1958-07-26

COMMITTEES OF THE HOUSE


[Stage Direction]
Mr. Heath Macquarrie (Queens) presented the first report of the standing committee on privileges and elections, and moved that the report be concurred in.
Motion agreed to.
Second report of standing committee on industrial relations.-Mr. Small.
Second report of standing committee on marine and fisheries.-Mr. English.


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. L. B. Pearson (Leader of the Opposition):: I should like to direct a question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. In view of the Prime Minister's statement last night calling for an increase of $3 billion in the resources of the international monetary fund and a very large increase in the lending capacity of the international bank, can the minister tell us whether the Canadian delegation to the economic and social council of the United Nations, which is currently meeting at Geneva, has been instructed to pursue these important objectives and, if so, with what result?


Hon. Sidney E. Smiih (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: I will take that question as notice, Mr. Speaker, except that I make this observation. I am not clear that this is a matter for representation to the economic and social council. We are represented on the boards of the international bank and the monetary fund.



THE CANADIAN ECONOMY


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. H. J. Robichaud (Gloucester):: I should like to direct a question to the Prime Minister based on a report in La Presse, Montreal, dated July 23, to the effect that the Borden commission has completed its hearings for the whole country. Will the Prime Minister
clarify the present situation in the light of the contradiction between this report and his statement to the house on Tuesday that the commission would hold sittings in the Atlantic provinces at a later date?


Right Hon. J. G. Diefenbaker (Prime Minister):: I thank my hon. friend for having given me notice of this question. All that has been completed is the hearings before the issuing of an interim report. There will be a resumption of hearings after the interim report has been completed, and then there will be hearings, as I said the other day, in the maritime provinces.



ARTS, LETTERS AND SCIENCES CANADA COUNCIL  STATUS OF CIVIL SERVANTS AWARDED SCHOLARSHIPS

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. H. W. Herridge (Kootenay West):: I
wish to address a question to the Prime Minister. I have been informed that some persons awarded scholarships by the Canada Council have been denied the opportunity to take advantage of these scholarships because they are civil servants. Can the Prime Minister inform the house of government policy in this respect, and would he have this matter looked into to see that there is no conflict in policy or with the government's intentions?


John George Diefenbaker: I just received this notice before coming into the house and I have no knowledge of the matter in question, but will give it consideration and will communicate with the Canada Council with a view to being able to answer the hon. gentleman at an early date.



ST. LAWRENCE SEAWAY REPORTED LAY-OFFS FOLLOWING TRANSFER OF 14-FOOT NAVIGATION

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. Lionel Chevrier (Laurier):: May I
direct a question to the Minister of Transport. The Cornwall Standard-Freeholder of July 23 carries a statement to the effect that the superintendent for the Ontario-St. Lawrence canal system announces the retirement of 122 men on the canals who are affected by the transfer of 14-foot navigation from the Canadian side to the United States side. The article goes on to state that 50 of these men

Inquiries of the Ministry will find employment, following the plan to which the minister referred earlier, in other branches of the Department of Transport. Then the superintendent goes on to say that the remaining 70 or 72 men will be laid off on September 1. My question is, what will happen to these 70 or 72 men who will find themselves without employment on September 1?


Hon. George H. Hees (Minister of Transport):: I am not sure. As I assured the hon. member and stated in the house, everything will be done that is possible to find employment for the men who are laid off.


Lionel Chevrier: May I ask a supplementary question. What I think the superintendent is saying is that pursuant to the plan of the minister employment has been found for 50 men. My question was directed to the remaining 70. What will happen to them?


George Harris Hees: I take it the statement is selfexplanatory; that it has been possible to find jobs for 50 of the men but there are not jobs to be found for the other men, unfortunately.



FINANCE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Erhart Regier (Burnaby-Coquitlam):: Would the Minister of Finance care to make any observations on the growing number of reports that interest rates on municipal issues are rising?


Hon. Donald M. Fleming (Minister of Finance):: I do not think there is any comment that could be usefully made on that subject. Within recent times there have been movements in the market. There were movements in the market in May and June, and there have been movements in the market since. I do not know what particular date my hon. friend is referring to, and if he would care to indicate that I shall be glad to comment if I can usefully do so.


Erhart Regier: I have cases on record where investment houses sent amending telegrams to municipal councils changing their previous offerings and indicating a rise in interest rates after the minister's bond conversion announcement.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I can say, Mr. Speaker, that since the announcement of the conversion loan the current quotations on some provincial issues and some municipal issues have risen and some have dropped 

slightly. There is no direct connection, I think, to be drawn between the loan and the situation my hon. friend has alleged.



SAINT JOHN, N.B.  STATUS OF AGREEMENT RESPECTING THERMAL PLANT

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hédard-J. Robichaud: I wish to direct a question to the Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources. Now that tenders have been called and awarded for the equipment and machinery to be used in the thermal plant at East Saint John, New Brunswick, can the minister advise the house whether an agreement has been signed between the federal government and the province of New Brunswick in this regard?


Hon. Alvin Hamillon (Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources):: Mr. Speaker, I inquired into this matter about a week ago, and I find that some tenders were called over a year ago for equipment in the Saint John East plant. I spoke to the officials of the government of New Brunswick on this matter. Additional tenders are being called of a routine sort. They do not affect the over-all agreement between the two governments. As far as the agreement is concerned, progress is being made on completing it. It has not been signed at the present time concerning the Saint John East plant.



AIR TRANSPORT


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Lionel Chevrier: May I direct a question to the Minister of Transport. In a press release emanating from his office comes the announcement of the appointment of Mr. Shepard as acting chairman of the air transport board to perform certain duties. My question to the minister is this. Will the acting chairman of the air transport board have two capacities, namely (1) that of hearing applications now before the air transport board for transcontinental competition with T.C.A. and (2) will he be authorized to make an investigation into further competition in the field of transcontinental services?


George Harris Hees: Mr. Speaker, the task which the chairman of the board of transport commissioners will perform while acting as chairman of the air transport board will be limited to hearings dealing with the transcontinental route.


The house in committee of supply, Mr. Rea in the chair.



POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT

[Stage Direction]
304. Departmental administration, $1,886,095.
Mr. Denis:: May I ask whether the Postmaster General has a statement to make lefore we go on with the item?


Hon. W. M. Hamilton (Postmaster General):: In introducing these estimates, Mr. Chairman, I will attempt to review briefly the operations of my department since the last time the estimates came before this house, explaining some of those aspects of the operations which are not covered in detail in the department's annual report. In making this presentation I cannot help but feel that I enjoy a great advantage which was denied my predecessors in office during the period since 1953, namely that I shall not be obliged to deal with the questions of the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace who had a great deal of curiosity about the department.


Mr. Martin (Essex East):: I think the minister will find there are others who have curiosity about the department as presently administered.


William McLean Hamilton: As
is well known, the Post Office Department is a vast one extending into every part of Canada and serving every Canadian. Less well known is the fact that in terms of staff it is the second largest government department, being exceeded in size only by the Department of National Defence. Some 25,000 civil servants plus another 25,000 people composed of revenue postmasters, rural mail carriers and various other categories, handle an average of 10 million letters a day through 12,000 post offices. Each day our rural mail deliveries cover 133,000 miles; translated into other figures this represents the fantastic annual equivalent of some 55 return trips to the moon. In the cities, letter carriers in the course of their work walk over 6 million miles a year-an equivalent figure is 240 times around the world. An average letter posted in a street letter box in one city and delivered to its destination in another will undergo a minimum of ten individual handlings in the course of its journey; yet the post office is so smoothly functioning and so efficient that the same first class letter deposited in any major city in Canada will normally be delivered within 24 hours in most other major centres in our country.
On the other hand, the department does not claim perfection; human beings are fallible, and in the process of handling these 10 million letters a day to which I have 57071-3-171
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referred it is impossible to avoid the occasional mistake. The percentage of error, however, is extremely small, on an average one hundredth of one per cent or one piece of mail in ten thousand, which figure represents delays, mis-sorted mail and even the occasional letter which disappears and can never be found. But compared with any business operation of which I am aware I think the record of the post office is outstanding.
I will now review the financial operations of the department. The year 1956-57, which is covered by the report available to members of the house, showed total revenues of close to $168 million with total expenditures of just over $162 million, and a favourable balance of $5,827,000. I am not going to attempt to give a further detailed review of this particular period, first because it ended some 15 months ago and second because whatever I might say in that connection is available to members in the published report covering the operations of the Post Office Department.
In the year ending March 31, 1958, for which period the report has not yet been issued, the total postage receipts of the department amounted to $164,899,000, or an increase of $9,122,000 over the preceding year. In addition to these postage receipts the department enjoys revenue from a number of other sources, primarily fees on postal money orders, the rental of post office boxes and the payment from other countries for the handling of certain types of mail. The total of this revenue was $12,534,000, or an increase of $482,000 over the previous year; and with the inclusion of one or two minor adjustments representing $50,000 or so we arrive at the significant revenue figure for the Post Office Department for the year in question of $177,493,000, or an increase in total of $9,604,000 over the preceding year.
The department's disbursements for the same period totalled $177,893,000, or an increase of $15,843,000. Deducting the total disbursements from the total receipts the department therefore shows a net excess of disbursements over revenues of $399,901, and this compares with a net excess of receipts over disbursements to which I have already referred for the previous year of $5,780,471.
There are those who refer to this difference between the receipts of the department and its disbursements as the department's profit or loss on the year's operations, an assumption which is not strictly correct, because not included are such items as the cost of mail which is carried free for government departments, the cost of public buildings which are supplied free to the department by the Department of Public Works, and perhaps

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one or two other items. But the figure does provide a very adequate method of assessing the operations of the department.
Hon. members will have noticed a change in the department's net position from what might be termed a profit of $5,780,000 in 195657 to what might be termed the loss of some $400,000 in the year under discussion, and I should like to set forth the major reason for this change. Incidentally, these reasons were forecast some ten months ago in the last annual report of the department, which said:
It is advisable to draw attention to the fact that again in the coming fiscal year very heavy additional expenditures are in prospect-expenditures which are quite beyond the control of the Post Office Department.
The report then continued to outline these additional expenditures which have resulted in the figures which have been given to the house.
The largest single item of increased expenditure was in salaries paid to post office employees, $8,312,000 to our civil service staff proper plus $1,824,000 to revenue postmasters, making a total increase of $10,136,000. While a portion of this increase represented staff required by the increase in the volume of our business, the great majority, represented by some $7,500,000, resulted directly from the general civil service salary increases which became effective on May 1, 1957. An 11 per cent increase was also granted in January of 1957 to the railways in mail payments, and this is estimated to represent a cost increase of $1,250,000.
These two increases, totalling $8,750,000, could be added to in a great many cases, each representing an increased payment for exactly the same quantity of work performed or of goods and services received, and it becomes clear that even had the post office operations remained at exactly the same level as in previous years our previous favourable position would have been completely wiped out and would have been represented instead by a net loss of several million dollars.
In actual fact we did enjoy a substantial increase in the volume of our operations and this brought with it increased revenue. But increased revenue also brings with it increased expenditures, and these increases have been still further augmented by the natural growth of our country and the need to increase such postal services as rural mail routes and the like. Typical of such increases are those of $2,636,000 in salaries over and above the increase necessitated by the general salary revision, $2,036,000 for mail services by ordinary land conveyance, which includes the rural mail delivery, and an increase of $1,478,000 for mail service by air.

In addition, very briefly, there is another factor which was at work during the year under discussion, one which it is impossible to measure exactly but which we know affects the operations of the post office adversely at certain times as far as its revenues and expenditures are concerned. This is what we might call the revenue mix, and it relates to the various types of mail and the volume of each which is handled. It is important because certain classes of mail bring to the post office more revenue than others in relation to the cost of handling them. When business conditions become at all unsettled there is a certain falling off in first class profitable mail and a substantial increase in such comparatively unprofitable fields as third class mail, circular mail you may call it, since business firms begin to more actively solicit business by mailing advertisements, circulars, and the like.
Having reviewed the financial position of the Post Office Department over this period, I would like to summarize briefly the conclusions and then proceed to some other aspects of our operations. While the revenues of the department have increased, the expenses have increased at a faster rate in the year under discussion so that we are almost exactly at the breakeven point where revenues and expenses are equal. The increases in our expenses are due to factors over which the department has no control, such as cost increases for the same services performed and cost increases due to increased volume of work required. There is some evidence that the unprofitable types of mail increased in the year under discussion. The fact that cost increases totalling $8,750,000, from which the department enjoyed no advantage, could be absorbed and net revenue decline only $6,180,000 shows that in the year under discussion the department has operated at a substantially higher degree of efficiency than previously.
I would now like to turn to a review of specific aspects of our operation during the past year. In order to try to be as up to date as possible I will take the period from the beginning of July, 1957, to the end of June, 1958. In that period, of course, the most outstanding feature was the congress of the universal postal union. I must say that I have been touched greatly by the wonderful things which have been said about the organization and handling of that congress by the postal officials of so many countries in the world, both when they were here in Ottawa and subsequently when I met them or corresponded with them. Over 100 members of our staff were available for parttime work on various functions of this conference, working to arrange the details of

the operation. We are also grateful to the dozen or so other government departments which co-operated with us.
The congress itself included over 300 delegates from 96 member countries. Together they considered over 1,200 propositions relating to the various aspects of our international mail service.
Mr. Chairman, in connection with this congress it is only fair to say that the preliminary arrangements and planning had been made by the previous administration, and that this contributed greatly to the success of the congress. We took over at a period shortly before the congress started and were helped by that previous work.
I would like, Mr. Chairman, to pay a special tribute to Mr. Walter Turnbull, the deputy postmaster general for a number of years. He was elected president of the congress and he personally directed practically all its operations. He did an outstanding job in every respect.
I would just like to say another word about Mr. Turnbull. In 1956 he announced his intention to retire following the congress, and he carried out that plan. He was an outstanding postal official who contributed greatly not only to postal development in Canada but throughout the world as a result of his contacts with various postal administrations in every part of the globe. Not everyone was always in accord with Mr. Turnbull during his term as deputy postmaster general either inside this house or outside of it, but no one to my knowledge disputed his tremendous ability, intelligence and imagination as deputy postmaster general, and at his departure he left a Canadian postal service that in case after case bears the imprint of his own achievements.
Since we are on this subject, Mr. Turnbull's successor, to whom I paid tribute last year on the announcement of his appointment and to whom I will pay another tribute at this point since his appointment has become effective, is Mr. George Boyle, who has an intimate knowledge of the department gained over 43 years in its service during which time he has risen from one of the most minor positions to the highest permanent post in the department. In an organization which has so many excellent people from whom to choose, Mr. Boyle's progress is the best indication of his own ability, and already it is possible to see additional evidence of that in his new post.
I will have something more to say about the post office staff generally a little later, but I singled out these two men at this point because of my conviction that the Post Office Department is completely dependent upon the calibre of its personnel,
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and my feeling also that the type of man we have as deputy postmaster general is just one indication of the worth of that personnel.
Now, with respect to specific details and changes, over the last year door to door delivery was inaugurated in 10 cities serving 28,424 calls. In centres which already had this service it was extended beyond previous boundaries to add 48,342 calls, and in addition there was new service to 31,310 billed as "fill-ins" and calls falling within existing boundaries. The total number of new calls added under these three classes was 108,076.
While I am on the question of letter carrier delivery I might refer to two a day delivery, because this question of the return to two a day delivery of mail in the residential sections of our country where letter carrier service exists has often been discussed in this house. Hon. members will recall that it was abolished in 1952 by the previous administration.
In every aspect of postal service it is necessary to balance off those things which we might like to do against the cost of providing the service concerned, and these same considerations apply in this particular instance. In the last few years hours of work have decreased and rates of pay have increased, so that the resumption in residential areas of a second delivery a day at the present time would cost something in excess of $6 million a year.
In addition to the cost factor, conditions have changed in the past few years, with the result that a great deal more mail moving between cities is available for delivery in the cities of destination on the morning delivery, and also many arrangements of routes have been undertaken so that areas which faced particular problems at the change-over are now better served and more satisfied.
Over the years I have made a point of checking with people across this country on their reactions, and I have found that the average householder seems to feel that he is adequately served with one delivery a day, although business firms often find it an inconvenience when they are faced with that particular situation. I might just mention that such business firms and householders, if they are particularly interested, are in a position to obtain lock boxes at the local post office and thus pick up their mail several times a day.
Taking all these factors into consideration I have concluded that any general resumption of the two a day mail delivery in residential areas is not now warranted. However, every effort is being made to deal with

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local situations in a way satisfactory to individual patrons, and I am convinced that we can render satisfactory service in this way without the great increase of cost which would be entailed in the general resumption of two a day mail service.
In rural routes 74 rural routes were established to provide service to 11,500 patrons. In addition, 728 existing routes were extended to give service to 4,500 patrons. Twenty-eight revenue post offices were established in rural areas. Fifty-nine sub-offices and four new postal stations were opened in cities. To me a point of particular interest are the stamp vending machines, which many people find helpful. I feel that government stamp vending machines, which provide service 24 hours a day and give full value for the money inserted, are a great convenience to the public and therefore we are trebling the number available.
The choice of subjects and designs for postage stamps has been a subject of careful study, because we desire to produce stamps which will receive general approval of the public that uses them. Because stamp design is essentially a matter of aesthetics, and human tastes differ in that field perhaps more than in any other, we have to resign ourselves to the fact that it is unlikely that any stamp is ever going to be issued which will receive universal acclaim. However, steps are under way to establish an advisory committee on postage stamp design, because I feel that the views of a representative group of Canadians will be helpful in determining subjects and designs which will be most satisfactory to the majority of Canadians.
Because of changes in rail schedules and equipment which make it impractical to handle mail over certain routes where it used to travel, we have instituted additional highway services which are providing equal or superior connections.
Recently our regulations covering certain types of insertions in magazines and periodical publications were relaxed so that Canadian publishers might compete more successfully with publications coming into Canada from the United States.
During the year under discussion 55 new federal buildings were occupied by post offices, including two major projects, one in Vancouver and one in Winnipeg, which contain extensive mechanical mail handling equipment. One machine in operation at both Vancouver and Winnipeg is an electronic device for the sorting of parcels which is probably the most modern anywhere in the world. In addition to our new buildings, we have 16 additions to existing federal buildings, and we have 118 other projects in the planning stage.

Here is something which I think members might find interesting and perhaps have not heard about yet. Because all mail originates with the public, public co-operation and understanding of our problems are a vital necessity to successful postal operation. One way to achieve this co-operation is to keep the public well informed about the post office. We have therefore produced and issued a very fine moving picture in colour and sound in co-operation with the national film board. It is expected that millions of Canadians will see this moving picture over the next few years, and that it will result in a much better appreciation of our problems and more cooperation from the general public.
I turn now to our activities which concern more directly the internal operations of the department and the mechanical handling of mail. In previous years it seemed to me that the opportunity existed for closer co-operation among the United States, the United Kingdom and Canadian postal services in a number of fields. There has always been discussion of particular problems which concern the services in these three countries and, indeed, discussions with every country in the world wherever possible, but on no occasion in recent years until Canada took steps to initiate action have there been joint meetings of the most senior officials of the three services for a wide range of discussion of the general problems with which each was dealing and the plans for the future which each was developing.
Such an interchange of information is most important at a time like the present, when it seems apparent that we are entering a period of substantial development in mail handling operations. Over the past 40 years and until the present there has been substantially little development in the way mail has been handled in post offices. About the only general change, apart from one or two new types of machines in isolated cases, has been the introduction of moving belts and chutes to transfer mail from one location to another. Other operations have remained static and heavily dependent on the manual manipulation of each individual letter or parcel. This situation has applied in every country in the world, so it is no criticism of the Canadian postal service to point out that it exists in this country as well.
The primary difficulty in mechanizing and modernizing mail handling operations is, first, that large volumes of mail are found only in a limited number of locations and then only at relatively short peak periods, so that the installation of costly and complicated machinery to deal with such situations requires economic calculations and decisions of considerable complexity. On the technical side

the development of the necessary machinery, much of which is of an electronic nature, presents again very substantial difficulties. Most mass production operations deal with a standardized product. The mail stream varies widely, with each unit having the possibility of differing from every other unit in such respects as the size of the envelope, the position and denomination of the stamp, the thickness of the enclosure and the ultimate destination which is involved.
As a result, while highly qualified research technicians have been at work in a number of countries, including Canada, the United States and Great Britain, for a number of years trying to develop machinery which will handle mail more effectively and more expeditiously than at present, it is only in recent months that anything has begun to appear which, when put into operation in a post office in the regular mail stream, operates in a satisfactory manner. All of these facts and a great many more, all of which have been helpful in making progress in this respect-


The Deputy Chairman:: Order. The time set for the Postmaster General is up. Has he unanimous consent of the committee to continue?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


William McLean Hamilton: Thank you, Mr. Chairman; about another ten minutes should cover it. I regret that we have 15 months to cover since the last annual report. All these facts to which I have referred were discussed at a series of meetings which have been held during the last year between Canada, the United States and Great Britain. One of the results of these meetings has been to convince us in Canada that the British post office has developed certain types of machines which should be of great help to us in this country, and we are in the final stages of discussion to enable us to instal prototype units of this equipment so that we may examine them under Canadian operating conditions and determine how extensively they may be used in our country. What our course of action will be after that I do not know, but certainly we should examine and study means which we feel are now available to speed and improve our mail delivery.
I have no doubt that within the next four to five years we will see the commencement of radical changes in mail handling techniques, and that within the next decade these same techniques will be widely employed in our Canadian postal service. In introducing them our prime purpose is to speed up and make more effective the handling of large volumes of mail, and to introduce machinery for certain laborious and unskilled post office
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tasks. It cannot be anticipated that this machinery will make any appreciable reduction in our permanent personnel, first because many of our jobs represent work which can never be mechanized-letter carriers are a good example-and second because the steady increase in volume of mail now demands a steady increase in our personnel, and the purpose of the machinery is to allow us to handle a larger volume of mail more quickly and effectively with the same number of people.
I should like to say a word about our own major project in the Canadian postal service. It is the electronic sortation machine on which close to $3 million has now been spent for research and development. The basic concept of the machine shows promise, but at no point up to the present could it be said that the machine is anywhere near the point at which it might be placed, even on a trial basis, in a post office to test it on regular mail for any extended period of time. I think that point should be made quite clear, Mr. Chairman. We are currently engaged in a very careful reassessment of this machine to determine our future course of action so far as it is concerned.
May I say a few words now about staff management, which is of interest to many members of the house. The general personnel policy of the Post Office Department, including staff training and development, is a well advanced and creditable one. As part of the department's program of management development, there was a marked increase in the number of officers and supervisors who rotated jobs or were assigned temporarily to other locations for varying periods according to individual needs. In this way we secured an interchange of ideas and information between headquarters and the field which is tremendously valuable in a widely extended operation such as our department.
A series of coloured slide films was produced within the department to give an over-all picture of the postal service and to acquaint our headquarters staff with postal operations, as well as to help indoctrinate new employees. We also use these slide films as visual aids to training.
We started in recent periods an accident prevention program in the Montreal post office. This resulted in such a substantial reduction in the number of accidents and the number of days lost as a result of accidents that the program was extended to the Toronto and Ottawa post offices.
We decentralized still further, giving the senior field officers wider authority for leaves. Headquarters no longer maintains individual records of staff for the larger field offices, nor any personnel records at all for part-time

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employees in the larger offices. This reduced the records staff at headquarters without any corresponding increase in the field.
The usual pattern continued of a percentage increase in staff of about half the percentage increase in the volume of mail. The turnover in our staff showed a moderate drop from 11 per cent to 9 per cent per annum. During the period I am reviewing the remuneration of 594 mail service contracts was adjusted upward to offset increased operating expenses and to bring the rates to a level comparable with those paid for similar work.
One of the heaviest burdens on our letter carriers is what is known as household circulars. A change has allowed these to be delivered on Monday as well as other days in the week, and this has spread the load to the advantage of the letter carriers and improved the service to the mailers.


Mr. Benidickson:: What did the minister call that?


William McLean Hamilton: Householder circulars; a type of third class mail which the postman drops in at each house at which he calls.
To meet the constant problem of quickly providing suitable uniforms to new employees a change was made in the method of ordering and stocking them. It seems to me that this will improve both the appearance and morale of the new members of the uniformed staff.
Very special attention has been given to safeguarding the cash and postal values, particularly in the face of a substantial increase in the number of burglaries throughout the country, which applies incidentally not only to the Post Office Department but to other sections of the economy as well. Additional burglar alarms have been installed and additional safes have been supplied. More use is being made of night depositories in banks and other security measures have been introduced, designed to offer the maximum protection to the public whose valuables we hold.
Inquiries, which improve the post office service because they enable us to locate possible weaknesses and correct them, are being more effectively analysed and followed up on a national basis. We have established a more uniform system of processing them.
We have a work management program which involves the measurement of mail volumes processed, hours worked, and in most cases work standards. During this period the program was extended from certain major sections of eight of our largest offices to two additional offices.
It seems to me this is a very important part of our operation, because the results of

the program make postmasters and supervisors aware of the salary costs of various sections of their offices. It assists them also in studying operational conditions from the point of view of more effective use of staff. Finally, it instils a spirit of teamwork amongst employees and an ambition to better production. I can recall going into a post office in Winnipeg on one of my inspection trips and finding a large blackboard there on which the previous week's results were posted. A spirit existed in that post office, and exists in many others, of teamwork and a sincere desire to do a little better next week to improve those figures.
Here at headquarters, I think members will be very interested to know, we have installed one of the most modern machines available, a Univac 120 in our financial branch. This is an electronic accounting machine which will process the post office savings bank accounts and reduce the routine clerical work in that connection. We also use it to process the salary payments to revenue postmasters. It is estimated that these two uses of the machine will save the department $26,000 per year. I might just mention, in case the question comes up later, that this has been achieved without laying off any individual affected by the installation of this machine. There is a turnover in the department, and these people have been absorbed in other capacities. They have been called for on other jobs. Whenever we think in terms of a machine we think also in terms of our staff and the need to protect them in their jobs and not deny work through the installation of such machines.
Intensive studies of our money order system are under way with a view to developing a system based on electronic accounting machines similar to those being developed for the American Bankers Association and the Canadian Bankers Association. Again, this would reduce the routine clerical work of the department. I might say that the money order forms were redesigned during the year, and just that one little change in redesigning the money order form reduced printing costs by approximately $10,000 a year. We have improved considerably the procedures for controlling costs of the many truck contracts for parcel post, street letter box collections and special delivery in our various city services.
Now, Mr. Chairman, in conclusion may I say just one word to express a general attitude. Personally, I have not felt it possible to perform my own job without a fairly detailed knowledge of the basic operations and conditions of my department in every part of Canada. For that reason I have covered

Canada from Newfoundland to British Columbia to obtain personal acquaintance with our department and the individuals who work for it. I tried to work that out quickly this morning, and find I travelled something close to 25,000 to 30,000 miles last year in the performance of that duty. Wherever I have gone I have taken the time to talk person-nally with post office employees at every level, particularly those employees at subordinate levels who never before had seen a postmaster general in their office or met him in any way.
There are eight regional postmasters' associations as well as a national association. I have attended conferences of six of these eight postmasters' associations and a national meeting as well. As to the other two, I have given an undertaking to be there at their next annual meeting. I have received representatives of our employee groups and discussed with them their problems and suggestions. Finally, I made some attempt to obtain comparative knowledge of other postal services in the world.
These subjective experiences lead me to certain objective conclusions. First, I feel that our Canadian postal service is generally the equal of any in the world and probably superior to most. We face peculiar problems in our country in this respect: a huge country with a comparatively small population which is widely distributed and with great density only in limited areas; long hauls for much of our mail; isolated areas which are difficult of access, and many other problems. We can therefore make no attempt to duplicate exactly in any part of Canada those services which some countries give under vastly different conditions.
None the less, I am firmly convinced that when all factors are taken into consideration the Canadian people enjoy a postal service as good as that anywhere in the world and probably better than that in most areas.
The greatest portion of the credit for this, Mr. Chairman, must go to the post office employees themselves. The reputation of a postal service is not achieved overnight or by some sweeping changes in policy. Rather, such reputation is the result of faithful service, faithfully performed by a host of individuals over a long period of time. I might say that the motto of the Canadian postal service is Servire populo, "To serve the People". That motto, that faithful public service, has been the case in the Canadian postal service and it continues to be the case. Fine buildings and good equipment, new plans and improved methods all contribute to our success but in the final analysis it is the individual postal employee, in whatever post
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he may be serving, who determines the effectiveness of our service.
I feel sure that I speak for every member of this house when I pay a tribute to the postal employees of Canada for their devotion to duty and the part they daily play so successfully in the operation of those basic channels of communication without which our modern society could not exist.


Azellus Denis: Mr. Chairman, I wish to say just a word of thanks to the Postmaster General for his comments and his analysis of the situation. However, in summing up what he has said I regret to say that his statement, as with that of other ministers, concludes by indicating a deficit as usual, ft is far from being a break-even policy which he always advocated while he was the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace sitting in the opposition. He has had fine experience and shown great ability since he became a member of parliament. I think he was the official critic for the then opposition. He worked hard at the job, even making research all around the department and even having access to confidential reports which the minister at the time was good enough to let him examine. Certainly in the Woods and Gordon report he found many suggestions and many statements that were extremely useful to him, just as the report was useful during the time of the former postmaster general.
After reviewing what the minister has just said we must come to the conclusion that almost nothing of what he used to say or nothing of the statements and the suggestions made by him while he was only an opposition member of parliament has been implemented since he has assumed office as Postmaster General. I recall that in 1953, 1954 and 1955 he filled the pages of Hansard with declarations and statements with regard to two a day mail delivery. I do not see that anything has been done since he has been the minister of this department. I can recall full pages of declarations by the Postmaster General. For instance in 1954, as reported at page 1178 of Hansard, before he was Postmaster General but was the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace, sitting in the opposition he said this:
Before I resume my seat I have just one further question. I should like to ask the minister when we in Notre Dame de Grace are going to get our second mail delivery a day.
This matter of two a day delivery of mail was a political issue during the last election. In every province and at every meeting the Tory party used that kind of political issue, making promises and commitments. Now that the Conservative party is in power, now that the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace is Postmaster General, we are receiving letters

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from all over Canada asking when the minister will put into effect the dozens of declarations and statements covering pages and pages of Hansard asking for two a day mail delivery. Nothing has been done. For instance, from Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Mr. Wadden wrote to us asking when this implementation would take place.
I do not know what is going to happen if, with regard to everything the minister said while he was a member of parliament, sitting in the opposition nothing is implemented. We are going to lack confidence in the minister. At that time he was extremely efficient. Today, when he occupies the post of Postmaster General, he might realize that the situation is a little bit different. Let us consider, for instance, the increase in the cost of postage stamps from 4 cents to 5 cents. How many speeches did the minister make about that increase in the cost of postage stamps? It was a good thing to say during the electoral campaign. But now that my hon. friend and his party have obtained power, now that they have obtained responsibility, now that they have obtained a majority on account of issues of that kind, now that he is in a position to implement the commitments he has made for many years, we find that nothing has been done.
He just said that the Post Office Department is very efficient. Does he mean that in the course of two, three, four or five months every efficiency there is in the Post Office Department is the baby of the minister, or is the efficiency the result of the fact that the department was well administered previously and he is taking credit for what was done by the previous government? I do not know whether he used to talk black one day and white on another day. In 1954, as reported at page 1818 of Hansard, when he was only a member of parliament sitting on the opposition side, the minister said this:
-but I criticize in the very strongest terms the Postmaster General for his administration of the department, and for many of the ways in which it is administered under his direction.
Today, however, he says everything is in order, everything is in good condition. He has made declaration after declaration inside and outside of the house to that effect. On June 24, 1958 the Victoria Daily Times had this to say:
"Canadian postal department is second to none" Mr. Hamilton said, "and the common feeling that Ottawa is unaware of local problems has no basis "
On July 25 the Globe and Mail reported that the Postmaster General had said that his four weeks' experience on the job had shown him an organization which, basically, was working very efficiently. Was it those

four weeks of the Postmaster General's experience which made this department work efficiently? I doubt it, and I think he will admit that something was done before he came to office. A little further down it says:
Formerly a fierce critic of the decision to revert to once-daily delivery, Mr. Hamilton now believes that few householders expect or want the mailman to call more than once-
I do not know what is going to happen over the years, but it is obvious that the suggestions made by the Postmaster General have not been implemented, so we must conclude that this department was well administered by the former government and that the present Postmaster General is only continuing what was done in the past. In his statement this morning no mention was made of the suggestions which he himself put forward when he was a private member, such as the one with respect to burglar alarms.


William McLean Hamilton: The
hon. member must have been asleep.


Azellus Denis: Oh, no.


William McLean Hamilton: That was all covered in the statement.	.


Azellus Denis: But I would like to know from the Postmaster General how many burglar alarms have been installed since he took office and how many thefts have occurred in the same period, just so we may compare the difference between his administration and that of the former minister. All these questions in my opinion should be answered. There is another point which I would like to raise. While the minister said inside and outside the house that the former government should cut expenditures and should stop the waste and extravagance, the minister in his statement this morning made no mention of these matters. He had an opportunity today to tell the house and the country all about the extravagance and waste and poor administration in the past, and because he did not we must only conclude that he was talking-


Lionel Chevrier: Through his hat.


Azellus Denis: I would not say that because it is not polite, but I am sure the minister knows my meaning.


Lionel Chevrier: It is quite polite.


Azellus Denis: Instead of cutting expenditures, however, he has increased them by $5,700,000; and if hon. members will look at the estimates they will see that every item is increased-


Mr. Ricard:: Wages of employees also.


Azellus Denis: -except departmental administration, which has decreased by $301,633. Of

course there was the expenditure on the universal postal conference which last year cost $250,000 and we had $255,000 for publicity and advertising and so on, but still the conclusion one must draw from these estimates is that instead of cutting expenditures, for whatever reason, we have an increase of $5,700,000.
The minister spoke about electronic sorters and all kinds of machinery installed in the department, saying that he had not cut the number of employees. This may be so, though he was not very definite about it. I gather that this move will not hurt too much, but I would like to know from the minister how many employees are replaced by these electronic machines. If they have not yet cut the number of employees they may very well do so, which will stop Canadians from working in the department. When there is unemployment all through the country I do not think this is the time for the government to put in hundreds and hundreds of electronic or mechanical machines. Maybe it is a mere coincidence, but in recent weeks the civil service commission has been sending back applications for jobs to the senders because they are no longer taking records of applicants for mail carriers or clerks in the department.
Because of these facts it looks as if there will not be an increase in the number of employees of the Post Office Department, and I would suggest to the minister that the department should keep a file of all applicants for jobs such as those I have outlined so that when a vacancy occurs these applicants may be notified of the holding of examinations, rather than having to follow the newspapers every day or look at the notices in the public buildings. The minister I am sure will agree that it is pretty hard for an unemployed man to go through all the public offices to see if there is a notice of a job available to him. This is an improvement which could be made in the Post Office Department, and it is one which was advocated by the minister himself. All these questions should be answered, and the house should be informed of the cost of these electronic machines and of the department's experience in using them.
I do not think I have any more to say on this item, but I will have some other comments to make with respect to other items of the estimates. If he cannot implement the promises he made and which he repeated in the house and outside during the election campaign, he should tell us it was only for fun, that he was not really aware of anything wrong and that he was just taking a chance. And I know the present Postmaster General is in a position to 57071-3-172
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say that, because he is honest and ready to comply with the truth and with the facts.


Mr. Winch:: It is not my intention to speak for very long, Mr. Chairman, but I feel that on this first vote I must say a few words, mainly because the Postmaster General in introducing the discussion had one thing to say in particular. That was in part a comparison of his present position with the attitude he took while he was in opposition and, to some extent, a withdrawal of the criticisms which he had directed against the department in the past.
At the time of his criticisms, that is before June of last year, the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace sat very close to me, right in the next row, and it is because of what he said then that I should like to ask him a question. What has happened under his administration since last June in comparison with what he said for four years when he sat two seats away from me? I do not have to refer to Hansard, because I well remember the speeches made during that period by the present Postmaster General. Time after time he talked about two-a-day deliveries. Where are they today, and why has he changed his viewpoint? May I ask whether it is because in opposition he was irresponsible but that in government he is responsible?
May I also draw attention to a point which, though of less importance, is one which meant a great deal to the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace in those days, when week after week, if there was ever a robbery of a post office, he got up on the orders of the day and referred to those robberies and wanted to know what was going on. I should like to ask the Postmaster General what has been the situation since he took office, and whether he has been able to give a greater degree of protection than his predecessors in office. I do not know why this matter was of such particular interest for years to the present Postmaster General, but it was. Perhaps he can now throw some new light on the subject.
May I also draw to the minister's attention the fact that when he was in opposition he felt that those who lived in small towns and villages should enjoy the same rights with regard to postal service as those living in large towns and cities. I should like to ask the Postmaster General, in view of this, what is the basic policy determining when a town may have home delivery of mail. I have received a great number of inquiries on this matter from British Columbia, but in recent days I have heard from the town of Tilbury in Ontario, and I have been sent an editorial from the Tilbury Times. I hope

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the Postmaster General will tell us what is the policy governing conditions when home delivery can be made.
In conclusion I come to the major point. Remembering the speeches which the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace made when he sat alongside me for four years on the costings of the department, and in particular his references to first class mail having to bear the cost of other classes of mail-


William McLean Hamilton: Just so that I may understand the question and answer it adequately, would the hon. member care to give me some reference to Hansard where this particular observation occurs?


Harold Edward Winch: Mr. Chairman, I have not those references here, but I am amazed that I should remember the hon. minister's speeches better than he does himself.


William McLean Hamilton: Perhaps over the lunch hour the hon. member would look up the reference, because I do not recall that there is anything in the record along the lines he has suggested.


Harold Edward Winch: Perhaps the hon. member would cast his mind back to the days when the previous government was making a change in the postal charges. Can he remember the days of discussion on that measure and the fight that was put up by the Conservative opposition at that time to resist those changes? Does the minister not remember his own remarks on that occasion?


Francis Alvin George Hamilton: You
are talking now about variations in rates-


Harold Edward Winch: The hon. minister does me the honour of allowing me to think I remember his speeches better than he does. The important thing is the position that was taken at that time. According to the last report of the department the post office, though naturally, of course, a public service, is a money-making proposition. All I want to ask the Postmaster General to do is to remember the position he took toward this matter while in opposition, and his opposition to first-class mail having to bear the heavy deficits incurred on other classes of mail of an industrial or advertising nature.
I merely draw this to the attention of the committee, and ask that during the course of this debate the Postmaster General will take the opportunity to outline the policies of the department in relation to the points I have sought to raise.


Mr. Carter:: Mr. Chairman, the Postmaster General opened the discussion on this item by congratulating himself on his great good fortune in not having to deal with the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace. I think

enough has been said already to prove to the Postmaster General that the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace is going to be quite a source of embarrassment to the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace as Postmaster General.
I remember-I think we all do-that when the Postmaster General was on this side of the house he waxed very eloquent about numerous subjects. Among them were the two-a-day mail delivery, government public relations, postal surpluses, and other things almost too numerous to mention. It may be interesting to hear what the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace had to say about the two-a-day mail service when he was on this side of the house, and I am reading from Hansard of May 26, 1955, at page 4146:
We know there Is no use complaining because it is going to be crammed down our throats anyway. I think that has been the attitude of the people of Canada toward this one-a-day mail delivery. I suggest this thought in that connection to the Postmaster General. Why do we not have two-a-day mail deliveries five days a week? At the present time we give a mail delivery in most residential areas once a day, and that is six deliveries a week.
Then again, on January 20, 1956, at page 362 of Hansard, the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace is reported as having said:
I should like to ask again, as I did last year, that the post office consider the re-establishment of the two-a-day mail delivery rather than the present one-a-day system which extends into such a large part of Canada. We should have a two-a-day mail delivery on a five-day week basis. I would point out that the return to the two-a-day, five-days-a-week delivery would not cause a major cost increase in the operation of the post office.
Again on May 26, 1955, at page 4146 of Hansard, the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace is reported as follows:
I should like to say a few words about twice-a-day mail deliveries. I do not agree with the attitude of the Postmaster General and the department that once-a-day mail delivery is genuinely satisfactory or acceptable to the people of Canada.
Well, Mr. Chairman, that was the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace speaking as a member of Her Majesty's loyal opposition. Contrast that with what the hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace said this morning when speaking as Postmaster General. I did not have time to take down the exact words he used, but he did say that in considering the expression of two-a-day mail delivery we must balance what we would like to have against the cost of the service concerned, and he went on to say that this extra service would cost upwards of $6 million extra to the people of Canada but he did not stop there. He went on to say that he now believed that the one-a-day delivery was generally acceptable to the people of Canada, that the people were being

adequately served with one-a-day mail delivery and that the second delivery would not be warranted.
When we compare what the Postmaster General said this morning with what he said on this side of the house we must come to the conclusion that he has learned a great deal since assuming the burdens of office.


William McLean Hamilton: Thank you; those are the kindest words that have been said this morning.


Lester Bowles Pearson: He had so much to learn.


Chesley William Carter: No member of parliament was more caustic in his criticism than the Postmaster General when he was just plain hon. member for Notre Dame de Grace, and he used to wax loud, long and eloquent on the waste and extravagance of the Post Office Department. Yet when we look at the estimates for this year we find that they have increased by $5,786,390 over last year despite the fact that in 1957-58 there was $250,000 in the estimates for the universal postal union congress, and in addition the 1957-58 estimates included an amount for the approximate requirement for increases in rates of pay, but there seems to be no item to take account of further increases in the rates of pay in the estimates for the present fiscal year. Along that line, Mr. Chairman, the Montreal Gazette of March 22, 1958 carried the following extract, which is attributed to the Postmaster General:
Interchange of jobs between executives of industry and government was urged here yesterday by Postmaster General Hamilton to help businessmen to understand why the government has to employ more people than private industry to do a given type and volume of work. "If we were able to have a change of officers between private industry and government departments, both would benefit and derive greater respect for the other", Mr. Hamilton told members of the Montreal chapter society for advancement of management. The absence of the profit motive and the element of competition was cited by Mr. Hamilton as one of the "valid reasons" why government operations cannot equal the efficiency of private enterprise or its speed of adaptation to changing conditions. "The government has found it necessary to employ certain measures which may seem like empire building or unnecessary red tape to the men engaged in private enterprise, but which are actually needed to replace control by profit and competition", he declared.
The Postmaster General should tell us whether this is the answer to the accusation he used to make against the department "that it was full of waste and inefficiency". Then as late as June 24 of this year, as reported in the Victoria Daily Times, the Postmaster General is quoted as saying:
"Canadian postal department is second to none", Mr. Hamilton said, "and the common feeling that Ottawa is unaware of local problems has no basis." 57071-3-1724
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Does this mean that the Postmaster General is convinced that in recent years his department is and always has been efficiently run? The recent information that we have big brother listening in on our deliberations in the chamber calls to mind that several years ago the hon. member for Peterborough raised a very strong complaint about the use of television circuits in the post office in Peterborough. I believe he complained that there were 16 of them. I now have his exact words. As found on page 155 of Hansard for January 16, 1956, the hon. member for Peterborough said:
I understand that some 16 of these television cameras are to be installed in the Peterborough post office. Some of them will be dummies. In the past the men have never objected very much to the use of peepholes in post offices through which inspectors can watch and check on a man whom they suspect of not being honest, but they certainly do object to television cameras. Personally I think it is a waste of the taxpayer's money. It is going to cost over $50,000 to instal them, and will cause a great deal of hard feeling. The sooner the idea is thrown out by the Post Office Department the better for this country.
As late as yesterday, July 25, an inquiry revealed that this equipment is still installed in the Peterborough office. It was understood that it was installed on an experimental basis for a trial period. Perhaps the Postmaster General can now tell the house his conclusions as to its usefulness and if he thinks it is superior to the system of peepholes and observation galleries. Perhaps if experience warrants it we might improve the equipment in the Prime Minister's office and modernize it still further by installing a closed television circuit.
There are many things that I think would be very entertaining to us and very embarrassing to the Postmaster General, but I must desist from this pleasant occupation in order to deal with matters which are more urgent and pressing in the province from which I come. The first matter I wish to deal with is the position of revenue postmasters in Newfoundland. The Post Office Department report for 1957 lists 636 post offices in operation on March 31, 1956. It does not give any breakdown to indicate how many are staff post offices or semi-staff post offices, but I would assume that between 400 and 500 or approximately 75 per cent would be revenue post offices and that in the majority of these the postmasters would, in addition to their postal duties, have to carry out duties on behalf of Canadian National Telegraphs.
I have already referred to the plight of the postmaster-telegrapher in the house on many occasions, and I am not going to repeat what I have said before. My latest reference to the matter was on May 19 of this year, and

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earlier references in detail can be found on page 2235 of Hansard for April 20, 1951, and page 442 of Hansard for January 23, 1956.
The reason I bring the subject forward now is that Canadian National Telegraphs have recently made a decision, now in process of being carried out, to convert the equipment in these combined postal and telegraph offices from wireless telegraph to radiotelephone. As a result of that change many postmasters have suffered a serious decrease in that portion of their salaries which was paid by Canadian National Telegraphs, and the urgent question in the minds of all these people is, what is the Post Office Department going to do about it?
The Post Office Department cannot escape responsibility in this matter, because they worked out an agreement with Canadian National Telegraphs whereby they rented the services of these postmasters to Canadian National Telegraphs, and having done that they therefore made themselves responsible for the duties of these people and part of their remuneration; as a matter of fact the whole of their remuneration, because their cheques are received from the Post Office Department. I understand that the Post Office Department in turn has collected varying amounts from Canadian National Telegraphs in proportion to the services rendered.
This is an urgent matter because it concerns the welfare of human beings who, because of this action on the part of Canadian National Telegraph, have had their remuneration cut below a subsistence level. They are now on a starvation wage and, as I have pointed out before, hon. members must keep in mind that they cannot be compared with their prototypes on the mainland because many of them work in a separate building away from their places of residence and must be there during certain hours to answer calls and maintain a schedule of communication between the various C.N.T. offices. Therefore, even if they have to transmit their messages by telephone instead of by Morse code, the fact remains that their services are the same. Their time is tied up, and something must be done about their salaries. When the minister replies I hope he will give a full and detailed account of what the Post Office Department is planning to do with respect to this problem.
The second vital matter I want to bring to the attention of the Postmaster General concerns a recent order affecting some post offices in the rural outport communities of Newfoundland. This order stems from section 8 of the Post Office Act. That section has two parts. Part 1 reads as follows:

Except as provided in subsection (2), the Postmaster General has the sole and exclusive privilege of collecting, conveying and delivering letters within Canada.
Subsection 2 reads as follows:
The exclusive privilege referred to in subsection (1) does not apply to
(a)	letters carried by a friend on his way, journey or travel, if such letters are delivered by such friend to the addressee;
(d) letters lawfully brought into Canada and immediately posted at the nearest post office;
This section 8 of the act is amplified in the "Canada Official Postal Guide, 1957", page 108, under the general heading "General Laws and Regulations". On this page we find section 411 entitled "Postmaster General's Exclusive Privilege". I quote:
The Postmaster General has the sole and exclusive privilege of conveying, receiving, collecting, sending and delivering letters within Canada; and (except in the cases hereinafter mentioned) any person who collects, sends, conveys or delivers or undertakes to convey, or deliver, any letter within Canada, or who receives, or has in his possession any letter for the purpose of conveying or delivering it, otherwise than in conformity with the Post Office Act, for each and every letter so unlawfully conveyed or undertaken to be conveyed, received, delivered or found in his possession, is liable to a fine not exceeding $100 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two months or to both fine and imprisonment.
Then follow the exceptions:
The following are the excepted cases:-
(a)	Letters carried by a friend on his way, journey or travel, if such letters are delivered by such friend to the addressee;
(b)	Letters concerning the private affairs of the sender or addressee when sent casually by a messenger;
(c)	Commissions, affidavits, writs, processes or proceedings issued by a court of justice;
(d)	Letters lawfully brought into Canada and immediately posted at the nearest post office;
(e)	Letters of merchants, owners of vessels of merchandise, or owners of the cargo or loading therein, when carried by such vessel or by any person employed by such owners and delivered to the respective addressees, without pay, reward, advantage or profit for so doing;
(f)	Letters concerning goods or merchandise to be delivered with the goods to which such letters relate, carried by common known carriers without reward, profit or advantage for receiving or delivering them.
But the Post Office Act does not authorize any person to collect any such excepted letters for the purpose of sending or conveying them as aforesaid, nor does it oblige any person to send any newspaper, pamphlet or printed matter by post.
It will be seen, Mr. Chairman, that this section places tremendous powers in the hands of the Postmaster General to interfere with the private rights and liberties of the individual. I have received complaints from some of my communities that they have now been ordered that they cannot post any mail outside their own community where post offices exist or other than at the nearest post office. When we consider that in most of

these communities the frequency of mail service is once a week at the best and often once every ten days, it will be seen how handicapped the people of these places are, particularly the people who are trying to do business in these places, by not being able to send their letters to another post office where speedier mail service is available.
One complaint I received covered a businessman who lives in a community which has mail service once every eight days. He operates a boat from his community to Port aux Basques, which has a daily service, but he is not permitted to take his own letters on his own boat from his community and post them in Port aux Basques, where he can avail himself of a daily mail service. Surely this is a tremendous interference with the rights and liberties of that person, apart from the handicap it imposes upon him in the operation of his business. When I received that letter of complaint I could not believe that this order had gone out. I thought there must be some misunderstanding about it. However, since then I have received letters from other people complaining about the same thing.
Amongst these complaints we get some like this. A person may be in a certain community where the office closes at six o'clock. A taxi may be going to another community that evening or going to St. John's, where there is an air mail service. According to this regulation that person is forbidden to give the mail to that taximan to post for him in St. John's, where he could avail himself of better service.
I feel there is something wrong with this regulation, because certainly the mail is the property of the person who owns it and does not become the property of the post office until it is posted in the office. In any case, what is a letter? Does a letter become a letter merely because it is in an envelope and sealed? How do you distinguish between a letter and a note? I do hope the Postmaster General will look into this situation and give the house a detailed report on exactly what the order was that emanated from the post office in St. John's and went to these outport communities. What is his interpretation of the points I have raised in this discussion?
I see it is about one o'clock and I have another item to discuss. Perhaps I might call it one o'clock, because I notice my time is nearly up, so I will wait for another opportunity to discuss the other item.
At one o'clock the committee took recess.
Prince Charles designated Prince of Wales AFTER RECESS
The committee resumed at 2.30 p.m.


Charles Edward Rea: I understand that the Prime Minister wishes to make a statement. Shall I rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again later this date?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
Progress reported.



PRINCE CHARLES


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, I thank the house for this opportunity. On this historic occasion I am happy to announce that Her Gracious Majesty the Queen has this day designated Prince Charles as Prince of Wales. It was particularly appropriate that the announcement was made at Cardiff, Wales, where today are taking place the concluding ceremonies of the British Empire games at which representatives of 35 nations within the commonwealth have been engaged in competition while their respective countries are joined in the co-operation which the commonwealth concept makes possible.
As I said a moment ago, the title is an historic one. It carries back the history of those in the British tradition to 657 years ago when Edward I created his eldest living son, Edward, the Prince of Wales, by letters patent. Since that date there have been 19 holders of the honour. During the period there have been long breaks during which no one held the position of Prince of Wales, the longest of which was following the elevation of Prince Hal to the throne as Henry VIII. One hundred and one years passed after Prince Charles, afterward Charles II, ascended the throne. For a period of 54 years no one held this honour.
It is now 22 years since there has been a Prince of Wales, the last being Edward VIII who had the honour conferred upon him on his sixteenth birthday in June of 1910.
I think that all of us would at this time desire to express our congratulations to the Prince of Wales who, in the process of the fulfilment of God's will, will ultimately occupy the throne. To Her Majesty the Queen I am sure all hon. members would desire to convey their good wishes coupled with the hope that her health may soon be fully restored. As to the Prince of Wales, I think I can do no better than quote the words of the poet:
Among our ancient mountains,
And from our lovely vales,
Oh, let the prayer re-echo:
"God bless the Prince of Wales!"

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Lionel Chevrier: Mr. Speaker, we on this side of the house rejoice in the announcement which has just now been made by the Prime Minister that Her Majesty the Queen has seen fit to confer upon young Prince Charles the title of Prince of Wales. We rejoice also because, as the Prime Minister has said, this title has been vacant now for many years. We have watched with joy and interest the life of this young boy as he has been growing in strength and wisdom. I am sure that all of us on this side of the house would wish to associate ourselves with the words of the Prime Minister in congratulating the young prince upon this honour. I should like to add that I hope and trust that Almighty God will not only support him in his young years but will also guide his life so that the destiny which one day will fall upon him will be a source of consolation not only to the members of the royal family but a source of strength for those who form part of the British commonwealth of nations.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: Mr. Speaker, we in this group realize that under our form of government, our constitution, our basic rights and freedoms are vested in the crown. We were very much interested to hear the announcement made by the Prime Minister just now. We trust that this young man will continue to have good health and much happiness as a result of being a prominent personage in a commonwealth working toward greater freedom, greater happiness and peace for all people in the world.

The house resumed in committee of supply, Mr. Rea in the chair.



POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT

[Stage Direction]
304. Departmental Administration, $1,886,095.
Herbert Wilfred Herridge: Mr. Chairman, I am going to be quite brief in my opening remarks on these estimates. However, I want to make a few general remarks before we proceed to the items. Then when we come to the items I have some questions to ask relating to administration and some matters of more or less parochial interest to my constituents.
When I address the minister as Postmaster General, I think he should really be addressed as the minister of successful social enterprise. As a result of the precedents established by him when he was a member of the opposition, -he, in fact, I think on one occasion being almost solely responsible for holding up the postmaster general's estimates for two
[Mr. Diefenbaker.l
days-I trust that he will not object to a very close and lengthy study of his estimates at this time.
Having said that, I want to express my appreciation of the prompt manner in which the minister has dealt with any matters which I have brought to his attention and also of the courtesy of the senior officials, whether in Ottawa or in Vancouver, in their close attention to any worth-while complaint that is directed towards them. Furthermore, we should all express our gratitude to the great multitude of humble civil servants who stamp the letters; run the post offices; deliver the mail in our cities, towns and villages; and carry on the service on our rural mail routes. If it were not for this co-operation extending right from the rank and file of the organization to the minister we would not have the successful administration of postal affairs that exists today.
I noticed what the minister had to say when he was making his statement this morning and I, for one, as I think did the other members of this group, appreciated his making a full statement with respect to the administration of his department, particularly in view of the fact that the latest report we have is the one dated March 31, 1957. I understand from my experience in this house that the report of the Post Office Department does not usually come out until the fall. I might say in passing that I do hope, as one interested in stamps, that this will be the last edition of any report published by the post office which carries the picture of that gloomy goat, because I have lived very close to a lot of goats and I have never in my life seen such a caricature.
I was particularly interested in three matters raised by the minister, first of all the question of public relations, and I was very pleased to hear his reference to that topic because I think the successful administration of his department depends to a great extent on satisfactory public relations. I realize the work that has been done in the large centres in that respect and the attendance of the minister and his officials at such public events as fairs, and my only further suggestion is that these public relations activities be extended to the smaller centres as much as possible. As a matter of fact some of the, shall I say, complaints, arise from the smaller places because of a lack of understanding of the department's administration and so on, and I do suggest that his officials conduct these public relations activities in those smaller centres to a greater extent than has been the practice in the past so that the people there will have the same opportunity to understand the administration as

the people in larger centres. I am one, as you know, Mr. Chairman, who has always urged consideration of these people who live in the smaller communities and the more isolated spots in our country.
I was also very pleased to hear the minister's reference to an advisory committee with respect to the choosing of designs for stamps. I think we have been very backward in this respect in Canada, especially when I look at some of the most beautiful stamps issued by little Oriental states and small nations elsewhere and by what we consider undeveloped and in some cases backward states. With respect to stamps we in this country have to date a lot to learn, and I am very glad the minister has suggested this advisory committee so as to get, shall I say, the viewpoints of numbers of people interested in this art. It is another illustration of the development of the collective principle within his department-not the "great wise man" but the collective wisdom of a number of people-it is another aspect of the C.C.F. policy being put into practice by the government.
Another matter I would like to mention particularly is that in recent years-and I think this is a very good practice-the departmental officials have somewhat changed their approach with respect to replies to applications for mail services or changes in mail routes and things of that sort. A few years ago one would get a rather cryptic letter from the department in reply to such an application to the effect that "the matter has been under consideration and the decision is in the negative" or something equally as cold blooded. I now find that on a number of occasions departmental officials are giving reasons and by way of illustration may I say that in my district some years ago there was quite a demand for changes of a mail service. From a local point of view this seemed pretty reasonable, especially in some cases where a certain mail service would appear to have a shorter route as a result of such an application being granted, but sometimes people are not acquainted with the economic factors involved. The particular instance of which I am thinking happened some years ago and the departmental officials gave me a thorough explanation of the costs involved and the reasons why it was not economic to accede to the wishes of the local people. I do suggest to the minister that when dealing with a lot of these questions a great deal of discontent and unnecessary correspondence might be avoided by some detailed explanation as to the basis upon which a decision is reached.
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I mention this matter because I was very taken with the fact that when this application was first presented there was a lot of local heat but in some cases not very much light because they did not understand the situation. However, when I got the explanation in a somewhat lengthy letter those people who had been most active in the matter readily understood the situation and the basis for the department's decision.
Before the minister's estimates are concluded and when he replies to our various complaints on item 1 I wish he would give to the house a very brief summary of the types of post offices which exist within his department; that is to say the classifications and terms of employment for each type of post office. I am particularly concerned with the way the post office operates and the postmasters' salaries, some of which are covered by revenue from stamps and things of that sort, particularly with respect of the rights of the postmaster in regard to the employment of help. For instance, does the veterans' preference apply with reference to employment of help by postmasters of this revenue classification, and if competent citizens are available do they receive preference over noncitizens, and so on? I mention these matters because they have been brought to my attention on a few occasions.
I am also particularly concerned with payments to postmasters, particularly in small post offices and the usual regulations in respect of the administration of these post offices. For instance I would like the Postmaster General to tell us how many hours a day or how many days a week such a post office is required to keep open and if the minister could, when he replies, give an outline of classifications and terms of employment in each type of post office, I would appreciate that very much, although I am not suggesting he should go into any great detail.
Those are my few brief opening remarks. Later on I shall, after consideration of the minister's estimates, co-operate with anyone who is willing in order to demonstrate to the minister that we have an equal capacity to deal with estimates as he had when he was in the opposition.


William McLean Hamilton: You
have already demonstrated that.


Mr. Deschatelets:: This morning the minister informed the committee that an advisory committee would be set up to help the minister with respect to the design of stamps. We do hope that the minister does not for a moment think that if in the future a committee is to advise him on these designs that he can hide behind that committee. We

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will hold the minister responsible as he held the previous postmasters general responsible.
I would like to make one suggestion to the minister before he sets up this committee. I do hope all the provinces will be represented including, of course, the province of Quebec, so that when new stamps are issued to celebrate historic events all the provinces will be brought into the picture.
I have a few remarks to make on a subject which was the topic of previous speeches heard in this committee this morning and having to do, of course, with the numerous statements and promises made by the Postmaster General in connection with the reestablishment of a second mail delivery a day. This was more than a promise, it was a commitment and a solemn one, and at the time this commitment was made the Postmaster General was the spokesman for his party on matters having to do with the post office and he was therefore representing the views of his party. Then, to add insult to injury, on July 25, 1957 the Windsor Star reported that the Postmaster General had reiterated after the first election of his party that he would re-establish the twice a day delivery service.
We are awaiting a statement by the Postmaster General with the greatest interest, because he has completely failed to give us a proper reason for the change of policy of his party in this matter, and when we talk about Conservative policies unfilled we will always remember the bluff of the two deliveries a day.


Mr. Peters:: Listening to the remarks that have been made this morning and this afternoon by the Postmaster General I draw the conclusion that the Postmaster General's statements previously were not in keeping with the operation of the department.
I draw the inference also from the fact that I looked up to find what the Postmaster General's report was-I find that this report, the last one endorsed by the present Postmaster General-published in March, 1957, and having observed the lag in time from the time that report is prepared to the time it is presented, I presume that the Postmaster General was, in effect, in this particular case, endorsing the program the Liberal government had already implemented with very little change. I think the Canadian people should take a good deal of interest in the department because this is one of the large departments of government. We find that while hon. members were in opposition certain considerations were raised and certain suggestions made, but when the opposition has formed the government there are very
[Mr. Deschatelets.l
few changes. Unless the report which I think should legitimately have been published before this was discussed shows the contrary, we can only draw the conclusion that there has been very little change.
I should like to question the Postmaster General on the matter raised by the hon. member for Burin-Burgeo this morning regarding these television snoopers that were installed several years ago in Peterborough. He mentioned the fact that he was very much opposed to this. This certainly was the opinion expressed by the hon. member for that constituency while he sat in opposition, and I think I would like to go further still and say we not only object to these television cameras being installed but, also, that they should remove the people who inspect the work of this department from observation galleries. Knowing, Mr. Chairman, the examinations that the people in the post office must take, the responsible positions they have to assume and the very satisfactory operation and performance of their duties by the post office officials across the country, I do not think, legitimately, we should allow any snooping, and certainly we are very much opposed to this television aspect of examining the work of people. We have had no reason for this type of investigation. Certainly I think a much more satisfactory method of supervising this work could be devised, and the minister might consider the bonding of employees.
Another matter which has been raised in the past, and this is one in which I hope the Conservative regime does not make a change, is the post office savings bank. Many hon. members may not have had any experience with this bank, but I would suggest that this is a very valuable service which the post office has performed which it should be proud of and advertise more. While it is true many of the small post offices do not want to be bothered with this, it is advantageous to the travelling public of Canada, such as salesmen and service personnel- that is the first time I came into contact with the post office savings bank, in the air force *-and it means you can deposit money any time the post office is open, up to six o'clock. It is a great establishment for anybody moving from town to town where they are not too well known, because all you have to do is take your book into any post office and if there is any money indicated on your card you can receive that money in almost every small town across Canada. It means you do not have to go through the formalities of phoning a bank to check on your home account; you do not have to carry travellers cheques, and it seems to me a great service

would be accomplished to more Canadians if the Canadian people were better advised on the operations of this bank.
I am quite sure that the Postmaster General is going to give a complete report on the financial position of the bank and I would strongly urge that he give some consideration to extending the services rather than curtailing them. We are well aware of the fact that some of the banks and other institutions in the financial field are not too happy about the federal government operating this type of savings bank, but I would point out that it has been in existence in Britain for many years and is used in a similar manner to that in which the Canadian service personnel use it but on a much larger scale, and I think it is a great establishment.
Something has been said today about the institution of the two-delivery system for mail. While we are not opposed to this, we suggest there must be an extension of the mail delivery service particularly in small towns on a greater scale than is taking place today before we contemplate extending two-service delivery in the larger centres. We still have many small and medium sized towns that do not enjoy a door-to-door delivery such as many of us have come to accept and want extended, and until that is done I think we should continue on a program of extending this door-to-door delivery before we extend in the other fields.
There are probably 3,000 rural mail deliveries being made in my riding, and with this we have a bit of a problem. We have been led to believe over the years, probably by United States movies, the old story that the United States mail must go through whatever the weather conditions. Unfortunately that is not true in Canada. In my area there appears to have been no consideration given to those areas that may be snowed up in the wintertime. The contract is let on the basis that the mailman is able to drive his car around the route. He may not own a horse, and yet 15 or 20 miles of his route will be blocked for two or three months, and I think an additional sum of money must be inserted into his contract to allow him to make these rural deliveries to the places that weather hazards make impossible to be visited for the contract price he is receiving for delivery of mail by car.
I think it may have been romanticized a bit by United States movies, but I think the idea when we post a letter is that we expect it to get to its delivery point as soon as possible. But in many of the areas I am speaking of the mail is not delivered for weeks at a time, and is only delivered then when people go out to a small grocery store.
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It is not a post office by any means, but the mail is there, and they can pick up the mail at that time. The storekeeper does not receive any remuneration for his part in the delivery, and I think something could legitimately be done about this matter.
Another problem is the extension of rural deliveries. While it is, as I understand it, the policy of the Post Office Department on occasions to make extensions to existing rural routes, it is very difficult to get a completely new route set up. We have a number of communities that were at one time associated with a small village. The people went to that village for their groceries and they picked up their mail in the small grocery store. That situation has changed. The grocery store is gone. The people do not go to that small community store any more; in fact, in many instances it does not exist any longer. The small village in which I was born is a good example. At one time it was a very small metropolis and now it is not a centre of activity at all, and yet the people in that particular area are not on the extension of an existing mail route, nor can it be argued legitimately that they should be on any existing route because there is no extension; but on a number of occasions they have petitioned to have another rural route set up but they have not been successful.
Another problem we are having in northern Ontario has to do with the extension of the suburbs of many communities. The people in the suburbs are having great difficulty in getting post office boxes. If we could extend the door-to-door deliveries in those communities it would solve the problem. If we are not in a position to extend the deliveries at the present time, then it is necessary for the Post Office Department to put postal boxes in the area. I have noticed that in a number of cities in southern Ontario they have placed outdoor boxes on the street and a person can get a key for the box door and get his mail in that way. Places like Blind River and Elliot Lake have undergone a tremendous expansion program in the last few years. The mail service is very poor. It is impossible to get a box. The mail is delivered through general delivery and frankly I do not think that is an efficient way of handling mail where four or five thousand people have to come into the post office in a limited period of time. The practice of installing temporary boxes, if necessary, would go a long way toward alleviating some of the problems in that area.
I am also quite interested in the matter of stamps. At one time I collected stamps and I might point out that such places as Ghana, New Guinea, Togoland and so on,

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which are only to me place names, have produced some of the best looking stamps that have been printed. Although we do not have tropical scenery, we have much scenery that could be reproduced on stamps. We do not have to try to draw waves that look like straight lines or curved lines; we do not have to make that kind of stamp, but we can produce very valuable stamps and I should like to express our appreciation of the stamp that was designed to depict the mining industry of northern Ontario. This stamp was very favourably received in northern Ontario and it was a satisfactory stamp. I think it could have had a little more colour in it. We have a great deal of colour in northern Ontario and the stamp could have depicted some of that colour. The stamp that commemorated the paper industry was also commended. If we can do that with two or three stamps I do not see any reason why we could not depict many more scenes in colour, and we might sell more to the stamp collectors.
When the Postmaster General replies I hope he will refer to the matter of the savings bank and that he will comment favourably on the fact that we should extend the post office savings bank, particularly for the benefit of those people who are no longer able to drop into their home bank when they need money and when they are travelling on the road for a week or two. In those circumstances they can drop into the post office and pick up $50 or $75 and not have to call their home bank. I have had to do that on many occasions and sometimes when I made the telephone call there was not enough money in the bank to call about. (Translation):


Mr. Dupuis:: Mr. Chairman, at the outset I should like to remind the house of the fact that the constituency for which I sit was formerly represented by one of the predecessors of the present Postmaster General (Mr. Hamilton), the Hon. Alcide Cote. Before beginning my remarks, I would very much like to remind the house of the excellent way in which the Hon. Alcide Cote discharged his duties at the time he was head of the department whose estimates are now under consideration.
The Hon. Alcide Cote was a man of deep honesty, a true democrat, a real servant of the people. Unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, he was prematurely taken away from us, and I felt than on this occasion I should recall his memory in the house.

Mr. Chairman, I listened with a great deal of interest this morning to the speech delivered by the Postmaster General. We in particular, in the constituency of St. Jean, have long known of the hon. gentleman, as the one who had been entrusted with the task of criticizing in this house his predecessor, the late Hon. Alcide Cote.
I wish to thank those of my colleagues who, this morning, recalled a number of instances of criticism offered by the hon. gentleman who, at the time, was just the member for Notre Dame de Grace. Hansard records so many speeches of his criticizing the Post Office Department that I believe I should briefly point out some of the statements found in those speeches. Mind you, I have no intention of reading all the vague and insignificant claims made at that time by the hon. gentleman. I certainly have no intention of quoting from the official record the criticism, complaints, lamentations and gnashing of teeth indulged in at the time by the present Postmaster General. He would refer to post office robberies as though they had been invented by the Liberals. He would speak of departmental waste and extravagance; of inefficiency in the postal system under the Liberal administration; and he used to say that it was the department's duty to restore twice a day mail delivery in Canada.
Well, Mr. Chairman, when we saw the Postmaster General rise in his place this morning, we did not quite expect the remarks he did make. We were expecting the minister, who had witnessed so many robberies, to come into this house dragging after him the thieves he had ferretted out in the course of his inspection tours throughout the country. We were quite surprised to hear from him the admission that he was the first Postmaster General since confederation-and I wish to emphasize that fact-who had visited every post office in the country up to and including Newfoundland. The statement deserves emphasis for, if the Postmaster General has visited so many post offices, it must be because he was looking for those evil spirits which, at the time, were supposed to haunt the Post Office Department.
Having gone from one post office to the next, having put questions and carried out investigations, he comes back before us, to tell us what? To say that the criticism, the sly claims he had made before parliament for five years were but the outcome of a

vision, to use a word which we have learned recently. We have it out of his own mouth, Mr. Chairman, that the postal system of this country, so well administered by the Liberals before him, compares favourably, he has found, with any other postal system in the world.
Let me therefore state at this point that, in making those remarks, the minister was not paying tribute to the present government; he was merely establishing that the preceding administration-the Liberal administration which he had so bitterly criticized-was not so bad after all but was thoroughly commendable.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to remind the minister of what he had said, as reported on page 1179 of the French version of Hansard for January 14, 1954. The minister (who was then member for Notre Dame de Grace), giving the house a review of the Department's financial situation since 1945, said:
"In 1953, there was a surplus of $6,470,000 (in round figures); in 1952 the surplus was $6,649,000; in 1951 there was an error-"
"-somebody made a mistake and there was a deficit of $1,327,000;-"
"And there was a deficit!"
Now, Mr. Chairman, the member for Notre Dame de Grace, when in opposition, used to wonder how there could be a deficit! Surely, he would say, there must be a mistake! Well, today we could rightfully ask him where the error was made for we see that there is still, definitely, a deficit. And if error there be, it was surely the one made by the electorate in choosing the Conservative party.
Mr. Chairman, the minister also referred to an electronic sorting device to improve the system and speed up the handling of mail throughout the country. Now, I deplore that the present Postmaster General should speak of electronic sorting, that he should talk of substituting machinery for manpower, just when we need to recruit as much manpower as possible to arrest the tide of unemployment which is rife throughout the country at present. I hope the Postmaster General will alter his policy, and thoroughly contemplate the implications of such changes before introducing them.
Mr. Chairman, I will put off some of my observations until we take up the various items. Howevea, I wish to associate myself with all the others in saying that the Postmaster General has totally betrayed the promises he made when he told the public that he would expose the scandals he used to talk about. We have only to refer to newspaper reports of the election campaign to find accounts of the infllammatory speeches of the present Postmaster General. He has not always been indulgent towards his opponents.
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Furthermore, let me quote page 4346 of Hansard of the 26th of May 1955. The following sentence Mr. Chairman, will show you the mentality of the Postmaster General when he was merely member for Notre Dame de Grace. Just listen to this:
"But sometimes it's possible to knock some sense even into a stupid Minister-"
That's what he said at the time.
Well, Mr. Chairman, it is a reflection on his own even greater stupidity that, having spent five years criticizing others, he is now unable, having taken over from them, to put his finger on a single error of the government which was the butt of so many of his tirades. (Text):


Mr. Wraiten:: Mr. Chairman, my remarks are going to be very brief. I want the Postmaster General to know how much the people of Brantford appreciate the work done by the local postmaster and his staff last weekend when the change-over took place from the old building to the new wing that has been opened. It was a good job, well organized and well carried out when you realize that service was given in the old building until Saturday noon and complete facilities for serving the public were transferred to the new wing and ready for service on Monday morning. I should also like to state that the people of Brantford appreciate the efforts of the former member for Brantford who was a member of the previous government and prevailed upon that government to start the addition into which the post office moved last week-end.
It is a splendid building and we are quite proud of it. It is a credit to the government and to the city of Brantford. We hope that when the complete job is finished and we have the re-opening ceremony the Postmaster General or the Minister of Public Works will come to Brantford and officiate because we would be very proud to have them in our city.
There is only one suggestion I should like to make to the Postmaster General. In my opinion, instead of creating double service in the larger cities we need to have service in the smaller centres and also to extend rural delivery service so that farmers who live some distance from their mail boxes will not have to travel anywhere from half a mile to a mile to the corner of the road in order to collect their mail. That is all I have to say.


Mr. Weichel:: Mr. Chairman, it has often been said that a person cannot quit a position, assume another and still have the same boss. As a former postmaster and supervisory postmaster for over 35 years I had the honour to work under the present Postmaster General for one year and now that

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I am a member of the house I feel that he is still one of my bosses. It was a privilege to work under his guidance, as well as that of other postmasters general, and I am happy to say that my welfare as a postal employee was always his first consideration. I have received co-operation from the Postmaster General and together with the assistance of the general public my position was a pleas ant one.
Post office business is a big business. I was impressed by the fine report given this morning by the head of the department. The change that has taken place during my 35 years as a postmaster is amazing. Air mail and all-up mail service have been probably one of the greatest achievements in post office history. I was glad to hear the Postmaster General state that even greater improvements are being made with regard to this type of mail. I may say that not very long ago in my post office a letter was mailed at 5.30 in the evening and at 9 o'clock the next morning a gentleman walked into the Halifax post office and the letter was there in general delivery.
The sortation of ten million letters daily by 12,000 post offices can give some idea of the great work being done by the department. The addition of area superintendents throughout the whole of Canada and also supervisory postmasters has helped to make today's service, as the Postmaster General put it, second to none in the world. Area superintendents, district directors, regional directors and heads of the department were ever ready to assist all employees in their many problems. This gave us the opportunity to serve John Public as civil servants in a courteous and efficient manner. Post office boxes in the lobby, boxes throughout the town and rural delivery have helped to give better service in smaller communities. I understand that house to house mail delivery can only be provided in places with a population approaching that of a city.
I should like to suggest to the Postmaster General that part time assistants be employed under the civil service commission in the same way as full time employees. I believe they would give still better service than they are giving at the present time and they would also have the opportunity to have superannuation to their credit on retirement. If this were done we would have a better opportunity to secure part time helpers.
Finally my observations over 35 years lead me to say that postal employees working under the civil service commission and under the fine leadership of the Postmaster General are making an outstanding contribution to the welfare of our great country and I think we are all proud of their fine record. I

am sure we can all say that our Post Office Department is second to none in the world.


Mr. Granger:: Mr. Chairman, I should like to speak briefly about the small salaries paid to postmasters in some of the more isolated places in Newfoundland. Actually, it is quite well known that in many cases these salaries are utterly inadequate. The surprising thing is that the government, which should lead in showing a proper appreciation for faithful service, has been so backward in allowing the scale of salaries to remain so low. I think everyone will agree with me when I say it is impossible for a man, his wife and family to live on the salary of $150 a month, and in many cases the remuneration is even lower.
The postmaster plays a very important part in isolated communities. He is one of the most important individuals living in that community. I hope the Postmaster General can find a way to reward him. I believe that up until recently postmasters' salaries were based upon the revenue of the post office. I have learned with a great deal of pleasure that the salaries now will be based upon the amount of work done rather than upon the amount of revenue which the office obtains. The thing that has to be done now is to make this unit value high enough.
I might also point out that the amount of rent paid for post office quarters in some instances is pitifully small.
I might mention, too, that in many areas of Labrador the mail service is poor and far from being what it should be. There are only a few places in which there are postmasters, and mail is landed from the coastal steamers only at those places. The result is that the people have to go for many miles in order to get the mail which has been dropped off by the coastal steamers. I would request that provision be made whereby mail will be dropped off at each port of call. As an illustration of what I am saying, I would point out that the mail for Port Hope Simpson is carried there on the steamer but is not landed there. It is taken on to Williams Harbour, 20 miles away, although the steamer has actually called at Port Hope Simpson. The people from Port Hope Simpson must chase the steamer 20 miles in order to get the mail. Then the steamer which calls at Green Bay does not have a mailman aboard. In the old days all the coastal steamers used to carry a mailman. Since this steamer does not have a mailman letters cannot be mailed aboard but they have to be carried to the nearest post office ashore. If a nurse wants to send a small parcel of medicine to a nearby community, she has to get a crew member or a passenger to carry it. The reinstitution of mail men aboard coastal steamers would be

a great public service and the cost involved would be small.
I should like to mention, too, that the Canadian National telegraph office and the post office should continue to be joint offices rather than separated. In the old days, the Canadian National telegraph operator was also the postmaster, and between the two positions could sometimes get a reasonable salary. There has been an effort to separate these offices, and this effort should cease. In fact, a countereffort should be made to make them joint offices operating under the same people and in the same building. While I am mentioning buildings, and before I sit down I hope that the Postmaster General will recommend the provision of post office buildings in Badger, Glenwood and Robert's Arm.


Erhart Regier: I was very pleased indeed to hear the minister's report this morning. I was particularly pleased to note the great pride that the minister took in his work, and in the work being performed by the post office. As the hon. member for Kootenay West pointed out, he is rapidly learning that public enterprise is workable and the people who work in a public enterprise are able to render a degree of efficient service that is equalled by no other. I noted particularly when he expressed the motto of the post office, that it was to serve the people. The motto is not to make money, not to make profit, but to serve the people. The minister did his utmost to convince us on this side that this public enterprise known as the post office was working. He used the phrase that it was functioning so smoothly, so efficiently, that our post office record was an outstanding one. I was pleased to note the compliment he paid the employees. It is often said that men must have the lash of the profit motive behind them; they must be able to see money; they must have every expectation of receiving a high monetary return, before they will exert their utmost effort.
I was very pleased when the minister referred to the former depuy postmaster general, who has spent a lifetime in public service by saying that case after case bore the imprint of his achievements. I think I have the wording right, but at least it is close. The minister expressed confidence that the new deputy minister will have an equally outstanding record of public service. Those of us who have met the new deputy minister from time to time know that the minister's confidence is going to be fulfilled.
I should like to call the minister's attention to a number of little matters which, to me, involves some principles. In the first place, I should like to refer to the suggestion of bonding the employees. I feel that
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would be rather unnecessary. I noticed that according to the annual report for 1956-57 there were only 335 prosecutions, and of those only 96 involved employees of the post office. Here again, Mr. Chairman, is a wonderful illustration of the ability of people to serve, even though the incentive to serve may not be monetary but rather one of serving people. I do not know, offhand, how many employees the post office has, but it likely runs into the tens of thousands.


Francis Alvin George Hamilton: About 50,000.


Erhart Regier: The minister says, 50,000 and out of 50,000 people only 96 had to be prosecuted in one year for a whole host of wrong things, such as robbery, receiving, shortages, thefts, forgeries and so on. I think that speaks very well for our employees.
I should like to compliment the minister on the new atmosphere which prevails in his department from one end of Canada to the other on the part of everyone concerned. They make the public really feel that this is not some hierarchy of government, but this is the post office which belongs to the public and all the employees are actually public servants. I have only to compare the attitude of the minister with the attitude of other ministers to know that that is at least partly the wish of the minister that this new atmosphere ought to prevail. The success of any public enterprise depends very much on the attitude of the public being served towards that institution. If the public feels alienated in so far as that institution is concerned, if they feel that it is not part of them, they also do not feel any responsibility towards that institution and the efforts of that institution to serve the public are hampered.
I was hoping the minister would announce that henceforth regulations might play a slightly lesser role in his department. Every so often we run into regulations. Some of the requests of the people seem to be so logical and very often so minor and so simple yet they mean so much to the people concerned that they cannot understand the need for detailed regulations. I know that when there is danger of a bureaucracy in any institution, whether privately-owned or publicly-owned, you build up regulations. Every time something goes wrong some official thinks up a new regulation that ought to be put into effect. Without having regard to the small number of things that do go wrong, in an effort possibly to avoid a repetition of a wrong, out comes a new regulation.
I have in mind such regulations as that as to the hours at which wickets can be kept open in a major post office in one of

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our large Canadian cities. Surely at a post office such as in Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver-and I am now referring to the main post offices-where they have hundreds and hundreds of employees, it should be possible, by rearranging of employee hours, to keep wickets open right around the clock. I do not suggest that all the wickets should be kept open but some of the wickets might be kept open. However, on some afternoons I have found some wickets closed in large post offices. I believe that statement is correct, if my memory serves me rightly and unless there has been a change since then.
I know the origin of this regulation. It originated from the principle of the 40-hour week. However, there is no reason why the men cannot have a 40-hour week in a large post office and yet some wickets and some service be available to the public at all hours. Working people working regular hours in Canada-which ordinarily means that after breakfast they begin work and they come home for dinner at six o'clock at night-find it extremely hard to use some of our public facilities. It is for that reason that the chartered banks of Canada began opening on Friday night from 4.30 p.m. until 6.00 p.m. This procedure has shown itself to be a great convenience to those people who must work during banking hours. I think the larger post offices at least might consider an amendment to whatever regulation exists in relation to the hours at which wickets are open.
Then there is the regulation that covers rural routes: not more than so many, not less than so many. That may be all very well as an over-all policy or as a guide. However, I believe the application of the regulation works hardships in that it does not take account of different circumstances and of different communities. Another regulation governs the establishment of red letter boxes where people can post their mail without going all the way to the post office. Another one governs when door-to-door delivery service will be given to any special community. We have regulations in other matters. I would hope that the minister some time in the course of the next year will undertake a review of all these regulations that exist. He possibly knows how many there are. I am sure they run into the hundreds and hundreds. I hope he will make a review of them with a view of possibly eliminating half of them and instituting a little bit of common sense in the case of a goodly number of them. I know that procedure can lead to misuse as well. There is always a reason for the origin of a regulation. But I think far too often the

origin is not a very serious one and only reflects something that has gone wrong somewhere along the line.
I am a little bit alarmed, Mr. Chairman, at another phase of the minister's report for the year ended March 31, 1957. I do not know what the situation is for the year ended March 31, 1958. Maybe the minister will be able to supply that information. However, at the beginning of that post office year-I suppose that is what it would be right to call it-there were in operation 947 post offices and at the end of the year there were in operation 940 post offices or in other words a reduction in the number of post offices by seven. I may say those figures refer to the province of British Columbia. For the whole of Canada the number of post offices in operation was reduced from 11,996 to 11,879. For the whole of Canada in that one fiscal year 83 new post offices were set up and 200 post offices were closed. That means that there were 117 fewer post offices at the end of the year than at the beginning of the year. We thought the population of Canada was growing. We thought that new communities were continuously being built up in many of the unsettled areas of Canada. I should like to have an explanation. I hope the explanation is not the one that I fear it may well be. The fear to which I have reference is that there is a growing tendency to consolidate, to which even this minister has not yet called a halt, to take away from little communities their own post office in order to build up a monumental post office-and I mean monumental in size-in the larger urban centre that is nearest.
That brings me to that huge memorial that has been built in the city of Vancouver to a former minister of the government, the Vancouver post office. I admire the building. I think it is marvellous. I believe it is beautiful. All the people like to look at the building. However, I believe this post office has been established for the purpose of serving a territory much larger than the immediate area, namely the city of Vancouver. I agree that in years to come the city of Vancouver will need a post office of that size. The minister can correct me if I am wrong but I believe that the cost was some $14 million and the tunnel to the railway station added $2 million. Why in the world the government would spend money on a tunnel to a railway station from the post office when in these days most of the important mail comes in by air anyway is beyond my understanding. Interest on the $2 million would have paid for trucking charges for years and years to come without the need of the original investment. However, be

that as it may it is a nice post office and that is that.
We do not want the post offices around the city of Vancouver to have to disappear as a result of that Vancouver post office. We do not care whether the head of the post office in Vancouver is in grade 18 as a result of it and would only be in grade 9 if it were not for that centralized post office. The people want to feel that the post office belongs to them and not to a huge bureaucracy with inspectors inspecting inspectors inspecting inspectors. I know the minister is not at fault. I know this is not a policy initiated by the minister. I know that it was a previous regime that initiated that policy. However, it is not looked upon with favour by the people.
I have taken a few lessons in economics and I believe the minister has done so too. He knows that there is a point of maximum return and that if you exceed this point you no longer have efficiency but instead have inefficiency. The people in Burnaby can inform the minister that the efficiency of the postal services in their community has not improved as a result of the consolidation manoeuvres that have occurred.
I am referring to the policy of the department and am only using the lower mainland of British Columbia as an example in order to make sure that the minister knows what I am getting at. I refer to all the little services we get from the post office which usually involve 5 cents to 15 cents in respect of letters and involving 60 cents or 70 cents when we mail a parcel. They are relatively small and insignificant yet they affect the daily lives of the people who like to feel they are doing business with their own post offices.
I cannot understand why in Burnaby, where we have a population of 100,000 people, we cannot have an efficiently operated post office, when a former minister admitted that the city of Saskatoon, which has a much smaller population, has a post office which yields a net revenue to the government of Canada. So after all these years we come to the conclusion that we cannot have this post office even though we are the second largest community in our province because we have to serve the interests of that huge establishment in the city of Vancouver and if we did get our own post office some of the officials in the Vancouver post office would suffer a loss of salary or loss of category because their volume would be seriously reduced.
The post office-and this perhaps comes back to the question of regulations-might in the interest of public relations pay a little more attention to the boundaries of munici-
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palities. I know the post office has announced that it pays no attention to such boundaries and I have letters to that effect in my office. This policy leads to utter confusion and to disappointment, and it results in poor service. We have in the city of Port Moody one example, where the population within the city possibly borders on 3,000, and yet within that city is the Port Moody post office, Pleasantside post office and the city is also served from door to door by deliveries out of the city of New Westminster. Not so long ago there was an effort on the part of the post office to persuade part of the city to accept a rural route which would be based in Port Coquitlam so that there would have been four identifications in one small city. This, as I say, leads to utter confusion, and I would like the minister some day when he sends out these public notices advising the people what to do about their Christmas mail to simply take my riding as a guinea pig. I would challenge him to mail one piece of mail to every householder within my constituency without having thousands of homes not served and without having thousands of these circulars arrive in some other constituency.
There is no way of which I know, although I know the riding which I represent intimately, whereby I could send a letter to each one of my own constituents-there is no reference I could use. I have the rural directory which helps for a little bit and leads to a mix-up in some sections, and then there is the voters' list, which has no addresses at all worth mentioning. There is the telephone book and surely the Post Office Department should be able to obtain a little co-operation from the telephone companies of Canada so that at least the telephone directories might give accurate addresses. However, there is no medium of which I know available to ordinary commercial people to enable them to accurately cover any area they wish to cover. One of the major flaws is because of this regulation or decision or whatever it is that the Post Office Department will not pay attention to municipal boundaries and this has led to a case such as I have described where there are four different identifications in one little city.
There is, I believe, supposed to be a regulation in regard to the drop letter rate. I do not know what it is and I am still attempting to find out, but some small communities adjacent to communities cannot have this drop letter rate, while the riding of Coast-Capilano which was represented by a former minister and which is further away from Vancouver than some ridings does enjoy that four-cent letter rate, at least in some parts of it.

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The minister spoke to us of the financial aspects of his department and he referred to the profit making part of the mail. The first class mail, he said, is a profitable mail and I think he should give some very serious consideration to an increase in the rate for all this unnecessary material and garbage that we receive. Surely the taxpayers do not have to subsidize the Ford Motor Company or Lux soap or Rinso soap powder, or whatever else it might be, by means of taxes so that these huge corporations may be enabled not only to flood our homes with needless paper but also to overburden the backs of our mail carriers.
If the minister is thinking of instituting economies in his department and in the workload of the employees in addition to enhancing his revenues he might well recommend a realistic approach to that problem. This dates back to the very early days of Canadian history when it was in the public interest to distribute as much reading matter to the isolated pioneer as was possible, and this same principle has never been altered. Today we have the average resident in the average Canadian community receiving thousands of pounds of advertising delivered to him at the expense of a public service. This is not helping the public service at all, it is simply exploiting the taxpayer and the institutions of the taxpayer for the purposes of big business.
If one will look at the amount of money the people of Canada owe today I think it will be seen, and the minister himself must agree with this, that there has been far more advertising through the mail than there should have been for the welfare of the people during the last several years.
The points I wish to make at this stage are now fairly well covered. I think it is safe for me to say on behalf of all my colleagues that we are very pleased with the attitude taken by the minister since he took office in his department. This attitude has been one of accommodation and co-operation and we are very pleased to note the pride he takes in the honest and faithful work done by the men in this worth-while public institution and, in speaking for my own riding, I am particularly pleased to hear him say he intends to visit all post offices in Canada. I extend to him an invitation to visit the new Burnaby post office which I know he intends to have built very shortly.
Post offices in Canada are publicly owned institutions and as such they have rendered and will continue to render satisfactory services to the public only so long as and to the degree in which the people have the feeling that the individual institutions are their own. I would therefore plead with the Postmaster General to reverse the present

trend of centralization lest the institution which so many of us have grown to respect develops into an octopus which is beyond the reach of public opinion.


Mr. Kindt:: Mr. Chairman, I should like to take a minute or two to say a few words about small post offices and particularly about the salaries paid to the operators of small post offices. In my riding there are 64 small post offices and I think the top salary received by any one of these postmasters is less than $4,000. In many cases salaries range from $3,000 down. It is not possible in many of these areas where the postmaster receives such small salaries for them to have anything more than a subsistence standard of living, and unless a man can take on supplementary enterprises and step up his income by some other means he is placed in a position of having to accept a low standard of living. He gets into a position where he does not want to go out and get another job and leave his post office business because he has put in a long period of service and will qualify for a pension in the end. So he is faced with the problem of getting by as best he can and covering his costs of living out of the revenue he receives from his post office salary. As we all know, the Value of the dollar has decreased 50 per cent, and I should like to hear from the Postmaster General whether the salaries paid to these operators of small post offices have increased proportionately.
Again, I understand that the salaries are set by a rule of thumb formula which is based on the amount of work done or on the revenue of the post office. In so far as it would be possible to vary that in accordance with the conditions under which these small post office operators have to operate I think the Postmaster General would be perfectly within his right to make that variation, and I hope he does in the interest of these small operators.
In conclusion I want to add a note to what has already been said about the efficiency of the post office service. I have nothing but the greatest praise for its work in my riding. The work which is being done on the delivery routes and in these post offices is second to none. The atmosphere is good and the accommodation is good, and I think a great deal of this is attributable to the efforts of the Postmaster General.


Mr.   Carier@: When I called it one o'clock I indicated that there were one or two items I would like to deal with. One of them has already been introduced by the hon. member for Macleod who has just taken his seat, and I should like to follow up what he has just said. The report of the Post Office Department shows that we have 636 post offices in Newfoundland and while no breakdown is

given as to the classification of these offices I presume there is some accounting which would give the total salaries paid in Newfoundland post offices, and if the figures are available I would be grateful if the minister could give us some idea of what the average salary of the Newfoundland postmasters amount to. If he could give it for each classification, without too much inconvenience, it would be even better.
While I am talking about salaries I should like to bring to the attention of the committee the fact that in Newfoundland and possibly everywhere else in Canada the salaries of the revenue postmasters include the amount of rent that must be paid for the post office accommodation. That was a recent change. Several years ago the post office, through the Department of Public Works, allocated the accommodation for the post office and assessed its rental and this was paid separately from the postmaster's salary. When the change was made, the postmaster was paid a fixed amount and was charged with the responsibility of finding suitable accommodation for the post office. That, of course, introduced an element of inequity, because in some places accommodation may be readily available at a reasonable price while in other communities it might not be so easily available and the cost might be higher. Unless this is taken into account the remuneration of the postmaster might be considerably reduced. Thus, in two communities with equal workloads, although the remuneration may be the same the take home pay of the individual postmasters may vary considerably on account of this policy of making the postmaster's salary cover the rental of post office accommodation.
While I am on this subject I should call the attention of the Postmaster General to the anomaly which has developed in Newfoundland due to the policy of the federal government regarding the provision of post office buildings. When the estimates for public works were before the house the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate and myself tried to find out from the minister just who had the last word in determining what type of building would be supplied and the amount of space that would be provided. We learned that the local branch of the post office made an estimate of the requirements and that this was sent to the branch here in Ottawa where it would perhaps be modified or revised, and then that estimate might again be revised in consultation between the Post Office Department and the Department of Public Works, but we never did find out who had the final word in determining what space should be provided. I think the minister will
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recognize that I have in mind the post office building in Marystown in my riding about which there has been a great deal of controversy and which I understand has not been started because the town council has refused to issue the necessary permit. We know that the local branch, local architects and the personnel of the Newfoundland branch estimated certain requirements for that office. That was revised by the Post Office Department here and then after further controversy it was increased, as the Minister of Public Works told us, by 20 per cent.
There is still considerable controversy over the fact that this further increase is still insufficient, having regard to the infrequency of mail. It sometimes happens that six or eight weeks mail may accumulate and arrive at the same time before it can be distributed, and those conditions obtain in most offices in Newfoundland, which makes them different from similar communities or communities of the same size on the mainland where mail can be received and distributed almost every day.
This policy with respect to buildings has caused an anomaly to develop in Newfoundland because prior to Newfoundland becoming a province of Canada the government of the island built a number of post offices in various communities where they felt the amount of traffic justified it. Those buildings were inherited by the federal government and as they become dilapidated or as they require repairs or replacement it is the policy and the responsibility of the federal government to replace them. Many of those places have now been provided with nice, up-to-date, modern post office buildings, while communities of similar size, and perhaps even greater size, and often of greater importance, cannot get a building provided by the federal department for the simple reason that it was not fortunate enough to have one prior to confederation. I would suggest to the Postmaster General that the whole policy governing the erection of post office buildings should be revised and rather than providing them on a basis of revenue, which I believe now is the case, they should be provided on merit as the requirements of the community dictate, because in a community of a thousand people, or even 500 people, it is not convenient to the public to have to go to a room in some private residence to post and receive mail. Adequate facilities for the public cannot be provided under those circumstances.
Before I leave the subject of salaries and rental of those buildings altogether I should like to ask the minister whether he can give any example where the remuneration of the postmaster has been decreased when the post

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office has been moved from a rented building, or from the residence of the postmaster, to a public building for which rent did not have to be paid? I have been told there have been such instances, and if that is so then it destroys the whole basis of the post office argument in which they maintain that they do not pay rent, they pay only the salaries of the postmasters and it is up to them to get whatever accommodation they can and pay for it out of the remuneration they receive.
Before I sit down, Mr. Chairman, I want to bring to the attention of the minister the position of some of our mail couriers. In Newfoundland we have very few roads and in many instances mail has to be carried either in a small boat from one settlement to another or carried overland by the courier on his back. Until quite recently I did not realize just what carrying Canadian mail is like. Before confederation we had very good regulations in Newfoundland under which the mailbag would contain bundles of letters and bundles of parcels under a certain weight, all done up in neatly wrapped packages but one courier told me this story when I discussed it with him, He said: "Sir, we are not carrying mail any more, we are carrying freight." I asked him what he meant by that. He said, "We do not carry packages, we are carrying anything, pieces of stoves, window screens and parts of washers, almost anything you can think of that can be put into a mailbag today."
These people have to carry that on their backs. I would ask the Postmaster General to take this into consideration when the remuneration of those couriers is being determined because, unlike the situation on the mainland where the courier can meet the train, deposit his mail and take mail away again, the courier in Newfoundland may have to take it to a point several miles distant. He may have to leave it there, return to his home and come back at some other time to pick up the incoming mail and carry it back to the post office. It is a much more complicated business than obtains anywhere on the mainland.
I would urge the Postmaster General to take all these factors into consideration when the remuneration of couriers is being determined.


Mr. Bourque:: Mr. Chairman, I was glad today to hear the Postmaster General say that we had the most efficient postal system in the world. With that I agree, but this has been so for many years. I am glad to see that the Postmaster General has followed the tradition of other postmasters general who have preceded him. This situation is due to the fact that the officials and the employees

are so loyal and so intelligent that they have helped to make our system one of the most efficient postal services in the world. I would ask the Postmaster General whether at any time he has had any intention of making any changes and whether he would consider the services that those employees have given to this country, and bear this in mind whenever he might have intentions of changing any of the personnel.
I should like to take a minute to say that when the Postmaster General was on this side of the house-and I have great regard for him and I have known him for many years- practically every day he would rise in his place in the house and denounce the once-a-day delivery. Being a businessman I approved of his action at the time. I believe he was sincere and whenever he rose to denounce the once-a-day delivery I was glad to hear him do so. And then he became a minister and, alas, he changed his mind completely. He was no longer a twice-a-day delivery fan, but he thought that the public was well served by having one delivery a day. What caused him to change his mind? He is a practical businessman. He must know that while it may not be economic as far as the post office is concerned, yet the hardship that it causes the people and the loss to the business firms in having only one delivery a day far exceeds the economies of the Post Office Department. He must realize that while it may cost the post office possibly a small amount less than it would if we had two deliveries a day yet it may be causing unemployment at a time when unemployment is rife and we need to have a job for every man. Is it really an economy? If we had these men and women working in the post office they would be drawing a salary and they would not be on the unemployment role and they would pay back in income tax possibly just as much as we are paying them now in unemployment benefits. Frankly, I do not think it is an economy. I think the minister should think back to the time when he was on the opposition side and when every day he said that we should have two deliveries a day.
The minister talked about electronic machines. I have no doubt they will be a wonderful improvement for post offices throughout the country. Automation is becoming a necessity. We must all look forward to evolution and I believe that some day we will have to have these machines. But does the minister think the time is right to introduce these machines, thus putting people out of post offices throughout the whole country because a lesser number of people will be required? I think he is making a big mistake. Possibly a few years from now

when unemployment may have ceased to exist, and I hope that it will, will be time enough to instal these machines and to put in the best systems that can be installed in our post offices throughout the country. But I think it is a very bad thing for the minister to increase the unemployment rolls at the present time. Many questions have been asked today and before I sit down I should like to ask the minister if he does not think it would be a good thing for him to reply to some of them now.


J.-H.-Théogène Ricard: Mr. Chairman, as usual I
simply want to say a few words. My reason for rising is that I want to put before the minister a request made by the town of Acton Vale which is in another constituency than my own. Acton Vale is a progressive city and has requested me to use my influence with the Postmaster General to secure the building of a post office there. I know the city of Acton Vale very well. In recent years many industries have been established there and I think it would be most fitting if a post office would be erected there. I make this request to the Postmaster General.


William McLean Hamilton: Mr. Chairman, to take some point of departure in this debate, the hon. member for Outremont-St. Jean was kind enough to invite me to answer some of the questions which have been asked. Well, let us take one observation he made a little while ago to which reference has also been made by a number of opposition members. I am going to use this as an example of much of what has been going on today. On May 20 of this year, as found at page 280 of Hansard, the hon. member for Outremont said:
What a wonderful difference there is between sitting in the opposition and being a member of the government.
After a few other words he went on to say:
When he was on this side of the house he protested continually about the many thefts that were taking place in the post offices throughout the country. These thefts still go on just the same and he seems to do nothing about the matter. Possibly he tries but he cannot do anything about it. If we look at all the bank robberies that are going on throughout Canada today we realize it has become almost an impossibility to check them.
All through this morning and this afternoon we have heard that same type of approach being taken in the debate. "Here is what the minister said." "Why has he not done anything about it?" All right, let us take this question as an example. The fact of the matter is that in the year ended March 31, 1958, nine months of which were under my administration, while robberies in post offices did increase from 159 in the previous
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year to 191 the actual losses in those robberies declined from $161,500 to $130,100. The reason for that is simply that instead of the previous, self-satisfied, take-what-may-come attitude of the former postmaster general we went after this thing, introduced, as I pointed out to the house this morning, various security measures and we got results and cut down losses.


Paul Joseph James Martin: More robberies.


William McLean Hamilton: Unfortunately we are not in a position to control the number of people who decide to break into post offices but we certainly are in a position to control the care of our own valuables. That is what we have done and it is typical of our record.
There is another point I want to make since we are on this matter. Incidentally, I want to congratulate the Liberal opposition on the excellent research they have done. Every one of them has been rustling sheets of paper containing quotations from Hansard and passing them from one to another. In fact, the finest example of this co-operation was when a couple of Liberal members rushed over to the hon. member for Burnaby-Coquitlam of the C.C.F. group when he was speaking with what they thought was a quotation which would help the hon. member. Hon. members will recall that I asked the hon. member for Vancouver East to prove what he was saying by quoting from Hansard but he could not find the quotation.
What I want to get at is this. My interest in the department and its administration has not simply arisen following my appointment as Postmaster General. A number of hon. members, and I am very grateful for it, have referred to my interest in the department and my activities over the years. Dealing specifically with the question of robberies and thefts from post offices, I have given the facts as to the results. This morning the hon. member for St. Denis asked for certain figures as to burglar alarms and thefts. I will give the figures later as to thefts but let me deal with burglar alarms for the moment because hon. members will see the development of an interesting situation.
As I said, my interest in the department has extended over a number of years. Liberal members have drawn attention to the fact that I laid great emphasis on the matter of thefts over a number of years. If we take the year 1956 we find that prior to August of that year there had only been 21 burglar alarms installed. I do not have a break-down as to how many were installed between that time and June 10, 1957, and how many after June 10, 1957, but in that period, after pressure had been exerted in this connection, 17

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more were installed or almost a 100 per cent increase in burglar alarms. There were 11 buzzer alarms before August, 1956, and that figure was increased by 50 per cent. Six were added. There had been 75 safes with money chests prior to August, 1956 and subsequent to that time another 137 were added or almost 200 per cent more.
Here is the picture of what has been happening as a result of our efforts in connection with this department. Now, I want to deal with those questions where hon. members claim there has been no action. I have so many quotations here that I cannot begin to use them. The hon. member for St. Denis said nothing has been implemented. I think that is typical of what was said. Now that is the same argument that has been put forward from time to time, quite unfairly I think to other ministers as well, that criticisms made when we were in opposition have not been acted upon when we came to power.
In the case of mechanization, modernization and the development of electronic sorting equipment, I pounded away at that when I was in opposition. I made the suggestion in opposition that there should be closer cooperation between this country, the United States and the United Kingdom in examining developments and exchanging information. Nothing was done. When I came into office as Postmaster General I did have meetings in Washington; my officials and I have been to London; the United States and United Kingdom officials have been here to Ottawa and to other postal areas in Canada. This is a solid achievement that has been carried out.


Mr. Hardie:: Who initiated the postal congress here last year?


William McLean Hamilton: The
universal postal union, as it happened, five years before at their meeting, when they decided to come here.


Mervyn Arthur Hardie: You admit you did not have anything to do with it; good.


Lionel Chevrier: May I ask the minister a question? Has he completed the matter of thefts in the department? I want to ask him a question dealing with that, if I may.


William McLean Hamilton: I am
following a certain line of thought, Mr. Chairman, in order to attempt to deal with the questions which have been raised to date. Perhaps if it is agreeable to the hon. member we could have my officials come down here when the detailed consideration commences-


Lionel Chevrier: Perhaps I could ask the question now. Has the minister given consideration to a recommendation which he

made when he was on this side of the house with reference to these thefts, namely that the whole matter of protection in post offices be turned over to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police? Did he give consideration to that suggestion and has he asked the mounted police to take over the protective aspects of the post office?


William McLean Hamilton: In
answering the hon. member's question, I would say there is a good deal of co-operation between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and my own department. On the other hand, there are areas in Canada where the provincial police force is formed of other than the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and it, therefore, is not practical to use them for specific post office investigations. I think that is the answer to the question.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Was that not the reply given to the Postmaster General when he was on this side?


William McLean Hamilton: never said that the previous government was always wrong. I said that sometimes they were wrong.


Paul Joseph James Martin: In this instance you are now saying the previous government was right.


William McLean Hamilton: never disputed many of these facts which were given to me. In many cases I was searching for information, not attempting to criticize. Let me just deal with this type of interruption which I am getting at the present time from the hon. member.


Paul Joseph James Martin: It is not an interruption, it is a question.


William McLean Hamilton: I was
trying to follow a trend of thought and I am going back to it. A few moments ago I began to follow this trend of thought, and here is a quotation which deals with various observations which have been made today, particularly by the hon. member for St. Jean-Iberville-Napierville in French, that I was critical of the whole Post Office Department; that I was so bitter about these people and the previous administration. I quote, Mr. Chairman, from Hansard of March 1, 1957, page 1805, from my own remarks:
The minister has heard, and rightly so, praise and commendation from all parts of the house this afternoon for certain aspects of the operations of his department, and more specifically for the efforts put forward by the mass of the employees in the post office department whose number totals, if I remember rightly, some 50,000. That is as it should be. These are hardworking, conscientious people who are giving devoted service to their country. They are handling nearly four billion pieces of

mail a year, and I join with other hon, members in commending them for their devotion and hard work.
Let me say this, Mr. Chairman. I hope the Postmaster General will not be led by that into rising subsequently and saying, "You have said so many nice things about my employees that those of you who have made certain critical observations are just unreasonable, carping critics who are contradicting themselves and contradicting other people within the party." Praise for the staff of the post office department and for their efforts does not necessarily include praise for the policies of the department, the expenditures of the department or certain of its actions, and I think that point should be made so we do not have any misunderstanding.
This same misunderstanding has arisen here this afternoon time and time again. Because I criticized the minister, because I singled out certain aspects of the administration for criticism and because I asked some questions, that does not mean I was bitterly opposed and critical of the entire administration.


Mr. Rouleau:: You have changed your attitude since.


William McLean Hamilton: No,
let me go back to the point with which I was dealing. I was dealing with the suggestion that there have been no changes in the department as a result of the new administration, and I referred to modernization and mechanization.
In the case of stamp design, we have enlarged the field from which advice is sought and proposed the establishment of the stamp advisory committee to which I referred today.
In the case of the post office savings bank, we are now having a look at the possibility of extending its facilities to areas where it will not be in competition with commercial banks, and curtailing those facilities where perhaps the banking facilities are adequate. I do not know whether or not this is going to be practical. We are in the process of investigating that.
In the case of stamp vending machines, we have doubled the number installed and we have an additional 500 to be delivered by the end of this year.
Another matter we went over was the reference I made to the security of postal values.
In the case of our general personnel policy we have introduced changes, some of them requested for many years by our staff, some as long as 40 years, to improve working conditions.
In the case of our postal regulations we followed through with another aspect of our criticisms and made our regulations covering advertising and insertions in Canadian publications more realistic to enable them to compete more successfully with publications [DOT]coming in from the United States.
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This morning one hon. member was kind enough to congratulate us, and I am grateful to him-I think it was the hon. member for Kootenay East-upon the improvement in our correspondence. Part of this is the result of the emphasis being placed on adequate correspondence. There is a great interest in correspondence within the department, more so because most of this correspondence goes across my own desk. I, personally, was dissatisfied previously with the type of explanation and the type of reason which I was given by the minister. I felt, when I accepted this responsibility, I was going to do something to improve this and see that members got adequate, complete and satisfactory answers. I say here, Mr. Chairman, if any member, Liberal, Conservative, C.C.F., sitting in this house is not satisfied with the amount of information given in a letter from my office, he has only to ask and we will try to get him every piece of information for which he could possibly ask. I do not expect they will always agree with reasons given in the letter, but I do say that in this field as well we are dealing with criticisms which have previously been made.
I could go ahead on this score for quite a little while dealing with other developments and changes which we have made as a result of our criticisms. However, I suggest to you, Mr. Chairman, that at this point I have dealt reasonably adequately with the general criticism which was so evident in those offered today that this has just been a continuation of the old regime.
In so far as two a day mail delivery is concerned, we have had innumerable quotations on that matter from my own remarks over the years when I was in opposition. You will have noted, Mr. Chairman-and it is an interesting fact-that the great majority of these quotations were from Hansard of 1954 and 1955, with one I think from Hansard of 1956. There is a reason for that. When I came here in 1953 the one a day mail delivery situation had been instituted a comparatively short time previously. No cost figures had been introduced into the house to show what the position would be if they returned to two a day mail delivery. The necessary adjustment had not been made in many cases to fit into that one a day mail delivery picture in order to make it operate as satisfactorily as possible. When I came here in 1953 and in 1954 there was a general feeling across this country of dissatisfaction with and opposition to the one a day delivery service in residential areas. Largely perhaps as a result of the debates which we had at that time and the criticisms which we made of the one a day policy at that time the department took various steps to ameliorate

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this situation. They arranged that more mail would reach the point of destination early enough in the morning to be delivered on that first delivery. They examined routes and rearranged routes in order to accommodate particular situations, particularly those of business. Finally, they came down to this house, Mr. Chairman, and put on the record adequate figures for the first time, after two years of pressure, to point out the cost increase which would result from a return to a two a day mail delivery. As a result of all this, finally when I got the information for which I had pressed for two years, my position and my view of the matter began to change and culminated in the observations that I have made today. I do not know what hon. members in this house expect-


Paul Joseph James Martin: Did my hon. friend, as a private member, ever reveal his change of attitude?


William McLean Hamilton: beg the hon. member's pardon?


Paul Joseph James Martin: Did my hon. friend ever communicate, after 1956, what his attitude towards delivery twice a day was while he was a private member?


William McLean Hamilton: have many examples which I could quote from the hon. member for Essex East. When he changed his mind he went to any length in order not to show that he had changed. As far as I was concerned, I have set out the story. I mitigated my criticism.


Mr. Bourgel:: You had not changed on March 1, 1957. Would the minister like me to read exactly what he had to say on March 1?


William McLean Hamilton: No.
I have it here. There was a single paragraph there which was very definitely critical.


Maurice Bourget: Would the minister like me to read it? It will be very interesting to the house, particularly after the remarks made by the minister to the effect that his ideas had changed with regard to twice a day delivery of mail. As reported at page 1807 of Hansard he said:
The point I would make is that the elimination of twice a day mail delivery service has caused-
This is on March 1, 1957.
-and is continuing to cause considerable distress and inconvenience in our metropolitan areas that are now served by letter carrier service.
If the minister has changed his mind, I do not know when he did so; probably it was since June 21, 1957, because on March 1 he had not yet changed.


William McLean Hamilton: No,
Mr. Chairman. This fits in perfectly with the picture I am trying to establish which was that when I came in 1953 there was general dissatisfaction with this service and that with growing emphasis in recent months it has become apparent that the normal residential householder is not unduly concerned about two a day mail delivery. But-and this is the point, and this is what I was referring to in those remarks which the hon. member for Levis has just quoted-the businessman is still concerned with getting two a day mail delivery. When I made those remarks I had in mind particularly the businessman. When I made my remarks this morning, as the hon. member who is very fair will recall, I drew specific attention to the case of the businessman operating in an area where one a day delivery is in effect and said that it presented a specific problem to such people. That is a problem which we are going to have to study and with which we are going to have to try to deal. But I wanted to give the house this morning as much information as I could and to establish the fact that, as of this moment, I did not feel that any general revision as to two a day delivery was the best policy.
Let me deal for a few moments as well as I can with the specific question of hon. members. Then perhaps we can ask my officials to come down here and deal with any more which may be asked. I find that in my general remarks here I have dealt I think with most of the points raised by the hon. member for St. Denis. Again I want to emphasize the fact that I do not accept his statement that I claimed the post office was poor or that it offered poor service in previous years. I never said that.


Azellus Denis: That is your own declaration.


Francis Alvin George Hamilton: You
might quote it for me.


Azellus Denis: I did so.


William McLean Hamilton: My
criticism was of the work of the Postmaster General. The hon. member further observed or drew the conclusion that if nothing had been implemented of the suggestions made, he would have to conclude that the former minister was a good minister and that we are only continuing his policy. The fact that I have shown that we have made so many changes, Mr. Chairman, perhaps puts a couple of negatives into that statement with regard to the good administration of the previous minister.
I have given figures concerning burglar alarms and thefts. The hon. member for St. Denis asserted that I was talking about

extravagance and waste in the post office. Here again I wish the hon. members would document their assertions because they have got themselves mixed	up-and
badly mixed up-in this case between what they think happened and what actually is on the record in Hansard. In the case of extravagance, for example, my great effort in that respect occurred back in 1954, and I based my argument completely on quotations from the department's own report -I refer to the Woods-Gordon report-in which reference was made time and again to certain inefficiencies in the department and recommendations were made for their improvement. I can remember that there were some of these observations and most of them have been dealt with by now. I have no doubt that a great many more have been dealt with than would have been the case had they not been brought before the house.


Azellus Denis: There was nothing about
extravagance.


Francis Alvin George Hamilton: The
point is this. I was quoting the Woods-Gordon report. Since then, with one exception, I do not remember having referred to any extravagance in the post office. The one which I did deal with quite adequately was the case of the universal postal union congress here.
This was budgeted for by the previous administration in the amount of $300,000 and I have just been checking up and I find that our administration managed to put the thing through for $226,000, or a saving of $75,000. I would point out to the hon. member for St. Denis that when we talked about extravagance we meant it, and in cases like this we are able to produce proof of performance.


Maurice Bourget: On that particular point, Mr. Chairman, I am sure the minister would like to be fair, because when the amount of $250,000 was put in the estimates I believe the former minister explained to the hon. member who was at that time asking a question that it was only an estimate and that they were expecting 300 or 350 people at the postal union congress. Surely the minister would not boast that he had saved $75,000 on that estimate because the $250,000 was only an approximate figure, since they could not deal with all the details of how much it would cost and where the delegates would go, and so on.


William McLean Hamilton: I do
not want to be misunderstood on that point
at all.
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Maurice Bourget: That was the way you put it.


William McLean Hamilton: There was $25,000 in the estimates for 195455, $25,000 in the estimates for 1955-56 and $250,000 in the estimates for 1956-57, which total $300,000 and not the $250,000 to which my hon. friend referred. The actual expenditures totalled $226,000 and our complaint was purely and simply that they were overestimating the cost-


Maurice Bourget: There is no extravagance in that.


William McLean Hamilton: -
and they did over-estimate the cost. That is the only statement I am making.
The hon. member for St. Denis pointed out that every item in our estimates had increased and I think that point has been dealt with by my remarks this morning that it was as the result of the increased volume of mail and the increase in costs generally.
To take the question of electronic machines, as I pointed out this morning it is not intended that these machines should replace permanent employees of the post office. There is no doubt that in addition to the permanent employees, however, the post office has part-time people who work two, three and four hours a day in some of the major post offices and that there will be some reduction in this part-time employment. I want to emphasize the fact, however, that these are not people who depend upon post office employment for a living. It is very obvious that they do not-they are housewives and people who do such work after their regular jobs are finished. What reduction there will be in that respect it is impossible to say but this change, when it takes place will not fall heavily upon the people concerned because their post office employment is purely a subsidiary item in their lives and the turnover in these people is quite high, which indicates how little emphasis they place on their jobs.
Suggestions have been made by hon. members that we should not be examining the mechanization of the postal operations at a time when we have some difficulty with respect to unemployment, but a good administrator lives not for today alone; he lives for next month, next year, and the best administrator and planner lives and plans for the next decade. In my remarks this morning I did not talk in terms of the installation of these machines in three months or six months to any extent. It will be the beginning of 1960 before we have the prototype of these machines of which I spoke from England in operation in our Canadian post offices. In my remarks I pointed out that it

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will be five years at least before we will have the general plan laid down and it will be a decade before machines are fully operating but unless we begin to plan at this time to deal with these periods of Conservative prosperity which are coming-


An hon. Member:: When?


Lionel Chevrier: They are pretty slow in
coming.


Paul Joseph James Martin: The Prime Minister says we have prosperity today.


Francis Alvin George Hamilton: Greater prosperity still is coming. Unless we plan now for these situations in the future we will not be able to deal with them, and that is the purpose behind this plan and the purpose behind the emphasis on mechanization and modernization of which I spoke this morning in my attempt to bring members into my confidence and to give them some understanding of what we are trying to do in this great department upon which every Canadian is so dependent.
The hon. member for St. Denis suggested we should retain files of people who apply for work in the Post Office Department. I would however point out to him that this is entirely the responsibility of the civil service commission. They recruit people and we are not in a position to do their work in any respect.


Charles Edward Rea: Once again I must advise the Postmaster General that his time has run out. Does the committee give unanimous consent to the hon. minister to continue his remarks?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Paul Joseph James Martin: This will hold up your estimates.


William McLean Hamilton: The
hon. member for Burnaby-Coquitlam asked what had happened in my own period of administration and I think I covered that. He also inquired regarding the robberies which have occurred in the post offices in that period and with regard to small towns and villages being supplied with the same letter carrier service as the larger centres. He referred specifically to Tilbury. Actually I can understand that because Tilbury is a small community with about 1,000 points of call, as we call them in the postal service, which is organizing a campaign along with some other communities right across Canada in an attempt to get thousands of signatures with which to persuade us to extend our letter carrier service down into communities of this nature.

Basically the policy which applies to letter carrier service is that it is introduced when there are 2,500 points of call in any particular community. There are other minor considerations but that is the guiding practice and the treasury board ruling is definite on that point. We have followed a policy of not extending the service until a community has reached this point and there is a specific reason for this because that is the lowest number at which it is economical to provide letter carrier service. The average letter carrier serves 500 or 600 homes; he works five days, a week and the service is provided six days a week. Therefore there must be a relief man and there must be another man to fill in on holidays and in cases of sickness and such things. It has been the experience of the department that unless there are 2,500 points of call some of these men are not fully occupied and it becomes an uneconomic proposition when you have at least half of a man sitting around-if that is possible.


Erhart Regier: Why not on a part-time basis? The minister admits he has thousands of part-time employees. Why could not these small towns have letter carrier service by people working on a part-time basis?


Francis Alvin George Hamilton: That is an interesting speculation but the exigencies of the service-I find my time is running so far overtime that perhaps I could go into this matter specifically with the hon. member later-are such that it is not economical because of the training requirements of the job, much as one might like to consider extending this service to these smaller communities.
The member for Burin-Burgeo made a number of interesting remarks. Concerning TV cameras in the Peterborough area to which he referred, it has been our experience that for the general supervision of post offices these are not a satisfactory operation. I could go into the details but I will not. There may be some time in the future when consideration could be given to them as a supplement in special cases, but certainly there is no thinking at the moment that they will be generally extended. On the other hand one hon. member, I forget whom, objected generally to these observation galleries in post offices. I think in passing it is as well to say that these do serve a useful purpose and that they have obtained the approval of the great bulk of our postal employees who are honest people and who know that the occasional malefactor who turns up in their midst embarrasses them until he is caught, and I may say that the only effective way of doing that generally is by the use of observation galleries. By

the way, these only come into operation when there is some reason to suspect that wrongdoing is occurring at a particular spot in the post office.
Dealing with combined postal and telegraph offices in Newfoundland about which the hon. member for Burin-Burgeo spoke, there are 32 of these special cases from pre-confederation days. We have an undertaking to retain, in these cases, the same level of income for the incumbents who are people who have carried on under that understanding up to the present time. Twelve of the cases have been processed to the satisfaction of the people concerned. Another 20 are in the course of being processed now. By agreement between the Canadian National Telegraphs and ourselves, these people will be protected so that they will enjoy the same salary which they had at the time of confederation despite whatever technological advances may have occurred. That does not necessarily extend to all those who have come into the service since. Our undertaking is in respect of confederation.
I have been unable to locate a copy of the order to which my hon. friend referred. It is Saturday, and sections of the departments are closed. I must say that this is something neither I nor my officials with whom I discussed it at noon could understand, and we will look into the matter most carefully to see what the situation is. Basically, as far as we are concerned, we are opposed to the carrying of letters for a fee as a regular practice on the part of any private individual; in other words, we are working against anyone who attempts to avoid paying the proper rate of postage. But we are certainly not trying to be unrealistic about things.
The hon. member for Kootenay West suggested that our officials should conduct public relations campaigns in the smaller places.
I could not agree with him more and I can tell him that having gone across the country myself and set that example, I am encouraging our senior staff to go out into the field and see for themselves what is happening right down to the smallest offices and to bring all the benefit they can to those areas.
We have heard the hon. member's observations on our departmental correspondence and I thank him. He has requested a brief summary of the types of post offices and the terms of employment therein. Basically, there are four. The revenue post office, the smallest, is normally located in a house or in the corner of a store, and the postmaster is paid $3,000 or less, depending on the size of the business, for providing both the service and the quarters. Veterans preference
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applies in this case as in others, and appointments are restricted to patrons of that particular post office.
The next type is the semi-staff post office where revenue is upwards of $3,000 and where the postmaster is under civil service regulations and where he is primarily responsible for appointing the staff underneath him. In these offices the premises are supplied by the government.
A staff post office is the largest type of post office and there you have premises supplied by the government and the entire staff appointed under the civil service commission.
Finally, in cities, you have sub post offices which are minor locations in stores. Again, this is to give service to particular sections which are not immediately adjacent to major post offices. The hours normally worked in most post offices, if my memory serves me rightly, are 40 hours a week.
I believe that criticisms which have been made by the hon. member for Burin-Burgeo and one or two other hon. members concerned salaries. Post office salaries generally, I think, are on a comparable basis with those in other government departments and in competitive types of work in private enterprise. We do have the particular case of the revenue postmasters, and I think that is where much of the misunderstanding has occurred. The revenue postmaster in most cases is not obliged to spend every moment of his time in the operation of his post office, and his remuneration could go down as low as $2.20.


Azellus Denis: Is that the minimum?


William McLean Hamilton: think it is, according to my recollection. Revenue postmasters are free to run a store, or operate a farm, or to do any one of a great many other things. Let us also face the fact that while we are tremendously helped by these revenue post offices, in many of the smaller offices the work is very light and they handle five, ten or 15 pieces of mail a day, and the suggestion that to do that we should instal a civil servant at $3,000 a year is one, which, quite frankly, does not appeal to me.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I did not suggest that.


William McLean Hamilton: know. You are too much of a realist.
The sub offices are based completely on revenue-the amount of sales from the post office determines the income of the postmaster and the premises are supplied by the man who receives the rent.
The hon. member for Maisonneuve-Rose-mont asked me not to hide behind the committee on stamp design we are proposing to

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set up. I can give him an unqualified assurance that I will not. These people are there to advise the minister, but it is his responsibility.
The hon. member for Timiskaming suggested that we bond all our people handling money. That is not a practical suggestion, because everybody in the post office service handles money at one time or another. I dealt also with the observations on the post office savings bank.
With respect to rural mail, the hon. member for Timiskaming suggested an additional amount of money for winter hazard coverage. As far as rural mail delivery is concerned, the answer to that is very simple and it applies to some observations made by the hon. member for Burin-Burgeo as well. In connection with rural mail couriers, the price is a matter of tender. These people may tender any price they wish and then the contract is awarded to the lowest tenderer and, therefore, under these circumstances we do not have the responsibility for such special increases in payment to the man who, in the first instance, established the payment he wanted himself.
With respect to extensions, the hon. member for Timiskaming suggested it was difficult to get a new route set up. This may be a particular case. My earlier analysis pointed out the number of routes we had set up this year and I can assure him that if he gives me the details we shall be glad to examine them. We want to give mail service wherever it is possible, taking everything into consideration, to do so.
I am glad he likes more colourful stamps. I am sure he approves our policy of issuing stamps in two colours. I will look into the question at Elliot Lake where I know we have a difficult problem which I believe revolves around the provision of space.
The hon. member for St. Jean-Iberville-Napierville distinguished himself by saying that I was so stupid I spent five years criticizing and had no changes to make when my appointment took place. That sounds no more attractive in English than it did when he mentioned it in French. I think I dealt with that in some of my very first remarks.


Lionel Chevrier: A pretty effective speech,
nonetheless.


William McLean Hamilton: pretty effective answer, I would think.


Lionel Chevrier: I do not see it.


William McLean Hamilton: I am
grateful to the hon. member for Brantford for his congratulations to our staff in Brantford and I will certainly pass it on. I may say that it is typical not only of Brantford but of

big places like Vancouver and Winnipeg where you have to make those changes over the weekend and it represents a fantastic amount of work. Our staffs have done a magnificent job.
I am grateful to the hon. member for Waterloo North. He had 30-odd years with the postal service, and when he says it is a fine service he knows whereof he speaks.
I have dealt with the observations of the hon. member for Grand Falls-White Bay-Labrador pretty well. He referred to small salaries in revenue post offices and asked why that should be. I think we should underline the fact that in those small post offices now we are paying our people on the basis of a unit of work rather than on revenues and it results in a much fairer arrangement as far as these postmasters are concerned. I have spoken to them across the country at the various postmasters' conventions and like everyone else they would like to be paid more. However, they are appreciative of the fact that they have received the increases which were given to the civil service and which increases did not automatically apply to them. They are particularly grateful, Mr. Chairman-and this applies to the small post offices-for the fact that in the last revision of the salary increases a greater percentage increase was given to the smaller post offices than to the larger ones and the net result of that has been to even out some inequities.
I will look into the various points raised by the hon. member for Grand Falls-White Bay-Labrador, particularly in connection with the deliveries at Port Hope Simpson and Green Bay.
With respect to buildings, Mr. Chairman, let us all try to save some of the poor Postmaster General's energy and realize that honestly, absolutely and entirely our buildings are under the Minister of Public Works, although we have a good deal of co-operation between the two of us. Somebody wanted to know how these things are worked out. We establish our requirements; we review them in the field; we review them at headquarters and we transmit them to the Department of Public Works. There will be occasions on which they will dispute to some extent our requirements, not so much on the basis of what we require but as to whether a rearrangement of space may not allow us to operate more effectively. But these things are worked out. It is impossible to say who has the last word, Mr. Chairman, because they are worked out co-operatively and the Minister of Public Works and I have not yet come to blows on any occasion in connection with this and I have no intention of doing so because he is bigger than I am.


Lionel Chevrier: You will if you keep holding up your estimates.


William McLean Hamilton: I am
not holding up my estimates; I am trying to deal with the questions which have been raised in the last three and a half hours. I think I have answered most of the questions asked by hon. members.
I thank the hon. member for Burnaby-Coquitlam for the kind things he said. He said he hoped that regulations will play a little lesser role in our department. I cannot promise that but I think I can promise that we will try to bring a realistic, sympathetic view to the problems which face the people of Canada in so far as our own department is concerned.
With regard to the reduction in the number of post offices, that is not essentially a matter of consolidation. I cannot detail every one but I can tell him that most of those reductions occurred where the post office quite honestly had outlived its usefulness. One still finds a great many cases where the last store in a village has closed up, where nobody wants the responsibility of the post office, where the cost of operation may have been $300, $400, $500 a year and where the revenue from that same post office may have been, say, $12, indicating that just nobody had any interest in it. When we send an investigator, he discovers that everybody is going two or three times a week to a community a few miles away where they do their shopping and pick up their mail at the same time. We can discuss specific instances but generally it is not a policy of consolidating and putting out of existence the post office in smaller communities.
He suggests we should pay more attention to the boundaries of municipalities in settling up our letter carrier areas. This is a recurring problem. It is just impossible to offer adequate mail service under existing conditions, with the growth of Canada, and still carve out that service to correspond with individual municipal boundaries.
The hon. member for Macleod again dealt with the salaries of the small post offices. The hon. member for Burin-Burgeo came back, and I think I have dealt with his remarks pretty well, in connection with the relationship between public works and my own department. Because of the interest of hon. members from Newfoundland I must tell the members of the committee if they will excuse me, one of my Newfoundland stories.
I went in there several months ago and in a little post office as I looked around, remarked to the postmistress that her equipment looked slightly antiquated and I thought something should be done about it. She said, "Well,
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Mr. Postmaster General, we have had this equipment here since confederation". To me as a central Canadian confederation took place in 1867. I nearly fell through the floor. However, when I checked up I found that in Newfoundland the time of confederation means 1949. That was yet another lesson, which I have learned so many times across Canada, of just how we have different little ideas and attitudes and how we manage to get along one with another pretty well nonetheless.
With respect to the replacing of old buildings with new buildings, Mr. Chairman, which applies to Newfoundland particularly, it is specifically a matter for the Minister of Public Works. Regarding the member's request for an example, if there is one, where the remuneration of the postmaster has been decreased when he moved from his own premises to a public building, I do not have information on that point at my fingertips but I shall be glad to look it up for him and see if one exists.


Lionel Chevrier: The Minister of Public Works looks embarrassed.


William McLean Hamilton: He
just looks happy because he has such a cooperative Postmaster General who is giving him every degree of assistance that he possibly can.
On the question of mail couriers in Newfoundland, I covered that before, I think. It is by tender and if they are going to deal with these heavy packages they must adjust their tender price accordingly.
I dealt at the start with the hon. member for Outremont and some of his observations. I was interested to find that he was so vociferous and enthusiastic now in support of twice a day mail delivery. I sat in the house for four years and never heard him open his mouth on the subject and I am wondering why he did not ask for it then.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, I shall refer to my colleague, the Minister of Public Works, the request of the hon. member for St. Hyacinthe-Bagot for a post office at Acton Vale because again that is specifically a decision of the Department of Public Works.
I apologize sincerely, Mr. Chairman, for having taken so much of the time of the committee in trying to answer the questions put to me. I have appreciated nothing quite so much as the few observations that have been made about the pride I take in the department. I do take pride in it. I think it is a very fine department, doing a very good job and for any questions that have come or will come from the floor of the house I believe we can produce pretty sensible and sound answers.

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Chesley William Carter: Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the Postmaster General for his very complete and comprehensive answers and the manner in which he has answered the questions I raised. If I heard the Postmaster General correctly when he discussed the position of the people affected by the change-over by Canadian National Telegraphs he said that there were 32 revenue post offices in Newfoundland. I presume what he meant was that there are 32 revenue postmasters left over at the present time from confederation and that it is these 32 who will receive some sort of protection against the situation that has developed from the change-over by Canadian National Telegraphs.
I am most grateful to the Postmaster General for that consideration but I also suggest to him that many of the other revenue postmasters, who may have had the misfortune to become employed since confederation, are in exactly the same position as those who were employed at the time of confederation with Newfoundland. I do believe that ordinary justice demands that some consideration be given to their plight too.
With respect to the other matter I raised about the order emanating from the local post office, like the Postmaster General I find it difficult to believe that an order would go out which would be interpreted in the way in which my constituents seem to have interpreted it. But I presume that the Postmaster General will look into this and we will hear more about it later when his estimates come before the house again.


William McLean Hamilton: That is right, although I had hoped that we might get these estimates through today. If that should happen, I certainly will give the hon. member for Burin-Burgeo complete information without any hesitation.


Chesley William Carter: I will not delay the minister's estimates another minute. The only other point I wish to make has to do with what he had to say about couriers. He said that they received the amount that they offered to accept when they tendered. I should like to point out to the Postmaster General that these mail couriers are at a disadvantage when submitting tenders because they do not really understand what they are tendering for. They visualize an ordinary bag of mail made up of bundles of letters and a few nicely wrapped packages. But they discover later than instead of carrying little packets of letters and a few packages they are carrying heavy objects and articles like doors, windows, screens, parts of washing machines and garden implements and other things which they do not regard as mail. If they had known that this was what they were
(Mr. Hamilton (Notre Dame de Grace).]
tendering for I think they would have submitted quite different tenders. In view of the disadvantage at which they find themselves I still think they have a case when they ask that their tenders be revised.


Mr. Batten:: Mr. Chairman, during the last half hour the minister has made quite an attempt to explain away statements he made in years gone by dealing with a twice a day delivery system. I feel that many of us here now who were here at that time will not readily forget the manner in which he proposed twice a day mail delivery and the frequency with which he made mention of it. During his remarks he rather left the impression that when he first came to the house this particular problem was of current interest and that over a period of four or five years public interest began to diminish and there was no longer the same need to express his opinion on the problem as there had been before.
I remember quite well when the hon. member made his maiden speech in the first session of the twenty-second parliament. At that time he gave quite an account of the need for a twice a day mail delivery system in the area from which he comes. I am going to read from the speech he made then. At that time he said, as recorded on page 343 of Hansard for the 1953-54 session:
Our postal service is totally inadequate for the needs of a community such as ours. While we are essentially a residential community, stores and businesses are scattered throughout the area. We have numerous salesmen and representatives who combine both home and office. For some reason which was defended on the grounds of economy, but which still did not seem to result in any great reduction in the Post Office Department expenses mail delivery in our area was reduced a few years ago from twice a day to once a day. This has caused us a great deal of inconvenience. My riding is an integral part of a great city. It is a busy place with many interests, and it is dependent upon an adequate postal service. Many of these activities are being seriously handicapped and inconvenienced by a postal service which would be more appropriate for a small, sleepy country village.
Then he went on to say:
We feel that we are entitled to the restoration of adequate postal facilities.
I would say to him, having said that, that surely the need for postal service in the area from which he comes has not decreased from that time to now. I am quite sure that it has not. If this country is going to expand at the rate we are told by some of the hon. gentleman's colleagues then we can look forward to the time when necessarily the larger and busier centres will be still larger and busier. I suspect that in that sense they will require a more adequate

postal service. I say to the minister now that if such a service was required in 1953-54 it is still required.
In his remarks the minister went on to say that since then there has been no great public demand for this service. Yet only a year ago he himself still maintained the same opinion. I quote again from page 1807 of Hansard for March 1, 1957. The hon. member for Levis has already referred to this but I am going to read the whole paragraph. Just over a year ago when he was sitting on this side of the house the minister said:
Let me say immediately that there is no quarrel with the rural areas in their demand for a minimum delivery once a day, nor is there any doubt in the mind of any of us, I think, that certain areas now on rural routes or on box systems are entitled to twice a day delivery. The point I would make is that the elimination of twice a day mail delivery service has caused and is continuing to cause considerable distress and inconvenience in our metropolitan areas that are now served by letter carrier service. The costs were worked out in detail and presented to the estimates committee last year They represented approximately one-third of the surplus of the post office department for the year 1955-56, and they will represent less than one-half of the estimated surplus of the post office department for the current year. In other words, we could change to twice a day delivery service, five days a week, and still leave the post office department with a substantial surplus.
These are the words of the minister just over a year ago. Well, I fail to see how the minister is going to square his statement of a year ago with the statement he makes now that it is going to be too expensive. I suggest the metamorphosis of changing from an ordinary member of this house to a minister by crossing 20 feet of green carpet to sit on the treasury benches, is one that changed him from making irresponsible statements to being faced with the realities of life. I am glad that he has done that. I hope that in facing these realities of life in the Post Office Department, he will face a few of the realities in the province from which I come. I am going to tell him about those.
In a section of Newfoundland which is thickly populated for that province, the mail service is most unsatisfactory. The fault is not all that of the Post Office Department, but a great deal of it is the result of the fact that mail deliveries by the Canadian National or other boats, or in the wintertime by airplane, are not too regular. I am not going to blame the minister or his department for that. I do feel that after the mail has been landed in that area some better method could be found for delivery from the point of landing to the various places along the coast. I have made some inquiries about this problem, but to date I have not made much progress.
I go farther up along the west coast of Newfoundland, along what is known as the
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St. Barbe coast and I come to a place known as Hawke's Bay, which is a large logging centre. The resident population may number 600 or 700 people, but during the logging season which lasts over a period of some months, the population will increase sometimes by 2,000 people. These 2,000 people come from all sections of the coast. They do not live in Hawke's Bay, and being away from home they are naturally looking for mail. The mail service to this particular place is most unsatisfactory because the place is a little isolated. During the coming summer Hawke's Bay will be connected with one of the largest centres known as Port Saunders by a road which is now being built by the provincial government. I should like to recommend to the minister that when that road is completed the mail service could be improved at a more reasonable cost than it could have been improved last year. I suggest serious attention be given to improving the mail service for Hawke's Bay.
Then I made a request of the minister about a place called Portland Creek. In explaining about Portland Creek I would have to explain the situation that obtains within this section of Newfoundland because the mail is now able to come from an area known as Norris Point down the coast by road, but that has only been possible within the last year. So, when the mail goes from Cow Head down to Daniel's Harbour the mail carrier has actually to pass through Portland Creek. Although Portland Creek is five miles away from the nearest post office I have so far been unable to obtain any mail service for this particular place. I would hope that when the minister's estimates are through and he has time to look over things that are going to be done in the future, he will take into account this little isolated settlement of Portland Creek.
I come now, Mr. Chairman, to the question of the post office at a very lovely settlement called St. Andrews on the west coast of Newfoundland. The minister is well aware now of the conditions under which Newfoundland came into confederation so far as the postal service is concerned, and is well aware of the conditions under which some buildings were taken over as federal buildings while other buildings remained in the provincial service. Here is a building which is now federal, which is very old and no longer able to meet the needs of that area. I am not so much concerned, Mr. Chairman, with whether the building itself be large or small, so long as it is adequate. I think the building which is known as the post office should be something of a credit to the federal government. It should be a

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decent looking building. I think the Postmaster General would want that type of building. I can assure him that this little building is no longer adequate to meet the needs of the people whom it serves; it is in a most dilapidated condition. I fear that some day when there is a good Newfoundland breeze this building will not stand on all fours as it has in the past. I do hope that something can be done about this to avoid any accident that might happen, and also to improve the service in that area.
In my correspondence with the department concerning this place, I fear that there has been some misunderstanding and they think I am speaking about some other place. In one letter I had from the department it was stated that this place received postal service in the summertime only. Of course, this is not true because it is served by two trains every day and is served by road during all seasons of the year and even in wintertime this road is accessible. It is quite often the centre to which mail is brought and from which mail is delivered to various points around it. I hope that it may be possible for the minister to have a look at this building and to decide that the service which it provides is not suitable for the Post Office Department. Then we could make a recommendation to my good friend the Minister of Public Works, who may be able to do something about this particular problem. I am sure the construction would not be costly and could be completed within a short time.
Jutting out from the west coast of Newfoundland is an area of land known as the Port au Port peninsula. This Port au Port peninsula has only one main point of contact with the mainland, which has a large and thriving town of Stephenville, on the borders of which the United States has had for some years a very large air force base. I am not going to give the minister a description of the mail service on Port au Port peninsula. I am going to suggest to him a survey be made of the needs of the area all along that Port au Port peninsula to ascertain what can be done to improve the service for the people who live there. Not too long ago, when the people who live within the Port au Port peninsula found work at the air force base in Stephenville, they were able to collect their mail at the local post office at Stephenville. Times are changing there and more people, by reason of having to be employed somehow, are returning to the fishing industry and are living continuously in the areas in which their homes are built. These people are feeling more keenly as time goes on the

need for postal service which will be an improvement over the service now provided.
I do not want to delay the minister too long, but we have in Newfoundland numerous small buildings that are serving as post offices. Sometimes the post offices are separate buildings, sometimes they are in rooms in private houses or in a section of a store, something of that type. In many of these cases we find that the rent being paid by the postal department would not pay for the charwoman to clean up after the mail has been delivered. I recommend to the minister that a very serious attempt be made to see what can be done about renting these buildings. I will agree that many of the people who are getting little or no rent at the moment are a little bit afraid to say too much about it because they fear that the community would lose the postal service as there would be no place to house the post office. In many of these cases, the rent being paid is very small. It is really too small, as I said before, to pay for the coal and the cleaning up. It is far too small to warrant anybody building a building, even a building which might be rented in the area. I would ask the hon. gentleman if he would, if time permits, go into this whole problem of building rentals for the post office services in Newfoundland.
I intended to have something to say about the Canadian National Telegraphs and its connection with the postal service. However, my hon. friend for Burin-Burgeo has gone into that matter. I believe it is a most gnawing problem and one that is not conducive to the best of efficiency either in the post office or in the Canadian National Telegraphs. However, I am going to reserve my comments in this regard and possibly make them at a later date when the estimates of the Minister of Transport are before the house.


Azellus Denis: As we all now know, Mr. Chairman, co-operation exists between the Postmaster General and the Minister of Public Works. While they are both here and having regard to the construction of post office buildings, maybe one of the two or the two together could give me this information. Can the minister tell the committee when tenders will be called for the construction of a new postal station in the city of Cote St. Luc in the constituency of Mount Royal? Have plans been drawn? Who is the architect? When is the construction likely to start? I believe the minister in answer to the hon. member for Mount Royal stated that the building of the post office has been decided on.


William McLean Hamilton: Yes. In that particular case it has been decided to put up this building. The plans are now

being drawn. Tenders will be called, I would think,-according to the information which I have received-in order to allow construction to start about mid-October of this year.


Maurice Bourget: I want to ask the minister what policy he follows in the recommendation of the construction of new post offices. Does he make a recommendation only in cases where the revenue of the post office is $10,000 or does he do so when it is less than that?


William McLean Hamilton: There is a certain amount of elasticity. Certainly it is not our practice to recommend construction of post offices in areas where the revenue is less than $10,000. Where the revenue goes over that amount we may sometimes recommend the construction of a post office and find that the Department of Public Works can provide more than adequate rental space which in their judgment is better. In other cases-and there are not very many of these-where the revenue is less than $10,000 the Department of Public Works may be planning a building to incorporate two or three units in the community and decide to include us in that building. Generally, the breaking point at which one moves into the construction of a public building for a post office is $10,000.


Jean-Paul Deschatelets: I should like to ask the
minister whether construction of a postal station is planned for Rosemount. I remember that at the end of 1957 we exchanged correspondence with the previous postmaster general. Since Rosemount is a district which is developing very rapidly it is felt that a new station is in order in that district. Can the minister tell me whether there is anything on the way?


Francis Alvin George Hamilton: I am
sorry to keep the hon. gentleman waiting. I will have the information in just a moment.


Jean-Paul Deschatelets: Perhaps I can help the minister out by stating that the site was on Pie IX boulevard near the new shopping centre.


Francis Alvin George Hamilton: The
information I have at the moment is that there is nothing immediately on the way in connection with Rosemount.


Mervyn Arthur Hardie: I wonder whether the minister can tell us what has been done this year with regard to housing for post office employees in the Northwest Territories?


Francis Alvin George Hamilton: That is a problem which does not apply particularly to the Post Office Department but which is generally a matter of government policy. I believe it is under study; that
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is to say, the provision of quarters for government employees in the north is under study by a committee of the government. As the hon. member will notice, there is a substantial increase in the amount of our estimates for the provision of this accommodation owing to the fact that we are obliged to pay more for certain forms of taxation and provision of services in the north.


Mervyn Arthur Hardie: A year or so ago it was government policy that the Post Office Department supply housing at least for two of their employees, namely the postmaster in Fort Smith and the postmaster in Yellowknife. These buildings were to be completed last year. My question now relates to housing for the employees of the Post Office Department other than the postmaster himself. In this particular case, I imagine that Yellowknife would be about the only place where employees would have to be supplied with houses in order to bring their standards in line with those of employees of other government departments.


William McLean Hamilton: wish I could give the hon. member the details that he requires now; but actually, as I understand it, this is purely an extension of the housing of government employees in the north.


Mervyn Arthur Hardie: Is anything being done this year?


William McLean Hamilton: To
the best of my knowledge, the matter is still under study by a committee of the government.


Mervyn Arthur Hardie: Then nothing has been done this year to provide any additional housing units in the Northwest Territories?


William McLean Hamilton: That is right.


Lionel Chevrier: Mr. Chairman, Le Droit of September 25, 1957, carries a report of a speech made by the minister before the advertising and sales club of Ottawa which is an organization dear to the heart of the minister, I know. The statement which he is reported to have made had to do with publicity as a means of communication between the government and the public. Perhaps he had in mind the post office at the time; I do not know whether or not that is so, Then he went on to say that in the last budget presented to parliament-that is not the one that was under discussion recently- expenditures of all departments amounted to slightly over $4J billion which means the expenditure of about a dollar on publicity for each $900 spent on other matters. The

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question I should like to ask the minister now is whether he has been able to increase that amount set out in the speech referred to in Le Droit, I think an example was given by the minister at that time. The reason I raise the point is that I understand that this matter has been under consideration by the departmental officials. I wondered whether the minister had anything to say on that matter.


William McLean Hamilton: On
the broader picture which affected the total government expenditures and total government disbursements in respect of advertising and publicity, I know the hon. member would agree with me that it would be quite improper for me to make any wide-ranging observations which are more properly the responsibility of the Prime Minister.
As far as our own department is concerned, at this moment our expenditures-and I can give them to the hon. member exactly-are very much in line with those of the preceding year, subject however to a reduction due to the fact that our film was paid for largely in the preceding year. We are now contemplating certain aspects of future operations which may require public co-operation with respect to such things as the zoning of mail if that should become once more an active issue such as in a case where a person in addition to putting the city on the address will also put a particular location within that city.
This might require additional expenditures because the purpose of expenditures on publicity and advertising is to achieve some result which will merit such expenditures, and I can assure the hon. member that any expenditures we make will be in order to achieve a specific result.


Lionel Chevrier: May I press the minister a little further with regard to this matter. Is there an increase over the amount for last year of this kind of advertising?


William McLean Hamilton: The
figure which was in the estimates for 1957-58 was $255,300, covering expenditures on advertising, films, broadcasting and displays, while the figure for the current year is $216,700. That is a decrease of $38,600. The decrease is primarily, as I have said, due to the fact that the post office film was paid for in the preceding year.


Lionel Chevrier: May I ask the minister a further question. According to the Ottawa Journal of September 10, 1957, the minister made a statement referring to the 12,000 rural mail carriers in Canada, and I quote his words which were reported as follows:
12,000 rural mail carriers in Canada have been warned to refrain from political activities at the

risk of losing their contracts with the dominion government. A Post Office Department directive to be read by all mail contractors was approved by Postmaster General Hamilton a month ago and has gone forward to post office districts over the signature of Sarto Chartrand, post office director of transportation.
May I ask the minister if following this statement and because of the directive referred to there have been any dismissals from the post office?


William McLean Hamilton: In
the case of rural mail carriers, Mr. Chairman, the answer is no. The hon. member is asking now about political activity on the part of rural mail carriers?


Lionel Chevrier: Yes.


William McLean Hamilton: The
answer is no.


Mervyn Arthur Hardie: Some weeks ago I noticed in the Edmonton Journal that the Post Office Department was now routing mail for Uranium City, Saskatchewan, via Saskatoon and Prince Albert rather than, as formerly, via Edmonton by C.P.A. to Uranium City. I wonder if the minister could give us the reason why this service has been changed and could also give us an idea of the cost of transporting mail from Saskatoon to Uranium City as against Edmonton to Uranium City?


William McLean Hamilton: will be delighted to give the hon. member the information he requires. Actually it is a technical matter having to do with our transportation vote and if he would wait for a moment or two until the expert on this question is here and we come to that item in the estimates I will be glad to give him an answer.


Lionel Chevrier: May I pursue the question I asked concerning political patronage a little further? The minister has said that no rural mail carriers have been dismissed and I would like to ask whether in any other branches of the post office there have been dismissals because of political patronage?


William McLean Hamilton: Mr. Chairman, there has not been a single dismissal in my department because of political patronage in the way suggested by the hon. member. However, I think I know what he is trying to get at and I want to help him if I can. There has been one dismissal for political activity on the part of an employee in respect of which an affidavit is on file from the employee concerned admitting the particular political activity.


Maurice Bourget: A few minutes ago the minister told us that the international postal convention held in Ottawa last year cost $225,000.


William McLean Hamilton: What I said was $226,000.


Maurice Bourget: $226,000-would he give us the breakdown as to hospitality, transportation, staff, and so on?


William McLean Hamilton: Yes, Mr. Chairman, this is something we have available because we felt sure someone would be interested in it. I do not know how much detail the hon. member would like but I will give him a reasonable amount and if he finds it insufficient I will give him more.
The administration covering salaries of House of Commons staff was $22,000-I will give these in round figures-the reporters' travelling and living expenses were $3,000; the travelling and living expenses of certain other non-Canadian people were $4,500; expenses of printing, stationery and various other items totalled $55,900; sundries in that classification were $460; provision of equipment for simultaneous translation and so on, $6,790; provision of accommodation-and I here refer to accommodation when we were travelling and when these people were our guests in various parts of Canada, and the same applies to the following two or three items-$33,384; meals under the same circumstances, $20,850; entertaining in Ottawa and elsewhere of specific people, $3,090; gifts, because it is customary at these international conventions to present them with a booklet of stamps of the country concerned and to provide other publicity items which are given as souvenirs of the country-$15,000; transportation in connection with trips, $21,800; and the delegates were also given very adequate photographic albums and coverage costing $4,160, and that adds up roughly to $192,000, to which we add $34,000 from the previous year's expenditures, mostly in connection with the system of simultaneous translation, for a grand total of $226,000.


Maurice Bourget: May I ask the minister if he has disposed of that system of simultaneous translation?


William McLean Hamilton: As
I remember it, Mr. Chairman, this never belonged to us; it was equipment which was the property of the national defence department. That department bought it and we paid the cost of putting it together and operating it while it was here but it was then returned to the Department of National Defence.
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Maurice Bourget: Would part of these expenditures be invoiced to the postal union?


William McLean Hamilton: There may be a few minor items in that category but the great bulk of these expenditures are properly chargeable to the Canadian government as host and organizer of the convention.


Herman Maxwell Batten: Could the minister tell us the number of people employed in administration in the province of Newfoundland and the cost of administration in that province and could he also give us the same information with respect to the province of Nova Scotia?


William McLean Hamilton: I am
sorry, but I have not that information available. I will be very glad to give it to the hon. member during the debate, or see that it is sent to him.


Herman Maxwell Batten: That will be perfectly
satisfactory.


Azellus Denis: Talking about expenses, may I ask the minister about the item under travelling expenses amounting to $80,000 on page 438. And then if the minister will turn to page 442 he will see there under travelling expenses an amount of $387,750. I have here a statement which was made by the hon. gentleman while he was in opposition, and I quote from his remarks at page 4186 of Hansard on May 27, 1955:
Finally ... I would ask the minister to tell us why his travelling expenses have had to go up from $35,300 to $100,400. Even with all the effort put forward by this government in finding new and fanciful ways of spending public money, that is an accomplishment of which he may well be proud.
Of course, the hon. minister was then talking about the expenses of the department and not about the expenses of the Postmaster General himself. Now I have just mentioned a couple of items amounting to at least $460,000, and I ask the minister whether he is in a position to explain this large increase in travelling expenses and, if he is not in a position to do this, whether he will apply to himself the remarks he made about the former minister?


William McLean Hamilton: course, the increase in travelling expenses in this particular estimate has not been anything like as great as the increase to which the hon. member has just referred in the estimates of the previous minister. I think it was from $35,000-


Azellus Denis: To $100,400.

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William McLean Hamilton: In
other words, when you find an increase of from $35,000 to $100,000, that is quite legitimately the cause of a question. The particular case we are discussing concerns $80,000 in the estimates as against $80,000-the same amount-in the estimates for the preceding year, and in the other case it is $387,750 as against $345,150, an increase which is slightly over 10 per cent. The reason, of course, for our travelling expenses is that we have a fantastically far-flung postal department with headquarters in Ottawa and the necessity of covering all Canada to inspect post offices, and to have officials dealing with special situations. And you have hundreds of men- that figure is, perhaps, a little fanciful- scores of men, certainly, who are on the road every day in the year, and that is the basic reason for the travel expenses as such. The increase is simply and solely due to the fact that it costs slightly more to travel today than it did to travel last year. And also, in line with the undertaking I gave to the hon. member for Kootenay West, we are laying emphasis on getting our senior people out into the field in order to get in touch with conditions, and one does these things at an expense.


Romuald Bourque: Mr. Chairman, is this the estimate where we can ask the minister what the additional cost would be to have a twice a day delivery?


William McLean Hamilton: Technically it would come under operations, Mr. Chairman. We could give the figures now, but just think how wonderful it would be if we could put this item through and then deal with it under operations where it would properly come.


Lionel Chevrier: Referring to the travelling expenses, may we have from the minister a statement as to the over-all travelling expenses of the department. He has dealt with two items, one under the first vote, and the other with regard to which a question was raised by my hon. friend from St. Denis. I do not know whether these two items cover the whole field or not. What is the total amount?


William McLean Hamilton: will be glad to give that figure. It is $80,000 under administration, $387,750 under operations, $10,000 under transportation and $3,500 under financial services. That is $479,000 I think.


Romuald Bourque: I have quite a few questions, and I was wondering whether I could ask them now or at some other point. For instance, I want to know about the cost of these electronic machines and the cost of this advisory council for the changing of the design on stamps, and why the stamps must be continually changed. Would I get an answer to those questions later on?


William McLean Hamilton: The
hon. member for Outremont-St. Jean will have an answer from me on any question he cares to ask, but I do not think I will be able to answer any of those questions now, because it is six o'clock-unless the committee wishes to sit later, in which case I would be perfectly agreeable.


Some hon. Members:: Six o'clock.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Resolution adopted in committee of supply this day reported and concurred in.

Lionel Chevrier: I take it that Monday is private members' day. Would the leader of the house care to tell us what the business will be on Tuesday?


Mr. Green:: On Tuesday we will commence with item 4 on the order paper, the house in committee on an act to amend the Canadian Farm Loan Act. We will then take item 21, the resolution concerning the Financial Administration Act; then the budget resolutions, item 22 on the day's order paper. After that we will take item 3, the house in committee on the Estate Tax Act; item No. 10, second reading of a bill to amend the Income Tax Act; item No. 12, second reading of a bill to amend the Loan Companies Act; item No. 13, second reading of a bill to amend the Trust Companies Act; and item No. 20, the resolution concerning the Children of War Dead (Education Assistance) Act.


Lionel Chevrier: I see the Minister of Finance is going to have a busy day.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Not any more than usual.


Lionel Chevrier: Can the minister indicate what the business may be on Wednesday?


Howard Charles Green: I am not sure, Mr. Speaker. We may go on with these items I have mentioned or we may take estimates.


Lionel Chevrier: Thank you.


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

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

Mr. Howard: 1.	How many inquiries under the Combines Investigation Act were instituted during the fiscal year ending March 31, 1958?
2.	How many of these were made (a) under section 7 of the act; (b) ordered by the director; (c) by order of the minister?
3.	In each case, what was the nature of the alleged offence and the names and addresses of the persons, organizations or corporations involved?
4.	Which of such inquiries (a) are still under investigation; (b) were discontinued; (c) referred to the restrictive trade practices commission; (d) resulted in prosecution or other legal proceedings being taken?
Answer by: Hon. E. D. Fulton (Minister of
Justice):
1.	Sixteen.
2.	(a) None; (b) fifteen such inquiries were commenced by the director pursuant to section 8(b) of the Combines Investigation Act which provides that the director shall cause an inquiry to be made whenever he has reason to believe that the sections of the anti-combines legislation have been, are being or are about to be violated. One such inquiry was commenced by the director pursuant to section 42 of the act which provides that the director may carry out an inquiry concerning the existence and effect of conditions or practices relating to any commodity which may be the subject of trade or commerce and which conditions or practices are related to monopolistic practices or restraint of trade; (c) none.
3.	Five of the inquiries relate to the merger, trust or monopoly provision (section 2(e)); four relate to combinations in restraint of trade; five relate to predatory or discriminatory pricing (section 412 of the Criminal
Questions
Code); one relates to resale price maintenance; and one relates to section 42 of the Combines Investigation Act above mentioned. It is not considered advisable or appropriate to publish further details relating to an inquiry unless and until a report has been made to and published by the minister.
4.(a) Fifteen; (b) one; (c) one; (d) none.


INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION ON NARCOTIC CONTROL
Mr. Martin (Essex East): 1.	Has the government received from or through the United Nations a copy of the proposed convention to replace all existing international treaties for the international control of narcotics?
2.	If so, was the Canadian government asked for comments on this proposed convention?
3.	What reply has been made by the government?
Answer by: Hon. Sidney E. Smith (Secretary
of State for External Affairs):
The draft single convention on narcotic drugs underwent some revision at the thirteenth session of the narcotics commission of the economic and social council which met in Geneva in May this year. The commission agreed that the text of the convention as revised should be forwarded to the economic and social council with a recommendation that it be referred to governments by the secretary general for comment and that a plenipotentiary conference be convened in 1960 for consideration of it.
The economic and social council is meeting at present in Geneva. If it approves the recommendations of the narcotics commission we can expect that the convention will be sent to governments for their comments shortly after the session which is due to end on August 2, 1958.
[The following item was passed in committee of supply];


POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT
[Stage Direction]
304. Departmental administration, $1,886,095.
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[Stage Direction]
Monday, July 28, 1958

[Stage Direction]
Mr. Heath Macquarrie (Queens) presented the first report of the standing committee on privileges and elections, and moved that the report be concurred in.
Motion agreed to.
Second report of standing committee on industrial relations.-Mr. Small.
Second report of standing committee on marine and fisheries.-Mr. English.