1956-06-11

Right Hon. L. S. St. Laurent (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, in view of the question raised about the business of the house by hon. members opposite on Friday, I should like to make a brief statement which I hope will leave no doubt in the mind of any hon. member about the position of the government in asking at this time for one month's interim supply. Just before the house adjourned on Friday, I stated that the government could not suggest adjourning after having obtained only one month's supply. If one month's supply is granted at the present time, it would be our intention to proceed with the business of the session in the normal way, and before the end of June to ask for a further grant of interim supply and continue the session. In arranging the order of business the government would, as usual, consult hon. members opposite as to the most convenient way of bringing forward matters for debate.



COMMONWEALTH CONFERENCE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. George A. Drew (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, can the Prime Minister inform the house as to the date of his departure for the conference, and whether he is in a position to inform us in regard to the agenda of that conference?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: I intend to leave for London by plane on the evening of Friday the 22nd, I think it is. The agenda has not been formally determined. There are items which have been suggested, and I think generally regarded by those who will attend as proper items for the agenda for that kind of meeting, involving principally considerations of the world situation. There are different items relating to different areas of the world, and those are the items that have been suggested for consideration at the meeting.
LLater:]
On the orders of the day:


Mr. Fulton:: May I ask the Prime Minister another question? Is he in a position to inform us now which of his cabinet colleagues he expects will accompany him to the conference. He mentioned just now that economic relations were not discussed; but I think I am correct in saying we had previously understood that the Minister of Finance might be going to the conference.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Mr. Speaker, the Secretary of State for External Affairs has to be in both London and Paris two or three days before the conference, and he will be remaining over with me to attend the conference. It is not intended to have any of our other colleagues unless something special should arise, when either they might be called upon to send their views about it, or, if it became really desirable to do so, there might be some call upon them to join us.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
George Alexander Drew: Might I ask the Prime Minister if he is in a position to indicate any point of view the government may hold in regard to the communication which has been received from Marshal Bulganin? I should like to ask also if the communication from Marshal Bulganin could be tabled in the house?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Yes, I can confirm that a letter from Premier Bulganin was delivered to me by his excellency the ambassador last Friday morning. The letter is one covering the full text of the Soviet announcement made May 14 last concerning the reduction in the level of Soviet armed forces.
I think there has been publication of, if not the covering letters, the memorandum of May 14, which concerned the reduction in the level of the Soviet armed forces. I certainly see no objection to tabling those letters and I shall ascertain whether there would be any discourtesy, of which of course no hon. member would want us to be guilty, in tabling them in the house, but I do not think there can be any question about that.
4890	HOUSE OF
Inquiries of the Ministry


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Edmund Davie Fulton: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Secretary of State for External Affairs, perhaps I should direct my question to the Prime Minister. I should like to ask whether any announcement or statement can be made to the house as to the matters which were discussed between the government and the Earl of Home, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations in the United Kingdom government, on the occasion of his recent visit? If so, what were the results of those discussions?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Well, Mr. Speaker, I can say in a general way that there was a very friendly discussion of matters which are giving all governments of the free world concern at the present time. I think that is as far as I should go at this moment without referring to the Department of External Affairs. I had a very interesting conversation with the Earl of Home, and the Secretary of State for External Affairs was with me at that time. We did exchange some views about the forthcoming prime ministers' meeting and about other matters. Economic matters were not discussed at that meeting. I shall ascertain from the Department of External Affairs whether there is any memorandum. I know the Earl of Home saw several of my colleagues as well as myself, and I shall ascertain from the Department of External Affairs whether a summary or a memorandum was drawn up after those discussions.



SHIPPING


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. W. B. Nesbitt (Oxford):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Transport. Some few days ago I addressed a question to the hon. gentleman requesting information as to the announcement made by a senior official of the department at Toronto, Ontario, with respect to the lake Ontario search and rescue organization. Has the minister any comment to make at this time?


Hon. George C. Marler (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, following the inquiries which the hon. gentleman made, I in turn made some inquiries in my department and found that the remarks which were made by an official of my department were made during the course of a general discussion about conditions on lake Ontario. The account I have had of the matter shows that


the official was not delivering a speech or an address; he merely gave some information which I think the hon. member will find is covered by the proposed amendments to the Canada Shipping Act which are now before the House of Commons.



PIPE LINES


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Howard C. Green (Vancouver-Quadra):: Mr. Speaker, will the Minister of Trade and Commerce table the agreement or agreements made with Trans-Canada Pipe Lines Limited last week. I can find no record of their having been tabled as yet.


Right Hon. C. D. Howe (Minister of Trade and Commerce):: Well, Mr. Speaker, I had thought that they had been tabled but I will have an examination made and if there are any documents that have not been tabled I will see that they are tabled at once.



PUBLIC SERVICE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. R. O. Campney (Minister of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, on May 24 last, the hon. member for Hamilton West (Mrs. Fair-clough) asked about an increase in working hours for certain security guards employed by the defence research board. I take it that her reference was to a small number of security guards employed by the defence research board at headquarters and in the Daly annex building.
Under the National Defence Act employees of the board do not come under the Civil Service Act, but whenever their working conditions run parallel to civil service regulations, the board can extend to such employees benefits accruing to civil servants of similar classifications.
The guards referred to by the hon. lady are classified by the board as watchmen, and civil servants in the classification of watchmen or security supervisors are required under present regulations to work a 48-hour week.
Consequently, when new civil service rates of pay were being worked out recently, the board undertook to readjust the working conditions of these watchmen to the same basis as that for watchmen in other government establishments in this area. This meant an increase in pay as from April 1 last and

this was followed by an adjustment of shifts to bring these employees on to a 48-hour week.


Mrs. Ellen L. Fairclough (Hamilton West):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to address a supplementary question to the minister. Is it not true that the increase in pay which they received was merely the statutory increase or the regular increase which was given to all civil servants at that time? Despite this fact, I understand that these people had their work week increased from I think 42-J hours to 48 hours for which additional time they received no compensation.


Ralph Osborne Campney: That is true, Mr. Speaker, and I would make two observations about it. One is that these people are not under the civil service commission and therefore are not in that sense civil servants. The second point is that we are hopeful we will be able to obtain a civil service classification for watchmen more suitable than the present classification which would make up for some of the discrepancy.



LABOUR CONDITIONS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. G. C. Nowlan (Digby-Annapolis-Kings):: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Minister of Labour and in his absence to his parliamentary assistant. Has the attention of the department been drawn to the fact that a strike is proposed on the Princess Helene steamer connecting Nova Scotia with New Brunswick on June 16? If so, and in view of the disastrous consequences which flowed from such strikes last fall, would the minister be able to tell the house what is being done to avoid it?


Hon. W. E. Harris (Minister of Finance):: Well, Mr. Speaker, I shall see that an answer is given to my hon. friend as soon as possible.



ALLEGED IMPORTATION OF UNITED STATES WELDERS INTO BRITISH COLUMBIA

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Harold E. Winch (Vancouver East):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Labour and in his absence to his parliamentary assistant and perhaps also to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.
Can they inform the house what the situation is in the province of British Columbia with regard to the importation of welders into that province for work on the pipe line that is now being constructed in that area,
Interim Supply
when there are Canadian welders available who are fully qualified and unemployed?


Hon. J. W. Pickersgill (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, when the hon. gentleman asked his questions the other day I directed the department to make inquiries as soon as possible but I suppose because of the five-day week I have not received a report. In fact I inquired about two minutes before coming into the house. I hope to be able to give the hon. gentleman an answer, possibly even later today.

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



INTERIM SUPPLY

Walter Edward Harris: That a sum not exceeding $264,409,639.92 being one-twelfth of the total of the amounts of the items set forth in the main estimates for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1957, laid before the House of Commons at the present session of parliament: and in addition thereto, a sum not exceeding $652,148.34 being one-twelfth of the total of the amounts of items 212, 213, 214, 216, 222, 228 of the said estimates and a sum not exceeding $36,506,378.25 being one-fourth of the total of the amounts of items set forth in the supplementary estimates for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1957, be granted to Her Majesty on account of the fiscal year ending March 31, 1957.
He said: Mr. Chairman, this resolution asks that the house vote a sum which is one-twelfth of the items of the main estimates for the fiscal year, with an additional one-twelfth of six special items in those main estimates to provide for services of a seasonal nature on which the heaviest payments fall due in the early part of the year-these items will be set out in the schedule to the bill- and also one-quarter of all the items in the supplementary estimates which were tabled the other day.
The general proportions of one-twelfth and one-quarter of the main and supplementary estimates are intended to provide for all necessary ordinary requirements to the end of June. The higher proportion for the supplementary estimates will effect the release of the same proportion of those estimates as will be released for the main estimates by the appropriation bill No. 1, that is one-sixth of the main estimates.
The additional proportion requested is for certain special items of a kind for which it has been usual to request an additional proportion at this time. This is to meet the seasonal requirements of certain services which send out field survey parties during the spring and early summer. In no instance is the total of any item being released.

Interim Supply
The passing of the bill which will be founded on this resolution will not prejudice the rights and privileges of hon. members to criticize and discuss any items in the estimates which will come up for consideration throughout the balance of the session, and the usual undertaking is hereby given that such rights and privileges will be respected and will not be curtailed or restricted in any way as a result of the passing of this measure.


George Alexander Drew: Mr. Chairman, the request for interim supply usually raises no question because of the undertaking that is given by the Minister of Finance in the ordinary course of events in terms similar to those which have been stated today. Naturally there has been a good deal of speculation as to what would happen at this time in view of the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Normally there is no question raised. In fact I believe that there has been only one instance in the history of the House of Commons where there has been any delay and it would appear that the delay on that occasion was through inadvertence rather than for any other reason.
However, the circumstances in this case are not normal. We have indicated clearly that so far as we are concerned our attitude toward the management of the business of the country by the government has not in any way been changed by the disposition of the debate which was before us. I hope we have made it equally clear that the lack of confidence we expressed in the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker was not something to be disposed of by the mere passage of the measure which had been under consideration at the time we were called upon to express that lack of confidence.
The situation with which we are confronted is not going to be affected during the course of the present parliament by a mere passage of time. The things that have occurred are too fundamental in their effect upon our parliamentary system to be forgotten. This is not a case of letting bygones be bygones. To our great regret, the relationship of the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker has become inconsistent with our traditions in this house, so far as their relationship with the full membership of the house is concerned. It is for that reason that we would still express the hope that the government would have the courage to follow the honourable course and to dissolve this parliament and permit the early election of a new parliament which would be in harmony with the sentiments of the people of Canada, who now have knowledge of the whole situation.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


George Alexander Drew: I should hope that we should have the assurance that, after the appropriate disposition of business in this house, the Prime Minister would take the constitutional steps to obtain dissolution and permit the people to express their opinion on what has happened here. I leave that request before the Prime Minister. I believe it is a request which in no way becomes diminished in its force by lapse of time. On the contrary, each day that passes gives greater force to the need for the expression of that opinion by our people.
In the meantime, however, we are now called upon to deal with the motion for interim supply. What has happened here is typical of the way in which the business of this country is being done. It is now June 11; the last interim supply motion provided supply until May 31. It is in keeping with the attitude of this government to the house and to the people of Canada that it should now come before us on June 11 to ask that there be further funds advanced to meet the requirements, which are now extremely urgent.
It is altogether likely that the cheques have already been prepared and are ready to be sent out for the payments due on June 15. That is the way in which this house has become accustomed to be treated by this government. It should be remembered, however, that it is the people of Canada that are being treated in this way. This is typical of the way in which time limits are set and the ordinary opportunities to examine curtailed by the severe restriction of time.
It is only natural that there should have been discussion in the press and elsewhere as to what would happen to the very large number of civil servants, members of the armed forces and others whose cheques are dependent upon the voting of interim supply. In waiting until June 11 to present this motion for interim supply, the government showed scant concern for the civil servants, the members of the armed forces or others who work for pay. Everything has been subordinated to the determination of the government to ram the pipe line bill down the throats of this parliament and the people of Canada. Everything else has been set aside, no matter how urgent or important it was. Merely one example in addition to what we now have before us will serve to indicate the way that all other important business has been held in a state of suspense by the compelling demand of this government that they meet a time limit set by the

company which has received such concern and consideration from the government during the past weeks.
That other subject is national defence. Nearly half the money that is collected from the taxpayers of Canada goes either directly or indirectly into the vitally important requirements of national defence. It is now more than five months since this session began on January 10 and there has been no discussion of any kind of national defence. During the current sessions of the various legislative bodies of Britain, the United States and Russia, as well as other countries whose activities are important at this time, there has been an examination of national defence and there has been an extensive reorganization of the national defence forces.
As early as December 21 the members of the House of Commons in Britain were informed regarding the nature of the reorganization that was to take place there, including a reduction of the armed forces, a streamlining of the organization and a general modernization of the whole concept of national defence. The same has taken place in the United States where sweeping reorganization has taken place for the strengthening and improving of their defence forces with a smaller number of men. More recently still the same thing has taken place in Russia. So far as we are concerned, this subject has not been before us and the item for national defence has not even been called yet as one of the items that could be brought before the house for discussion in the consideration of estimates.
That is typical of the way that the government has been marking time while it sought by every device first to bring its own members into line and then to impose the will of the government upon this house. There might be many reasons for us to indicate our very strong conviction that the government no longer has any reason to be offered evidence of confidence by the members of this house or the people of Canada. However, the fact remains that what is now before us is the provision of one-twelfth of the amount of money that will be required in any event. We have the assurance of the Prime Minister that business is going to proceed in its ordinary way and that we will have the opportunity to examine the estimates as we should.
The reason I asked the questions I did on Thursday and on Friday was that there were reports coming from what would ordinarily be regarded as very reliable sources to the effect that there was to be an adjournment during the summer months. We certainly would not have agreed to any suspension of the activities of this house at a time when
Interim Supply
such important business as national defence, national health and other matters of that kind were to be discussed here in the House of Commons. All the important departments that are still to be brought before the house should be examined with the utmost care.
We now have the answer we sought last week, and are told that the business will proceed. In any event we had no thought, and we have no thought, of permitting the civil servants, the members of the armed forces and others to be made the victims of this government's misconduct. We shall, therefore, consent in the usual way to interim supply on the basis of the assurance given by the Minister of Finance and on the basis of the assurance given by the Prime Minister that the business of this house will proceed to its termination in the usual way without interruption.
I hope that the future business of this session, for whatever length of time it may last, will be conducted on a more businesslike basis. I hope that when any request is going to be made which calls for the consideration of supply or other matters, it will be brought forward in time to consider it without being confronted with deadlines which would limit in any way the normal process of debate.
Before I conclude these remarks, Mr. Chairman, may I express the hope that the government will not again cause the concern, and very natural concern, in the minds of the civil servants, members of the armed forces and others which they have aroused on this occasion by the way in which they forgot the interests of these people and subordinated their duty to these public servants in the way that they have on this occasion, particularly for the purpose for which it was done. I would hope that we will have ample opportunity to deal with every item in the same way that we have on other occasions in the past. I would hope that there would be no thought in the minds of civil servants that the sword of Damocles is hanging over their heads and that they must depend on the whims of this government for adequate consideration of their requirements as they have at this time.
Now, Mr. Chairman, I have indicated that we shall follow the course that we would follow ordinarily. We shall look forward to an early opportunity to deal with the important items that require consideration, and we shall proceed as rapidly as possible to permit interim supply to be adopted. I repeat my request however, that as we do this we recall that this is merely one more example of the way in which the government has disregarded the rights of parliament, the rights of civil servants and others employed by the government, and above all the rights of the people

Interim Supply
of Canada. It is hoped that the government will recognize the situation with which we are now confronted in this house and will not impose upon the Speaker and Deputy Speaker, a task with which they should not be confronted because of the actions of the government. I do hope the government will proceed with the business, and at the same time give us the assurance that this whole unhappy atmosphere will be cleared up by the constitutional procedure that can be followed, and that the people of Canada will have the right to choose the kind of parliament they want.


Mr. Knowles:: It is still our view, Mr. Chairman, that there is one honourable way in which this government can obtain the supply that is necessary in order to meet civil servants' salaries and other payments due on Friday of this week. This honourable way has been suggested by the Leader of the Opposition, namely that the government should indicate to the house its readiness to dissolve this parliament at an early date and call a general election. If that proposal were made to this house we would have no hesitation in granting whatever number of months' interim supply is necessary to carry on the business of government until a new parliament should meet.
Let me say again, Mr. Chairman, that this group still feels that the government of the day has lost the confidence of the people of this country. It may be possible for the government still to muster a majority vote in the House of Commons, which was elected nearly three years ago. We believe, however, that particularly as a result of what has been done to parliament in recent weeks, this government does not possess the confidence of the people of Canada. Because it does not possess that confidence, a fact which arises because of its own actions in parliament, we say that the government does not have the moral authority to come before parliament today and ask interim supply in the normal way; in other words, to ask parliament to allow it to carry on just as if nothing had happened.
Supply has ended. The civil servants must be paid. Other bills must be met. These very necessities add, we feel, to the insistence that what we should be told at this time by the government is that it is prepared to dissolve this parliament and call a general election. We would be quite prepared for the date of dissolution to be put off whatever number of weeks might be necessary for such important business as is before parliament to be concluded, and indeed for the estimates to be concluded in the normal

way. But we feel very strongly that this government does not possess the moral authority, nor does this parliament possess the authority necessary to carry on, in view of what has been done to it by the government, and dissolution is the only answer to the situation.
I quite understand the conclusion to which the Leader of the Opposition has come, but I confess that it is not in my heart to give such ready consent, in terms of letting things go through quickly, to a government that has done to parliament what this House of Commons has suffered during the past few weeks. What parliament does with the request of the government will, of course, be up to the members of this house. But I repeat that in our view the government does not have the moral authority to make the request that has been presented to us. Actually the Prime Minister and the government should reconsider the making of this request. It is obvious the government is hoping that in some way we will let bygones be bygones and that in some way time will heal the wounds, and the government will be enabled to rehabilitate its position before it has to go to the people of this country. We do not think that is the honourable way to deal with this situation. We think that moral standards call for something much better than that.
So far as the relationship between the House of Commons and the government is concerned I am reminded of what Durell has to say in his book "Parliamentary Grants", on page 4, where I read:
It is, indeed, ultimately to the power of the purse, to its power to bring the whole executive machinery of the country to a standstill, that the House of Commons owes its control over the executive. That is the fountain and origin of its historical victories over the other organs of the state; and since that power was recognized and confirmed towards the end of the 17th century, the House of Commons has remained, whether reformed or unreformed, whether corrupt or incorrupt, the chief arbiter of the national destinies.
That is the position this House of Commons is in this afternoon. We have an executive in whom we believe the people of Canada have no confidence, making a request to us, which is more than a request just for the salaries of civil servants, but rather is a request that we permit this government to carry on in the normal way. Out of concern for the position of civil servants and in view of the position that the Leader of the Opposition has taken, we may have to grant such supply as is necessary to pay those salaries. In my own mind I am not sure just what is the right thing for an opposition to do in a situation like this,

particularly after what the Leader of the Opposition has said, but I say, Mr. Chairman, the granting of interim supply will be done, if it is done at all, under protest, with this declaration which I make to the government: You are asking something that you have no moral authority to request from a free Canadian parliament.
Despite what the Prime Minister said on Friday about civil servants and others who should not be called upon to suffer because of party warfare, I assert, Mr. Chairman, that the issue is not whether civil servants are to receive their salaries. Incidentally, 'because in my remarks I seem to be referring to civil servants only and not to those of the armed forces, I may say that I have done that because it is my understanding that the nature of the national defence estimates is such that there is plenty of money for the paying of the armed forces. As hon. members know, the national defence estimates consist mainly of one large item for something over $1,700 million, and in that item there are included subitems for wages and salaries and also items for ships, guns, planes, tanks and ammunition. Already the government has one-sixth of that total sum. Because some of those other things such as ships, guns and planes have not been purchased there is enough money there, so I understand, for the armed forces to be paid at the middle of this month. Therefore, if there is concern at all about the meeting of salaries this week it is only with respect to the civil servants. But, may I say, Mr. Chairman, that in our view the issue is not civil servants' salaries. This government has no right to claim that that is the issue.
On May 25 when the government's chief concern was in getting its pipe line bill through parliament I asked the Minister of Finance this question, as recorded at page 4325 of Hansard:
Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Finance. When does the minister intend to ask the house for further interim supply?
On behalf of this government that is now so concerned that it is asking parliament to help it out so it can pay the civil service, this was the minister's reply:
X presume in due course when I announce it to the house.
I asked a supplementary question which reads:
As a supplementary question, may I ask the Minister of Finance what he intends to use for money when his present supply runs out.
The reply of the minister was this:
I am afraid that I could not answer that question because the occasion has not arisen yet.
Interim Supply
Despite that effort to bring to the attention of the government the fact that something should be done, and done then, about supply, nothing was done by the government, and so three days later, on Monday, May 28, I put another question to the Minister of Finance which can be found on page 4371 of Hansard:
Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Minister of Finance. Is the minister in a position yet to answer my question of Friday respecting when he is going to ask the house for interim supply so he will have some money in June? In the meantime, can he assure civil servants that the present interim supply he has will make it possible for him to pay salaries on the 31st of May?
What was the answer of the Minister of Finance, speaking for this government that is now so concerned about civil servants? Here it is:
I am not in a position to answer the question, but I will make inquiries.
I thought that would bring forth an answer on the minister's initiative within a day or so, but it did not come. Accordingly, on May 30 I asked again. Here is my question as recorded on page 4461 of Hansard:
Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Minister of Finance. In view of the action that has been taken in the other place ostensibly to make it possible to get interim supply through in one day, can the minister now say when he intends to move for interim supply?
The minister's reply was this:
I cannot, Mr. Speaker, but as is customary I shall consult with the opposition groups before making the proposal.
There you have it, Mr. Chairman. Three attempts on my part during the month of May to bring to the attention of the government the fact that something needed to be done to get interim supply so civil servants could be paid. But what was the government concerned about then? It had only one preoccupation, namely, getting its precious pipe line bill through the house. On Friday when the Prime Minister made his appeal to the house he said something to this effect, that it was usual at this stage to ask for interim supply. I have not turned up the exact quotation but I know that the words "at this stage" are there. May I remind the Prime Minister and the government that one has to stretch words a bit on June 8, or today on June 11, to say that this is the stage at which interim supply is usually sought for the month of June. I have taken the trouble to check back through the Hansards for the past 16 years-those happen to be the Hansards that I have in my office-covering the last four parliaments of which I have been a member. I checked every interim supply bill during those 16 years, and I shall say something in a moment about the picture

Interim Supply
as a whole, but first I want to say something about supply for the month of June.
After all, that is what is before the house now, supply for the month of June. I tell you, Mr. Chairman, from my research, that not in a single June during the past 16 years-you may go back further, but that is as far as I went in my research-not in a single instance has supply for June not been obtained prior to the end of May. Indeed in some cases it was obtained several days or even weeks before the end of May. Not once in the last 16 years, through all the war years and all the post-war years and all the troubles and fights that we have had in parliament, not once has the government laid aside its request for interim supply for the month of June because there was some other issue that was more important. It was only the pipe line that became more important than interim supply in this instance.
Let me put these dates on record. In 1940 it was obtained on May 28; in 1941, on May 29; in 1942, on May 26. In 1943, the motion which led to obtaining supply was actually made on May 11. There was a bit of debate and even with the debate that took place it was obtained in this house on May 17. In 1944 it was obtained on May 26. The year 1945 was an election year and supply for the months of May, June, July and August was obtained on April 13. In 1946 it was asked for on May 6 and obtained on May 26; in 1947 it was obtained on May 13. In 1948 it was again obtained on May 13. The year 1949 was also an election year and on April 30 a sufficient supply was put through for June, July, August and September. In 1950 it was obtained on May 30. In 1951 it was obtained on May 30. In 1952 it was obtained on May 29. In 1953 the final supply bill was put through on May 14. That, of course, was again an election year. In 1954 it was obtained on May 27 and in 1955 it was obtained on May 26.
There is the record of 16 years, Mr. Chairman; never later than May 30. Even apart from the instances of the election years it was obtained in some instances as early as May 13 and asked for in one year as early as May 6. In other words, the government knows from its past practice that the time to ask for interim supply for the month of June is in the month of May before its May money runs out.
I will tell the present Minister of Finance that he is personally aware of how these things should be handled. Indeed, last year in June when he was seeking interim supply for the month of July I asked him if the fact that he was seeking only one month's

supply meant that he hoped the main estimates would be through before the end of July. This was his reply as found at page 5274 of Hansard for June 24, 1955:


Walter Edward Harris: There is no certainty at the moment, Mr. Chairman, that that will be so.
Then I ask that these words be noted:
If we are here on the 25th or 26th of July, I shall make another motion similar to this.
In other words, Mr. Chairman, despite the minister's innocence in his reply to my questions in May of this year, from his statement of last June it is clear that he knows that the time to ask for interim supply is before the end of the month in which the government's current interim supply runs out. This year the government would not do that even when we asked them to. They would not even consider the matter; no, it had to wait until the precious pipe line bill was through and then we are asked to bail the government out of the situation in which it finds itself.
With regard to the instances in the past, I might also point out that in addition to all these cases where supply for the month of June was obtained in the previous month, in the whole period of 16 years the only occasion I can find where interim supply for any month was obtained after the first of the month was in the fall of 1945. That, as hon. members will recall, was an election year. In fact, the 1945 election was held 11 years ago today. As the result of arrangements made previous to the calling of that election, interim supply ran out on August 31. The new parliament did not meet until September 6. What did Mr. King do? He took the matter up in the house the very first day, let the house understand that the treasury was empty and that interim supply would be needed. He indicated he had spoken to leaders of the groups opposite and arrangements were made for an interim supply bill to be put through on the 11th of September. That is the only instance across the 16 years where there was any delay in interim supply to a date beyond the first day of the month for which supply was to be voted. That of course was for a very justifiable reason; namely, there had been an appeal to the country and a general election.
I might also tell the house that in 1942 when supply was sought on May 26 by Mr. Ilsley a rather interesting situation developed. I am sure the Prime Minister will remember it because he was then a new member of the house and that was his first session. He was present that day because he answered a question that was put to him on the orders of the day. He was minister of justice at the time. It so happened that

Mr. Ilsley on that occasion asked for two months' supply. The house was in an angry mood over some things that had happened although it had much less cause to be angry than might be the case at the present time. As the result of a considerable debate Mr. Ilsley had to agree on the floor of the house to cutting his interim supply bill in half. It was only the 26th of May but he said to the house, "We need this money now; we need it to pay bills". He was talking about the month of June. The then leader of the opposition, Mr. Hanson, suggested the two months' supply be reduced to one and called upon the the minister of finance to accept the reduction to half of what he was asking the house to give him. Mr. Ilsley replied that he had no option, but that he had to accept. He recognized that the gift of supply was in the hands of the House of Commons.
This government, concerned as it has been to get its pipe line through, has paid no attention to the proprieties concerned with obtaining interim supply from the house and has let all its established practices go by the board. Now it comes before parliament and expects us, despite its failure to respond to the concern we demonstrated in May for the civil service, to bail the government out. I say, Mr. Chairman, the issue is not the salaries of our civil servants. Our position on that is clear. Like the Leader of the Opposition, we feel that although others may have been victimized by the government's action the civil service should not also be the victim of what this government has done. In our view it is a moral issue. What we now have is an executive which has treated parliament in a despotic manner, coming before parliament and asking it for the tools to carry on in the normal way just as if nothing had happened. It comes before parliament as if it had moral authority. We claim that it does not. In our view the honourable course for the government is to withdraw this request and come before us with an assurance that there will be a dissolution, whereupon we would grant whatever supply is necessary. If the government is not prepared to deal with it in that way we can only assume this government is not one that can be appealed to on the moral grounds which we feel are basic to this whole situation.
Mr. Chairman, it is not possible for a free parliament to have done to it what we have suffered here in the last few weeks and then for it to go on in the normal way. In our view the civil service and others should not be made to suffer, but in our view the government has no moral authority to make the request that it now lays before this house.
Interim Supply


Mr. Low:: Mr. Chairman, the ideal situation would be, of course, to have the estimates through the committee before the end of the financial year; then it would not be necessary for the government to ask for interim supply at any time; but we know from experience and past history that that has been impossible. Consequently it is necessary for the government some time before the end of the session to ask for interim supply as it is doing today.
Now, I have listened very carefully to the arguments that have been advanced today. I have thought back over the years when I have heard similar arguments advanced on many another proposition put forward by the government. At one stage I want to ask the hon. gentleman who was speaking if the situation with respect to the government's request for interim supply was any different fundamentally from the situation which exists when the government is asking for support for any proposition it puts forward. The opposition has argued on every occasion, I think, that I have ever heard in the house when the government has put forward a proposition, that the government ought not to do it because it did not enjoy the confidence of the people of the country. It does not matter what the proposition is, that is the position taken by the opposition; and the only difference it seems to me at the present time is that feelings are a little more in evidence than they were on previous occasions. There is perhaps more evidence of anger than there has been at other times.
I suppose if one were to take seriously the argument advanced here today about this being a dishonourable thing, one would have to consider the reverse position and argue that when we agree to an estimate passing we are indicating our belief in the normal integrity and the support by the country necessary for those who administer it. That is just about the last argument that could be advanced. It is just as reasonable to suppose that one argument could apply as that the other could apply.
I do not look upon this as a dishonourable request at all, and I suppose the reason I do not is that I do not think the government acted in a despotic manner in getting the pipe line bill through. Therefore I am not carrying around a lot of anger and bitterness in my soul because of what happened. I must say that I feel very bad about what happened, but that feeling has not been engendered by any belief I have that the government acted in a despotic manner.
The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre has indicated his concern for the civil service. I have tried to put myself in

Interim Supply
the position of the Minister of Finance on any one of the last days of May when the request for information was made by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre. I am wondering what the Minister of Finance thought as the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre expressed concern or simulated concern for the civil service. I know I would have thought to myself that that was clever of the hon. member in trying to have something else brought before the house so that the bill being considered at that time would carry over June 7. I am not going to say that that was what was in the hon. member's mind, but believe me that is the thought I would have had if I had been in the position of the Minister of Finance at that time.
I wonder if the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre or the Leader of the Opposition would give a clear undertaking today that if the Minister of Finance had called a recess for one day, let us say on May 29, 30 or 31, to ask for interim supply, they would have taken the normal time to discuss it and then got back to the pipe line bill. If they would give that unequivocal undertaking, then that would be an answer that they would have supported it without using it as the means to hold up government plans. If that were the case, then I would be ready to change my attitude, but under the circumstances I can only believe that they would have seized on that interim supply to hold things up beyond the date that was named as the terminal date beyond which they could not go with that bill.
It has been said that the government should have asked for interim supply at an early date. I think they should have done that as it would have been better for everybody, but I have tried also to think when they could have asked for it within the past three or four weeks with any chance in the world of getting it. I am of the opinion that they have asked for this interim supply at the earliest possible time available to them.
An effort has been made to stress that the government is a dishonourable government, that the government is a despotic government, and for that reason we ought to hold up interim supply. I am not claiming any virtue at all in that regard; I simply say that as the government has bills to pay, as time in running out and as we are going to have plenty of time to discuss the estimates in the regular manner and to do the business of the house in the regular manner, it would seem to be the best thing for members of this House of Commons representing the people of this country to get interim supply through and go on with the business of the house.

I would certainly suggest to the Minister of Finance that he bring the main departmental estimates before us as soon as possible so that we may have ample opportunity to go into them and have all the discussion required in the interests of good government in this country.


Mr. Zaplilny:: Mr. Chairman, before we vote on this question I should like to ask the Prime Minister one or two questions. It seems that the government has once more placed a deadline before the house. It seems to be the rule rather than the exception to have government by deadline. I for one resent that. If the government is going to operate in that way this bill should have been introduced by the Minister of National Defence, who is the only one with enough artillery to carry it through.
It seems to me that this is the proper time for the government to disclose some of its plans with regard to legislation. The government has been in such a great hurry to give away the taxpayers' money to United States capitalists that in my opinion they have completely ignored the Canadian people. We are wondering whether the government has any plans for legislation to better the lot of old age pensioners. We want to know what the government is going to do about blind pensioners. We also want to know when the government is going to straighten out the regulations under the Disabled Persons Act. These are things that may not appear to be huge things percentagewise as compared with the $103 million pipe-line bill, but they are important to many thousands of Canadians.
I must remind the government that it is several years since those who are recipients of old age pensions had an increase in their pensions. Since that time there have been two increases in civil service salaries, two increases in judges' salaries and at least one increase in the pay of the armed services. With the cost of living rising all over the country, people are asking when old age and blind pensioners are going to receive some consideration. This session is nearing its end and so far there has been no indication from the government as to whether they intend to introduce legislation this session with regard to old age pensions, blind pensions and the regulations under the Disabled Persons Act. I think this committee deserves answers to those questions before we vote on this motion.


George Alexander Drew: Mr. Chairman, I just want to deal with one thing that was raised, the question that was asked as to what the opposition would have done if there had been time set aside when this motion could have been dealt with. I would point out that

after the pipe-line bill was introduced other business was dealt with on Wednesday, May 16. It would have been possible at that time for the government to have asked for interim supply, as it should have done well in advance of May 31. I point that out so the intervention by the hon. member for Peace River will not leave the impression that there was no opportunity for this to be done.
I do not wish to extend my remarks beyond saying that this is June 11 and the interim supply we are now dealing with runs from the beginning to the end of June only. I trust that when we are next called upon to deal with this matter it will be done in plenty of time. Of course the attitude we adopt at that time will depend entirely upon the circumstances of the case.


Mr. Maclnnis:: Mr. Chairman, I am not at all surprised that the government do not want to go to the country, as I have no doubt they have been reading the editorials which have been published during the past few weeks in newspapers across Canada. From editorials in regard to the pipe-line legislation itself, there were newspapers that supported it and newspapers that opposed it, but in regard to what this government did to the rules of this house the newspapers of this country have been almost unanimous. What we should ask from this government before we grant interim supply is: is this government from now on going to run this parliament according to the rules of this parliament? That is the question that should be asked.
I am rather surprised how easily my friends on my left have been bought. They used to associate the C.C.F. with the Liberal party and the Liberal government. We were socialists in a hurry; the Liberals were socialists who were not in quite such a hurry. But the socialists that were not in quite such a hurry have become quite acceptable socialists just because they helped to buy a little gas that the province of Alberta has to sell. Surely the support of no party was ever bought so cheaply.
As I have said, that is the assurance that the Leader of the Opposition should ask- and he is in a much better position to ask it than we are-from the government, while they are taking time to rehabilitate themselves and hoping that the public will forget what they have done to parliament and that, when the next election comes around some time in 1957, the odor in which they stand with the public will not be quite as bad as it is today.


The Chairman:: Shall the resolution carry?


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: I asked the Prime Minister two questions to which I think he was prepared to reply before the Leader of the
Interim Supply
Opposition stood up. I wonder whether he is prepared to reply now.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: There will be opportunity to discuss all those questions when the estimates of the Minister of National Health and Welfare are before the house for consideration.


Frederick Samuel Zaplitny: May I ask whether the Prime Minister does not intend to make any announcement at this time?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: No, I am
not in a position to make any announcement at this time.


Harold Edward Winch: Perhaps I do not understand all these words of diplomacy but am I to understand, from what the Prime Minister said at the presentation of this resolution, that at the present time the government is asking, because of the situation in which they are in, that all they require now is the one-twelfth of the estimates and that, if that is passed-and of course it must be passed, because the bills have to be paid-that means that the house is not going to adjourn this month or next month, either for a meeting in the fall or for the purpose of an election; but, if they get the one-twelfth of the money they require to pay their bills for the month of June, this house carries on with all normal business until it is finished, and that includes discussion of all estimates; and, if they are not finished by the end of June, then they come back again for interim supply? There has not yet been a straightforward statement as to the intention of the government. I guess that is the intention, but I think all of us would like the Prime Minister to get to his feet now and say point-blank what is the situation with all business of this house, all supply and all estimates?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: The situation at this time is that we are asking for one month's supply and that we intend, when that supply is granted, to proceed with the business of the house in the ordinary way. We do not expect that the estimates will be passed by the end of June, and we do expect that at that time it will be necessary to ask for further interim supply, and we intend to carry on with the business of the house in the normal way. Now I cannot go beyond that. I cannot at this time make any commitments about things which cannot be foreseen and circumstances which might in the future arise.
The hon. gentleman knows that there are several hundred items in the estimates, and each one can be discussed. If each one were to be discussed, even if we were to sit here until Christmas, we would not get through
4S00

Interim Supply
with the discussion ot each one of those estimates if we were not seriously intent upon disposing of the business of the house in the normal way.
I do not want to say anything at the present time that would appear to be controversial. There will be plenty of controversy about all these matters on appropriate occasions. But I would hope that, for the reasons that have been given-and I am not going to attempt to discuss at this time the qualifications that have been placed upon these reasons-the supply will be granted at this time and that we could then proceed in the ordinary way with the business of the house.


George Alexander Drew: Mr. Chairman, just before the question is put, I should like to ask the Prime Minister whether there is any legislation that the government intends to introduce which is not yet before the house?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: There is' not, to my knowledge, any legislation that has not yet been indicated. There is the legislation with respect to the dominion-provincial fiscal arrangements, which is being completed and the tenor of which has been fully disclosed in the proposals that have been made to the provinces, and that have been tabled in the house and even printed as appendices to Hansard. The Minister of Finance did say that he had a succession duty bill that he expected to introduce but that he was not at all confident that there would be time to have it considered. Those are the only two outstanding things, except for one that was forecast by the Minister of Labour for some partial amendment of, I think, section 45 (2) of the Unemployment Insurance Act. I do not know of anything else that is not already before the house.


Harold Edward Winch: I am sorry to get up again, but I have to go by the words of the Prime Minister that the house will, if granted the one month's supply, carry on in the normal way. If it carries on in the normal way, we should then go through all the estimates, with all our rights of discussing all estimates. That cannot be done in this month of June.


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: No.


Harold Edward Winch: In addition, carrying on in the normal way includes all the business on the order paper, that is, bills and estimates and so on. If that happens and we carry on in the normal way-and that is the interpretation I would like-is that the interpretation of the Prime Minister of the normal way? That could possibly take us into August. Under those circumstances, is there any possibility or probability of the introduction of

the required bill, as mentioned by the Leader of the Opposition, on the dominion-provincial relations, because all our present contracts die on March 31 of next year; or is it the intention that carrying on in the normal way means to carry on now until everything is through and then have a spring session? Just what is the situation?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Well, Mr. Chairman, I think the hon. gentleman wishes to go much further than I am in a position to go at the present time. The hon. gentleman says that it might even extend into August. That is possible but I would hope not. I would hope that we could dispose, in an orderly way, of all the business including the legislation with respect to dominion-provincial relations.


Harold Edward Winch: At this session?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: At this
session.


Harold Edward Winch: That is what I wanted to know.


William Alfred Robinson: Shall the resolution carry?


Stanley Howard Knowles: Under protest.


Mr. Regier:: I want to spend a few minutes to express my great disappointment at the statement of the Prime Minister that no new major legislation is being contemplated. I have reference to the statement made by the Minister of Finance, as found at page 4141 of Hansard, where he made this remark in reply to something I had said in the pipe line debate:
Bless your soul, if this project gets going we will have enough money for all the things you have asked for.
I understand that this is June 11. I have also been given to understand that the pipe line began moving as of midnight of June 7 and is now rolling. Therefore the minister now has all the money. However, he added this qualification later:
.	.	. we would use our usual good sense in
deciding which ones should be proceeded with.
In that qualification there is at least the inference that the Canadian people would also get some of the good things and that not all the money would be reserved for foreigners.


William Alfred Robinson: Shall the resolution carry?


Mr. Lennard:: While this general questioning is going on, I should like to ask the Minister of Finance if it is the intention to bring in this session an amendment to the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act to include widows. It is about time it was done. I think it is a shame that the widows of members of parliament are left high and dry when the member dies.


Walter Edward Harris: Mr. Chairman-


Frank Exton Lennard: It is nothing to laugh about
either.


Walter Edward Harris: No, Mr. Chairman. I assure the hon. member for Wentworth that this matter has been before the government for some time. I know that in this instance the hon. member has mentioned, as in other instances having to do with the legislation, there have been consultations. I would hope that these consultations could be continued and that we could find a solution to the problem. I think it is correct to say that a great many members share the strong views that the hon. member has expressed. I might admit that the matter had gone out of my mind temporarily in the recent weeks, but now that he has drawn it to my attention I shall make inquiries again as to exactly what the situation is and will say something at a later date.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
Resolution reported and concurred in.


Walter Edward Harris: that the house go into committee of ways and means.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Robinson (Simcoe East) in the chair.


Walter Edward Harris: That towards making good the supply granted to Her Majesty on account of certain expenses of the public service for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1957, the following sums be granted out of the consolidated revenue fund of Canada, namely:
1.	The sum of $264,409,639.92, being one-twelfth of the total of the amounts of the items set forth in the main estimates for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1957; and
2.	The sum of $652,148.34. being one-twelfth of the total of the amounts of items 212, 213, 214, 216, 222, 228 of the said estimates;
3.	The sum of $36,506,378.25, being one-fourth of the supplementary estimates for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1957;
as set forth in the resolution concurred in this day in the committee of supply.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
Resolution reported and concurred in.
Mr. Harris thereupon moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 414, for granting to Her Majesty certain sums of money for the public service of the financial year ending the 31st March, 1957.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:: When shall this bill be read the second time? By leave, now?
Canadian National Railways


Stanley Howard Knowles: Under protest.


Walter Edward Harris: the second reading of the bill.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time, considered in committee and reported.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Shall this bill be read the third time now?


Stanley Howard Knowles: Under protest.


Walter Edward Harris: the third reading of the bill.
Motion agreed to and bill read the third time and passed.



CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAYS


Walter Edward Harris: that the house go into committee to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to bring in a measure to authorize the Canadian National Railway Company to make capital expenditures in the year 1956 not exceeding $233,564,000 and to make certain capital expenditures and enter into certain contracts prior to July 1, 1957; to authorize the national company to issue securities to provide amounts required for the authorized expenditures; to provide that, except as expressly provided, the aggregate principal amount of securities outstanding at any time shall not exceed $203,994,000; to authorize the governor in council to guarantee the principal and interest of securities issued by the company for the purpose aforesaid; to authorize the Minister of Finance to make loans to the said company secured by such securities and not exceeding $203,994,000 in principal amount to enable the said company to meet such expenditures and with authority to give financial aid and assistance to other companies of the national system.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Robinson (Simcoe East) in the chair.


Mr. Benidickson:: Mr. Chairman, this is the annual resolution that precedes the introduction of the Canadian National Railways Financing and Guarantee Act. Hon. members will recall that in 1952 the form of this legislation was changed so as to include the financing of all capital expenditures whether authorized in that act or in earlier financing and guarantee acts. This procedure has been followed again this year.
The bill to be founded on this resolution is divided into three specific parts. The first part is to authorize the Canadian National Railways to incur capital expenditures up to $233,564,000. The second part authorizes the railway company to make capital expenditures prior to July 1, 1957, to discharge obligations incurred under this act which become due and payable after January 1, 1957 in the amount of $80 million. The third part authorizes the railway company to enter

Canadian National Railways into contracts for new equipment and for its general additions and betterments in the amount of $90 million. To summarize, parliament is being asked to approve financing, either by way of the issue of new securities guaranteed by the government or by way of direct loan in the amount of $203,994,000.
For the convenience of hon. members, I would ask permission to place on Hansard a table giving the details of this amount, for the convenience of hon. members and so they can better take part in debate on second reading after consideration of these financial statements.


The Deputy Chairman:: Order. Just to keep us in order, is it agreed that the hon. member may have permission to have the figures included?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


William Moore Benidickson: The table is as follows:
The details of the amounts required are as
follows:
Year 1S56
Road property	 $ 84,077,000
Branch line construction .	9,875,000
Equipment	 116,147,000
Hotels	 9,035,000
Investment in affiliated companies	 14,430,000

Less: Depreciation accruals 74,570,000

Year 1957
Interim financing authority January 1 to June 30, 1957, on obligations incurred prior to January 1, 1957 ..	80,000,000
Less: Depreciation accruals 35,000,000
45,000,000

After hon. members review the table they will find, on a study of the report of the sittings of the committee on railways and shipping, that the officers of the Canadian National Railways appeared before that committee and the budget of capital expenses to which this resolution alludes was given very exhaustive committee inquiry.
In addition in this year's bill there will be provided the appointment of the auditors for the Canadian National Railways for the year 1956. Hon. members will recall that prior to last year, 1955, the appointment was made by a special bill. Since it relates to the finances of the railway, it was felt appropriate last year, and has been done again this year, to include in this bill the appointment of the auditors of road.
In the bill to be provided, hon. members will find the usual authority for the making of

temporary loans to the railway company and to Trans-Canada Air Lines to meet operating deficits to June 30, 1957. While the budget of the railway company contemplates a surplus of $2-6 million for the calendar year 1956, it has been the experience that deficits are usually incurred in the first six months of the calendar year.


Mr. Churchill:: The parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Finance has set out some of the salient facts with regard to this resolution. He is quite correct in saying that the committee on railways and shipping gave careful consideration to the budget presented by the president of the Canadian National. During the month of March we spent two or three sittings dealing with that problem and received from the president a full and frank statement.
However, I should like to have a little more information with regard to the actual figures that appear in this resolution. The first one of $233,564,000 is the total and that was brought to our attention by the president of the C.N.R. This total we approved. If the parliamentary assistant will refer to page 287 of the railways and shipping report for March 22, I think, he will find these figures set out. This grand total was made up of the amounts that were to be spent on road property, $84,077,000; branch line construction, $9,875,000; equipment, $116,147,000; hotels, $9,035,000; investment in affiliated companies, $14,430,000.
However, the president of the C.N.R. went on to tell us how he proposed to obtain the money to meet those capital expenditures, and drew our attention to the fact that there were three sources open to him. The first was depreciation accruals. He said he expected to have an amount of $74,570,000 from this source. Then, I give his exact words on page 287 of the committee report:
Then, we estimate that the government will provide us with $20,555,000 by the purchase of preferred stock under the provisions of the recapitalization plan . . . which then leaves us with the problem of finding $138,439,000 to finance our requirements for this year. That is the total which we will in the first instance borrow from the government in the form of an advance, and then go to the public market to sell bonds to pay off the temporary government advance.
The question I have to ask is this. When you add together the depreciation accruals of $74,570,000, the $20,555,000 which the president expected to get from the purchase of preferred stock, and then the $138,439,000 which he said was required to be borrowed, then you come to a total of $233,564,000. But if you deduct what he already has on hand in the $74,570,000, the requirement then would be $158,994,000, and the difference between that and the $203,994,000 that is

mentioned in the second part of this resolution is what would not be accounted for by way of explanation. Could the parliamentary assistant enlighten us with regard to that?


William Moore Benidickson: Well, Mr. Chairman, I did not have the advantage of being on the railways and shipping committee this particular session as did the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre, but I have read the minutes of that committee. I can assure the committee that with respect to the budget resolution arrangements this year I could find nothing that was different from those in former years. I recall that two years ago I was a member of the railways and shipping committee, and we considered the budget in the same way as we did this year. There is always some difficulty in relating the figures in the resolution, and my hon. friend has given two examples, one amounting to $233 million and the other amounting to $203 million, to the subsequent bill that comes before the house. When the subsequent bill comes before the house there are explanatory notes on the right-hand side of the page of the bill. In those explanatory notes there are excerpts given to the 262 members as against the probably 30 members that were on the committee. May I say that the figures I gave to the clerk for filing in some way answer my hon. friend's question. I would think the whole house would find advantage in looking at those figures and re-examining the pages as outlined by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre of the sittings of the railways and shipping committee. I refer to pages 280 onward. We could then probably have a detailed discussion in this committee.


Gordon Minto Churchill: All of that is good advice but the resolution stage provides the house with an opportunity to get a little light on matters which are not clear.


William Moore Benidickson: Quite so.


Gordon Minto Churchill: What I am talking about now is the difference of $45 million over and above the amount that the president of the Canadian National Railways informed us would be required for this coming year. I simply raise the question, what has caused that upward revision in the figures that we were given?


William Moore Benidickson: I am sure my hon. friend is referring to cash requirements as explained in the railways and shipping committee. Cash requirements, of course, would be the balance after cash income had been provided through the railways' operations and in their balance sheet had been offset by such things as depreciation of $74 million and some odd, as I recall it, and so on.
11. 1956	4903
Canadian National Railways


Edward Turney Applewhaite: Shall the resolution carry?


Mr. Hamilton (York West):: Mr. Chairman, I shall be only a minute. I was very fortunate to be on the sessional committee of railways and shipping and to have had an opportunity to question the president of the Canadian National Railways and to hear him explain the over-all financial picture. As a matter of fact, it is not something that I ever thought I would have a chance to do when I took my first ride at four or five years of age in my dad's caboose on the old Grand Trunk.
There still seems to be a very critical situation facing the Canadian National. Mr. Gordon outlined that at the present time all of these expenditures which we have and which are mentioned in the resolution are prudent expenditures, and the railway can be expected to make the necessary profit to take care of the fixed charges on the outlay which is provided in this resolution; but at the same time he has not avoided saying that the railway does face a critical period as the dieselization program is completed and the law of diminishing returns sets in. In connection with that program, at the present time the railway has been able to meet its fixed charges owing to the fact that there has been great savings in connection with the introduction of that new dieselization program. But if that saving does not continue, or if we do have a corresponding increase in wage costs and other operating expenses, then of course, he is going to face a very serious problem in the over-all financing of the road.
In this connection, the company faces a different proposition from that of its competitor, the Canadian Pacific Railway, because if that railway is unable to meet at a specific time the dividend that might be expected on some of its stock then, of course, the dividend is simply not declared; but under the recapitalization program of 1952 there is an indication that the Canadian National has been set up on a basis so that all of its fixed charges can be paid and, as a matter of fact, of necessity must be paid because the government continues as the guarantor of all of the obligations.
I am not an accountant, but it seems to me that sooner or later we shall have to remove some of the shackles which surround railway operations in Canada. Perhaps we should have a look at this thing in the reverse of the ordinary accounting methods. Since it is absolutely essential that the guaranteed indebtedness must be met we shall have to set aside an amount which is absolutely essential to the railway's continued successful

Canadian National Railways operation, an amount to meet the fixed indebtedness. We shall have to use that as a step in the formula and then arrive at a situation where the railway may look at its current operating position and examine its revenue as related to its expenses. If there is an indication that that amount cannot be met, then of course we shall have to give the railway an opportunity to earn the amount of revenue sufficient to meet its current operating expenses. Possibly that is the reverse of the way the operation is carried out at the present time. If operating expenses are so great that they do not allow a sufficient amount to be carried over against the fixed charges, then of course the government has to step in, as it has done in the past. Even taking the 1952 formula into account, it might have to step in and make payments to the people holding bonds. Mr. Gordon said this in the committee: these expenditures are prudent ones. As far as the capital outlay is concerned, they can earn their worth, if you want to put it that way. Then, taking a realistic approach, we must move back in our formula and ensure that the railway itself in its current operations is placed in a position where it can meet its current expenditures. As a matter of fact, if that were done it seems to me we would not be faced with the almost yearly problem of negotiation between labour and management which is very unsatisfactory because first of all labour does not feel that it is being allowed to bargain in an unfettered condition because of the over-all control that has been set down at the top, and management feels just as frustrated because it realizes that no matter what it does in connection with meeting the demands of labour it too is in a position where its over-all operation is pretty well surrounded by government regulation.
At each step it must come back here- perhaps not to this house, but certainly to an arm of the government-and say, "We are in this situation, are you going to help us out?" It seems to me it is about time we took a very realistic approach to the over-all financing problem which confronts the Canadian National Railways and gave considerably more leeway to management in its fight to stay ahead of the increasing operating costs. In so doing I think we would find we would have a much more satisfied labour group on the railway as well.


Gordon Minto Churchill: May I just add a comment to my earlier remarks. It is possible the answer to my question is to be found on page 288 of the committee report although it

is not very clear even there and it is difficult to recall discussions we had as far back as March.
One of the problems that arise in all the committees is that the committee reports are published so late they really are of no use to us while the committee is sitting. The question I raise now I might better have raised with the president of the Canadian National Railways present, although I had no printed copy of the report to follow. Obviously when figures in the millions are being discussed in the course of the remarks of the president of the Canadian National Railways or anyone else who appears before a committee it is extremely difficult to follow it all very closely. Perhaps by the time we get to second reading we will have the answer to this particular question.


William Moore Benidickson: Well, Mr. Chairman, if there is anything new in the hon. gentleman's inquiry I can assure him that it will be ready on second reading. I am quite confident, except for the difficulty of presenting it, that it is available in the budget sheets presented to the committee on railways and shipping and incorporated as a part of the minutes of proceedings and evidence, No. 2, of this committee. I would hope that when we discuss this item again hon. members will have had notice of this reference.


Mr. Trainor:: Mr. Chairman, I should like to take the opportunity presented by this resolution to call the attention of the committee to a grievance of a group of employees of the Canadian National Railways in my constituency.
Hon. members will recall that during the course of the past year a fire occurred in Winnipeg which partially destroyed the Fort Rouge shops of the Canadian National Railways. I asked on a previous occasion, as did the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, whether or not it was the intention of the railway to reconstruct these shops on the existing site. The minister concerned indicated on that occasion the company did not intend to re-establish the shop on the existing site.
Now the difficulty is this, Mr. Chairman. The employees concerned represent a large number of people. They have their homes in this area and have had them located there for years. The intention of the railroad apparently is to transfer the operation of these shops to Transcona which is approximately five or six miles outside of Winnipeg at the opposite end to Fort Rouge. This involves these employees, if they wish to remain in their own homes, paying transportation costs to the Canadian National station

and then paying their railroad fare to Trans-cona when they go to work in the morning and again when they come back in the evening.
I suggest, Mr. Chairman, this is a gross disregard of the human factor. These people are entitled to consideration. If the company decided to carry out its declared intention it ought to arrange first of all to consult with the employees to see what sort of compromise arrangement might be worked out and secondly it should not be done without adequate compensation to these employees who have to abandon their homes, which they have owned and occupied for many years, and seek new homes in the town of Transcona. I see the Minister of Transport is not here but I should like to have some member of the government give an assurance somewhat along these lines that this type of action might be taken.


Walter Edward Harris: Mr. Chairman, I have listened to what my hon. friend has said. He knows perfectly well the relationship of the government and the management of the Canadian National Railways. I think on all occasions the government has promised to draw to the attention of the management of the railways any matter which is raised in the house which the government feels is a matter of importance and one that should be considered. I now give the assurance my hon. friend has asked for. We shall draw to the attention of the management of the railway what he has said.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Chairman, I should like to support the request the hon. member for Winnipeg South has made with respect to the car shops at Fort Rouge. I appreciate the assurance the Minister of Finance has given that this will be drawn to the attention of the management of the Canadian National Railways.
I might point out that that assurance was given by the Minister of Transport some weeks ago when we asked questions about this matter on the floor of the house. I thought there would be replies given by the minister to our questions at a later date. Those replies have not been forthcoming so I rise now simply to repeat our insistence that the matter be brought to the attention of the management and also that the management be asked to hear representations from the employees concerned.
As the hon. member for Winnipeg South has pointed out, there are a great many employees in the constituency of my hon. friend who have their homes in that area. They are seriously affected by any change such as this which seems to be contemplated. As the Minister of Finance has said, I hope
Canadian National Railways these representations will be brought to the attention of management as forcibly as the government can do it.


Walter Edward Harris: Mr. Chairman, I should have waited for the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre to speak because I knew that he had in fact directed questions to the Minister of Transport earlier in the session concerning this matter. My assurance includes an assurance to the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre and all hon. members from the city who are interested in this matter.


William Moore Benidickson: As the Minister of
Finance has given me the privilege of piloting this resolution through the house, I think in answer to that question it would not be wrong for me to say at this point that I lived in that community for most of my formative years and if anything came up relating to that area on which I could help them I would certainly continue to do so. But everybody knows the Canadian National Railways is a crown corporation which operates its affairs independent of parliament except for representations such as we have heard in the House of Commons today.


Gordon Minto Churchill: Mr. Chairman, as one of the other members representing Winnipeg I support the suggestion that the Minister of Transport indicate to the president of the Canadian National that appropriate action should be taken with regard to the shops which were recently destroyed and the employees whose work has been interfered with and who may be seriously inconvenienced in the future.
With regard to what the Minister of Finance said concerning drawing the attention of the railways to certain matters, I would point out that in the committee hearings in March there was a little exchange as to whether or not there was responsibility on the government with regard to the Canadian National or whether the C.N.R. acted completely independently. At some future date with some relish, I shall read to the Minister of Transport some of the remarks which are on the record indicating an exchange between myself and the president of the C.N.R. There is responsibility on the government which on occasions in the past has been avoided by other ministers of transport, telling us that the C.N.R. was completely independent of direction. I think the C.N.R. will be anxious to give close attention to any representations placed before it by the Minister of Transport.
Resolution reported and concurred in.
4906	HOUSE OF
Canadian Forces Act
Mr. Harris thereupon moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 415, to authorize the provision of moneys to meet certain capital expenditures of the Canadian National Railways system during the calendar year 1956, and to authorize the guarantee by Her Majesty of certain securities to be issued by the Canadian National Railway Company.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



CANADIAN FORCES ACT


Ralph Osborne Campney: that the house go into committee to consider the following resolution:
That it is expedient to introduce a measure respecting the Canadian forces to amend the Defence Services Pension Act to provide for uniformity of pension payments to former members of the forces pensioned as warrant officers or equivalent; also to amend the National Defence Act, inter alia, with respect to the code of service discipline and with respect to the payment of duties and tolls for the use of certain facilities.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Applewhaite in the chair.


Ralph Osborne Campney: Mr. Chairman, at each of the last six sessions of parliament bills have been introduced entitled the Canadian Forces Act, similar in purpose to the bill which will be introduced upon the adoption of this resolution. The bill to be introduced will be entitled the Canadian Forces Act, 1956, and will propose a number of amendments to statutes related to defence. This year the bill is more limited than has usually been the case, in that it contains proposed amendments to only two acts, the Defence Services Pension Act and the National Defence Act.
Three clauses of the bill contain amendments proposed to the Defence Service Pension Act. Two of these amendments are designed to facilitate administration of existing provisions in the Defence Service Pension Act and the other is designed to achieve uniformity in respect of pension payments to members of the three services who are pensioned as warrant officers or equivalent and are subsequently re-enrolled or accept appointments in the public service of Canada.
Nine clauses of the bill contain proposed amendments to the National Defence Act. The amendments to this act deal with a variety of subjects and embody in the code of service discipline some provisions contained in the new Criminal Code adopted at the last session of parliament. Others, it is hoped, will facilitate the administration of justice under the code of service discipline.


One proposed amendment would enable the commander of a unit to issue to persons accompanying his unit enforceable orders relating to the defence or evacuation of the unit area in the event of an enemy attack.
Another amendment proposed to the National Defence Act would incorporate in the code of service discipline provisions relating to persons driving Canadian forces vehicles while their ability to drive is impaired by alcohol or a drug.
An amendment is also proposed which would clarify the authority of the governor in council to make regulations in respect of the enforcement of discipline in service prisons and detention barracks.
A further proposed amendment would enable treasury board to authorize the payment of tolls in respect of the use by Canadian forces vehicles of facilities such as bridges, highways and canals where such tolls are payable by other users.
There are other proposed amendments to the National Defence Act designed to facilitate the administration of the code of service discipline and to effect other changes of a technical nature in the act.
Mr. Chairman, the foregoing amendments are directed to the efficient and equitable administration of our defence forces, and I therefore commend this resolution to the committee for its favourable consideration.


Mr. Pearkes:: Mr. Chairman, I should like to take this opportunity of thanking the minister for his concise and illuminating description of the amendments which are to be proposed by the bill to follow this resolution. However, it seems to me that this is just another example of the government following a bad practice which is used as a precedent and then becomes routine.
For some years now we on this side of the house have pointed out how unsatisfactory it is to combine amendments to several acts in one bill. This year the Minister of National Defence even goes so far as to apologize for the fact that there are only two acts being amended in this 1956 version of the Canadian Forces Act. I cannot help feeling that as these acts have been in existence for a good many years it is not necessary to take up the time of the house year after year bringing in small amendments. Surely the main acts should be reviewed and brought up to date once and for all instead of having to bring in amendments year after year.
For instance, I am quite certain that there were bridges in existence last year, the year before and the year before that which exacted tolls from military vehicles. Why could not

this amendment have been brought in before? The Defence Services Pension Act has been in existence for some time. Surely it should have been discovered by this time that there was some difficulty about warrant officers being re-employed, re-enrolled or accepted in the public service of Canada. It does not seem to me that the time of this house should be taken up with such amendments. Next year the Minister of National Defence may be proposing another amendment to deal with sergeants or petty officers. Surely one big effort could be made to bring these acts up to date.
With regard to the amendments made necessary by the introduction last year of the new Criminal Code, I agree that these should be reflected in the military code of discipline. Therefore it is reasonable to expect that prompt action be taken and that the amendments be made. I sincerely hope that the code of military discipline has been carefully reviewed since the introduction of the new Criminal Code, and that it will not be necessary next year to bring in any further amendments.
I notice that there is to be an amendment to deal with the enforcement of discipline in service prisons and detention barracks. I do not suppose there is anything very new about that. Then we come to the amendment dealing with persons driving military vehicles while under the influence of liquor. Unfortunately there have been a great many instances of persons charged in the courts across the country with being under the influence while driving military vehicles. I think it would be a good thing to tighten up the discipline in respect to that, because it not only may cause grievous harm to innocent people who are in the path of such vehicles but it certainly brings the units concerned into very bad repute. On the information we have received, which is rather sketchy, I feel that we shall have to defer any further comments until we have the bill before us.
Resolution reported and concurred in.
Mr. Campney thereupon moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 416, respecting the Canadian forces.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE


Walter Edward Harris: Before the next order is called, perhaps I should indicate what I think is the agreed agenda for this afternoon and this evening. We are taking now, as I understand it, the bill in my name with respect to the 67509-311
Tariff Board Act
Tariff Board Act. Thereafter we shall take second reading of the bill to amend the Livestock and Livestock Products Act; then we shall take the Canada Lands Surveys Act amendments; then the gold mining subsidies resolution. At a later time, if that has been completed, I shall indicate, I hope by agreement, what we can take then.



TARIFF BOARD ACT


Walter Edward Harris: the second reading of Bill No. 290, to amend the Tariff Board Act.


Mr. J. W. Monteith (Perth):: In introducing the resolution on this bill on May 8 the minister mentioned that the increased volume of appeals under the Excise Tax Act and the Customs Tariff Act was the reason for increasing the number of members on the board.
I am wondering whether by any chance there could be any clarification whatsoever in the terms of the Customs Tariff Act and the Excise Tax Act that would help to reduce the number of appeals under these acts. I notice that, as reported on page 3698 of Hansard of May 8, the minister said:
As a matter of fact, we are contemplating a situation where we may have two vice-chairmen and appropriate members of the board working on different things at the same time, either completing a report while another investigation is beginning or having hearings going on at the same time on different subjects.
I can understand that the first part of that statement is quite within reason, but upon reading the bill it appears to me that there must be three members of the board sitting on any one appeal. Consequently I do not see how there can be more than one hearing going on at one time. If there is going to be a real saving of time, of course, we are quite in favour of the bill, but I should like to have clarified what the minister meant at that time by saying there could be two hearings going on at once. Outside of that, I think, we are in favour of the bill.


Walter Edward Harris: Mr. Speaker-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Applewhaiie):: the Minister of Finance speaks now he will close the debate.


Walter Edward Harris: To answer very briefly what my hon. friend has said, I quite appreciate his study of the bill and I think there is some point to the question he has asked. The fact of the matter is that I had a situation like this in mind. I did not have two hearings in mind, and in so far as I may have left that impression it was in error. What I had in mind was that the work of
4908	HOUSE OF
Livestock and Livestock Products Act the board could be divided in such a manner that there would be overlapping and that we might have a board of three conduct a hearing, then another board of three begin another hearing; and while the former was completing its study and the preparation of its report there would be one member of the board who would be not only sitting in the new hearing but would be working on the old one to complete its report. We thought that in that manner, by providing for the board as we have, we could have in fact a continuation of work which may not be possible at the present time.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and the house went into committee thereon, Mr. Applewhaite in the chair.
On clause 1-Constitution of board.
Jay Waldo Monteith: I wonder whether I could ask the minister for clarification of the statement he made a moment ago on second reading. As I understand it, he means that there could be one group of three sitting with a vice-chairman or the chairman in charge, and then when they have completed that hearing a certain number of that group of three could move on to another hearing while somebody on the first hearing would be completing the report and so on?


Walter Edward Harris: That is correct.


[Stage Direction]
Clause agreed to.
Clauses 2 and 3 agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.


Walter Edward Harris: the second reading of Bill No. 352, to amend the Livestock and Livestock Products Act.


Mr. Charlton:: Is the parliamentary assistant going to explain this bill?


Mr. Robert McCubbin (Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Agriculture):: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I have a short statement on the bill which I shall read. Part III of the Livestock and Livestock Products Act deals with poultry production. Under its authority is operated a national breeding program for poultry, known as record of performance, and the hatchery approval policy. The latter policy involves provision for supervision of chick hatchery sanitation and operations. On request of the provinces this policy has been proclaimed for compulsory operation in all 

provinces but Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland. It operates voluntarily in those three provinces.
There are two features of hatchery supervision which will be changed by the proposed amendments. At the present time, under the authority of section 43 (b) of the act it is required that all chicks sold from approved hatcheries be marked with a standard grade name. In the present stage of development of the poultry business these compulsory grades have little significance with respect to the economic value of the stock. It is proposed to discontinue the requirement for compulsory grading and to substitute for that a provision which will protect the use of such terms as "record of performance" when applied to poultry. That is the purpose of the amendment to section 43 (b).
The act at the present time requires by section 48 that all advertising by chick hatcheries be approved by the department before publication. Section 52 (g) at present makes it an offence to publish such advertising without approval. This approval of advertising is no longer considered necessary and it is proposed to repeal section 48 and paragraph (g) of section 52.
In various sections of the act reference is made to certain requirements with respect to chicks. For administrative purposes it is desired to apply those same requirements to hatching eggs, which is the purpose of the proposed addition of subsection 2 to section 42 of the act.


John Alpheus Charlton: Mr. Speaker, I see nothing wrong with the bill. As a matter of fact we think it is good. It relieves poultry hatcheries of a lot of restrictions and red tape with respect to advertising which applied in previous years, and I see no reason to delay the passage of the bill.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time, considered in committee, reported, read the third time and passed.

[Stage Direction]
AMENDMENTS RESPECTING REMUNERATION OF EXAMINERS	'
Hon. George Prudham (Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys) moved: the second reading of Bill No. 254, to amend the Canada Lands Surveys Act.


George Clyde Nowlan: Mr. Speaker, as I understand it this bill simply deals with the licensing of land surveyors under the act in question. It therefore is somewhat technical in its nature and is not one which requires any protracted debate, but

when the resolution was introduced and considered the minister made very casual reference to it.
I have gone over the bill and I think it is in keeping with the explanation he gave at that time. I do not know if anyone else is going to speak on it. I certainly am not going to take up the time of the house to speak on it because I have accepted what the minister said on that occasion, but I would hope that when he speaks and closes the debate he will amplify the work that has been done and that is proposed to be done by these examiners. He stated it was of a very limited nature when he spoke before, and if there is anything else he can say to amplify it I think it should be done at this time, because he certainly did not do so when the measure was in the committee stage.


George Prudham: Mr. Speaker-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Applewhaite):: the minister speaks now he will close the debate.


George Prudham: Mr. Speaker, I made quite a full statement at the resolution stage and I really have nothing to add at this time. If my hon. friend has any specific questions to ask when we get into commitee I shall try to answer them.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and the house went into committee thereon, Mr. Applewhaite in the chair.
On clause 1-Remuneration of members and secretary.
George Clyde Nowlan: I wonder whether the minister would give us the details of the bill at this time. He said he gave a fairly protracted statement at the resolution stage. I was here when he spoke at that time and I thought his statement was merely an outline such as one usually gets at that stage. He did not deal with the details of the bill at all, and I should like to have him make a statement at this time.


George Prudham: Mr. Chairman, I have no further elaboration to make. If the hon. gentleman cares to ask any questions on any section of the bill I will try to answer them.


George Clyde Nowlan: The explanatory note says that the bill is simply to provide for the remuneration of the examiners on an annual basis. I think the minister told us there was some question before as to how they were being paid, and that it was felt it would be better if they were dealt with on this basis rather than in accordance with the situation that prevailed prior to the introduction of the amendment. Could the minister elaborate on that?
67509-3 Hi
Canada Lands Surveys Act


George Prudham: For many years the examiners have been paid on the basis of the sittings of the board; and as a great deal of this work has to be done privately by the individual members of the board, usually on their own time at home in the evenings, it has been very difficult to establish for the purposes of the Auditor General exactly what a sitting is. Over the years they have been paid on the basis of so much per sitting, and the total annual payment to each member of the board has averaged around $750.
A couple of years ago the Auditor General suggested to our department that we might be somewhat out of order and not acting strictly according to the provisions of the act, and that we should make a change. It is for that reason that we are bringing in this amendment at this time, in order that the examiners may be paid on an annual basis, which relates very closely to the amount that has been paid in the past.


George Clyde Nowlan: Section 7 of the act, which is amended by clause 1 of the bill, refers to members or temporary members of the board. The wording of the new section 7 as provided by clause 1 of the bill is:
Every member or temporary member of the board and the secretary of the board, whether or not he is employed or paid in any other capacity in the public service of Canada, may, in respect of the performance of his duties and functions under this act, be paid-
Then it goes on to refer to remuneration at an annual rate to be fixed by the treasury board and, of course, his actual living and travelling expenses while away from his normal place of residence. Frankly I am not clear in my own mind as to the distinction between members of the board and examiners who are referred to in the next clause. We are not confronted with that clause at the moment but we will be shortly, and it refers to special examiners other than members of the board. Just what are the functions of the board with respect to examinations? What else do they do and what is the difference between an examiner and a member of the board?


George Prudham: The chairman of the board is the surveyor general and the other two members are at the present time and have been for many years employees of the department. A special examiner would be a man who would conduct an examination say in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg or some other point where there were a number of applicants for examination. It has been found more economical to pay qualified land surveyors who reside in that area than to send one of our examiners from Ottawa, with all the expenses of travelling. It is for that reason we provide for special examiners.

Canada Lands Surveys Act


George Clyde Nowlan: What are the functions of the board, Mr. Chairman, other than the conduct of these examinations and the licensing of what used to be dominion land surveyors? Do they receive any salary or remuneration as members of the board other than that which is indicated by this bill for their services as examiners?


George Prudham: No, Mr. Chairman.


George Clyde Nowlan: What other work has the board? Is the board simply for the purpose of examinations or do they have other functions in connection with the Canada Lands Surveys Act?


George Prudham: Well, Mr. Chairman, the work of the commissioners-


George Clyde Nowlan: I am speaking of them as a board, not as individuals.


George Prudham: They have no other duties as a board, although they are paid as civil servants for other work in the department.


George Clyde Nowlan: They are officials of the department who are paid in connection with their appointments in the department and then they, as individuals, sit on the board.


George Prudham: Yes.


George Clyde Nowlan: And the functions of that board are to conduct examinations for certificates?


George Prudham: That is right.


George Clyde Nowlan: And the proposal now is to pay them annually rather than on a per diem basis as had been done heretofore?


George Prudham: That is right.


Mr. Bryce:: Has the chief examiner a fulltime job?


George Prudham: The chairman of the board of examiners is the surveyor general of Canada. This is only part-time work for him.


William Scottie Bryce: You are going to change from this per diem allowance and give them so much a year, is that it?


George Prudham: That is the purpose of this amendment.


William Scottie Bryce: Are there any extras going to be employed or will there be the same number of men? What benefit will be gained by paying them on a yearly basis instead of a per diem?


George Prudham: As I explained before, it is because of the nature of the work. They have, first of all, to meet as a board and decide in a general way what should be the framework of the examinations for the current year. Perhaps the members of the board will be


assigned the preparation of different examination papers, and that work is usually done after hours at home where they are able to concentrate. Then after the examinations are conducted and the applicants have written their examinations, there is the long and tedious work of marking papers and classifying them. This work is done much more adequately by all members working individually than it would be if they worked together around the table as a board.


William Scottie Bryce: How many members are there on the board?


George Prudham: There are three.


William Scottie Bryce: Does that include the chief surveyor?


George Prudham: That is right.


George Clyde Nowlan: I wonder, Mr. Chairman, if the minister could tell us how many applicants wrote the examinations last year, and how many times the examinations were set? Are there regular times for setting these examinations or does it depend upon the number of applicants?


George Prudham: The examinations are usually held on the first Tuesday in February. Last year there were 93 applicants.


George Clyde Nowlan: There is no other classification besides the degree, I take it; or are there various stages such as those in connection with a chartered accountant?


George Prudham: There is the one advance examination for a topographical surveyor, and only 32 have qualified for that certificate since 1875. It is a very advanced certificate and very few attain it.


George Clyde Nowlan: Could the minister tell us how much was paid last year for services in connection with these examinations on the basis which existed up until this time?


George Prudham: They received $750 per member.


[Stage Direction]
Clause agreed to.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Title agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.


George Prudham: that the house go into committee to consider the following resolution:

That it is expedient to introduce a measure to afnend the Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act to extend its application to the years 1957 and 1958.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Robinson (Simcoe East) in the chair.


George Clyde Nowlan: Is the minister going to make a statement on this, Mr. Chairman?


George Prudham: Mr. Chairman, this resolution proposes very briefly to extend the provisions of the Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act at the same rate and under the same regulations for the years 1957 and 1958. This Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act came into operation in 1948, and with certain changes in formula it has been assisting the gold mines since that date.
The emergency, so far as the gold mines were concerned, was due to rising costs of labour and materials and the fixed price for gold at $35 United States funds per ounce. During the war the gold mines had been restricted in obtaining certain materials, and consequently production was less than it could have been under normal circumstances. The payments under the act were to meet emergency conditions and to compensate, in some measure, for the restrictions that had been imposed.
The emergency, so far as rising costs and the fixed price for gold are concerned, still exists. There are many communities dependent solely on gold mining and it is proposed, therefore, to extend the period of time for another two years, 1957 and 1958, at the same rate that prevailed for 1955 and for this year, 1956.
Payments under the act have always been based on a formula which has two factors, namely the rate of assistance and the number of assistance ounces. The formula now in effect, and which this bill will extend for two years, is two-thirds of the amount by which the average cost of producing an ounce of gold exceeds $26-50 multiplied by two-thirds of the production in the designated year. The maximum assistance payment is $12-33 an ounce.
Applications for payment in any year are received up until June 30 of the following year. Advance payments are made on an 80 per cent basis, pending an audit of the gold mining company's books by the cost inspection and audit division of the Department of Finance. When the audit is completed the final payment of the 20 per cent holdback is approved. Under these conditions final payments are not yet complete for 1955 but payments are expected to be in the neighbourhood of $9,300,000.
11, 1956	4911
Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act
In 1954, under a formula which gave greater payments, the total cost when the final settlements are made is expected to be about $16,300,000. In 1953 payments amounted to $14,652,080.26. Payments have varied from a low of slightly under $9 million in 1950 to a high of more than $16 million in 1954. The rate of payment per ounce produced in 1954 was $4.22 and in 1953 it was $4.61, the highest rate ever paid.
Payments are made only to mines whose production of gold is 70 per cent of the total value of their output. In 1955 five lode mines suspended operations while one other mine was absorbed by the parent company. One new lode mine came into production in 1955 and one mine elected to sell on the free market and was ineligible for assistance. No mines were on the free market in 1954. Production of gold eligible for assistance payments under the conditions outlined were 3,795,248 ounces in 1954 and 3,301,501 ounces in 1955. No payments under the Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act are made for gold produced as a by-product recovered in the smelting of gold-bearing base metals. Thus, the gold that qualified for assistance in 1954 was 86-9 per cent of the total gold production, which amounted to 4,366,440 ounces, and in 1955 the corresponding figure was 72-4 per cent of the total gold production of 4,556,400 ounces.
The gold mines have made strenuous efforts to decrease their operating costs, and with marked success. They have done very well. There has been an increase in grade of the ore found in several mines, and on a recent trip up through the Red Lake camp I was pleased to note that many of the mines there have improved their position. One mine in the Northwest Territories has a very high-grade ore and is doing very well without gold mining assistance. In 1957 there may be as many as seven mines which, on account of the costs of production decreasing, will receive either no assistance or just a very small amount under the terms of the act. Other mines, however, are in a life and death struggle for existence, and some may have to close in the next two years.
It has been estimated by officers of my department that if assistance payments were discontinued at the end of 1956, when the present act expires, 18 or 20 mines with an annual production of about 700,000 ounces of gold would quite likely close after a two or three years' salvage period. During the salvage period the gold now in sight would be mined but no new ore would be sought by further exploration. These mines when closed would be permanently lost.
4912	HOUSE OF COMMONS
Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act
For the past several years there has been very little prospecting for or development of new gold mines, and the number of gold producers dropped in 1955 to fewer than half the number producing in 1941, the peak year of production. Most of the potential gold mines which are in the development stage are located in or near proven gold camps, and there appears to be little interest to move beyond those localities. Many of the gold mines, in fact, have used money received from gold production to go into other mining ventures. I think we are all familiar with the names of the mines. Gold mines have branched out into other fields such as iron, oil and uranium development.
I could name several mines but I do not think it would be wise for me in my capacity as Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys to name any mines specifically. I do say this, that the companies that are engaged in gold mining are really mining companies and in many instances they have plowed their profits back into further exploration and new development of base metals as well as gold.
It will be apparent that the continuation of the emergency gold mining assistance has aided many of the gold mines to remain in operation so the communities dependent on them have continued to maintain a reasonable standard of living. It has provided money for new mining developments, as I have said, and they have contributed in this way to the general prosperity which mining is now enjoying, and which has been reflected in the economy of Canada.
The contribution of the gold mines to the Canadian economy can be summarized in a few sentences. The amount of new wealth produced in gold in 1955 was valued at $157,305,152. Salaries and wages paid in 1954 were $63,578,156; fuel and electric power purchased amounted to $6,987,528; plant and equipment installed amounted to $6,385,260, and other supplies purchased amounted to $38,814,500. It is estimated that the total number of employees in 1954 was almost 18,500.
Since the inception of the gold mining assistance in 1948 the amount paid out to March 31, 1956, is over $90 million. This applied to 26 million ounces, or an average of $3.48 an ounce. It is calculated that payments in 1955 will probably reach $9,300,000.
It is expected that if production costs remain the same for 1957 as for 1955 the cost of assistance in 1957 will be approximately $8,600,000. This decrease from the present estimate of $9,300,000 in 1955 and $8,900,000 in 1956, even though it is at the same rate as provided at the present time, is due to the
[Mr. Prudham.l
fact that several mines are now mining better grade ores and therefore will receive less help and, as I said before, a few will probably go out of existence.
There has been a marked improvement in efficiency in the last few years and for this the management and the men deserve a great deal of credit. Increased costs for the coming year, of course, would tend to increase payments under the act, but I predict that the present trend toward lower payments under the act will continue.
Gold mines are continuing to make, as I said before, a very valuable contribution to the over-all economy of Canada, and we think the further aid for the years 1957 and 1958 is entirely justified.


George Clyde Nowlan: Mr. Chairman, certainly the minister does not have to make any apology for the value of the gold mining industry in Canada. We all realize it is one of the great mining industries of this country, and one which has made a real contribution. I am certainly not going to debate the merits of this resolution at the moment, because even if I wanted to I would not have the qualifications so to do. When the bill is before us on second reading those hon. members who have more knowledge of the industry than I have will be able to discuss the bill on its merits.
As I understand it what we are doing now is extending the life of the bill for a further two years, and the bill itself is being continued in terms exactly the same as heretofore.
It is somewhat of a play on words, I think, Mr. Chairman, to have the title of this bill "The Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act". The minister has told us the emergency arose during the war when the price of gold was fixed at a certain price and when the costs of labour were increasing. Well, the price of gold is still fixed and labour is still going up and up and is much higher than it was at the time the bill was originally introduced. Possibly some consideration could be given to changing the name of the act.
I am reminded of the wartime income tax act which was introduced in 1917 as a temporary measure during the first war and was continued under the same name until about three years ago, when we finally dropped the word "wartime" out of the title and put it on the straight basis of the Income Tax Act. It may be that if this act is to be carried on it should not be called an emergency act but that some consideration should be given to changing the title to put it on the other basis.
Certainly the contribution which has been made by the industry, as the minister said,

has been substantial. The amount we are apparently paying this year is going to be quite a bit less than last year. One is faced with the possibility which the minister suggests of a substantial number of mines perhaps closing during the year. Some of these, of course, are probably on a temporary basis, where only camps have been established, but in other cases full communities will be threatened by the closing of these mines. It presents a problem to the minister in the administration of this particular industry which I think is something that has to be dealt with on more than an emergency basis or from instalment to instalment as the minister proposes to do just now. I presume the bill is being extended for two years rather than one so that the industry will have some idea of continuance or permanence for a period of two years. That in itself is a very short time during which one can make plans.
I realize, too, of course, there are other mining industries as well as gold mining which are facing trouble and disaster, and there is one on which some of us could talk more competently than on this. When I see the figures paid out here I am also reminded of the assistance on a comparative basis; I can make a mental comparison with amounts paid out to other mining industries. As I said, I certainly am not trying to discuss the merits of this at all. I simply say that when the bill on which this resolution is based comes before us for second reading we will then have an opportunity to debate its merits and the application of the general principle as such, and I shall reserve any further comments for that debate.


Mr. Rea:: Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the minister a question. I understand those mines which have taken advantage of the free market to sell gold cannot get any assistance under this act. If that is so why should they be penalized by not being allowed to sell gold in the free market which they have not been able to do since the spring? I understand those which did that are not to be allowed any assistance under this act.


George Prudham: If a mine elected to sell on the free market it would be for one reason only, and that was to get a higher price; therefore it would not need the assistance. That is the only reason a mine would elect to pass up assistance and go on the free market.


Charles Edward Rea: They might not get as much
assistance. Is there not a way that can be worked out whereby if they got part of it they would get half the assistance? In other words, why penalize them and make the government pay the extra cost? You say you are paying about $3.48 an ounce. If they
Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act could get an extra $1.50 it would only cost the government the difference between $1.50 and $3.48. There is no reason why that could not be done. It might save the government some money and give the mine a chance to make more there.


George Prudham: A mine has the option of electing to go on the free market with one month's notice, but if its costs were below $26.50 it would not be eligible for assistance. Also a mine has the privilege of delivering its production to the mint or selling it elsewhere on the free market if it so wishes. I do not know if that answers your question.


Charles Edward Rea: I agree. I quite understand what the minister is saying, but I still cannot get over the fact that if a mine can sell its gold on the free market for say $1.50 an ounce over and above the cost of $26.50, it should be penalized and the government does not pay the $3.48. Perhaps the government would only have to give them $1.50 or less an ounce. We want to stop as much subsidy as we can and yet keep them in business. I think perhaps you are following what I have in mind. Let us suppose they do sell and the government then only needs to give them $1.50 an ounce to make up what they would be getting if they did not sell on the free market. Is there any reason why that could not be done?


George Prudham: You need to have a cut-off point somewhere or you would run into impossible administrative difficulties.


Charles Edward Rea: You have bookkeeping systems now with the mines. This would be just a bookkeeping entry.


George Prudham: I do not know; it is quite a complicated procedure even now.


Charles Edward Rea: Not any more complicated than keeping track of the costs. You would be just keeping track of sales.


George Prudham: I do not know why a mine would elect to go on the free market if it could make more money by drawing assistance. I do not think it should have it both ways.


Charles Edward Rea: We do not know what the free market might be. It might be a good thing to have them try it. We do not know what the free market is going to be. I think you will agree that no one knows yet.


George Prudham: A mine has the option of reverting to either the free market or gold mining assistance on one month's notice. I think that is fair enough.


Charles Edward Rea: In other words you are penalizing those mines which do not have as high grade ore; they are being penalized in the possibility of creating a market for their product in some
4914	HOUSE OF
Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act other way. There are all sorts of ideas, as you know. They could perhaps decide to make $50 gold coins and sell them to the public and they might create quite a good market, we do not know. They are being penalized because they have low-grade ore. I do not think the idea of the government is to penalize; I think it wants to try to create a free market, as you suggested in the spring. I do not see why you have to cut it off there. Why can you not do it on a graded scale?


Mr. Barnett:: As I understand the introductory remarks made by the Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys, Mr. Chairman, in effect he is asking parliament to extend the Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act on the basis of the formula which was adopted the last time the act came before the house for revision.
It seems to me it is perhaps regrettable that the minister is bringing in the request at this time inasmuch, as the minister said, we have not received a report which indicates in any detail the operation of the act over the past year. In other words, as I understand it we are not really in a position to make a detailed examination of how the current formula under the act is working out across the country in comparison with how it worked out under the basis of the previous formula.
I believe the minister did make certain general observations and some reference to one or two mines, but I think it would be advantageous if we could have a detailed statement, at least before second reading, as to how the act has been working out for the different mines which are receiving assistance. I think we should have that information before we are asked to extend the act for a further period of two years.
If I recall correctly, the mines have until June 30 of the year following to make their applications for assistance, and perhaps that is one reason we have not before us detailed information of the kind I have been referring to. It seems to me that period is unnecessarily long and that a period of three months, or up to March 31, should be adequate for the making of application for assistance by any mining corporation. If that had been the cut-off date, then the government would have been able to give us a more detailed statement as to the operations of the act. I hope the minister will be able to cast some light upon the situation, and perhaps he will indicate what additional information he can give us to that contained in his introductory remarks.
I would remind the committee that the application of the Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act is of interest to a great many people besides the mine operators. This is


a matter of concern not only to the directors and shareholders of a mining company but also to its employees. I think the minister will recall that such support as he has received in previous years from this corner of the house when similar bills have been before us has been based upon his argument that this assistance would be of some benefit to the men who operate and work in the gold mining industry. These men are concerned with knowing what assistance the mines are going to receive under the act.
We feel that when funds are coming from the public treasury for the assistance of gold mine operators the amount should be decided upon as quickly as possible after the termination of each year's operations so that when the bargaining agents for the employees go into negotiations with the employers they will be in a position to know exactly the position of that mine relative to the assistance received under the act. In carrying on negotiations with mining operators and others, unions have found that negotiations could be carried forward on a sounder basis if the companies were prepared to make clear their actual operating positions and their ability to pay. As hon. members of the committee are well aware, by and large that sort of request is still met with an adamant negative on the part of the operators.
It does seem to me that where public funds are involved the one concern of this parliament should be that the people working in the industry get a fair break. I throw that forward as a suggestion for the consideration of the minister, so that when the bill is brought in he may consider shortening the period in which applications are allowed, for the reasons I have advanced.


Mr. Quelch:: Could the minister say how many operators have elected to sell on the free market and what is the highest price that has been received during the past year on the free market?


George Prudham: Only two mines sold on the free market last year, and we do not know what price they received. Those mines were not receiving assistance during that year because their costs were less than $26.50.
The hon. member for Comox-Alberni has pointed out that we should have some concern for the workingmen. That is exactly the reason this act was brought in in the first place, and why we have been arguing that it is really a measure to maintain employment in these communities. We believe that the results to date have justified the expenditure of money that has been made. In many instances these communities have been preserved and enabled to carry on. In several

instances a mining company has been able to establish operations in base metal mining, probably in the same community, and has invested in other types of mining in other parts of the country, all of which has resulted in the maintenance of employment in the industry.


Solon Earl Low: Am I to understand that the free market in gold has not diminished the number of requests for subsidy thus far?


George Prudham: For the simple reason that it is not profitable to sell on the free market. There was a period about three or four years ago when there was a lot of speculation on the free market and operators were tempted to forego assistance and sell their product on the free market. But I understand that conditions have settled down.


Thomas Speakman Barnett: Will the minister give consideration to the point I raised about shortening the time for making application?


George Prudham: This department would be quite pleased if we could shorten the time; but gold mines, especially placer operations, are scattered in the far corners of this country. Many of them are small operations and it takes time for our auditors to visit them to make a final audit. They make interim inspection trips, as do our engineers, and an assessment of the development of reserve ore is made. A mine is not allowed in any one year to increase the proportion of its reserves in relation to its production beyond a reasonable relationship with what they had when they came under gold mining assistance in the first place. It is a complicated and, I think, of necessity a long drawn out operation. If we could shorten it our department would be very pleased to do so.


Thomas Speakman Barnett: How many placer operators are now receiving assistance under the act?


George Prudham: There are two major placer operators and eight or ten small ones at the moment.


Solon Earl Low: Does the minister see any possibility in the foreseeable future of being able to discontinue this assistance? I am not arguing at the moment that it should be discontinued now. Perhaps under the circumstances it is inevitable that we continue it at least until either costs are down sufficiently to make it possible for the miners to operate profitably or, in the alternative, a more profitable market is created. It would have to depend on one or both of those things. Does the minister foresee a time when we can get rid of this assistance?


George Prudham: Our maximum payments were over $16 million; we are now down to
4915
Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act around the $9 million mark, and we foresee the cost coming down to less than $8 million or around the $8 million figure. We think the mines are making very good progress toward self-sufficiency under this act. That is one reason we are extending it for two years, to give them some security, so they can plan their operations more efficiently and plot their development work to get the maximum results. We are very pleased at the way it is going, and we are confident they are moving toward self-sufficiency.


Solon Earl Low: I have just one more question. I am sorry but I did not quite hear all the minister said in his parliamentary statement, as there seemed to be a good deal of noise. It occurred to me then to ask how many men are employed in Canada today in the industry.


George Prudham: About 18,500.


Victor Quelch: What percentage of the companies are receiving assistance, and what percentage are subsidiaries of United States companies?


George Prudham: I have no information about that.


Victor Quelch: I would be rather interested to learn to what extent we are subsidizing United States companies under this act.


Charles Edward Rea: I noted the minister said that the subsidies had gone from $16 million to $9 million over a certain period of time. Would he state whether in his opinion that is due to the efficiency of the operation of the mines, or have many mines closed up?


George Prudham: The change in the maximum amount paid is related to our rate of payments to a large extent, and also the reduction in costs is due to improved efficiency.


Erhart Regier: The minister mentioned that about 18,000 men were employed in gold mining. I am sure he does not mean to say that 18,000 gold miners are being assisted by means of a subsidy. I believe that a goodly number work in mines that do not receive a subsidy. Could the minister give us any indication of the number of men who are thereby being retained in employment? Is it one-half or is it only one-quarter of them, or perhaps only 1,000?


George Prudham: I cannot tell exactly but, as I mentioned in my statement, about 72 per cent of the total production is assisted. Whether or not that relates directly to employment, that gives a rough idea.


John Borden Hamilton: I am trying to tie down whether it is an increase in efficiency that is causing a decrease in the
4916	HOUSE OF
Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act number of claims, or at least a decrease in the amount paid. Is this figure of 18,000 a constant figure, or have you any figures to show how many people have been employed in this industry over the past two or three years?


George Prudham: I think when the act came into force there were about 22,000. I cannot give you the figures progressively, but that is approximately what the reduction has been.


John Borden Hamilton: Although you were not able to give us the figures of mines closed, there has been a decrease in the number of people employed to the extent of about 4,000 over the past ten years, is that right?


George Prudham: I would say over the past six years. My figures would indicate about 3,500 of a reduction.


John Borden Hamilton: At the same time has there been a corresponding decrease in gold production? Is that going down?


George Prudham: No, it has gone up.


John Borden Hamilton: So there is increased efficiency then in connection with the operation of the companies that are claiming assistance?


George Prudham: Yes.


John Borden Hamilton: I think we are all very much interested in this, and I subscribe to the view that it is very beneficial to have this act extended for two years so there can be planning here. I think all of us agree that it is of benefit not only to the people who are in the mining industry but to the thousands of people dependent on the trade which is generated through these communities.
A great number of the mines are probably in fairly inaccessible areas. I wonder whether the minister has given any consideration, in connection with the assistance that these people may need, to improvement of transportation or the lowering of transportation costs. It seems to me that if these mines were made a little more accessible or if there were general thought given to improving the conditions and the accessibility, we might find a greater number improving their operations and there might be an indication of more that could go into production. Perhaps there is an indirect way here in which these people could be helped.


George Prudham: I think the formula
provides for that. We may assume that the mine in the inaccessible place has a higher cost, including transportation, and therefore would get more assistance under the act.


John Borden Hamilton: In other words the formula does cover the question of transportation costs in addition to the actual production?


George Prudham: Yes.


Erhart Regier: I wonder whether the minister can tell us whether any thought has ever been given to this phase of the problem. I notice that even if we say that 16,000 miners are being helped thereby, the sum of $8 million means $500 per miner. We have been doing this for some eight years. That is a grand sum of $4,000 per miner. What I have in mind is whether any thought has ever been given to spending $4,000 on each miner working in these marginal mines and attempt to rehabilitate him to some other area of Canada or in some more profitable undertaking.


George Prudham: If we did that we would destroy the communities. The actual number of people working in a mine does not by any means represent the number of people that benefit. I have read many times that for every man underground there are at least four people employed on the surface. Further, whole communities depend on the existence of these mines. I am sure that my hon. friend from Timiskaming, when she gets an opportunity, will tell you about that. I think there is ample justification for maintaining those communities in the north. They are helping to roll back our frontiers. As I said before, they are not only engaged in the search for and the production of gold, but their efforts also lead directly and indirectly to the development of base metals and forestry. They consume large amounts of pit props and other lumber, steel and electrical goods. This aid is by no means confined to the actual miners who work in the pits.


Mrs. Shipley:: Mr. Chairman, following the last question by the hon. member for Burnaby-Coquitlam, I think it is high time that somebody from the mining areas had a word to say. I was waiting until the questions were over, and had thought that perhaps I would speak on the next reading of the bill. You know, it is a simple thing to say, and it sounds like an easy solution; why do you not take $4,000 in the first place and rehabilitate these miners?


Erhart Regier: On a question of privilege, I did not offer that as a solution. I only asked whether any consideration had ever been given.


Marie Ann Shipley: Oh, quite. I was not trying to imply in any way that the hon. member had said that was what should be done, but

it is a simple thing to ask if it has been considered. However, if the hon. member knew the miners I think he perhaps would not make such a suggestion. After all, the men and women in these areas have everything they own in this world invested in these communities. They have worked there for years. We have millions and millions of dollars invested in first class schools, water, sewers and all sorts of sanitary facilities, churches, all those things that go to make modern municipalities. We grew very rapidly at one time, when the federal government asked us to expand the production of gold as quickly as possible because they needed the money to pay for war supplies. That caused our municipalities to expand very rapidly and, I might say, put us very much in debt. However, every available bit of manpower and mining ability was put into meeting that request. It was made at the time when Mr. Ilsley was minister of finance, but I have forgotten the year.
In these communities we also have extensive business sections. We have some secondary industry, most of which is entirely dependent on the mining industry. But in the outlying areas in my particular part of Ontario we have a peculiar land formation. Around Cobalt we have solid rock. If you wanted to have a little vegetable garden you would have to drag in the earth. Just north of that we have what is called the small clay belt. It has some of the finest soil you can find in any country in the world. The people there grow wonderful vegetables, but not in large enough quantities to justify the establishment of the costly storage facilities you would have to have if you were going to hold over your root vegetables in order to export them when you could get a good price. This clay farming area depends on the mining municipalities nearby for its markets. In a sense the people there are just as dependent on the mining industry as are those who actually work in the mines.
North of that clay belt we have the Kirk-land-Larder mining area which is almost solid rock with no soil at all. North of that again, and running into the riding of my colleague the hon. member for Timmins, we have a sand belt, and then a rocky belt and then the great clay belt. This part of Ontario will one day be one of the finest parts of Canada, and not only just for mining. We have not exhausted exploration for mines in that area, and I do not refer particularly to gold mines. In certain parts of the area those who explored for gold mines found and developed great base metal mines, and the search still goes on.
67509-312J
11, 1956	4917
Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act
It is our hope, and I hope it is the hope of other hon. members-in fact, you have always been most sympathetic to our problem-that either the price of gold will go up or that costs will go down, but we do not really expect that costs will go down because that would mean a depression. Actually our main hope is an increase in the price of gold, which is not an impossible thing. Today the price of gold is determined by the United States government. It used to be determined by the government of Great Britain. It may be that overnight we will have an increase in the price of gold, and then we would not need any help.
This assistance is given in such a manner that only those mines that need it in order to keep operating receive it, and they receive it in varying amounts based on need, that is, their cost per ounce of gold produced.
The question was asked whether consideration has been given to moving these people. How could you compensate; what would you do with the thousands of people we have in these mining areas? Surely it would not be expected that they would give up all their life savings. The provinces are primarily concerned in the situation, and in my case it happens to be the province of Ontario.
Actually I think what should be done is that at this time we should have a most influential committee to study ways and means of establishing secondary industries in these communities, if necessary by subsidy in the beginning if you wish to call it that, before it is too late and we have a serious problem on our hands.
I have more to say, but I should like to speak at a later time when I have heard what others have to say.
At six o'clock the committee took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The committee resumed at eight o'clock.
Walter Edward Harris: Just before we begin may I say that upon completion of the discussion of the resolution we are now considering the house will, by consent, go into supply, without this particular motion being counted as one of those which is referred to in the rules, and we shall then consider the estimates of the Department of Transport.


Marie Ann Shipley: When I was speaking just before the dinner hour, Mr. Chairman, I was speaking in particular to the suggestion made by the hon. member for Comox-Alberni. He had asked the Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys if his department had ever given
4918	HOUSE OF
Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act consideration to computing the amount of money per employee given in gold mining assistance in Canada, and rehabilitating the miners elsewhere. I had pointed out the buildings, the sanitary services and so on existent in those cities. In Ontario alone we have two cities entirely dependent on the gold mining industry, the city of Timmins in the riding of my colleague from the constituency of Timmins, and the city of Kirkland Lake, although it is not incorporated as such, in the riding of Timiskaming. There are many, many smaller villages, towns and hamlets.
The hon. member for Comox-Alberni made it quite clear that this was only a suggestion. I should like to suggest to the hon. member for Comox-Alberni that every session since I have been here, and it is true I am but a novice, we have spent almost 50 per cent of the time of this house in discussing the plight of the western farmers. I understand that during election times in the west certain members of a certain party, and one in particular of the party to which the hon. member belongs, object rather strenuously to the assistance that has been given to the gold mining industry. One of the things they say is that you cannot eat it, and they say many other things that are rarely cited in this house.
I just wonder what the hon. member would think if those of us who do not grow wheat suggested that all the proposals from his party would not mean a thing unless this government felt the western wheat farmer was entitled to assistance. What would he think if we suggested, or if I suggested for instance that, after all, according to his party we have difficulty in selling wheat and a major difficulty exists in some areas represented by members of his party, and that we should take the $4,000-1 think that was the sum he suggested-and rehabilitate those farmers in some other industry.
Now, of course, I would not be stupid enough to make such a proposal. I worked on a farm myself, and I know that land means everything to the man who is on it. I do not concede we have too much wheat. In spite of the crying to which we have listened hour after hour and day after day in this house about what this government was doing in selling wheat the Minister of Trade and Commerce, who said he would take care of the wheat, has been able to take care of it in the face of serious problems. But day after day we have listened to the cries from these areas. I am rather amazed that the hon. member, who appears to be so sympathetic to the problems facing the individual farmers, would be so lacking in consideration and thoughtfulness for the individual miners. Believe me, the miner works no less hard than the farmer.
I Mrs. Shipley.]


Thomas Speakman Barnett: About which hon. member are you talking?


Marie Ann Shipley: I was talking about you. Go ahead and ask the question. Are you the member for Comox-Alberni or Alberni-Comox?


Thomas Speakman Barnett: Comox-Alberni. I was just trying to recall when I have been talking about the plight of the western farmer. My colleague the hon. member for Burnaby-Coquitlam did say something about $4,000 per miner earlier this afternoon. I am slightly puzzled as to which member the hon. member has been referring in her recent remarks.


Marie Ann Shipley: It does not make much difference; it was a member of your party.


Harold Edward Winch: It does not make much sense, either, the way you are putting it.


Marie Ann Shipley: It will in just a moment. Who said that? Was that the hon. member for Vancouver something?


Harold Edward Winch: It is not Vancouver something. It is Vancouver East, a very important area.


Marie Ann Shipley: I assure the hon. gentleman I did not use the term "something" in that sense. I find it very difficult, this being my first session, to remember exactly where people come from.


Harold Edward Winch: Wrong again; it is your third.


Marie Ann Shipley: It is my first parliament; you are a great stickler, but that is all right. I am used to the hon. member. I sit on a committee with him, and I know he can be such a stickler.
I am sorry; the hon. member for Burnaby-Coquitlam made the statement, but it is quite all right. I meant every word I said. We will apply it to the hon. member for Burnaby-Coquitlam. Now, you have disrupted my train of thought and I may have to repeat it so that even the hon. member for Vancouver East can understand the point. As I was about to say, we have listened with great patience and understanding because the members of that party are not the only ones who feel keenly about the plight of the farmers. This government has done many things for the farmers. I will admit that occasionally some of the people in this part of the country say if we can do so much for the farmer, why can we not do something for this group or that group?
Here we have a subsidy, and we dislike subsidies just as much as the western farmer does. I know farmers. They like to be independent. But no matter what we do, from some of the speeches made by some of the

members in the C.C.F. party and the opposition it would appear that it is not enough. We have done a great deal. If you divided what we have done over a four-year period by the number of farmers concerned, I am sure the total would probably equal the total quoted by the hon. member for Burnaby-Coquitlam. We would not suggest for a moment that as an argument against doing what has been done for the farmer. What has been done for the farmer has been done with 100 per cent co-operation from the members on this side of the house. I am confident that we will continue to do what should be done for all phases of the economy of this country to keep Canada strong.
Here we have the gold mining industry which, as I explained before dinner, has been at the will of government, not solely this government but international government. The price of gold is something over which this government has no control. At one time, and I told you about that before dinner, we were asked to expand rapidly and produce as much as we could. We did that. Then all of a sudden gold mining was not a war essential and all our supplies and our labour supply were cut off. In the meantime municipalities had flourished.
I remember that last year when this bill re-establishing the assistance for two years was under discussion there was much talk on the part of C.C.F. members about this government establishing a special committee to investigate the gold mines, as to their financial problems, the needs of the municipalities and so on. They were told at that time that the type of investigation primarily desired was of provincial matters, and such a committee was subsequently established by the premier of Ontario.
The report I have is a gold mining and economic study in Ontario. The chairman of this committee was Professor F. A. Knox, head of the department of political and economic science, Queen's University, Kingston. The members were Professor E. E. Reilly, professor of economics, University of Western Ontario, London, and Professor H. R. Rice, head of the department of mining engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto. The secretary was James Johnston, Stratford. This is the final report they made to the premier of Ontario and to the government. I am going to tell you more of this report later, but at this stage of the discussion I should like to read from page 48, where they state:
Although gold has been produced in many parts of Ontario, 82 per cent of it has come from the Porcupine and the Kirkland Lake camps.
The Porcupine camp is situated in the riding of my colleague the hon. member for
11, 195G	4919
Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act Timmins, and the Kirkland Lake camp, normally known as the Kirkland-Larder camp, is in my riding. I continue:
In 1954, these two camps still produced 62 per cent of the province's total. They supported 55,000 or 79 per cent of the 70,000 population of Ontario's "gold mining" communities. By their size alone, they present the major problems of adjustment to changing gold mining trends. Their largest communities, Timmins and Kirkland Lake, would show the most significant impact of any unfavourable shifts. While both of these are almost solely dependent upon the one industry, they do not depend on any one mine.
Kirkland Lake is my home town. Further down on page 49 I find the following:
Because of the lack of alternative occupations in the area, the miner and his family are especially dependent upon employment in the mines. There are few jobs for young men and almost none for young women. The tax base of the mining municipalities is therefore uncertain also.
That is another problem which I shall not discuss at this time. Although the hon. member for Burnaby-Coquitlam did ask the question, I am sure if he gives the matter a little thought he will realize that he should not suggest such treatment for people who have lived in these communities. I am one myself, though I was not by any means a newcomer. In 1927 it is true the town was in its very beginning. We had no streets, no sidewalks, no sewers, no running water, nothing of that kind. Today it is a modern city, and there are people who have been there 12 to 15 years longer than I.
These people have paid their taxes to build one of the finest fire-fighting services in Canada. We have one of the lowest fire insurance rates, and incidentally we have many buildings that are greater fire hazards than one can find in the whole city of Ottawa, but we have one of the lowest fire losses in the country. Therefore you know how good the service is.
We operate a fine police force. We have built roads, sewers, water mains, churches, schools, and so on. We paid for these as we went along. Hon. members across the way know that in the early days the wages paid to gold miners were the highest in heavy industry in Canada, but for some years past they have been by no means the highest.
We paid. It costs six times as much to put a sewer through one yard of rock as it does to put it through loam or soil. We paid for that, we the people and not somebody who made a million dollars and lives on James street in Montreal or Bay street in Toronto. They do not compose a fraction of one per cent of the people involved in gold mining. It is the miner, the baker, the housewife, the
4920	HOUSE OF
Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act school teacher, the street cleaner. We all own shares in these mines and we helped to build the community.
If hon. gentlemen across the way ever think of asking the question, why not take $4,000 and rehabilitate these people, I sincerely hope they will remember that the people who built these mining communities were also the prospectors. They are the people who found the base metal mines throughout this country; they are the people who are making Canada great, and please do not let me hear any more about taking $4,000 to rehabilitate a miner.


Erhart Regier: Mr. Chairman, in the first place I should thank the hon. member for the very interesting political speech we have just heard.


Marie Ann Shipley: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order, I never thought more of the party to which I belong, and I object very strongly to my speech being called a political speech.


Edward Turney Applewhaite: I think one can hardly claim in an organization like this that a point of order or a question of privilege arises if either side is accused of discussing politics. After all, if I might say so, what are we here for? The hon. member for Burnaby-Coquitlam.


Erhart Regier: Mr. Chairman, I may not know everything there is to know about mining. However, I can assure the hon. lady that the people of my riding know a lot less about growing wheat and about the problems of the farmer than I might know about the conditions of the miners in her constituency. On the west coast of British Columbia we are about as far removed from the problems of the wheat farmers as any other hon. members in this house. When I asked the minister whether there was any possible hope of finding a better solution of the problem before us I think I was entitled to a little more responsible answer than, again I must submit, the political reply I received. I think the record of the C.C.F. movement on behalf of the workers, and especially on behalf of the miners of Canada, is well known. Back in the early days it was the miners' union that was responsible for the election of the first labour and socialist member to this House of Commons.
However, we have been concerned with what has happened over the years. When we see, for example, in one year the dividends paid out by the gold mining companies of Canada amount to $18 million and these gold mining companies receive subsidies of $16 million from this government, we begin to wonder just what is taking place. If the subsidy is meant for the miner, as the minister


indicated was the reason for the legislation, to help the miner, we are all for it, and in this house we have always been in favour of this subsidy.
However, we have sometimes had the nerve to attempt to find out how much of the subsidy is actually received by the miners. We are not at all interested in helping to line the pockets of speculators in Montreal and Toronto. When I referred to the subsidy to the average miner having amounted to the sum of $4,000 over the past eight years I did have in mind the thought that very little of this $4,000 has reached the pockets and the homes of the miners concerned.
The hon. member for Timiskaming mentioned a few possible solutions, and I was keenly observant of the offering she would make. She said that possibly the only solution is an increase in the price of gold. That, I contend, is a whole lot of wishful thinking. As long as one nation of the world has a virtual monopoly on the supply of gold and on balances of trade, that nation is not likely to allow an increase in the price of gold for any useful purpose.
However, I would like at this point to congratulate her. She did propose a second solution, namely the establishment of secondary industry for those people. My only purpose in raising the question in the first place was that I was wondering whether some more useful avenue of helping those people might not be found.
I wanted the minister to tell me whether any exploration in that field has been undertaken. I notice the minister saw fit to have the hon. member supply me with an answer. Perhaps he does not know any more about gold mining than I know about wheat farming; however, I hope we shall not for long continue subsidizing mining companies and have miners working much longer hours than the average Canadian worker is required to work at wages which, as the hon. member admits, are below standard wages.


Marie Ann Shipley: No, no.


Erhart Regier: Yet the taxpayer has to pay a subsidy-


Marie Ann Shipley: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman-


Erhart Regier: -when these millions of dollars might be found to provide for these people in their own community, or elsewhere as they see fit, some means of employment whereby they can render their contribution to the economy of the nation.


Marie Ann Shipley: Mr. Chairman, may I reply to one point. I did not say the wages were below standard; I said they were much lower than they were when we led the field.


Mr. Simmons:: I am happy to support this resolution preceding the bill. The minister has explained that all the proposed bill seeks to do is extend the emergency gold mining assistance payments for another two years, namely 1957 and 1958. By making this federal cost-aid policy apply over the next two years instead of only one, it will now be possible for the management of Canadian gold mines to plan their future operations with greater assurance. The two-year extension will serve to strengthen the stability of this industry in Canada.
When this legislation was first introduced in this house eight years ago, we all knew it was not meant to be a cure-all for the troubles that beset this important mining industry. Rather it was planned as emergency help over what was hoped to be a comparatively limited period of years. The industry had been caught in a progressive squeeze between rising production costs on the one hand and a fixed price for its product on the other. That condition still applies, and I assume that some form of federal assistance will be continued to gold mines as long as the industry remains caught in an unfair and ruinous situation.
By this renewed measure of federal aid the government acknowledges that the gold mining industry of Canada is worth preserving and encouraging. It is the pioneer industry of the north country and has done more than any other activity to push back our frontiers of settlement and give Canada depth as well as width. It is an industry that provides employment as well as a market for machinery and supplies. Gold mining is and has been the mainspring of our entire mining economy, especially in the north. The search for gold spurs the search for other minerals.
In 1953, the last designated year under the legislation for which complete figures are available, 20 gold mines in the Yukon territory received a total federal subsidy amounting to $536,954.67. I find that applications for assistance for the designated year 1954 will continue to be received in Ottawa up until June of this year.
There is one strange inherent contradiction in federal gold mining policy in its application to the Yukon to which I wish to draw special attention at this time, which is causing gold mining operators in the Yukon considerable anxiety. Placer gold mining companies in the Yukon receive federal costaid assistance, as indeed they should. I fully support this form of encouragement and only wish the amount could be increased. On the other hand, the federal government discourages this placer mining industry by fastening
11. 1956	4921
Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act upon it a heavy special tax that has all the earmarks of rank discrimination. I refer to the gold export tax. In its severity and unfairness, as well as its evident contradiction of the purpose of emergency gold mining assistance, this tax provision appears to represent the height of absurdity.
In 1953, for example, one placer gold mining company in the Klondike district paid $20,217 on all gold shipped out of the Yukon, whatever its disposition. This represented over 78 per cent of the year's profit on the company's operations. That imposition is bad enough, but the discriminating feature enters when we realize that the equivalent tax or royalty under the provisions of section 95 of the Yukon Quartz Mining Act would have amounted to $476. For 1954 the equivalent figures are $25,179 export tax on placer gold in contrast to $5,535 on quartz gold under the Yukon Quartz Mining Act.
My contention is that the gold export tax should be reduced in line with the rates of royalty under the provisions of section 95 of the Yukon Quartz Mining Act. The question involves two principles. First of all, is it fair and sound that a depressed industry should be obliged to pay such an exorbitant tax? And secondly, if the royalty is fair and sound in principle, is the amount of the royalty reasonable? I say not.
The gold export tax may have had some justification when it was established in 1897, inasmuch as gold was being shipped from the Yukon to the United States and our government felt Canada should secure some revenue from the tremendous production of gold at that time. Today the situation is much different.
I do not say that this export tax should be entirely abolished. When it was first imposed, gold was being exported from the Yukon to the United States and it was felt that the people of Canada should derive some financial benefit from the depletion of the mineral resources of this country. But let me again reiterate that the present rate of this so-called gold export tax is a heavy and unfair burden on placer mining operations and should be sharply reduced, at least to the point where it is at the same level as taxation on the product of gold quartz mining activity.
This appeal has the support of three major business organizations of this country. I refer to the British Columbia and Yukon chamber of mines and its branches, the Vancouver board of trade and the Yukon territorial council, which on March 28 of this year passed the following resolution:
Whereas an export tax on gold mined in the Yukon territory was imposed in 1897 to provide revenue from shipments to the United States;
4922	HOUSE OF
Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act
And whereas practically all gold mined in the Yukon today is shipped to the Royal Canadian Mint at Ottawa;
And whereas it is a discriminating tax levied solely on gold shipped from the Yukon;
And whereas it increases the burden of an industry struggling to survive due to ever increasing costs and the fixed price of gold;
Therefore be it resolved that this council recommend that an adjustment be made of the export tax on gold mined in the Yukon Territory.
By bringing the placer gold export tax into line with the tax levied on quartz gold, the government would be encouraging an industry which provides important employment in one of Canada's most northerly communities. Gold mining costs in the Yukon are already high enough. The labour costs of one producer is 70 per cent of the total cost of production. If this export tax is permitted to continue at its present rate serious curtailment of operations may occur.
This export tax on Yukon placer gold, which yields over $40,000 a year in revenue to the federal treasury, has the effect of adding approximately 37 J cents in additional production cost to every ounce of gold produced. There has been no change in this gold export tax provision since 1902. It will not require a change in the legislation, merely a change in the regulations. An amendment to the act itself would be necessary only if the tax were eliminated altogether.
I appeal to the government on behalf of all placer gold mining companies in the Yukon to drastically reduce the rate of the so-called gold export tax to provide encouragement for this depressed mining industry.


George Prudham: Mr. Chairman, this afternoon the hon. member for Spadina asked some questions about the free market, and I am not sure that I was explicit in my answer. Gold mines desiring to go on the free market may do so at the beginning of any quarter in the year by giving 30 days' notice. If they wish to return to gold mining assistance they may do so only on July 1 or January 1 by giving similar notice.
The hon. member for Yukon, who has just spoken, made out a good case for the gold mining industry in his area, but I would suggest that perhaps his remarks would b? better directed to the Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources, as we have no power under this act to deal with that tax problem. I do know that under the Yukon Quartz Mining Act royalties are paid on a profit-sharing basis by the lode mines; that is, royalties are paid only when a net profit is made by the mining company. There is an exemption of the first $10,000, and the tax is graduated from 3 per cent to 6 per cent.


Under the Yukon Placer Mining Act, which applies to placer mines only, a tax is levied on gold which is exported from the territory. That tax is 2\ per cent on all production, but it is based on a value of $15 per ounce which is less than half the current value. Under this method of assessment the tax works out to slightly more than \\ per cent on gold valued at $35.


James Aubrey Simmons: The royalties are levied on bar ounces, not on vein ounces, which equals 1-45 per cent on the gross output, according to the figures I have.


George Prudham: I shall not get into an argument on that because I am not very well informed apart from the terms of the act. The hon. member for Burnaby-Coquitlam asked what we were doing in a constructive way to provide alternate employment for people in the gold mining industry. I would remind him that the geological survey of Canada has about 75 parties in the field this year. Every year they are mapping the geology of Canada and the records, maps and statistics which they have compiled form the basis for a great many mineral discoveries.
I could mention a few recent discoveries which were based on the reports, maps and statistics compiled by the geological survey, in many cases years ago. One outstanding example is the great iron ore development in Labrador which was based on geological reports made before the turn of the century. More recent ones are the Manitouwadge ore discovery and the discoveries at Blind River, and to a large extent the discovery in New Brunswick.
I submit that this is the most constructive effort that could be made to keep the mining industry advancing and to provide alternate employment for people engaged in a particular line of endeavour which seems to be facing difficult times. I know of one gold mine in Quebec which is nearing the end of its life. During this last year they discovered a copper deposit within 20 miles, which they are now developing. They will use their gold mill for the processing of that copper ore and the community will be assured of continuation. I know of another area in Manitoba which has been depending on gold exclusively for a number of years. The last report I have is that the mill will be turned over to the processing of nickel ore.
I do not think we should take a short-term view of this. It is true that mines come and go, but in the over-all picture a really constructive effort is being made by the industry itself, by the federal government and by the provincial governments to develop these great mineral resources. I am confident that

the gold mining industry through its own efforts and through the development of base metals and other minerals in the same areas and in other parts of Canada will come through this emergency period and will soon be self-sustaining. I think it would be a negative approach indeed to take the money which we are now advancing to the gold mining industry and use it to move people away from that industry.
Our economy in Canada is very interdependent. The mining industry is a large consumer of agricultural products and as I mentioned this afternoon of the products of our forests and factories. When one makes a trip to these areas he cannot help but be impressed by the large consumption of goods that is taking place.
I think that is all I have to say at the moment unless some hon. member has another point to bring up.


Mr. Gillis:: Mr. Chairman, I want to say just a few words in support of what the hon. member for Timiskaming has said. I think everyone who has commented on what she had to say missed completely the point she was making. I am in sympathy with her because I represent exactly the same kind of area. During the present session a motion was moved in the house and we had a broad and comprehensive discussion of the whole question of ghost towns investments and areas which were working on wasting resources. There is no need to repeat what was said then.
The Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act justifies itself on the grounds that it creates employment and keeps up industry. On that basis I support it. As the minister has indicated the amount of assistance has dropped from $16 million to $9 million, which indicates that many of the mines are going into the free market. The mines to which this assistance is applicable are marginal mines. The hon. member for Burnaby-Coquitlam does not understand that if this gold mining assistance act was not applicable to those particular mines they would close. There would be no employment and the benefit that the miner gets out of this assistance is that he has a job and there are some wages paid. Otherwise he would not have a job.
The point I wish to make is this. The hon. member for Timiskaming has pointed out that all mining areas are the same. They go up, they reach their peak, and they peter out. In the meantime there are millions of dollars invested in the community, in schools, sewers, streets and everything that goes to make up a community. If the community is
Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act allowed to go down with the industry, then that total investment on the part of the people is lost.
What was suggested earlier in the session was that realizing that mining is a wasting resource, that it will reach its peak and go down, there should be a continuing research committee set up by both provincial and federal governments to study the area and find out what kind of subsidiary industry might replace the mining industry when it goes out, so the investment on the part of the people in the community may not be lost.
This is a young country and it is growing, and there is much room for development. Over the next 50 years there will be many people in all sections of it. I am sure that, either in northern Ontario or in the mining areas of Cape Breton or in Nova Scotia or British Columbia, if a proper body were set up to make a proper analysis of the future so the investment in a community may not be lost, subsidiary industry in those areas could be found that would be useful in the future. That was the angle the hon. member took, and I support it very strongly.
I take exactly the same view. The coal mines are going down. The miners are moving out to British Columbia. Many of them are going out to the logging industry. That is a long way from home. There are those -a few hundred-now going out to Steep Rock. These people have homes and investments in a community. Many of them are leaving families. They do not want to uproot themselves. I am sure that if a proper study were made of the areas, suitable development could be found in these communities to retain the investments that have been made over many years.
Coal is subsidized, and rightly so, because it provides a means of livelihood. It is holding up communities that otherwise would go out overnight. On that ground this subsidy is justified. But I would stress again to the minister that subsidies are only a palliative, not a cure; that the crux of the whole problem is that sooner or later, whether or not you subsidize these mines, they are going to go out because they are a wasting resource. Ways and means should be found. At the present time research is more necessary than anything else the government could do to find ways and means of retaining the investment in these communities.
If we were an old country I would say it is a tough proposition, but we are not. The future is ahead of us. There is a terrific possibility of development in this country over the next 50 years, and in no section of it should there be any waste. Remember

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that this is the last frontier. From every section of the world immigrants are coming into Canada, principally because there is no other place to go. We should not allow any sections of our community to become ghost towns or wastes or lost investments. We should be planning to rehabilitate these communities, and I think it can be done; but it requires a continuing research committee in order to do that. I am in hopes that the Gordon commission, when it makes its report, may have something to say on that particular point.
I do not want to deal with the point, because we beat this to death on a resolution during this session. I just wanted to say that the hon. member for Timiskaming was not asking for charity. She was justifying the measure before the house at the present time as a temporary measure, but what she was stressing was the investment in the community and the fact that sooner or later it was going down anyway and that efforts should be made on the part of the government to provide subsidiary industries to protect the investment the people have in these communities.
Resolution reported and concurred in.
Mr. Prudham thereupon moved for leave to introduce Bill No. 417, to amend the Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Applewhaite):: Is it
agreed that by unanimous consent I do now leave the chair for the house to resolve itself into committee of supply?


Stanley Howard Knowles: Just for the record, it is understood that this is not one of the six Monday supply motions provided for under standing order 56.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Applewhaite):: It is
understood that to all intents and purposes the house resolves itself into committee of supply now as though this were a Thursday or a Friday.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.

The house in committee of supply, Mr. Applewhaite in the chair.
DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORT 435. Departmental administration, $1,777,100.


Wallace Bickford (Wally) Nesbitt: On this particular item of the estimates there are a great many things that many hon. members would like to say, but I am going to confine my remarks to a subject (Mr. Gillis.l
which has been of great interest to me and, I believe, to some other hon. members of this house. That is the subject of search and rescue organizations on the great lakes.
First of all, though, I should like to make some brief remarks regarding airport facilities, particularly at Malton airport, Toronto. The subject of airport facilities has been under considerable discussion in the past. I know there have been great plans to improve those facilities. The other day I saw some very fine pictures of what the Ottawa airport is to be like. I was very glad to see that. People coming to Ottawa on business and the public generally are very glad to see that improvements are to be made. However, Malton airport is, I suppose, almost the busiest, if not the busiest airport in Canada, and the facilities there for the travelling public are deplorable.
There is one little scheme they have there which is of interest. You pay 10 cents to stand on the roof and watch the aircraft coming and going. It is rather comfortable, except that there are only one or two benches on which one may sit after paying the 10 cents. In the waiting room below, where most people wait for planes as they come and go, or are delayed, as is frequently the case, there is not enough accommodation for people to sit down. There are ladies, some with children, old people, cripples and so on, and usually the crowds hanging around Malton airport are much like the crowds we have seen in the galleries of the house and in the corridors of the building in the last couple of weeks.
I hope the minister will tell us that plans are going to be made to improve the seating capacity of the waiting rooms at Malton airport. I know they are building something outside, sort of a shed or canopy to keep the rain off people going out to the planes, but there certainly is not enough accommodation. The only thing that Malton airport normally resembles at practically any time of the day when planes are arriving and departing is, with all respect, a twentieth century black hole of Calcutta.
To get back to the remarks I had originally intended to make, they have to do with the matter of a great lakes search and rescue organization to which I have referred already during this session. However, I should like to make some additional remarks. Now that the drowning and accident season on the great lakes is again upon us, this matter has come very much to public attention. There have been numerous editorials in virtually all the newspapers in the southern part of Ontario which, of course, is that part of the country most affected.

I am not going to refer to the remarks I have made in the house on other occasions during this session and last session with respect to the need of a coastguard service on the great lakes. I do not intend to do so because anybody who is interested can always refer to those remarks. But I should like to bring forward some additional information at this time. The whole subject of an improved search and rescue organization on the great lakes has become very much in the public mind and is becoming increasingly so. To summarize what I have pointed out on other occasions, this is largely due to the great increase in population in southern Ontario, the increase in the material wealth of the people since the war, more leisure time and the fact that people have taken to boating to a great extent.
To show the interest that has arisen this spring in this regard I should like to refer briefly to certain editorials. I do not intend to read them in their entirety but I wish to refer them to the minister. First of all there was an editorial in the Tillsonburg News of April 5, 1956, which is one of the largest weekly papers in Ontario. The editorial is headed, "Protection Needed on the Lakes," and ends with these words:
The federal government, in whose jurisdiction the great lakes fall, should give the matter consideration. Better protection is definitely needed.
I also refer to an editorial in the London Free Press of Thursday, March 29, 1956, headed, "Search and Rescue Service Necessary on the Lakes." It starts off with these words:
With the summer boating and swimming season approaching, Wallace Nesbitt, M.P. for Oxford, has made a suggestion that merits the attention of the federal government.
Then it goes on to deal with the matter at some length and ends by saying:
This is a fault Ottawa could and should remedy. Mr. Nesbitt suggests that something like a coastguard service could be set up economically by employing university students on their summer vacations. It might be possible to integrate reserve naval personnel and boat club members in such a plan. In any case, the Oxford M.P. has introduced a suggestion too valuable to be cast aside.
Then I refer to an editorial in the Toronto Globe and Mail of Wednesday, May 9, 1956, headed "Why Not a Coastguard?" The Globe and Mail, I may say, has had editorials on this matter before. I believe this is the third editorial they have had. I shall not waste the time of the house reading this editorial. I should not say "waste the time of the house", but I shall not take the time of the house to read it because hon. members can always read it. However, it touches on the incident that occurred on lake Erie this spring
Supply-Transport
when a number of Canadian fishermen had their boats seized by the United States coastguard apparently for trespassing in United States waters. It points out that if we had some sort of coastguard service it could be used to warn Canadian fishermen to keep out of United States waters and warn them when they are getting into United States waters. Of course this would largely concern only lake Erie, because due to the lamprey problem and other things commercial fishing on the other great lakes is not so much concerned with this problem at the present time.
Then I also refer to another editorial that appeared in the Woodstock Sentinel-Review. This editorial is headed, "Boating Mishaps", and is of very recent date having been published on June 7, 1956, just a few days ago. It refers to the announcement made by Captain G. L. Johnston, assistant chief of the nautical division of the Department of Transport, concerning the future licensing of small boats on the great lakes, something which the minister referred to earlier this day. The editorial points out the great problem on the great lakes so far as search and rescue is concerned. It points out that there is no coordination among the services, and that many a life could have been saved had there been some sort of co-ordination.
I do not know what brought about this action on the part of the department. I hope that some of the remarks I have made in the past may have had some influence. However, I am quite sure that the Department of Transport and possibly even the minister have received letters from numerous organizations such as the lake Ontario search and rescue organization, which has been doing a particularly fine job in rendering service by helping people who have become lost and in trouble on the great lakes, and also has been doing very fine work in trying to publicize the situation and interest public opinion in this very important matter.
I do not know what caused these proposed changes, but in any event I am very glad to see that they are going to be made, and I certainly welcome the proposed amendments to the Canada Shipping Act. I do not wish to refer to that matter at this time because it will be discussed on another occasion in the house, but I see that under one of the proposed amendments to the act there will be regulation of the inland and minor waters of Canada and provision for the licensing of operators in such waters, and I am very glad that that is so. While this is not the whole loaf but only half a slice out of the whole proposed loaf, at least half a slice of bread is better than none at all.

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Of course there is no doubt that when the Canada Shipping Act comes before us it will be referred to the committee on railways, canals and telegraph lines. At least I presume it will, and I should like to suggest to the minister now that he take under consideration the calling of witnesses before that committee when it is considering the bill. Since one of the amendments to the act is going to concern the regulation and licensing of boats on the great lakes, I should like to suggest to the minister that at that time the committee should call witnesses to give evidence with respect to all the information the committee may require, not only as to the proposed regulations but to provide the minister and the department with information as to the actual need for search, rescue and other similar services on the great lakes.
I see this suggestion was made indirectly by the hon. member for Northumberland in a speech he made earlier this year. I know I am not allowed to refer to remarks made in previous debates during the present session, but without quoting the hon. member directly I think I can say that he suggested that at the present time there was insufficient evidence before the Department of Transport to justify the setting up of a proper coastguard or search and rescue organization on the great lakes, and that we should hear witnesses.
Since the hon. member was, I presume, speaking on behalf of the government at that time-his speech certainly looked like it, to say the least-may I suggest that here is a chance for the government to call witnesses. They could call the president of the lake Ontario search and rescue organization. They could hear the presidents and other officials of the various boating and yacht clubs and also the provincial police and others. These people could appear before the committee while these amendments were being considered.
Then if the minister and the officials of the Department of Transport are not prepared to take my word for it, and are not prepared to take the word of some of the large, prominent newspapers in Ontario such as the Toronto Globe and Mail, the London Free Press and a large weekly like the Tillsonburg News, which are newspapers in the area directly concerned, I feel that, since the department had claimed through its spokesmen that there is insufficient evidence before it, when these amendments to the Canada Shipping Act are before the committee that will be the time to get this additional information.
As I have pointed out before in this house, there are certain rescue and search organizations such as the provincial police, the

R.C.M.P. and the R.C.A.F. air search and rescue organization at Trenton. These have all been referred to in the house and most hon. members are familiar with them. As I pointed out before, the big problem is coordination when an accident occurs. If a boat upsets and someone is in the water or a boat is lost in the fog on the great lakes, the question is with whom do you get in touch? Usually nobody knows; even the local officials very often do not seem to know. Eventually Trenton or someplace like that may be informed and under those circumstances will take steps to commence the rescue. Usually there is a heavy fog or a storm, and it is very difficult for aircraft to operate and try to locate boats lost in a fog.
The important element is time. If an accident happens and someone has to search for two or three hours to find out with whom to get in touch, very often the person involved is drowned. While they announce with great trumpeting that they have discovered the body, I do not think that is very much help to the family of the person concerned.
It has been suggested on other occasions by the hon. member for Northumberland that the present regulations are fine and that small boats have to have licences. That is true. It is my understanding that the purpose of licensing motors of 10 horsepower and above is to determine to whom they belong. I know the number has to be painted on the back in 3-inch letters, and if a boat overturns or is lost the authorities can determine to whom it belongs and can get in touch with relatives in case of a fatal accident. It has been pointed out that this is quite adequate, and that the R.C.M.P. are in charge of inspection services.
I should like to know, and perhaps if there is time the minister could tell us although I know it is not directly under his department, just how many R.C.M.P. constables there are in the province of Ontario who are running around inspecting small boats. I would be willing to warrant that there are not very many. I should like to find out if there are any R.C.M.P. constables inspecting small boats in Ontario, and just what they do. What kind of reports do they make? I would very much doubt that they make any report at all or have much activity in this regard. If they do, I would be most delighted to hear about it.
It has been already noted with some pleasure that there are amendments proposed to the Canada Shipping Act which will certainly be helpful in a small way in alleviating this problem. I should like to see further amendments to this act, and it might not be too late for the minister to consider amendments relating to safety devices in small boats.

These amendments might involve the provision of life jackets and the question of small children being obliged to wear such jackets when they are out on the great lakes. In addition, these boats might be fitted with flares or smoke signals of some sort.
Then the question would arise, who is going to enforce these regulations? This question occurs to me right away, even in relation to the proposed legislation. I note that clause 27 of the bill, paragraph (c), refers to the enforcement of any such order or regulation.


George Carlyle Marler: Mr. Chairman, I think the hon. member will realize that at the moment the discussion seems to be turning to the amendments to the Canada Shipping Act which I take it we will have an opportunity of discussing later. It seems to me it is quite out of order to be discussing amendments to the Canada Shipping Act when those very amendments are already before the house.


Wallace Bickford (Wally) Nesbitt: Well, Mr. Chairman, I suppose it is probably a matter of degree. I would agree with the minister that it is out of order to discuss a bill that is not yet before the house-


George Carlyle Marler: It is before the house.


Wallace Bickford (Wally) Nesbitt: -but I was suggesting that there are certain things which are not included in these amendments. We have all had an opportunity of reading the proposed amendments, and I thought before they came before the house the minister should have an opportunity of considering whether or not he could make some further alterations to meet this problem. My remarks were merely directed to that end. However, I shall not continue with them, as I feel I have already said enough. I hope the minister will give the problem a little extra consideration.
There are just one or two other matters I would like to mention. In some previous remarks I made concerning this question I confined my suggestions to the minister, and to the government generally, to the point that the coastguard service on the great lakes be restricted to the summer months and largely to search and rescue work. I did not feel that a further expansion of the service into the customs and excise division to check contraband would be warranted at the present time. I felt the work should be largely limited to search and rescue work, but there might be one exception.
On lake Erie large commercial fishing activities are carried out and a very nasty incident arose there this spring, but apparently it was not too important. Some Canadian fishing tugs were seized by the
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United States coastguard and taken to the city of Toledo, I believe it was, where fines were levied, and properly so. However, rumours do have a habit of spreading and there were a lot of newspaper reports about the incident which created a bad impression in the public mind. Incidents such as these do not encourage good feeling between ourselves and our great neighbour to the south, with whom we have always had the most friendly relationship.
If there were a Canadian patrol vessel on lake Erie it could warn our fishermen to keep out of those waters, and during the summer months it could also be called upon in case of boating accidents. I suppose that lake Erie has more small boats on it than possibly any other of the great lakes. I had some figures to show that in Ontario alone last year the number of registered small boats increased by 15,000. It is true, of course, that many of these would be in small inland waters which do not come under the federal transport department, such as the Muskoka lakes and so on, but a great number of them would be on the great lakes. The president of the lake Ontario search and rescue organization, which I suppose is the largest and most well organized of these volunteer organizations, has pointed out that there are 300,000 or 400,000 small boats of all kinds in Ontario, a very large proportion of which would be on the great lakes. This number would include canoes, rowboats, boats powered with motors under 10 horsepower and so on.
Since a great number of these boats are on lake Erie a patrol boat, in addition to giving information to Canadian commercial fishermen who work out of Port Dover and other ports, could perform this other very necessary work as well. Lake Erie is probably the most dangerous of the great lakes. It is very shallow and the slightest thunder squall will stir it up.
Since I mentioned this matter in remarks I made earlier I do not wish to duplicate them at this time. Therefore I shall bring my remarks on this subject to a close at this time, though I shall probably resume them, as the minister suggested, when the amendments to the Canada Shipping Act come up for consideration. However, I should like to close by referring to one news item. I started my remarks by saying that the accident and drowning season is upon us again. I should like to refer to a news item which appeared on Monday, June 4 last. It appeared in all the Ontario papers. I happen to have

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a clipping from the Sentinel-Review Daily of Woodstock. The heading reads:
Missing Persons Safe After Ordeal On Lake
Three men and two women paddled their three outboard motorboats ashore today at nearby Whitby after drifting all night on lake Ontario.
The article goes on to give in some detail what happened. It says that fortunately the lake was calm. If it had not been calm there would have been a number of bereaved families. This item appeared early in the season. No doubt we shall have like articles appearing day after day during the remainder of the summer and the warm weather season until September. There will be headlines such as these in the paper saying that five people have drowned, two people have drowned, boat upsets, boat adrift for three days, persons missing, and so on. Every year it is the same.
As I said, the minister has apparently started to do something. Changes are to be made in the Canada Shipping Act, but I do not think they go far enough. I hope the minister and the officials of his department will consider doing something in this regard either by themselves or in co-operation with the appropriate authorities in the province of Ontario, because I do not think any of us want to see a repetition of what we have seen year after year, namely an increase in the number of drownings in the lakes in the summer time.


Mr. Hamilton (Notre Dame de Grace):: Mr. Chairman, it must be obvious to anyone who examines the estimates of the Department of Transport that one of the surprising things in the set-up of this government is the number of matters which should properly come under the Department of Transport but which are not actually there. One outstanding example, of course, is that of Trans-Canada Air Lines. It is a major transportation system in every way similar to the Canadian National Railways in so far as it operates as a transportation system, but we find that it does not report to the Minister of Transport.
In recent weeks in this house we have seen one of Canada's greatest advances or great beginnings in a new field of transportation, namely the trans-Canada transportation of gas. That has been pushed through the house, and whatever happens in that field will ultimately be reported to a minister other than the Minister of Transport. We find again that while the Minister of Transport has the responsibility for most canals, there are canals turning up under the aegis of the Minister of Public Works. We find that while the Minister of Transport has the responsibility for most wharves and most harbours, certain maritime
[Mr. Nesbitt.)
transportation operations carried on by the government respond again to the Minister of Public Works.
I was amused just before rising to discover that two of my colleagues who sit right next to me, one from the Kootenays and the other from Selkirk, are in this position. The hon. member for Kootenay West has an inland lake in his constituency, and the Department of Transport operates the aids to navigation, wharves, and the like. The hon. member for Selkirk, who sits immediately behind him, has an inland lake in his riding, namely lake Winnipeg, and apparently the responsibility for similar functions in his area come under the Minister of Public Works. Certainly that is so in so far as the wharves are concerned. I would suggest to you, Mr. Chairman, that it is quite impossible to have any sort of efficient, coherent and sensible transportation operation in so far as the government is concerned when we have this widespread diversity of responsibility in various aspects of it.
It would seem that one of the first tasks which faces the Minister of Transport and his department is to go out and bring under the wing of his department in some sort of sensible pattern the operations carried on by the government which should properly be responsible to the Minister of Transport. One does not want to suggest why his department might have been burgled in the past and had these various operations either stolen from it or never given to it, but whatever the past reasons may have been the present situation is, from an administrative point of view, most unsatisfactory and could well be corrected.
That leads almost automatically to the suggestion of a national transportation policy of some kind for Canada. Here again we have the responsibility in various fields of transportation widely separated and governed by a number of different committees and groups, and this policy is causing inconsistencies and raising many problems which would not exist if we developed a more sensible and more coherent alignment of responsibility. I have as one authority at least no less than the Turgeon report of 1951 which, hon. members will recall, is the report of the royal commission on transportation. At page 280 of that report we find the commissioners pointing out, and I quote:
Today there are three separate bodies, each charged with the control (a more or less extensive control in each case) of a part of Canada's transportation system. They are the board of transport commissioners, the air transport board and the Canadian maritime commission. It must be difficult, with this dispersion of control, to apply to all of Canada's transportation agencies like principles of regulation for the accomplishment of a common purpose, viz. that of enabling

each agency to perform its service advantageously and properly as part of a national transportation structure. The tendency of a separate independent body is to formulate policy affecting transportation without regard to the relationship of the various agencies to each other. This anomaly should give way to the constitution of a central authority which will be able to take in hand the major task of co-ordinated control, having at its disposal all the benefit acquired from the experience of the separate bodies in recent years.
That is only one authority which could be quoted; there are many others, and they seem to agree along those fundamental lines. Of course, we realize that one of the principal factors in transportation today is highway transportation, and within the bounds of the provinces that is beyond dispute under the control of the province itself. By a finding of the privy council in England, if my memory serves me rightly, or a body of appeal in England at any rate, interprovincial highway transportation systems are essentially under the control of the federal government. Last year the federal government returned or abdicated that field-"abdicated" might be a better word-and decided to leave it to the provinces for the time being.


George Carlyle Marler: I think if you said it was under the control of the federal parliament it would be more exact.


William McLean Hamilton: right, under the control of the federal parliament, if the minister prefers it, although since recent days we have seen great evidence that the federal parliament is being so completely subjugated to the government itself it might be said that any suggestion that matters are subject to the control of the federal parliament is rather a mockery, it seems to me.
The question of integrating highway transport by means of a national approach to transportation or a national transportation policy, as I have suggested, does present certain difficulties; however, we have managed in other fields, at times when the provinces had control of a given section or area of our economy, to work out a modus operandi by means of meeting with them, by means of discussion with them, which has brought about very satisfactory results in some cases.
It would seem to me something of that nature is urgently required in the present instance. Certainly it is unfortunate with the tremendous growth and development which is taking place in this country at the present time that we should have our manifold means of transportation-our airways, our railways, our maritime transportation, our highways, our pipe lines-all at sixes and sevens, the majority of them reporting to different bodies of control, the majority of
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them quite properly competing with one another, but competing without any attempt at co-ordination on the part of the government which has none the less intruded itself by means of regulatory bodies into almost every one of the fields I have mentioned.
Nowhere is this intrusion more evident than in the field of railway transportation and nowhere, Mr. Chairman, is there greater need for a new and imaginative approach to the regulation of transport, the control of transport, than in the field of railway transportation. I do not think we can expect the free enterprise type of activity-which is represented by at least one of our great railroads in complete measure and a quasi-free enterprise type of activity by the other, the Canadian National Railways-I do not think we can expect them to operate indefinitely with success unless they have a genuine opportunity to express their managerial discretion and equal opportunity to act in accord with the basic principles of a free enterprise system.
There was a time when it was necessary to impose the strictest measure of control on railway transportation as such because at that time it occupied a monopoly position. When the railroads grew up, when they first laid their lines across this country, when they divided it almost into a checkerboard pattern with line after line, the only measure of competition was one railroad as against another railroad; there was no air transportation and in great parts of the country there was no opportunity for maritime transportation. There was no such thing as pipe lines, and the gasoline engine being almost unheard of in those days there was no such thing as highway transportation.
Therefore when you had a monopoly system of transportation as was the case with the railroads, it was perhaps necessary that a firm measure of control be exercised; but that measure of control, it seems to some of us, has been continued in almost the same pattern right down to the present despite the tremendous differences in the economic framework within which the railroads are now operating.
The highway transportation system in this country is today a major factor in the transportation and transit industry. Buses carry great loads of passengers; heavy transport trucks, each of which comes very close to carrying the same tonnage as a railway car, whine along the highways of this country day and night. Overhead, by the tens of thousands, passenger traffic is being taken away from the railroads by the airways. Overhead again, the high value freight and express traffic is being picked up by the airways. Under these

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circumstances it seems to me the old pattern under which the railroads are held under rigorous control and given no opportunity to engage in ordinary economic enterprise which is available to most fields of enterprise in our economy is unrealistic in relation to the present day structure of our transportation pattern.


George Carlyle Marler: Will the hon. member permit me to ask one question at this point? He has just spoken about the rigorous control of the railways, and a little earlier he spoke about the fact that what the railroads needed was the opportunity to exercise their managerial authority. The hon. member has gone on to describe the conditions which I take it he believed had changed the position of the railways from a monopoly to one in which they are now faced with vigorous competition.
I wonder if I might ask the hon. member what forms of rigorous control he has in mind that are now interfering with the operation of the railroads? I know it is very easy to talk in generalities, but I wonder if the hon. member would give one example of the type of control to which he is referring.


William McLean Hamilton: Perhaps I should have covered that point at the beginning, but I thought it would have been reasonably obvious and certainly it would have become obvious-


George Carlyle Marler: Well, if it is obvious let us have it.


William McLean Hamilton: However, I am very grateful to the minister for pointing out that I have not perhaps defined the particular field that was in my mind at the beginning of these remarks. I had particularly in mind the question of the rate structures of the railroads, and the necessity for the railroads at the present time to go through a complicated and lengthy process whenever they desire a lasting change in their rate structure; a process incidentally, Mr. Chairman, which very often has a tendency to result in rates which are unrealistic in the light of all the circumstances surrounding a particular situation.
Now, the minister does not need to take my word for that, because I am sure he must have had representations from the president of his own railway, the Canadian National Railways. He must have read the speeches of Mr. Gordon as reported in the newspapers, in which he has pointed out this difficulty. He must have read the remarks made at the annual meetings by Mr. W. A. Mather, chairman of the board of the C.P.R. and Mr. N. R. -better known as "Buck"-Crump, that very

remarkable man who is now president of the C.P.R. They have both pointed out this particular difficulty.
Having made reference to the point I would not want to leave the committee with the feeling that I am advocating throwing the rate-making structure of the railroads completely over and allowing them a complete measure of discretion. We are at a stage where some measure of control is admitted to be, shall we say, necessary in many segments of our economy, and certainly transportation is no exception. But I do suggest that we might allow the railroads more freedom than they have within a certain broad framework.
For example, there should certainly be a ceiling on rates where a railroad enjoys a monopoly on a certain variety of traffic or in connection with transportation in a given area, so that it would not be able to mulct its passengers or those who give it freight to carry. Again there certainly should be a floor in some cases to guard against cutthroat competition designed to drive competing forms of transportation out of business.
Finally I suggest that there might well be certain cases of transportation-western wheat is probably the most outstanding example-where some special measure by the government will be called for if a realistic rate structure is to emerge from the present picture. What that course of action may be is difficult to suggest in the short time at my disposal, but I do suggest, and most strongly, that it is unfair to ask the two railroads of this country to carry a burden which is the direct result of government policy.
It may well be that it is advantageous to Canada as a whole to have a particular rate set for the transportation of western wheat. I think we must take into consideration the position of the western farmer and the need for him to remain economically successful. But having said that, let me suggest that if the transportation rate established for his wheat happens to be uneconomic from the viewpoint of railroad operations, then I think it is unfair to ask and force the railroads to continue to carry that wheat at that uneconomic figure. Some provision should be made for a wider distribution of that burden. Having established a given policy in respect to the carriage of a given commodity the government should accept responsibility for the results of that policy, and not expect the railroads to underwrite it.
No later than tonight we have this article appearing in the Ottawa Journal:
Increasing Rail Freight Rates
The board of transport commissioners announced today it plans to grant the railways shortly an

interim increase in freight rates subject to review next fall. The amount was not specified.
I suggest to you that when you have a business running into the hundreds of millions of dollars-if my memory serves me rightly the gross last year of the C.N.R. was some $600 million-it is rather difficult when it has to go to the board of transport commissioners and get a temporary across the board increase which has no relationship to specific problems and which may be revoked in the fall. Earlier there was reference to the government doing business like a peanut stand, and I suggest that the temporary fixing up of a situation like this is again a reflection of a peanut stand mentality rather than a $600 million mentality.
Finally I should like to quote in summary an article which appeared in the Montreal Gazette of May 25, 1955. In this editorial they say:
It would seem that the railway problem is not just a Canadian problem; it is a North American problem. It is caused by the same thing; overregulation of the railways in an age when they are under severe competition from other means of transport. And for this there would seem to be only one cure.
As the report to the president says: "Adjustment of regulatory programs and policies to these competitive facts is long overdue".
For the benefit of those who may read Hansard or who are listening, may I say that the report to the president refers to a report of a committee set up by President Einsenhower.
There are a number of items which could be taken up under the estimates, but for a moment I should like to touch upon one item which reflects an historical situation which is now due for a change. I refer to the provision of private railway cars for the use of members of the government. This originated many years ago. At that time they were four in number, and probably there was ample justification for their existence. Certainly we did not have air transport at that time, nor did we have the high quality of ordinary rail transport which is available today.
However, over the years and particularly in the last few years we have reached the stage where air transport is the normal method of transport for senior executives. Many corporations have their own private planes. The government has a fleet of private planes which they use day in and day out for the transportation of ministers from one point in Canada to another. Let me say at once that I have no objection to the use of these aeroplanes for that purpose when the end purpose is proper government business.
Despite the fact that ministers have taken to the air in large numbers, we find that no
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one has yet got around to doing anything about this fleet of private railway cars. The same four cars which they have had over the years are still being kept up with a staff of seven people. The estimate this year is $56,240 for their operation. I suggest that we may need one or perhaps two of these cars only. The Prime Minister on occasion may need that type of transportation. Visiting dignitaries may require that the car be put at their disposal. There may be occasions on which a minister going into a particular part of the country to do business needs to take his travelling hotel along with him and park it on a siding. I am not averse to operating a limited number of these cars, but I suggest that the retention of the four of them as at the present time is a completely unwarranted waste of the taxpayers' money.
Furthermore I suggest that the existence of the cars, lying there idle a good deal of the time, leads the ministers sometimes down unfortunate paths. We had the case, originally denied and then admitted by the Minister of Transport, in which he used one of them to whip down to Montreal and address a political meeting immediately upon his arrival. He did not need the car, and that is obvious from the fact that the next day he came back in an ordinary train, the Canadian.
We have had other cases. Last year, I remember, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration had occasion to travel from one end of Canada to the other with the Minister of Fisheries, one of them at least accompanied by his family, in one of these private cars, for a holiday trip plus a little bit of business on the west coast. These are the devious paths down which people will be led when you leave a little temptation in their way. I suggest that when you have a luxurious private railway car on a siding just waiting to be used, somebody is going to use it and perhaps even take it down to his summer home and park it down there for a few days as a means of transportation. That is costing the taxpayers money. It is not necessary, and it should be cut out.
I see you rising, Mr. Chairman, so I shall take up the other questions further on in the estimates.


William Alfred Robinson: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member, but his time has just expired.


Mr. Herridge:: I wish to make a few brief remarks on this first item. I shall have a few things to say on one or two of the other items as they come before us.
I understand that the public works department builds wharves and other structures in navigable waters. I am told that the Department of Transport's function is to

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administer those wharves and certain other structures and supervise them after construction. Before proceeding with the few remarks I wish to make, I want to say that I have every respect for and confidence in the minister's engineer in Victoria, who I think is doing an excellent job, but in my opinion he has a very large district to cover and personally I think he requires more staff. Particularly owing to the development of the interior, I think it is necessary that a senior official of the department, like the district agent in Victoria, have the opportunity himself to visit wharves and certain localities when problems arise and not have to depend in all cases on the report, say, of the junior official of another department.
Up until recent years the arrangements that had been in effect for 50 years were quite satisfactory, but I am speaking now of circumstances of which I have some knowledge. Those intangible arrangements, shall I say, are not sufficient under present conditions, with the development of the logging industry, the lumber industry and the mining industry and the consequent increase in the number of tugs and barges towing logs and things of that sort, and with the necessity for more navigational aids, buoys and that sort of thing. I think there should be a much clearer definition of the responsibilities of the Department of Public Works and the responsibilities of the Department of Transport, and the public should be informed of those definite responsibilities.
I believe that is necessary for the satisfactory supervision of wharves and for the reporting of damage so it can be repaired before greater damage occurs through neglect, and also for the application of the department's regulations without fear or favour, regardless of whether it is a large corporation or a single isolated rancher. Everybody is entitled to be treated alike. I do not believe in the poor man in his little launch being chased away from a government wharf and a corporation being allowed to tie up its vessels for its own purposes. I think there should be some clearer definition of the regulation in that respect.
I realize the difficulties in these isolated cases in the administration of wharves and other structures by the Department of Transsport, but I think the difficulty could be largely overcome by having the R.C.M.P. informed that they can report immediately any damage to these structures and things of that sort, and in other cases perhaps the local postmaster could do this. I have already referred to the considerable damage being done to a wharf in my district because 
the situation was not reported in time to the department. That is all I have to say on that point.
I think it is time we had a revision of the Navigable Waters Protection Act. I find it is an act that is not very effective in many cases. It needs thorough overhauling in the light of modern developments and the changed conditions we find nowadays in industry and on navigable waters. There are clauses in that act with respect to the pollution of navigable waters by sawdust, by slabs, by mill waste and by industrial enterprise. So far as I know, I have never heard of any industry being reported in 50 years as a result of the violation of that act. There again I think the whole act needs overhauling and amending so that these responsibilities are defined as between the Department of Public Works and the Department of Transport and so there is control over this pollution of waters.
This was a minor matter until recent years but now, with the great increase in the lumber industry and other industries, it is becoming a serious matter. It has not developed serious proportions to date, but unless there is some strict application of the law in the near future these things will develop and become very serious in the years to come.
I also think it is necessary to have a clearer definition of the responsibility for the renting of space around wharves for gas stations, boat service stations and things of that sort. The department should have a closer check on the driving of piles in navigable waters, and the placing of obstructions in waters by companies or individuals. I am not at all blaming the officials. As I have said before the circumstances have changed, and I am quite certain that the district engineer or district agent for the minister's department in British Columbia needs an addition to his staff so that some senior officials will have an opportunity to get around the province more frequently than they are at present able to do. I think it is particularly necessary that there be a definition of the responsibilities of the two departments and an application of the law in all cases without fear or favour.


Mr. Stanton:: I should like at this time to take a few minutes to make two or three observations, and I hope that in making his reply the minister will be favourable to the comments I wish to make at this time.
I do not know whether or not it has been brought to the attention of the minister but it has been brought to my attention on different occasions that a particular situation exists with regard to the pensions of some

of the employees of the Canadian National Railways. Some of these men are getting on in years. We might say that they are in the sunset of life. In the years between 1930 and 1940 a few of them were laid off through no fault of their own and were not credited with pension rights during those years. I believe they are willing to contribute their payments to the pension fund for the time they were laid off. At that time they were willing and ready to go back to work whenever they were called.
I believe it is very unfair to these men to have these years of credit deducted under their pension scheme. I believe they should be eligible for superannuation without these years being deducted. I hope the minister will give the matter very serious consideration. I do not believe there are too many of these men. There are some in the Brockville district in the constituency I represent, and I presume there are a few more across Canada.
I have another problem about which I have spoken before. I believe I spoke of it first three years ago and have brought it up on a couple of occasions since. I refer to the situation in the city of Brockville with respect to the railway station and crossing the railway tracks. I believe the president of the C.N.R., Mr. Gordon, journeyed to Brockville last summer and made an inspection of the conditions that exist there. I did not know of his visit until afterwards; apparently it is the policy not to inform opposition members of such visits. However, I was wondering whether the minister cojild inform me what decision the president of the C.N.R. had made on his visit to Brockville, or if he has made a decision yet.
It is a burning issue so far as the people of Brockville are concerned, not only the residents of Brockville but the community at large and also visitors to the city. The railway lines completely block off two of the main arteries coming into the city from the north. In addition, passengers leaving trains have to travel a long distance back to the station. When the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace was speaking about private cars I was wondering whether it would not be a good idea to put the private cars on the siding and bring the passengers who get off trains from the east or west to the station. There is also a long wait for passenger cars, especially when freight trains are going through, and it is very tedious for the passengers.
If there should be a fire and the fire reels were held up at the crossing, think of the additional damage that might be caused by having to wait for only a few minutes. Then there is the matter of ambulances going to
Supply-Transport
the hospital. I am not quite sure whether I have mentioned this to the house before, but some four or five years ago an ambulance was going to the hospital with an emergency case and was held up for quite some time at the crossing, so long that it did not arrive at the hospital in time. However, I am glad to say that the mother and child are doing fine.
What we greatly need is a subway and a new station. The station is very old and is one that would be appropriate for a little village. We need a subway very badly at that particular point. There are two large public schools on the north side of the town and the children have to cross the railroad tracks. I plead with the minister to do something about this matter. In fact I hope within the next few days to crave his indulgence so that I may have an interview with him for a few minutes in order to go over the whole situation with him.
We are greatly in need of better and safer railway accommodation in the heart of Brockville. Brockville is growing very rapidly to the north and it will only be a short time until the railroad will be in the very centre of the city, which will be most inconvenient if the present situation goes on. When the new by-pass highway, No. 401, is built to the north of the city the main road leading from that highway will cross these tracks, and it is doubly necessary that some provision be made for accommodating that traffic in the next two or three years.
I plead with the minister to do something to alleviate the serious situation we have there. It has been spoken of many times by other members of the house who have been travelling through Brockville and have had to change trains there to come to Ottawa. Many members of the house have said that it is a very undesirable situation. I hope the minister will give very serious consideration not only to the question of the employees and their pension plan but also to the need of a new station and a subway at Brockville.
Item stands.
Progress reported.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Walter Edward Harris: Mr. Speaker, tomorrow we shall take second reading of the bill with respect to the Defence Services Pension Act, second reading of the bill respecting the Canadian National Railway Company financing legislation, second reading of the Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act amending bill, then the resolution in the name of the Minister of Labour with respect to certain provisions for equal pay for female employees, and then the resolution in the name of the Minister

Business of the House
of National Health and Welfare with respect to unemployment assistance costs in the provinces.


Howard Charles Green: Mr. Speaker, may I point out to the minister that the defence services pension bill has not yet been distributed and we do not know how complicated it is. We may not be able to go on with it tomorrow.


George Clyde Nowlan: Has the gold mining bill been distributed?


Walter Edward Harris: I spoke to the staff about an hour and a half ago about this particular bill. If it is not already distributed, certainly it will be made available very early in the morning. If it is complicated and for any
reason hon. members feel that they should not proceed with it, if they will let me know we will arrange the agenda otherwise.


George Clyde Nowlan: What about the gold mining bill; has that been distributed?


Walter Edward Harris: I do not think it has at the moment, but it will be.


George Clyde Nowlan: There are some hon. members who want to speak on that, and I see it is scheduled for tomorrow.


Walter Edward Harris: We will be glad to make any arrangements that are suitable.


[Stage Direction]
At 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. Hahn: 1.	Has the federal government written off any war debts owing by countries to Canada?
2.	If so, what countries and in what amount?
Answer by: Hon. W. E. Harris (Minister of Finance):
1.	Yes.
2.	Pursuant to the United Kingdom Financial Agreement Act, 1946, the government of Canada agreed to cancel the amount owing by the government of the United Kingdom to the government of Canada with respect to the British commonwealth air training plan, which amount the two governments agreed was $425,000,000.
"king edward" dredge bunk-scow 
Question No. 513-Mr. Regier:
1.	Is the bunk-scow of the King Edward dredge, owned by the Department of Public Works, for sale?
2.	If not, what use is being made of it?
3.	For how many days in 1955 was it in use?
4.	What was the cost of its operation for the year 1955?
5.	How many watchmen are employed on it?
6.	Who makes out their time schedule?
7.	Are there always watchmen on board?
Answer by:	Mr. Bourgel, Parliamentary
Assistant, for the Minister of Public Works:
1.	No.
2.	To provide accommodation for the crews of the dredge and tugs.
3.	365 days.
4.	Cost not available as it forms an integral part of the plant. Expenditures are charged against the operation of the dredge.
5.	Four.
6.	The dredge master.
7.	Yes.


HIGHLANDS PARK, CAPE BRETON, N.S.-EQUIPMENT PURCHASES
Mr. Nowlan: 1.	Has the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources, or any other department or agency of the government of Canada, within the last year, purchased for use in Highlands park, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, a shovel, crusher, and other machinery and equipment incidental thereto?
2.	If so, (a) from what firm or firms was such shovel, crusher and other machinery purchased; (b) for what price?
3.	Were tenders or invitations to bid invited?
Questions
4. If so, (a) what firms replied to the invitation to bid; (b) what was the price quoted by each of such firms?
Answer by: Hon. Jean Lesage (Minister of
Northern Affairs and National Resources):
1.	Yes.
2.	(a) One Smith-Rodley f cubic yard crawler shovel was purchased at a price of $34,915 including trade-in allowance.
One model 293Q junior universal portable crushing plant was purchased at a price of $59,950 including trade-in allowance.
One I cubic yard manganese clam bucket and a tag line winder were purchased at a price of $2,415 for use with the Smith-Rodley shovel.
No other equipment incidental to either the shovel or the crusher was purchased. Above items purchased were obtained from Automotive Products Limited of Montreal, Quebec.
(b) Answered by (a) above.
1 V pc
4.' (a) and (b)
Crawler shovel-
Automotive Products Limited,
Montreal, Quebec	$34,915
Coleman Machinery Limited,
Halifax, Nova	Scotia	 36,551
Industrial Machinery Company,
Halifax, Nova	Scotia	 36,665
Eastern Equipment Limited,
Halifax, Nova	Scotia	 38,700
Foulis Engineering Limited,
Halifax, Nova	Scotia	 39,580
Sheridan Equipment Company Limited,
Toronto, Ontario		 41,330
Geo. W. Crothers, Limited,
Leaside, Toronto,	Ontario	 41,674
W. L. Ballentine Company Limited,
Toronto, Ontario	 44,540
Laurion Equipment Limited,
Montreal, Quebec	 48,742
Crushing plant-
Automotive Products Limited,
Montreal, Quebec		 59,950
Falcon Equipment Company Limited,
Toronto, Ontario	 65,480
Foulis Engineering Sales Limited, '
Halifax, Nova Scotia	 66,060
Clam bucket and winder-
Automotive Products Limited,
Montreal, Quebec		 2,415
Industrial Machinery Company,
Halifax, Nova Scotia	No	bid
Coleman Machinery Limited,
Halifax, Nova Scotia	No	bid
Wm. Stairs, Son & Morrow,
Halifax, Nova Scotia	No	bid

Tuesday, June 12, 1956