1957-04-09

Right Hon. L. S. St. Laurent (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, I hope you will indulge me for a moment in order that I may say how happy we all are to see the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar (Mr. Coldwell) back in his seat, to express to him the confident hope that he is really as well as he looks, and that it will not overtax his strength to carry on his usual activities both in this house and following the prorogation of this session.
I am sure that not only in the house but throughout the country a great many people will be overjoyed to see him resuming his usual activities.


Mr. J. G. Diefenbaker (Leader of ihe Opposition):: This is one of those occasions on which there can be complete unanimity among all members of the house. As one who has known the hon. member for Rosetown-Biggar intimately for many years I am most happy to join with the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) in his expression of pleasure that my hon. friend has been vouchsafed a return to the house, and my hope is that he will be able to participate in the events ahead with the same power and effectiveness as in the past.


Mr. E. G. Hansell (Macleod):: I am sure the hon. member for Peace River (Mr. Low), the leader of this group, would wish me to concur in what the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Diefenbaker) have already said.


Mr. M. J. Coldwell (Roselown-Biggar):: should like to thank the Prime Minister and others who have welcomed me back to the house. I can assure you that I am most happy to be here. I was hoping that I might be here before prorogation and that I might be able to continue my work, as has been suggested, after prorogation. I may say that I hope to be able to do so on a somewhat restricted basis, and if my constituents of Rosetown-Biggar decide to send me here again my doctor tells me I shall be able to function normally later on.
I want to say to all members of the house that I have deeply appreciated the many messages, flowers, cards, etc., that were sent to me while I was in the hospital by the many, many people throughout the country who have wished me well. I hope I may be able to give some service to this country for some years to come.



CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION


Mr. J. A. Charlton (Branl-Haldimand):: Mr. Speaker, a petition has been forwarded to me from the hereditary council of chiefs of the Six Nations reservation at Ohsweken, and I now present it to the House of Commons.



MISCELLANEOUS PRIVATE BILLS

[Stage Direction]
Seventeenth report of standing committee on miscellaneous private bills.-Mr. Henderson.

Hon. Jean Lesage (Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources):: Mr. Speaker, in the course of the budget address on March 14 the Minister of Finance outlined a proposal that the government considered would be helpful in meeting the power requirements of the maritime provinces. Since that statement there have been a number of developments, and I think it might be of interest to hon. members to know something further about the proposal and where it now stands.
I will not repeat the statement by the Minister of Finance which can be found at page 2220 of Hansard for March 14. The same day it was made I wrote to Premier Stanfield and Premier Flemming enclosing a copy of it. I indicated that if they thought it would be desirable to have a meeting, either with me or on the official level, I would be very glad to arrange it.
I received an immediate reply from both premiers suggesting that a meeting of officials should be held. That meeting took place in Ottawa on March 21. A number of questions were discussed relating both to matters of policy and to details of application of the proposal. Following the report by the officials of the provincial power commissions to their
3294	HOUSE OF
Power Development-Atlantic Area respective premiers, I received telegrams from each premier accepting the federal proposal subject to discussion of further details. In the light of the discussions at the meeting of officials and of the acceptance by the premiers of the federal proposal, a number of further decisions have now been taken.
Hon. members will recall that at the last session of parliament an amendment to the Northwest Territories Power Commission Act was passed changing the name of the commission to the Northern Canada Power Commission and empowering it to acquire, operate and maintain power plants not only in the two territories but also in the provinces "with the approval of the governor in council but subject to the laws of the province in which the powers . . . are exercised".
It had not been thought at that time that the operations of the commission would ever extend to any part of Canada other than the territories or the northern limits of certain of the provinces. However, the legal position is that the commission can, with the approval of the governor in council and subject to the laws of the province concerned, operate in any province. The representatives of both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, but especially of the latter, raised considerations that gave urgency to the implementation of the federal proposal. In order to comply with the provincial desire that immediate action should be taken, the federal government has decided that the Northern Canada Power Commission should be designated as its agency to carry the proposals into effect. Order in council number 1957-476 was passed on April 4 for that purpose.
One of the matters of urgency is that the New Brunswick Electric Power Commission has prepared plans for the construction of a new plant of 50 megawatts capacity which the commission was intending to erect at Saint John. Tenders had actually been received when the statement of the Minister of Finance was made, although no contract for any part of the plant had been placed. The province of New Brunswick urged that this plant should be taken over under the federal proposal.
One question that was discussed at the meeting of officials was whether the construction of interconnection lines between the two provinces under the federal proposal might affect the urgency of the need for the plant or possibly might affect the determination of the most desirable location. It may be, for instance, that in order to serve an interconnected system covering the two provinces it would be more efficient to have a new plant in Cumberland county, Nova Scotia, to use coal from that area, rather than to have it in Saint John.


It has been decided that an immediate study should be undertaken to determine what new capacity may be required in the two provinces and, having regard to possible new interconnection lines, what would be the most effective and economic location. This study will be undertaken by the Montreal Engineering Company as consultants for the Northern Canada Power Commission. The study will be carried out in full consultation with the power commissions of the two provinces.
Pending the completion of this study, and in order that there may be no unnecessary delay in bringing a new power plant into operation at whatever location may be found most advantageous, the Northern Canada Power Commission has been authorized by the governor in council, under the order in council to which I have referred, to enter into the contract that the New Brunswick Electric Power Commission had planned to place for the turbo generator and other major equipment for the proposed 50,000 KW plant. It is expected that the contract will be placed within the next few days. As originally planned by the New Brunswick Electric Power Commission, and as the delivery requirements of the contract will specify, this plant will be on a schedule that would call for delivery of power from it in 1959.
The studies to which I have referred of the required new capacity and of new interconnection lines are extensive and are not expected to be completed before August 1 of this year. The costs will be quite substantial. In the normal course, engineering studies undertaken by the Northern Canada Power Commission are charged, in accordance with section 14 of the act, against any project that results from the study. In order that there may be no undue burden of cost to be met out of the price charged for power in the maritimes, the government has decided that these studies that are now under way should be met by funds to be appropriated by parliament for that purpose. The submission of a suitable item will be made in due course for consideration by this house.
With regard to the fuel to be used by the plants that will be established under the federal proposal, the basic objective of securing power at the lowest possible cost is, of course, to be kept constantly in mind. This consideration will frequently affect the location of the plants that are to be built. It is, of course, also the desire of the government to see maritime coal used to the greatest extent possible in the plants that may be established. The sharp increase in the price

of oil and in charges for ocean shipping over recent months have resulted in a situation in which, over virtually all the maritime provinces, it appears that it would be cheaper to use maritime coal for the production of power than to use oil.
There is some reason to think that this increase in the price of oil may not be as temporary as has sometimes been hoped or suggested. In the circumstances, the economic advantage of the use of maritime coal shows every likelihood of continuing.
In the immediate future the first plant to be built by the Northern Canada Power Commission seems likely to be at Saint John or in Cumberland county. If it is in Cumberland county it will be because of the prospects of securing maximum economies through the use of coal from that area. If the best location turns out to be Saint John, the object will be to enter into arrangements with maritime coal producers so that coal may be used for fuel on a basis that will produce power at as low a cost as if oil were used. I have every confidence that such arrangements can be made. As I said at the outset, the object of the government in this proposal is to secure power at the lowest possible cost and at the same time to use maritime coal as the fuel for that purpose.
Contracts for the construction of plants and transmission lines to be built under the federal proposal will be placed on the basis of tenders to be called in each case; the same will apply to equipment. Contracts will be placed in the normal fashion with the lowest tenderer in a position to provide the quality of equipment and construction capacity that is required within whatever delivery schedule may be necessary. Design of plant and equipment required by the Northern Canada Power Commission will normally be undertaken by it, through its consulting engineers, unless in any particular case a special arrangement is made. Such a special arrangement might apply, for instance, to projects like the Saint John plant, which are already in the course of design and which are to be taken over by the federal agency. Naturally, all questions relating to the capacity and character of facilities will be a matter for consultation with the provincial power commissions.
The plants will be operated by the Northern Canada Power Commission with the power sold at cost to the agency designated by the province. The same cost basis will apply to the rental of transmission lines. Rental of these lines will provide for maintenance to be undertaken by the lessee.
The financing of plants and transmission lines will be in accordance with the normal 82715-208i
9. 1957	3295
Power Development-Atlantic Area financing of construction undertaken by the Northern Canada Power Commission, that is at the federal borrowing rate plus a small additional charge that is normally made for the provision of finances to crown corporations. Amortization of the thermal plants will be over the 30-year period which is normal for such plants, and the steel tower high voltage interconnection lines will be over the 40-year period which is normal for them.
As has been indicated throughout, the principal purpose behind the proposal of the government is to supply power in the maritime provinces on the most efficient basis possible and at the lowest possible cost. There will, of course, have to be an agreement with the governments of the maritime provinces with regard to the proposal generally, and also with regard to the specific plants and interconnection lines. In accordance with the underlying purpose of the project, a provision of all agreements will be one requiring the provincial governments under their normal powers of regulation, or through the establishment of charges by their respective power commissions, to see that the benefits of reduced power costs are passed on to the consumers. The provincial power commissions, or in some cases private utilities, will be in a position to buy power from the Northern Canada Power Commission at a favourable rate, and they will be expected to see-I have no doubt they will be anxious to see-that the full benefit goes to the industrial or domestic users.
It is my belief, Mr. Speaker, that the proposal that has been put forward, and which has been so promptly accepted by the premiers of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, will operate to the genuine advantage of the maritime provinces.


Mr. Thomas M. Bell (Saint John-Alberl):: Mr. Speaker, may I ask the minister, after indicating general approval of these long-needed thermal plants, if this now means that the answer is no to the New Brunswick government's request of the federal government for financial assistance for Beechwood, the first stage in the Saint John system of low-cost power development.


Jean Lesage: Mr. Speaker, I have not mentioned the subject in my statement. I have just tabled the full correspondence with Premier Flemming on the subject. I suggest that the hon. member consult with the Clerk.


Thomas Miller Bell: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. If this survey that has been suggested is carried out, and if power development on the Saint John river appears feasible,
3296	HOUSE OF
Power Development-Atlantic Area will the same offer be made to New Brunswick that is being made to British Columbia in connection with the Columbia river?


Jean Lesage: I suggest, Mr. Speaker,' that the hon. member read the correspondence. He will find all the answers to the questions he is asking in the correspondence. There is no short answer to these questions.


Thomas Miller Bell: Mr. Speaker, on a question of privilege; I have asked twice in the last two weeks for answers to questions and the minister has said it is in the correspondence, and it is not. The other day I asked him whether he would report to the house on this matter and he said no. This morning he has reported to the house. I think this question deserves an honest answer now, before the election, because it is extremely important to New Brunswick.


Jean Lesage: I repeat, sir, that the complete answer is in the correspondence I just tabled.


Mr. Green:: Why don't you summarize it?


Thomas Miller Bell: I would like a yes or no answer to these questions now, because it is important to New Brunswick.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The hon. gentleman should at least take a look at the correspondence before he makes any other comments.


Thomas Miller Bell: I have seen the correspondence.


Mr. A. R. Lusby (Cumberland):: I should like to direct a question to the minister. I am very much interested in the references which were made in this report to my constituency with respect to power development. May I ask the minister whether in this survey which is to be undertaken full consideration will be given to the fact that the coal fields of Springhill are the most central of any within the combined area of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and also to the fact that the coal produced in those fields is steam coal of a quality that is unsurpassed in the maritimes?


Jean Lesage: Of course this is a fact that will be considered.


Howard Charles Green: May I ask the minister whether the order in council has also been tabled?


Jean Lesage: I do not believe it has, but I can table it now, sir.


Mr. MacLean:: I should like to ask the minister whether it is expected that this program will be expanded at a later date to include the province of Prince Edward Island?


Jean Lesage: I mentioned the maritime provinces; I have always felt that Prince Edward Island was a maritime province.


Mr. G. C. Nowlan (Digby-Annapolis-Kings):: I was waiting for the orders of the day to be called, but since questions are being asked now I shall ask one, too. Has the government given consideration to expanding the principle of subventions on the movement of coal within the maritime provinces to assist in the use of that coal in competition with oil, assuming that the temporary condition may not continue and the price of oil may drop?


Jean Lesage: If the hon. member will read my statement he will find that I said or implied we did not consider it was necessary to give a subvention on coal so it would be competitive with oil.


George Clyde Nowlan: The minister did not consider
it would be necessary?


Jean Lesage: No.

On the orders of the day:


Mr. D. S. Harkness (Calgary North):: I
should like to direct a question to the Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources consequent on the statement he has made. Has the Northern Canada Power Commission the staff and facilities necessary to carry out the very extensive new functions assigned to it, and if not, as seems probable, by what method is it to be put into a position to do so? Is the commission's headquarters to be moved to the maritimes and its main activities concentrated there?


Jean Lesage: The plan is that the headquarters will remain in Ottawa, but it is clear there will have to be an increase in staff and also an increase in facilities.



FINANCE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. L. E. Cardiff (Huron):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Agriculture. Perhaps the question could be more properly directed to the Minister of Finance, owing to the fact that the minister had had a resolution sent to him by the beekeepers. I will direct it to him and the government.
Will the minister consider having the tax removed on sugar used for the feeding of bees? The beekeepers in my riding are having a tough time making ends meet, and I appeal to the government to give this request their sincere consideration if we are to retain the normal supply of honey in Canada.


Right Hon. J. G. Gardiner (Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, matters having
to do with tariff of course are not handled in the Department of Agriculture, but we shall take into consideration the representations made and discuss the matter with finance.



INCOME TAX


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. E. D. Fulton (Kamloops):: Mr. Speaker, may I ask the Minister of National Revenue whether the Canadian government has made any further representations to the United States government in connection with the case now before the tax court of the United States of America involving Premium Iron Ores Limited, in which this Canadian company is being sued for a tax which I understand may amount with interest to $8 million if the case should be upheld?


Hon. J. J. McCann (Minister of National Revenue):: Mr. Speaker, no representations
have been made by the Department of National Revenue. I cannot speak for other departments.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Perhaps I could ask the Prime Minister as a general question whether any further representations have been made since the last report to the house on it, and whether he or the Minister of Trade and Commerce have had any conversations with the United States secretary of the treasury about this case and, if so, to what effect?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Mr. Speaker, I have had no correspondence or conversations with the secretary of the United States treasury. There have been no other written representations but the note that was filed some time ago. However, there has been a recent interview between the ambassador and officers of the state department to try to clear up the inaccurate representation that had appeared before the commission with respect to the contents of that note, and to make certain that the full content of the note would be brought to the attention of all the departments concerned.


Edmund Davie Fulton: May I ask the Minister of
Trade and Commerce if he has had any conversations with the United States secretary of the treasury and, if so, to what effect?


Right Hon. C. D. Howe (Minister of Trade and Commerce):: Mr. Speaker, the answer
is no.
Inquiries of the Ministry


Edmund Davie Fulton: Mr. Speaker, may I ask the
Prime Minister whether, in the notes or aides-memoire that have been delivered or in the most recent representations he has just referred to, the position was taken that this was a matter in which Canada has a vital interest and therefore that a definite position with respect to it was being taken by the Canadian government?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Mr. Speaker, the position was taken that there was a question of fact that was now submitted to the court, and if as a consequence of the court's finding on the evidence relating to that question of fact it was felt that the real intent of the treaty with respect to the avoidance of double taxation was not being carried out, there would have to be reconsideration of its terms.


Edmund Davie Fulton: That was made clear?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: That was
made clear.



INDUSTRY


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Stanley Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Minister of Trade and Commerce. Has the minister yet obtained what he referred to yesterday as an expert opinion on the ethics of Mr. J. D. Barrington being at the same time managing director of the government-owned Polymer Corporation Limited and a director of McIntyre Porcupine Gold Mines Limited?


Clarence Decatur Howe: Mr. Speaker, I have given no further consideration to the matter. I shall take it up as soon as the pressure of parliamentary duties is relieved.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, may I ask the minister a supplementary question. Did the minister make any suggestion to anyone connected with McIntyre Porcupine Gold Mines Limited that Mr. Barrington might be appointed a director of the company?


Clarence Decatur Howe: The president spoke to me about it. I said he had better consult with Mr. Barrington. I expected to be consulted later myself but I was not, and the matter is still under consideration.


Stanley Howard Knowles: May I ask a further supplementary question. Will the minister ascertain what Mr. Tory, the chairman of the board, has said about this matter?
3238	HOUSE OF
Inquiries of the Ministry


Clarence Decatur Howe: I will be very glad to find that out.


Mr. Donald M. Fleming (Eglinlon):: Mr. Speaker, may I ask the Prime Minister what is the policy of the government in reference to full-time executive officers of crown corporations accepting appointments to the boards of corporations?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Well, Mr. Speaker, I do not know that there is any other express policy provided by legislation than that with respect to the president and chairman of the Canadian National Railways, who by statute is prevented from accepting other appointments to directorships. When someone is a fulltime employee of a department of government, if the whole of his time is devoted to his duties there seems to be no other time that could be attributed to any other responsibility. I do not think the question has ever arisen in connection with any other of the executive officers of crown corporations except in the case of the C.N.R., where the matter was determined by an enactment of parliament.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Are there any other cases where a full-time executive officer of a crown corporation is serving on the board of directors of a corporation?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: Not to my
knowledge, Mr. Speaker. I have never made any specific inquiry, but it had never come to my knowledge that there was any other full-time executive of a crown corporation who was a director of any other concern.


Donald Methuen Fleming: May I ask the Prime Minister what is his view as to the propriety of the matter in the case of a full-time employee of a crown corporation?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: If the question arises I will give it very careful consideration and I will form an opinion, as I had to form an opinion with respect to the presidency of the C.N.R.; but I do not think I should give hypothetical opinions in this house on matters which have not yet, to my knowledge, arisen.


Donald Methuen Fleming: May I ask the Prime Minister if the question has not now arisen, in view of the situation referred to?


Louis Stephen St-Laurent: I do not
know that it has, and I do not know whether this gentleman is a full-time employee of a crown corporation. I do not know what the facts are, and I am not going to express an opinion on a hypothetical set of facts.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I should like to understand clearly what answer the Minister of Trade


and Commerce gave to my last question. Did he say he would ascertain from Mr. Tory, the chairman of the board of McIntyre Porcupine, what he has said concerning this matter?


Clarence Decatur Howe: I will take such action as I consider appropriate in the circumstances.


Stanley Howard Knowles: May I ask the Minister of Trade and Commerce if he will inform the Prime Minister whether or not Mr. Barrington is a full-time salaried official of the corporation?


Clarence Decatur Howe: I will be very glad to do that at the appropriate time.



CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
James Joseph McCann: Mr. Speaker, on Thursday, April 4, the hon. member for Oxford (Mr. Nesbitt) asked the following question:
Did the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation assign special television personnel and equipment to accompany the Minister of National Health and Welfare and the Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys on their recent trips abroad?
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation advises that no C.B.C. personnel accompanied the Minister of National Health and Welfare on his recent trip. A television reporter and film cameraman went to cover the establishment of Ghana as a country of the commonwealth, and travelled there in a plane with the Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys, who was representing Canada at the ceremonies.



NATIONAL PARKS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. C. E. Johnston (Bow River):: I would like to direct a question to the Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources. I have not given him notice of this question, but we have had correspondence on the matter and I do not think notice is needed.
Now that the Social Credit province of Alberta has agreed to make loans to municipalities at low interest rates for hospital construction, and since Banff is considered as a municipality for this purpose, will the federal government or the park superintendent on the federal government's behalf make application to the province of Alberta

for a low interest rate loan for the purpose of assistance in the construction of the Banff Mineral Springs hospital?


Jean Lesage: Mr. Speaker, the premise of the hon. member's question is now being studied by the law officers of my department.


Charles Edward Johnston: Could the minister give us an answer to the question tomorrow, seeing he needs a little notice?


Jean Lesage: I do not know when the law officers of the department who are studying the question will be in a position to give me a legal opinion as to the statements made by the hon. member.


Charles Edward Johnston: I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that it is urgent that a decision should be reached, because people in Banff are anxious to get on with the construction of the hospital.


Jean Lesage: I will press the law officers of my department, but lawyers generally do not like to be pressed.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Howard Charles Green: May I direct a question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs, arising out of a report on the radio this morning to the effect that he said in Montreal last night that Canada would withdraw her troops from the United Nations emergency force if either Israel or Egypt attempted to exercise control over that force.
Does the minister not think it would be wise for Canada, which has by far the largest number of troops in that force, to urge the advisory committee on the United Nations emergency force to send a subcommittee to Gaza as quickly as possible to investigate the whole position? I ask that because it would seem that the result of such action might be to prevent a serious outbreak there.


Hon. L. B. Pearson (Secretary of Stale for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, in so far as the radio report is concerned, what I said in Montreal last night was a repetition of what I have said in the House of Commons, namely that if any one government made the functioning of this force impossible through lack of co-operation, it
Inquiries of the Ministry would be impossible for Canadian participation to continue; but if we had to take that position it would be with great regret and only as a last resort.
In so far as the second part of the question is concerned, the position of the Canadian government and, indeed, of other governments in regard to the control of this force has been made very clear more than once before now in the committee to which the hon. gentleman referred. That position was also made clear to the governments in question, particularly to the government of Egypt, by the secretary general when he went to Cairo a short time ago. Since that time his assistant, Dr. Bunche, has been in the Gaza strip investigating the working out of arrangements which seemed satisfactory on paper. He has just returned to New York, and before we take further action I believe the committee should hear a report from him, as it proposes to do very shortly.


Howard Charles Green: Does the minister not think it might help to prevent trouble there if the committee were to send over members of its own body in order to see the position for itself, and also to focus world attention on the situation which exists?


Lester Bowles Pearson: That might be a very useful and constructive idea, and it will be brought up at the next meeting of the committee.



UNITED NATIONS EMERGENCY FORCE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. R. O. Campney (Minister of National Defence):: Last week the hon. member for Oxford inquired with respect to the conditions of service of Canadian forces in the Middle East. He based his question on a newspaper report which in turn referred to alleged remarks by a member of the Canadian contingent who had recently returned to Canada. The gist of these remarks was that Canadian troops were so discontented with conditions in Egypt that some of them were purposely getting into trouble in order to be sent home.
As I pointed out to the hon. member on Friday, this appeared to be completely at variance not only with the information we ourselves had received but also with dispatches being sent by newspaper reporters from the area. For this reason I asked for a full report direct from the Middle East.
I have now received this report, and I may say that it confirms entirely my original understanding of the situation existing there. I can now say that since the arrival of the contingent only two members of the force have been returned to Canada for disciplinary

Inquiries of the Ministry reasons, and there is nothing to indicate that their offences were committed with this end in view. As a matter of fact, the incidence of crime in the contingent is somewhat lower than in the army as a whole.
None of us would contend, Mr. Speaker, that conditions in Egypt and the Gaza strip are ideal. The Canadian units of UNEF are operating under field conditions in an area which has recently been the scene of warfare. While accommodation and welfare arrangements cannot come up to the standards in Canada, they are the best obtainable under the circumstances. I think the majority of our men realize this and I am confident that, despite the conditions, their morale and conduct are extremely good. In fact General Burns himself has indicated very definitely that the conduct of our troops in UNEF is a credit to them and to Canada.



UNITED STATES


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, would the Secretary of State for External Affairs now say what appropriate protests have been made to the administration of the United States against the extrajudicial investigations of Canadians by congressional committees of the United States? Has an appropriate protest been made, and what has been the reaction or answer to that protest?


Lester Bowles Pearson: Mr. Speaker, as I indicated to the house yesterday I had hoped to be able to make a statement on this matter today, but my statement has not been completed. I also have not had a chance to discuss it with my colleagues, but I hope to be able to make it tomorrow. It is a complicated matter as well as a tragic one, because the statement will deal not only with a certain tragic experience but with relations between the two governments in the field of security.


John George Diefenbaker: Possibly the minister would say, without disclosing the nature of the protest, whether or not a protest has been made.


Lester Bowles Pearson: Yes, a very strong protest has been made formally and in writing.



ROYAL CANADIAN AIR FORCE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Ralph Osborne Campney: Mr. Speaker, though I can add little to the known facts, in view of the

question asked by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre the other day I should like to make a further report on the very regrettable air accident which occurred on March 1 near Manotick, in which all eight persons aboard a Mitchell plane lost their lives.
The aircraft was en route, as hon. members will remember, from Churchill to Uplands, having refuelled at North Bay about 45 minutes before approaching Uplands. The aircraft crashed about six minutes after nine p.m., within a few minutes of the last radio contact with Uplands, at which time there was no reason to believe that the pilot was experiencing any difficulty.
Although the investigation has been very thorough, the lack of survivors and the complete disintegration of the aircraft have made it difficult, indeed practically impossible, to determine the actual cause of the crash. Officers of the Royal Canadian Air Force are continuing to follow up their investigation. Nevertheless, as I have said, there appears to be little likelihood of ever successfully determining what caused the plane to crash.



ST. LAWRENCE SEAWAY CAUGHNAWAGA INDIAN RESERVE    REQUEST FOR ASSISTANCE IN SUBMITTING TEST CASE

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. A. M. Campbell (The Battlefords):: should like to address a question to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. If the Caughnawaga Indians are not able to come to an agreement with the seaway authority respecting property expropriated, will the minister consider financial assistance to these Indians in taking a test case to the courts?


Hon. J. W. Pickersgill (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration):: Well, Mr. Speaker, I would certainly not say that I would not give consideration to it, but I would have to think about it very hard indeed.


Edmund Davie Fulton: You should do that more often before you speak.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, I wonder whether the leader of the house would make it clear what the arrangements are regarding today's debate.


Hon. W. E. Harris (Minister of Finance):: apologize, Mr. Speaker. I was engaged in reading some words in Hansard of yesterday.

My understanding is that we intend to proceed with the supply motion as soon as orders of the day are called.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Can it be made clear what will happen to the hour between five and six? Can it also be made clear at what time the vote is to be taken, and what happens after the vote? My point is that since the debate proposed for today is not one that is provided for in the rules but is rather a matter of consent, should we not have it clear now rather than encounter an argument later as to what the arrangements are?


Walter Edward Harris: I think it likely, subject to any ruling Your Honour might make, that consent would be required at this time to present a supply motion, although we have not sought a ruling on that point. That being the case, the question arises whether there are any terms on which consent might be given. It has been drawn to my attention that from five to six we have the hour for private bills which is normally abandoned on those Tuesdays on which a supply motion is under discussion, debate on which has commenced on a Monday.
However, I think we can take it that we are proceeding by consent. I am not sure whether there is unanimous consent that we do so if it means that the period from five to six is not to be used for private members' bills. It has been suggested that one way to avoid that would be to use that hour for private bills and postpone the vote on the amendment from 8.15 to 8.45, thereby recapturing half an hour of the hour that might be lost and also not depriving those hon. members who might wish to raise grievances not connected with the amendment of that half hour. Up to the time I came into the house there had been no agreement as to what might be done. Possibly we could reach agreement now, or we might find it possible to do so before five o'clock.


John George Diefenbaker: In view of the fact that we are being reduced to a portion of one day for debate of the supply motion, I feel that the voting hour should be postponed to permit full consideration being given, and that an extra hour should be allowed from the time at which the vote would normally be taken. The vote was to be taken at 8.15, and in view of what I have said I think it should be postponed to 9.15. We have gone a long way in order to co-operate, and I feel we should be entitled to that.


Walter Edward Harris: I have noted what has been said. I just want to say that my hon. friend is not being deprived of quite as much time as he indicates, by reason of the fact that 82715-209
9, 1957	3301
Agricultural Products-Support Prices we are now sitting in the morning, which we do not normally do on Tuesdays when supply motions are under discussion.


Howard Charles Green: But there would ordinarily be Monday and Tuesday.


Walter Edward Harris: Quite so. Instead of two days we will have one day plus two hours. The Leader of the Opposition has stated the terms on which he thinks we should begin discussion of the supply motion and, so far as the government is concerned, we have no objection. If hon. gentlemen opposite would like to consider the matter until five o'clock we could perhaps arrive at an arrangement by that time.


Ernest George Hansell: I am sure this group will facilitate the business of the house, but I am concerned about the one hour for private bills. It seems to me that if we forgo the one hour for private bills provision should be made for it either after the vote tonight or some time tomorrow. Otherwise there may be private bills that will die on the order paper, and there are some private bills that I think should go through.


Mr. T. H. Goode (Burnaby-Richmond):: Mr. Speaker, my colleague the hon. member for Victoria (B.C.) is making a radio broadcast at the moment, and in all fairness to him I think it should be said that the Trans Mountain Oil Pipe Line Company bill should be proceeded with in the hour from five to six. After all, that bill has been on the order paper for some months now. In fairness to my colleague I ask that this fact be considered.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, it is our view that we should retain the hour from five o'clock to six o'clock for such private and public bills as may be reached in that hour. Whatever arrangement should be made as to the time of voting perhaps can be the subject of further discussion or negotiation. Initially it would be our view that the hour from five o'clock to six o'clock should be spent on private and public bills, and that the vote should be taken at 8.15 p.m. However, perhaps we could negotiate further as to the time of the vote.


Walter Edward Harris: that the house go into committee of supply.


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, this motion provides the opportunity to bring before the
3302	HOUSE OF
Agricultural Products-Support Prices house matters of national interest. On this occasion I propose to deal in general with the subject of agriculture and the need for action to be taken in order to provide and assure that the farmer shall have a fair and reasonable share of the national income.
I do not intend to deal with marketing legislation in any way, though ordinarily I would have done so. However, I express the hope that tomorrow the legislation that was introduced yesterday will be brought before the house, and that no excuse will be offered for not having it passed at the present session. We are most desirous of that being done. I mention that point merely in passing, namely that no excuse will be accepted by the opposition for any action that might be taken to delay the further processing of that bill and its enactment at the present session.
I commence by saying what has been said on previous occasions, namely that the farmer finds himself squeezed between rising costs of production and falling farm prices. His position is that he gets less and pays more. While there has been some improvement in the matter of the net national farm income within recent months, none the less the fact remains to be emphasized that the farmer still finds himself in a difficult and, in my opinion, perilous position.
The general submission of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture made on December 3 last to the federal-provincial agricultural conference sets out the facts in general. I shall do no more than refer to one or two matters stated in that submission, instead of plastering the record with a great number of statistics to support the conclusions of that body. The submission states:
Farm prices in 1956 have been 6 per cent lower than in 1949, while costs of goods and services the farmer buys have increased 20 per cent.
Then it adds these words:
This means that the farmers' unfavourable price position is caused more by extraordinary increase in costs, than by the fall in farm price levels.
Then at page 3 of that submission there are set out in detail the changes that have taken place in recent years in Canadian agriculture, and in particular that during a period of ten years the number of farms dropped from 695,000 to 531,000, a drop of 24 per cent.
Indeed, on reading this summary we find that the general picture is such that Canadian agriculture finds itself in a difficult and trying position, which is not met by the quoting of statistics designed to show that there is statistical prosperity within our country.
It deals in particular with poultry prices and with the turkey producer's position. That
[Mr. Diefenbaker.l

producer finds himself with depressed prices resulting in considerable measure from unjustified competition on the part of United States producers. The fruit and vegetable farmers also find that United States farm products of this kind are being dumped into Canada, and that today there is no protection by way of anti-dumping duties or tariffs. Action must be taken in order to assure that valuation shall be properly determined, but not on the basis of invoices from the United States of America.
Then also the Canadian Federation of Agriculture made a full submission to the Prime Minister and the members of the cabinet on February 15 of this year. I shall do no more than quote one or two of the representations epitomizing, as they do, the situation that prevails. On page 1 they state:
Farmers from coast to coast feel keenly that on the average their returns have become badly out of balance with those of other major groups in the nation. It is important to emphasize purchasing power in this connection because the farmers' difficulties are to be found as much in high prices of the things he buys as in a decline in the number of dollars he receives.
Then it deals in particular with the price support legislation and endeavours to show- and I think successfully-that as this policy of the government in connection with agricultural price support has been revealed year by year, and as over the years the policy and philosophy of the government in administering this act has developed, it has been used only in the case of extreme price decline, in circumstances where the cost to the government will be moderate and the possibility of creating any real problems in the field of surplus disposal and trade relations would be almost entirely avoided. In other words, to summarize what has been represented by this great national farm organization the returns of farmers are out of balance with those of other major groups in the nation, and unless agriculture is stabilized and balanced the entire Canadian economy will suffer in consequence.
I believe that the two major objectives that must be faced by parliament are to assure stability for the farmer and also, as I mentioned a moment ago, to assure him a fair and reasonable share of the national income. The farmer finds himself in the position where his markets have been lost or diminished because of ineffective trade policies of the federal government. Briefs have been presented year by year by representative farm organizations, but the farmer finds himself gradually achieving a position detrimental to the preservation of the Canadian agricultural production machine.

Then also there is another phase that must be considered, for it reverses in Canada the trend in United States of America. The farmer's share of the consumer's dollar has been reduced considerably in recent years.
About 10 years ago the farmer's share was 59 cents, while today it is just about 50 cents. In spite of an increase in actual production since 1951, the farmer more and more is receiving less and less than a fair percentage of the total annual product.
It is no answer to say that in 1956 the share of Canadian agriculture began to approximate, to a degree that had not been so in preceding years, the net income of 1951, for the reason that the net national product of Canada in th._ same period has very materially increased, and as a result the disparity on the part of agriculture has increased and its share has decreased.
This is not a problem that affects only the farmers. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, in one of their briefs, have set out in detail the farmers' problems. They point out that the Canadian Chamber of Commerce recognizes that a sound and prosperous agriculture is vital to Canada's economy; that the interests of the agricultural industry and labour are interdependent, and the chamber therefore makes recommendations in detail as to the action that must be taken in order to preserve and increase agriculture's share of the gross national product. To those who object to farmers engaging in the marketing of their own products it is of interest to note that in recent representations made by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce these words appear:
The chamber recognizes the right of producers of farm products to act together with respect to the sale of their own products. The freedom of farmers to organize and seek a sound solution to the problem of marketing is part of our Canadian way of life.
I mention that because there are some who would lead people to believe that business in this country is opposed to co-operative farm organizations.
I mentioned a moment ago that one of the difficulties in which farmers find themselves today is the vast importation of farm products that is taking place in this country. The farmer finds himself handicapped by the failure of the government to act effectively regarding the imports of farm products, many of which seem to be dumped on the Canadian market and have a detrimental effect on the Canadian farmers' market. On the other hand the United States has followed the course of permitting the import of Canadian farm products into that country, but 82715-209J
Agricultural Products-Support Prices whenever these importations have a detrimental effect on United States farmers, immediately Canada finds its imports under quota or restricted.
It is of interest to note that we on this side of the house, and particularly members from the maritimes such as the hon. member for Victoria-Carleton (Mr. Montgomery) and all Conservative members from the maritimes, have pointed out the situation with regard to potatoes. No action was taken until April 5, 1957. As I listened today to the revelation of what is contemplated in connection with power in the maritimes I could not but think of the remarkable impetus the re-election of one Conservative government in New Brunswick and the election of a new Conservative government in Nova Scotia have had on the thinking of this government which for so long has refused to act. If we could have an election every year there would certainly be beneficial results in various parts of this country which have been lacking for so many years.


Mr. Hodgson:: We might even get something in Ontario.


John George Diefenbaker: Agricultural Products-Support Prices into Canada. I say that advisedly, because at the present time valuations are accepted on the basis of the invoice price. Unless a change is made in that regard and valuations based on fair market values are applied, the Canadian farmer will find himself very detrimentally affected. I refer particularly at the moment to the fruit farmers of this country. Indeed, Canadian markets are being flooded with United States potatoes, fruits and vegetables, because the United States can produce and ship its very high volume surplus and undersell Canadian competition. We find that one of the companies today is able to package goods-it is a company that operates in Canada as well-and send them to Canada, and the Canadian company cannot meet the competition of its own products. The Canadian canning companies, particularly the small ones, are faced with competition they cannot meet, with large foreign companies coming into Canada and seeming to operate without *egard to losses.
I mentioned some of the imports into Canada. I am going to summarize just a few. I find that in 1952 the importations of fruit, fresh, dried and canned, and fruit juices and syrups amounted to $99,761,000. In 1956 that amount increased to $121 million. Vegetable imports increased in the same period from approximately $41 million to some $50 million in 1956; poultry, fowl and turkeys from $290,000 in 1952 to $5,556,000 in 1956. Canned peaches-and this tells the story-imported from the United States in 11 months of 1956, the latest figures I have available, came to 8,614,000 pounds and canned fruits other than peaches amounted to 32,170,000 pounds.
This is a serious situation. We want trade, but we do not want Canada's agricultural producers challenged by unfair competition brought about by the dumping of farm products into Canada. The Canadian Horticultural Council, in its recommendations to the cabinet on February 14, said this:
It is doubtful if, at any time in the past, our primary producers of fruits and vegetables have been so exercised or have suffered such serious losses as during the past years, from the "dumping" of like products from the United States on the Canadian market. These products may not be "dumped" within the limited definition of that term in the Customs Act or the Customs Tariff Act, but the effects on the financial returns of the Canadian farmer are just the same as though they had been "dumped" within the definition of the legislation.
That, in general, represents the views of the horticultural council. It says that approximately 50 per cent by value of all exports to Canada of fresh fruits and vegetables enter duty free. Much of these free products are citrus fruits, pineapples, melons

and grapes, and they compete, of course, with Canadian fruits. Substantial concessions were made to the United States or to the interests of the United States effective June 30, 1956, on certain fruit juices, processed pineapples, cherries and other processed horticultural products, all of which compete with Canadian products, but for which-and this I underline-there is no compensating concession on Canadian horticultural products.
That situation is detrimental and serious to Canada. The agreements on tariffs and trade have not been lived up to by the United States. They have been lived up to by Canada, but in so far as the United States is concerned it has almost with impunity broken those agreements in connection with agricultural products, which very seriously affects the Canadian economy.
As far as the wheat markets are concerned, they have been undermined by the unlawful give-away programs of the United States which have caused patent injustices to Canada. I believe the time has come to say a word to the United States, a word that can be understood, that we Canadians object most strenuously to policies that are in derogation of the general agreement on tariffs and trade and to the detriment of the Canadian farmer.
Take flour, for instance, as a good example. The United States has a subsidy on wheat of $1.84 per hundredweight. I worked it out on the basis of a hundredweight. Its flour subsidy is $2.34 per hundredweight. In other words United States millers receive an extra subsidy of 50 cents per hundredweight on all wheat exported in the form of flour. The Canadian subsidy, which was introduced recently, the Minister of Trade and Commerce said would do something to meet this situation created by Canadian orders for flour being filled not in Canada from Canadian wheat, but in the United States from United States wheat bagged as though it were Canadian flour, with the export orders filled in a manner detrimental to us. The United States gives its flour millers a subsidy of 37J cents per hundredweight more than the Canadian government. Both wheats are approximately competitively priced in the export market. Our Canadian mills cannot compete with the current subsidy of 5J cents a bushel out of Atlantic ports.
We are losing our markets for flour because of effective action being taken by the United States and little action being taken by Canada. I believe if Canada wants to meet the situation it will have to increase the subsidy on flour so that Canada again may

start exporting in volume, and when she does our surpluses of wheat will be reduced.
Some ask, what about the cost in that connection? Well, I point out that when the wheat is kept in storage it costs the wheat board 20 cents per bushel per year, and if an extra subsidy were given on flour it would bring about savings in storage; it would stimulate Canadian production and would reduce, to the degree to which flour production was encouraged, our surpluses.
I mentioned, sir, the question of the Agricultural Prices Support Act; that a policy has developed that is used only in extreme circumstances, and that its present uses are not providing the necessary floors to maintain a responsible, profitable agriculture. We believe that a maximum of stability of income must be assured; that it is basic to Canada that the preservation of the agricultural machine shall be assured, and that having regard to the present use of floor prices under the Agricultural Prices Support Act, the producers of eggs, chickens and turkeys as well should be assured of a reasonable floor under their products.
Throughout the years we in this party have advocated that action be taken on behalf of the farmer, and I am going to set out in detail some of the suggestions we have made and the motions we have moved in order to answer the propaganda that is sometimes spread that the Conservative party has no interest in the welfare of the farmer. I go back to April 8, 1941, as reported in Hansard at page 2280 when, on a similar occasion on a motion to go into supply I had the honour to move, seconded by Mr. Gordon Graydon:
That the government should take immediate steps to create a parity of prices as between agriculture and other products in order to improve the condition of Canadian agriculture in order that it may receive a just and fair return.
Then on March 23, 1953, I moved on behalf of this party, as reported at page 3208 of Hansard:
In the opinion of this house consideration should be given to the advisability of introducing during the present session legislation to provide floor prices for agricultural products at such levels as to ensure producers a fair price-cost relationship.
Then on March 12, 1956, as reported at page 2026 of Hansard of that date, I moved on behalf of this party, seconded by the hon. member for Brant-Haldimand (Mr. Charlton):
That ... in the opinion of this house consideration should be given by the government to the advisability of introducing during the present session legislation to create a parity of prices for agricultural products at levels to ensure producers a fair price-cost relationship.
That has been our stand and it will continue to be our stand, although there has been misinterpretation of a stand we took
9, 1957	3305
Agricultural Products-Support Prices in January last. At that time, in keeping with our responsibilities and realizing that the motion that had been introduced could not be effectuated and indeed was suspect, we refused to give it our support. It was meaningless and designed to confuse and deceive, because it held out promises that could not be carried into effect. It denied the need of flexible floor prices and promised 100 per cent income, without in any way indicating what would be par in connection with such an income.
In other words through the years we have endeavoured to assure the farmer of a fair share of the national income. Our objective is the equality of farmers in Canada's economy. We believe that action must be taken to correct the social inequity and the inferior economic position into which agriculture has been allowed to fall. We believe that action must be taken and taken at once.
One has just to look at the purchasing power of the dollar to realize the situation in which the farmer finds himself in relation to the prices which are paid today for Canadian farm products. With regard to all cost of living items, if the dollar had a purchasing power of $1 in 1939, in January, 1957, it had shrunk to 53 cents. The food dollar with a purchasing power of $1 in 1939, in January, 1957, had a purchasing power of 45 cents. The shelter dollar has a purchasing power of 63 cents today. The rent dollar has a purchasing power of 62 cents, and the clothing dollar a purchasing power of 51 cents today.
Those percentages indicate the degree to which the dollar has depreciated. Farm prices, whatever their comparison may be with those that existed in the past, are lower in purchasing power than they have been at any time since 1931 and 1932, at the height of the world depression. At that time prices in every part of the world fell to rock bottom levels because of the world depression that affected all; yet today Canadian farm prices have depreciated to a degree that is comparable in terms of purchasing power only to the worst days of the world-wide depression.
We believe that action must be taken now. I have already mentioned the Agricultural Products Marketing Act. That is now before the house, and it has received and will receive our support in order to enable farmers to market their products in a democratic and orderly manner. We believe that action must also be taken to recover our lost and diminished markets, particularly the British market for agricultural products. In keeping with our conviction we have advocated and pressed for a British commonwealth trade conference so that farm product and other markets may be developed and expanded in
3306	HOUSE OF
Agricultural Products-Support Prices the commonwealth; but for some reason the members supporting the government have voted on every occasion against this demand and the motions I mentioned regarding farm prices.
We believe the time has come to investigate the very wide disparity between the price the farmer receives and the price paid by the consumer, as I pointed out a moment ago. We believe that the agricultural committee could have done a worth-while work in that connection had it been given the opportunity. Certainly it did not take the Minister of Agriculture very long to clear up the recent situation in connection with sheep. On that occasion he went into action quickly. Similar prompt action on the part of the government in convening the agricultural committee to investigate the disparity in the share the farmer receives of the ultimate consumer dollar would have paid dividends to the farmer.
We have repeated over and over again our belief that Canada should not stand idly by while its wheat markets are being lost through policies of the United States which are not fair or recognized competition but are actually policies that provide prices against which we cannot compete. These policies, as I said before, are contrary to the agreements that are in effect among the free nations of the world.
We believe, too, that action must be taken for the enactment of permanent floor price legislation based on a definite formula to allow for variations in production and demand for individual products. It is our contention that such floor prices should be announced well in advance of the production period each year and after consultation with representative producers and agricultural organization. We believe that a flexible price support program is the only means that will ensure an adequate parity for agricultural producers based on a fair price cost relationship. We hold the view that only by action such as this will be met the problem which the agricultural industry faces today of falling prices and increasing costs of production.
The farmer is caught in that ruthless squeeze. At the present time the problem has not been met nor has any effective action been taken to preserve and maintain the integrity of agriculture against the adverse effects of that squeeze. For that reason we in this party believe that action should be taken now, and I therefore move, seconded by the hon. member for Brant-Haldimand (Mr. Charlton):
[Mr. DiefenbakerJ

That all the words after "that" to the end of the question be deleted and the following substituted therefor:
"in the opinion of this house consideration should be given to introducing during the present session of parliament legislation which will assure farmers support prices for agricultural products based on a fair price-cost relationship, thereby resulting in agriculture receiving its reasonable share of the national income."


Walter Edward Harris: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order I would draw to your attention the fact that there was a vote on this subject, though not on the words used in the amendment, on one of the subamendments to the address in reply to the speech from the throne. I draw this to your attention, raising it as a point of order, without arguing the case at the moment.


Mr. Speaker:: Would the Minister of Finance be good enough to indicate the subamendment to which he has referred?


Walter Edward Harris: It was one moved by a member of the C.C.F. party.


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, I am not going to enter into an argument now. Apparently the motion to which the Minister of Finance refers is that of January 23, which is entirely different from the present motion. That motion read:
We regret that Your Excellency's advisers seem to favour a flexible price support program, the effect of which is to leave the agriculture industry in a state of uncertainty and insecurity: we also regret that Your Excellency's advisors have failed to take the necessary steps to establish a system of parity prices for agricultural products at levels to ensure 100 per cent parity of income for agricultural producers.
I submit that the present motion is not in any way similar to that motion of January 23.


James Garfield Gardiner: I would just like to suggest, Mr. Speaker, that the Leader of the Opposition used that motion made on January 23 as the main point in his speech just delivered.


Mr. Quelch:: Mr. Speaker, the motion of the Progressive Conservative party is merely a somersaulting of their former position.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Speaker, we have just heard the hon. member for Acadia (Mr. Quelch) trying to smuggle a speech into a discussion of a point of order.
I take it the Minister of Finance has raised a question of order in regard to the amendment. If the point is seriously raised, then I suggest that the answer given by the Leader of the Opposition is a complete reply to the minister's contention. The Leader of the Opposition in the course of his remarks, quite apart from what he has said on the point of

order, clearly established the essential difference between the amendment which has been introduced today and the amendment introduced on January 23, which he has just read from page 582 of Hansard.
Mr. Speaker, that amendment dealt with two things. It drew attention to the fact that His Excellency's advisors "seem to favour a flexible price support program the effect of which is to leave the agricultural industry in a state of uncertainty and insecurity." The second part of the motion expressed regret that His Excellency's advisors had "failed to take the necessary steps to establish a system of parity prices for agricultural products at levels to ensure 100 per cent parity of income for agricultural producers."
Sir, you will see that the purport of the present motion is quite different from that of the amendment on page 582 of Hansard, which was voted on by the house on January 23. The present amendment calls upon the government to introduce legislation at this session for a purpose which, in my submission, is not the purpose stated in the amendment of January 23, when regret was expressed that His Excellency's advisers had not recommended a certain course.
Now, sir, I think it is quite clear that the Minister of Finance in raising this point in an offhand way does not take his own objection to the amendment very seriously.


Walter Edward Harris: Well, Mr. Speaker, I do not
want that impression to be left without saying this. I have listened to the Leader of the Opposition making it quite clear that he is drawing a distinction between parity prices and support prices. That, I take it, is the burden of the amendment and the burden of his argument. I gather that is the point, and in those circumstances I can see he is about to make a distinction which, I may say, I expected him to try to make before the session was over.


Charles Edward Johnston: On this
point of order, Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that our party should have been supplied with a copy of this amendment. We have not got one. Thank you; I have just received one now. I would like to say a few words about this amendment. It says:
That all the words after "that" to the end of the question be deleted and the following substituted therefor:
"in the opinion of this house consideration should be given to introducing during the present session of parliament legislation which will assure farmers support prices for agricultural products based on a fair price-cost relationship, thereby resulting in agriculture receiving its reasonable share of the national income."
I have just read over the C.C.F. amendment on page 582 of Hansard, and it is in
9. 1957	3307
Agricultural Products-Support Prices almost identical terms. Certainly if the words are not identical the meaning is clearly the same, and it does seem to me that we should not be cluttering up the record with amendments which, for all practical purposes, have the same wording. I am not trying to make a political issue out of this. It does not make any difference to me, because we did not move the first motion nor did we move this. We have, of course, supported the principle throughout. But it does seem to me we should not have two almost identical motions placed before this house. We voted on this on January 23, and I do not see why the house should be required to vote on the same thing again on this occasion.


Mr. H. W. Herridge (Kootenay West):: Mr. Speaker, I was under the impression when I heard the amendment read that it was out of order, but after hearing the explanation of the hon. member for Eglinton that the purpose of this amendment is not the same as the purpose of the amendment moved by this group, that is that the purpose of the amendment moved by the Progressive Conservative party is not the same as ours, I presume it is in order.


John Alpheus Charlton: I
think one point should be made clear, Mr. Speaker. The Minister of Finance has just stated that the Leader of the Opposition differentiated between a parity price and a reasonable support price. He did not. But the fact that "parity price" had been used in the previous amendment is the reason for it not being used in this one.
r leming:
we snouia Dear in mind.
Mr. Speaker, that what was said in the amendment of January 23 was very specific. It said in the second part:
-we also regret that Your Excellency's advisers have failed to take the necessary steps to establish a system of parity prices for agricultural products at levels to ensure 100 per cent parity of income for agricultural producers.
I emphasize that it says "100 per cent of parity of income for agricultural producers". In the amendment before you this morning-


Charles Edward Johnston: Read the first part, too.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I did read the first part of the amendment of January 23 earlier. The first part refers to a flexible price support program. It claims that His Excellency's advisers "seem to favour a flexible price support program, the effect of which is to leave the agricultural industry in a state of uncertainty and insecurity".


Charles Edward Johnston: That is exactly what you have in your amendment today.


Mr. Weir:: What is the difference?
3308	HOUSE OF
Agricultural Products-Support Prices


Donald Methuen Fleming: I think the difference is very clear. It is obvious that the parliamentary assistant to the Prime Minister has not seen or considered the terms of this morning's amendment. What it does is express the opinion now that during the present session of parliament legislation should be introduced which will assure to farmers support prices for agricultural products based on a fair price-cost relationship, thereby resulting in agriculture receiving its reasonable share of the national income. The amendment of January 23 staked its whole case upon 100 per cent parity of income for agricultural producers, that is to say, parity of income and at the 100 per cent level.
What the amendment this morning does is to propose that legislation should be introduced to assure farmers support prices for agricultural products based on a fair price-cost relationship, thereby resulting in agriculture receiving its reasonable share of the national income. I submit that there is a clear distinction between the two. The amendment of January 23 was very specific on a particular matter. The amendment this morning does not transgress on the decision of the house with regard to that particular matter, but states in its own terms that what is required is legislation which will assure farmers support prices for their products based on a fair price-cost relationship.


Mr. Speaker:: I see that it is getting close to one o'clock. I presume if the hon. member for Humboldt-Melfort has a subamendment to move he will only move it at the end of his speech, and that he will take longer than 15 minutes to address the house. Therefore I would have from 1 p.m. to 2.30 p.m. to examine the points that have been advanced with respect to the amendment.


Mr. Bryson:: If I might make a comment on the matter, I do not think the Leader of the Opposition has put forward anything different in debating his amendment than he did in debating our amendment. I intend to say a few words on this amendment.


Donald Methuen Fleming: On a point of order, I hope the hon. gentleman will permit me to say that he has quite overlooked the fact that the amendment he speaks of was introduced in the house only about 15 minutes before the vote on it was taken on January 23. It was the last day of debate on the throne speech, and that amendment was brought in after the amendment introduced by the Leader of the Opposition and the subamendment introduced by the C.C.F. had been disposed of on previous days. It was the final day of debate. Under the rules the vote on the motion to adopt the address was to be taken at 5.30 p.m. The hon. member for Yorkton, who introduced


that amendment, rose in his place at five o'clock and spoke until about 5.17, at which time he moved his amendment.
Then the hon. member for Hamilton South rose in his place and spoke until 5.30. Therefore the Leader of the Opposition had no opportunity to speak on the amendment. No member of Her Majesty's loyal opposition spoke on this amendment or had any opportunity to do so. It was just a last minute amendment brought in in that way, a precipitate attempt to stampede the house on a very complicated amendment, one that had two prongs to it which in certain respects were somewhat contradictory.


Mr. Speaker:: Whenever a member has a right to move a subamendment I do not think the hon. member for Eglinton needs to indicate, no matter at what time the member does so, that it is a precipitate attempt to stampede the house. When a member has a right to do a certain thing and it happens that there are not very many minutes left before the vote is taken, I do not think the execution of that right is to be construed as a precipitate attempt to stampede the house. I do not think the hon. member for Eglinton would want to leave that impression.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Speaker, if you will permit me, I was dealing with the statement made by the hon. member for Humboldt-Melfort that the Leader of the Opposition had spoken on the amendment of January 23 and had taken a different position in his speech today. The Leader of the Opposition did not speak on that amendment. He did not have the opportunity to do so.
With respect to my comment on the amendment and the time of its introduction, I am not suggesting at all that every time an amendment is brought in at the last minute it is necessarily precipitate or done for the purpose of stampeding the house. However, I draw to your attention, sir, that on that particular occasion the C.C.F. had had their opportunity to introduce a subamendment to the amendment of the Leader of the Opposition on the throne speech. They had done so and their amendment had been disposed of. This amendment was brought in actually less than 15 minutes before the vote on it became necessary under the rules of the house. No member of Her Majesty's loyal opposition had an opportunity to speak on it.


Mr. Speaker:: A member has a right to move a subamendment at such a time, and I do not think any hon. member should say that what a member does in the execution of his right is a precipitate attempt to stampede the house.


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, on a question of privilege, this gives me the opportunity to clarify a story that has been circulating. The statement was made by the hon. member for Humboldt-Melfort that I spoke on the amendment of January 23. I did not speak on it. I had no opportunity to speak on it because the circumstances were as outlined by the hon. member who has just taken his seat. I want to clear up once and for all that not only did I not have the opportunity of speaking on that amendment of January 23, but that it was brought in at such a time as to make certain that I would not have that opportunity.


Hugh Alexander Bryson: On a question of privilege, I want to assure the Leader of the Opposition that I was not referring to what took place on January 23. I was referring to the remarks he made today. He misunderstood what I said.


John George Diefenbaker: If that is clear, that is fine.


Hugh Alexander Bryson: Before you make a ruling, Mr. Speaker, may I say that I cannot see any possible difference between a fair cost-price relationship and the amendment we moved on the occasion to which the Leader of the Opposition has referred, which amendment dealt with parity prices. The point I am trying to make is that in his remarks in debating the amendment that has been moved today the Leader of the Opposition used the same arguments that were used by all parties in debating our amendment.
I wish to say a few words on this matter, and I want to make it clear before I start that on the basis of the amendment proposed I have to make exactly the same kind of speech I made in debating our amendment because, as far as I am concerned, they are identical.


Donald Methuen Fleming: On a point of order, the hon. member did not speak on the amendment of January 23. The only person who spoke on it was the mover. Only one speech was made on that amendment, and the hon. member for Humboldt-Melfort should not say what he has just said about having made the speech on that amendment that he would propose to make on today's amendment. Only one speech was made at that time, and it was that of the mover of the amendment. The hon. member for Hamilton South followed him but spoke on an entirely different subject. Therefore there was only one speech, that of the mover of the amendment, on January 23.


Mr. Colin Cameron (Nanaimo):: On a point of order, may I suggest to Your Honour that it is not in order for a member to debate the content of a speech being made by another
Agricultural Products-Support Prices member of the house. If he thinks misstatements have been made he has his opportunity to enter the debate and correct them.


Clayton Wesley Hodgson: How are the sheep?


Mr. Speaker:: I took it that the hon. member for Humboldt-Melfort was pursuing the question of order, because that is still being debated at the moment.


Colin Cameron: To the first interruption in his speech.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Humboldt-Melfort, if I recall the matter correctly, indicated that he was not yet addressing his remarks to the amendment but that he was discussing the matter of order. He warned the house that if this amendment is construed to be in order he will be obliged to make the same speech he would have made on the previous amendment moved on January 23. After doing that he resumed his seat. I take it that, since the Leader of the Opposition concluded his address, all that has been discussed so far are matters of order. If there are further representations to be made on the point of order I shall be pleased to hear them. Otherwise I would ask the house to allow me to call it one o'clock so I may study the matter during the luncheon recess and make a ruling, if necessary, at 2.30.


Some hon. Members:: One o'clock.


Mr. T. S. Barnett (Comox-Alberni):: Further to the point of order, Mr. Speaker, may I say this. I feel I should say that I fail to understand why the hon. member for Eglin-ton in his last remarks should persist in the statement he previously made, namely that the hon. member for Humboldt-Melfort was referring to a speech purported to be made by the Leader of the Opposition last January, inasmuch as the hon. member for Humboldt-Melfort had just finished explaining that he was referring to the remarks made by the Leader of the Opposition this morning.


Donald Methuen Fleming: But he went on after that.


Thomas Speakman Barnett: After the hon. member for Humboldt-Melfort had made that explanation which, as I took it, had been accepted by the Leader of the Opposition, the hon. member for Eglinton immediately rose in his place and proceeded to repeat the allegation he had previously made in reference to what the hon. member for Humboldt-Melfort was talking about. I think that point should be made clear.


Some hon. Members:: One o'clock.
3310	HOUSE OF
Agricultural Products-Support Prices Mr. Speaker: Would hon. members agree to my calling it one o'clock now?


Some hon. Members:: One o'clock.
At one o'clock the house took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The house resumed at 2.30 p.m.
Hugh Alexander Bryson: I rise on a question of privilege, Mr. Speaker, arising out of the remarks made by the Leader of the Opposition before the luncheon recess in which he referred to a C.C.F. amendment which was moved on January 23. As I recall it, he said this amendment was introduced at such a time as to make certain that he would have no opportunity to debate it.
I recall, Mr. Speaker, that when the hon. member for Yorkton (Mr. Castleden) rose to propose the amendment he stated he was going to leave ample time for the amendment to be debated. At the conclusion of the remarks by the hon. member for Yorkton the debate was continued by the hon. member for Hamilton South (Mr. Reinke). I suggest, therefore, that the statement of the Leader of the Opposition is not in accord with the facts.


Mr. Speaker:: It looks as if I have the
floor now. This is not an easy matter to decide. The amendment which was moved by the Leader of the Opposition reads as follows:
In the opinion of this house consideration should be given to introducing during the present session of parliament legislation which will assure farmers support prices for agricultural products based on a fair price-cost relationship, thereby resulting in agriculture receiving its reasonable share of the national income.
It has been contended that the terms of this amendment are similar to the terms of other amendments moved in the course of the present session, and that therefore citation 332 of Beauchesne's third edition should govern. This citation reads:
It is a rule in both houses, which is essential to the due performance of their duties, that no question or bill shall be offered that is substantially the same as one on which their judgment has already been expressed in the current session.
What are the other amendments that have been offered which it is claimed were in similar terms to the one moved today by the Leader of the Opposition? It has been said that there was one moved on January 23 by the hon. member for Yorkton and which reads as follows:
We regret, however, that Your Excellency's advisers seem to favour a flexible price support program, the effect of which is to leave the


agricultural industry in a state of uncertainty and insecurity; we also regret that Your Excellency's advisers have failed to take the necessary steps to establish a system of parity prices for agricultural products at levels to ensure 100 per cent parity of income for agricultural producers.
It has been advanced further that the subject matter of the amendment moved today by the Leader of the Opposition was included in the terms of a subamendment moved by the hon. member for Red Deer on January 17 and the vote on which appears in the Journals on page 61. This subamendment reads as follows:
-and, by reason of their failure to take effective action to stop the continuous rise in the cost of living; their failure to lay down and follow policies under which Canadian farmers and other primary producers can enjoy an equitable share of the prosperity which Canada can achieve; and their failure to bring old age pensions and other social security payments into line with the present cost of living.
Perhaps I should point out also that on the motion to go into committee of ways and means for the purpose of the presentation of the budget the hon. member for Greenwood (Mr. Macdonnell) moved an amendment on behalf of the official opposition as recorded at page 2469 of Hansard for March 19, 1957, subparagraph (d) of which reads:
(d) ignores the problems and needs of agriculture.
The general paragraph of that amendment was an follows:
This house regrets that the economic policy of the government fails, despite a very large surplus, to meet the needs of the Canadian people and in particular-
Then follow paragraphs (a) (b) (c), and then (d) which reads:
-ignores the problems and needs of agriculture.
It would appear that we are now being faced with the consequences of wide amendments being moved to the address in reply to the speech from the throne, to supply motions when they are presented to be debated, and also to the motion to go into committee of ways and means for the purpose of the presentation of the budget. I have already pointed out to the house that difficulties may ensue from the moving of omnibus amendments to these various questions which provide the house with opportunities for moving want of confidence motions.
If I had, since the beginning of this session, adhered strictly to the rules as they are laid down, it would have been my duty to declare out of order motions which were moved previously. By examining these various amendments one can easily see the wide amendment that was moved in reply to the speech from the throne, and that the various

subjects that were contained therein were later repeated in amendments moved on supply motions which took place on Monday, February 11 and later on the budget on March 19.
I did not declare some of those amendments out of order because I took it the house would agree with me that these opportunities, which are opposition opportunities to move want of confidence motions, offer great latitude. Were I today to interpret the rules as they should be interpreted, which I failed to do earlier this session under similar circumstances, one could very well say if this motion today, which is in similar terms to motions on which decisions were given earlier in the session, is to be declared out of order, why were other amendments not dealt with in the same way? Hon. members could point to other amendments which were moved earlier in this session, at which time I merely pointed out to the house that they should not be used as a basis for similar amendments in the future and that hon. members should be careful not to move omnibus amendments. I pointed out the difficulties which might be presented and gave warnings which I think have been proven to be quite borne out today. Nevertheless I think the problem is deeper than that.
There is only one amendment and one subamendment to a motion to go into supply, and there are few opportunities for amendments to be moved on such motions. While technically the amendment appears to be out of order, I want to tell the house that I would hesitate to declare it out of order, although citation 332 says that a matter that is offered that is substantially the same as one on which the judgment of the house has already been expressed in the current session is not in order. The purpose of this citation is further explained in the second paragraph, which says in part:
Unless such a rule were in existence, the time of the house might be used in the discussion of motions of the same nature and contradictory decisions would be sometimes arrived at in the course of the same session.
I have referred to the record, and I find that when a motion which is more closely similar to this amendment was moved there was no discussion on it. Only one member spoke after the motion was moved, and that was the hon. member for Hamilton South who spoke on a subject which was totally different from that which had been introduced in the amendment moved by the hon. member for Yorkton. Therefore, in discussing the same matter today, if it is the same matter, we would not be repeating a discussion of the same nature because there was no discussion of the previous one.
9, 1957	3311
Agricultural Products-Support Prices
A few years ago when an amendment to the address in reply to the speech from the throne was moved the debate was supposed to be relevant to that amendment. When a subamendment followed, the debate was supposed to be relevant to the subamendment. Such was the policy on the amendment and the subamendment to the motion to go into supply and on the amendment and the subamendment to the motion to go into ways and means on the budget. But we all know that the house itself has been dispensing with those rules for a long time, and that notwithstanding the fact that a specific subamendment dealing with such a thing as health insurance is moved, hon. members talk not immediately to the amendment but may talk about wheat and various other matters concerning the economy of the country and the policies of the government in general.
I would be inclined today, especially since we are coming to the close of the session and this is the last opportunity the opposition has to move a want of confidence motion, to take a broad meaning of the rules and be guided by citation 338, which reads:
The object of an amendment may be to effect such an alteration in a question as will obtain the support of those who, without such alteration, must either vote against it or abstain from voting thereon, or to present to the house an alternative proposition either wholly or partially opposed to the original question.
I take it that those who believe the amendment moved by the Leader of the Opposition today is different in terms and in meaning from those which were contained in the amendment moved by the hon. member for Yorkton, because of the great latitude given in all those debates I mentioned earlier; because of the fact that the members who have moved this amendment feel that they are entitled to a decision of the house on a matter which is quite different, I would ask the house, even if a majority were of the opinion that it is similar, to go along with my suggestion that we dispense with a strict adherence to the rules.
In any event, I am not prepared today to be technical and declare the amendment out of order on what I consider to be merely technical grounds, unless I am overruled by the house. I will allow the amendment.


Hugh Alexander Bryson: Mr. Speaker, regardless of the interpretation the official opposition may place on the particular amendment they have moved today, and regardless of the interpretation they place on the phraseology or terms that have been used by the CCF party on this side of the house at the other times, so far as we in this group are concerned it is all one and the same proposition. I think one thing can be said, namely that in moving this amendment

Agricultural Products-Support Prices today the Conservatives have given a clear indication to this house and to this country that the ghosts are returning to haunt the stand the Conservative party took on a former occasion when we had a debate on agricultural matters in this house.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Utter nonsense.


Hugh Alexander Bryson: I must concur wholeheartedly in the remarks made before lunch by the hon. member for Acadia, when he termed the stand the Conservative party is taking now as a capitulation from the stand they took not very long ago. One thing has been made clear. We have seen today a further unveiling of a new Conservative agricultural policy in this country.


Mr. Casselman:: You are having a dream.


Hugh Alexander Bryson: From reading press reports and from listening to the statements the Conservative party have been frequently making in this house of late, if one were asked to comment on the new Conservative agricultural policy in this country the only comment one could make in reply would be, "I can make no statement until I read tomorrow's newspapers."


Mr. Rowe:: Judging by what the hon. member is saying I would say that he has not read yesterday's newspapers.


Hugh Alexander Bryson: Apparently they are not in favour of 100 per cent parity income for agriculture. They voted against the amendment when we introduced it, and they said they voted against it because it was a trick amendment. Mr. Speaker, I do not think there is much of a trick involved in trying to get a fair share of the national income for agriculture in this country.


Mr. Dinsdale:: There was no time to discuss it.


Hugh Alexander Bryson: You had opportunity. The hon. member for Hamilton South had ample opportunity in that very same debate.


Mr. Churchill:: How many minutes?


Donald Methuen Fleming: That is not right.


Gordon Minto Churchill: There was no opportunity for debate.


Donald Methuen Fleming: That is not true.


Hugh Alexander Bryson: I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, on the basis of even this new Conservative agricultural policy that we heard expounded here today, if it should ever happen that the Conservative party forms the next government in this country the farmers will be out singing the same old song they are singing now, "We've got plenty of nothing". Certainly the Leader of the Official Opposition-and
this is the last remark I am going to make in that connection-lamented the position of Canadian agriculture. He went to great lengths to describe the very serious position in which the farmer and the agricultural producer throughout this country find themselves today. But he forgot to tell this house and this country just what his party is going to do about it.


Clayton Wesley Hodgson: We have an amendment here, and you are talking against it.


Hugh Alexander Bryson: Mr. Speaker, I do not like to thresh old straw but, as I said before lunch, in debating this amendment I am going to have to reiterate the same old arguments that have been used on other occasions during this session when we debated similar amendments.
I am not going to take exception to the figures placed on the record by the Leader of the Opposition. He mentioned today that the costs of agricultural producers in this country had increased by 20 per cent. He also pointed out that the share of the national income which is going to agriculture today has dropped to 6 per cent. As a matter of fact, I think it is fair to say that in the last 10 years the share of the national income going to agricultural producers in this country has dropped from something in the neighbourhood of 11 per cent to something in the neighbourhood of 5.6 per cent. I would go even further and say that since 1951 the net farm income in western Canada has dropped by 66g per cent.
There has certainly been some increase in farm cash income in the last year or so, in the last year in particular; but I contend, sir, that farm net income is still declining. To substantiate that statement I wish to refer the house to the report of the Saskatchewan wheat pool in which we find that the average price the farmers in western Canada can expect to receive from the sale of their wheat for last year will be $1.29 per bushel f.o.b. Fort William.
When you consider that because of the cost-price squeeze, and the unfair relationship between the farmer's cost of production on the one hand and the price he receives for his produce on the other, you readily realize that today the farmer is attempting to operate with a 45-cent dollar. Certainly that gives some appreciation of the problem that agricultural producers in this country are experiencing.
I believe it is fair to say that of all industries in this country, agriculture is the most depressed at the present time. During the past few years the government has brought in a great many measures in an effort to alleviate the problem of agriculture but they see it as a local problem and fail to recognize


that the problem of agriculture is national. If it is going to be solved it must be solved on a national basis. The government must recognize the problem of agriculture as a national problem.
The treatment the agricultural producer is receiving today is somewhat different and a trifle removed from the treatment this government is according to practically every industry in this country with the exception of agriculture. To illustrate my point I would like to draw your attention, Mr. Speaker, to the position of one of the leading branches of a Canadian industry. I wish to put on the record a description of the position of Canada Packers Limited, in order that we may compare it with the position occupied by the agricultural industry, because of the different treatment that has been accorded it.
I have here a list of figures showing the capital investment and the profit on the capital investment of Canada Packers Limited, a relatively small part of one industry with capital investment assets of something in the neighbourhood of $30,750,000. The figures contained in the annual report of Canada Packers Limited show an average profit for ten years of 27J per cent on their capital investment. This is more than three times the expected return on general capital investment, and 25 times more than was received by farmers on their capital investment in 1954.
I have just pointed out that the capital investment of Canada Packers Limited is $30,750,000, yet the capital investment of Canadian agriculture is in excess of $10 billion, so there we have a picture of the kind of treatment that is accorded to one industry in this country as compared to another. I submit, sir, that what has been accomplished by Canada Packers Limited is a fair illustration of what is being accomplished by every other industry in this country with the exception of agriculture.
I have said that measures must be taken that have not yet been taken to date to grapple with this problem. There must be recognition of the over-all problem of agriculture. The time has come when we must stop trying to solve the agricultural problem in this country by the implementation of a series of ad hoc pieces of legislation. Unless we do something by way of introducing a comprehensive agricultural policy in this country the agricultural industry is headed for bankruptcy.
We in this party stand foursquare for a comprehensive agricultural policy based on the concept of parity prices, prices that bear a fair relationship to the cost of production on the one hand and the price received by
9, 1957	3313
Agricultural Products-Support Prices the agricultural producer on the other. We are not even asking that the farmer be allowed to make a profit, nor are we suggesting, as the Canadian Pacific Railway are suggesting, that they should have the people of Canada subsidize them to the extent that they can show a profit on their capital investment of 4.71 per cent. We are simply suggesting that a parity price would be one that would bear a fair relationship to the costs and prices of a producer.
I am not carried away with the proposition of a two-price sytem. I think it is possible that we in Canada are going to have to accept a two-price system before we are going to get a comprehensive over-all policy of parity prices, but I think first of all we must establish the principle before we talk about the details.
There has been a lot of talk about deficiency payments. I am now speaking personally, for myself. As I say, I am not at all carried away with the proposition of deficiency payments on two counts. First of all, I think it is politically dishonest for anyone to go out land suggest that the people of Canada through the public treasury should pay the farmer a deficiency payment. That is a back door method of saying we are going to pay a subsidy. Why not be honest about it and say that the farmer deserves a parity price, one bearing a fair relationship to his costs and the price he receives for his products, rather than say, "We are going to pay you $1 a bushel for wheat. We know the parity price is $1.90, but by some back door method on a dark night in a back alley we are going to take out of the public treasury the difference between $1 and $1.90 and give it to you, and hope that we can get away with it without the people of Canada finding out about it".
I do not like that policy because I think it is politically dishonest. I am not worried that $2 a bushel is going to mean that the consumer in this country is going to pay more for the bread he buys.
Because it has been proved conclusively that if the price of wheat today were set at the parity price of $2.20 a bushel it would only raise the price of wheat by possibly three-quarters of a cent or 1 cent a loaf. As a matter of fact, statistics prove conclusively that if the farmer today gave his wheat to the millers for nothing it would lead to a reduction of only 3 cents in the cost of a loaf of bread. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I am not too concerned about deficiency payments. I think, first of all, that it is politically dishonest, and I say that on my own account rather than for the party. That is one point to which I take exception.
The other point is this. I am not in favour of deficiency payments for the simple
3314	HOUSE OF
Agricultural Products-Support Prices reason that I can see this pattern developing; a deficiency payment must be based on a fair price to the producer, and if the market is congested at a time when a farmer has a load of hogs or cattle what is to prevent a dealer coming to him and saying, "The market is not going to accept your produce today at the price you want for it. Sell it to me for a little less. You are going to get a deficiency payment anyway; why keep it on your hands?" Perhaps I am wrong, but at the moment I am not over concerned about fighting the case for deficiency payments. My proposition is this. Let us call spades, spades. Let us be honest. Deficiency payments, if they are made, are going to be based on prices, which are parity prices. So let us come out and say we are going to have a parity price.
Heaven knows we have a difficult job as it is in trying to sell to the people of eastern Canada-and perhaps it is understandable that they should think so-the proposition that interim and final payments from the Canadian wheat board are not subsidies paid out of the public treasury. We have not been able to sell even that proposition, let alone this proposition of deficiency payments as being nothing but a subsidy. Having said that, I want to add that we in this party stand foursquare on this concept and principle of a parity price.
What is a parity price? As far as I am concerned I shall be honest about it, and admit that it would be a very difficult task to say categorically what a parity price is; and I think any hon. member would be in the same difficulty. But my conception of a parity price, and the conception of a parity price which is held by the party which I represent, is not, for instance, a high support price on all the wheat we could grow in western Canada. That is not my conception, because I do not honestly think we can go on producing 400, 500 or 600 million bushels of wheat in this country and get away with it. I maintain that a parity price is a combination of a great many things. It means a system of crop insurance; it means a system of long and short-term credit; it means cash advances; it means marketing boards-


Gordon Minto Churchill: You are reading a lot into the word "parity".


Hugh Alexander Bryson: It means an extension of the marketing policies of the government; and all these things combined, I maintain, will give the farmer a parity price.
Hon. members have been talking about a parity price for wheat. I think we must face it that there is bound to be a reduction in the volume of a lot of things which are grown in this country. By that I do not


mean we shall need to curtail total production, but that we are going to have to curtail production in some directions; and I suggest we shall have to curtail the production of wheat.
A parity price will simply mean that people will be able to diversify their farming. A farmer who is now engaged strictly in wheat farming will be able to change the nature of his operation, something he cannot do at the present time because of the high cost such a change would involve. A farmer may be farming on marginal land which is, strictly speaking, not suitable for the production of wheat at all. That is the case with regard to a good deal of the land in my own area. I submit that we should not grow any wheat there at all, because we grow a wheat of low protein quality. Let the people down in Rosetown grow the wheat; they are the people who are in the best position to grow it. But there are other things we can grow better in the area where I live than anywhere else in Saskatchewan.
If I were to change my operation from a wheat operation to something else it would cost a lot of money, but if I knew I was going to get a parity price for what I produced as a result of the transfer of my operation to one which would be more efficient, I would do it and be glad to do it. Unless we do have a parity price system, however, which would encourage a farmer to switch his production to a more diversified type of agriculture, he would be a fool to do it before he received some assurance that at least his capital investment would be protected. There is not an industry in this country which would make a large capital investment unless it knew when the first soil was turned exactly how long it would take before the cost of the capital investment was recovered.
Mr. Speaker, I will say nothing further in that regard. I declare categorically that we stand foursquare for a comprehensive agricultural policy based on the principle of parity price, and we shall keep on fighting for the implementation of that policy. Now I move, seconded by the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Zaplitny):
That the amendment be amended by deleting therefrom the words "its reasonable share of the national income" and by substituting therefor the following words:	"a share of the national
income based on parity".


Victor Quelch: Mr. Speaker, it is becoming more and more difficult to speak on this subject without indulging in some form of repetition, because this is the fourth amendment we have had this session on the question of parity prices. For that reason I will speak at less length than I would normally do.

In speaking on agriculture I have always taken the stand on behalf of this group that we believe a sound long-term agricultural policy to be essential not merely for the welfare of the farmer but also for the welfare of the Canadian people and the people of the world at large. The only way people can be well fed is by agriculture maintaining its production at a high level, and when you consider that today 50 per cent of the world's population is undernourished it becomes evident that it is necessary for agriculture to remain efficient so we can produce an abundance of food.
We have taken the stand that sound agricultural policy requires support prices. We believe that those support prices should be given on the basis of a two-price system. We believe it is necessary to do everything in our power to expand markets, both domestic and external, and that we should have a system of all-risk crop insurance.
Let me come back to the question of support prices. We see a lot of criticism in eastern newspapers to the suggestion that the prices of farm products should be supported. You often read the statement in eastern newspapers that the farmers are always asking for a hand-out, and why should the farmers be guaranteed support prices? I maintain there is a very good reason why the farmers are justified in asking for support prices. I maintain that when the farmers ask for support prices they are not asking for a hand-out in any shape or form, but are merely asking the government to keep their end of a contract that was made in the latter years of the war.
It will be remembered that in the latter years of the war we had price ceilings on farm products along with price ceilings on other commodities, and that many farmers were very critical of the government when it placed ceilings on farm products. Why? For the very simple reason that during the depression years the farmers were told time and again that they could not expect the government to do anything about prices because farm prices were low internationally. They were told that it was a world situation, and therefore they would have to be satisfied to accept world prices even though they were low for their farm products. Yet very shortly after the declaration of war the farmers were told they could not have world prices. Prices had gone up and they were told that world prices were too high and they would have to take lower prices.
You cannot have it both ways. If the farmers have to take world prices when they are low they are entitled to world prices when they are high. They were denied that
Agricultural Products-Support Prices privilege in the latter years of the war, and it made it that much more difficult for farmers to pay off the debts incurred as the result of producing at depressed prices during the depression years. Farm organizations repeated what I have said to the government on various occasions, and the government finally told them that in return for accepting a ceiling on farm prices they would be guaranteed support prices as part of a permanent postwar policy. Many members on this side of the house have quoted from time to time the speech made by the former prime minister of the country in which he said that in return for the farmers accepting a ceiling on their products during the war they would be guaranteed support prices after the war, and as a sign of good faith the government brought in the Agricultural Prices Support Act.
We have heard a lot of discussion as to just what is meant by parity. Section 9 of the Agricultural Prices Support Act does provide a form of parity. It says that the board will step in and buy farm products when the prices fall below the level of other products, and that they will endeavour to maintain prices of farm products at a fair relationship to the prices of other commodities. That is what is meant by parity in this case, a price that bears a fair relationship to the prices of other commodities.
Under the agricultural prices support board formula three years, 1943, 1944 and 1945, were established as the base period, and it was said that we would maintain the prices of farm products so today they would bear the same relationship to the prices of other commodities that existed in the three base years. When the farmers ask the government to live up to that formula they are merely asking the government to keep faith with the promise that was made at the end of the war; yet we find that today support prices are not on that basis but are well below it.
I have here a table I received from the agricultural prices support board dated January 11, 1957. In this table I note that the support price for butter is only 81 per cent of parity, based upon the years 1943, 1944 and 1945; that the support price of 23 cents for hogs is only 80 per cent of parity, and that the support price of 38 cents for eggs is only 54 per cent of parity.
Some suggestion has been made that 100 per cent of parity is too high, but this is merely 100 per cent of parity on the basis of the years 1943, 1944 and 1945. Is anybody going to suggest that during the years 1943, 1944 and 1945 the prices of agricultural products were too high compared with the prices of other commodities? I do not think

Agricultural Products-Support Prices anybody would dare say that, because at that time the prices of farm products were still fairly low by comparison. Therefore when we say today that prices of farm products should be maintained at 100 per cent of parity in relation to the years 1943, 1944 and 1945, all we are asking is that the same relationship should exist today between the prices of farm products and the prices of other commodities that existed in those years when price ceilings were in operation. Nobody would suggest for one minute that that would be unreasonable, and for anybody to suggest that the farmers should only get a percentage of that is to suggest that the farmers should only receive a percentage of a fair price instead of 100 per cent of a fair price.
Some people will say that the farmers have not done too badly. We continually hear people say that gross income is up, but gross income means nothing at all unless at the same time you take costs into consideration. If income goes up and costs go up at a greater rate than income, then the net income is going to be less. It is true that in 1957 there has been a slight improvement, but if we go back ten years what do we find was the situation?
The western pools presented a brief to the cabinet on March 9, 1957, which included tables showing prices of farm products and costs for the ten years from 1947 to 1956 inclusive. If anybody is in any doubt as to the condition of agriculture, let them peruse that brief. This is what it shows. Saskatchewan farm costs today are 45.9 per cent higher than they were ten years ago, while farm prices are 7.1 per cent lower than they were in 1947. What happened? For a few years after 1947 farm prices and farm costs rose pretty evenly, until approximately 1951. From 1951 onward farm costs continued to rise and farm prices started to fall with the result that comparing today with 1947 we find that farm costs have gone up over 45 per cent while farm income has dropped 7.1 per cent.
That, of course, is why the farmers are suffering from a cost-price squeeze. That is why I say most definitely that the government has not kept faith with the farmers. It has not kept the promise made by the then prime minister that if the farmers would agree to accept price ceilings the government in return would stabilize prices in the future. As I say, the government has not lived up to that promise.
I am sure anybody who is not familiar with parity prices will be very confused if they read Hansard of this session and the various motions that have been made. I would say

that anybody who is familiar with parity prices would be even more confused as to the stand of the Conservative party. If I am in order I should like to quote the different amendments that have been moved, to see if we can get some sense out of what they say and the action that has been taken with regard to them. On January 17 the hon. member for Red Deer moved an amendment in these words:
And, by reason of their failure to take effective action to stop the continuous rise in the cost of living; their failure to lay down and follow policies under which Canadian farmers and other primary producers can enjoy an equitable share of the prosperity which Canada can achieve . . .
That amendment received the support of the three opposition parties. Then on January 23 the hon. member for Yorkton moved an amendment in these words:
We regret, however, that Your Excellency's advisers seem to favour a flexible price support program, the effect of which is to leave the agricultural industry in a state of uncertainty and insecurity; we also regret that Your Excellency's advisers have failed to take the necessary steps to establish a system of parity prices for agricultural producers at levels to ensure 100 per cent parity of income for agricultural producers.
Mind you, that was not to establish 100 per cent parity of price. It was merely to bring about 100 per cent parity of income. For reasons I still cannot understand the Conservatives voted against that proposition. If the motion had been for 100 per cent of parity price I could have understood it if they had voted against it. But the motion merely asked for 100 per cent of parity of income. Why should anybody say that the farmers of Canada are not entitled to their full share of the national income? In other words, as the farmers represent 15 per cent of the population, they should be entitled to 15 per cent of the income. Today the farmers are representing approximately 15 per cent of the population and they receive only 6.9 per cent of the income.
The C.C.F. motion was that they should receive 100 per cent of parity, and the Conservatives voted against it. For the life of me I cannot understand why they voted against it at that time, unless there was a misunderstanding. As I say, if the motion had been for 100 per cent of parity of price I could have understood it, because there might be times when you would say that in certain lines of production they should have less than parity and that in other lines of production they should have more than 100 per cent of parity, so that it would average 100 per cent of parity right across the industry but you would not maintain 100 per cent of parity in any one single line of production.

The present amendment reads as follows:
In the opinion of this house consideration should be given to introducing during the present session of parliament legislation which will assure farmers support prices for agricultural products based on a fair price-cost relationship, thereby resulting in agriculture receiving its reasonable share of the national income.
That word "reasonable" apparently means an amount less than parity, because the Conservative party voted against a parity of income. Hence they think the farmers should be satisfied with less than parity. The C.C.F. have tried to make the matter clearer by moving an amendment. I have not the amendment before me.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Here it is.


Victor Quelch: I thank the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre for handing me a copy. It reads as follows:
That the amendment be amended by deleting therefrom the words "its reasonable share of the national income" and by substituting therefor the following words: "a share of the national income based on parity".
That is common sense, Mr. Speaker. Now we know what we are talking about. I defy anybody to say what was meant by the amendment of the Conservative party. It could be anything that each individual member liked to make it. But one thing is clear, namely that it does not mean parity of income because they voted against it when it was before the house. We in this group believe that the farmers are entitled to their fair share of the national income, and that that should be 100 per cent of parity.
We did not consider that the agricultural prices support board, by using the years 1943, 1944 and 1945 as a basis, were establishing too high a basis. We thought that was a rather fair basis. I notice that the Canadian Federation of Agriculture have suggested the years 1926 to 1929. But actually the base years 1943, 1944 and 1945 give a 1 per cent higher figure than do the base years suggested by the Canadian Federation of Agriculture.
I therefore think the agricultural prices support board and, to that extent, the government are to be congratulated upon using those three years as a basis for parity. I would criticize the government for not keeping their support prices at 100 per cent of the base years. As I pointed out, their support price is only approximately 80 per cent in the case of two products and only 54 per cent in the case of another. We in the Social Credit group have always taken the stand that support prices should be paid on the basis of a two-price system. We have taken that stand in this house ever since 1951.
I remember that the first time I became interested in the idea of a two-price system
Agricultural Products-Support Prices was when I attended a convention that was also attended by the Minister of Agriculture, namely the annual convention of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture held at Niagara Falls. At that convention there was in attendance a professor from Harvard University; I refer to Professor Galbraith. He spoke about the two-price system. I thought it was a reasonable proposition. We in this group discussed it, and from then on we supported it. At that time it was not supported by the farm organizations, but about 1953 the interprovincial farm union took it up and supported the two-price system, and have supported it ever since. I remember that two years ago I was quite severely criticized by the hon. member for Assiniboia for advocating the two-price system. However, I am glad to note that the C.C.F. are broadminded on the question now. They do not oppose the two-price system. As a matter of fact I think they support it.
I believe the two-price system is a reasonable one. The two-price system merely says that farm products sold in the domestic market should be sold at parity and that farm products sold in the world market should be sold at the best prices that can be obtained, preferably under international agreement but supported at a reasonable level that will assure that the aggregate of the farmers' income will be on a parity with the income of other industries.
There is nothing new about the two-price system, nor is there anything unique about it. The secondary industries have always adopted the two-price system. They have always adopted a system of selling their commodities in the domestic market at a price that will bring them a fair return on their investment; then as to any surplus production they have had, they have sold it abroad for the best price they have been able to obtain. But just because they have had to sell their commodities in the world market at a certain price does not mean that they have sold their commodities in the domestic market at the same price. Very often the price at which they sold abroad was considerably lower than the price they charged in the domestic market.
As I say, the price they charge in the domestic market is a price that is necessary in order to bring them a fair return on their investment. That is very true of certain Canadian manufacturers of farm implements. I have priced machinery in England and I have priced it here; and I have found that they were selling machinery in England a great deal more cheaply than they were selling it in Canada at the time.
If it is good business for the secondary industries, why would it not be good business
3313	HOUSE OF
Agricultural Products-Support Prices for agriculture? Of course the difference is that the secondary industries are in the position that they set the price, and they set the price at whatever level is necessary to give them a fair return on their investment. But agriculture has never been in a position to set its own price. The farmers take their commodities to market and are obliged to say, "What will you give us?" What do they get? They get approximately the same price as that for which those commodities sell on the world market.
Yet is it not a very strange situation when you take into consideration the fact that while 96 per cent or more of our farm products, excluding wheat, are sold in the domestic market, we nevertheless allow that 4 per cent which is exported abroad to set the price for the 96 per cent sold in Canada? In other words we are allowing the tail to wag the dog. Therefore those of us who advocate the two-price system for agriculture are only saying that the price for farm products in Canada should be at a level that bears a fair relationship, and nothing more, to the prices of other commodities; and then that the 4 per cent that is exported abroad should be sold at the best price we can obtain, preferably under international agreement such as we have under the international wheat agreement.
There is no doubt that it would be a great deal easier to operate the two-price system if we had all farm products sold under marketing boards, as is done by the wheat board. It would be a very simple matter then. But even without that advantage it would be possible to adopt the two-price system without boards by selling them on the weighted average between the price we get in the domestic market and the price we get abroad.
I have dealt with this subject at length on a number of occasions in this house; therefore I am not going to repeat my remarks now.
I will admit that it would be a whole lot easier to operate it if we had a system of marketing boards across the country. Not having the marketing boards, we could do it on the basis of estimating the amount of agricultural commodities that would be sold internally, the price we would sell them at internally at parity and estimating the amount we would sell abroad, the price we would get for them, and then pay the farmer a weighted average of those two prices. In that way, the two price system could be operated.
I have always felt though, in view of the definite commitment that was made by the Prime Minister at the end of the war, that


the government should live up to that commitment. The farmers, therefore, are absolutely justified in asking the government to maintain floor prices that will help to ensure farmers getting a parity of income on the basis of section 9 of the Agricultural Prices Support Act. It was for that reason some farm organizations asked a couple of years ago that wheat be brought under the Agricultural Prices Support Act. Grain does not come under it. They wanted to have the assurance that there would be a support price under wheat in the same way as there is a support price under hogs, poultry, eggs and butter. At the present time all they have under wheat is the initial payment. As I have pointed out before, there is all the difference in the world between an initial payment and a support price. The purpose of a support price is to prevent the price from falling below a certain level at which the farmer would suffer a loss. An initial payment in the case of wheat is an estimate by the government of the price necessary in order to insure the government against suffering a loss. It was for that reason no doubt that on some occasions in the past when we have asked the government to notify us early in the year as to what the initial payment would be the minister has stated that he could not do it until he had a better idea what the price of wheat would be during the current year. He wanted to be certain there would be no losses entailed as a result of setting the initial payment too high. How could you possibly call that a support price? It is merely an estimate of what the lowest average price will be.
It is for that reason I feel the farmers are justified in asking that grain should be brought under the Agricultural Prices Support Act. Then they could be guaranteed a support price which would return to the farmer a price that bore a fair relationship to the price of other commodities. If the price of wheat today were based upon the formula under the Agricultural Prices Support Act, that is a formula using the years 1943, 1944 and 1945 as base years, the price of wheat today would be $2.37 cents a bushel. I got that price in January from the bureau of statistics. What is the price the farmers are getting for wheat today? I notice that the wheat pools, in their brief to the government, show the average farm price is about $1.29, yet the support under the Agricultural Prices Support Act formula would be around $2.37 per bushel. They make this interesting comment regarding wheat:
Briefly, the above table shows that in 1956 the value per bushel of wheat marketed in Saskatchewan was almost 21 per cent below that of 1947. During the same period the western wheat grower's costs had risen by almost 46 per cent.

When you have a situation where farm costs have risen by 45 per cent over a period of 10 years, while farmers' returns for wheat have dropped by approximately 21 per cent, then I think you will agree with me that agriculture today is bound to be suffering as a consequence. It is not serving any good purpose to merely quote gross farm income because gross farm income by itself does not mean a thing. Therefore, we in this group will be very pleased to support the amendment to the amendment moved by the C.C.F.


John Alpheus Charlton: Mr. Speaker, confusion on top of confusion apparently seems to be the theme of this debate so far as parity prices are concerned and the C.C.F. appraisal of our farm policy.
I want to deal for a few moments with what the hon. member for Humboldt-Melfort (Mr. Bryson) said in his speech. I am sorry he is not in the house at this time. I did not hear all of his speech because I was called out of the house to receive a long distance telephone call but I did hear most of it.
He said, in effect, that there was plenty of opportunity for us to debate the amendment moved by the hon. member for Yorkton (Mr. Castleden) on January 23. I believe you, yourself, Mr. Speaker, stated that it was nearly time for the vote when that amendment was moved. The hon. member for Yorkton did not move the amendment until he had finished his speech. He did not speak on his own amendment because, as I say, it was not moved until the end of his speech. At that time there were only seven minutes left before the vote had to be taken. The hon. member for Humboldt-Melfort said that the hon. member for Hamilton South (Mr. Reinke) did speak on the amendment. I sincerely suggest to all those here that the hon. member for Hamilton South did not mention parity prices. He spoke on an entirely different subject. It was absolutely impossible for our party to make our position on that amendment clear. The hon. member for Humboldt-Melfort was wrong, therefore, in suggesting we did have that opportunity.
He suggested also that the policy outlined by our leader this morning was quite different from any policy we had stated previously. I would sincerely suggest to him that he go back over the record of our policy. He could find many instances where exactly the same policy had been stated, and as far back as 1941 parity prices had been mentioned in this house. I would suggest to him, too, that that was about the first time parity for agricultural producers was mentioned in this house or anywhere else. If anyone can claim to be
9, 1957	3319
Agricultural Products-Support Prices the father of the idea, it is the Leader of the Opposition, the hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker).


James Garfield Gardiner: What about the United
States?


John Alpheus Charlton: We will let you have the United States.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I would suggest it has been our policy ever since I have been-


James Garfield Gardiner: Everything you talk about comes from the other side of the line; even parity prices.


William Earl Rowe: Everything you listen to comes from over there.


John Alpheus Charlton: Evidently there is a side debate going on. Ever since I have been in the House of Commons we have had as our policy equality for agriculture. Since 1948 our policy has been to give maximum stability to agricultural income. Since the Leader of the Opposition has used the word "parity" for as long as he has been moving amendments in this House of Commons, I think it should be very clear where we stand so far as parity prices are concerned. We have always stood for a flexible price support program with prices based on a formula and stated well in advance of the production period.
This is not new. It was in our policy in 1948. I would suggest, therefore, before hon. members make statements of that kind they should check back on our policy statements to make sure they are stating the truth. There is one thing that was probably not in our policy previously and that relates to the commission on price spreads in agricultural products. I suggest to you, however, that it was the Right Hon. R. B. Bennett, when he was leader of the government in 1934, who established a price spread commission. It was his idea. If anyone deserves the credit for it, it should go to the Bennett government of 1934.
The hon. member for Humboldt-Melfort suggested that some of the things we have mentioned were politically dishonest. Well, I suggest to him that his amendment-


Hugh Alexander Bryson: On a question of privilege, Mr. Speaker, I did not refer to anything that was said as being politically dishonest. I said I felt that anybody who suggested-and I may be wrong; future events may prove me wrong-the proposition of putting forward deficiency payments was, in my estimation, politically dishonest.


John Alpheus Charlton: I apologize to the hon. member; I am sorry if I misled the house on that.


Clayton Wesley Hodgson: You are not far out.
3320	HOUSE OF
Agricultural Products-Support Prices


John Alpheus Charlton: I do suggest that if there is anything to be said in that regard it can be said about the amendment moved by the C.C.F. party on the occasion of the throne speech debate. They knew very well that a Liberal speaker would be following their own speaker on the list and that we would have no opportunity to discuss the matter, or make our position clear on that particular amendment.


An hon. Member:: You had a chance to vote on it.


John Alpheus Charlton: We did. I suggest also there was a particular reason behind the subamendment of the C.C.F. party. Their object was to take it out into the country and try to show how we voted on that particular amendment and use it for their own political purpose.


Mr. Jutras:: What are they doing now?


John Alpheus Charlton: Some mention was made of the definition of parity. The hon. member for Acadia gave a very fair definition of parity. It is not hard to define. On more than one occasion in the house the Minister of Agriculture has said he was not sure what it meant. He has suggested on various occasions that they have taken 1943-45 as the base period, and they set their support prices on those three years as the base. Your parity price would mean a different price if you took another base period. Parity to me means that a base period having been taken, a bushel of wheat or any other farm product would have the same purchasing power today as it had in that base period. That is as simple as it can be made, and it should be understandable to everyone in the house. In other words, the cost price relationship remains the same as it was in some previous base price period.
As far as the subamendment is concerned, I see nothing wrong with it, but I suggest there is a great deal of difference between the 100 per cent parity of income in the C.C.F. amendment and parity prices. Let us look at 100 per cent parity of income. Whose income is it going to be parity with? Whose income are you going to take? Are you going to take the income of the Prime Minister of Canada, or of some farmer who is making only $1,200 or $1,300?
It has been rather difficult to follow the meanderings of the government during the last couple of months. It seems rather strange that with an election coming on people seem to be able to get the things they want much easier today than they could in the preceding three or four years. Is it because there are two more provincial Conservative governments than there were a few years ago? Is


it because an election will be held in the near future? Is that why farmers are beginning to get some of the things that they have been asking for, for 10 years? I could enumerate these things.
I am sure the farmers appreciate the things they have been given. They are part-way measures, at least, except one. The Minister of Agriculture announced at the concentrated milk producers association banquet that the support price on powdered skim milk would be one cent more than the producers had asked for. I am sure they appreciated that very much. By doing this does the government think they can fool the voters and the farmers across this country? If it could be done, then why was it not done when it was asked for three or four years ago?


Clayton Wesley Hodgson: There was no election then.


John Alpheus Charlton: Forsooth, no election then. Does the government think that they can buy the votes in that way?
I do not think it is necessary for me at this time to go back over the economic position in which the farmers across the country find themselves; it has been stated on many occasions both in this debate and in previous debates in the House of Commons, but I want to say that the proof of the economic position of the Canadian farmer today is the fact that so many young lads are leaving the farms to go into industrial employment. If they find it necessary to leave the farm, then farming conditions are certainly not up to their desires. They do not want to stay on the farm; therefore farming conditions are not good enough to keep them on the farm. The farm population has decreased considerably in the last few years. How much space did the Gordon commission report give to the agricultural economy? It gave very, very little and most of the space was devoted to the western wheat position.
The taxation problem is one other very important matter for the farm population today. I do not know about other provinces but the province of Ontario has lightened that burden somewhat in the case of farms taken into urban areas. The farmers are being taxed off their land these days if they are anywhere near a large city. As I say, the Ontario government did legislate to the effect that assessments cannot be increased if a farm is taken in by or annexed to a city as long as that farm remains as a farm and is worked as a farm.
I have the "Current Review of Agricultural Conditions in Canada". It is the January, 1957, edition. On page one of the booklet we find the following:
It appears that the decline in agricultural prices of the past few years may have levelled out in

the latter months of 1956, and it seems unlikely that there will be any further decline in the general level of farm prices in 1957.
They are admitting in this booklet that the prices of farm produce had gone down, which is more than the Minister of Agriculture has admitted in the house at any time since 1952 or 1953. On page 2 of the same booklet I find:
Any change in farm net income from farming operations will depend largely on the size of the western grain crop in 1957.
I suggest that has a great deal to do with the gross income of farmers all across Canada.
The gross national income has a direct relationship to the size of the wheat crop and the amount of wheat harvested. If there is a good wheat crop harvested the gross income increases tremendously and that increase is reflected in the average across the country but conditions in the eastern provinces may not be similar to those in the western provinces.


James Garfield Gardiner: It is the same thing when the gross income goes down.


John Alpheus Charlton: Yes, of course, but I suggest that the Minister of Agriculture in the last few years has always gone back to 1951 and 1952 in quoting prices.


James Garfield Gardiner: Oh, no. That was your
plan up until two years ago. In every speech I made I criticized it.


John Alpheus Charlton: I consider it a compliment that the minister is following any plan of ours but I wonder how long he will continue? As a matter of fact it has been diluted so much that it means very little today.


James Garfield Gardiner: I have never done that. I say that you should average over five years and you never have.


John Alpheus Charlton: The Minister of Agriculture will have a chance to make his own speech. He can use the figures for those years again if he wants to but I suggest to him that while he may fool himself and think he is fooling us he certainly is not fooling the people who know best what their position is. He is certainly not fooling the farmers.
The Economic Annalist published by' the Department of Agriculture is generally regarded as presenting an accurate picture of the position of farmers across Canada and it contains an index of figures which I presume are put out by the bureau of statistics. The Economic Annalist of February 1957 shows that from 1949 until the present time the prices of agricultural products have declined by 11.6 per cent. The index in 1949 was
Agricultural Products-Support Prices 255.4 and in December 1956, the last year for which figures are available, the index was 225.8.
In that same period with the exception of the fact that the figures are for August instead of December there was an increase of 24.6 per cent in the composite price of commodities and services used by farmers, as against a reduction of 11.6 per cent in the price of farm products. Also in that same period from 1949 to 1956 the cost of food to the Canadian consumer has gone from 100 which was the index price in 1949 to 117.1 or a 17.1 per cent increase.
The price of the products we have to buy as farmers has increased in this period by 24.6 per cent. The wholesale price of our products declined 11.6 per cent and the prices of our products to the consumer have gone up by 17.1 per cent. These figures constitute a justification for having a commission established to study the spread in prices between the price the producer receives and the price the consumer pays for agricultural products. I suggest that these figures paint a true picture of the plight of the Canadian farmer today.
I realize that I cannot quote from the budget speech in this debate but in an article in the Globe and Mail of March 15 based on the budget speech of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Harris) they quote him as saying:
Heavy imports, particularly from the U.S.A., helped restrain the rise in Canadian prices by making more goods available.
I want to repeat that statement because I think it is important. The Globe and Mail quotes the Minister of Finance as saying:
Heavy imports, particularly from the U.S.A., helped restrain the rise in Canadian prices by making more goods available.
Are we to take it that this statement reflects the policy of this government? Apparently that is the case because that is the basis on which they have been working over the last number of years. Their policy is to bring in enough from other countries to keep the price of our agricultural products low in this country.
I would like to cite some figures contained in a return to a question asked by the hon. member for Prince Edward Lennox (Mr. Tustin) on March 19, 1957 concerning imports of powdered milk, cheese, canned peaches, canned pears, mixed fruits, canned vegetables, tomato products and other goods imported in 1956. The figures are as follows:
Powdered whole	milk	
101,487	poundsPowdered skim milk	
3,198,199	poundsCheese	
9,001,068	poundsCanned peaches	
14.626,636	pounds


Mr. Fraser (Peterborough):: They serve them in the parliamentary restaurant.
3322	HOUSE OF
Agricultural Products-Support Prices Mr. Charlton: Yes, certainly they do. A sufficient quantity is not grown in this country to supply the entire domestic demand but a large quantity is grown and many of our domestic peaches spoiled last year.
Other imports were as follows:
Canned pears	
2,998,134	poundsMixed fruits	
30,545,836	poundsCanned tomatoes	
26,521,865	poundsTomato pulp and puree	
816,701	poundsCanned concentrated	tomato juice 11,875 poundsCanned tomato paste	... 28,901,602	pounds
Tomato juice, except concentrated 26,885,103 pounds
Mr. Speaker, some of the best tomatoes
grown in this country are grown in my own riding. I wonder what the people in my constituency think of all these tomatoes being imported in Canada when they are unable to get a decent price for the tomatoes they grow in the counties of Brant and Haldi-mand? Imports of canned vegetables in 1956
were as follows:
Canned corn	
4,331,198	poundsCanned peas	
1,955,337	poundsCanned asparagus	
1,511,223	poundsCanned green or wax beans	717,904	poundsCanned baked beans	
3,750,595	poundsCanned vegetables not otherwise provided	
6,143,820	pounds
It is understandable in the light of these figures why the Minister of Finance said in his budget speech that heavy imports particularly from the United States helped restrain the rise in Canadian prices by making more goods available.
What happens when our own fresh fruits and vegetables come into season? There are probably 20 carloads sitting on sidings in Toronto or Montreal alone and the wholesalers use that as a means of cutting down the price on our own products. They say, "We do not need them because we have plenty sitting on a siding. We do not need your products and we will just give you so much for them and that is all." The seasonal tariffs that are put on do not mean a thing because the markets are glutted the day before the tariffs are applied.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: Any government that does such a thing ought to be "canned".


John Alpheus Charlton: That is what this government has been doing for many years now. Apparently that is the policy of fee government as stated by the Minister of Finance.
We had a debate a few days ago regarding the price of eggs in this country. Egg prices are very low this year, from 22 to 23 cents a dozen to 30 cents a dozen for grade A large depending on the district where they are purchased. Yet in 1956, 68,321 cases of eggs were imported into this country. This was in the very year when prices went down to


the lowest level they had reached for years, away below the cost of production to the farmers.
Imports of dressed poultry last year totalled 22,816,809 pounds. That is the result of the policy of this government. I know that parts of this brief from the Canadian Horticultural Council were used this morning. I am not sure which parts were used, but I do want to say that fruit and vegetable growers all across this country are very disturbed about the importation of fruits and vegetables and the reduction in the prices received by our domestic producers. As was said by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Diefenbaker) this morning, while these goods may not be dumped on the market in the strict legal sense of that word, they are nevertheless dumped as far as our domestic producers are concerned. Here is what the Canadian Horticultural Council considers to be the problem which its membership across Canada faces. This brief, which was sent to members of the cabinet, is dated February 4, 1957, and paragraph 3 reads:
It is doubtful if at any time in the past our primary producers of fruits and vegetables have been so exercised, or have suffered such serious losses as during the past few years, from the "dumping" of like products from the United States on the Canadian markets. These products may not be "dumped" within the limited definition of that term in the Customs Act or the Customs Tariff Act, but the effect on the financial returns of the Canadian farmer are just the same as though they had been "dumped" within the definition of the legislation.
The nature or form of the competition to which our producers object most strenuously is imports at "distress" prices at the peak or clean-up of United States harvesting which frequently collide with the commencement of Canadian harvesting. Under these conditions the United States producer may have received a premium price, or at least a good average price on a large proportion of his crop, but his "clean-up" sales can set the market price for a very large proportion of the Canadian crop of the same commodity, and prevent any possibility of the Canadian producer selling any portion of his crop at premium prices, or even benefiting to a normal extent from a short-crop condition that might exist in Canada.
As they point out, because fee United States lies south of us the crop season is earlier. There is very little importation into the United States of fruit and vegetables from other countries to the south, so they get a good price at the start of their season. But at the end of their season, which is probably the beginning of our season here, they dump their surplus in our market thus reducing the price which our own producers are able to get. I am sure the minister is aware of what the Canadian Horticultural Council has asked for in this connection. It

is set out in paragraph 6 of the brief under the heading "Our Request":
Our request to the government on behalf of these primary producers is as follows:
That the Minister of National Revenue be given power to establish a fair market value, effective during the Canadian marketing season, for each kind of fruit or vegetable of a kind produced in Canada, for the purpose of preventing "dumping" on Canadian markets.
I want to emphasize those words "produced in Canada". That is all they are asking. Naturally, they are not asking for a dumping duty on fruits and vegetables which are not produced here.
There is another point I wish to raise regarding the importation of agricultural products from the United States. I have here a cellophane pack in which turkeys are imported into this country from the United States. It should be plain what this brand name is. These bags are probably manufactured in the United States. The turkeys are packed in them over there and sent to this country-12 million pounds of them last year-though not all of them in these particular bags. Here we have United States turkeys sold under a Canadian brand name.
That, in my opinion, amounts to misrepresentation to the consumers of this country, and something should be done about it. It may be strictly within the law as far as the law reads at present, but in that case the law should be changed.
Not only turkeys are involved in this sort of practice; many other products are being treated in the same way. Incidentally, the brand name is Maple Leaf. Underneath the label it says the product was packed for this particular company whose head office is in Toronto, Canada. As I say, this is a situation which is being repeated with respect to a number of other products. I am told, though I do not know this as a fact, that United States potatoes are being shipped across the border from Maine into New Brunswick, packaged in Canadian bags and sold in competition with our own Ontario, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island potatoes; and that the shippers get the benefit of the maritime freight subsidy in competing against our own product. Is that right? I would ask the minister to make sure that it does not happen in the future.
Generally speaking, when people think of subsidies they seem to assume that farmers are the only people who receive them. That is not true. But it is generally accepted in the large centres of population that subsidies are linked with farmers, and that farmers have been given something for nothing. I would like to point out that in six of the
Agricultural Products-Support Prices last ten years, of the total subsidies paid by this government over 50 per cent went to non-agricultural industries. Only in four years did over 50 per cent go to agriculture, and those four years included the years when foot-and-mouth disease was raging in Canada. If it had not been for that, then probably for eight years out of ten over 50 per cent of the sums paid out in subsidies would have gone to non-agricultural industries. I am talking of direct subsidies, not of indirect subsidies of which I could name many.
We come now to the support prices act that the government has in operation. A year ago the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) said on more than one occasion in the house 

in fact, he emphasized it-that it was absolutely necessary to have 78 million pounds of butter in the pipe line in order that the price could be maintained.


James Garfield Gardiner: I never used the term
"absolutely necessary".


John Alpheus Charlton: I could go back to Hansard and check it. As a matter of fact, I think I have it right here.


James Garfield Gardiner: I said it was advisable.


John Alpheus Charlton: I did not know that I had the particular Hansard with me but I see that I have. As found at page 1055 of Hansard for February 10, 1956, the minister had this to say:
Again I repeat we are quite satisfied that that condition requires us to have at least 78 million pounds of butter as of the first of January each year in order to maintain the position that was established under this particular plan. All I want to say with regard to that is that is exactly what I have had in my mind when I have stated from time to time that there is no troublesome surplus so far as we are concerned.


James Garfield Gardiner: I did not use the word
"absolutely".


John Alpheus Charlton: Does the minister recognize those words? I would advise him to look at them.


James Garfield Gardiner: I do not deny that. The hon. member said that I said it was absolutely necessary and I did not.


John Alpheus Charlton: Perhaps I should not have used the word "absolutely".


William Earl Rowe: Necessary but not absolutely necessary.


John Alpheus Charlton: Necessary is necessary
whether or not it is absolutely. I think the minister made it quite clear that he wanted at least 78 million pounds. What did the minister say at the concentrated milk producers' banquet this year? I cannot quote his words exactly but I was sitting there listening to him and if he wants to deny what I say that is his business. He stated in effect

Agricultural Products-Support Prices that the surplus of butter on hand at present was 38 million pounds and that he expected it to be down to a reasonable amount by the end of the year. I do not know what one would call that kind of statement, but in my opinion it is at least not very consistent.


William Earl Rowe: It is consistent with his statements.


John Alpheus Charlton: The minister made another statement which I used as the basis for a question in the house some little time ago. In the Ottawa Journal of February 8, 1957 there was an article reporting that the minister had addressed the annual dinner meeting of the meat packers council of Canada in Winnipeg, and in that article I find the following with respect to what the minister said:
. . . the present support price on hogs of $23, Toronto basis, which has been in effect since 1952 could not have been maintained during the last year or two had it not been for the fact that imports of United States pork products have been under embargo due to outbreaks of swine disease in that country. The minister told the annual dinner meeting of the meat packers council of Canada that as a result Canadian hog prices have been at levels of 6 to 8 cents, and even on occasions as high as 11 cents a pound, above American prices.
I want to emphasize the following paragraph particularly:
As soon as the disease conditions which caused the embargo are cleared up, Mr. Gardiner said, the border would be reopened. He said the U.S. embargo imposed on Canadian beef and pork had been removed early in 1953, as soon as foot-and-mouth disease had been eradicated in this country. "Canada will be forced to follow the same course and remove the embargo on meat imports in the foreseeable future", he said.
The minister led the meat packers council at least to believe that such action would take place in a reasonably short period of time. However, when I asked a question in the house his answer, as found at page 1466 of Hansard of February 20, 1957, was in these words:
Mr. Speaker, there is no indication at present that the situation has changed or is likely to change in the near future as related to the disease among hogs in the United States and, of course, as long as that condition exists there will be no necessity for making any change in any regulations here.
I wonder whether the minister's speech in Winnipeg was wishful thinking when he said that the disease would be cleared up quickly in the United States and it would not be very long before importations of pork into this country would resume. Apparently that was his main idea in telling the meat packers council that they could expect some pork to be imported into Canada again shortly.
Just a few days ago the government announced that the tariff on potatoes would

cover the entire year instead of only the period of six weeks prior to our new potatoes coming on the market. I have here a newspaper article taken from the London Free Press of March 7, 1957, about the time that adjustment of the tariff was first mentioned. The headline of the article is, "U.S. Hits Plea for Potato Shift". The article goes on to say:
United States potato growers today protested against a Canadian government proposal to renegotiate tariff arrangements covering potato shipments between Canada and the United States. Representations against any alteration in the existing tariffs were placed before a U.S. tariff commission committee hearing by Congressman Clifford McIntyre appearing for Maine potato producers, and A. E. Mercher of the national potato council, which represents the U.S. potato industry.
They can impose tariffs, quotas and everything else on our products going into the United States, and what does the Canadian government do? Practically nothing. But the minute we mention imposing a tariff on some of their products coming into Canada a plea is made on the part of the growers of that country that this is an injustice to them. They think it is their right to send potatoes into Canada in competition with our own producers. At least they make this sort of plea against tariff increases or even the suggestion of tariff increases on United States potatoes coming into Canada. Yet in many instances the price received by producers of Canadian potatoes is less than the cost of production.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: I am extremely sorry to interrupt the hon. member but his time expired several seconds ago.


James Garfield Gardiner: Mr. Speaker, as a number of speakers have said today, this is the third or fourth occasion during this session upon which we have discussed the question raised here, and most of those who have made that suggestion have also stated that they have delivered speeches before on the question. I am not in exactly the same position. I was not here when the first motion was moved on the 23rd of January and therefore did not take part in the discussion on that occasion. Again, there have been two occasions upon which the discussion was not quite in order and because I raised questions of order myself it was impossible for me to proceed with a discussion of the matter later.
Nevertheless the questions which have been discussed here have been discussed on many occasions both during this and other sessions and I think the opinion of most members is very well known. But apparently the question was raised today for a specific purpose, to

clarify some of the actions of at least some members of the house when the question was discussed before.
It was claimed by the last speaker, I think, that parity was first mentioned-I presume he meant in the house-by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Diefenbaker) back in 1941. I am quite sure that the records will show that it was mentioned many times before that. But whether it was or was not, parity as we have been discussing it and as we understand it first became a matter of real discussion in the United States prior to 1932. After it had been discussed there for quite a number of years, they introduced their legislation which established their form of parity at that time. Some changes were made from time to time until by 1941 on the other side of the line they had considerable experience which we were able to follow. We had our discussions in the house in 1941. On that occasion I think it was quite apparent that the government at least had not been convinced by what had happened in the United States that we should adopt that policy here. But we were not required to make a decision on the matter until 1944. The chief reason why we were not required to make a decision was that we had with Britain throughout the war definite agreements under which we sold our farm products to Britain, not for the purpose of getting the highest possible returns from them-although we attempted to arrange a price which would be satisfactory to the farmers here-but for the purpose of getting a high production of our farm products in order to be able to supply food to the allied armies and to Great Britain. Hence during that period we did not consider that there was any real reason for adopting the marketing system based on parity prices. Nevertheless we kept close check on the matter.
However, in 1944, when the war was drawing toward a close, and when everyone knew it was drawing toward a close, we drafted the Agricultural Prices Support Act and had it passed by this parliament. The act did not actually come into effect or was not utilized until 1946 or 1947, I think, but it was placed on the statute books in 1944. The subsection about which there has been considerable discussion today is subsection 2 of section 9. Subsection 2 of section 9 states as follows:
(2) In prescribing prices under paragraphs (a) and (c) of subsection one of this section, the board shall endeavour to ensure adequate and stable returns for agriculture by promoting orderly adjustment from war to peace conditions and shall endeavour to secure a fair relationship between the returns from agriculture and those from other occupations.
3325
Agricultural Products-Support Prices
I should like to call attention to the fact, that until the last meeting of the provincial-dominion agricultural conference which was held in December last, the question which was discussed was not parity income. The question which was discussed was parity prices and no one left any doubt about that matter. We were discussing parity prices and usually were trying to have them brought in as they had been practiced in the United States. But during the last conference, after some discussion the president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, Mr. Hannam, made it apparent that they were not advocating parity prices but were advocating a parity of income; and from there on the discussions were associated with that term.
It was not their desire to say that there should be parity of prices. I think one of the reasons for that is apparent so far as the farmer is concerned. When you are dealing with parity prices you are dealing with the price of a commodity and it is possible to take the price of that commodity-whether it is butter, hogs or whatever it might be- and deal with that commodity by itself and prove that the farmer is not getting a parity price for that particular product when he sells it. But for all we know here or for all anyone knows who is discussing the question from that point of view, probably three-quarters of the farmers about whom he is talking do not produce that product at all. In other cases it can be said that the farmer may be getting a parity price on one particular commodity for the time being, may be getting less than parity on another, and he may be getting more than parity on still another and that he may be doing fairly well following the system he is following on his farm because he thinks a certain type of farming or a certain way of farming is the one best suited to the farm he is on and the district in which he is farming.
On the other hand, there are many farmers in our section of the country-that is out west, in Saskatchewan particularly-who grow only one commodity to sell, and that one commodity is wheat. Hence they are inclined to discuss the condition of the farmer altogether from the point of view of wheat growing. Of course that matter does not affect farmers in many other parts of the country. Hence to go on discussing questions from the point of view of whether eggs are at parity or whether some other commodity is at parity and whether you are helping someone in western Canada or someone in eastern Canada causes some persons to take to statistics-and probably I have been guilty of doing that myself-which apply right across Canada. But any time that
3326	HOUSE OF
Agricultural Products-Support Prices I have used those statistics applying right across Canada I have called the attention of the hon. member who has just spoken and of every other hon. member of this house to the fact that no farmer who succeeds in farming ever bases the success or otherwise of his farming operations upon any one year, no matter where he is farming in Canada. Certainly he does not base it on any one year if he farms in western Canada and is a wheat grower because you can grow wheat of the kind that we grow only in a country that is comparatively dry; and any country that is comparatively dry has drought years in which the farmers cannot grow wheat at all or anything else, scarcely. Hence to start figuring from that point of view, either by giving the figures right across the country or by applying them to any one year, does not help very much in considering what is the position of the farmer.
I therefore repeat that I have never relied upon any comparisons with the year 1951. The year 1951 is a top year in income returns to farmers right across this country. It is a top year because we were fighting a war in Korea. Everyone knows that just a short while prior to that time all farmers were quite convinced that the prices of the things they were going to buy were going down because there was less and less use for steel, aluminum and all of the commodities that enter in the production of farm implements. We had just got out of a war. Just when we were on the point of thinking that the change was going to come about, we were into another war.
As soon as we got into the other war, farmers were competing with those who were conducting the war in the buying of their equipment. Of course, prices went up. They could not go in any other direction. Since that time we have had other experiences, one of which we are in the midst of now having to do with Suez, and which still causes people to think that we are approaching a period when there may be use for equipment of a kind that cannot be used on the farms.
As a matter of fact, the old story has never changed. At one period you are beating plowshares into swords and at another period you are beating swords into plowshares. When we are compelled to buy in competition with those who are beating plowshares into swords, our prices are high. If anyone tells the young people of this country that they are foolish to stay on the farms because we are going through an experience of that kind, well, to say the least he is not speaking in the interests of the


country itself, nor is he giving the kind of incentive or direction to the young people which should be given.
My main criticism of the propaganda that has been put out in this country for the last four or five years is that if any young man or young woman listened to it none of them would go near a farm. If any young man or young woman who was already on a farm was told that everyone who works in some other industry is getting far more than they are, then they would not remain on the farm. My friends over in the C.C.F. group have forgotten that they used to say that all these industries they are talking about were in the hands of 50 big shots. Probably they were a lot closer to the truth then than they are now. The young people who go away from the farms do not step into the shoes of the 50 big shots. It is only those people who get elected and become ministers in a C.C.F. government who get into the $10,000 a year category. This is just a matter of having one point of view when you are in one class and an entirely different point of view when you are in another; it is quite understandable.
But I do submit that it is not a good thing to be going around the country telling the young people stories like that. What are the results? During the time we were in the conference last December the farmers' union brought in representatives of those who worked in the implements industry in this country and made representations that something ought to be done for the farmers in order to make it possible for them to buy more farm implements so the young people who had been employed in the implement industry could get back into it. When they submitted their figures they showed that a short time ago there were 15,000 young men and women working in the farm implement industry in this country; last December, when they were talking to us, there were less than 5,000.
At the time I asked where they got the extra 10,000 who came into the industry after the war. They told me they got them off the farms. I said, where did they go when 10,000 of them could not find jobs any longer with you? They said, we do not know. Of course, they did not know. I said, what did they do about the houses they had bought in the cities where they went? We do not know. You and I know that they bought houses in the places to which they went on the basis of prices that existed, and which were three or four times as high as they were not very many years ago. These people were asked to pay for them on what was approximately a rental basis, paying so much a month or a year. It would have taken many of them 10

or 30 years to pay for them if they had remained in them. When they lost their jobs, where did they go? I do not know. I only know what I did myself when I was young, and what many others did when we were misled into thinking that it was a good thing to get off the farm. We often lost what we put into homes.
If this kind of talk goes on during a period when it is obvious that the cost of materials which we are going to use must be high, and during a time when many of the experts are saying it is not always going to continue that way when our experience has taught us it never has continued that way for the greater part of a period, then I do not think it is helping this country at all. Some people say to not go near a farm; you cannot make any money there. They say you cannot get yourself established because there is no way by which you can borrow money in order to get a farm. Statements of this sort are not going to help the country. They will lead to the young people getting away from the farm and staying as far away as they can. Eventually, if we can judge by the experience of the past, many of them are going to wish they could get back again. So far as I am concerned, I am not making those kind of speeches. I like to be accused of not making them, because I believe they are not in the interests of the country or in the interests of the young people either.
We have had considerable talk about parity prices and what this means, as well as the statement made by Mr. King. This point has been answered over and over again, but probably it should be answered again. Mr. King had a picture of what the farmer had gone through before the war, and many of us had, too. This morning the Leader of the Opposition repeated something that has been said in this house by C.C.F. members on a number of occasions. I am not too sure whether or not he meant exactly what he said. Probably he did not mean as much as I am taking out of it because of the fact others have stated it before. He was comparing the value of a dollar made today with the value of a dollar in those days before the war. He went on to suggest, if he did not say it definitely, and I think he said it definitely, that conditions are as bad now as they were then.


John George Diefenbaker: Not that bad.


James Garfield Gardiner: I think you will find when you read Hansard that it needs correction, if that is not what you intended. This statement has been repeated over and over by one member who is not here, and therefore I will not mention his constituency. It has been suggested that times are just as bad now as they were then because of this difference in dollar 82715-210J
Agricultural Products-Support Prices value. The only thing I am going to say with regard to that is that I know the farmer. I do not think there is any better informed group of people in this country than the farmers. If anyone does not agree with that, I would suggest he go out to the school houses where there are only farmers and make some of the statements that are made in this house. You will probably soon find out the farmer knows what his conditions were in the thirties. He well remembers them. He has bitter reason to remember them. For anyone to suggest that there is any comparison whatever between the conditions that have prevailed in this country since the war and the conditions that prevailed in this country for ten years before the war,-and more, if you like to take more years than that-then he is trying to tell the farmers something they know is not correct. The farmer has had every day experiences on the farm which prove that is not correct. He may sit and listen but when he comes to turn over in his mind what was said he will come to quite a different conclusion from that which was intended to be brought about.


John Alpheus Charlton: Will the minister permit a question?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes.


John Alpheus Charlton: Does he not know that the president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture said just two years ago that the net position of the farmers today compared with the net position in the 1930's with the exception of the years 1931 and 1932?


James Garfield Gardiner: I am not quoting what anybody said; I am telling you what I think.


John Alpheus Charlton: A few minutes ago the minister quoted what he said.


James Garfield Gardiner: The net position involves many things that my hon. friend has not put into the statement he has made, which he says means the same thing. It does not mean the same thing. A farmer is thinking, not only in terms of dollars and cents for the year 1956 but in terms of a lifetime and an activity in which he is bringing up a family. To try to tell him that the only thing he must take into consideration when he is going to decide whether he is to stay on the farm or get away from it is the net return for a particular year, or a particular month, or a particular week, will not profit you much. I repeat, if you wish to go into a discussion of the question with the farmers on that basis you will not get very far. The farmer, in some areas, in making his comparisons looks at the neighbourhood in which he lives and he says that in 1931 to 1937 my children were running around barefooted in the middle of the winter and I had to keep them under

Agricultural Products-Support Prices cover; I could not buy shoes for them. If you want to try to convince him that that condition exists now, hop to it. I will not need to answer you on it because the condition is not the same and everybody knows it is not the same.
If we are concerned about keeping young people on the farm I think we ought to be a little more careful about what we say and how we say it and how we put it, and I am concerned with that and I am sure that other members of the house are as well.
To come back to the relationship between the position we were in and the position we are in now, that is the position we were in in 1944 when this act was drafted, may I say we were in the middle of what we then thought would be the last three years of the war, 1943, 1944 and 1945. Everyone who wrote to us at that time was asking, and everyone at any meetings where we went was suggesting, that if we could just keep the times and the conditions to where they were then we would feel satisfied about it. The thing which was in their minds was what happened at the end of the first world war, when those of us who went on the farms around that time were expecting a continuation for some little time of the conditions that had prevailed just at the end of the war and had prevailed a year or two before. But we found out that we were very greatly mistaken, and that after wars governments in the past had not paid very much attention to the condition of the farmer. As a matter of fact, they had used the farmer to beat down this thing they called inflation. On every occasion that anyone in this house can remember following a war that was done. Economist after economist, in writing about the wars of the past, has intimated that that was done, and a certain school of economists argued that the only position to take to prevent inflation and to put things back to where they had been was to beat down the prices of primary commodities and more particularly farm prices, and that was done.
What Mr. King had in his mind and what every member of the government had in his mind was that that should not happen after the last war; that it had happened after the first one but that it should not happen after the last one. I am not discussing anything political when I say that because the Liberals came to power not long after the first war, and some of these things did happen and kept on happening. I am simply saying that that is a fact of history, recorded in every history book that has ever been written and recorded in the writings of every economist who has ever written; that at the ends of wars the only way you can get back is to grind down the primary producers and make

it possible for people to get back into employment or into industry of some kind or another.
The intention when this legislation was drafted was to see that that did not happen.
I am sure that whatever other criticisms hon. members can make at this time they will agree that that has not happened up until now. I am not going to say that this government is responsible for all of that. We have simply been attempting to do in our own way what has been attempted elsewhere. Britain has been bent on seeing that it did not happen after the last war; the United States has been bent on seeing that it did not happen after the last war. We have been working along with them, and others in their own way have been working in the same direction in other countries throughout the world. I think it is only fair to say that wherever you go the same things have not happened since the last war that happened after the one preceding it, and we are benefiting greatly from the actions which have been taken.
Among other things we took this action. Some people who are more conservative than we are, and maybe some people in our own party who are more conservative than I am, seem to think that we should not have any of those controls; we should not have any price controls; we should not start to try to move people around; we should let them act entirely upon their own. We did not agree with that and therefore we brought in this legislation to make it possible for something else to be done.
Under the legislation a revolving fund of $200 million has been set up. The general statement that is made when people want to be critical of the legislation is that we have only used, for a while they said $10 million, now I think they admit that probably $90 million has been used. But the fact is that upwards of $400 million has been used. After having bought up 75 million pounds of butter, as was suggested here a few moments ago, and put it in storage, we sold the 75 million pounds of butter and got the money back and put it back into the fund. That is what is meant by a revolving fund. Between $350 million and $400 million-I have not the exact figure-was used for that purpose. It is a fact that we have been able to replenish the fund from time to time. That has made it possible to carry on this legislation continuously since 1944 down to the present time. Anyone who is critical of the legislation, those people who think in terms of stopping inflation by some of these other methods, are not arguing against the $200 million being there now, because it has never been necessary to go back to the treasury to get another cent over the $200 million. We have been utilizing

the fund that is there, putting up the money that is necessary to put up for the time being, selling the commodities after a while and getting the money back and putting it into the fund.
Somebody asks, why do you need to do that; why do you not set the price? I have repeated this over and over in the house. We have no authority to set the price. The only time we ever had the authority to set the price was when the War Measures Act was in operation, and it came into operation right after the war started and continued in effect for about four years after the war. During that time we could set the prices; we could say what the price of potatoes was; we could say what the price of butter was; we could say what the price of anything was; we could tell you what wages you had to work for, and so on. But immediately the War Measures Act went out of operation we had no such authority; but every authority that is possible exists somewhere in this country with some government, and that authority rests with the provincial governments. That is why we have the marketing act before the house at the present time, in order to pass some of the authority which we have over to the provinces so that they can enforce some of the things that they are doing. But the provincial government has that authority and no one else. If grade A eggs sold in the province of Ontario at 21 cents and 22 cents there never was any reason for their selling at that price.
This government said, "You can put them into a storage at a price of 38 cents". The only cost involved was that of getting them from where they were produced to the storage by some organization-a private organization or a co-operative organization, whatever was desired to be set up in order to get these eggs to the storage plant-and they were turned over to us on the basis of 38 cents. The only authority that could say that had to be done was the provincial authority and there is not a provincial government in Canada that has done it. Therefore I say if we have not had full benefit of the supports that have been put there then it is not the fault of the federal government. That is our way of getting around the constitution.


An hon. Member:: You're telling me.


James Garfield Gardiner: We cannot set a price but we can buy a commodity. For this reason we have said if no one is willing to buy a commodity at a certain price we will. That is a plan which was not followed in the United States, at least not in the first instance. It has been followed to some extent more recently. However, we started out on
Agricultural Products-Support Prices that basis. First, we did not have the authority to set prices. Second, the agreements we had with Great Britain eventually were going to run out. Third, we did have the right to buy commodities. Therefore we concluded that if we were going to be able to continue to buy commodities we should not have a formula which would induce people to produce more than could be marketed and so we said, "We will set a support price- not an actual price but a support price." Those who have been discussing this question up to now have been saying that the price of pork is $23. The price of pork is not $23. The support price under pork is $23 and it was suggested that that is 80 per cent of parity.


Victor Quelch: I said support price.


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes. That is 80 per cent of parity. However the discussion has indicated that that is not parity and of course that is not parity and it was never intended to be. The farm federation says that a support price should not be higher than 85 per cent of parity.


Victor Quelch: They are shifting around a little bit now.


James Garfield Gardiner: Well, yes. I believe they took 10 per cent from the bottom instead of from the top.


An hon. Member:: Was it not 5 per cent?


James Garfield Gardiner: Yes, I believe it was. It was 65 per cent and now it is 70 per cent. They have come up 5 per cent from the bottom. They said it should be not lower than 70 per cent and not higher than 85 per cent, I believe. If the support price is 80 per cent, that is not too bad. All we say there is that if no one else will pay 80 per cent-which is $23-we will buy it. We have not bought any which means that it has been at least equal to the floor.
I have here the averages through all the years if any one wants to have them given. They indicate very clearly that $23 is not the price the farmer obtained. He obtained very much more than that and the farmer knows that to be the case. No one can go out in the country and tell him that all he ever received for his hogs was $23. He has received as much as $48.50 and very recently he has been receiving $30 in spite of the fact that he does not have to look very far back to see that $23 prevented them from going any lower. The sum of $23 is a stop loss, not an indication that that is what the farmer should get. The farmer receives all he possibly can over and above that figure. We simply say
3330	HOUSE OF
Agricultural Products-Support Prices that at a certain level we will buy it. That is the case in relation to hogs but butter is in a somewhat different position.
We do not produce enough butter in the winter time to feed ourselves. We produce only about 60 per cent of the butter we consume in Canada in the winter time. If we are going to have butter in the winter months there are only two ways we can obtain it. One is to store it up in the summer months when we are producing plenty of butter and the other means is to import butter. I know that my hon. friends opposite have held the view at one time that perhaps there should be more importing and the business should be allowed to proceed. I note, too, that they eventually came to the conclusion they would put on a higher duty and I am just sorry they did not take the same position with regard to some commodities other than butter.


William Earl Rowe: We never did hold that view.


James Garfield Gardiner: Go back far enough and you will find you did.


William Earl Rowe: No.


James Garfield Gardiner: Perhaps you did not but some conservatives did.


William Earl Rowe: Back before you were born probably.


James Garfield Gardiner: Oh no, I was born too long ago, really, and I would like to have been born later.


William Earl Rowe: I am glad you were born when you were.


James Garfield Gardiner: Nevertheless I think I had been born when your party took that position.


William Earl Rowe: It was never taken by this party.


James Garfield Gardiner: Oh yes. Probably you were still down where I used to be when that happened.


William Earl Rowe: I was here before you.


James Garfield Gardiner: I know you were but nevertheless that is the position that was taken in connection with this particular commodity. We have not attempted to say to the farmer, "We are going to pay you a price which some people call parity." We have attempted to make it possible for the farmer to receive a fairly high price for his commodity under all the conditions that exist simply by saying to those who are in that business, "We are riot going to allow it to go down below that price. We will buy it if others do not buy it." And so they have gone on buying above


that price and on one or two occasions for a few weeks they got down close to it on hogs but since then it has gone up.
In regard to butter the position was different. It was not the intention so much to do that as it was to stabilize the price. We got a fairly high price in the winter time over most years in the past but we got a very low price in the summer so what we had in mind was to stabilize the price of butter.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Applewhaile):: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. minister but I am obliged to advise him that it is five o'clock and the house must proceed to the consideration of private and public bills.



MISCELLANEOUS PRIVATE BILLS


Mr. W. J. Henderson (Kingston):: Mr. Speaker, may I ask leave of the house to revert to routine proceedings for the purpose of receiving the eighteenth report of the standing committee on miscellaneous private bills?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Applewhaite):: Does the hon. member have unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
Eighteenth report of standing committee on miscellaneous private bills.-Mr. Henderson.



PRIVATE BILLS


[Stage Direction]
The house resumed, from Friday, April 5, consideration in committee of Bill No. 15, respecting Trans Mountain Oil Pipe Line Company-Mr. Fairey-Mr. Applewhaite in the chair.
On clause 1-Subdivision of shares.
Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Chairman, before I resume my remarks on clause 1 of this bill may I indicate that if the committee wished to let this bill stand for a moment so as to deal with the divorce bills that are on the order paper at the committee stage we would be willing for that to be done. It so happens that all the divorce bills on the order paper today were considered in the miscellaneous private bills committee with members of our party in attendance and if they are called there will be no further discussion on them. We intend, however, to have something to say regarding Bill No. 15. I put it to you, sir, whether the committee wishes to do anything along that line at this moment or not.


Mr. Fairey:: Mr. Chairman, this is the fourth occasion on which I have been asked to let this particular bill stand and I regret very much that it has been the cause of delay in passing so many divorce bills. I wish to say now that if the committee agrees I am prepared to speak to the bill at this time; but I will not take the time of the house for more than about 20 minutes at the most, after which I will sit down and leave the disposal of the bill to the discretion of hon. members. That would leave plenty of time to deal with the divorce bills which follow.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Apparently we shall have to see what to do later when the divorce bills are reached. My point was that we were prepared to give any unanimous consent which might be necessary to getting these divorce bills through. I may say that we have something further to say with regard to Bill No. 15, and I am glad to note that as soon as he has the opportunity of doing so the hon. member who is sponsoring this measure will also have some comments to make.
Mr. Chairman, we have stated our position with regard to this bill on several occasions, and we have made it clear that there are certain sociological or philosophical reasons for our opposition to a stock-splitting tactic such as is involved in this bill. Today it is our intention, however, to indicate some reasons which might be regarded as more tangible in support of our feeling that parliament should not pass this bill and that parliament should not be called upon to bless the tactics which are involved in the seeking of this legislation.
We have pointed out already various ways in which we feel this company has not played fair with parliament. To begin with, when the bill incorporating this company was first placed before parliament there was a clear-cut undertaking that the line would be an all-Canadian line. That undertaking, as hon. members know, has not been kept. I would point out also that when representatives of the company were before the committee on railways, canals and telegraph lines on March 7 certain statements were made which do not stand up.
On page 43, for example, it was indicated by Mr. McQuarrie, the secretary of the company, that the companies which hold the shares in Trans Mountain were "in all sorts of business". Perhaps I had better put the exact statement on the record:


Mr. McQuarrie:: They are in all sorts of business; some are investment people, insurance companies and all sorts of people who have money to invest.


Mr. Follwell:: They are all incorporated
companies?
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Heath Nelson Macquarrie: Yes, they are all Incorporated
companies of all kinds.


Mr. Nicholson:: You have not got a break-down of those companies to show what percentage are oil companies?


Heath Nelson Macquarrie: No. Nothing like that. There is a grand total.
It is interesting to note that on that occasion the officials of the company did not have with them documents to support their statement that the companies holding these stocks were "in all sorts of business"-investment people, insurance companies, and so on. My colleague the hon. member for Nanaimo, when this bill was before this committee of the whole house on the last occasion, placed on record a list of some 12 or 15 companies which hold shares in Trans Mountain. Not one of them is an insurance company; not one of them is an investment company. They are all in the oil or pipe-line business.
That is hardly playing fair with a committee of this house or with parliament. When this matter was last before us I was at the point of drawing attention to the strange phenomenon that the two main officials of the company who appeared before our committee had not compared notes as to the information which was in their possession. The president of the company, Mr. Morrison, was asked about the share holdings of the directors of the company, and he said on page 54:
I know how many a certain number of companies have. But I have no knowledge whatever of how many individual directors may have.
However, on the very next page, under questioning by my colleague the hon. member for Mackenzie, Mr. McQuarrie said:
Part of my duty is to check each year to see if each director is properly qualified. According to the list which I had on April 5, 1956, at that time one director owned two shares; another owned 5,000; one owned 202; another, 102; another 302; two owned some 2,000, and another one owned five.
Mr. Morrison, however did not know how many shares the directors held; indeed he said:
That is the first time I ever heard this.
It seems strange indeed that these two principal spokesmen of the company appearing before our committee had not compared notes as to the information they had concerning their own company.
I draw attention also to the fact that this company has stated repeatedly-in its explanatory note to the bill, through those who spoke for it in the Senate, through the hon. gentleman who is sponsoring the bill in this house and through those who appeared in the committee-that its purpose is to secure a wider distribution of the shares of the company among the general public. Yet on page 44 of the minutes of proceedings

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and evidence the company's president, Mr. Morrison, admitted that additional shares would not be issued; and there are other indications that there is no intention on the part of the Trans Mountain company's shareholders, either companies or directors, to dispose of any of their shares after they have been split. In other words it seems to us quite hollow-this suggestion that splitting the shares five for one is advanced for the purpose of achieving a wider distribution of those shares.
In addition to these instances of lack of fairness with parliament there is another matter which we feel is particularly serious, and I say quite frankly that we have this additional information only because we have delayed the passing of this bill, only because with the passage of time certain information which had not reached the light of day when the company was before the standing committee on March 7 has now come to light. I ask the sponsor of the bill to read again the minutes of proceedings and evidence, as he must have done many times during the past few weeks. He will note that the witnesses, the president and the secretary, were very careful to make sure that the information they gave to the committee was dated not later than April 5, 1956. For example, I draw attention to page 55 where Mr. McQuarrie had been asked certain questions. On two occasions he indicated that he was talking about "The list I had on April 5, 1956". It is very interesting to note that when Mr. McQuarrie was pressed by the hon. member for Bow River regarding certain stock holdings he replied:
The stock register is about three inches thick. I did not bring it along. It has about 6,000 names in it.
Is a book three inches thick too heavy to carry? I have one here two or three inches thick that I brought in from the library. If one is interested in a matter and wants to tell the whole story, why not bring it along? As I indicated the other day, it is also rather interesting that the notice to the shareholders concerning the meeting at which the question of this stock split was discussed was not brought along. That is noted on page 63 where Mr. McQuarrie says:
I wish we had brought the notice. A letter went out to each shareholder, along with the notice. I have not got a copy of that letter with me.
My point is that if the committee had had the notice and the letter calling that special meeting, the committee would then have learned of any other items that were discussed at that special meeting, and if the witnesses had brought to the committee the stock register hon. members would have been in a position to ask questions with respect to

whether there were any more shares out since the date of April 5, 1956, which was the date the witnesses gave as the deadline beyond which they were giving no information.
The fact is that an annual meeting of this company was held on April 18, 1956, in the city of Vancouver but nothing that trans-spired at that annual meeting on April 18, 1956, came out at the meeting that was held in this building on March 7, 1957. Surely it was relevant to the affairs of this company to bring before this committee any important decisions that had been taken at the annual meeting on April 18, 1956. I now tell this committee that at that meeting on April 18, 1956, the shareholders approved of the issue of several thousand options to purchase shares. The decision to issue these options had been made by the board of directors in October, 1955, and according to the Financial Post "Survey of Industrials" for 1956-and it is also indicated in Moody's "Transportation Manual" for 1956-4,900 of the options that were approved at the annual meeting in April, about which we were told nothing in the committee, were issued to persons who turned them into shares at a price of $38,625. These sales were made in 1956.
The price on the market of Trans Mountain shares during 1956 varied, of course, but in January it was $46, in February $47, and in March it was running around $51. In other words, the people who got these options, which were decided upon by the board of directors in October, 1955, and approved by the annual meeting in April, 1956, got shares in this company at a price which at the time they bought them was less than the market price.
After the annual meeting in April, 1956, at which time approval was given to the 4,900 shares which had been sold between October, 1955, and April, 1956, approval was given to still further options. May I make the point here, that all of these options were to certain key employees and not to the general public.
My hon. friend comes before the house and says that the aim of the company is to bring about a wider distribution to the Canadian public. We have been told about the
1,500,000	shares issued out of the treasury, but deep, dark secrecy was maintained with regard to these options that were made available to key employees, to personnel and management, on the basis of which a handsome profit has been made as the result of the stock splitting technique.
I happen to have on my desk a very interesting article from the New York Times of March 24, 1957. The title is "Prices Anticipate Splits of Shares". It is an analysis of what happens to stocks when companies decide on

stock splits. It points out that the time when the value of shares appreciates really commences when the rumour first gets out that a stock split is going to take place, and the time when the appreciation takes place and values accrue runs from the time the rumour leaks out that it is going to take place through the time when the directors decide on it, through the time when the shareholders decide on it and up until the time when the split is actually approved. The article is based on the experience in some 28 different stocks that were analysed by Mr. Burton Crane, a writer in the New York Times.
I submit that what this company was doing in this whole piece was to go in for the stock-splitting technique by letting rumours out that it was going to happen and by sending out notices to the shareholders so the rumour would spread still more, and the result was that the market price of these shares went up and up. That was fine for those who held stock but it was a particular bonanza for those on the inside who were being given these options about which not a word was said before the committee on railways, canals and telegraph lines when these people came before the committee on March 7 of this year.
I would point out that one of the reasons we are now in possession of this information is that we have exercised our right to debate this matter and have exercised our right, if you will, to delay it. In the meantime there has come to light the annual report of Trans Mountain Oil Pipe Line Company. It is for the period ended December 31, 1956, and I am sure that whatever is in the material contained in the annual report for the calendar year 1956 must have been in the possession of these gentlemen who were before our committee on March 7, 1957, but of course no reference was made to it.
However that annual report has now been published. It bears the date of April 4, 1957, but is for the period ended December 31, 1956. I have not yet been able to obtain a copy of it. I am informed that it is not yet available in Ottawa but it is available in Toronto. By long distance telephone only today I have been able to get some of the information contained in that annual report. I dare say my hon. friend who is sponsoring this bill may have a copy of it. I hope he has, and if he has I hope he will agree that the information contained in that annual report should be given to the house even though it was not given to the committee when it met on March 7, 1957.
I urge again that hon. members read the evidence taken before that committee, as I have read it two or three times. When you 82715-211
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read it, after you get hold of this information that there were these options and these additional shares, you then begin to realize how cleverly these witnesses avoided getting into that field by giving the committee information on the question of shares only up to April 5, 1956. I repeat that it was in March, 1957, that these gentlemen were here, but the latest information given to the committee was information up to April 5, 1956. As I say, if they had had the stock register with them these other questions would have arisen and it might have been possible for members to get this information.
The shares that are being optioned out to key employees at the present time, and that includes any directors who are also employees of the company and on salary, have been granted at $82 per share. At the present time they are selling on the market for something of the order $115 to $120. So there again you have a special profit being made available to these key employees, including any salaried personnel engaged in the management of the company.
I must say this to hon. gentlemen around who know the practice in these companies. I recognize that this is standard practice, this business of splitting shares and this business of granting options to employees and to management personnel at a price less than the market price. But when a company is coming before parliament and asking parliament to bless a manoeuvre of this kind I suggest that it is the moral responsibility of that company to let parliament know what is happening. Oh, they did not make any misstatements with regard to this matter. They carefully avoided getting anywhere near it; they carefully avoided the question of shares that had been issued since April 5, 1956, and they carefully avoided getting anywhere near the question of any decision about shares that had been made at the annual meeting of April 18, 1956. Indeed, they carefully avoided even mentioning the annual meeting that was held in Vancouver on April 18, 1956.
I say in passing that we have had in this House of Commons one other case of options about which we had no information, options which were just pieces of paper in the hands of two gentlemen in particular and which, as a result of the action of parliament-against which some of us fought for all we were worth-became extremely valuable. Now we have these people-key personnel or key employees, to use the language of the report that is out, a copy of which we have not yet been able to get-being given options to buy at a price less than the market price. Why is the market price soaring? It is not

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just because the company is making high profits, although that is a factor in the picture as well and in that connection there are elements that one must bear in mind. It is also because this company has indulged in this stock-splitting technique, starting with the rumour, then the notice, the special meeting and so on which, as Burton Crane of the New York Times says, has turned out to be a standard way of appreciating the stocks of a company such as this one.
Incidentally, before I touch upon the point I was going to make, may I point out that at page 44, under questioning, the witness- it was Mr. Morrison in both cases-said at two places: "The company is not selling any more shares." That is to be found about a third of the way down the page and then further down again he says "not that additional shares will be issued". I leave it to Mr. Morrison to justify that statement that no more shares were being sold in the light of the fact that these options bad been issued to sell additional shares out of the treasury, out of the 3j million shares that were not issued in the first instance.
To recapitulate the story of this company, may I say that in the first instance 1,500,000 shares were issued and we have been given the breakdown as to those shares as between companies and private individuals. Later on 4,900 shares were issued between October 1955 and April 1956 on the basis of options agreed to in October, 1955. That seemed to bring the total number of shares issued to 1,504,900. When the witness gave the figure, he gave it as 1,504,928 as at April 5, 1956. I cannot seem to account for the other 28 shares but we will not argue about that matter. My point is that since that date, when that was the figure, more thousands of shares have been issued. They had been issued after the date of April 5, 1956, and before the witnesses appeared before the committee. They had been issued out of the treasury and yet the committee was not told about that fact. They said they were not selling any more shares. But they were selling shares to key personnel and they were doing so at a price below the market price, thus enabling them to make a special profit from the gains arising because of the stock-splitting transaction.
The company has said a number of times that it has no thought of making any profit out of this deal. For example, at page 45 of the minutes of proceedings and evidence of the committee, I find Mr. Morrison reported as saying this:
The question of profit in this transaction has never come up on the board.

At page 46 we find that Mr. Morrison was asked this question by and made this answer to the hon. member for Nanaimo:
Q. Well, is there any value whatsoever to the company and to the present shareholders to be obtained from this measure? A. Not that I know of.
Also over on page 48 we find that Mr. Morrison, in answer to the hon. member for Nanaimo, stated this:
There is no thought of making a profit out of it.
When they made those statements these people knew that these options were out. If either of these witnesses is himself a salaried employee of the company he certainly was entitled to these options and probably had them, and was therefore a person who would be making a profit out of this whole stocksplitting manoeuvre.
In order to establish their honesty these men may say, "Oh, but that profit was already made because of the rumour that there would be a stock split, because of the decision of the board of directors, because of the decision of the shareholders, because of the appreciation that had already taken place". They may say that there will be no further profit to them as a result of parliament passing the bill, if it does pass. If they want to take that position, the only answer I make is that what they are doing is asking parliament to bless a transaction the aim of which was to make profit for those on the inside and that, in the light of that fact, these people have not been fair with parliament. That is why we say that this bill should not be passed by this House of Commons.
We make no apology for the delay with which this bill has been met as a result of our close study and our close scrutiny of it. In fact, we think we have done a service to parliament in holding this bill up until we could get all this information which was kept secret, which was carefully avoided by the company's spokesmen, so that we might know the whole story. We say to you, Mr. Chairman, and to the committee that in the light of the evidence to which I have referred we do not accept the statement that the only purpose of this legislation is to achieve a wider distribution of the shares amongst the general public. We say that the purpose of this legislation is to ask parliament to bless a stock-splitting manoeuvre which is of advantage to those on the inside, and that is why we are opposed to this bill.


Edward Turney Applewhaite: May 1 inform the hon. member that his time has expired.


Francis Thrower Fairey: Mr. Chairman, I have already expressed my regret that the numerous divorce bills which have preceded this bill

have been manoeuvred into a position to prevent my making the proper explanation. The hon. gentleman who has just taken his seat has made a good deal of repetitious reference to stock options. Over and over again he has repeated the statement that stock options were available to people who were not named. As a matter of fact, the hon. member for Nanaimo made the same statement when he spoke on another occasion, and he made the statement that 30,000 shares were available- I took it down-or were set aside in April of last year and were sold at $30 when the selling price on the stock exchange was $50. I must confess that to me that was a startling statement because I had no idea that there were any such stock options available to anybody except what I am going to speak about in a moment.
I telephoned Vancouver and Toronto and was assured that the statement was totally inaccurate. There are no stock options available to directors or shareholders, except what is issued under a by-law of the company which is shown in the prospectus and is repeated in the annual statement. I will read it, Mr. Chairman:
(K) By-law No. 4 of the company enacted on November 20. 1955 instituted an incentive stock option plan whereby options to purchase unissued shares of the capital stock of the company (not in excess in the aggregate of 15,000 shares,-
Not 30,000, but 15,000.
-subject to appropriate adjustment to give effect to any relevant changes in the share capitalization of the company) may be granted by the board of directors to such fulltime employees of the company and its subsidiaries as the board of directors may designate.
This is the important point.
The price at which the stock is offered under the plan is the closing market quotation on the Toronto stock exchange on the date on which the option is granted.
Any person, therefore, who is a fulltime employee of the company today and who exercises an option, would have to pay the closing price on the Toronto stock exchange today. Later on in the same paragraph of the prospectus it says:
Pursuant to the foregoing plan, options in respect of an aggregate of 6,900 shares of the capital stock of the company have heretofore been granted to the certain fulltime employees of the company, of which options in respect to 4,900 shares have heretofore been exercised. The plan provides that an option shall become exercisable only after one year of continued employment immediately following the date the option is granted-
This means-I think it is quite clear- that if a fulltime employee requests that he be granted an option under this by-law he can exercise that option one year from that date at the price on the Toronto stock exchange on the day his option was approved. There are only 15,000 shares and they are 82715-211|
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available to fulltime employees, not to directors or shareholders. There are no other stock options of any kind whatever and the only director who is a fulltime employee is the president and he has not exercised any option at all.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: I wonder if the hon. member would indicate at what price the 15,000 shares were picked up?


Francis Thrower Fairey: They were picked up at various figures and at various times. I know what you have done, you have averaged the price. As a matter of fact, in the annual statement it says:
The options totalling 4,900 shares granted in 1955 were exercised in 1956, in respect of which the company received a total amount of $189,262.
You have averaged that; I know that.
In November 1956 further options totalling 2,000 shares were granted at $82 per share-
Because that was the closing price on the Toronto exchange at that time.
-to certain key employees; no portion of these options is exercisable until November 1957.
I know that the opposition to this bill is based upon two factors: first, that the company is a crooked company because they say they are trying to increase their public relations by making shares available at a reasonable price to a greater number of people; secondly, if that is not true, they are trying to hide enormous profits. What are the facts? This company built, at a cost of about $80 million or thereabouts, a pipe line going into Vancouver. There is a lot of talk about it being a Canadian pipe line, and so it is, an all-Canadian pipe line with a spur line into the United States.


Alexander Malcolm Nicholson: And taking over half the oil.


Francis Thrower Fairey: No, taking a little less than half the oil.


Mr. Regier:: No, not according to the statements by the company officials.


Francis Thrower Fairey: Who is making this speech?


Some hon. Members:: Order; sit down.


Edward Turney Applewhaite: The hon. member for Victoria, B.C., has the floor.


Francis Thrower Fairey: The other day when I contradicted the hon. member, he was quoting what some officials told him they hoped to put through the line in the coming year; they were giving estimates in answer to a question raised by the hon. member for Burnaby-Richmond. I was quoting the actual figures on the amount of oil that had been put through the line in the preceding year.
The company proposes an expansion program. Why does it propose this? It does so

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because Alberta has between 200,000 and
300,000	barrels of oil a day which it wishes to export, and they want to pass it over the Trans Mountain Oil Pipe Line to Vancouver.
Some of it is going to go to the United States, but what is wrong with that? We sell lumber, fish and all kinds of things to the United States. We are complaining, on the one hand, that we have this adverse balance of trade with the United States. This will help to correct it.
By the way, in the Vancouver Sun of last Thursday, April 4, I found an article indicating that the British American Oil Company proposes to build a new refinery at Port Moody in the constituency of the hon. member for Burnaby-Coquitlam. It is going to cost about $20 million and it is going to be supplied with oil by the Trans Mountain Pipe Line from Alberta and so help to build up industries in the Vancouver area. This plant will have a capacity of about 20,000 barrels a day and will give employment to about 175 people.
Why does the company wish to propose that its stock be split? Most companies do this when the price of their shares on the stock market rises to such a price that they get out of reach of the ordinary investor. It is considered unwise and perhaps detrimental to the interests of a company to have shares selling at too high a price as they would then tend to gravitate into the hands of a few rich people. The company is subjected to criticism, so it is considered wise to split the stock so that a great number of shares will be available for ordinary trading by people of modest means. It means that there are a great number of people interested in the welfare of the company and able to support it.
A good deal has been said by my friends opposite as to why the company does not sell some treasury stock. There are about 3.5 million shares of treasury stock and they ask why the company does not sell it. In the first place, there are several ways in which a company may finance its expansion program. I am hurrying because I promised to be through in 15 or 20 minutes and I want to give other members an opportunity to vote. Let me say that this company proposes in the coming year to expend $40 million, and over the next two years about $70 million. The company has started construction of two loops, one near Edson and one just north of Kamloops, for the purpose of increasing the capacity of the line so that they can bring the oil from Alberta to the Pacific coast and so as to help Alberta to pay greater dividends. It is a prosperous company. There is no question about that.
[Mr. Fairey.l
It is true that they lost money for the first two years, and they have made money in the succeeding years. They are plowing all the money back into capital expenditures.
The $70 million the company proposes to spend in the next two years is to be raised by a $30 million bond issue. Why do they not sell shares as my friends opposite request? In the first place, they do not wish to finance in that way because at the present time the bond market is the best means of financing. Financial people, like Wood, Gundy and Company, and others, suggest that at the present time the most economical way of financing capital expenditure is by bond issues, and therefore it is not necessary to sell the shares. This may not be true in every year from now on when the tremendous growth in British Columbia and Alberta is realized. It is evidently expected that this pipe line will have to be enlarged or a duplicate line built. At that time it may be very handy to have a sufficient number of shares in the treasury so that they could be marketed if the market conditions meant the company should resort to that type of financing.
There is no point in trying to blacken the name of a company which is operating successfully, which is doing a good job and which is carrying oil for export as well as for the full requirements, I may say, of British Columbia, and where there has not been a single share sold except for cash with the exception of those of which I spoke a few moments ago. These are available on option to fulltime employees after they have been employed one year after applying for the option.
There are many things I might say but I am going to close with this. In his closing speech the other night the hon. member for Nanaimo-I excuse him for this because I know he had to jump up quickly to talk the bill out and therefore he was probably not as accurate as one would normally expect him to be-


Mr. Ellis:: You are talking it out now.


Francis Thrower Fairey: I certainly am not. The second inaccurate statement which he made had to do with the shares. There is no secret about it, the main shareholders of this company are big oil companies, and they are not selling their shares on the stock market. The Imperial Oil, the Canadian Gulf now owned by British American Oil Company, the Standard Oil of British Columbia; Shell Oil of Canada, each have 130,000 shares, as have the Bechtell Company, the builders of the line. Richfield has 50,000, Union Oil of California, 100,000; making in all 670,000 shares.

These people hold these shares because they wish to hold control and management of the company because it is their oil which is passing over the line. Then, 250,000 shares were sold to the Western Canadian Oil Company.
The hon. gentleman said the other day that when they were asking for the names of the shareholders they were misled by a statement of Mr. McQuarrie that the shares were held by a variety of people, including companies and other people and, as it says in the evidence, people who had money to invest. But Mr. McQuarrie was not talking about those 250,000 shares at all. It is perfectly true that those 250,000 shares were held by a number of smaller oil companies, seven or eight of them, and the hon. member was quite correct when he listed them, but they were not talking about the same thing. Mr. McQuarrie was talking about a block of shares, and the only shares, which are being traded on the market, being 450,000 shares held in the hands of the general public. These were the shares Mr. McQuarrie was talking about when he said that they were held very widely.
I promised to sit down after I talked for 15 or 20 minutes. I have spoken for nearly 20 minutes. There is much more I could say. Let me say this in closing. There is nothing underhand about this thing. This is a normal procedure for companies. When shares of a company reach too high a price on the market they split the shares to make them more readily available to those of us who are in the lower income brackets so that we may have a chance to participate in the profits of a good company. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Will the hon. member answer one or two questions?


Francis Thrower Fairey: Yes.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Did I understand him to say that he did not know until recently that these options existed?


Francis Thrower Fairey: No; I certainly did know. I knew it at the time because I have the prospectus here, but I certainly did not know and it certainly was a surprise-that is what I said-when the hon. member for Nanaimo said that there were 30,000 shares, and the hon. member repeated it today, although he did not mention 30,000, available to shareholders and directors. The hon. member carefully avoided saying they were restricted to fulltime employees after they had been employed a certain time and that the price at which they could exercise the option was the closing price on the Toronto stock exchange at the time the option was granted.
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Stanley Howard Knowles: Is the hon. member admitting that at the time the company appeared before the committee he knew there were
15,000	options?


Francis Thrower Fairey: Of course.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Does the hon. member not think that that information should have been made available to the committee?


Francis Thrower Fairey: May I say that when you get before a committee on a bill, which we thought was a simple, straightforward matter you do not bring all the office records and you do not-


Stanley Howard Knowles: Obviously, they did not.


Francis Thrower Fairey: Do you expect that every company that comes here with a bill; do you, for instance, ask an insurance company to bring down the names of their policy holders, to give you the names of 6,700 shareholders?


Stanley Howard Knowles: When a company comes before parliament with a bill relating to its shares is the share or stock register not an item that you would expect its representatives to bring to a committee?
May I ask the hon. member another question? He says that these options have to be paid for at the price on the Toronto stock exchange on the day the options are granted. Does he mean exactly that? I am sure he does. In other words, if a person does not pick up his shares until a later date, is it not true that he still gets them at the price on the exchange on the day he was granted the options even though at the time he picks them up they may be selling at a higher price?


Francis Thrower Fairey: Yes, that is perfectly true. If I were granted an option six months ago it would be granted at the price on the Toronto stock exchange at that time, but I am not allowed to exercise that option until I have worked for another full year, and I get the stock at that price, certainly.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Would not those who hold those options thus share in this whole business of splitting the shares and garner a special profit?


Francis Thrower Fairey: At the time it was done there was no question of splitting shares. It was a matter of buying shares in the company. If they split the shares they will not get them at the same price, of course.


Thomas Speakman Barnett: There are a number of questions that I might ask the hon. member for Victoria, B.C., but perhaps I might better devote the time I have available to making a few comments with reference to the statement that he has made to the committee. Let me say at the outset that I for one certainly

Private Bills
recognize and believe that the hon. member for Victoria, B.C., has nothing up his sleeve in connection with this proposal. I think he agreed to sponsor this bill in this house in good faith as far as he was concerned. While I may have felt a few times while it has been under consideration that he may have had some moments of regret that he agreed-


Francis Thrower Fairey: I have not.


Thomas Speakman Barnett: He says he does not regret it. It is entirely a personal matter so far as he is concerned. Nevertheless I can say the statement which we actually have been hoping he would make has not convinced me that this company has a sound case in coming before parliament with the request that it has, no more than I would say any other company under similar circumstances would have a sound case.
I think it would be fair to say that there has not been on our part any attempt to blacken the name of a particular concern. If any name-blackening has occurred it is because of the actions which this company of its own volition apparently has seen fit to take.
One of the arguments that has been advanced in the recent statement of the hon. member for Victoria, B.C., and which has been brought forward at various other stages in the discussion, is that somehow or other this stock-splitting process is going to make it easier for the poor man, as the hon. member for Victoria, B.C., has described himself, to have an investment in a producing enterprise of this country. I have thought about this proposition a good deal in recent weeks and I must say it seems to me rather an extraordinary argument to advance.
I am not going to take time to look up the exact reference but at some point in the proceedings I believe the hon. member for York West asked why the stock was not split 100 times and the spokesman for the company who was on the witness stand at that particular moment as I recall it replied something to the effect that that would be putting them down in the penny stock class and it would be beneath the dignity of a company of this kind. They hold themselves up as being a very substantial sort of corporation whose stocks, I presume they would consider, are a good investment and certainly the figures of the earnings they produced before us would indicate that that is the case.
It seems to me that any Canadian citizen who is sufficiently above the line of poverty to be able to invest savings in an enterprise in this country, if he is going to be wise, would have available an amount sufficient to purchase a share of a stock which cost him $124-


Francis Thrower Fairey: Could you buy just one share
on the stock market? Try it.


Thomas Speakman Barnett: If one is thinking in terms which I would consider to be legitimate for the purposes of the present argument at least of investing some personal savings in the development of Canadian industry I cannot see that it would make any difference to him whether he bought one share at $124 or five shares at $24.75.


Mr. Enfield:: Would the hon. member permit a question. Suppose you wanted to buy only three shares at something less than $124? You would not be able to unless you had the total price of the one share.


Thomas Speakman Barnett: 1 am sorry, but I did not quite catch the question.


Frank A. Enfield: This was my question. Suppose you wanted to buy a number of shares the total price of which came to less than the amount of the cost of one present share. Would you not find it easier to make that purchase? Obviously you would.


Thomas Speakman Barnett: What I am suggesting in effect is that if a person's income is not sufficiently above the poverty line when he is looking for a sound investment that is going to return him dividends that he cannot afford to spend at least $124-I am using that figure because it happens to be the last figure I noticed at which the stock was quoted-then he should not be buying any shares. Instead he should put that money into a savings account or into something where it will be immediately available to him as a liquid asset to meet any minor emergency he might encounter.


Frank A. Enfield: Mr. Chairman, would the hon. member permit another question. Would you not admit that bringing the cost of the shares down to a lower level is certainly going to make it easier to trade in those shares?


Charles Edward Johnston: How is that going to happen?


Frank A. Enfield: Because the shares when they are quoted on the market available for public purchase as they are now will be quoted at a lower price per share and you can buy one share for whatever the price would be.


Charles Edward Johnston: It depends
entirely on the amount.


Thomas Speakman Barnett: I admit that the case I am suggesting is a rather hypothetical one.


Alfred Claude Ellis: Not any more hypothetical than the one that was mentioned.


Thomas Speakman Barnett: The point I am attempting to establish and which apparently the hon. member who has been asking questions does not agree with-


An hon. Member:: The hon. member for Y ork-Scarborough.


Thomas Speakman Barnett: I have already named him several times in discussion and I thought I would avoid putting his name on the record of this house again.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Only one-tenth of 1 per cent of the shares are traded on the stock exchange.


Thomas Speakman Barnett: The point I was endeavouring to make in reply to the argument put forward to the effect that if the stock split does not take place the few shares that are available for trading are going to gravitate into the hands of a few wealthy individuals does not necessarily follow at all. The only advantage of this stock split to anyone who is not wealthy is that it may give him a somewhat greater opportunity to gamble on the stock market if the shares are selling at what would be the split price.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Chairman, on a question of privilege I wonder if the committee would like to give consideration to the suggestion I made earlier that we might consider putting through the divorce bills that are on the order paper which have been reported back from the committee. We would be willing to do this if it is agreeable to the committee.


An hon. Member:: Who is the leader of this house?


Edward Turney Applewhaite: Is it agreed that I rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again?


Some hon. Members:: No.


Edward Turney Applewhaite: It being six o'clock, shall I report progress and ask leave to sit again?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
Progress reported.


Edward Turney Applewhaite: It is my understanding that by leave the next order of business shall be read.


William James Henderson: Mr. Chairman, there are 29 divorce bills which have been reported to us by the miscellaneous private bills committee and I understand there is no objection to them. I wonder if they could be considered without in any way interfering with the debate that is presently proceeding.


Edward Turney Applewhaite: Is it agreed that I shall leave the chair under standing order 54(1) for the house to go into committee of the whole to consider the divorce bills now on the order paper?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
Private Bills



CONSIDERED IN COMMITTEE


Edward Turney Applewhaite: Is it agreed that the divorce bills orders Nos. 37 to 65 both inclusive be committed as one bill?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
Bill No. 333, for the relief of Pauline Ver-doni Di Fruscia.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 334, for the relief of Lawrence Robson Moore.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 335, for the relief of Jadwiga Uzar Ziomko, otherwise known as Hedwig Uzar Ziomko.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 336, for the relief of Eleonor Butkieviciute Springeliene Springelis.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 337, for the relief of Harry Edward Beard.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 338, for the relief of Shirley Ann Doris Hobbs Cleary.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 339, for the relief of Charles Richard Allen.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 340, for the relief of Eveline Dora Giroux Gunhouse.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 341, for the relief of Mary Weiner Brown.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 342, for the relief of Simone Habel Tanguay.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 383, for the relief of Wilfrid Lanouette.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 384, for the relief of Fanny Faye Fox Cohen.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 385, for the relief of Ronald Pike. -Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 386, for the relief of Micheline Bourdon Russell.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 387, for the relief of Rose Marie Bremner Middleton.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 388, for the relief of Donalda Ruth MacCrimmon Belak.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 389, for the relief of Joseph Laureat Pierre Valois.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 390, for the relief of Mary Patricia Happy Sullivan.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 391, for the relief of Frances Ellison Schnebley Pattee.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 392, for the relief of Sylvia Rapp Snider.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 393, for the relief of Barbara Fay Howard Goulet.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 394, for the relief of Bernice Clyke Brown.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 395, for the relief of Harry Payne Ward.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 396, for the relief of Roman Krastins.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 397, for the relief of Sam Essner. -Mr. Henderson.

Agricultural Products-Support Prices
Bill No. 398, tor the relief of Georges Henri Durocher.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 399, for the relief of Pauline Jarowyj Krymlak.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 401, for the relief of Florence Rhoda Cohen Denbow.-Mr. Henderson.
Bill No. 361, for the relief of Jacques Petel. -Mr. Henderson.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Edward Turney Applewhaite: At eight o'clock the house will resume the business which was interrupted at five o'clock.
It being six o'clock I do leave the chair.
At six o'clock the house took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The house resumed at eight o'clock.

[Stage Direction]
The house resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Harris for committee of supply, and the amendment thereto of Mr. Diefenbaker, and the amendment to the amendment of Mr. Bryson.
Walter Edward Harris: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It has been agreed that the two votes which are facing the house shall be taken at 9.15 p.m.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Applewhaile):: Is
it agreed that the votes on the amendment and the subamendment shall be taken at 9.15?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


James Garfield Gardiner: Mr. Speaker, when we
adjourned at six o'clock I was pointing out that governments throughout the world had been endeavouring to prevent conditions after the last war resembling those which had followed most wars in the past, namely conditions which resulted from an effort to curb inflation by forcing down the prices of primary products, and that Canada, in trying to avoid that situation, had introduced the Agricultural Prices Support Act of 1944 under which we had utilized $200 million as a revolving fund for the purpose of supporting prices.
I indicated that we had no authority to set prices. We therefore undertook to buy any products which others would not buy, at a certain set price. We had dealt with hogs, we had dealt with butter and I was about to deal a little more fully with eggs. My occasion for wishing to deal a little more
[The Deputy Chairman.]
fully with eggs and certain other commodities is provided by the annual presentation of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture to the Prime Minister (Mr. St. Laurent) and members of the cabinet on February 15, 1957. I should like to review shortly some of the things which were said before six o'clock in order to link them with the suggestions made by the federation of agriculture.
The first commodity dealt with by the federation as a separate commodity was dairy products, but before coming to that they dealt with the general question of supports. Part of that representation was read by the Leader of the Opposition. I would like to read another part of it:
We therefore suggest that a greater use be made in the future of the Agricultural Prices Support Act as a means of maintaining adequate market support prices of those farm commodities to which the act applies. Eggs, fowl and turkeys provide immediate opportunities for the application of this request.
In so far as eggs are concerned, the decision of the federation taken at Winnipeg and later presented to the government was to the effect that we had not been able to maintain the price which we had sought to maintain by saying we would take delivery at 38 cents of all eggs which were delivered to storage at given times. During the early part of our experience, beginning about six years ago, we set the 1st day of December as the day on which those eggs might be delivered, and we found as we went along that it is much more difficult to deal effectively with eggs than it is to deal with butter, the chief reason being that butter production is governed largely by weather conditions; in Canada we have a very high production in the summer months and a very low production in the winter months, due to the fact that our cows are out to grass in the summer and are fed on dry feed in the winter time. We have attempted to overcome the disadvantages of this situation, as I stated before dinner, by stabilizing the price throughout the year.
When we begin to deal with eggs it is quite different. There was a time when the period at which egg production was high was regulated by the fact that the old hen started to cluck in the spring of the year; eggs were put under her and she finally hatched them out. That always happened about the same time of the year, so we thought we were in a position to carry on in the usual way over a period of time.


Howard Charles Green: Too many cluckers in the government.


James Garfield Gardiner: The hatcheries have changed all that. Individuals who are quite anxious to cluck in here find means of operating

hatcheries so as to produce eggs whenever they want them, not when the hen decides to have them. So the hatchers decided-or somebody decided and the hatchers followed along-that around December 1 would be a good time to have a lot of eggs, because the government was prepared to take delivery of them if they were sent to storage; and now we have a very high production of eggs around December and January. This has been giving us some trouble, and it is that trouble to which the federation is referring, and to which it was referring when it discussed this question in Winnipeg.
And having listened to these discussions, and having heard the representations, we did, within a few days, follow the suggestions which the federation made. This document is dated February 15, so as a matter of fact we had already started before it was delivered. On January 24, I think it was, we offered to take delivery of grade A large eggs at 38 cents; not to wait until December 1 but to purchase them and put them in storage, if no one else would put them in storage. So we purchased grade A large eggs at 38 cents and if they were oil-dipped we paid 39 cents for them-it costs about one cent to dip them. If we paid 38 cents we oil-dipped them before putting them in storage.
This was of some assistance, as the federation said in its representations to the government. But another problem has developed in connection with eggs which at that time was not even recognized. In this presentation to the government it has been suggested that we should establish a proper relationship between the price of grade A large eggs and medium eggs. The reason for that was that there had been a "spread", as high almost as 20 cents I think at times in the immediate past, between the price of grade A large eggs and medium eggs.
According to the best experts from whom we could get advice, the real relationship in weight between the medium egg and the grade A large egg is about five cents. So the suggestion was that we should set some margin between the two by establishing a price for both grade A large eggs and medium eggs.
Unfortunately for those who held that view the spread between grade A large eggs and medium eggs has been from one to two cents for weeks now, and of course there had to be a reason for that. Some people seem to think that supply and demand have nothing to do with these things, but it is found now that because pullets are not laying at this particular time, again because of the time that the hatcheries bring them to life, medium eggs are low in volume
9. 1957	3341
Agricultural Products-Support Prices and therefore comparatively high in price. At the same time it has been found that because there has been some difficulty about selling old hens due to the price not having been as high for a while, the old hen population has increased with the result that the supply of grade A large eggs has also increased and there are more grade A large eggs on the market than the market will take and not quite as many medium eggs on the market as the market will take. Therefore there is only a spread of one or two cents between the prices of the two.
It is all very well for people to say after a thing happens: "Well, you should have foreseen all that." I might suggest that if I had been running a hatchery I probably would have foreseen some of it. But we have not been doing that so we have had to find some method of dealing with the matter. Our method was, first, to purchase grade A large eggs and, second, to keep a very close check on the medium eggs, and we did not see that increasing the support price over and above what it is now would correct that situation very much if at all.
But it is found that there are eggs coming on the market that do not come under these grades at all. They are what we call grade B eggs. There may be a few misshaped eggs among them. There may be some that are not quite as clean as they should be. There may be a few that have been cracked, and there are other things that happen to them. The result is that they are not fit for storage. But those eggs can be utilized here and there across the country and take the place of well graded and well fed eggs with the result that those who carry on the producing of eggs in the manner in which they should suffer so far as price is concerned.
Therefore we have decided to put a support price under B eggs, take those eggs off the market immediately, freeze them and sell them for baking purposes. That plan has just been inaugurated and put into effect. We think it will work in order to bring about the results that are desired. I have recited the plan here to make it known in the first place that we are working in that direction and to indicate in the second place that when representations of this kind are made to us by those who should know we do take action upon them as soon as possible.
Another matter was brought to our attention at that time having to do with other commodities. The one I am most concerned about at the moment is dairy products. As I stated before dinner, we have had a support price on butter for the last six or seven years. The reason why we placed a support price under butter was that for many years
3342	HOUSE OF
Agricultural Products-Support Prices before the war we had been depending upon cheese taking the surplus milk, milk that was not required as whole milk for human consumption, milk that was not required for the purpose of producing butter. We had been putting that into cheese. It was the lowest price milk that went on the market and the cheese industry was carried on in a rather big way for the purpose of supplying the British market. We had a market even during the war for 145 million pounds of cheese in Great Britain.
But when the war was over the British did not seem to desire to have our cheese at the price that we thought we must secure for it and that market has fairly well disappeared, first, because we are not producing the cheese to send to it and, second, because if we were going to produce it we had to have a much higher price than could be obtained if the production of cheese was to be used to take up the surplus supply of milk. When we ceased to put our surplus milk in cheese we desired to put more of it into butter. We therefore established a support price to keep up production.
In the meantime, partly because of the fact that we had been at war, a great deal more milk was being put into cans and a great deal more was being turned into skim milk powder. A rather recent development so far as quantity is concerned had to do with the development of powdered skim milk, and two different processes were used in its preparation. The document presented to the government by the federation suggested that we should place a support price of 14 cents under roller skim powder and 16 cents under spray skim powder. We considered the matters, examined the whole situation as it exists and decided to place a support price under both these commodities.
Two or three weeks ago I announced to the house that we had put a support price of 14 cents on roller powder and 17 cents on spray. As was suggested by one member of the opposition this afternoon, the figure of 17 cents is one cent more than we were asked for, and we had a reason for doing that. Since the representations were made we had been watching carefully the price of skim milk powder and had found it had been running around 16, 16J, 17, 17J and even as high as 18 cents. Again, the price which farmers in Canada were receiving for milk going into the product was not as high as the price in the United States, and we made some inquiries as to why that was the condition and came to certain conclusions.
Something was said this afternoon to the effect that we had not had any support price under powdered milk prior to a few


weeks ago, but that is not the case. We had had a support under skim milk powder for several years, and that support was in this form. We said to the producers of the powder: "Whenever you have a surplus that you are not able to handle or market the government will consider taking that surplus and holding it off the market or giving it away to someone who is in need of it", usually in some other part of the world, "and you can rest assured that we will do that from time to time."
Looking back I know that I can say, and it can be said by others, that that would not be a very satisfactory manner to deal with the situation from the point of view of the producer because too much risk was left with the person who was accumulating the surplus, and so we decided to guarantee that we would take the powder at 14 cents for the one variety and 17 cents for the other, with the result that the price of milk going into those commodities immediately rose from 5 to 10 cents a hundred, and even milk going into the production of butter has increased in price. I think that is only natural because of the fact that those who are dealing in this commodity now know that they can turn it over to the government at a price if they should have a surplus and therefore they can go out and pay the farmer a higher price for his milk.
It is encouraging to note that the element of competition in purchasing entered into it to such an extent that, generally speaking, the price has gone up five cents to ten cents and there are indications of its having gone up about 15 cents in some places. Hence that has had a beneficial result to the dairy farmer right across Canada. Those are two of the things that have been done as a result of the representation made by the federation at that time. Then they go on to say:
Based on the Supreme Court of Canada decision respecting the Ontario farm products marketing act it is clear that further federal legislation is needed if producer boards are to be enabled to carry on certain functions which they consider will often be essential to effective orderly marketing of farm products.
That bill is before the house. I had the privilege of speaking to it yesterday. I was a little bit surprised when the Leader of the Opposition took the position in relation to it that we should not place the onus of proof on the person who was accused of marketing a product outside the provincial act or that the onus of proof should not be placed upon the individual who was charged.


John George Diefenbaker: I questioned it. I have
now looked into the matter and I may say that any criticism on my part in that regard was not well founded.


James Garfield Gardiner: I am pleased to know that my hon. friend the Leader of the Opposition sometimes comes to conclusions that an opinion he had earlier is not right. I am sure there will not be the same emphasis put upon any difficulties some of the rest of us have in seeing as far into the future as some people think we should. But on this occasion the representations were made from Ontario that we should pass legislation and the main part of that legislation is the fact that the onus of proof had to be placed upon the person who was being charged to prove that the product was a product that was either being marketed within the province in which it was produced or was one that was being marketed to be sold outside the province in which it was produced. That legislation is before the house and carries out another of the requests which were made by the Canadian Federation of Agriculture at that time.
There is still one other matter, namely tariff policy. The federation of agriculture said this:
In the case of potatoes, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture repeats its request that a year round duty of 37i cents per hundredweight be applied to commercial and seed potato importations into Canada from the United States.
The Minister of Finance (Mr. Harris) reported to the house two days ago that that has been done. I just review these few things in order to indicate that when representations are made by the farm movement we look into those matters and have them dealt with. This afternoon there was some suggestion that there are special reasons at the moment for dealing with them. May I say that the main reason for dealing with them at this time is that they were asked for in the last representation which was made to this government by the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. If that happens to come at a time when it is a little bit inconvenient for the opposition, of course we are not making any excuse for having made the changes at this time. The fact is that we have been dealing with these commodities and have been paying attention to the representations that have been made from time to time by the farmers. I think that is sufficient to indicate that we pay some attention to the representations that are made to us.
That brings me to the point of saying that after all the most important consideration in connection with all this discussion is where we have arrived by carrying on the policies which we have carried on. I am not, of course, discussing the grain position. That matter does not come under this department nor does it come under the Agricultural Prices Support Act. The other products come
9,	1957	3343
Agricultural Products-Support Prices under it, and any farm products that are not mentioned in the act up to now other than grain can come under that act.
I have here before me a list of the prices that have been obtained on the Canadian side of the line for these products recently and I have them over a longer period of time. However, in order to save time I think I will deal with the most recent prices which we have been able to secure. On April 5, 1957 good slaughter steers sold at Toronto for $20 a hundredweight and in Chicago at $19.50.


Lewis Elston Cardiff: That does not mean anything.


James Garfield Gardiner: My hon. friend says that does not mean anything. It means $20, which is 50 cents a hundredweight higher than the market there.


Lewis Elston Cardiff: You cannot tell by that what grade of steers were sold in the United States.


James Garfield Gardiner: Good slaughter steers have the same meaning in the United States as here. It is not the top limit of steers in the United States it is true, but it is the grade of steer which we market in the United States and it is $20 a hundredweight in Toronto and $19.50 on that day in Chicago.


Lewis Elston Cardiff: It does not mean a thing.


James Garfield Gardiner: To satisfy my hon. friend I go back to March, 1956 when the price was $17.38 in Toronto and $17.31 in Chicago. That is more nearly the same price. Then if you take the whole year 1956, the average price at Toronto was $18.80 and the average price in Chicago was $19.55. I go back over that in order to indicate that there has been no necessity for setting a floor price under cattle. The United States market is the highest market in the world for cattle. The only charge against cattle going to the United States from this country is the freight on the cattle that are shipped and a comparatively small duty which is charged against cattle going into the United States from this country.


Lewis Elston Cardiff: And the exchange.


James Garfield Gardiner: There is the small matter of the exchange which may be one way or the other. At present our dollar is a little bit more valuable than theirs. However, there are differences of that kind. This indicates that without any support price here at all we get practically the highest price that can be obtained from cattle anywhere in the world, and I think that is about all we can hope for.
Then we come to hogs. The yearly average for grade A hogs in 1956 at Toronto was $27.50-that is dressed weight-and in
3344	HOUSE OF
Agricultural Products-Support Prices Chicago $20.80, a yearly average of $6.95 a hundredweight more in Canada than in the United States.


John Alpheus Charlton: Is that live weight?


James Garfield Gardiner: That is dressed weight. Live weight is much lower than that. Then in March, 1956, the price at Toronto was $23.60 and in Chicago $17.56. In March 1957 Toronto, $30.19; Chicago, $23.33. March 30, 1957 Toronto $29.50; Chicago $24.15. Then coming down to April 5, 1957, I will give them right across Canada. Edmonton, $27.10; Winnipeg, $28; Toronto, $29.50; and Chicago, $24. In other words, at every one of those points right across the country the price was from $3.10 to $5.50 higher in Canada than the Chicago price. Those prices, of course, indicate that we have a fairly good market in Canada.
The hon. member who spoke just before me mentioned the fact I had made a speech a year ago in Winnipeg in which I called attention to the fact that there is a disease amongst the hogs in the United States which makes it impossible for them, because of the embargo we have put on, to ship hogs into this country. I warned those who were there at that time that if that disease were cleared up, and we all hope it will be, we would have difficulty maintaining a floor price of $23.
Some hon. members have indicated that all we need to do is sit down and work out a formula, apply the formula to a price and call it a parity price, then everything will be all right. Those of us who have had anything to do with these matters know that is not the case. If hogs are selling on the United States market at five or six cents a pound lower than they are here and there is no embargo because of disease, we will have so many hogs over here within a week that we will not sell any of ours. In other words, we would require to put our price down to meet their price so it would not make any difference what we thought about parity. We would be flooded out of our own market. This explains the reason why we cannot just take a formula, lay it down, and say we are going to do this. It is exactly that system that the United States tried out, under the so-called parity, and the result was they filled every cave in the United States with eggs. They had so much pork on the market that their price went down, as has been indicated here. They had so much of the other commodities on the market that their prices went down.
The only product that has not suffered that way has been wheat, and there was a special reason for that. Wheat is a commodity that you can store over a long period of time.
[Mr. Gardiner.!


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if I might rise on a question of privilege. As most hon. members know, the whole debate today has been arranged by mutual consent. When it was announced by the house leader at eight o'clock that we had agreed on a vote at 9.15, it was believed the minister was within 15 or 20 minutes of the end of his speech. The arrangement was that the rest of the time was to be divided between the hon. member for Dufferin-Simcoe (Mr. Rowe) and the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Zaplitny). There is not going to be much time left for them to divide if the minister has much more to say.
I realize that legally, or by the rules, he has unlimited time. He is the first minister replying to a motion of non-confidence. However, he has now spoken for about an hour and twenty minutes and I would hope he would soon conclude so the other two members to whom I referred might get at least some of the time which was arranged.


James Garfield Gardiner: My hon. friend understands the rules very well, and the only reason that I had to start speaking so early was that we could not get agreement on what was going to happen.


Stanley Howard Knowles: That is not correct; agreement was reached.


James Garfield Gardiner: I would not have been speaking before six o'clock if agreement had been reached. I have not a great deal more to put on the record, but I do intend to put these prices on the record.
I come now to poultry products. I was going to read from this document what I had said before but I shall desist from doing that and go on to give the prices of poultry products. These are prices received by the producer in cents per dozen for eggs. In the United States in 1956 the average price received was 37.7 cents and in Canada 38.1 cents. In April, 1956, in the United States they received 32 to 36 cents in the midwest states and in Manitoba they received 35 to 37 cents. Then the current price in April, 1957, in the United States, 22 to 23 cents in the midwest states, and 30 cents in Manitoba. I shall give the spot quotations, wholesale, the price of eggs, April, 1956: New York, grade A large, 41 cents, and Montreal, 48 to 49 cents. For April, 1957: New York, 31 cents, and Montreal, 38J to 39 cents.
I come now to poultry prices. Fowl, live- well, I shall just read the 1957 prices in order to make it shorter-in Buffalo, in 1957 the price was 16 to 19 cents; in Toronto, 22 cents. Then, broilers, in Buffalo the price was 21 to 23 cents, and in Toronto 23 cents. Turkeys, live, in Buffalo, 24 cents, and in Toronto 30 cents.
Before the dinner recess, the hon. member for Brant-Haldimand (Mr. Charlton) held up a sack in which they ship turkeys into this country. He was suggesting that the impression was given that they were Canadian turkeys which were in these sacks. I quite agree it would not be proper to bring them in here as American turkeys and suggest to the trade that they are a Canadian product. But here is the reason why they come in. Turkeys in the United States are 24 cents a pound; turkeys in Toronto are 30 cents a pound. They can get six cents a pound more less the duty for them by sending them into Canada, and with that difference in price, of course they will come in.


William Earl Rowe: Is 30 cents too much?


James Garfield Gardiner: No, it is not too much.


William Earl Rowe: Why do you let them come in?


James Garfield Gardiner: But they do come in over the duty.
9. 1957
Agricultural Products-Support Prices


William Earl Rowe: Why do you let them come in? They come in because you let them.


James Garfield Gardiner: I quite agree that if my hon. friend had his way and his party's policy was put into effect in this country we would have protection that would keep everything out. We tried that once before and where did it get us? It put every product in this country that the farmer had to sell in a position where he could not sell it, and when he did sell it he took as low as $4.66 a hundred for beef. We are not attempting to bring about that condition.


William Earl Rowe: You were doubtful about it; that is why you are trying to talk it out.


James Garfield Gardiner: The fact is that those are the prices that have been established.
In order to wind up what I have to say- I can quite understand my hon. friends do not like to hear it because they have been talking the very opposite all day. They started in this morning to prove to us that the support policy which we have in this country had done terrible things for the farmers of the country and were suggesting to us that we should adopt what they have done in the United States, which they say would be very helpful to us. These prices indicate that it would not be helpful to us. We have better prices on this side of the line than they have, in spite of the fact that we have not anything like the same population to sell our food products to. If our policy has created a condition under which we have better prices than they have over there, then surely it must be a policy that is at least better suited to this country than the United States price policy would be. We have no intention of changing the policy which has been put into effect now for seven or eight years and which has worked successfully in connection with all of our farm products to maintain our prices at a reasonable level as compared with those in the United States. We are not going to change from that to something else.


Lewis Elston Cardiff: To whose advantage?


James Garfield Gardiner: My hon. friend asks, to whose advantage?


Lewis Elston Cardiff: Certainly not to the farmers.


James Garfield Gardiner: Well, these are the prices that the farmer receives, and they must be to his advantage; they could not be to the advantage of anyone else. But my hon. friend keeps on saying, "Well, after all the farmer's proportion of the national income is not as high as it ought to be". I can quite agree with that if you start with 1951 and work along up to the present.
As has been said, when you get a big crop in the west you have a big farm gross income, and some people might say that that is most
3346	HOUSE OF
Agricultural Products-Support Prices helpful to all the farmers in Canada. It certainly is most helpful to all businessmen in Canada; there is no question about that. When you have a big wheat crop on the western prairies it helps the railways, it helps the financial institutions, it helps those who are selling farm implements and it helps everyone in that classification. What I would like to point out is this. You cannot have good conditions on the farms in this country unless you have good conditions in industry. You must have labour well paid; you must have industry prosperous if you are going to have the farmer prosperous. Industry and those who work in industry are the market for our farm products.
The products of people working in industry are sold to farmers. Therefore I am not going to criticize the fact that income from industry is high in this country at the present time. I am going to say only that all of the conditions existing in this country at the present time make it natural that the income from industry should be high. If the farmer does not get back a full share of that income this year that is no reason why he should not get a very considerable part of it over the next 10 years. Everyone who looks into the situation, including the Gordon commission, says we are going to have prosperous conditions ahead; we are going to have more and more development of industry; we are going to have more people going in to the back sections of our country and digging up the mineral wealth of those areas and bringing it into the settled areas to be developed. So long as that continues we shall have continued fairly good conditions amongst the farmers of this country.
I would much rather be going out preaching that doctrine to the people of Canada than going around telling the young people not to go on the farm because they will starve to death there. Do not go on the farm because you will see your children going around under conditions that one would not wish to describe in this house. If you go on a farm you will find that farm conditions are terrible in this country, they say. Everyone who moves into farming districts knows that while the farmer is not getting as much as we would like to see him get, his conditions are not such as are being described by some people who are talking more for his vote than they are to help him.
The farmer in Canada is the backbone of our population in more ways than one. The farm is the best place in this country or in any other country on which to raise a family. Given that kind of healthy conditions and that outlook upon life you have something which is of a great help to the people of a


nation. In addition to that, nearly all of the professional people in this country were born and raised on farms; nearly all of the businessmen of this country were born and raised on farms; and nearly every member of this house rises in his place and boasts that he was born on a farm. They are the backbone of the country and will continue to be so. Therefore I should like to say that when the farmers look the whole thing over and listen to the kind of talk that we have had given to us during today they will be able to decide for themselves.
May I say I cannot understand why the Leader of the Opposition wanted two days. I thought from the remarks that he made here before this debate started that he had some very important things to bring up that had never been brought up in this house before during this session; but he came here with a motion which had been discussed already four times, and which we had to consider for an hour or two to decide whether it was in order, since it had been discussed three or four times. He had not a new thing or a new proposal to make to this house during the whole time that he spoke. Now that he has had a few new ideas from me he wants to stop the discussion. I am not going to deal with that further but I am going to say this. If I had nothing more important to bring up than to resurrect a matter that has been discussed four times during this session in full-dress debates, than to try to straighten out something that had got me into difficulties, I would not have said anything. He voted three times; he voted twice for parity prices and then he voted once on something which he said meant parity for him. Then when the C.C.F. moved a resolution in favour of parity he voted against it. That is what he has done. He wanted two days to straighten that out.


Thomas Miller Bell: You voted against it.


James Garfield Gardiner: I have always voted against it. I was not here on the day that the motion was up, or I would have voted against it, too. I would have been voting with him. On previous occasions I had to make speeches against speeches that he had made and then vote against him for exactly the same reason that was given here this afternoon by the hon. member for Eglinton (Mr. Fleming). What did he say this afternoon? The hon. member for Eglinton said, "Well, we just had to do that because that amendment was only a trick put on by the C.C.F.". That is exactly what I said to him in 1941 and exactly what I said to him the last time he moved it last year; it was only a trick on his part to get those on this side of the house to vote either nonconfidence in the government or for something that they did not believe in at that time.


An hon. Member:: Wait for a month.


James Garfield Gardiner: I think that will straighten itself out all right. We have had a demonstration of the real reason why this two-day debate was wanted. We have carried it on now for one day and I think this is a good time to bring it to an end.


William Earl Rowe: Mr. Speaker, we have observed a spectacle tonight of true Liberalism as it stands today. The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner) knew very well that there was an agreement made concerning this debate which was to continue to allow speakers from this party and the party to my left to participate and yet he says that the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Diefenbaker) brought up an issue that' was not important and that he wasted the time of the house. It took the Minister of Agriculture twice as long to answer what was said by the Leader of the Opposition so eloquently this afternoon as it took the leader of my group to speak. I have listened to the Minister of Agriculture in this house for many years and I have always observed that when he talks the loudest and longest he has the weakest case.
I propose tonight to be a gentleman in this House of Commons


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


William Earl Rowe: Those who applaud the loudest and longest should observe it the most. I propose to leave half the time for the other parties in the House of Commons and while my right hon. friend the Minister of Agriculture has left only ten minutes for each of us he himself talked for an hour and forty minutes-


Some hon. Members:: Shame.


William Earl Rowe: -criticizing the Leader of the Opposition for talking too long and for bringing up an issue that is not important. In spite of all this the minister spoke for twice the length of time consumed by the Leader of the Opposition in his feeble attempt to answer the statements made by the leader of this party. I will leave it to you and to those who observe the proceedings in this House of Commons, that if you analyse the minister's speech tomorrow morning and take the eloquence and loudness out of it you will find it is the most empty, barren bleak and hollow political speech that has ever been presented in this house.
The Minister of Agriculture is a great friend of mine, a bonny fighter in the House of Commons. No man in this house can take
Agricultural Products-Support Prices so weak a case and present it as loudly, eloquently and at as great length as the minister has done on this and many other occasions.
He tells us tonight that we are responsible for our boys leaving the farms and for the condition of agriculture today. Who is responsible?-


Mr. Dickey:: You are.


William Earl Rowe: I am listening to the weak little voice of the assistant minister of agriculture.


Mr. McCubbin:: I did not say one word.


William Earl Rowe: Did you say you never said one word?


Robert McCubbin: I did not interrupt you in any shape, manner or form.


Clayton Wesley Hodgson: It was the little squeak behind him.


William Earl Rowe: You have admitted that you did not say a word. You have never said many words in the House of Commons anyway.
The Minister of Agriculture talked tonight for 15 minutes about the cluckers in the poultry business. When hens are about to lay eggs they cluck. How many hon. members in this house have placed their hands under a hen to withdraw an egg and have heard her clucking? There have never been more cluckers in any one place than there are in this government. It is a government composed of old cluckers. The old Minister of Agriculture has been in power for so long and he has done nothing but cluck throughout that time and it has been the most clever political clucking that has been possible to hear in Canada in the last 30 years. The most clever political clucking I have heard in Canada in the last 30 years was done by the Minister of Agriculture. He is the prize clucker in Canada.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: And he has
been laying cracked eggs.


William Earl Rowe: He talks about us telling the farmers to leave and he whistles while he passes the graveyard. He does not even see the problem. All he has to do is drive up and down the side roads of this country to see the "for sale" signs on the gate posts of farms and the auction sales bills in the grocery stores to know that farmers do not have to listen to the Conservative party to find out what is wrong with agriculture today. They know what is wrong themselves.
Surely even the Minister of Agriculture knows that agriculturists in this country have not shared in the national economy as they should and as the Leader of the Opposition
3348	HOUSE OF
Agricultural Products-Support Prices so eloquently expressed in his remarks this afternoon. No one knows this better than the Minister of Agriculture and that is why he talked so long and loud. He would have ceased a half hour ago if conditions were good but he did not want to hear from those of us on this side of the house.
The minister says he was born a long time ago.


Clayton Wesley Hodgson: Too long ago.


William Earl Rowe: I am rather sorry he was born so long ago because I would like him to be around to see the results and fruits of his political manoeuvring in agriculture in this country in years to come. I have been in this house longer than he has and I have watched agriculture throughout the years. He said this afternoon in a glib and loud outburst that we were not going to suffer another period such as we had after the first great war. Oh, how soon they forget.


James Garfield Gardiner: You have forgotten too. Cattle went down to $4.66 when you got in.


Some hon. Members:: Sit down.


William Earl Rowe: I did not interrupt you when you were speaking. You have left me only ten minutes and I am not going to waste time listening to your interruptions because they are not worth while anyway.
The Minister of Agriculture knows very well that in the years following the first great war we had prosperity until 1926. I myself sold hogs on my farm for $25 a live weight in 1925.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: I did, too.


William Earl Rowe: My friend the Minister of
Agriculture said we were not going to have a recurrence of it. From 1921 to 1930, this government that sits to your left-


Mr. Bennett:: His right.


William Earl Rowe: Yes. You will be on the left after June 10; after June 10 when you are on the bench they will be on your left.
This government had a market in Britain for 255 million pounds of bacon and we sold that bacon. We also sold 77 million pounds of beef. In 1921 when these apostles of free trade on your right came into power those markets were left as a legacy for them. When they went out of power they had lost those markets entirely and we were importing Danish bacon right into the minister's own province of Saskatchewan. Danish bacon had to be imported to feed the people of your province. This situation has continued to develop. They have lost every market that was gained overseas.
The minister talked about eggs with glowing pride and at great length and he says


that the government has put a floor price on eggs of 38 cents a dozen. I know something about the poultry business; at least at one time I had 2,000 laying hens.


Clayton Wesley Hodgson: Were any of them cluckers?


William Earl Rowe: I know something about the poultry business in Canada. The cluckers I had did more for me than any of these tired old cluckers in the government are doing today.
Any man in Canada who knows anything about business realizes that you cannot make any money in the poultry business even if your hens are laying 70 per cent with eggs selling at 30 cents a dozen.


James Garfield Gardiner: That is the price they were when you were in.


Mr. Lennard:: You shut up.


William Earl Rowe: The signs of the times are to be found hanging on every garden and gate post across this country. Everybody knows that the farmers are having difficulty. The minister tonight as on every other occasion paid no heed to the opposition. He did not answer one syllable of the argument put forward so cleverly this afternoon by the Leader of the Opposition. He did not reply to one syllable. He talked about the cluckers in the poultry business and about bacon and he told us what a nice place farms are to raise one's children. A farm is indeed a nice place to raise children. If you have beautiful shade trees and a stream, why, it is a grand place to raise a family.
The Minister of Agriculture in the last 20 years has never touched on anything having to do with the stability of prices of farm products. He talked about floor prices and every one of us is aware that floor prices today are below the cost of production. Despite this he proceeded to ridicule the Leader of the Opposition who fully realizes that agriculture is vitally important in the life of our Canadian economy to the extent that we must make it a responsible and remunerative enterprise. Agriculture is vital to this country in times of peace, and it is fundamental in times of war.
We live in a cold country. I am speaking for the fruit and vegetable growers up in Dufferin-Simcoe and in other parts of Canada when I ask why we should increase our imports of these products into this country every year. Figures indicating the volume of our imports of these products have already been placed on the record and I am not going to repeat them; as a matter of fact, I do not have time enough to do so because the Minister of Agriculture took up not only his own time but also the time that would have

been allotted to me in putting forth his case so cleverly, glibly, blatantly, but so loudly, barrenly and bleakly so far as the facts are concerned.
But, we know very well that about $100 million worth of fruit and vegetables have been brought into this country that we could have produced here.


An hon. Member:: Oranges.


William Earl Rowe: That is all right for young fellows like you. We brought in approximately $5 million worth of turkeys. While you were drinking orange juice, our turkey growers went out of business. We brought in $1 million of canned meats and, as I say, we brought in $5 million worth of turkeys while our own turkey growers closed up their pens. We brought in many millions of dollars worth of poultry while returned soldiers who thought they could make a few dollars out of poultry closed their doors and went on relief.
The government and those who support them talk about fixed prices and talk about floor prices, but they are still clinging to this doctrine of free trade, and they would rather see our poultry men go out of business than put a tariff on turkeys. Now they are rushing in before the election with a few duties on new potatoes and have reduced our quota to the United States by a million bags. It shows how these apostles of free trade, when they try to adopt reasonable protection policies which they know to be necessary at times, do the job so clumsily that they upset the works.
I hope hon. members who listen to me tonight will realize that I play the game with regard to any mutual agreements. I have now exhausted my time. I could tell you how this government which is supported by the Minister of Agriculture lost every market we had over the years between 1921 and 1935. I could tell you how they lost every market we had between 1935 and 1936.


An hon. Member:: Oh, oh.


William Earl Rowe: Someone said "Oh, oh". Some of you young squeakers across the way do not know what the cost has been of these doctrines of free trade under which we find we are importing beef and other products into Canada and telling the farmers at election time, when they wonder why prices are not better, that the law of demand and supply must govern. "We will let the law of supply and demand govern" the Minister of Agriculture tells us. "We cannot stop these things coming in because the American price is lower than ours."
This is our country, this is Canada. Let us observe the economic independence we
Agricultural Products-Support Prices have and tell the United States that we are minding our own business, economically and in every other way.


Mr. F. S. Zaplilny (Dauphin):: Mr. Speaker, I am sure that in the limited time we have left I shall be unable to compete with the pyrotechnics we have experienced in the last hour or so; I have neither the eloquence nor the many years of experience which the previous speakers possess; I cannot go back into the dusty corners of history and discuss the agricultural policies of governments gone by.
Nevertheless I do hope in the few minutes that are left that I may be able to bring this discussion back to the central theme of this debate. I listened very carefully to the whole of the speech made by the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Gardiner). I enjoyed his speech, as I always do, but in trying to formulate some idea of what government policy the minister was outlining as far as agriculture was concerned for the future-and after all it is the future we are concerned with rather than the past-I found myself in a rather frustrating position; it was somewhat like looking for a black cat in a dark room, particularly when the cat is not there.
The minister talked about hens. He talked about clucking hens, about little red hens and big red herrings. He built up a straw man by saying that someone has been seducing young farmers from the farms and that that was a terrible thing for agriculture. But let me say this to the minister-and I think he will agree with me on this-that I do not think anything said in this house either by hon. members on these benches or those on the other side is going to be the deciding factor as to whether a farmer stays on his farm or leaves it. I give the farmers of this country credit for being able to make up their own minds on the basis of their own economic circumstances rather than on anything which may be said on either side of this house.
If the farmers are leaving the farms, and obviously that is the case because statistics show quite clearly what is happening, it is not because of anything anybody has said; it is because those farmers are finding that their reward is not satisfactory on the basis of the money and the labour that they have put into their farms. No amount of talk, either by the minister or by anyone on this side, will convince me that such people would continue to farm if they felt they were not receiving a proper return for their labour. That is elementary, and I think the minister might have put it in that way instead of trying to put the blame for what arises from an economic situation on somebody else.

Agricultural Products-Support Prices
What is the central theme of this debate? The reason members of this group felt it necessary to move an amendment to the amendment before the house was simply because ever since there have been C.C.F. members in parliament-ever since 1935- they have championed a system of parity income for agriculture. One of the hon. members of the official opposition party spoke of the year 1948 and made reference to the Leader of the Opposition at that time. With regard to parity prices, one has only to look through the record to find that the C.G.F. members who have been in this house since 1935, and those hon. members who were here prior to that time and who later became part of the C.C.F. party, were the ones who fought for the principle of parity prices during the years. They are still doing it, and this is the only party which has consistently fought for that principle.
I am not going to take time in defining parity in view of the discussion we had earlier, but I will say this: a few days ago the Minister of Justice (Mr. Garson), speaking in his own constituency at a nominating convention, was reported in the press to have said in reply to a question put to him by a farmer who complained about the position in which agriculture finds itself today that the position of agriculture arises not because prices for agricultural products are too low but because the cost of production is too high.
That is a statement made by a minister of this government, and I put it to the Minister of Agriculture that if this is the case, and if his colleague was stating a view which is held by the government, then the government has done very little about it. I ask the minister: what has the government done in the last ten years to bring down the cost of production of agricultural products? Though production costs in the last eight or ten years have been rising there has been a decline in the net income received by farmers for their products. That process is going on day after day, yet the government has not placed before the house one idea or one solution with regard to it. They have done nothing to bring down the cost of production, and now a minister of this government goes to the farmers and tells them: "Your troubles come about because the cost of production is too high." It is all right for the Minister of Agriculture to quote figures on agricultural prices and compare them with prices across the line, but at the same time he should have put down another column of figures and shown what the costs of production of United States farmers are compared with those of Canadian farmers. He should have quoted the
prices of farm machinery, farm fertilizers and all the things that enter into the cost of production and we would have had a slightly different picture from the one that he tried to present.
I think it is time that the government said frankly to the people of the country that they do not feel they can do anything to bring about higher prices for farm products but that they are going to do something to bring down the costs of production. If they would at least go that far we would then see some glimmer of hope that at some time we would reach a basis of parity with regard to farm income compared with other incomes. It is the duty and responsibility of the government to do so.
I have only a minute or two left, but one way I can recommend to the government by which they could help to bring down the cost of production would be through the tariff structure. We hear competitive claims by the official opposition and the government as to which is responsible for the high tariff structure. I will leave it to them to divide the honours amongst themselves, but the fact is that by lowering the tariff on those imports which are necessary factors in the farmers' cost of production the exorbitant prices that the farmers have to pay for the things they have to buy could be brought down. That in itself could be the controlling factor in bringing down the farmers' cost of production.
The government could also set up an export-import board which would be responsible for bringing goods into the country under a barter system in order to provide the farmers with many of the things they require at more reasonable prices and in that way help to bring their net income up to a parity level. Regardless of what method is used, I think what is needed now more than ever is for parliament to declare itself clearly on the question of parity prices.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Applewhaite):: Having been informed that it is 9.15 p.m. and pursuant to the special order adopted by unanimous consent and confirmed at eight o'clock tonight, it is now my duty to put the question on the subamendment.


William Gilbert Weir: I was paired. Had I voted, I would have voted against the amendment to the amendment.


Mr. Speaker:: Is the house ready for the question? The question is on the amendment to the main motion. Those who are in favour of the amendment will please say yea?


Some hon. Members:: Yea.
NAYS Messrs:
Anderson
Applewhaite
Arsenault
Ashbourne
Balcom
Batten
Bennett
Blanchette
Boivin
Bonnier
Boucher
Bourget
Breton
Brisson
Brown (Essex West) Bruneau
Cameron (High Park)
Campney
Cannon
Cardin
Caron
Carter
Cauchon
Cavers
Cloutier
Crestohl
Denis
Deschatelets
Deslieres
Dickey
Dumas
Dupuis
Enfield
Eyre
Fairey
Follwell
Fontaine
Forgie
Fraser (St.John's East)
Gardiner
Garland
Garson
Gauthier (Lakg St. John)
Gauthier (Portneuf)
Gingras
Gingues
Girard
Goode
Gour (Russell)
Gourd (Chapleau)
Gregg
Habel
Hanna
Harris
Harrison
Henderson
Henry
Hollingworth Houck Huffman James Jutras Kickham Kirk (Antigonish-Guysborough)
Kirk (Shelburne-Yarmouth-Clare) Laflamme Lafontaine Langlois (Berthier-Maskinonge-Delanaudiere) Lapointe Lavigne
Leduc (Gatineau)
Leduc (Jacques Cartier-Lasalle)
Leduc (Verdun)
Lefrangois
Legare
Lesage
Lusby
MacEachen
McCann
McCubbin
McHraith
Mclvor
McMillan
McWilliam
Mang
Marler
Martin
Masse
Matheson
Menard
Meunier
Michaud
Monette
Murphy (Westmorland)
Nixon
Philpott
Pickersgill


Mr. Speaker:: Those who are opposed to the amendment will please say nay.


Some hon. Members:: Nay.


Mr. Speaker:: In my opinion the nays have it.
And more than five members having risen:


Mr. Speaker:: Call in the members. Do I understand that the whips on both sides of the house declare, by nodding to the chair, that their members have been called in for the purpose of this division?



AND COMPENSATION FOR LOSS OF TREATY RIGHTS

Herbert Wilfred Herridge: Mr. Speaker, I rise to express a grievance against 
previous governments of Canada who failed to protect Canadian rights satisfactorily when the United States was developing the Columbia south of the constituency which I have the honour to represent. As a result of that grievance against those previous governments I want to express certain anxiety in this connection which is felt by some of my constituents. Before doing so I must say that the statement made by the Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources (Mr. Lesage) on March 26 with respect to the willingness of the federal government to assist the provincial government of British Columbia in the development of power on the Columbia river was a most welcome statement to the people I have the honour to represent. I trust it will not be long before we hear that the premier of British Columbia accepts the offer and we begin to hear of negotiations with respect to the development of the river that will soon terminate in an announcement like that made this morning with respect' to certain power developments in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.


Edmund Davie Fulton: The hon. member realizes that is a complete reversal of policy on the part of this government.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: Mr. Speaker, I suppose we are all human and I do not know of any government that has ever been in existence that has not made announcements at what it considered to be the appropriate time. What we are concerned about is the fact that the announcement has been made and it is one of the most important announcements that has ever been made by this government with respect to the development of the province in which I live. I do not want to deal at length with that, but what I am saying is generally felt by the people whom I have the honour to represent.
I was also glad to hear the minister's statement with respect to negotiations at high level between representatives of the government of Canada and the government of the United States with respect to the settlement of these problems that have arisen, particularly in the proposed development of the Columbia basin in Canada. I hope we shall hear news of these negotiations in the near future. We look for a settlement that is satisfactory and an arrangement that is equitable to all governments concerned, the Canadian government, the government of British Columbia and the government of the United States. I just want to emphasize one or two things, the two points on which there is a certain anxiety.
First of all, I do want to emphasize that many Canadians fail to realize that it was General McNaughton's understanding, foresight and firmness, and the same understand-

ing, foresight and firmness on the part of the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Howe) that highlighted Canadian rights with respect to this important development and their strong stand on this matter has now been recognized widely in the United States.
Less than a year or two ago some prominent people who were quite misinformed were making statements that these rights did not exist. I had the opportunity last summer to address quite a large gathering of businessmen from the state of Idaho with respect to this whole problem, and when I finished speaking to them about the attitude of the Canadian government and the Canadian people with respect to this problem, several of them came up to me and said they were very pleased to hear our side of the story; that they had not heard our side of the story before and were to that extent misinformed.
It is known, and it is a fact, that General McNaughton and the Minister of Trade and Commerce had highlighted this by their firmness and that is now being recognized in the United States. In that respect I want to quote from the joint hearings before the committee on interior and insular affairs and a special subcommittee of the committee on foreign relations, United States senate, 84th congress, second session, held on March 22, 26, 28, and May 23, 1956. This is a most comprehensive document. It contains copies of various reports from various newspaper items in Canada, and so on.
First of all I want to quote from page 372 of the report. In this they reprint an article from the Winnipeg Free Press by Mr. Grant Dexter. It is printed in full. The comments made in this article are printed in the evidence before the committee. I want to refer particularly to one paragraph in the article which refers to the boundary waters treaty of 1909 as follows:
Having established this law in 1909 as the international law, the United States has invoked it consistently and "ruthlessly" against Canada. The United States did so by diverting the Allagash river in Maine into the Penobscot river. It did so by diverting the St. Mary river in Montana.
Both diversions were costly to Canada. But as Canada was not using this water and could not claim it as being "dedicated", there was no case under the treaty against the United States. It was hard on Canada but the Canadian government accepted the law as agreed to in the treaty and made no protest.
Now, for the first time since the treaty was entered into, the shoe is on the other foot. The spring flow of the Columbia river, carrying 5 million horsepower in its tumultuous progress, is surplus water, unused by anyone, and therefore "undedicated".
I quote this paragraph from the newspaper report because reference is made to it by various witnesses later on to indicate clearly that they have come to the opinion that we have those rights which have been so firmly
9, 1957	3353
Power Development-Columbia River maintained by General McNaughton and the Minister of Trade and Commerce.
In addition to that I want to quote from the daily Journal of Commerce, Portland, Oregon, Friday, November 9, 1956. The article is entitled "Canada and the Upper Columbia". It is a United States paper. I read:
The September 29 issue of Maclean's magazine, one of Canada's most widely read magazines, contains an article entitled "The Coming Battle for the Columbia". Bruce Hutchison, author of the article, sets forth the Canadian viewpoint and a great deal of background and history leading to present negotiations over use of the water in the upper Columbia river.
Unfortunately for the United States, the history goes back to the days when the nation was a lusty, rapidly growing group of states with little thought of our future resources and little regard for anything that stood in the way of our growth.
The article points out one of our great blunders in the past, going back to the days when we coveted gold in Alaska. Along with the gold we desired Alaska's panhandle, which controls such rivers as the Yukon, even though nearly all of that river lies in Canada.
The common law of England had developed from the theory that no man has the right to diminish or damage the flow of that river to the detriment of another man downstream. The United States rejected any such theories, and bulled through its own concept of the time-that a nation has the right to do as it pleases with any water in its borders.
That is the way the matter now stands, and we cannot question the legality of any move Canada may make with the waters of the Columbia or any other river within her borders. We can only hope that Canada will be generous for other reasons, but to be realistic we must realize that she is well aware of the value of her hydroelectric power potentials and is not preparing to negotiate them away without some real inducement.
This is from the daily Journal of Commerce, a very influential paper in the state of Oregon. I mention these things because when General McNaughton and the Minister of Trade and Commerce were making their statements some timid souls doubted their wisdom and thought they were going too far in their strict interpretation of article 2 of the boundary waters treaty but that idea has been dissipated in this country and their claim has been increasingly recognized as valid in the United States.
I want to quote from pages one and two of the same report to indicate the importance of this matter to the people of the United States as well as to ourselves and to illustrate that it is recognized. From page one I read:
The purpose of these hearings is to give thoughtful consideration to the problem of properly conserving and making the best possible use of one of our nation's greatest natural resources, the Columbia river system-
The same applies to Canada. On page two I find the following:
Above the border of Mica Creek dam, the finest storage site in the entire basin and the key to the development of the Columbia river in Canada, is similarly mired down.
That is the position we hold at the present time The people whom I have the honour to
3354	HOUSE OF
Power Development-Columbia River represent, and I think the majority of the people in British Columbia who give some consideration to these things, recognize that fact.
I have reason to mention particularly two anxieties on the part of the people I have the honour to represent. The first is that they naturally want this matter to be settled in equity as between all governments concerned but they are concerned that there is no compromise on the part of those who negotiate for Canada and no change made in article 2 of the boundary waters treaty, and that it is recognized that we have those rights and are in a very strong position on that account just as we had two leading Canadians who emphasized that point, when some had doubts.
The second point I wish to make which is of concern to thinking people in that part of the country is that those who negotiate for Canada make certain to secure adequate compensation for, shall I say, the interference with Canadian rights by the United States in the development of the Columbia when they built the dams south of the line. As I said before, that was done and previous governments both Liberal and Conservative failed to properly protect Canada's rights at that time. I remember on one occasion asking the present Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Pearson) if he had any information with respect to it in the records of the department. He had the records of the department searched and he informed me there was not a scratch of the pen with respect to the violation of article 2 of the Oregon treaty of 1846 by the United States in the building of the Grand Coulee dam. I made what I consider quite a good speech on this subject in the House of Commons on September 22, 1949.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Hear, hear.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I am now going to quote myself. That used to be done quite frequently by the former minister of veterans affairs.


George Clyde Nowlan: It was a good speech.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: In any event, I am going to quote from that speech the second paragraph of that article which is as follows:
In navigating the said river or rivers, British subjects, with their goods and produce, shall be treated on the same footing as citizens of the United States; it being, however, always understood, that nothing in this article shall be construed as preventing, or intended to prevent, the government of the United States from making any regulations respecting the navigation of the said river or rivers, not inconsistent with the present treaty.
Well, what happened? The treaty was violated by the building of the dams and we lost the right of navigation which was considerable in relation to the land lost by us in the western portion of Oregon. I quoted from the records of the British house and that was the argument used in the British House of

Commons. The argument used in the United States Senate was that they got the best of the deal because they got the land and all we got was navigation. Well, navigation was considered an important matter at that time.
Surveys were made in 1914 which showed that the Columbia at relatively small expense in terms of modern costs could be made navigable from the sea to Revelstoke to take 14-foot draft boats down to the sea; but our transportation developed across the country instead of north and south. The government of Canada at that time allowed that treaty to be broken and surrendered the valuable rights without a protest.
My point is this. My constituents hope that when negotiations are going on consideration will be given to the need for compensation for the loss of those rights. I talked to United States engineers and fisheries department officials in the United States who told me they were amazed that the Canadian government made no protest whatever and they were confident if a protest had come from the Canadian government at that time there would have been adequate compensation for the loss of the navigation rights on the Columbia river, for the loss of the salmon run which used to come up into the district where I live and for the inconvenience in general.
I have risen to express these two questions which concern my constituents. We do trust in view of the grievance we have against former governments that this government will continue the good work it is undertaking in this respect by completing a settlement in equity to all concerned and making certain that Canadian rights are protected to the limit.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
[Stage Direction]
The house in committee of supply, Mr. Robinson (Simcoe East) in the chair.
Progress reported.

Walter Edward Harris: Mr. Speaker, tomorrow we shall take the third reading of the bill with respect to hospital insurance, then the Agricultural Products Marketing Act, then the act to amend the United Kingdom Financial Agreement Act, then the international atomic energy agency convention, then the three bills with respect to double taxation in the respective countries and then a motion for interim supply.


Donald Methuen Fleming: In that order?


Walter Edward Harris: I think so, Mr. Speaker.


[Stage Direction]
At ten o'clock the house adjourned, without question put, pursuant to standing order.