this legislation is that we know if it is enacted it, together with the proposal contained in Bill No. 83, will be all that the wheat farmers of western Canada will get in relation to their present crisis. We know that no matter how strong the appeals may be for further legislation, for further consideration of their plight, the fact that these two measures have been passed will put an end to any consideration by the government of the crisis in western Canada.
That is bad enough, Mr. Speaker, when it applies to the present situation. That is bad enough when that is the answer for this year, but I ask hon. members to recognize that in addition the government, through this legislation, is asking for the right by order in council to extend this bill for a second year. That means that if a year from now a situation in western Canada develops which is similar to the situation that now obtains, we will not even have the matter discussed in parliament. There will not be a summoning of a session of parliament as there should have been last fall. Of course not. But there will not even be a discussion in parliament. The matter will be decided behind the closed doors of a cabinet meeting by the passing of an order in council, and once again the farmers of western Canada will be faced with the fact that this is it so far as the government of Canada is concerned.
As one hon. member said a few days ago, 32 of us from the prairie provinces would not be committing political suicide if we felt that this legislation was popular on the prairies. We know that it is not. The fact that, despite what happened in the first vote 67509-95 J
at the resolution stage, there has been a solid opposition in the votes on the amendments that have taken place, and that there will be a solid opposition on the vote that may now take place on second reading, is in my opinion pretty conclusive evidence as to the views of the people who are affected by this legislation.
The Minister of Trade and Commerce enjoyed making his comments the other day with respect to whether my colleagues in this party were expressing the views of western agriculture, but he cannot deny the fact that the one way the people of the prairies have to express their views on national matters is through the representation they send to this house. He confirmed that this afternoon in the statement that the best representation from the farming community consists of the elected representatives here. Those elected representatives are two to one against this legislation.
Therefore I feel that it should be turned down by the house. But if the government insists on putting it through, surely the least the government can do is to have it referred to a standing committee of the house so that interested bodies may appear and further consideration may be given as to whether this is the way to deal with the matter or whether an effort should be made to find some better way.


Mr. C. E. Johnston (Bow River):: Mr. Speaker, I do not intend to take very long at this time. I have spoken on the bill on other occasions and have expressed my views leaving no doubt as to what I meant. When I was speaking the other day I made a statement with regard to something the Minister of Trade and Commerce had said. The effect of it was that the minister had said there were not very many people who were going to take advantage of these loans. He objected to that statement and said that I should give some proof of that fact. I informed him at that time that I would do so.
The other day I started to quote some passages from Hansard which indicate, in my judgment at least, that the minister made that implication on more than one occasion. I had put one reference on the record and then Mr. Speaker at that time, not Mr. Speaker now in the chair, stopped me and said he did not think it was a question of privilege.
I indicated, therefore, that as time went on I would put the remarks of the Minister of Trade and Commerce on Hansard to prove my point, and that I would also prove the point I had made regarding the Minister of Agriculture supporting the remarks of the Minister of Trade and Commerce. I want to do this now, and it will not take more than.

Grain
a couple of minutes. As found at page 129 of Hansard of January 16, the Minister of Trade and Commerce had this to say:
A certain number of producers have found themselves in difficulty this past season, and the purpose of the guaranteed loan was to relieve those smaller producers.
I contended at that time that in referring to a certain number of producers the minister had indicated that no great number of people were intending to take advantage of the legislation. Then I want to quote another passage from the remarks of the Minister of Trade and Commerce. As found near the top of page 129 he said:
Apart from that-
He was referring to the storage question, -it did not seem to me that there was any particular burden on the farmer through this condition of plenty.
Again I say, Mr. Speaker, that the Minister of Trade and Commerce pointed out that because of the surplus situation there was no unnecessary burden on the farmers, and that very few would take advantage of this legislation. To make it more definite, I want to put on Hansard what the Minister of Trade and Commerce is reported as having said in Calgary. These are his words, and without doubt I think they will convince the house that the minister did not have in mind that very many people would take advantage of the legislation. As found in the Calgary Herald of November 28, 1955, the minister is reported as saying:
It is my hope and belief that comparatively limited use will be made of the lending facilities, that most farmers are either in a position to carry on without borrowing or are in a position to finance in the ordinary way.
Then the Minister of Agriculture said just today in his speech, and I wrote down his words at the time he uttered them, that a very small percentage of the farmers will go to the banks for these loans. In my opinion, Mr. Speaker, I did not misquote the Minister of Trade and Commerce. What I said was perfectly true and I still stand by what I said the other day with respect to what the minister had said.
The house divided on the motion (Mr. Howe, Port Arthur), which was agreed to on the following division.
Anderson
Applewhaite
Arsenault
Balcom
Batten
Benidickson
Bennett
Blanchette
YEAS Messrs:
Boisvert
Bonnier
Bourget
Bourque
Breton
Brisson
Brown (Essex West) Bruneau
IMr. Johnston (Bow River).]
Buchanan
Byrne
Cameron (High Park)
Cardin
Caron
Carter
Cavers
Crestohl
Dechene
Denis
Deschatelets
Deslieres
Dickey
Dumas
Eudes
Eyre
Fairey
Follwell
Forgie
Fraser (St. John's East)
Gagnon
Gardiner
Garland
Garson
Gauthier (Lake St. John)
Gauthier (Portneuf)
Gingras
Girard
Goode
Gour (Russell)
Gourd (Chapleau)
Gregg
Habel
Hanna
Hardie
Harris
Harrison
Healy
Hellyer
Henderson
Henry
Houck
Howe (Port Arthur)
Huffman
Hunter
James
Jutras
Kickham
Kirk (Antigonish-Guysborough)
Kirk (Shelburne-Yarmouth-Clare) Lafontaine Langlois (Berthier-Maskinonge-Delanaudiere)
Langlois (Gaspe)
LedUe (Gatineau)
Leduc (Jacques Cartier-Lasalle)
Lefrangois
Legare
Lesage
MacEachen
MacKenzie
MacNaught
McCann
McCubbin
McCulloch (Pictou)
Mcllraith
Mclvor
McMillan
Me William
Maltais
Mang
Marler
Masse
Menard
Meunier
Michaud
Mitchell (Sudbury) Monette
Murphy (Westmorland)
Pickersgill
Pinard
Pommer
Poulin
Power (Quebec South)
Power (St. John's West)
Proudfoot
Purdy
Ratelle
Reinke
Richard (St. Maurice-Lafleche)
Roberge
Robertson
Robinson (Simcoe East) Rochefort
St. Laurent (Quebec East)
St. Laurent (Temis-couata)
Shipley, Mrs.
Sinclair
Smith (York North) Stick
Stuart (Charlotte)
Studer
Thibault
Tucker
Viau
Villeneuve
Weaver
Weir
Weselak
White (Waterloo South)-125.
++NAYS
Messrs:
Aitken, Miss
Argue
Barnett
Bennett, Miss
Blackmore
Blair
Brooks
Bryce
Bryson
Cameron (Nanaimo)
Campbell
Cardiff
Castleden
Charlton
Diefenbaker
Dinsdale
Drew
Ellis
Fairclough, Mrs.
Fleming
Fulton
Green
Hahn
Hamilton (York West)
Hansell
Harkness
Herridge
Hodgson
Holowach
Howe (Wellington-Huron)
Johnson (Kindersley) Johnston (Bow River) Knight

Knowles
Leboe
Lennard
Macdonnell
Maelnnis
MacLean
McBain
McCullough (Moose Mountain)
Michener
Montgomery
Murphy (Lambton West)
Nesbitt
Nicholson
Nickle
Pallett
Patterson
Pearkes
Quelch
Regier
Rowe
Small
Smith (Battle River-Camrose)
Trainor
Tustin
White (Middlesex East)
Wylie
Yuill
Zaplitny-61.
Bill read the second time.


Mr. Speaker:: Will hon. members agree to send the bill to committee now and perhaps make up for the time lost by meeting at 8.15 this evening? Is that agreed?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
The house in committee, Mr. Robinson (Simcoe East) in the chair.


William Alfred Robinson: The house in committee on Bill No. 82, to provide for short-term credit to grain producers, and so on.
It being six o'clock I do leave the chair. May I remind hon. members that in accordance with the understanding just arrived at I will resume the chair at 8.15.
At 6.20 the committee took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The committee resumed at 8.15 p.m.
On clause 1-Short title.
Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: Mr. Chairman, I wonder if the minister would elaborate on the word "interim". It would seem to me that since the act provides that by order in council it can be extended to a year from now there should be some indication as to what the minister has in mind by the reference "interim".


Clarence Decatur Howe: Mr. Chairman, the purpose of the word interim is to indicate that it is not the intention of the act to take care of all the requirements of the producer for a year. It is to take care of a producer in the interim from the beginning of the crop year until he is able to deliver wheat or other grain in an amount that is current in a normal year.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: But, Mr. Chairman, since provision is made for the legislation to be extended by order in council, I think that would suggest in the minds of those who were drafting it that it probably will be applicable next year. With such large sections of the west where farmers have been able to deliver only one bushel per acre up until this time,
Grain
and with the picture as serious as it is, IT would think there should be some indication; as to whether or not the farmers are going to be able to find some other ways and means of realizing on the sizeable stocks of grain which are in hand but which cannot be sold.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Well, Mr. Chairman, no matter what the title suggests to my hon. friend it is in fact an interim loan. The farmer starts repaying it as soon as he delivers any grain and over a period of time the loan is bound to diminish, providing the farmer is able to market his grain.


Donald Methuen Fleming: At quite an early stage of the debate the minister indicated that the number of applications for loans received by the-banks totalled about 8,000.


Clarence Decatur Howe: At the end of last year.


Donald Methuen Fleming: At the end of the calendar year. Has the minister now any more recent figures on the total number of applications for loans and the aggregate amount?


Clarence Decatur Howe: No; I am sorry, but I have not seen the figure. I particularly asked for it at the year end and obtained it.
I have not asked for it since; therefore I have not seen it. Of course the banks have the figures, but it would take a request on our part to obtain the figures from them.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Does, the minister recall the total amount of the loans that was given to him as at the end of the calendar year 1955?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes. It was roughly 8,000 loans totalling approximately $7 million.


George Hugh Castleden: I should like to ask what it is expected that such loans to the 8,000 borrowers will cost the government. What was the cost as a result of the experience of the government under a similar act in 1951?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Mr. Chairman, I hope the only expense will be the expense of the administration which is the responsibility of my colleague the Minister of Finance. The Department of Trade and Commerce hopes to ride free.


Mr. Quelch:: Could the minister say how many loans have been made up to the end of January?


Clarence Decatur Howe: No, I have not
seen the figures.


[Stage Direction]
Clause agreed to.
On clause 2-Definitions.
Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: I was going to ask if there have been any requests from the credit unions

Grain
to have them accorded the same guarantees the banks have. Could the minister indicate whether or not there have been any requests?


Clarence Decatur Howe: I rather think there have been. We were not in a position to grant the requests. Until now we have had no legislation to cover our guarantee. We had some protection under the Bank Act, but unfortunately credit unions do not come under the federal statute which is known as the Bank Act and therefore we could not guarantee loans from credit unions.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: My understanding is that fishermen qualify for loans. I do not have the legislation before me, but probably the Minister of Finance could help us with this. It would seem to me that if the fishermen are able to qualify for loans through their credit unions, and if the credit unions on the prairies *did want to have some consideration given them and the credit unions in British Columbia and the maritimes, probably some changes should be made.


Walter Edward Harris: It is correct that fishermen do get their loans under the legislation of last session through credit unions. We have considered it in connection with this legislation 'and in connection with another bill which will be coming forward in due course. The difficulty is more than just a matter of intention or desire, there is a real administrative difficulty. We have been in touch with the major credit union organizations throughout Canada, have corresponded with them and obtained their suggestions and have asked them a number of questions as to how some of these problems could be solved if they did in fact come within this type of legislation from now on.
It was not possible to conclude that, and it is not possible to conclude the matter in time for this legislation. I hope I shall be able to do so before another bill of similar import may come forward. I can assure my hon. friend that so far as we are concerned there is no objection to credit unions. We would be glad to have their assistance, but there are a great many problems that arise in the Department of Finance if we are to get the same results we get from the banks. 2 hope my hon. friend will take it that while -we were not able to do it in connection with this bill, we hope to be able to do it in connection with this type of legislation in the future.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: I am glad to have that statement from the minister. I am sure that hon. members from all parts of the country will [DOT]agree with me when I say that the credit unions have a good record in the handling IMr. Nicholson.]
of small loans in a great many areas in the prairie provinces where there are no banks for some considerable distance. If the minister is able to bring forward legislation shortly so that credit unions can have the same advantages the banks are given under this legislation, I am sure it will be appreciated greatly.


James Alexander Smith: Did the
same request come from Alberta treasury branches as well?


Walter Edward Harris: The Alberta government treasury branches were considered in the same manner as were the credit unions, but we were unable to accede to their wishes at the moment. I repeat the assurance I gave to the hon. member with respect to credit unions and say that we will look at the matter, having in mind the actual desire to provide loans under convenient terms to farmers at any given time.


Mr. Hahn:: Can the Minister of Trade and Commerce state why grain is being defined as wheat, other than Durum wheat, oats, barley and rye?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Wheat, other than Durum wheat, is allowed to be shipped ex quota; there is no quota for Durum wheat, and the same for flax.


Edward George McCullough: As I
understand it, rye is excluded from the "grain" mentioned in that paragraph.


An hon. Member:: Included.


Edward George McCullough: 
Clarence Decatur Howe: In speeches which my hon. friend has delivered at least four times he has complained about the farmer not having freedom to deliver. Fortunately he has freedom to deliver his flax or rye and his Durum wheat whenever he likes. Therefore he has at least the best of one world if not of two.


Daniel Roland Michener: As I understand it, we are dealing with paragraph (e) of subclause 1 of clause 2 of the bill. I should like to ask the minister if it is the intention of this paragraph to include oats, barley and rye within the definition of grain, or to exclude them.
I have read the section several times and I am not yet clear as to its intention. It reads:
"grain" means wheat, other than Durum wheat, oats, barley and rye.
If that "other than" carries through to oats, barley and rye, then it means only wheat and would not include oats, barley and rye. If it does not include oats, barley and rye I suggest that the wording be reversed so that it would read:
"grain" means oats, barley and rye and wheat other than Durum.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Perhaps if my
hon. friend would pay strict attention to the commas he would get the meaning.


Daniel Roland Michener: I have, but I think there should be brackets enclosing "other than Durum wheat" if it is to mean that Durum wheat is the only exclusion. Is that the intention?


Clarence Decatur Howe: That is right.


Daniel Roland Michener: I suggest that the paragraph could be made clearer. I read the paragraph when the bill first came down and I was not clear whether it was intended to include or exclude oats, barley and rye. I suggest that for the sake of clarity a simple change be made.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Some of the highest priced lawyers in the country worked on this draft. If it would make my hon. friend feel any better he could move an amendment that there be parentheses around the words "other than Durum wheat".


Daniel Roland Michener: I would move accordingly. Sometimes these high priced lawyers get so refined it is impossible to understand what they say.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Nothing like a good sea
lawyer.
Grain


William Alfred Robinson: It is moved by the hon.
member for St. Paul's that the commas after the first and second "wheat" in paragraph (e) of subclause 1 of clause 2 be replaced by parentheses.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I think we would still need a comma after the closing parenthesis.


Daniel Roland Michener: I agree. We have discovered another high priced lawyer.


[Stage Direction]
Amendment agreed to.
Mr. Johnson (Kindersley):: I should like to ask the Minister of Finance whether the prescribed form referred to in paragraph (h) has been altered in any way since the bill was introduced, or since November of last year?


Walter Edward Harris: I did mot catch the final part of the question.


Willis Merwyn (Merv) Johnson: I imagine that the prescribed form referred to means the form which the farmer fills out at the bank when obtaining a loan. Has that been altered in any way since the legislation was initially introduced?


Walter Edward Harris: I am sure it has not been
changed since the legislation was introduced, but we did change the form a week or ten days after it was sent out in the middle of November in order to eliminate certain searches with respect to titles and things of that kind. That would be perhaps around November 15 or 20, but I do not recall any major changes since.


Mr. Zaplitny:: Perhaps the minister could table a copy of the prescribed form which is now being used in order that members may have an opportunity to see what is the case at the present time.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes, we shall be glad to do that. We have it here.


Edward George McCullough: Could the minister state whether or not there have been restrictions on the delivery of rye? It seems to me that farmers have been restricted under the Canadian wheat board regulations.


Clarence Decatur Howe: During this crop year, rye has been under quota. Rye is included with grain this year. The quota was lifted for a short time, but it is now under quota.


William Alfred Robinson: Shall clause 2 carry?


George Hugh Castleden: With regard to clause 2 the Minister of Finance, in giving his explanation to the house, stated that he had contacted the credit unions throughout Canada and had acted upon their recommendations. Would he tell the house whether the banks expressed

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any opinion as to their willingness or desire to lend money under this act?


Walter Edward Harris: Certainly they agreed to loan money under this act.


George Hugh Castleden: Managers of banks to whom I have spoken in regard to this said they were hoping they would not be called upon to lend money under these regulations, and my impression was that the banks did not like it.


Edward George McCullough: Subclause 2 refers to words and expressions. I should like to ask why the words and expressions used in this act will have the same meaning as in the Canadian Wheat Board Act. Why are not the words fully spelled out in their exact meaning? It seems to me a situation could well arise where there would be an amendment to the Canadian Wheat Board Act, and perhaps the occasion would arise when the expression used in that act would not coincide exactly in meaning with what is meant in this act. I wonder if there is any reason why the words and expressions were not fully spelled out in the explanations in this act.


Clarence Decatur Howe: In any revision of the wheat board act we would be very careful that the meaning of the expressions would not change. This simply means that instead of a long list of interpretations, we put in the major interpretations and say that the others are exactly as in the wheat board act.


Edward George McCullough: In connection with the prescribed form, I understand that forms prescribed by regulation may be changed at the will of the minister by order in council. It seems to me there is a danger here. I wonder why the minister is asking that by order in council these regulations may be changed. Most of us are not satisfied at the present time that the forms the farmer has to fill out are fair. They seem to be restrictive, and they seem to put the farmer in a difficult position, as we shall find out when we go into the other clauses of the bill. It seems to me we should have spelled out here very definitely what the government intends to do with regard to the prescribed forms, and we should know exactly what kind of forms the farmer has to fill out and what kind of commitments he has to make in order to obtain a little money on the grain he has stored on the farm.


Clarence Decatur Howe: It is always the custom, where regulations are required, to provide that they will be made by order in council under the authority of the bill itself. That is the case here.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: The clause states:
"actual producer" means a producer actually engaged in the production of grain;
What would be the situation with respect to grain that is rented out? Would it be assumed that the tenant rather than the owner of the land is the actual producer of the grain, or would both be considered as actual producers of grain? What is the interpretation of that?


Clarence Decatur Howe: The interpretation is exactly the same as in the wheat board act. The producer is the man who actually grows the grain.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: I am not too clear about that answer. When the minister says that the producer is the one who actually grows the grain, does he mean the tenant in the case of rented land?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes, the tenant does the work.


Edward George McCullough: Following up the question by the hon. member for Dauphin, I wonder if the term "producer" will have the same application in this case as under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act. In other words, will anyone who is possibly receiving a small income from some other source be refused any assistance under this act?
I have in mind that when we were discussing it in a former debate with the Minister of Agriculture it was pointed out that there were cases where a young farmer who was perhaps doing a bit of trucking as a side line was not allowed to qualify for payments under the Prairie Farm Assistance Act. Would it be just as restrictive in this case, or will it mean that a farmer who is normally producing the grain and just takes a temporary occupation outside of his farming practices will be able to get this loan?
Many farmers, much as they would like to refrain from having to take this loan, are going to find themselves in a very difficult position this spring as regards putting in their crops. Some of the farmers have gone into the city and taken construction and other jobs. Perhaps they have taken their cattle to another farmer, and one farmer may be looking after two or more farmers' stocks while those farmers are away trying to earn a little ready cash. Will these people be refused a loan under this bill?


Clarence Decatur Howe: No, P.F.A.A. has no more to do with this legislation than the Railway Act. This legislation is parallel to the wheat board act. The expressions are the same as those used in the wheat board act. If the man is the actual producer of the

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grain, whether he be a tenant or an owner, he is entitled to obtain a loan on the grain he produced.


Mr. Regier:: The Minister of Finance referred previously to having consulted credit union organizations, I believe. I wonder whether he could be a little more specific as to who was consulted. I understand there is no such thing as a national credit union organization. Were the provincial credit union federations or the co-operative union of Canada consulted, or were they individual organizations that were consulted?


Walter Edward Harris: I do not think we need to go into great detail, but we have .consulted all the major credit unions, especially those that have a provincial or extra-provincial authority. I think before we are through we shall have consulted such a representative group that there will be no question about the opinion that we ultimately form having the support of practically all the credit unions.


Hazen Robert Argue: I heard the Minister of
Finance's comments earlier on the likelihood or the hope that credit unions might be included in a number of acts at this time. Is it the minister's hope that in the next session of parliament, if this act should then be in effect, an amendment might be moved so that credit unions may be included?


Walter Edward Harris: I am very much concerned to get this session of parliament along with its job and not to worry about that.


Hazen Robert Argue: I hoped when the minister made his earlier remarks that we were likely to get action, not only as far as this legislation is concerned, with regard to giving credit unions the same guarantee as banks, but under other legislation and other acts of this parliament, giving them the same guarantee.
In spite of the minister's comment that he would like to get this session over before he says anything about this other possibility, I am hopeful that at the next session credit unions may be included, and under the same guarantee as the banks.
When the Minister of Trade and Commerce was defining "producer" I noticed he made the comment that any actual producer, tenant or owner, was entitled to a loan. I am wondering in what way a producer can qualify so that he is entitled to a loan. In other words, does the minister feel that if a producer has grain on his farm that has not yet been marketed and the permit book is open for a certain sum of money, the producer in reality is entitled to a loan in that amount?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Mr. Chairman, we are coming to the guaranteed loan presently,
and I suggest that we take these things up under the proper heading.


George Hugh Castleden: The Minister of Finance
indicated that the provincial credit union organizations are still being contacted. Is that what I understood him to say?


Walter Edward Harris: No, Mr. Chairman. I said that we had decided we could not complete our work with respect to this bill and have anything to do with credit unions in it. However, I did say that in general we were pursuing the subject of the position in which credit unions could be put with respect to similar legislation. I mentioned that there is one on the order paper that we are considering at the present time, but so far as this bill is concerned there will not be time and we do not intend to pursue it.


John George Diefenbaker: As the bill now stands, credit unions could not be included, could they?


Clarence Decatur Howe: No.


John George Diefenbaker: In view of the fact that under section 88 of the Bank Act security must be taken, and therefore as the legislation now stands credit unions could not be included.


William Alfred Robinson: Shall clause 2 as amended carry?


John George Diefenbaker: No. I am asking the Minister of Finance whether that is not so.


Walter Edward Harris: The chief difficulty that we have had is the question of representation of credit unions. It is not a question to be solved easily. We are dealing here with seven or eight banks and we have to have a similar situation before we can deal with credit unions.


Erhart Regier: I do not think the credit union movement is going to be very happy with the minister's answers thus far. I understand this legislation goes back to October 1. Quite a few months have passed since that time. Could the minister not be a little more explicit and explain exactly the implications involved in why the credit union movement cannot be brought into this legislation?


Walter Edward Harris: There is no need to do that. There is nothing in the bill with respect to credit unions. My hon. friend will just have to take the explanation I gave, that I did not consider it possible then and have not considered it possible since to have the work we are doing with the credit unions advanced sufficiently to find an acceptable basis on which we can include them in legislation of

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this kind. I think that is a complete answer, and I do not think my hon. friend should press it beyond that.
Clause 2 as amended agreed to.
On clause 3-Minister's liability to a bank.


John George Diefenbaker: With respect to the first subsection of clause 3, I am one of those who believe there is very little danger of any losses being suffered by the federal authority under the guarantee. In order to support that I should like the minister to give particulars as to the experience under the 1951 act. How much was borrowed? I believe the figure was approximately $600,000 but I am not sure of that. How much, as finally guaranteed by the Minister of Finance, had to be put up by the government of Canada, and of that amount how much is still in default, if anything?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Originally there were 1,504 loans under the 1951 legislation. Of that number 1,430 were repaid in full and 71 were defaulted. There is a balance of three loans still outstanding that have not been put in default. The amount of the claims paid by the Department of Finance is $23,587.51. The amount of money recovered through wheat board deductions and direct repayments by borrowers is $9,707.22. The balance outstanding at this date is $13,880.25.


Hazen Robert Argue: What was the aggregate amount of the loans made under that act?


Clarence Decatur Howe: 


John Borden Hamilton: I notice that paragraph (d) of subclause 1 of clause 3 refers to the rate of interest charged by the bank on the loan not exceeding 5 per cent. In other words the guarantee would apply if the rate of interest charged by the bank on the loan did not exceed 5 per cent per annum simple interest. This would indicate a maximum figure. Can the minister inform the committee if the banks have handled any of these loans at less than 5 per cent interest?
The reason I ask the question is that it seems to me the guarantee supplied in this case is very much the same as when a borrower goes to the bank, asks for $1,500, is questioned as to his security and presents $1,500 in Dominion of Canada bonds. Under circumstances of that kind I am quite sure that any bank manager would be prepared to lend at a rate less than 5 per cent. I have been told that there may be problems of collection involved in this instance which are a little different from just having to cash bonds, but I am quite sure that if the banks had certain problems of collection they would in

the ordinary course of events add their collection charges to the amount which they would be attempting to collect. Perhaps the minister might answer first if there have been any loans at less than 5 per cent and, second, just what type of negotiations took place with the chartered banks leading up to the rate fixed under this legislation.


Clarence Decatur Howe: If a borrower were prepared to put up $1,500 in government bonds he would not make use of this legislation. He would conduct his own negotiations with the bank. Of course the bank does not need $1,500 in government bonds plus the government guarantee. I dare say if they had both they might give him quite a good rate. This legislation is concerned with the borrower whose only security is the wheat on his farm, and as far as I know the rate is 5 per cent.
These are small loans. The average is about $800, and the period of time would not be over six months. Probably it would not be as much as that. Therefore the total amount collected by the bank would be $20 per loan, and for that sum the bank has to go to the expense of making and collecting the loan. There is no such thing as adding collection charges, so my hon. friend need not worry about that.


John Borden Hamilton: I am satisfied with the explanation respecting no collection charges, but I do not think the minister should try to confuse me by telling me that if a man had $1,500 in bonds he would not be going to the bank to borrow under this legislation. I realize that. What I am saying is that the guarantee by the government to the bank is just as good security as the $1,500 in bonds that he might have taken to the bank if he had them. Under those circumstances people ordinarily can borrow money at less than 5 per cent. That is the particular point at issue here. Approximately 16 million people have become joint and several guarantors for these loans, and I cannot see much prospect of anybody losing any money.


Clarence Decatur Howe: If you put it to
a bank manager as to which he would rather have as security, $1,500 in government bonds or alternatively $1,500 in respect of which the government has given a 20 per cent guarantee, I think he would certainly choose the former. I do not know why my hon. friend insists on comparing two unequal classes of security.


Hazen Robert Argue: Mr. Chairman, we in this group have continued to say that under the legislation before us the banks in fact are taking no risk at all and that the 10 per cent of the

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aggregate that is guaranteed could not possibly under any circumstances be reached. I can therefore agree with those who say that, with such a complete guarantee by the federal government, the banks should certainly be able to do better than to put out their money at the rather high rate of 5 per cent.
In answer to a question by the hon. member for Prince Albert, the minister has just placed on record the experience of the government in connection with a guarantee on somewhat similar lines in 1951. It shows that on aggregate loans of $625,000, to date the loss to the treasury has been $13,880. I am sure the minister hopes that some of the money still owing may yet be collected, and that what has been a loss to date of approximately 2 per cent may be still further reduced. I would think the 2 per cent loss is probably higher than that which is likely to be experienced under this act.
The 1951 legislation was enacted to deal with a situation that was different in many respects. Today we are dealing with a situation where the farmers have grain of high grade, in excellent condition and in good storage. It is the grain itself that is the guarantee that the bank loan will be paid. But in 1951, when marketing conditions were better, it was not a question of a farmer with grain finding it difficult to get his grain to market. The situation was that owing to adverse weather conditions in the fall of 1951, thousands of farmers had not been able to harvest their crop and the crop itself in an unthreshed condition was out under the snow. Because the farmers had no grain to market, the government decided to guarantee a loan. In this legislation the loan is against grain in storage. But in the legislation of 1951 the security was the crop and the crop was defined as follows:
(e) "crop" means a crop of grain of any kind, as well before as after severance from the soil, harvesting or threshing thereof, and includes grain of any kind.
The grain could not only be under the snow in a swath condition where there was perhaps a reasonably good chance of harvesting it in the spring, but the grain could be under the snow in a standing condition so it was difficult to say what the possibility might be of harvesting the grain the next spring.
Still, with respect to this legislation, there is a high interest rate of 5 per cent. The farmer is obliged to surrender his permit book. He is giving the banks, I suggest, full security. I wonder what the right of the farmer is under this act. Is the farmer with grain undelivered, with his permit book uncommitted as defined in this legislation, in
fact entitled to a loan? I do not think so. I still believe it is at the discretion of the banker whether the loan is in fact made. Because of the fact that we object to this extremely high rate of interest, Mr. Chairman, we oppose this particular clause.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I am quite willing to assume that there will be no loss to the banks and I am quite willing to assume that the loss-if there is a loss-to the government will be extremely small. Nevertheless, it costs money to carry on a banking business. It costs money to make small loans. My hon. friend has before the house at the present time an amendment to the Small Loans Act, and it covers loans of about the same amount as these loans. What interest rate did he provide for there?


Hazen Robert Argue: Mr. Chairman, they are not at all comparable. The purpose of the legislation which I proposed to the house was to reduce the interest rate that borrowers would be obliged to pay when they obtained loans under the Small Loans Act. The borrower who is asking for a loan from a small loan company has already been paid his wages-* at least we assume that-or if he has a product to sell, he has been able to sell it. But the fact is that the prairie producer, while he has perhaps one of the best crops in history, has not been able to deliver it.
Because the wheat board and the government, who have the sole responsibility of marketing that grain, have been unable to take delivery of a substantial part of the grain to date, we feel the government has some responsibility. It is probably more just that a person, in obtaining a loan after he has received his wages, should pay an interest rate even though it is in excess of 5 per cent, than it is that a person be forced to pay 5 per cent interest because of the failure, through government policy, to take delivery of that grain.


Victor Quelch: We in this group have already stated that we think the interest rate is too high. Inasmuch as apparently the losses are guaranteed by the government, there is therefore no real danger of the banks suffering any loss. But what I am interested in is this. How far must the banks go in collecting the money that is owed to them before the government will pay up any losses they may have suffered? For instance, if when the grain has been delivered there is still a certain amount of money owing to the banks, can the banks then claim that they have suffered loss or must they take other measures in order to try to collect the money that is owing to them, such as foreclosing on chattels or any other assets?

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Clarence Decatur Howe: I believe that matter is covered by the regulations. The bank is obliged to make a reasonable effort to collect the money. I think there is a recovery section in it:
The bank shall notwithstanding full settlement of its claim of loss as a result of the guarantee loan act on behalf of the Minister of Trade and Commerce to collect amounts outstanding in respect of the loan and for such purpose shall take such reasonable steps as the said minister may deem necessary and shall realize upon any security held by it such amounts as may be collected or realized by it to be remitted to the said minister at the end of each month, commencing with the first day of November, 1952.
That is a regulation from the 1951 legislation, but that will be covered by the regulations in this case.


Victor Quelch: The reason I asked that question is this. When we were considering the housing legislation the representatives of the banks stated that they did not like to go into the mortgage business because they did not want to be obliged to foreclose. At that time it was mentioned that they were obliged to do that under the farm improvement loans, and the witness for the bankers stated that, within his knowledge, they had not been obliged to foreclose on any farmer. I was wondering whether, under this legislation, the banks would actually be obliged to go through the procedure of foreclosing on any chattel that might be owned by the farmer other than the wheat alone.	,


Clarence Decatur Howe: The only security for this loan is the wheat.


Victor Quelch: If the wheat does not pay up the loss, as far as the bankers are concerned they are through?


Clarence Decatur Howe: If he does not pay it off with the wheat he has this year, we hope perhaps he will pay it off with the wheat he gets next year.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Chairman, I think the clause in regard to the maximum rate of interest needs some further clarification. I think it will shock a great many people to learn that a loan guaranteed by the government of Canada should call for a rate as high as 5 per cent. It is quite true that there are limitations on the amount of the loan. There are limitations imposed by this section and there are limitations imposed by the next following section. Therefore it cannot be said that it is a complete, unconditional guarantee of the loans by the government of Canada. But even taking account of that fact, the rate of interest seems high in relation to the kind of security this bill authorizes.
Seeing that this must have been the subject of conferences with the banks before the

lending began as of October 1, I ask the minister whether this subject of the rate of interest was seriously discussed, and whether the government did press for a lower rate of interest on these bank loans, in view of the extent of the government guarantee?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Mr. Chairman, the Minister of Finance, of course, deals with the banks, and discussions about the rate of interest were carried on by the Minister of Finance. The government has many guaranteed loans and I do not know that 5 per cent has ever been considered a high interest rate. The Farm Improvement Loans Act is the same and the National Housing Act is a bit higher. If my hon. friend says that 5 per cent for a loan averaging $800 is an excessive rate, he is expressing his own opinion; he certainly is not expressing mine.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I think the minister is only adding confusion to the situation. He is talking about certain loans made by government boards under certain acts to individual borrowers. That is not the situation under this bill at all. This is a question of banks lending to individual borrowers, and receiving at the same time a government guarantee. I did not use the expression "excessive interest rate" as the minister has. But I do wish to express the opinion that I think it will shock a great many people to learn that a loan that is guaranteed by the Bank of Canada still must bear a 5 per cent rate. It will shock many people to learn that that should be so. A great many people in this country would like to lend money, receiving on it a government guarantee, for a lesser rate than 5 per cent. If there were any sense to this, I think the minister should say so rather than introduce a lot of confusing references to situations which are not at all parallel to this in any sense.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Mr. Chairman, the Farm Improvement Loans Act is exactly the same as this. It provides that a borrower borrows from a bank under a government guarantee. It has been in effect for several years, and the rate is 5 per cent.


Mr. Rowe:: It is too much.


Clarence Decatur Howe: A more parallel act is the Fisheries Improvement Loans Act under which the fisherman borrows from a bank under a government guarantee at an interest rate of 5 per cent. It is the same class of loan.


Charles Edward Johnston: Can the minister tell us what was the amount of loss under the Farm Improvement Loans Act?


Clarence Decatur Howe: It is not in the
Department of Trade and Commerce.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: The Canadian Farm Loan Act is certainly not comparable.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I said "Farm Improvement Loans Act".


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: Certainly not the Canadian Farm Loan Act.


Clarence Decatur Howe: No.


Daniel Roland Michener: I should like to say a word about the time period for which these loans are guaranteed. The bill says loans made between November 15, 1955 and June 1, 1956. Here we are in February, and parliament is now going to guarantee loans which have been made as far back as November 15, I suppose under the assurance of the government that it would cause parliament to pass the necessary regulation. It is that kind of attitude of the government toward parliament which leads me to ask the minister whether the date was not intended to be November 5, which was the date on which the announcement was made and which, as students of history will recall, is Guy Fawkes day, and the anniversary of the gunpowder plot to blow up parliament. I thought the minister had some sense of poetic justice in what he was doing in making his announcement on Guy Fawkes day. Perhaps he would like to amend this section and have the date run from November 5 to June 1.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Mr. Chairman, if I had the same finicky view of the situation as my hon. friend has I would probably have decided to wait until parliament had met and this lengthy debate was over, and the farmers would only now be able to get loans instead of getting them last November. I daresay it helped.


John George Diefenbaker: Possibly the minister can explain whether or not an order in council was passed to cover the guarantees that had been made from the date when the banks were promised this guarantee back on November 5 until the date that parliament did meet. Is that the basis upon which the guarantee was carried into effect?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Mr. Chairman,, there was no order in council. There were letters from the Minister of Finance to the banks which were tabled in the house. I am quite sure my hon. friend has read them. I do not know why he asked the question.


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Chairman, that is not quite the answer; that is no answer at all. The Minister of Finance has no power outside of parliament or under an order of council under the prerogative right of the crown.


Clarence Decatur Howe: No power to write a letter?
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John George Diefenbaker: Oh, now, we have arrived at the point where a minister can write a letter and make a guarantee on behalf of the government of Canada without an order in council. That is a most interesting thing. That is a new principle of government.


Clarence Decatur Howe: The Minister of Finance made no guarantee. He wrote a letter to say that when the house convened he would introduce legislation to guarantee the loans from a certain period, which I think was November 15. That was the letter to the banks. The banks did not even wait. They decided they would lend on the basis of that letter, believing that the Minister of Finance would introduce the bill as he had promised, which has been done.


John George Diefenbaker: Has that letter been
tabled?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes.


John George Diefenbaker: That is the one that was tabled?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes.


John George Diefenbaker: The one in question; I see.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


John George Diefenbaker: My hon. friends laugh. Because of the delay in tabling them it makes one suspicious, any time any matter arises, that they have not been tabled. I want to ask some questions in regard to directions to the banks. One of the complaints that I have had from quite a number of farmers is that qualified farmers are denied loans under the terms of the legislation. It all seems to depend on the location of the bank or the attitude of the individual banker.
What instructions have been given to the banks in regard to this question? In certain places farmers have been denied loans with all types of excuses. One excuse has been, well, you really do not need the money at the present time because you are going to make payments on account of certain debts that you owe. That excuse has been used on a number of occasions. Farmers believe that they are entitled to this assistance because after all one of the major reasons for it was to relieve the monetary situation among the farmers, and also, I would think, to be of assistance to the creditors in the area in which those farmers live in order to meet the current expenses of farming.
What instructions have been given to the banks? I asked the other day whether the government had any record of how many applications were turned down by the various chartered banks. The reply I received was that the government had no such information. I feel that if instructions have not

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been given to the banks, instructions should certainly go out now from the Minister of Finance to the various banks requesting them to grant the necessary loans, since the banks are guaranteed against any possibility of loss. Will the minister say-


Clarence Decatur Howe: Mr. Chairman, there are only two criteria that must be insisted on. One is, has the farmer the grain? In other words if he has 2,000 bushels of wheat he is entitled to borrow on a thousand bushels. The other is, is it pledged under section 88 to some other bank? If it is not, or if it is pledged under section 88 to the same bank and there is room for the loan, he is entitled to the loan. Those are the only two criteria.


Victor Quelch: Is there not another under section 3(e)? If the farmer had sold his 2-bushel quota would not the amount of that be deducted from the $1,500?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes. This is supposed to put the farmer who has delivered no grain in cash until he has delivered his grain, and if he has delivered part of his grain that is counted against the loan and he is only entitled to borrow the $1,500 less the value of the grain that he has delivered.


Victor Quelch: What if the farmer has only delivered 2 bushels per acre-the normal delivery is 8-surely the farmer should be able to borrow something; but if he had 800 acres at 2 bushels that would be 1,600 and that would mean he would not be able to borrow a cent. Yet he would have 6 bushels to the acre left on which he should be able to borrow.


Clarence Decatur Howe: If he had 3,000 bushels he could borrow $1,500, I suppose, and if he has delivered 500 bushels that is taken off; but this legislation was never intended for a man who has 800,000 bushels of grain or anything like that.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Clarence Decatur Howe: How much did
you say?


Victor Quelch: Eight hundred.


Hazen Robert Argue: What is a million bushels?


Clarence Decatur Howe: This is for the
small farmer, the three-quarter section farmer who would be expected to produce about 3,000 bushels of grain. That is the man this legislation was designed for. My hon. friend likes to refer to his own position, but I venture to suggest a bank manager does not ask him for any guarantee when he goes in to borrow.


Hugh Alexander Bryson: It has been argued constantly that the risk involved does not warrant the high interest rate of 5 per cent, and the minister referred to the experience in 1951 and the small loss taken, which seems to fairly well justify that belief. [DOT] I wonder if the minister could tell us of the $13,000 that did go into default in the 1951 experience; how many of those loans went into default because of misrepresentations made by producers as to the amount of grain they gave as security to the bank?


Clarence Decatur Howe: We would not know that. These loans are put out by chartered banks. I suppose they do their best to collect, but whether there is misrepresentation or misfortune or whatever cause we would not know.


Willis Merwyn (Merv) Johnson: Mr. Chairman, the minister has stated that this legislation is aimed at assisting the small farmer providing he can meet the qualifications of section 3. The qualification of section 3(c) is that the bank manager has scrutinized and checked the application for the loan with the care required of him by the bank in thg conduct of its ordinary business.
I suppose all bank managers are charged with the responsibility of making money and not losing any; therefore the bank manager would not give the loan to anyone who is in any way a poor risk. He would not give it to the small farmer who is in need of it by virtue of this qualification which is stated in the act. Is that not correct?


Clarence Decatur Howe: All I can say is
that up to the end of last year he had already given it to 8,000 farmers, and I am sure he has given it to a great many more since that time.


Willis Merwyn (Merv) Johnson: Has the minister any information as to the number of farmers who have applied?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Not the slightest.


Willis Merwyn (Merv) Johnson: It is listed on the application for the loan which the Minister of Finance has. Could the minister get that information? Surely it must be part of the information which the Minister of Finance has.


Clarence Decatur Howe: It is not available in Ottawa.


Owen C. Trainor: Would the minister care to state at just what price per bushel this grain which is to be hypothecated for loans is to be held?


Clarence Decatur Howe: It is the initial price of the grade.


Owen C. Trainor: What is that, $1.40?


Clarence Decatur Howe: It depends on the grade.


George Hugh Castleden: I should like to ask another question with regard to the security. Since all the loans are going to be entered in the farmer's permit book, the security upon which the loan is made is not merely the grain which the farmer has on hand at this time but all the grain which he may have in years to come. Is that true or is it not?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Yes, that is true.


Edward George McCullough: I think the point has been well made that there has been very little risk involved in these bank loans. The hon. members who have spoken have indicated that there has been very little loss under the 1951 legislation, and I expect there will be very little loss under this legislation. This afternoon the minister indicated that to date some $7 million had been loaned under the present proposed legislation. Calculating that at 5 per cent interest, if it runs for a year there will be an additional debt of $350,000 on the farmers' backs.


Clarence Decatur Howe: It does not run for a year.


Edward George McCullough: But
certainly it may very well run for a year.


Clarence Decatur Howe: No, sir.


Edward George McCullough: Consequently I say it smacks of discrimination, simply because when we consider other legislation proposed by this government to help various companies in this country at around 3 or 3,j per cent interest, one can readily understand our disgust. The farmer is already bankrupt because of this government's policy.
I take exception to this because as the minister has said, it is an ironclad guarantee by the government of up to 15 per cent of the aggregate loss the banks can have. I think all hon. members will agree that at the outside the loss will be only about 2 per cent, and when it is considered that this legislation is supposed to help the small farmer in general one can agree with what has been said by the hon. member for Humboldt-Melfort and the hon. member for Kindersley and others who have said that the farmer in many cases is not going to receive any assistance under this legislation.
If for example the farmer has his grain hypothecated to taxes, to the storekeeper, the oil merchant and to others, and if he has made a delivery under the quota, then of course his chances of getting a loan are very remote.
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When one considers that the farmer is hard pressed at the present time I think the government should have given fair consideration to this. At least when it is prepared to back it with the Canadian taxpayer's money so the banks cannot possibly experience the loss contemplated of 15 per cent of the aggregate, then I think we should have at least found this government ready to compromise on this and ready to reduce the interest to approximately 3 per cent, which it was ready to give big companies in this country in relation to credit and advances.
I think there are certain friends of this government, but the farmers of western Canada are not among them. The friends of the government appear to be the vested interests, corporations, and big people who can do something for themselves. Very little if any consideration is given to the little fellow and, I refer particularly to the farmers of western Canada.


Owen C. Trainor: May I ask the minister an additional question? Supposing he accepted the suggestion which has just been made, how much does he estimate it would cost the treasury of Canada, if anything?


Clarence Decatur Howe: What was the suggestion just made?


Owen C. Trainor: The suggestion was made that the interest rate be reduced to 3 per cent.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Well, I suppose if the banks charged 5 per cent and we charged the farmer 3 per cent someone would have to pay the other 2 per cent. My hon. friend has a pencil there; he can figure it out.


Owen C. Trainor: Not necessarily; the banks could be persuaded to charge 3 per cent.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Chairman, a few minutes ago when the interest rate was under discussion the Minister of Trade and Commerce tried to make the point that 5 per cent was the rate charged in certain other acts providing for government-guaranteed loans. He referred in particular to the Farm Improvement Loans Act and the Fisheries Improvement Loans Act. It seems to me that there is a very fundamental difference between loans sought under those acts and the loans provided for under this legislation, a fundamental difference which we do not as yet seem to have been able to get across to the minister.
When a farmer seeks a loan under the Farm Improvement Loans Act he is seeking money to improve his property or to purchase machinery, knowing that he will have to repay that loan-and intending to do so-out of future earnings. But in this case the farmer is put in the position where he has to seek

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a loan in respect of wages he has already earned but has not been able to draw. It is because of that fundamental difference that we think there should be cash advances rather than loans. In other words, we think that there should be no interest at all. We contend that the minister's attempt to make a comparison is invalid.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Mr. Chairman, I am certain that my hon. friend is so indoctrinated with the idea of collective farms, government-owned farms, that he talks about the farmer's production as labour. The farmer is an entrepreneur, he is an owner. His rewards come from the product he sells. The farmer does not work for a wage unless he is a hired man. On the collective farms in the old country wages are paid to the farmer and the state owns the land. The state takes the profits from the farm and stands the risks. But here we have ownership of the land by a private individual. The owner of the land cultivates his farm, markets his product and takes whatever comes.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Just because the minister and I both happened to mention some fisheries legislation is no reason why he should produce a red herring. As a matter of fact, he knows that the inference which he has just attempted to draw is quite unfair and quite unrealistic.


Clarence Decatur Howe: No, you are a
socialist.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The fact of the matter is that in this country under a system which we in this group thoroughly approve, namely, orderly marketing through the wheat board, the only way in which a farmer-call him an owner if you will-can get a return for his year's work is to be able to market his product. You are indulging in semantics if you call him a labourer or wage earner because he collects his wages at the end of the year. The fact of the matter is that it is the inadequacy of the government's policy which makes it impossible for him to get that return.
I come back to the point which I made when I rose before. What the farmer will be seeking under this legislation, what he is forced by the government to apply for, is a portion of what he has already earned. That is totally different from trying to borrow something against future earnings. That being the case, there should not be any interest in this bill at all.


John Borden Hamilton: Mr. Chairman, I can see that we all have different opinions about interest rates and also about the effectiveness of the security. Listening to the hon.
[Mr. Knowles.)
member for Winnipeg South deal with the question of interest it seemed to me that the Minister of Trade and Commerce or the Minister of Finance owes this house an outline of the negotiations which took place with the banks, not just a tabling of correspondence. I think we are entitled to know if the officials of the department sat down with the representatives of the banks to determine what would be an equitable interest rate, and whether there were any representations on the part of the treasury that 5 per cent was too high, that the banks could make a reasonable profit at 3J per cent. Did they simply accept the proposition by the banks as being the only one under which they would carry out their obligations? I think we are entitled to an explanation and to know exactly what took place.


Mr. Stuart (Charlotte):: The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre has suggested that there should be some variation in the interest rates on loans provided for fishermen and those provided for farmers.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I did not say any such thing. I made a comparison between the farmer borrowing under one act and the farmer borrowing under another act. It was the minister who brought in the fish.


Andrew Wesley Stuart: That is what I want to speak about. I believe the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre mentioned fish as well. The fishermen in the riding which I represent are asking for loans this year for the first time, and I can assure you that they have not a year's supply of fish in storage. The reason they are asking for these loans is that last year was a bad year. If they had had two, three or four productive years they would be the last people in the world to ask anyone for assistance of any kind. The fact is that they have had two and three and in some cases four years of scarcity, and I mean scarcity.
During the past year legislation was passed in this house to provide them with the same facilities we are giving the western farmers. I can assure the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre that the fishermen who are taking advantage of this legislation are men who have been without income for two or three years. I think it is a most unfair comparison when you take one who has had four or five bountiful years and whose next year's bread and butter is in storage.


Edward Turney Applewhaite: Perhaps I might state to the committee, and I think hon. members will agree, it having been understood that there was a comparison made between fishing legislation and farming legislation,

and that comparison having been answered, while I am not ruling comparisons out of order I think I should rule out of order debate as to the merits or needs of fishermen.


Stanley Howard Knowles: On a question of privilege, I wish to make it perfectly clear that I referred to the fisheries act only to pick up what the minister had said, but when I made the comparison which I sought to make I made it between the farmer applying under the Farm Improvement Loans Act and the farmer applying under this bill. I deliberately and distinctly avoided making any other comparison, because if it were in order I would support the kind of appeal the hon. member for Charlotte is making on behalf of the fishermen.


Andrew Wesley Stuart: I was under the impression that in his statement the hon. member said there should be a difference in the interest rate on loans to western farmers and on loans to fishermen, that the western farmer should have a lower rate. I may have misunderstood the hon'. member.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I invite my hon. friend to go with me to the Hansard office and I am sure it will be found that I said no such thing.


Mr. Maclnnis:: Mr. Chairman, I have listened to this debate for a long time and have not taken any part in it, but apparently some hon. members do not understand the farmer's position as a producer. He is a little different from the industrial worker. The mere fact that he owns his farm does not make so much difference, 1 should think. The difference is this. The industrial worker sells his labour to somebody who wants to buy it-or, more correctly, his labour power. He gets paid for that. What he produces belongs to the person who bought his labour. The farmer does not sell his labour power or his labour directly to anybody. He turns that labour into some kind of agricultural commodity, into oats, wheat, beef or pork or whatever he may be producing. The moment he has produced that, he has to find a buyer and he is actually in the same position as the industrial worker.


An hon. Member:: No, he is not.


Donald MacInnis: You settle that for yourself. He is in the same position as the industrial worker who cannot find a buyer for his labour. The farmer on the prairies today who has wheat on his farm and cannot find a buyer is like the unemployed worker. He is in exactly the same position.


Clarence Decatur Howe: There is a remarkable difference. The farmer who cannot
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market his wheat still has his wheat. The unemployed worker has no income; he has only outgo.


Hazen Robert Argue: One works for nothing, and the other sits around for nothing.


Donald MacInnis: The farmer who has his wheat markets it in a reasonable time, it is true, and the industrial worker who cannot find a sale for his labour has his labour power, but that too has to be sold or used every day in order to be of any value to him. There is very little difference.


Clarence Decatur Howe: There is a lot of
difference.


Donald MacInnis: If the farmer cannot find a market for his product, as I said before, he is in the same position as the worker who is unemployed. As a matter of fact, what you are doing now is providing some sort of unemployment insurance for the farmer.


Clarence Decatur Howe: The farmer who cannot sell his wheat at least has his wheat. Suppose we take a year when the farmer cannot sell his wheat. At the end of the year he has the year's production of wheat. If a worker is unemployed for a year, he has nothing at the end of the year.


Owen C. Trainor: In view of the demonstration by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre and the hon. member for Vancouver-Kingsway of the complete socialism of the wheat grower in this country, how can the minister maintain that the wheat farmer is in the position of an independent entrepreneur?


Clarence Decatur Howe: I suppose the most independent man is the grower of Durum wheat or the grower of flax. They can sell those whenever they like. Yet we have more complaints from those people than from anyone else. They are free agents, but they are not happy about it.


Owen C. Trainor: In other words, there is no wheat board in their case.


Hazen Robert Argue: Some of us have been saying that the position of the farmer is identical with the position of the wage earner who would have to borrow his wages at the end of the month. The minister says that is just some evidence that the C.C.F. believe in socializing the farmer.


Clarence Decatur Howe: Does the C.C.F.
not believe in socialism?


Hazen Robert Argue: Not socializing farmers; absolutely not.


An hon. Member:: Just everybody else.


Hazen Robert Argue: The minister has stated that the farmer is an entrepreneur, that the

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farmer is a capitalist and that he is not a wage earner. We cannot demonstrate that he is a wage earner, because he is not getting any wages. The minister cannot demonstrate that the farmer is an entrepreneur when he is not getting any return on his capital investment. He has a capital investment and he does a good deal of work, but he gets nothing for it. I think the definition of a capitalist is somebody who gets a return on his capital.


Some hon. Members:: Oh.


Hazen Robert Argue: But we have the minister-


Clarence Decatur Howe: You will be driving a wedge between the Conservatives and the C.C.F. if you are not careful.


Hazen Robert Argue: I have in my hands some figures on the amount of return a farmer gets on his capital invested under the kind of system the minister is talking about.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I suggest that there is nothing in this that has anything to do with the clause under discussion.


Edward Turney Applewhaite: I was about to raise that point myself. The position in which the farmer finds himself today, and whether or not he should be called upon to pay a certain rate of interest, undoubtedly come under this particular clause; but if we get too far afield into the very broad principles of whether a farmer is a capitalist or a wage earner or whether or not the C.C.F. believe in socialism, we are getting too far from the subject. The hon. member for Assiniboia might point his remarks to the clause under discussion.


Stanley Howard Knowles: It is obvious that the Liberals do not believe in liberalism.


Hazen Robert Argue: It would be very difficult for a farmer or anyone else to pay interest when he is getting no interest on his investment. The figures I have show how impossible it is for farmers to pay a higher interest charge than they have been paying in recent times.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I can assure my hon. friend that, if he has figures, he has put them on Hansard at least four times in the last six weeks.


Hazen Robert Argue: That is another inaccurate statement of the minister. I have not yet mentioned these figures. He says I have put them on Hansard four times, and he does not know what the figures are. He has no idea what I am going to say, but he is so impatient with parliament and so impatient with discussion that he cannot wait until a member has finished his sentence before he gets up and interrupts with a lot of inaccurate statements.

As far as I know, these particular figures have not yet been placed on the record of this house by any other member.


Clarence Decatur Howe: What are you reading from?


Hazen Robert Argue: The interprovincial farm union council presentation to the cabinet. The figures are all taken from the dominion bureau of statistics and no doubt have been issued under the authority of the minister or, if they were not, there is another source, the Manitoba government's submission to the royal commission on Canada's economic prospects, another body set up by this government. In any case the Liberal party and this government are very closely associated with these statistics, even though I cannot tell at a quick glance whether they were issued by the dominion bureau of statistics.
They are to be found on page 8 of that submission. It is called "Table VII" and the heading is "Gross and Net Income, Operating Expenses, Total Debt and Per Cent Returns to Capital for Farms in Manitoba". You could not blame any low rate of return in Manitoba for anything a socialist provincial government might be doing, because the people out there have a provincial Liberal government as well as a federal Liberal government. In 1954 for each dollar of capital invested in Manitoba the farmers received a return of .001 per cent, which I suggest shows that the farmer, under the legislation and under the policy of the Minister of Trade and Commerce, is not a capitalist at all, because he gets zero return on his investment.


An hon. Member:: What is the comparable figure for Saskatchewan under the socialist government?


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: While the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre was speaking, some exception was taken to his suggestion that the farmer is in a position where he can sell his wheat to the wheat board, and to the wheat board only. We should not lose sight of the fact that twice during the last century farmers were prevented from selling their wheat in the open market in order to keep the price down, and they were forced to sell through the wheat board.
I am not complaining about that. I am all for it, but we must not ignore that fact. We cannot sell our wheat any place else. I wish the minister would admit the correctness of the information he gives us regarding what has happened in the case of farmers in other countries, as found in the Wheat Review for December, published by the authority of the Minister of Trade and Commerce, in which he refers to what is being done for

"the wheat farmers in the Argentine, in Australia, France and elsewhere in Europe.


Mr. Mang:: We have heard that a hundred times.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: You have not heard this at all. What the hon. member for Qu'Appelle says is typical, that they have heard all this many times when they have never heard it at all.


Clarence Decatur Howe: You gave us all that.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: I wish the Minister of Trade and Commerce would merely go as far as his colleague, the Minister of Finance, and admit that the jam we are in now has been brought about partly because of policies that have been formulated and carried out in other countries. I realize that when we are exporting such a large percentage of our production we are not in the same position as the United States, but I think that at some point the minister should admit that Canadian farmers have no place to sell their wheat except to his wheat board. He should admit that farmers' marketings for the period from August 1 last until February 8 have dropped from 138 million bushels to 115 million bushels, and that money is scarce.


Walter Edward Harris: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, up to this moment I had thought that this was a rather model committee of the whole. The questions that have been addressed to the government have been pointed and on the clauses concerned. The opinions expressed have been opinions with respect to the clauses concerned. But my hon. friend is now saying in a different form arguments he has used at least twice, if not three times, on the motion for second reading and the amendments thereto. Remarks of that kind are out of order in committee of the whole, and while I appreciate the fact that he may have quoted me in his last remarks I suggest that he should direct his remarks to the particular clause under discussion.


Victor Quelch: Mr. Chairman, the Minister of Trade and Commerce stated that the rate of interest under the bill was no higher than the rate of interest under the Farm Improvement Loans Act. That is true. It is also no higher than the rate of interest under the Veterans Business and Professional Loans Act. But the minister must be aware of the fact that when both these measures were before the house a number of members on this side of the house and I think some of the members on the other side of the house objected when we were in committee to a rate of 5 per cent being charged when the loans were being
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guaranteed by the government. I think members on all sides of the house felt that when loans were guaranteed by the government the chartered banks should be able to make them at less than 5 per cent.
That is why some of us wonder whether or not the government endeavoured to get the chartered banks to make loans at a lower rate than 5 per cent where the loans are guaranteed by the government. It may be argued that the banks perhaps said they were not going to make loans at less than that rate. On the other hand, the government is of course in a position where it can bring pressure upon the chartered banks to make loans at less than 5 per cent. If the government wish to do so they have the power to tell the chartered banks, "You will have to make loans at less than 5 per cent or we will have to take action to make loans available at that rate ourselves."
All that would be necessary would be for the government to say to the chartered banks, "Now, if you do not make loans at less than 5 per cent we will get the money from the Bank of Canada; then we will increase the cash reserve requirements of the chartered banks so you cannot use that money issued by the Bank of Canada for the purpose of expanding credit." If that were drawn to the attention of the chartered banks I believe they would probably think twice before they would refuse a request by the government to make loans at less than 5 per cent.
Remember that some years ago we had Mr. Towers before the banking committee, and he told us that he estimated it cost the banks approximately 3 per cent to create money. If it costs the banks 3 per cent to create money, then surely on loans guaranteed by the government they should be prepared to make loans at cost. As has already been pointed out, they are making loans at cost, if 3 per cent is the cost, to the wheat board, and they are making loans to the wheat pools at approximately 3f per cent, just three-quarters of one per cent above their cost as estimated by the former governor of the Bank of Canada. In view of that fact I think it would be interesting to know whether or not the government did attempt to get the banks to make loans at a lower rate than 5 per cent.


John Borden Hamilton: Mr. Chairman, since I asked the same question as the last speaker some time ago I want to say that I dissociate myself entirely from any suggestion that the banks should be forced to deal in any manner whatsoever. In my view whatever should have been done in this case should have been done by open negotiation and mutual agreement. Am I to take it

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from the silence of both the Minister of Trade and Commerce and the Minister of Finance that no round table discussions were held and no case was put forward for the farmers to see if a lower rate of interest could not be obtained in connection with these loans?


Mr, Karris:: Of course not, Mr. Chairman.


John Borden Hamilton: We are glad to have you answer.


Walter Edward Harris: There were negotiations and conversations over several days with respect to all the terms of the loans that might be made. Opinions were expressed about the rate of interest and whether it should be lower or higher, and as a result of those discussions the conclusion reached is in this bill.


Mr. Cameron (Nanaimo):: I have been
wondering about the interest rate. It occurs to me that if the government is assuming the ultimate responsibility for these loans now at 5 per cent, the government would be in no worse financial position if they were to borrow the money from the banks at the reduced rates at which governments can borrow from the banks and provide the wheat board with those funds for loans at a recoverable rate of interest, which would restore to the treasury all the funds they would be advancing and at the same time provide loans at a rate of interest much more favourable to the farmers. I understand that the legislation is intended to benefit the farmers, and it seems to me that consideration might have been taken into account by the government.


Mr. Cardiff:: 
Clarence Decatur Howe: I think I can answer that. At the moment the wheat board loan amounts to approximately $450 million. One piece of paper covers the loan of $450 million. I think my hon. friend will realize there is a good deal of work involved in putting any loan through and that, with the average loan under this legislation being about $800 and the average period being six months, it might be a little more costly to make small loans than a big loan.


Colin Cameron: Can the Minister of Finance tell me whether he considers that the treasury would have been in an adverse position if they had followed the course I suggested?


Owen C. Trainor: What the Minister of Trade and Commerce is really saying is that it is a question of the service charge being different

with regard to the two types of loans. I wonder whether any figure has been worked out as to just what is the cost of servicing these individual loans, and I should like to ask whether the service charge could not be assessed against the borrower rather than the interest charge.


Clarence Decatur Howe: The service charge is assessed against the borrower through the interest rate. I do not think the borrower would want to owe some indefinite service charge in addition to the interest rate.


Owen C. Trainor: Would it not be possible to separate the two? Presumably the interest rate is the profit for the banker in addition to the service charge for his services. Would it not be possible to separate the two so the farmer would merely pay the service charge on the loan?


Clarence Decatur Howe: I suppose anything is possible.


Colin Cameron: I should like to ask the Minister of Finance again whether he would agree that the government would be assuming no greater risk of loss of public funds if they had proceeded on the course of borrowing the money themselves from the banks at the rates which are available for government borrowing and had advanced the money at the same rate, with a slight addition for carrying charges, to the farmers through the wheat board. Would their risks have been any greater, and would there have been any loss to the treasury by following that course?


Walter Edward Harris: Mr. Chairman, we do not normally go into that business, although my hon. friend may very well say if his party were in office they would do so. However, I do not recall an occasion in the past when a transaction of the nature he has mentioned has been undertaken. Perhaps I am wrong in that regard. But our guarantee is a guarantee of a certain percentage of losses. It is not a guarantee of all losses. As I take it, my hon. friend's description of what he was going to do would mean that we would suffer all the losses that might occur.


Colin Cameron: Yes, Mr. Chairman. But I imagine that the government have statistical data upon which they base their guarantee of a percentage of the losses. From past experience they knew that the losses were not likely to exceed that amount. In fact I think they are fairly sure that they are not going to approach that percentage. I cannot see that there would be any more likelihood of the farmers being

unable to repay the loans if they came from the government than there would be if they came from the banks.


Edward Turney Applewhaite: Shall the clause carry?


Some hon. Members:: Carried.


Hazen Robert Argue: No, Mr. Chairman. I wonder whether either the Minister of Finance or the Minister of Trade and Commerce discussed with the various elevator companies whether or not the elevator companies might be prepared to make such loans through their own facilities?


Clarence Decatur Howe: The matter has been discussed. It was certainly discussed with them when the 1951 legislation was being considered. I discussed it with several of them when the question of assistance last autumn was being considered. Certainly no responsible elevator owner wants to be an intermediary in a matter of this kind.


Hazen Robert Argue: The information I was given-* it is now two or three years ago-along with some of my colleagues is that the Saskatchewan wheat pool at the time of the 1951 legislation made an offer to the government of the use of its facilities in making such advances to farmers. If my memory serves me correctly they made an offer to provide advances to farmers for an aggregate guarantee of 2J per cent. I am wondering whether this time the minister received any offer from any of the elevator companies suggesting that they would be prepared to make the advances.


Clarence Decatur Howe: I think that is correct, Mr. Chairman. I think the Saskatchewan wheat pool undertook to handle the loans under a government guarantee. I am certain that the interest rate was not going to be 2J per cent. That might have been the service charge by the elevator company, with the interest rate in addition. That was on the understanding that the government was to provide the funds. But it was the only elevator company that indicated any wish whatever to handle those accounts. I think there has been a change of heart there, because we received no such offer this time.


Hazen Robert Argue: I do not know whether or not there was a change of heart-


Edward Turney Applewhaite: Order. I think perhaps it is my duty to point out to the committee, before this interesting discussion goes further along these lines, that we are dealing with a financial or money bill, and that in the bill we are bound by the terms of the resolution which preceded it. That resolution read in part as follows:
That it is expedient to introduce a measure to provide, by way of a guarantee for bank loans . . .
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I say with some regret-because this is an interesting discussion-that I do not think, under that resolution, we now have the authority to discuss alternative methods of making the funds available to farmers. Those alternatives were discussed at great length on the resolution. I feel obliged to say that we are now bound not by the words of this bill but by the general principle of the bill, and that our job is to go over the wording of it clause by clause and to decide whether those clauses shall pass or not pass or be amended.


Hazen Robert Argue: Mr. Chairman, I was not endeavouring to open up a discussion that had already taken place, and I was not endeavouring to discuss the advantages or disadvantages-whatever hon. members might think-of a system of providing advances or loans or whatever you might wish to call them through the elevator companies. But when there is a provision that the government shall guarantee 10 per cent of the aggregate loans to the banks, I think it is relevant to ask questions and to point out- depending upon the type of answers that may be given-that some other alternative might have been available that would have made it possible for the government to make a much smaller guarantee.
When we are discussing the guarantee, which is 10 per cent, if it is true that an elevator company at any time in the past has offered to take a much lower guarantee, it seems to me that pointing out that fact, if it is a fact, is certainly relevant to this bill and to this section. The treasury is committed to a certain guarantee. Surely it is the duty of members of parliament to explore the situation and find out whether there was an alternative that would have provided for a much smaller guarantee.
The suggestion has been made by a number of hon. members that since this is an ironclad guarantee by the government, the banks should be prepared to reduce their interest rate from 5 per cent to 3 per cent or something in that neighbourhood. If some other facilities had been used, even if a service charge had to be added to the 3 per cent, it is my opinion that we could have made advances to farmers at an interest below 5 per cent, or else at an interest rate below 5 per cent through the facilities that they are ordinarily accustomed to use. They would be just as much opposed to paying one body an interest rate as they would be to paying any other body. But had other facilities been used, certainly there would have been much more convenience in dealing with this type of thing than there is by using the banks and the guarantee.
1510	HOUSE OF
Reference to Unparliamentary Remark


Edward Turney Applewhaite: Shall the clause carry?


Hazen Robert Argue: No.
The Depuly Chairman: Shall I report progress and ask leave to sit again?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
Clause stands.
Progress reported.



PRIVILEGE


Erhart Regier: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege. In the debate on Bill No. 82 this afternoon the hon. member for Rosthern said that members of the C.C.F. had called Mr. Parker of Manitoba a rat. I was one of those who echoed the Tory interjection "He is a rat". I thought the reference was to the hon. member who had the floor, namely the hon. member for Springfield (Mr. Weselak). I did not have any intention of calling the elected head of the Manitoba wheat pool and the friend of the Minister of Trade and Commerce any names whatsoever.
Since that time, Mr. Speaker, it has been pointed out to me that it is unparliamentary to call even a member of this house a rat, and I therefore withdraw that remark.


Mr. Dinsdale:: Mr. Speaker, on the question of privilege, I believe I understood the hon. member to suggest that he was merely reechoing a Tory sentiment. I am sitting on the extreme left of the so-called Tory group in this house, and I would like to state quite emphatically that the interjection referred to by the hon. member came from the quarter farther left than where I sit.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Applewhaiie):: I suggest to the house that perhaps this afternoon nobody intentionally called anybody else a rat, and if they did it is to be considered withdrawn.


Walter Adam Tucker: As a matter of fact, I raised the point so that whoever did say it could rise in his place and say that he did not intend to cast any aspersion. When I pointed out that this was an unwarranted aspersion on a great Manitoba citizen and that it should be stricken from the record there was not a word from the C.C.F. opposition.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Walter Edward Harris: Mr. Speaker, we shall continue with this tomorrow; then take the other wheat bill, and then the motions with respect to setting up committees.


[Stage Direction]
It being five minutes after ten o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.

[Stage Direction]
The following answers, deposited with the Clerk of the house, are printed in the official report of debates pursuant to standing order 39:

Mr. Hamilton (Notre Dame: de Grace):
On what date was the new public building in Nanaimo, British Columbia, completed and ready for occupancy?
Answer by: Mr. Winters:
The building will be ready and officially opened on February 29, 1956.


GREAT LAKES FISHERIES COMMISSION
Mr. Robinson (Bruce): 1.	What are the names of the plenipotentiaries representing Canada in connection with the Great Lakes Fisheries Convention Act?
2.	What are the names of the personnel of the Canadian section of the great lakes fisheries commission mentioned in article II of the act?
3.	What progress to date has been reported from the Canadian commission to the Department of Fisheries?
4.	What are the different methods used by the commission to combat the lamprey eel menace?
5.	Have there been any chemical control tests made towards combating the lamprey eel? If so, what results have been obtained?
6.	Since the act was passed, what work has been carried on in lake Huron and Georgian bay towards combating the lamprey eel menace?
Answer by: Mr. Sinclair:
1.	A. D. P. Heeney; Stewart Bates.
2.	Dr. A. L. Pritchard; Dr. W. J. K. Hark-ness; Dr. A. O. Blackhurst.
3.	The commission has not yet held its first meeting as the United States commissioners have only recently been appointed.
4.	The action to be taken by the commission cannot be forecast, but up to the present the following control methods are or have been in use on both the Canadian and United States sides of the lakes:
(a)	Electrical barriers in spawning streams;
(b)	Mechanical barriers in spawning streams (nets and dams);
(c)	Habitat change; gravel beds required for spawning are removed or covered with other material such as cement;
(d)	Application of materials toxic to lamprey.
5.	Yes. Results have been favourable in areas where young lamprey are congregated in streams. No material yet available for economical treatment of whole river systems. United States investigators have recently discovered specific poisons which will kill immature lampreys in the streams and not affect
Questions
other fish. Results of experiments and assessment of costs in this respect have not yet been released.
6.	The act came into force concurrent with ratification of the treaty only in October last, and there are no significant lamprey runs in the winter. One electrical barrier on Thessa-lon river and trap-nets on several small streams flowing into the north channel and Georgian bay will be operated again next summer.



FISHING PRIVILEGES, LOCKPORT LOCKS, MAN.

Mr. Knowles: 1.	Has any action been taken rescinding the privilege of fishing off the concrete wall at the locks at Lockport, Manitoba?
2.	If so, what is the reason for such action?
3.	Has fishing from this wall been prohibited at any time in the past?
4.	If the privilege of such fishing has been rescinded, will consideration be given to reinstating the same?
Answer by: Mr. Winters:
1.	Yes.
2.	During the summer of 1955, the privilege was withdrawn as the result of a minor accident.
3.	See answers to Nos. 1 and 2.
4.	Yes, if adequate assurance can be obtained from the anglers concerned that the privilege will not be abused.



UNEMPLOYMENT OFFICE, WINDSOR, ONT.

Mr. Fraser (Peterborough): 1.	Is the unemployment office in Windsor, Ontario, to be equipped with air conditioning?
2.	If so, at what cost?
3.	Does the government own the building in which this office is located?
4.	Have plans been made to instal air conditioning in government offices in other centres?
Answer by: Mr. Winters:
1.	Plans are being studied.
2.	Cost not known at present.
3.	Yes.
4.	No over-all plans have been made. Each case is studied on its merits.



POST OFFICE BUILDING, TEESWATER, ONT.

Mr. Robinson (Bruce): 1.	Did the Department of Public Works receive a petition, dated January II, 1955, requesting that a new post office be built at Teeswater, Ontario?
2.	If so, on what date?
3.	Has any work been done on the site purchased for the new post office building at Teeswater. Ontario?
4.	If so, what type of work?
5.	Have plans been made to erect the post office on the above mentioned site?
6.	If so, for what size and type of building?
7.	When is it expected this building will be completed?
8.	Will there be living quarters in the building for the postmaster?
Answer by: Mr. Winters:
1.	Yes.

Questions
2.	January 14, 1955.
3.	No.
4.	Answered by No. 3.
5.	Plans are in the process of preparation.
6.	A one storey building of brick veneer construction approximately 46' by 40', without basement.
7.	Approximately the end of the year.
8.	No.



FISH AND DRAGGER STATISTICS, GLOUCESTER COUNTY, N.B.

Mr. Robichaud: 1. What was the total catch of (a) cod; (b) flounders or plaice; (c) haddock, landed in
Gloucester county, New Brunswick, in each of the years, 1953, 1954, 1955?
2. What was the total number of draggers licensed in Gloucester county, in each of the fiscal years, 1953-54, 1954-55, 1955-56?
Answer by: Mr. Sinclair:
1.
1953	1954	1955
Quantity '000 lbs.
(a)	Cod 		. 17,663	23,189	27,459
(b)	Flounders or			
plaice ...	. 6,968	7,829	12,694(c)	Haddock ...	. 547	2,468	8922.	1953-54, 42;	1954-55, 49;	1955-56,	55.
Friday, February 24, 1956