1958-08-05

[Stage Direction]
Fifth report of standing committee on veterans affairs.-Mr. Dinsdale.

Mr. G. K. Fraser (Peterborough):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the the seventh report of the standing committee on railways, canals and telegraph lines.


Mr. Erhart Regier (Burnaby-Coquitlam):: May we have this report read by the Clerk, Mr. Speaker?
And the Clerk having read the report:


Erhart Regier: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. My point of order is that this report is not in accordance with the findings of the committee. I refer you, Mr. Speaker, to the evidence as found in the minutes of proceedings and evidence, No. 6, of the standing committee on railways, canals and telegraph lines, for Tuesday, July 29. On page 231 of that report we find this:


The Chairman:: Shall clause 1 carry? We will have a show of hands.
The Clerk: Six in favour, eight against.
It seems to me, Mr. Speaker, that we should consider Beauchesne's fourth edition, citation 322, which says:
It is not competent for a committee to reconsider and reverse its own decision, hut if the house resolves that such reconsideration is necessary, the correct procedure is for the house-
House is spelled with a capital letter.
-to give the committee instructions which will enable it to consider the whole question again.
It is my contention, therefore, that you, Mr. Speaker, have one of two alternatives; either you declare this report out of order or you recommit this matter to the committee. There are many references which show this house has the power to recommit a problem to a committee, in which case the committee would then be clear of the decision reached at an earlier meeting.
This morning, Mr. Speaker, the committee met, and without any further ado and despite objections and warnings raised, simply reversed a decision it had made the other day. I should like to call your attention to
citation 325 of Beauchesne's fourth edition. The first paragraph says:
When the report does not contain any resolutions, recommendations or other propositions for consideration of the house, it does not appear that any further proceedings in reference to it as a report are necessary.
I should like to underline the words "are necessary".
Every session, select committees make reports of this description, containing a statement of facts, or of the evidence on the subject of inquiry; but as they do not contain any proposition which can be agreed to by the house, they are simply printed for the information of the members.
The next citation, namely citation 326, I believe is very clear when it says:
326. The report of a standing committee should be considered final only when it is adopted by the house, because, until then, the house can refer it back to the committee with instruction to amend it in any particular.
If you wish other evidence out of Bourinot or May I am willing to produce it, Mr. Speaker. It is for these reasons that I submit that this report should be declared out of order by Your Honour or should be recommitted to the committee.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: Mr. Speaker, I think a word of explanation here would be in order. The preamble of the bill, which had been carried, reads as follows:
Whereas Trans Mountain Oil Pipe Line Company has by its petition prayed that it be enacted as hereinafter set forth, and it is expedient to grant the prayer of the petition: Therefore Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows:-
It has thus been approved in principle. It would have been to negative this action by killing the first clause. There is only one clause in the bill. The feeling of the committee was that there had not been enough discussion. At that time a number of the members put their hands up indicating that they wished the discussion to continue. Also, Mr. Speaker, I understand that if there is any dispute of any kind or disagreement in a standing committee in a case of this kind, the members at that time should have immediately disagreed and asked that it be discussed further or that a vote be taken.


Mr. Speaker:: May I ask one question of the hon. member who presented the report. Was the report as presented approved by the committee?
3090	HOUSE OF
Committee on Railways, Canals, etc.


Gordon Knapman Fraser: Mr. Speaker, the report was approved this morning by the committee.


Erhart Regier: Further to the last point, Mr. Speaker, I should say that the decision of the committee in the first instance is evidenced by the minutes of proceedings and evidence which the chairman did not deny this morning when asked about it. The committee took a vote; it was a vote by count of the clerk, and clause 1 did not carry. However, the hon. member raised the point of immediacy. This is the first time this matter could be raised in this house, Mr. Speaker, as I think you will agree. However, even in the meeting of the committee, when apparently there was some confusion, there is noted at page 231 a comment or a question by the hon. member for Winnipeg South when he said:
Does the vote on clause 1 settle the matter or is it to go on indefinitely?
I contend that he answered himself when he said "or is it to go on indefinitely?" Definitely, according to the rules whereby a committee may not reverse its decision, it would have to go on indefinitely, for the meeting to continue. Then, following that, the hon. member for Winnipeg South said, "We should now adjourn." There appeared to have been a number of members of the committee who understood at that time that the matter had been settled and the bill had been defeated in committee. However, the chairman said, "I asked our clerk if we could go on and he said yes."
The hon. member for Peterborough now makes the point that the preamble was endorsed. From all my reading of the rules, when you endorse the preamble you have satisfied yourself that all the conditions necessary for the consideration of the bill have been met; that is the endorsation of the preamble. I have always taken it, and have so been advised by others, that clause 1, which in this case is the one and only clause and the operative clause, is in effect the principle of the bill. The preamble only assures to us that it is right and proper that the committee do now consider amending a certain act at this time.


Mr. Speaker:: I think the point of order may be in effect an appeal from the chairman's ruling. Perhaps the best course to follow, as this is not a matter of immediate urgency, would be to allow me to consider the point of order which has been raised and to hold the item, which would normally go to the committee of the whole, until it has been disposed of.


Erhart Regier: I thank you, Mr. Speaker; and while you are considering it would you also consider the gross discrepancy which 

appears as between the evidence on page 231, recording this vote, and the minutes which say at one stage that the chairman asked whether the clause would carry and, "on a show of hands the committee decided to continue the discussion".


Mr. John Drysdale (Burnaby-Richmond):: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if when you are considering this matter you could also consider the point that the vote on page 231 of the report was, in my contention, a nullity. 1 would refer you to page 354 of Beauchesne's fourth edition, where it says:
All questions before committees on private bills are decided by a majority of voices including the voice of the chairman; and whenever the voices are equal, the chairman has a second or casting vote.
Then under citation 491 on the same page it continues:
491. (1) The names of the members attending each committee are entered by the committee clerk in the minutes; and when a division takes place, the clerk takes down the names of the members, distinguishing on which side of the question they respectively vote; and such lists are to be given in, with the report, to the house.
There was merely a show of hands vote, Your Honour. Accordingly it is my contention that the vote was a nullity and that therefore we were in order in carrying on the meeting.


Erhart Regier: The second vote was exactly the same.


John Andrew W. Drysdale: And in addition, Your Honour, the matter was referred to the committee and I think that is the place where the appeal should be made; and I know Beauchesne does refer to that as the proper practice rather than appealing to the house. The committee unanimously decided that it was correct.


Mr. Speaker:: I will take the matter under consideration. It may be that it should be disposed of in the committee itself.



NATIONAL DEFENCE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. L. B. Pearson (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Secretary of State for External Affairs whether he cares to comment on the report in this morning's newspaper to the effect that the Minister of National Defence is in Washington to ask the United States to provide atomic weapons for R.C.A.F. aircraft co-operating with U.S. aircraft in North American aerial defence.


Hon. Sidney E. Smith (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I was in telephone conversation this morning with the Minister of National Defence, who is in Washington, and he stated very emphatically and without qualification, with respect to the report to which the Leader of the Opposition refers, that he did not at any time say that Canada plans to request nuclear warheads for the Canadian squadrons under NORAD.
In reply to a question which was addressed to him by a reporter-and this is to be found in the press reports-he said this might be an item at the first meeting of the joint consultative committee, the establishment of which was announced by the Prime Minister and President Eisenhower during President Eisenhower's visit to Ottawa.



FINANCE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Robert Muir (Cape Breton North and Victoria):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Finance, of which I have given him notice. Has the government given any consideration to recommendations of the Nova Scotia royal commission on rural credit, which in 1956 urged amalgamation of the Canadian farm loan board and the Nova Scotia land settlement board?


Hon. Donald M. Fleming (Minister of Finance):: I thank the hon. gentleman for having given me notice of his intention to ask this question. The report of the Nova Scotia royal commission on rural credit was received some time ago and this, along with all other pertinent material in relation to the whole subject of agricultural credit in Canada, is under study at the present time.



INQUIRY AS TO TABLING OF REPORT ON FLUORSPAR

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr.  C. W. Carier@Burin-Burgeo: May I
ask the Minister of Finance whether he has received the report of the tariff board on fluorspar and, if so, when the report will be tabled.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I have not yet received the report.



CANADIAN ECONOMIC OUTLOOK FOR 1958&quot;- INQUIRY AS TO TELEPHONE DISCUSSION WITH NEWSPAPERMAN

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Lester Bowles Pearson: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask a question of the Minister of Trade and
Inquiries of the Ministry Commerce. Did the minister discuss over the telephone with Mr. Bruce Phillips, Ottawa correspondent for the Southam Press, the report in the Toronto Star of August 1 with excerpts from ''The Canadian Economic Outlook for 1958"? If so, did he state (1) that his reaction to the leakage was violent and, (2) that an investigation or inquiry into that leakage would be instituted?


Mr. Speaker:: I understood the Minister of Trade and Commerce to have dealt with that precise question yesterday, dealing with the word "violent".


Lester Bowles Pearson: No, Mr. Speaker-


Some hon. Members:: Order.


Mr. Harkness:: It was dealt with yesterday.


Lester Bowles Pearson: No, it was not. With respect, Mr. Speaker, I submit that no question in regard to this point has yet been asked in this house.


Mr. Speaker:: May I ask the Minister of Trade and Commerce if he dealt with that yesterday?


Hon. Gordon Churchill (Minister of Trade and Commerce):: Mr. Speaker, I recollect being asked questions yesterday concerning both these matters. The only new aspect to the question is the introduction of the name of a member of the press gallery.


Lester Bowles Pearson: Having just studied Hansard, Mr. Speaker, I think it is correct to say that no question was asked yesterday with regard to an alleged discussion between a representative of the Southam Press and the Minister of Trade and Commerce, and it is that particular discussion which has been reported in the press about which I am inquiring.


Mr. Green:: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, this whole question was canvassed at considerable length yesterday and it developed into what was nothing more than a cross-examination or a fishing expedition.


Some hon. Members:: Order.


Howard Charles Green: Today the Leader of the Opposition comes into the house with a similar question in which he refers by name to a member of the press gallery, and he wants to conduct a further cross-examination in regard to this particular member of the gallery. If the hon. member can do that he can do the same thing with regard to every individual member of the press gallery. I submit that questions of this type are entirely out of order when we are considering orders of the day.

Inquiries of the Ministry


Lester Bowles Pearson: Mr. Speaker, on the point of order, a report has appeared in more than one newspaper in Canada under the byline of Mr. Bruce Phillips of Ottawa commenting on a conversation which he had with the Minister of Trade and Commerce on this particular matter, which is of very considerable importance, and this particular interview was not referred to by the minister.


Mr. Speaker:: May I say to the Leader of the Opposition that what I am concerned about is the propriety of the question, not the circumstances which gave rise to it. We did have an extended inquiry of the Minister of Trade and Commerce yesterday as to his conversations with various members of the press, and as the matter was in the course of his public responsibilities I allowed the question and a number of supplementary questions.
If the hon. member's question today is a new inquiry about a new situation or involving circumstances which were not inquired about yesterday, I would be disposed to permit it, but I am not disposed to allow the minister to be cross-examined by a great many supplementary questions. We are in the middle of a debate involving this whole matter, and it seems to me that hon. members will be able to air their views sufficiently there. It is only a search for limited information which can be permitted.
In so far as the question relates to the use of the word "violent" I rule it out of order, but I am disposed to let the other part of the question stand.


Lester Bowles Pearson: Perhaps I could rephrase my question in this form. Is the statement made in the Hamilton Spectator of August 2 and attributed to the minister, to the effect that he was conducting or had ordered to be conducted an investigation into the leakage of the report "The Canadian Economic Outlook, 1958", accurate?


Mr. Speaker:: Before the minister answers that question, may I say that I do not think a question of that type is permissible. If the hon. member will refer to Beauchesne he will find that he states quite positively that a question simply directed to the verification of a statement in the press is not in order. If the hon. member wished to ask the minister whether he had a conversation with the gentleman in question I would consider that a proper question, but not the one that he put.


Lester Bowles Pearson: Thank you for your suggestion, Mr. Speaker. I will now ask the minister whether he had a telephone conversation with Mr. Bruce Phillips of the Southam Press regarding this alleged leakage and an investigation that was being conducted into it?


Gordon Minto Churchill: Mr. Speaker, it was Mr. Bruce Phillips who, as I recollect, first informed me that there would be a story appearing in the Toronto Star.


Mr. Habel:: You knew about it.


An hon. Member:: Make what you can of that.


Hon. J. W. Pickersgill (Bonavisia-Twillingate):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask the Minister of Finance, since he admitted last night that the extracts in the Toronto Star were based on "The Canadian Economic Outlook for 1958", if the government will now table that document?


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Speaker-


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I think that question involves a subject before the house in debate at the moment, and the hon. member might defer his question until the debate is completed.


Donald Methuen Fleming: May I also point out on a point of order that the hon. member has quite improperly smuggled into what purports to be a question something which he alleges to be a statement of fact and which is not a statement of fact, never was and I think never will be.


John Whitney Pickersgill: I assume, Mr. Speaker, since the minister has raised a point of order, that you will hear me briefly on it. I would direct Your Honour's attention to yesterday's Hansard, page 3083, the second column, where the minister referred to "statements that have been distorted beyond recognition." He was referring to the speech of the Leader of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition only quoted two documents. One was the budget speech, and the minister took no exception to the quotations from the budget speech-


Donald Methuen Fleming: Who says that?


John Whitney Pickersgill: -so it is perfectly obvious that the statements that were distorted beyond recognition were from "The Canadian Economic Outlook". You cannot distort something you have not seen.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Gordon Minto Churchill: What silly nonsense!


Mr. Speaker:: Perhaps the hon. member is happy now that he has made his point but, as I said originally, it is simply argument which should take place in the debate.



LABOUR CONDITIONS

[Stage Direction]
Inquiries of the Ministry WATER RESOURCES

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. Paul Martin (Essex East):: Mr. Speaker, may I ask the Minister of Labour if in view [DOT]of the statements made by the premier of Manitoba as to the necessity of getting plans ready to meet the urgent unemployment situation, and if in view of the conference recently held between the Minister of Labour and his opposite numbers in the provinces and the representatives of labour and management, the minister is prepared to announce government policy regarding the recommendations of that conference; or is it a fact that the government has not yet given consideration to the recommendations made by the conference?


Hon. Michael Starr (Minister of Labour):: Mr. Speaker, I am not aware of any such statements made by the premier of Manitoba, but I did make inquiries regarding the report of this conference as late as this morning, and I was told that the final report would be ready toward the latter part of this week. After that the report will be presented to the cabinet for consideration, after which time, and only after which time, the government will be able to adopt any policy it sees fit in order to alleviate the situation.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Will the minister allow me to send him a report from the Winnipeg Tribune of Friday last dealing with the statement of the new Conservative premier of the province of Manitoba?


Michael Starr: I shall be very glad to read whatever the new Conservative premier of Manitoba had to say, because I know they will be words of wisdom.



NON-OPERATING RAILWAY UNIONS    INQUIRY AS TO CONCILIATION BOARD REPORT

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. Lionel Chevrier (Laurier):: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Minister of Labour and ask him if he could indicate to the house whether the railways or the non-operating personnel of the railways have advised him of their acceptance or rejection of the report of the conciliation board which was made public on Wednesday last?


Michael Starr: In answer to that question, Mr. Speaker, I must advise that I have not received any word on that report from either party.



CHICAGO DIVERSION


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. W. L. Houck (Niagara Falls):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to address a question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. I realize that the Chicago water steal is an old threat to the welfare of great lakes communities, but it has new urgency now because of the water needs of the St. Lawrence seaway and Niagara power. The increased diversion of lake Michigan water for Chicago sewage purposes will raise the cost of Niagara power and endanger the St. Lawrence seaway. I am wondering if the Secretary of State for External Affairs has made a protest to the United States government concerning the bill that would authorize the additional Chicago diversion.


Sidney Earle Smith: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for having given me notice of his question. Representations in writing were made to the United States state department in an aide memoire which appears as an annex to Hansard for August 2, 1958. I may add that this aide memoire was conveyed to the committee of the United States Senate considering the proposed legislation on diversion of water at Chicago. It was presented to that committee on July 28. The committee was made fully aware of our interest and concern in this matter.
In addition to the written representations there have been discussions taking place both in Washington and Ottawa between officials emphasizing the particular interest and deep concern of Canada and the joint interest of both countries in the development of power and in the success of the St. Lawrence seaway.



PUBLIC SERVICE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Frank Howard (Skeena):: Mr. Speaker, on July 25 the Minister of Finance replied to a question of mine respecting prevailing rate employees being allowed to go home early during the summer months under conditions of intense heat and humidity. I wonder if I could direct another question to the minister along that line and ask, in order that prevailing rate employees may be placed in the same category as permanently appointed civil servants, if the minister will undertake to ensure that if and when prevailing rate

Inquiries of the Ministry employees are sent home due to heat and humidity there be no deduction from their wages for such absences.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Speaker, I take it from my hon. friend's question that the employees in question are in the case he puts permitted to go home because of prevailing conditions of heat or humidity?


Frank Howard: That is right, Mr. Speaker. When prevailing rate employees are allowed to go home because of heat and humidity, as are civil servants in the same areas, will the minister undertake to ensure that there will be no deduction from their wages for such absences?


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Speaker, I think my answer on the previous occasion covered the point fully, but if there is any doubt I shall re-examine it and deal with it further.



NORTHERN AFFAIRS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. M. A. Hardie (Mackenzie River):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources. The minister will recall that during the discussions of the committee on mines, forests and waters I asked a question regarding the death of a number of Eskimos at Garry lake in the Northwest Territories, and was informed at that time that autopsies were being performed on the bodies. I wonder whether the minister could make a statement at this time, if he has received the report.


Hon. Alvin Hamilton (Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources):: Mr. Speaker, I would prefer to take that question as notice and give an answer tomorrow. I have seen a report, but I would rather look into the matter and answer tomorrow.



BRIDGES


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
William Limburg Houck: I should like to direct a question to the Secretary of State. At a meeting held in Niagara Falls last Friday it was decided that the go-ahead would be given to a new bridge over the Niagara river from Lewiston, New York, to Queenston, Ontario, joining the New York throughway to the Queen Elizabeth highway. Has a dominion charter been granted for this new bridge?


Hon. Henri Couriemanche (Secretary of Stale):: Mr. Speaker, I have no knowledge of the matter, but I will check with the officials of the department and answer later.



INQUIRY AS TO SUGGESTED CHANGES IN CHAMBER

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. D. M. Fisher (Port Arthur):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Finance in his role as one of the commissioners of internal economy of the House of Commons. Have the commissioners given consideration to the changes in the physical structure of this chamber suggested by the Prime Minister yesterday, and have they also given consideration to bringing the estimates covering the House of Commons before the house this session in order to provide an opportunity to debate the suggested changes?


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Speaker, I think there is a point involved here on which I should ask you to give some direction. According to my understanding of the situation, the proper source of information concerning the activities of the commissioners of internal economy is the Speaker of the house, who is chairman of that body, and not any individual member of it.


Douglas Mason Fisher: Mr. Speaker, from checking past records I would suggest that there is no clear definition, that sometimes the Speaker has spoken and at other times the Minister of Finance has been the spokesman with regard to such matters.


Mr. Speaker:: I would think the proper place to raise the matter which the hon. member has in mind would be on the legislation estimates when they are before the house.



IMMIGRATION


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
John Whitney Pickersgill: I wonder whether I could put a question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. Has the government received any application from the sons of freedom or any group of the sons of freedom for financial assistance to emigrate to Russia?


Hon. E. D. Fulton (Minister of Justice):: Perhaps the hon. gentleman would permit me to answer that question. News reports have been brought to my attention in which it is said that a statement has been issued

on behalf of the sons of freedom sect of the Doukhobors that they wish to return to Russia provided certain conditions are agreed to by governments, from which I take it they mean the government of British Columbia and the government of Canada.
I have not actually seen an authentic copy of the statement purported to have been made, but since the matter may be related to discussions which have been taking place between this government and the government of British Columbia concerning a solution of the Doukhobor problem, and in which I have taken part, I have communicated with the premier of the province indicating that it would be desirable if he could let us have his views and let us have an indication as to what the government of British Columbia desires to do with respect to the specific solution of the problem which has been under discussion between us.



EXTERNAL AFFAIRS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Nicholas Mandziuk (Marquette):: May
I be permitted to ask the Prime Minister a question. What is the present position of the proposed summit meeting?


Right Hon. J. G. Diefenbaker (Prime Minister):: Well, Mr. Speaker, the only information that is available today is contained in a message received by the President of the United States from Mr. Khrushchev, in which Mr. Khrushchev asks that an extraordinary meeting of the United Nations assembly be convened, and I think the wording is, for the purpose of considering the question of the withdrawal of United States troops from Lebanon and British troops from Jordan. He is asking for an extraordinary meeting, and has obviously changed his attitude in the last few days or certainly in the last two weeks.
I have no observations to make on this change, with the exception that it has all the appearances that, Mr. Khrushchev having himself been faced with the reference of the summit meeting to the security council which was available to him, is now seeking means to delay the meeting of the security council which was proposed with a view to alleviating the situation in the Middle East. It is a change of front on his part, and one that indicates a great detour from the course he has been requesting for the last several weeks.
Canadian Economic Outlook SUPPLY
The house resumed, from Monday, August 4, consideration of the motion of Mr. Fleming (Eglinton) for committee of supply, and the amendment thereto of Mr. Pearson.


&quot;CANADIAN ECONOMIC OUTLOOK&quot;
Donald Methuen Fleming: Last evening, Mr. Speaker, I had dealt in an introductory way with some of the corrections of which the Leader of the Opposition plainly indicated he needed to be reminded in relation to the budget speech. I had, I know, disappointed him by not being gloomy. Indeed, the whole burden of the complaint of the Leader of the Opposition was that the budget speech was not pessimistic enough; and to establish his case, such as it was, he proceeded to wrench out of context things that were said in the budget speech, and to ignore completely many things that have to be taken into account in gauging the whole tenor of the speech.
The hon. gentleman has had a good deal to say about quotations and about excerpts. Well, Mr. Speaker, it is notable that in dealing with the budget speech last night, and in all his references to it, the Leader of the Opposition did not make one direct quotation. If he is going to make references I should think when the record is plain for all to read the least that might be expected of him under such circumstances, when he is making the kind of complaint he is, is that he should make direct quotations. It is interesting, also, that in his selection of excerpts from the budget speech he did not follow any consecutive course. The selection and sequence of the excerpts taken from the budget speech are to be found in the Toronto Daily Star.


John Whitney Pickersgill: How do you know; you said you had not read it.


Donald Methuen Fleming: The hon. member opposite will sometime or other perhaps, Mr. Speaker, understand the meaning of plain language, but as yet he has given no indication of being able to do so.


John Whitney Pickersgill: May I address a question to the minister; I am rising on a question of privilege. The minister has called my accuracy into question. I ask him if he did not tell us yesterday he had not read the item in the Toronto Star?


Donald Methuen Fleming: I have taken careful note, Mr. Speaker, of the references to the budget speech in the speech of the Leader of the Opposition. I am going to

Canadian Economic Outlook deal with them in relation to the quotations ascribed to the budget speech in the Toronto Daily Star.


John Whitney Pickersgill: That does not answer my question.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Nobody could
answer such an utterly foolish and childish question.


John Whitney Pickersgill: It is quite simple; did you read it or did you not?


Donald Methuen Fleming: The Leader of the Opposition chose to make four references to the budget speech. I note, Mr. Speaker, in the references to the article to which he directed our attention in his speech last evening, that the excerpts he has referred to are those appearing in the Toronto Daily Star, and in that order. He did not even have enough originality to change the order. He did not have enough originality to turn to the budget speech itself. Apparently it is enough that reference is made in the Toronto Daily Star, so he starts from there.
I should like to say a word or two about those references to the budget speech. The first reference in which the Leader of the Opposition indulged is found on page 3076 of Hansard for August 4, 1958. This is an accurate one, because here he departed from the language of the Toronto Daily Star-


Lester Bowles Pearson: Which you did not read.


Donald Methuen Fleming: -and which I have had an opportunity of checking against the references to it by the hon. gentleman in his remarks last night. First he talked about my reference to the rapidly narrowing gap in the percentage of unemployed as compared with a year ago. Yes, the Leader of the Opposition was correct in that reference, but the Toronto Daily Star was not.
He referred farther down on page 3076, Mr. Speaker, to a statement I had made, and which appears on page 1235 of the budget speech, where I said that "there are hopeful signs that we have reached the end of the recent decline". The Leader of the Opposition correctly quoted that one.
The next one, however, provides an interesting contrast. This is the third reference of the Leader of the Opposition to the budget speech. Here his remarks are in rather striking contrast to those appearing in the Toronto Daily Star, which was his guide. What I said is, I think, not to be confused with what the Toronto Daily Star has said on this subject as attributed to the budget speech. What the Toronto Daily Star has said-and this will be a fair guide, I think, by which to test the accuracy of this article-is this:

Mr. Fleming forecast the 1958 gross national product-the value of goods and services produced -would be up two per cent over 1957, or $32 million.
What I said, Mr. Speaker, and this will be found at page 1235 of Hansard, is:
Assuming normal crops, stable prices and no untoward external events, I am basing my revenue forecasts on a gross national product of $32 billion, which is about 2 per cent above the level achieved in 1957.


John Whitney Pickersgill: That is exactly what is here.


Donald Methuen Fleming: The hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate says, "That is exactly what is here." "Here" must mean somewhere in the recesses of his mind, because it is not what the Toronto Daily Star said. You see, what the Toronto Daily Star did was to omit entirely the governing words where I said:
Assuming normal crops, stable prices and no untoward external events-
This is interesting, Mr. Speaker. I suppose one should not expect too much in the way of accuracy from the Toronto Daily Star, Mr. Speaker, but you will notice that the Toronto Daily Star says that a 2 per cent increase over 1957 is $32 million. It says:
-would be up two per cent over 1957, or $32 million.
What I said was that I was basing my revenue forecast on a gross national product of $32 billion, but apparently the difference between millions and billions makes little impression upon the mind of the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate.


John Whitney Pickersgill: The Leader of the Opposition did not say that.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I am drawing attention to the fact that the Leader of the Opposition has followed slavishly the selections from the Toronto Daily Star, and he has asked the house and the country to believe that the inferences which that paper seeks to draw with respect to the budget speech are correct when you see the sort of inaccuracies that appear in them now.


Lester Bowles Pearson: I rise on a point of order. The minister is challenging the accuracy of what I have said in relation to his budget speech and is basing his own remarks on something I am supposed to have said about the Toronto Star.
Perhaps I had better read exactly what I did say. It is to be found at page 3076 of Hansard. This is what I said, and I commend it to my hon. friend.
The Minister of Finance said, and I am sure he will remember this portion of his budget speech, that assuming normal crops, stable prices and no untoward external events he was basing his revenue

forecasts on a gross national product of $32 billion which is about 2 per cent above the level achieved in 1957.
There is no mention of the Toronto Daily Star in connection with that statement at all.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Reference to the Toronto Daily Star ran all through the Leader of the Opposition's speech and was the whole basis of his selections. The whole sequence of his speech was based on the Toronto Daily Star.


An hon. Member:: Be honest.


Donald Methuen Fleming: That is a point which is perfectly plain and unchallengeable on the part of the Leader of the Opposition. I am going to have something to say a little later about the nature of the emphasis of the Leader of the Opposition.
What is the basis of the budget forecast? Mr. Speaker, the basis of the budget forecast appearing in the budget speech of June 17 was advice based on conditions existing right up to the time of delivery of the budget speech. It was not based upon reviews of conditions in January. It was not based upon reviews of conditions in February. It was not based upon reviews of conditions in March. It was not based upon reviews of conditions in April. It was not based upon reviews of conditions in May. It was based upon-


An hon. Member:: Speculation.


Donald Methuen Fleming: -the most up to date indicators at the date of the delivery of the budget on June 17. When hon. gentlemen opposite want to restrict the government in its consideration of what are sound and reliable economic indicators to situations long before the budget date, I wish to tell the opposition-and I know it will bring them no joy-that the Canadian economy in the early days of this spring had showed very great strength. It was in the light of the conditions of strength that were shown in the Canadian economy in the spring right up until June 17, when the budget speech was delivered, that the budget was based upon those conditions and an up to the minute review of them.
That was the basis of the budget indications. That was the basis of the budget speech. Timing apparently means nothing to hon. gentlemen opposite as long as they can live in and create an atmosphere of gloom. These gloom mongers are doing no service to Canada. The strength of the Canadian economy shown this spring was a matter that brought no joy to members of the opposition. The strength which the economy showed served to abate a great deal of the uncertainty that had existed in earlier months, and to impart to
Canadian Economic Outlook the whole of Canadian business and Canadian activities of all kinds a more confident tone than had existed. Mr. Speaker, it was on this basis, the basis of the latest economic indicators with the best advice available in Canada to a minister of finance, that this budget was based and all its forecasts.
I took the responsibility with my colleagues of weighing those up to the minute indicators. I accepted them. I believed them. On them I based this budget. Those economic facts are there in the white paper for all to read, for all who will take the trouble to read; but we have not seen much indication on the part of hon. gentlemen opposite that they have taken the trouble to peruse the incontestable facts appearing in the white paper.
I have this further to say, Mr. Speaker. If there are any persons who might seek to indulge in the baseless suggestion that the Canadian people were not led along factual bases in the budget forecast in appraising the economic forces at work in Canada at the time, may I say that no such complaint lies in the mouth of hon. gentlemen opposite. They cannot complain that there was any misleading because they, in their budget speeches, showed that they took a divergent attitude.
I took the trouble yesterday to look up the record and to see again what the Leader of the Opposition himself had to say in his own speech on the budget. It will be found in Hansard of July 3, and I am referring particularly to pages 1902 and 1903. This is from a member of this house who now undertakes to say that there were divergences between the budget forecast and something else, and says evidently that he thinks the something else was sound and the budget forecast was wrong. This is supposed to be something new. The hon. gentleman would have the house and the country believe that he has found something new. It is a very old story, Mr. Speaker. It is a month old. It is stale in the mouth of the Leader of the Opposition. Here is what he said in his own speech on the budget, as reported at page 1902 of Hansard:
-I am quite sure that any observations I am going to make will result in my being accused of spreading doom and gloom-


Gordon Minto Churchill: Precisely.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Precisely; that is
correct. That is exactly the line the hon. gentleman followed then and is following now. He was not satisfied with the budget prediction that we were going to have a budget deficit this year of $648 million. He was going to improve on it. So he said the deficit will likely be over $1 billion. Those are his words as found at page 1902 of

Canadian Economic Outlook Hansard. Can anybody who said that a month ago complain that he was misled by the budget forecast?
Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, he talked yesterday about the gross national product and my forecast of a gross national product for this year of 1958 of $32 billion, on three given assumptions. But the hon. gentleman had this to say as reported at page 1902 of Hansard of July 3. Speaking of what he called the optimistic deficit figure, he said this:
-it is based on a forecast of a gross national product of $32 billion which is, as I have said, a 2 per cent increase, assuming there is no significant rise in prices and assuming normal crops. After what we have heard this afternoon about the situation in the west, that is a somewhat risky assumption to make.
You will see, Mr. Speaker, that on July 3 the Leader of the Opposition was a little hesitant about building any case on assumptions, but when August 4 came along he was so desperate, he was so hard put to it for something to say on the final supply motion of this session, that he based his whole case on the riskiest kinds of assumptions and on nothing else. Then his remarks continue:
However, that is his assumption.
There he refers to the assumption of the Minister of Finance, and then he continues:
He also leads us to believe that he is basing that estimate on the 1958 investment outlook, this assumption of a 2 per cent increase.
Then the hon. gentleman dwells on the subject of the gross national product and he continues, as recorded further down the page:

and it seems to me difficult to understand how the minister can reconcile a 2 per cent increase in our gross national product with a 3 per cent decrease in total capital outlay without any price rise and with agricultural prices remaining normal.
He proceeded later on, after his review, to sum it up in these words:
[DOT]-which justified, I think, our caution in this regard.
Then he went on to say the following:
That figure-
The figure he referred to was the figure on the gross national product of Canada published by the dominion bureau of statistics, and listen to this, Mr. Speaker, if you will, in relation to a man and coming from the mouth of a man who is an hon. member of this house who has said there is something hidden which this house ought to have:
The most recent piece of evidence we have-and the minister must surely be acquainted with it- is the figure published by the dominion bureau of statistics on the gross national product for the first quarter of 1958. That figure is $31.7 billion which, seasonally adjusted at annual rates, shows
[Mr. Fleming (Eglinton).J

an increase of only 0.7 per cent over the comparable adjusted figure for the last quarter of 1957.
Yet in his speech yesterday the Leader of the Opposition tried to raise a hue and cry by saying that the gross national product estimated by the Minister of Finance at $32 billion with an increase of 2 per cent over 1957 had misled the country, because some other source had said the increase was going to be only 0.7 per cent. This was a brand new discovery. The Minister of Finance had misled the country because he had not given the figure of 0.7 per cent. One month ago the same figure of 0.7 per cent was put on record before the final vote was taken, and before the house resolved itself into committee of ways and means on the budget resolutions.


Lester Bowles Pearson: From a different source.


Donald Methuen Fleming: This was something which was put before the house. The 0.7 per cent was based upon a government record issued by the dominion bureau of statistics.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Whose estimates were better than yours.


Donald Methuen Fleming: This just illustrates how really silly and misleading was the case which the Leader of the Opposition tried to make out in this house last night. It was misleading because he tried to make it appear that something had been hidden; he tried to make it appear that he had discovered something new, something which the government should be called upon to answer. Mr. Speaker, this was answered in the course of the budget debate; this was all put before the house, and the house passed its judgment on that kind of statement on that very night in question, July 3, following the speech of the Leader of the Opposition.
Therefore let there be an end to this kind of hollow pretence, to this sham play on the part of the Leader of the Opposition. He talked last night about hypocrisy, which he attributed to a right hon. member of this house, but I would say to him that he is the last person in this house, in view of his performance last night, who should be talking about hypocrisy on the part of any other hon. member.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Lester Bowles Pearson: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, the hon. member has accused me of hypocrisy on the basis that I used a figure in my budget debate speech from a report which indicated that the increase in the gross national product had been merely 0.7 per cent, and therefore, having said last night that this report had been hidden, I had been

hypocritical. The report I was talking about, or the excerpts from the report to which I referred last night, was an entirely different report from that from the Department of Trade and Commerce, which had no relationship whatsoever to the first report. It happened, however, to come to the same conclusion as this Department of Trade and Commerce report, namely that the increase was 0.7 per cent. These are two separate and distinct reports and one had no relation to the other, which the minister of course knows.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I think it is not amiss for me to point out that in speaking as he did last night the Leader of the Opposition, unless he has completely forgotten the facts and unless he has completely forgotten his own argument on July 3, could not have failed to mislead the house if he had succeeded in making the house believe that there was something new, something hidden, something heinous about there having been no disclosure of the figure of 0.7 per cent. The dominion bureau of statistics put out that figure and the Leader of the Opposition was aware of it and put it on the record in this house away back on July 3. If what has been said by the Leader of the Opposition was not hypocrisy, then I think the hon. gentleman will have to amend his conceptions and his definitions.
Something was said by the Leader of the Opposition last night about unemployment figures and forecasts, as though we had asked the house to believe that unemployment in Canada was going to follow some figure we had put before the house. In the budget speech I did not put a figure before the house as to what unemployment was going to be. There cannot be any suggestion that this house was misled by any figure given; far from it. But listen, Mr. Speaker, to what the Leader of the Opposition said on this subject on July 3 and match it with that bogus display we witnessed here last night, when he tried to make it appear that the country had been misled and that unemployment is going to be even more severe this year than indicated in the budget forecast. Did he accept the estimate in the forecast? This is what the hon. gentleman had to say as recorded at page 1902:
Mr. Speaker, it is impossible for us to accept this optimistic conclusion of the minister because the evidence seems to us to point in the other direction, and if that is the case surely the minister should be taking this into consideration in the plans and policies which he must be preparing at the present time.
But even if we assumed an increase of 2 per cent in gross national product in 1958, what would be the employment outlook for the current year? The hon. member for Essex East-
Canadian Economic Outlook
And we know that hon. member is probably the least reliable guesser on the extent of unemployment in Canada-
-made his projection this afternoon, and I think, without going into the details he went into, that if there is this 2 per cent increase in the gross national product and if there is the same ratio between that figure and employment which has existed over recent years, it would mean we would have an increase of about 1 per cent in employment in this country in 1958 as compared with 1957. If there is an addition to the labour force of 2.5 per cent we would have considerably more unemployment next year than last year, and the peak figure would be far too high. I am willing to leave it at that.
The Leader of the Opposition last night tried to make it appear that the house had been misled by statements and forecasts appearing in the budget speech. These are his own words before the close of his budget speech. He challenged these budget forecasts, so how can he now pretend, even to himself, that there was anything in this budget speech by which anyone was misled? He dismissed that subject with a passing reference to the mathematics of the hon. member for Essex East and this additional sentence:
The implications with regard to unemployment are serious, but the implications with regard to inflation are just as serious.
The hon. gentleman then went on to deal with the dangers of inflation in, I think, somewhat the same terms as I had dealt with them in my budget speech, and all this adds up to is this-


John Whitney Pickersgill: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, are we debating the budget all over again or are we debating an amendment of my hon. friend the Leader of the Opposition?


Mr. Speaker:: That is not an easy question to answer. The amendment which was moved at the end of the address by the Leader of the Opposition was much more restrictive in character than the Leader of the Opposition's own remarks, and in his address he dealt with much the same subject matter as the Minister of Finance is dealing with, so I do not think I should restrict him in his reply.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Speaker, may I complete this portion of my remarks with the conclusion that there can be no complaint from hon. gentlemen opposite that they were misled by anything in the budget forecast, because it is plainly apparent from their own remarks that they did not accept them and that they disagreed then with the budget forecast.


John Whitney Pickersgill: But the public was misled.

Canadian Economic Outlook


Donald Methuen Fleming: And there is no shadow of substance in their statement now that something has been discovered today, or within the last four or five days, which throws doubt on the budget forecast. They threw every possible doubt on those budget forecasts before the conclusion of the budget debate, and the house has passed its judgment on those doubts in the decision that was taken in the vote on July 3.
It was on the basis of remarks like these that the Leader of the Opposition last night proceeded to draw some extraordinary conclusions as to the way in which he alleged the whole fabric of government had been shaken. At page 3075 of Hansard he undertook to say that "economic forecasting by officials in Canada, to which Canadian governments have become accustomed and upon which they have come to rely, has now for all practical purposes been weakened and prejudiced".
By what authority does the Leader of the Opposition make a statement of that kind? I say to him that that statement has not one single tittle or scintilla of truth in it. Nothing has been prejudiced in the relations between the government's officers in the civil service and the government. But the hon. gentleman last night did everything that lay within his power to create that kind of condition between the government and the civil service of which he complained. If there is anything that is prejudiced in this debate or in public discussion of recent days in relation to the position of the civil servants in this matter it is attributable to, and lies at the doorstep of, the Leader of the Opposition. Nothing has happened to come between the government and its advisers in the civil service, and to suggest that there has been some prejudice created by the course of action of the government is to deny the facts and to substitute for facts something that is really not true.


John Whitney Pickersgill: May I ask the minister a question. Is it not true that since January 20 the deputy minister of trade and commerce has resigned?


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Speaker, I should not have thought the hon. gentleman would have sought to make political capital by descending to that kind of remark in a situation of this sort. The deputy minister of trade and commerce exercised the right of any member of the civil service to resign in order to take up a position outside the civil service. Did no deputy minister resign during the regime of hon. gentlemen opposite? Of course they did.


Lionel Chevrier: Not under those circumstances.


Donald Methuen Fleming: What circumstances is the hon. member for Laurier talking about?


Lionel Chevrier: If I get an opportunity to speak this afternoon I will indicate to you in what circumstances.


Lester Bowles Pearson: You just stop talking.


Donald Methuen Fleming: The Leader of the Opposition is endeavouring to enforce closure-


An hon. Member:: But we have no flag.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I do not believe I am subject to his command with regard to the speech I make. I did not pretend in the first place that what I was going to say was going to please him, and if he expects that the balance of my remarks are intended to have that effect let me disabuse his mind at once. The Leader of the Opposition finished up last night, before he proceeded to give birth to this misshapen amendment, by summarizing his conclusion in the following words at page 3077 of Hansard-


An hon. Member:: Talk it out, Don.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I am sure that no amount of talk or intelligence around here would be able to pierce the outer covering of the hon. member's cranium.


An hon. Member:: Oh.


Mr. Speaker:: May I suggest to the house that there are too many collateral debates going on. If hon. members would not interrupt, and if the hon. member who has the floor would not pay any attention to interruptions, we could get on faster.


Donald Methuen Fleming: This was the conclusion reached by the Leader of the Opposition last night as reported at page 3077 of Hansard; "The entire system of economic reporting has now been prejudiced. That, Mr. Speaker, is the main burden of our attack on the government in this matter".


John Whitney Pickersgill: Hear, hear.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Those were heroic words, Mr. Speaker, but there is not a word of truth in them. The government has access on the frankest terms, on terms of mutual confidence, to the views of the advisers in the government service, and it was on the basis of that kind of relationship that the budget was assembled, the government taking full responsibility for the budget proposals, the content of the budget speech, and the budget forecasts upon which the budget is based. That budget was delivered in the house some

six weeks ago but, Mr. Speaker, we believe that it it was given again now it would be in almost identical terms.


Lester Bowles Pearson: It would take longer the second time.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Perhaps if hon. members opposite had paid some attention to it the first time and did not, as they have since attempted to do, distort it and misrepresent it and wrench things out of context and give a false impression of the budget speech, it would not have been necessary to remind them of the facts in this regard in the course of my remarks yesterday and this afternoon.
The true test of this budget forecast is, I am sure, going to be the test of time itself. That will be the test, taking due account of all the factors which enter into the budget speech and the budget forecasts. I am going to ask the house simply to consider what has happened in this respect since the 17th day of June. Let the house measure the accuracy of the budget forecasts by what has happened at any rate since the 17th day of June, when the budget was delivered. Here let me be brief. Let us take a few of the more important economic indicators of interest to all Canadians.
On July 31 the crop year closed in Canada. Our marketings of wheat in this country are of tremendous importance to the wellbeing of the whole Canadian economy. In the crop year ended July 31, 1958, Canada's exports of wheat totalled 312 million bushels. The export figure for the previous year, the crop year ended July 31, 1957, was 50 million bushels less than the total exported during *this most recent crop year.


Mr. Argue:: What about the prices?


Lester Bowles Pearson: Gifts and loans did it.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Speaker, is the Leader of the Opposition now finding fault with the fact that to assist sister nations of the commonwealth we extended the scope of the Colombo plan aid in this respect? We have extended loans to India to help her buy Canadian wheat to assist in meeting famine conditions in that country. Is that a matter of which the hon. member wants to make fun now?


Lester Bowles Pearson: We have already approved of that.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Then why does the Leader of the Opposition now try to play this snivelling partisan game in this house?


John Whitney Pickersgill: Why do you distort the
statistics?
Canadian Economic Outlook


Hazen Robert Argue: What about the price of wheat in that year?


Howard Charles Green: One at a time.


Mr. Robichaud:: Why not talk about the amendment that is before us?


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Speaker, the price reflects the very great efforts on the part of the Canadian wheat board and the Minister of Trade and Commerce to get for Canadian wheat the best price for wheat in all the world.


Hazen Robert Argue: The lowest in ten years, and you should pay a deficiency payment.


Donald Methuen Fleming: The best price that is being paid for wheat in all the world.


Hazen Robert Argue: That is not true. That statement is not true.


Donald Methuen Fleming: It is true. The best price that is being paid in all the world where there is a free market.


Hazen Robert Argue: That is well qualified now.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Does the hon. member not believe in free markets?


Hazen Robert Argue: No, I believe-


Donald Methuen Fleming: Evidently he does not.


Hazen Robert Argue: I believe in the Canadian wheat board and not in free markets.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Have I the permission of the hon. member for Assiniboia to continue my speech? I thank him very much. The hon. member for Assiniboia nods his head, so I take it he is agreeable to my continuing my speech.


Lionel Chevrier: Don't be so arrogant.


Hazen Robert Argue: You are up to 100 minutes now.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Perhaps I misunderstood the hon. member's gesture. When the hon. member for Assiniboia nodded his head I thought he had given me permission to proceed.


Hazen Robert Argue: Don't be so condescending.


Hédard-J. Robichaud: Are you trying to establish a marathon record?


Donald Methuen Fleming: The Leader of the Opposition last night, referring to the budget speech, had something to say as well about the cost of living, as found at page 3077. He chose to make reference to the Toronto Daily Star, and he said I had said that the cost of living would remain stable. Let us look at what I said and then let us examine

Canadian Economic Outlook
the facts. In the budget speech on June 17 as recorded at page 1234 of Hansard I said:
In the absence of immediate inflationary pressures I would not expect any general increase in prices during the balance of 1958. But this is not something we can take for granted.
You see, Mr. Speaker, this is the part the Leader of the Opposition completely omitted and glossed over. I continue:
But this is not something we can take for granted. It is the duty of all groups and classes in our society to ensure that the prospects for a sound recovery are not dimmed by a spiralling of costs or that efforts to stimulate recovery do not lend strength to a new inflation. Inflation remains a very real danger against which we must remain on guard.
What are the facts since the 17th day of June? Between May and June the consumer price index in this country remained unchanged, and between June and July the consumer price index in this country dropped four tenths of a point from 125.1 to 124.7. Is the government to be condemned on that score?


Lester Bowles Pearson: No.


Donald Methuen Fleming: No. And as for the
wholesale price index, Mr. Speaker, if the Leader of the Opposition will refer to the daily bulletin of the dominion bureau of statistics for July 4 he will find there that the wholesale price index has dropped also.
But we attach great importance in this country to the volume of our exports. What is the record of exports from this country since June 17? In the first half of the year 1958 Canada's exports reached an all-time record for the first half of any year, an all-time record. Does this sound like leading the Canadian people to accept an altogether too optimistic view of Canada's prospects when we budgeted on the basis of an increase of 2 per cent in the gross national product? Exports of Canadian goods in the first six months of 1958 were valued at $2,338 million, 2.2 per cent higher than in the corresponding period of 1957.
In weighing the extent of this increase it is well to bear in mind that the increase in the second quarter of 1958 grew faster than in the first quarter. In the second quarter of 1958 Canadian exports increased by about 7 per cent in value compared to that quarter of 1957 and thus went up at a sharper rate than in the first six months as a whole. I think those are significant statistics.
I do not say, however, that everything has gone up. Here is the index of industrial production. The latest figure is for May 1958. The seasonally adjusted figures on the basis that the period from 1935 to 1939 equals 100 are as follows: The figure for May, 1958 was

278.7 as compared with a figure in January, 1958 of 275.8 and a figure in May, 1957 of 286.7. Labour income seasonally adjusted and expressed in millions of dollars showed the following figures. The latest figure is for April, 1958, $1,304 million. In January, 1958 it was $1,283 million. In April, 1957 it was $1,263 million.
Let us examine the average hours worked per week in manufacturing, seasonally adjusted. The figures are as follows: May, 1958, 40.3; January, 1958, 39.5; May, 1957, 40.6. With respect to manufacturers' shipments in Canada the figures released by the dominion bureau of statistics on July 10 show that in the first five months of 1958 our figure was within 3 per cent of the figure in the same period of 1957.
Let us look at housing, Mr. Speaker. The figures on housing construction in Canada, for those who are prepared to take a realistic and not just a pessimistic, gloomy view like hon. members opposite, are indeed gratifying. The outlook is for the construction in Canada in 1958 of a record total of 150,000 housing units. The previous record was in 1955, 138,000 units. In 1956 there were 127,000 units and in 1957, 122,000 units.
In June, when there was a marked increase in employment in Canada, a strong advance occurred in forestry and construction. It accounted for about 60 per cent of the employment gain. Construction employment reached almost 500,000, about 30,000 higher than a year earlier. The recovery in the housing industry has been largely stimulated by a record-breaking house building program. The year to year increase in new housing units started was smaller in June than in preceding months. The six-month total, however, is 66 per cent higher than the comparable 1957 figure. I am sure these figures are much too favourable to bring any comfort to hon. gentlemen opposite.
There is a very interesting report in this morning's issue of the Montreal Gazette which reads as follows.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Page 1.


Donald Methuen Fleming: It is headed "Construction at Record High, Up 21.2 Per Cent in first seven months". The first paragraph in this article reads as follows:
Another record has been established by Canada's surging construction industry. For the first time the total cumulative dollar volume of construction contract awards for the first seven months has passed the $2 billion mark.
Figures based on information collected by Hugh C. MacLean Building Reports show that the 1958 seven-month cumulative total is $2,000,887,900. This is an increase of $360,672,400 or 21.2 per cent over the same period in 1957, and $5,295,800 above the

figure for 1956, the previous record year. This trend in dollar volume has now been maintained for the past four months of 1958.
These are figures which I am sure will bring satisfaction to all Canadians who do not take a jaundiced, political, partisan view of their country's outlook. They will not, of course, bring comfort to hon. members opposite. This gratifying increase points to a record construction program which will ensure a high level of employment in both the construction industry and in the industries supplying building materials.
The function of the administration in reference to the National Housing Act is worthy of comment. N.H.A. loan requests received during the first 30 weeks of 1958 compared with 1957 are as follows: 1957, the first 30 weeks, 15,562, and the first 30 weeks of 1958, 28,264. Yet we are asked to believe that the outlook for Canadians is gloomy.
One could go on, Mr. Speaker. I think I might make mention of the latest employment figures. The latest figures are those as of June 21 issued on July 21. These are the official figures compiled jointly by the Department of Labour and the dominion bureau of statistics. They show that on June 21 the number of Canadians who had jobs was 5,794,000. That figure was an increase of 129,000 over the figure for one month earlier and it is only 40,000 less than the figure of one year earlier.
These are significant figures, Mr. Speaker. They are not to be brushed aside after the fashion of hon. members opposite. If they had referred to the actual release to which I have referred they would have seen that the estimated number of persons without jobs and seeking employment decreased by 46,000 during the month to 320,000, representing 5.2 per cent of the labour force compared with 2.7 per cent a year earlier. The number of persons with jobs who were laid off for the full week declined another 4,000 to 15,000. These figures indicating the decrease in unemployment are, I think, figures that fully bear out what I had to say in the budget speech when I said, as found on page 1233:
Once again the latest figures are encouraging, showing a rapidly narrowing gap in the percentage of unemployed as compared with a year ago.
On June 21 the gap was down to 40,000 out of a total labour force of approximately six million.
So, Mr. Speaker, the government is quite prepared to stand by the budget. The government is quite prepared to stand by the forecasts upon which the budget was based. The government takes its responsibility in doing so. The government had access to the best and very latest advice in the country available at that date.
Canadian Economic Outlook
The budget was not born in an attitude of black pessimism. It was not born, on the other hand, of any Pollyanna attitude of disregarding the existence of facts in the economy that are unfavourable. The budget was based upon a realistic and factual appraisal of all of the factors at work in the Canadian economy at June 17, whether favourable or unfavourable, and that basis of budget writing has not been called into question by anything that has been said in the house by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Pearson). In writing budgets we do not intend to follow the example of hon. gentlemen opposite who glory in gloom and who are unhappy in the face of the strength of the Canadian economy.
We witnessed a demagogic display last evening on the part of the Leader of the Opposition put on for what were thought to be the partisan interests of the official opposition. Evidently it did not matter to him that he might in the course of his irresponsible remarks be doing damage to Canada's credit or shaking confidence on the part of Canadians, if there are any who pay any attention to anything that the Leader of the Opposition says. After what he said last night it is perfectly clear to all Canadians that the opposition does not want improvement in economic conditions in Canada. What they want is a condition of affairs under which they can derive some partisan advantage, and so if there is not room for gloom, if there is not occasion for gloom, they are not going to be happy unless they create gloom.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Who is talking demagogically now?


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Speaker, the Canadian people are realistic people. They look facts in the face, not just some of the facts but all of the facts-


John Whitney Pickersgill: When they are allowed to.


Donald Methuen Fleming: -and the budget was based upon that Canadian approach to problems. It looked all of the conditions in the face, whether favourable or unfavourable.


Lester Bowles Pearson: Except this report.


Donald Methuen Fleming: The proposals to the house in the budget are based upon a realistic review and estimate of all the factors at work in the Canadian economy and, Mr. Speaker, we are quite content to be judged by the test of time on the accuracy and fairness of those budget forecasts.


Hazen Robert Argue: Mr. Speaker, we have listened to the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fleming) make a speech that took almost two hours, a lengthy speech with a

Canadian Economic Outlook great deal of repetition in which the minister failed entirely to deal with the point under debate, namely-


Lionel Chevrier: Hear, hear.


Hazen Robert Argue: -whether or not excerpts in the Toronto Star are from a report on Canada's economic prospects for 1958.


Donald Methuen Fleming: That is not the
amendment at all.


Hazen Robert Argue: That is what the debate is about and that is what members have been talking about. Nevertheless the Minister of Finance spent two hours talking and succeeded in avoiding the question. I think he should be awarded some kind of prize or laurels by the Prime Minister (Mr. Diefen-baker) because in my opinion it is not by accident that the Minister of Finance entered the debate at the time he did. He has a reputation of being the most longwinded speaker in the house and the government knew that all it had to do was to put up the Minister of Finance and he would warm over the budget.


Edmund Davie Fulton: He is not half as boring as you are.


Hazen Robert Argue: He quoted it at great length last night with one eye on the budget and one eye on the clock, never asking himself whether or not long quotations from a previous debate were in order.


An hon. Member:: A new form of closure.


Hazen Robert Argue: But who are the ministers mainly involved? I suggest there are two, the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Churchill) and the Prime Minister. Oh, how the Prime Minister ridiculed the former government for having hidden this very report of one year earlier and accused them of misleading the Canadian public. There is no doubt that that hidden report, that secret document, the suppression of which was made to appear a nefarious act on the part of the former government, had something to do with the huge majority which the government has and the very small numbers in the opposition.
Oh, what a wonderful thing from the standpoint of the government that the election is over and they do not have to face the Canadian people now to be confronted with having done the very thing that they condemned the former government for having done-


Mr. Graffiey:: Have you seen the recent Gallup polls?


Hazen Robert Argue: -and having done it under circumstances where parts of the report have already appeared in the press undenied by the government in spite of the castigation of
tMr. Argue.l
the former government by the Prime Minister for the attitude it had taken. We want to hear in this debate from the Minister of Trade and Commerce who is responsible for this report. I should like to hear from the Prime Minister. I notice that the Prime Minister has a very excellent way from his standpoint of dealing with debates.
When he thinks he has the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Pearson) over a barrel, as soon as the Leader of the Opposition sits down the Prime Minister rises and attacks, and with what glee. But if the Prime Minister is not certain of his ground, if he needs time to do some homework, if he is on the spot, he puts forward the Minister of Finance who will talk louder and longer on any subject than any other member of the cabinet is able to do. It is no wonder to me we have not heard from the Minister of Trade and Commerce.


Gordon Minto Churchill: You will.


Hazen Robert Argue: If any cabinet minister was ever in a mess, it is this cabinet minister. He is in trouble not only in the house-


Edmund Davie Fulton: The longer you talk, the less trouble he is in.


Hazen Robert Argue: We like to hear from the Minister of Justice (Mr. Fulton) too. He is the smart boy who is not allowed to get into debates very often. He is deliberately kept at the far end of the cabinet benches in this house because there is not going to be any competition with the chosen few. However, when there is any difficulty, he moves up. He sits beside the Minister of Trade and Commerce so he can whisper fine, legal and technical points in his ear and keep the Minister of Trade and Commerce, if possible, from putting his foot in it, from getting into trouble. On page 3064 of Hansard for yesterday, the minister had this to say about the report:
Mr. Speaker, there is nothing in the Toronto Star story to indicate what report of the various reports that I receive was being referred to.
Here is what the Toronto Daily Star says in part:
The trade and commerce department's hitherto secret report on Canada's 1958 economic prospects-
Does that identify anything?
-is considerably more pessimistic than the budget forecast of Hon. Donald Fleming, finance minister.
The Minister of Trade and Commerce does not know what the report is on Canada's 1958 economic prospects. He said there is nothing in the article to identify the report.
Then, in the next paragraph the Toronto Daily Star reporter, Mark Harrison, has this to say:
The report-which the government has consistently refused to table in the House of Commons-

Does that identify the report? Has it anything to do with the statement of the Prime Minister when he would not allow the motion of the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate (Mr. Pickersgill) to pass? But, no, the Minister of Trade and Commerce has his head in the sand. He said there is nothing in this article to identify the report. Then, the article goes on:
The report, made annually to the government by Its top economic advisers,-
That does not identify the report; not at all.
-Is normally one of the main factors upon which the finance minister bases his budget calculations.
Last spring, prior to the election, the Conservatives accused the Liberals of ignoring the 1957 version of the report in framing the budget for that year.
The Minister of Trade and Commerce says there is nothing in the Toronto Star article to identify the report. Who does he think he is trying to kid? Then, he goes on to say that he could not say whether the excerpts, as produced in the Toronto Star, came from this report. The minister did not know to what it referred, so he did not make any inquiries at all. Whenever we have talked about the report it has sometimes been called a report, sometimes an outlook, sometimes prospects. There is no hard and fast description of this report, apparently, and even the Minister of Trade and Commerce does not think so because on July 18, at page 2411 of Hansard, the minister said this:
The economic survey for 1958 will be studied very carefully, and has been studied very carefully, and the government, in its judgment, will act in accordance with that report, as we thought the former government should have done.
The Minister of Trade and Commerce identifies the report very loosely as the economic survey. Yet, he says there is nothing in the Toronto Star story that would indicate to him what the report is. In order to permit the Minister of Trade and Commerce to do a little homework, may I say that I have in my hand Sessional Paper No. 227, Monday, January 20, 1958, which, without any evidence to the contrary, I take is the 1957 version of the document under discussion. On the first page under the heading "Foreword", we find this:
This report continues the regular series of statements on the economic outlook prepared for the use of the federal ministers and civil servants concerned. The purpose of the report is to appraise the influences operating in the economy as they are likely to affect the general level of economic activity in 1957. This report was finalized before the presentation of the federal budget.
I would have thought that was sufficient identification to suggest to the minister that the Toronto Star was talking about this report, its 1958 version. Does the Minister of Trade and Commerce really think that the
57071-3-196
Canadian Economic Outlook members of this house will agree with him, will take at face value his statement that there is nothing in the Toronto Star story to indicate to which of the various reports he receives reference is being made? The very fact the minister makes this statement, the very fact the Minister of Finance has failed to deal with this report, demonstrates to me that the evidence that is accumulating proves the Toronto Star was on the right track; that it had the report and the excerpts, in general, if not in toto, are correct.
To what great lengths has the Minister of Trade and Commerce gone to deny subsequent reports in the press of interviews with him. Bruce Phillips' report is apparently inaccurate, but he talked to the minister. It would be nice to hear from the minister about this report. Yesterday the minister said the story by Richard Jackson in the Ottawa Journal was without foundation. He is a very excellent and competent reporter, but his story is again without foundation. Then, Peter Dempson, who has been in the press gallery for years, his story in the Toronto Telegram is without foundation. The Minister of Trade and Commerce says that Clark Davey's story in the Globe and Mail is without foundation. The Minister of Finance says that if it is in the Toronto Star, it is suspect. It is a bad newspaper because it supports the Liberals. But he cannot say that about the Globe and Mail, and I agree it is a fair newspaper.


Gordon Minto Churchill: On a point of order; may I interrupt at this point?


Hédard-J. Robichaud: Oh, he is speaking.


Gordon Minto Churchill: The hon. member is, by inference, casting doubt on my statement made at the opening of the house yesterday.


Mr. Speaker:: I think what the minister says is correct. The hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Argue) should be careful not to question the statement made by the Minister of Trade and Commerce in his place yesterday, on a subject within his knowledge.


Hazen Robert Argue: I am not questioning what the Minister of Trade and Commerce said. I am saying that on one side we have what the minister says, and on the other side we have the statements of four important pressmen.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Do not forget Mr. Mackie.


Mr. Speaker:: May I ask the hon. member if he does not believe that that very comparison is a challenging of the statement made by the minister?


Hazen Robert Argue: We have to accept the statement of the Minister of Trade and Commerce; the minister who is known as the minister
3106	HOUSE OF
Canadian Economic Outlook without foundation. What has been the attitude of the government in recent weeks so far as the press is concerned? One cabinet minister will stand up and say the press is all wrong. There were 20 at an interview, but they are mistaken. Mr. Paul Henri Spaak at a press conference says that NORAD is not a part of NATO. But the press are all wrong; he did not say it.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Order.


Hazen Robert Argue: Somehow or other it is incorrect. May I say that I am prepared to accept the words of the Minister of Trade and Commerce.


Gordon Minto Churchill: Thank you very much for your change of attitude.


Hazen Robert Argue: That is part of the rules of this house. But I would suggest that there should be a meeting, in the light of all these events that have taken place, of the standing committee on privileges and elections.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. If the hon. member is about to say what he appears to be leading up to, I suggest that if he wants to make a motion to question anything-


Edmund Davie Fulton: Let him have the courage to make a motion of privilege.


Mr. Speaker:: -in the conduct of the minister, that is all right; but as long as the minister's statement stands in the house, I ask him not to skirt around it and question it and challenge it. He knows that is contrary to the practice of this house.


Hazen Robert Argue: Mr. Speaker, I should be very happy to consider a substantive motion if I knew of some way of getting it on the order paper. But since notices of motions will disappear four days from now and have no validity after the guillotine motion of yesterday, it is impossible for me to move such a substantive motion. But what I was going to suggest was not that we bring the Minister of Trade and Commerce to such a committee but that we should bring to the committee the members of the press gallery who have been referred to in order to see what has happened to them that they have forsaken-


Donald Methuen Fleming: Order.


Howard Charles Green: Mr. Speaker, you have already pointed out to the hon. member that he should not follow up this line of argument.


An hon. Member:: Stop whining.


Howard Charles Green: I suggest that if the hon. member will not follow your ruling, Mr. Speaker, he should sit down and keep quiet.


John Whitney Pickersgill: More closure.


Howard Charles Green: He had no right to do what he is doing. This matter was dealt with yesterday on a question of privilege and he is trying to get around what was done yesterday.


Lester Bowles Pearson: I rise on a point of order. The Minister of Finance has just spoken for two hours. During most of that time he could hardly have got farther away from the amendment than he did. During that time he challenged the patriotism, the veracity and everything else of myself and other members of this party. You quite rightly gave him a good deal of latitude because of the nature of the debate and of the amendment. I suggest that the same latitude should be extended to my friend the hon. member for Assiniboia.


Edmund Davie Fulton: I rise on the point of order that has been referred to, namely the attempts made by my friend the hon. member for Assiniboia to bring into question statements made and the word given by the Minister of Trade and Commerce yesterday. I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that my hon. friend should not be allowed to hide behind the camouflage he has just tried to throw up with regard to this not being capable of being put on the order paper in the form of a motion of privilege. If my hon. friend has the courage to back up the words he has used, may I point out to him that a motion of privilege can be entertained at any time. If my hon. friend has the courage of his convictions then let him not try to hide behind what was done yesterday with regard to amendment of the rules. I say this because I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, on the point of order that the hon. gentleman should not be allowed to proceed, to talk and to indicate that he does not accept the word given by the Minister of Trade and Commerce yesterday. If he does not accept that word, then let him have the courage of his convictions and bring in a motion based on privilege and we will meet him on his own ground.


Hazen Robert Argue: Mr. Speaker-


John Whitney Pickersgill: May I say a word on the point of order raised by the Minister of Justice. It seems to me-


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The point of order is that further objection was taken to what the hon. member for Assiniboia was saying. It is clear what course he is directed to follow by the rules and by custom. The question is a very narrow one at the moment, namely whether he is trespassing again.


John Whitney Pickersgill: That is precisely the point to which I desire to address myself. I was listening very attentively to the hon. member and it seemed to me that he stated quite clearly that he accepted the word of the

minister and that he was about to say that he thought there ought to be an investigation of the press gallery. Surely he is not going to be restricted in making that kind of an argument.


Mr. Speaker:: That is the way the matter appealed to me and that is why I allowed him to proceed. I am not sure that it was not a left handed way of approaching the matter. Will the hon. member proceed and try to keep within the directions which are amply clear?


Hazen Robert Argue: When I am speaking I think my left hand works about as well as my right hand. But I would suggest that the Minister of Justice did not increase his stature when he raised this point of order, with the language he used about hiding behind a camouflage.


Mr. Speaker:: The point of order is now disposed of. We are debating an amendment, if I may read it again for the benefit of the hon. member. Perhaps I do not need to read the amendment. As I said before, the debate is much wider than the terms of the amendment introduced by the Leader of the Opposition.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Speaking on the point of order, Mr. Speaker, I suggest that in view of the relatively large numbers who sit on the opposite side, it is necessary for us in the opposition to take every advantage of the practice of this house to state our views. The Minister of Justice tried to refer to the hon. member for Assiniboia as an hon. gentleman in this instance lacking in courage.


Edmund Davie Fulton: No; I did not; I said if he had the courage of his convictions he would make a motion of privilege.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Surely he is not to be denied the right to defend himself against the aspersion made by the Minister of Justice. There are many things which the hon. member for Assiniboia does and says with which I do not agree. But no one can fairly accuse him of lack of courage.


Mr. Speaker:: I do not want to prevent
the hon. member for Assiniboia from replying to any such aspersion. That was said in the course of a discussion on the point of order.
I was hoping that we had disposed of that point of order and were back on the debate now.


Hazen Robert Argue: Mr. Speaker, I was not trying to raise another point of order because I am not so thin skinned in this debate as apparently are some other hon. members. But when the Minister of Justice raised this
57071-3-196J
Canadian Economic Outlook question which he said reflected on the Minister of Trade and Commerce I was saying that in raising that particular question he reflected on me by saying that I was endeavouring to hide behind a camouflage, and he questioned my courage. I do not ask him to withdraw. He can leave that on the record, as far as I am concerned. I am willing to meet him in this house in debate on the merits of the subject and I do not have to whimper about his remarks.


Edmund Davie Fulton: I was merely suggesting-


An hon. Member:: Sit down, buttercup.


Edmund Davie Fulton: I was merely suggesting that
the hon. gentleman raise the matter in the proper way so we could meet on the issue. The words I used were that if he had the courage of his convictions he would raise it in the proper way.


Hazen Robert Argue: I think I am raising it in
the proper way; and I tell the Minister of Justice that I have the courage of my convictions and I ask him to enter this debate and to let us see how he can account for himself.


An hon. Member:: He can account very
well.


Hazen Robert Argue: A few days ago, in the city
of Montreal, I had an opportunity to say in a public way something I should like to repeat now. I feel that generally speaking the members of the press and the members of the press gallery in this house are gentlemen of honour who report the proceedings of this house in a fair and reasonable manner. That is why I have suggested that this committee might meet in order to see whether or not they had departed from what I believe has been their customary practice. As to the references to the press gallery, may 1 say that if at times they overlook some of the things I say, and perhaps in their wisdom, I do not complain. I do not ask them for any quarter. However, I think the members of the press gallery have earned a reputation in this house that has not been helped by the Minister of Trade and Commerce.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. May I remind the
hon. member again that we are not debating the reliability of the press gallery in this motion.


Hazen Robert Argue: We are not debating it, Mr. Speaker, but I have been trying to say that it is a fact. I know that in the committee on external affairs and in other committees of this house many ministers and members rely a great deal on the newspaper reports.


Mr. McGee:: May I ask the hon. member a question? Is he aware that one of his

Canadian Economic Outlook colleagues made a statement last week to the effect that the press of this country is incompetent?


Hazen Robert Argue: I am not too sure to which member the hon. member refers.


Frank Charles McGee: The hon. member for Port
Arthur.


Hazen Robert Argue: I do not know to what the hon. member is referring, but I think the hon. member for Port Arthur (Mr. Fisher) can take care of himself.


An hon. Member:: That is more than you can do.


John Whitney Pickersgill: The hon. member can take care of the hon. member for York-Scar-borough (Mr. McGee).


Hazen Robert Argue: I am sure the hon. member for Port Arthur is able to take part in any debate in this house and to defend himself regarding anything he might have been reported as having said.
Mr. Speaker, I had thought that we were talking about this hidden report, but the minister has warmed over his budget speech, he has made a lot of extravagant statements today as he did yesterday, many of which he made in his budget speech. He made one statement which was not extravagant and which is correct, namely that Canada s exports of wheat have gone up by 50 million bushels. I asked him about the price and he said it was the highest price in the world; when I questioned him further he said, "The highest price in a free market". Why is it lower than the Chicago market price by 20 cents? I have in my hand the most recent edition of the international federation of agricultural producers publication, the IFAP News, which reports the prices of wheat paid in eighteen countries, and I see that Canada has the distinction of paying the lowest price.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Surely, Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend realizes we are talking about wheat in the export markets.


Hazen Robert Argue: I said that the farmers were getting the lowest price since the end of the war. The minister has said it is the highest price in a free market, which is not true; that just is not true. The prices start with Canada having the lowest price of $1.40 per bushel, the United Kingdom $1.50, just 10 cents more, Argentina, $1.52, Australia, $1.63, and so on, up and up and up, until you come to Turkey with a price of $4.46 per bushel.


Donald Methuen Fleming: What are you talking about?


Hazen Robert Argue: The nub of what we are discussing and the thing which I think bothers Canadians most at this time is that this

government is now prepared to hide a report which it accused the former government of having hidden. Although this government used a roundabout and tortuous way of gaining votes on March 31-which they did gain-now, when they are faced with identical circumstances they run away and they are not consistent. They will not disclose this report, but for the Canadian people one of the most interesting and important aspects of the matter is that when the Liberal government was advised that we were in for tough times and that unemployment would rise, they did little or nothing. When the same group of economic advisers in the same government department advised this government that we were in for tough times and that the economic prospects were not good, that there would be only a 0.7 per cent increase in the gross national product, that business investments would drop by about 10 per cent in 1958 and would be likely to continue to drop in 1959, they did nothing about it either. They painted a glowing picture and all they have done is to state they are going to reconvert Canadian bonds and to increase the interest rates in order to get back to the high interest rate policy which they condemned the former government for having so long followed.
The Minister of Finance this afternoon talked about increasing unemployment figures and he took satisfaction-and this is what amazed me-in the employment figures for June, which he said were only 40,000 less than one year earlier. Just 40,000 worse than when the Liberals were in power, and the Conservatives painted such a terrible picture of conditions when the Liberals formed the government in Canada. Now that the Minister of Finance and his colleagues are in charge of the administration, however, the prospects for employment are worse, to say nothing of the existing unemployment situation. In June, instead of 162,000 persons without jobs and seeking work-as there were last June when this government took office-after the Minister of Finance has brought in his budget, after the government has read, studied, digested and concealed this report, unemployment is twice as great.
There is only one statement of the minister's which struck a somewhat sympathetic note with me, and that was when he was speaking of the rather weak amendment from the official opposition. If that amendment was a bit anaemic we hope to give it a blood transfusion, and it is my pleasure at this time to move:
That the amendment be amended by adding the words:
"and further that its action in ignoring 'The Canadian Economic Outlook for 1958' as indicated

by the reported and undenied excerpts from it, has prolonged the recession and has caused suffering for thousands of Canadians because of unemployment."


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Rubbish.


Hazen Robert Argue: There are two things involved in this debate. One is the attitude of the government which says, "If the former government did something it is wrong, but if we do it, it is right." Secondly, the attitude of this government in having failed to act on this very important set of recommendations in order to provide full employment and a buoyant economy in 1958.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Mr. Speaker, under our form of administration in Canada the anonymity and the integrity of the public service is essential for the maintenance of good government and that is the principle behind the amendment moved in this house last night by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Pearson). We have now been confronted with another amendment and I have just had an opportunity to glance quickly at its terms. My immediate reaction is that it would be difficult to fully accept its terms unless the Prime Minister is prepared to do what the Leader of the Opposition asked last night, namely to give us the opportunity of knowing precisely, in its full form, the nature of the economic survey which the Prime Minister (Mr. Diefenbaker) stated a few weeks ago would be made available only at the beginning of 1959.
We have had a defence of this attitude from the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fleming). I would have thought, however, that in accordance w:th the position he holds, both as leader of the house and as the Queen's first minister, the Prime Minister would have regarded it as his duty to make a statement on Saturday last, or certainly not later than Monday, with regard to what is alleged to be the disclosure of a document which, in accordance with his own language and view as stated in this house a few weeks ago, is of a confidential character and is one which would not be made available to parliament until the beginning of 1959.
Instead we have had inadequate replies to our interrogations by the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Churchill), and the defence of the government has been made by the Minister of Finance. But not a word has been said regarding the charge implied in the speeches which have been made on this side of the house or as to the terms implicit in the amendment moved by the Leader of
Canadian Economic Outlook the Opposition. It was, rather, for the Minister of Finance who, notwithstanding the fact that he delivered the longest budget speech in Canadian history-


Donald Methuen Fleming: Oh no.


Paul Joseph James Martin: -to think it was of such value that within two months it ought to be repeated again, in the same chamber where originally delivered.


Donald Methuen Fleming: You invited it- you and your leader.


Paul Joseph James Martin: The question before us is this: are we to regard as legitimate the practice that our public servants and cabinet ministers should have the right to disclose to parliament or to other agencies, or to the nation at large, documents prepared for the confidential use of members of the government? How are we going to be able to carry on government in a country such as ours, and on lines such as are the practices and traditions in the United Kingdom, if public servants, selected on the basis of merit, for their training, and their competence, are going to have their anonymity destroyed; if they are going to be placed in the position of knowing that on some occasion the administration, or a member of the administration, may disclose to the public information given confidentially to a minister or to the government as a whole? That is the serious issue involved in this particular amendment, and it does not warrant the adjectives or the characterization given to it by the Minister of Finance who has acted, during the past two hours, in a most irresponsible manner. He is the recipient, as is the Prime Minister, of confidential documents from time to time which have to do with the conduct of government both on the domestic and international level. What the Leader of the Opposition has done has been to bring home to the government and to the house the importance of maintaining the principle of public service integrity and anonymity.
But this principle has been violated in this instance by an alert and ingenious newspaperman who was able, apparently, to provide for his newspaper certain excerpts from a document which has been denied this house. In asking that this document be tabled, the only reason why we are doing so is because of the fact that publication has taken place outside this house, and the only way to clear up this matter is, as the Globe and Mail said this morning, for the government to table the whole document so that this practice will not be repeated. I say now to the Prime Minister that if he wishes to live up to the implications of his reply the other day he should take the

Canadian Economic Outlook course suggested by the Globe and Mail, a newspaper which, generally, is not unfriendly to him and to his government.
But this whole business did not begin within recent days. It began on January 20 last. That is the situation, and I know it is one that greatly disturbs the Prime Minister at this very moment. That is why he did not rise and speak at the beginning of this debate; that is why he did not, as Prime Minister, rise on a question of privilege on Saturday last and take a course which a prime minister under our constitutional tradition and practice should have taken, and which has been taken by his predecessors on other occasions.
He was precluded from taking that course by two inconsistent positions; first, that taken in answering a question put to him a few weeks ago, when he was asked to table the report by the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate (Mr. Pickersgill), and then by his own action on January last. His action and his utterances on January 20 last are now well known to this house and to the country. The previous administration, he argued, was responsible for unemployment. This government, of which he, the right hon. gentleman, is Prime Minister, was saddled with a legacy left to it by the previous administration. "Why do I say that?" said the Prime Minister. "I say so because I have here a document which records the fact that the former administration knew that the economic situation which now confronts the nation would eventuate." This was a document which the Prime Minister admitted, after persistent questioning by the then hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, was marked "confidential". Of course, he would table the document readily, having been requested to do so by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre-


John George Diefenbaker: Did not the hon. gentleman say he must table it?


Paul Joseph James Martin: Quite correct-that the hon. gentleman must table it, having already read it. Under rule 217, the Prime Minister had no other recourse. But he should not have waited for the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre to suggest that the document be tabled. What did the Prime Minister do? He read excerpts from this confidential document and did the very thing which the Minister of Trade and Commerce now says the reporter of the Toronto Star should not have done.
Here is what the right hon. gentleman said at page 3522 of Hansard for January 20, 1958;
I intend to establish as clearly as the printed word will make possible that during the months

of March, April, May until June 10, my hon. friends concealed from the Canadian people the facts. They know that.
I well remember the force and the fervour which accompanied the use of those words by the Prime Minister. And then, even stronger, at page 3526 of Hansard for the same date he said:
Today one looks back and realizes that these men who were in power did not do that of which my hon. friend spoke in such colourful terms the other night. He said we must not conceal facts, but I put it to the hon. members opposite-every one of them in the official opposition-that they hid the facts; they concealed the record; they did not let the Canadian people know what was taking place.
The Prime Minister argued that this economic survey of 1957, marked "confidential", prepared for the private use of members of the government by officials in the Department of Trade and Commerce, should have been made known, should have been tabled, should have been revealed to the Canadian people before the 21st of June, 1957. That is what the Prime Minister was arguing. He attacked the new leader of the Liberal party that night with vehemence, and used a method that I do not think has very often been employed in this house, particularly by one who holds the high office of Prime Minister. He said, in effect: what does it matter if this is a document which was prepared by the public service for the confidential advice of a minister of the crown? It will suit my political purpose. I will vanquish the Leader of the Opposition if I simply reveal this document in a dramatic way on the occasion of his first speech as leader of the Liberal party. I will satisfy my followers; I will gain votes in the country.


Donald Methuen Fleming: That is what
he did.


Paul Joseph James Martin: The minister says "that is what he did", and he is right. And I would think, in view of the attitude taken by the Prime Minister with regard to the 1958 survey, that that is not a very proud achievement for the hon. member to recall on this occasion.


Mr. Hodgson:: You fellows hid that report for 20 years.


Paul Joseph James Martin: If it was right for the previous administration to take the people of Canada into their confidence with regard to the report of 1957-and I say the government was justified in not revealing a document that had been prepared by the public service under the circumstances I have mentioned-if it was right and if it was the duty of the government to lay this information

before the Canadian people and before parliament, I ask the Prime Minister now, urging him to take part in this debate, to tell the house, having in mind the record in this matter, having in mind the way in which he used the 1957 report on January 20 last, and having in mind what he told the Canadian people about the way the previous administration had kept and withheld secrets from the Canadian people, how in the parliament of our country he can possibly justify refusing at this time to do what the Leader of the Opposition has requested, to do what the Toronto Globe and Mail urged this morning should be done, and table that document so we can find out whether or not the partial publication of this in the Toronto Star was taken from the economic survey of 1958.
No amount of debate, no amount of histrionics, no amount of subterfuge or irrelevancy in debate by the Prime Minister who is a past master at it will be able to provide a justification for not answering the question which I now put. Why will he not in the month of August 1958 in connection with a report prepared for this year table that report when he urged that a similar report prepared for 1957 by the same people and under the same auspices and for the same purposes be tabled?
The Prime Minister receives young visitors in his office frequently and tells them about the history of parliament, and about our free institutions and I really think he is to be commended for that because the people of Canada must look to their prime ministers for exemplary conduct. But I ask him in this instance as man to man, does he not realize that having taken the position he did the only way in which he can live up to the high standards he has set for himself and so properly is to take the same course as Prime Minister in 1958 that he took in the month of January prior to the general elections which resulted in his return to office? That surely is a request based upon an unanswerable argument. There can be no question about it. The only reason the Prime Minister can have for not revealing this information is that it bears out exactly what the Leader of the Opposition said last night and which some of us said during the course of the debate, and that is that the budget prepared by the Minister of Finance was not in harmony at least with the economic report prepared for 1958 by the Department of Trade and Commerce.
The Minister of Finance says he has other sources on which he must rely, the Bank of Canada and his own official advisors of the Department of Finance. That is true, of course, but now that this document has been partially revealed and in my judgment only
Canadian Economic Outlook for that reason we are entitled to have the full report so we can ascertain whether or not the conclusions of the Minister of Finance with regard to the future are in harmony, at any rate with this one particular report.


Donald Methuen Fleming: You did not accept those conclusions anyway.


Paul Joseph James Martin: My hon. friend says that I do not accept those conclusions but that is not the question. The only question before us is whether or not this government, having refused to table a document which it said we should have tabled in 1957, is prepared to exercise its responsibilities in accordance with our law as provided in the Official Secrets Act. The Minister of Justice (Mr. Fulton) will, I hope, give careful consideration to what I am now going to argue.
The Minister of Trade and Commerce denied yesterday that he had said to any newspaperman that he was "running this thing down" to use his own words as contained in his statement of privilege yesterday. I have before me the Ottawa Journal of today in which the Minister of Trade and Commerce is reported as having told Mr. James McCook of that newspaper, one of the most reliable men in the press gallery-


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Mr. Marlin (Essex Easl):: I am glad that hon. gentlemen opposite applaud newspaper people because this government yesterday and on other occasions, as the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Argue) has reminded us, has not always acknowledged the objective treatment given by members of the press gallery with regard to its policies and statements. Here is what the Minister of Trade and Commerce is reported by Mr. McCook to have said yesterday after this debate:
Mr. Churchill told the Journal outside the house that he had taken only these steps when informed of the article published in Toronto:
1.	Asked for the number of copies of the confidential report issued and the distribution list.
2.	Asked for the names of those who prepared the report.
And then the article goes on in these words:
The minister said that the next step, if any, by the government or himself had not been decided.
Does the government not regard the publication of even a partial report as a development that is of the utmost concern to it as a government particularly in the light of the fact that the Prime Minister said, notwithstanding what he had said in the month of January, that this economic survey for 1958 could not be made public now in the interests of the nation, to paraphrase his words, until some time at the beginning of 1959? Is there

Canadian Economic Outlook no responsibility on the part of the government to pursue this matter? Has the Minister of Trade and Commerce done nothing more than to ask for the names of those who prepared the report and asked about the number of copies of the confidential report that were issued? Will the Minister of Trade and Commerce now deny that this report goes to every minister of the crown? Did he have to inquire who prepared this report? This report goes to him first and presumably after he has perused it it goes to the Minister of Finance, the Prime Minister and other members of the government.
Is this the extent of the investigation being made by this government with regard to a document which the Prime Minister said in the interests of the nation could not be given to the parliament of Canada and to the people until the beginning of 1959? Is that the extent of the investigation? Is this matter of no concern to the Minister of Justice? Has it not concerned the Prime Minister? I would call the attention both of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice to section 4 subsection 4 of the Official Secrets Act to be found in the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1952, volume III, chapter 198 which reads as follows:
4. (4) Every person who
(a)	retains for any purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state any official document, whether or not completed or issued for use, when he has no right to retain it, or when it is contrary to his duty to retain it, or fails to comply with any directions issued by any government department or any person authorized by such department with regard to the return or disposal thereof; or
(b)	allows any other person to have possession of any official document issued for his use alone, or communicates any secret official code word or pass word so issued, or, without lawful authority or excuse, has in his possession any official document or secret official code word or pass word issued for the use of some person other than himself, or on obtaining possession of any official document by finding or otherwise, neglects or fails to restore it to the person or authority by whom or for whose use it was issued, or to a police constable; is guilty of an offence under this act.
That is a very important statute. If one looks at the most recent discussion in the house based on that act he will find that in introducing amendments to the act the government of the day postulated as one of the reasons for the legislation that the public service could carry on under our system of government in a way that would preserve its integrity and not invade the anonymity which public servants under our system have a right to expect. It is the duty of the government not to make the halfhearted investigation indicated by the Minister of Trade and Commerce who, after the fourth day, now says, "I will find out how many copies there are, I will find out the name of the men who

wrote the report", notwithstanding that the two authors, if the papers are correct, are well known officials of the Department of Trade and Commerce of which the minister apparently is not so fully cognizant at least in so far as this particular is concerned.
Is the matter to stop there? Has the Prime Minister asked his colleagues how this document left the secret compartment that it was supposed to have until the beginning of 1959, according to his revised version of how a government should treat this confidential and secret document prepared for the use of the administration by the public service, this post-election version as the Leader of the Opposition mentions. Has any inquiry been made of his colleagues? Was it given out by the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Smith)? I do not believe it was. Was it given out by the Minister of Justice? Was it given out by the Minister of Trade and Commerce himself? It would be hard to believe that it was given out by the Minister of Finance because he said he had not seen it. Apparently he prepared his budget without referring to it, without knowing anything about it.


Donald Methuen Fleming: What are you talking about?


Paul Joseph James Martin: I am asking the Minister of Finance, did he give it out?


Donald Methuen Fleming: No, you made a statement and not a very reliable one, either.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I am sure the Prime Minister did not. Did the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Green) inadvertently give it out?


An hon. Member:: He does not give anything out.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Other ministers are not here. The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Harkness) is not here. His seatmate is not here. I cannot ask them. The Secretary of State (Mr. Courtemanche) looks at me so genially that I wonder whether he could have possibly given it out. I know the Minister of Labour (Mr. Starr) would not. I think he would be too prudent to allow himself to do that. At any rate he was engaged in the interests of the nation at a conference outside this country at the time, I presume.


Michael Starr: In January?


Paul Joseph James Martin: No, this document was given out only within the last few days.


Gordon Minto Churchill: How do you know?


Paul Joseph James Martin: Because it only appeared in the Toronto Star on Friday.


Gordon Minto Churchill: You have some information.


Murdo William Martin: I like to see the
Prime Minister jump at that last remark. I know him so well and I simply want to anticipate the Prime Minister. I simply want to say to the Prime Minister-


Donald Methuen Fleming: Did you have it? Come clean.


Paul Joseph James Martin: -that I forewarn him that I knew nothing about the document and if I did-


Donald Methuen Fleming: Come, come!


Murdo William Martin: -the Prime
Minister would have been the first to know about it, as he knows.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Murdo William Martin: What about the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Monteith) and my genial friend who sits next to him looking at me so affectionately at this moment?


Donald Methuen Fleming: Don't kid yourself.


Mr. Fullon:: You are doing us a lot of good, Paul.


Murdo William Martin: In view of the importance of our mineral wealth, did he decide to give it out? Perhaps he does not know the newspaper or the reporter in question. But there are at least 18 or 20 members of the government, every one of whom has a copy of the document, and they may well rise in their places and tell us whether they can say "Mea culpa, mea culpa" or "Mea maxima culpa."


Gordon Minto Churchill: That is what you say.


Murdo William Martin: The reason I say they could easily have given out this postelection version is that they gave out the earlier one. The Prime Minister himself gave it out when on January 20, 1958, he said, "I have no hesitation; here is the confidential document that reveals the state of the nation and which is responsible for the situation that now confronts us." On the basis of that kind of reasoning, why should the Prime Minister not have given out this particular version? I am not suggesting that he did but why should he not have? He had no hesitation in doing so in the month of January in a debate in the house.
The Minister of Finance seeks to escape the terms of the amendment before us by drawing a red herring and telling us again about the classical words and the great thoughts involved in his monumental budget. I say to the Minister of Finance: What we are anxious to find out and what the people of Canada are anxious to find out is whether or not the Minister of Finance, in the framing of that budget, took into account this 57071-3-197
Canadian Economic Outlook particular report because according to the report there are some very serious variations between the position taken by the Minister of Finance and the position taken in the report as it appeared in the Toronto Star.
Here is what the Minister of Finance said in his budget speech, as found on page 1235 of Hansard:
-with due regard for the resourcefulness of the Canadian people and the determination of this government I have no hesitation in budgeting on the basis of a resumption of the rise in incomes and production.
The Toronto Star version of the economic survey for 1958 reads as follows in this particular, to quote from Mr. Harrison's article:
There is little basis for anticipating the renewal of any significant upward trend in over-all production and employment before the latter part of the year at least. In view of the downward momentum now present in the economy it is questionable whether any firming trend in the latter part of the year would be sufficient to bring overall production for 1958 as a whole up to the level of the preceding year.
I do not know whether or not that was contained in the report but what I do know and what the Minister of Finance knows, notwithstanding his diversionary tactics today and last night, is that that is alleged to be taken from the economic survey for 1958 which presumably was considered by the Minister of Finance in the formulation of his budget. If that is the case, then the Minister of Finance did not tell the Canadian people what some of his advisers had urged him to consider in the formulation of his policy. He tried today to substantiate his prognostications for the future. He referred to the increase in export trade and he referred to certain other indices. What he did not do was to tell the house that unemployment today in this month of August, a period of traditional recovery, is double what it was this time a year ago. The Minister of Finance did not indicate today or in his budget-


Donald Methuen Fleming: You are just guessing again.


Murdo William Martin: -nor did he give any reasons this afternoon-my hon. friend says I am guessing.


Donald Methuen Fleming: You have done a lot of guessing.


Murdo William Martin: There can be no doubt that the Minister of Finance has disregarded the advice of his constitutional advisers, of his financial advisers-


Donald Methuen Fleming: Such nonsense!

Canadian Economic Outlook


Paul Joseph James Martin: -and has painted an economic picture that is not in harmony-even with the facts as they are now known.


Donald Methuen Fleming: That is nonsense.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I ask the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fleming), has he consulted certain other government departments? Has he asked them what they consider will be the level of unemployment in the month of September? What it will be in the month of October? I have made certain projections that are now appearing in the Monetary Times, indicating that in the month of December we will possibly have as many as one million men and women who will be unplaced applicants.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I hope they realize how unreliable you are as a prognosticator.


Murdo William Martin: I ask the minister to remember these words when, at the end of six months' time, we confront one another in this house and are able to see whether or not his optimistic view was in harmony with the prognostications he gave in his budget speech.


Donald Methuen Fleming: You were a great exaggerator last January.


Murdo William Martin: I well remember the statement my hon. friend made when we asked him to reduce the excise tax on automobiles last fall. He said there was no serious unemployment in the automobile industry. Today he gets up in this house and talks about the economic picture of our country as though there were no unemployed people. In my own city of Windsor today, in the month of August, there are almost 12,000 men and women out of work.


Michael Starr: Would the hon. member permit a question? He has made a statement that the number of men out of work at this moment in Windsor is 12,000. I wonder what action he and his government took when the unemployed in the city of Windsor numbered 11,220 in July, 1954 and 10,432 in 1956?


Murdo William Martin: That is a very fair question. What did the government of which I was a member do? This government courageously pursued a policy-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Murdo William Martin: -that put men and women to work in this country, with the result that during the time when Mr. St. Laurent was prime minister we had the highest level of prosperity in Canadian history.


Donald Methuen Fleming: You never once opened your mouth to advocate a decrease in the excise tax on automobiles.


Murdo William Martin: My friends say we are conveyers of doom, and I want to pursue that statement. I would remind my hon. friends of what the former leader of their party, Hon. Mr. Drew, said on March 29, 1955, as recorded at page 2498 of Hansard:
I regret that anyone would suggest that a discussion on unemployment is an attempt to undermine confidence, If there is any attempt to undermine confidence on that basis, then of course it must come from the agency of the government which gives the figures. The figures that have been used are given by the dominion bureau of statistics.
Then he went on to say it was his duty in opposition to point out the situation as he saw it to the government. Now, that is why we have done the same thing. I say again, as I said during the budget debate, that the Minister of Finance should indicate unequivocally whether or not this report was used; whether or not he has lived up to the advice given him on all fronts by those in the public service whose duty it is to advise the Minister of Finance and the government as a whole.
Why should the government take this pious attitude which the Minister of Finance has taken when noting that in the Toronto Star it is alleged that there are certain excerpts from a genuine government document? Why should the Minister of Finance, in fairness to the country and to the responsibilities of his office, not say, yes, unfortunately this document has been revealed in part. Now that it has been revealed, there is only one course open and that is to place it on the table so that we can settle this matter once and for all. That would be a courageous attitude for the Minister of Finance to take. Then we would know where we are at. Then, having done that, the Minister of Finance could also take this position: Let us now decide never again to do what was done on January 20 last by the Prime Minister of Canada.


Howard Charles Green: You did not like it, did you?


Paul Joseph James Martin: I certainly did not like it, and I am surprised the Minister of Public Works, a member of the government of Canada, should say that he liked his Prime Minister revealing, for the purpose of an election advantage, a document that was marked "Private and Confidential". The Prime Minister has said, "Oh, no, I cannot give this document for 1958; I have the heavy responsibility of government, and I must discharge my responsibility in the light of our traditional practice. I cannot tell parliament, I cannot tell the nation what my advisers tell us about the economic conditions-


An hon. Member:: Certainly not.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Someone says "Certainly not", and yet in the month of January last the Prime Minister did that very thing. Last night mention was made of the Prime Minister's speech at Edmonton, as reported in the Ottawa Journal. The Leader of the Opposition was challenged to refer to this. I now have the clipping and here is what the Prime Minister said in Edmonton when he was confronting the public and complaining about how we had withheld important information from the Canadian people. I can see the hon. gentleman speaking to 5,000 people in Edmonton, and telling them exactly the opposite to what he told us only a few days ago when he said he could not reveal this document. The article states:
"They concealed", he said of the Liberal cabinet ministers.
"They covered up. They hid. They knew but they did not act. They were warned that a serious situation was developing in this country . . . in effect the beginning of a recession".
All of the Liberal cabinet ministers had received the report, he said.
"None of them read it. All of them hid it."
Those are the words of this great saviour of human liberty-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Paul Joseph James Martin: -who went the length and breadth of this country revealing the contents of a document which he says now he cannot give to this house.


John George Diefenbaker: That is the same speech you made during the election campaign.


Paul Joseph James Martin: My friend says that is the same speech I made during the election, and my friend is right. The only difference between my speech during the election and the speeches which were made by the Prime Minister is that his-


Donald Methuen Fleming: Were successful.


Paul Joseph James Martin: -because they were so attractive in deception, were able to capture support which will never again come to the Prime Minister.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Will my friend permit a question? When he talks about deception, will he tell the house why it was, in his billboards and publicity during the election campaign, he did not use the word "Liberal"?


Paul Joseph James Martin: I have a very good answer. First of all, I am well known as a Liberal. Secondly, I was in Prince Albert once during the election campaign and I saw the committee rooms of the present Prime Minister. There was not one reference to the 57071-3-1974
Canadian Economic Outlook word "Conservative", or "Progressive Conservative"; it was called the "John Diefenbaker Committee".


Mr. Bell (Saint John-Alberi):: What was your majority?


Paul Joseph James Martin: Using the foregoing as my arguments, I urge the house to accept this amendment.


Edmund Davie Fulton: After listening to the attempts of my hon. friends opposite in both the official opposition and the C.C.F. to work this house up into a state of righteous indignation over what they allege are the misdemeanours of this government, and after observing how lamentably short they fell even of the objective which they have set themselves, one can understand why it is they are driven back to the subterfuge of attempting to induce the government to do the very thing which they themselves say should not be done.


Paul Joseph James Martin: For the reasons given.


Edmund Davie Fulton: One can understand also the skill which hon. gentlemen opposite have achieved in this sort of game when one remembers the numerous holidays they used to take when they were in power on the occasions when they went fishing. What we have seen here is the most gigantic fishing expedition that it has ever been the pleasure or the misfortune of the House of Commons to see in my history.


John Whitney Pickersgill: The minister is still very young.


Edmund Davie Fulton: What we have seen is from the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Pearson) down an attempt to inveigle this government into a position where it would have no recourse but to do the very thing which hon. gentlemen say should not be done, namely to table a document which they themselves say is confidential and should not be tabled.


Lester Bowles Pearson: Because part of it you have already given out.


Donald Methuen Fleming: That is not true.


Lester Bowles Pearson: It certainly is.


Edmund Davie Fulton: If one were to take my hon. friends opposite seriously-but they themselves have precluded us from doing that by their own remarks-one would simply have to read back to them the remarks they themselves have made in this debate in order to dispose of the motion and the amendment they have used. This righteous indignation, this attempt of the hon. member for Essex East (Mr. Martin) and especially of the Leader of the Opposition last night to suggest that this

Canadian Economic Outlook document should be tabled is seen for the narrowest, meanest and poorest disguise in which any opposition ever attempted to close a motion. Let me read to my hon. friends some of their remarks. On no fewer than three occasions the Leader of the Opposition said this sort of document should not be tabled. Last night he said this:
I think it is regrettable-
He was referring to the possibility of tabling the document; what document they refer to, I do not yet know.
-that this should have to be done in the interests of clarifying this situation. In the past these reports have been considered as confidential, secret documents from expert civil servants to their ministers. For many years, they were treated as such. In the past, the previous government had not made these reports public, and for very good reasons.
That is the Leader of the Opposition speaking, as reported at page 3072 of Hansard.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Would the minister permit a question?


Edmund Davie Fulton: Oh, yes.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Would the minister tell us what his own attitude is to the tabling of these documents?


Edmund Davie Fulton: If the hon. member would identify the documents.


John Whitney Pickersgill: I shall be delighted to do so.


Edmund Davie Fulton: I did not know there was more than one document under discussion at the present time.


John Whitney Pickersgill: All right. I should like to ask the Minister of Justice-and I say again "these documents"-what his attitude is to the tabling of the Canadian Economic Outlook for 1957 and the Canadian Economic Outlook for 1958. Does he think there is one rule for one and another rule for the other? I should like to have a plain answer.


Edmund Davie Fulton: No, Mr. Speaker. The hon. gentleman has asked a plain question, Mr. Speaker. You might almost call it a simple question. It is a simple question because the answer has been given over and over again. The economic report of 1957 was tabled in January of 1958.


John Whitney Pickersgill: And your leader said it should have been tabled in June of 1957.


Edmund Davie Fulton: My leader said no such thing.


John Whitney Pickersgill: He said it over and over again.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Order.


Edmund Davie Fulton: My hon. friend is not content with asking innumerable silly questions which

get him into more trouble than if he remained silent but he even interrupts while he is sitting down. My hon. friend obviously cannot understand the meaning of plain English. If he will go back and read the speech of the Prime Minister on January 20 of this year he will find that what the Prime Minister accused my hon. friends opposite of was of having concealed the facts. At no time did the Prime Minister say that the government should have tabled the document.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Did he not?


James Ross Fulton: On only one occasion did the Prime Minister say that the government had concealed the document. At no time did he say that they should table it. He said the government had hidden the facts. He said that the government had misled the Canadian people.


Paul Joseph James Martin: There are seven pages there, starting at page 3523.


Edmund Davie Fulton: If my hon. friends will permit me to make my own speech I should be obliged to them. Theirs were rather poor. I beg them not to spoil mine.


John Whitney Pickersgill: That would be impossible.


Edmund Davie Fulton: My hon. friends will find that the Prime Minister as recorded at page 3525 of Hansard of January 20 of this year said this:
They did not realize the situation or if they did so they concealed the facts from the Canadian people;-
And at page 3526:
-they hid the facts; they concealed the record; they did not let the Canadian people know what was taking place.
Then at page 3527:
But they did nothing during the session to bring about changes in legislation to meet the situation of which they had been warned.
Then again:
They kept it from the Canadian people.
Here is the only one I have been able to find with reference to concealing the document:
-and now, for political purposes, having concealed this document, they have the effrontery to pretend to the Canadian people that we are responsible.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Would the hon. gentleman read a few words before that?


Edmund Davie Fulton: At page 3528 we find this:
Why did hon. members opposite, in the idealistic vein of the hon. Leader of the Opposition, not reveal these facts? Why did they not act on them, even if they did not think fit to reveal them?
Then at page 3530:
You concealed the facts.


Murdo William Martin: Will my hon. friend permit a question?


James Ross Fulton: Let me conclude this part of my remarks. I would ask my hon. friend to allow me to do that.


Paul Joseph James Martin: All right.


James Ross Fulton: The whole tenor of the Prime Minister's remarks was that the hon. gentlemen then in power concealed the facts from the Canadian people; that having been warned of the economic situation and of the dangers in the economic climate which then were known to their expert advisers and which became evident in their results about June
1957	and July 1957,-


John Whitney Pickersgill: Which the Prime Minister denied in November.


James Ross Fulton: -in spite of these danger signs, hon. gentlemen opposite concealed them and introduced a budget which flew in the very face of the warnings they had received from their economic advisers. That was the sense of the Prime Minister's charge.


Murdo William Martin: Will the hon. member read to the house the exchange between the then hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre and the Prime Minister as found at page 3530 and following in Hansard?


James Ross Fulton: I have read it. I do not think it is necessary to read it again in detail.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Oh, oh.


James Ross Fulton: I have said that I do not think it is necessary to read it in detail again. The then hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre asked whether the document had been tabled and the Prime Minister said:
If it has not been tabled my hon. friend has added one more example to the record of concealment by my hon. friends opposite.


John Whitney Pickersgill: And we could not table it after June 21.


Murdo William Martin: Go on to page 3531.


James Ross Fulton: We find this:
As a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker, it was hidden away so well we just found it.
Those were the words of the Prime Minister.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Of course that statement was not correct.


James Ross Fulton: From what I have read, Mr. Speaker, it becomes obvious that the tenor of the Prime Minister's charge in January of
1958	was that my hon. friends had concealed the facts from the Canadian people and in their budget had taken a course which was revealed to be a course of folly and of recklessness in the light of the facts that they had, in the light of facts of which they had
Canadian Economic Outlook been warned as far back as January of last year. The very great difference between the situation then and the situation now is that the economic report of which my hon. friends allege extracts have appeared in the Toronto Star is a current document and for the reasons which the Prime Minister gave last January or earlier in this session should not be tabled at this time. My hon. friends admit that it should not be tabled. They say that these documents should not be tabled when they are current because they say that the anonymity of civil service advice should be preserved. Yet on the other hand they turn around and do their best to trap us into such steps as will then enable them to demand the tabling of the document.


John Whitney Pickersgill: A trap of your own
construction.


Edmund Davie Fulton: That is the type of fishing expedition in which my hon. friends have been engaged. But however attractive the bait, it has not been successful; and may I say that the bait was not very attractive; it was a little bit old; it was a little bit worn. Those of us, Mr. Speaker, who may engage in angling as distinguished from fly fishing know how sometimes when the worms have been on the hook for a while they do not look too appetizing. The efforts made by my hon. friends opposite to bait their hook remind me of this kind of old, waterlogged, worn-out wormy bait that we have seen occasionally on these fishing expeditions.


Lester Bowles Pearson: Will my hon. friend permit a question?


Edmund Davie Fulton: Yes.


Lester Bowles Pearson: He can end this argument at once or this fishing expedition. Will he now deny the accuracy of the excerpts from these reports that have appeared in the press?


John Whitney Pickersgill: If they are denied, you do not have to produce them.


Edmund Davie Fulton: That bait is getting more tired and disgusting looking on every occasion it is used. It is the same bait with which he tried to bait his hook last night, but it did not work.


An hon. Member:: Why don't you deny it?


Paul Joseph James Martin: Because you are caught on a hook.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Because that fishing expedition has been so unproductive my hon. friend, the member for Essex East, then urged the government to go out on a witch hunt. "Why," he said, "look at the Official Secrets Act." And he held the book in his hands which were trembling with indignation and he said

Canadian Economic Outlook that the government should use the Official Secrets Act and that these civil servants, the anonymity of whose reports he had been so anxious to preserve, should be pursued by the government. He said, "You should go after these civil servants, turn the police on them, use your powers under the Official Secrets Act and go on a witch hunt."


Paul Joseph James Martin: And after the cabinet ministers.


Edmund Davie Fulton: My hon. friend indicated an astonishing degree of awareness as to how this report came into the hands of the Toronto Star.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Would the minister permit a question?


Some hon. Members:: Sit down.


Edmund Davie Fulton: I suggest there is a very simple solution.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Would the minister permit a question?


An hon. Member:: Fishing.


Edmund Davie Fulton: I submit there is a very simple solution.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Would the minister permit a question?


Mr. Speaker:: Order. One or other hon. members will have to sit down and I take it that the hon. member who has the floor does not wish to do so.


John Whitney Pickersgill: I have asked the minister if he will permit a question.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Not at this stage, if my hon. friend will permit me to continue.


John Whitney Pickersgill: I am not surprised.


Edmund Davie Fulton: The hon. member for Essex East, in view of the astonishing degree of awareness he indicated as to just how this alleged report, if in fact a report did come into the possession-


John Whitney Pickersgill: You said report.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Just how it got there. All he has to do is to ask the newspaper reporter and I wonder if my hon. friend has asked that reporter.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I will answer the question right now. I will deal with it. My hon. friend has said that was the report-


Edmund Davie Fulton: I said you said it was a report.


John Whitney Pickersgill: You didn't say that at all.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I will say right now that I have never seen the report and I know of no one who has seen the report except every cabinet minister in this house.


Some hon. Member:: Hear, hear.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Every one.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Perhaps the minister will now permit my question.


An hon. Member:: Let's get it over.


Edmund Davie Fulton: This one will be about as good as the other one.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Did I correctly understand the hon. gentleman to say that someone on this side of the house-and these were his words-reached the Toronto Star, thereby admitting that what the Toronto Star had was the report?


An hon. Member:: That is exactly what he said.


An hon. Member:: That is really fishing.


Edmund Davie Fulton: I do not think I said that.


Paul Joseph James Martin: You had better look in Hansard.


Edmund Davie Fulton: All I said was-


Paul Joseph James Martin: You are caught in the web of your own inconsistency.


Hazen Robert Argue: Baby, you really slipped.


Edmund Davie Fulton: My hon. friend opposite has been fishing for so long that he does not know the difference between the bait and the real thing. What I said was that the hon. member for Essex East revealed an astonishing degree of awareness about this whole thing.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Oh no-about the report.


Edmund Davie Fulton: About the report that is alleged to be-


Lester Bowles Pearson: About the report.


Edmund Davie Fulton: About the report that he alleges-


John Whitney Pickersgill: No-there was no "he alleges".


Edmund Davie Fulton: About the fact-


Lester Bowles Pearson: You are wiggling.


Edmund Davie Fulton: I have not said the excerpts published in the Toronto Star were extracts from any report in the possession of the government-


John Whitney Pickersgill: Oh yes-and so did the
Minister of Finance (Mr. Fleming) yesterday.


Edmund Davie Fulton: My hon. friends crow and they shake their heads wisely, but they well know that to be the case. I have at no time said that any extracts in the Toronto Star came from a report in the possession of the government, but what I did say was that the hon.

member for Essex East revealed an astonishing awareness of how the Toronto Star came into possession of whatever had come into its possession-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Edmund Davie Fulton: -from which it took extracts. And if he wants to settle the matter all he has to do is to ask the reporter where he got the inspiration for the article he published, and I would like to ask the hon. gentleman if he has asked this reporter. I ask this question of the hon. gentleman who indicates such a great desire to find out how the Toronto Star-


Lester Bowles Pearson: Be careful.


Edmund Davie Fulton: -got the source-


Paul Joseph James Martin: Careful.


Edmund Davie Fulton: -how the Toronto Star came to print the extracts it says it printed. I wonder if my hon. friend has asked the reporter. Does he indicate a desire to answer my question?


Paul Joseph James Martin: Of course I did not, but may I ask this question of the Minister of Justice?


Edmund Davie Fulton: Oh no, the hon. gentleman
wanted to-


Paul Joseph James Martin: Surely I have the right to direct a question to the Minister of Justice as the minister-


Edmund Davie Fulton: Oh no, Mr. Speaker.


Some hon. Members:: Order.


Mr. Speaker:: I must inform the hon.
gentlemen that I cannot hear either of them.


Edmund Davie Fulton: It is obvious-


Paul Joseph James Martin: Did the minister ask the reporter that question?


Lester Bowles Pearson: The hon. gentleman is the Minister of Justice.


Paul Joseph James Martin: The Minister of Justice.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Who constitutes the government over there?


Paul Joseph James Martin: What about the Official Secrets Act?


Edmund Davie Fulton: The hon. member we see revealed-has made no attempt to answer my question and so-


Paul Joseph James Martin: On a point of order Mr. Speaker. I think I answered that question. I said I had not asked the reporter but I ask the Minister of Justice did he ask the reporter where he got the report.
Canadian Economic Outlook


Edmund Davie Fulton: Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman reveals his usual ability to ignore the rules and do what he should not do on a point of order.


Paul Joseph James Martin: What about the Official Secrets Act?


An hon. Member:: A bunch of schoolboys.


John Whitney Pickersgill: The schoolmaster speaking.


Edmund Davie Fulton: Since the member for Essex East admits that he did not care to ask the Toronto Star reporter about this matter, we therefore see revealed the extent of the sham of the hon. gentlemen opposite when they say that we should go on a witch hunt and find out just what has happened and the sham when they ask us to table this report because they are not even interested enough to ask the newspaper reporter what it was that he had in his possession from which he printed excerpts.


John Whitney Pickersgill: The minister is the responsible minister in the government.


Edmund Davie Fulton: This government will exercise its responsibility and as the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fleming) has pointed out-


John Whitney Pickersgill: Utter irresponsibility.


Edmund Davie Fulton: -has exercised its responsibility in the white papers it has tabled in connection with the budget and in assuming responsibility for the economic forecasts upon which the budget is based. If my hon. friends will possess their souls in patience I expect they will find the economic forecasts made by the Minister of Finance will, in fact, turn out to be accurate. I expect at that time, Mr. Speaker, my hon. friends will be left without very much to say because it has become increasingly apparent in the course of this debate that, apart from the fishing expeditions, apart from the desire to see us out on a witch hunt, what they are really trying to do is to paint a picture of gloom and to persuade the Canadian people that the economic forecasts of the Minister of Finance are not accurate and that some other fancied report, which they admit they have not seen and which they take from unconfirmed pages in a newspaper, and which contains forecasts which they say are gloomier than the forecasts of the Minister of Finance-


John Whitney Pickersgill: Why do you not deny it then?


Edmund Davie Fulton: They say that these forecasts should be taken and that these forecasts are the forecasts upon which this government should build its program. They would love to see us-
3120	HOUSE OF COMMONS
Canadian Economic Outlook


John Whitney Pickersgill: Why does the minister not deny it and end the whole debate?


Edmund Davie Fulton: The gloomy picture which the hon. member for Essex East has been attempting to paint

and that is their whole attempt during this debate-is an attempt which stood them in very bad stead last March and will, I suggest, stand them in very bad stead as often as they attempt to repeat it. There is one thing to which I would like to refer-


John Whitney Pickersgill: You concealed the facts.


Edmund Davie Fulton: -in the remarks made by the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Argue). I refer to his attack on the denial of the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Churchill) of the accuracy of the quotations which were attributed to him earlier. I am not going to go into the merits or demerits of that denial but what I do wish to deal with directly is the suggestion of the hon. member for Assiniboia that he was precluded from bringing forward the matter by means of a motion if in fact he did not accept the words of the Minister of Trade and Commerce.


Hazen Robert Argue: I said I accepted them and that is on the record.


Edmund Davie Fulton: I said that he said that-


John Whitney Pickersgill: "I said that he said that you said"-be careful.


Edmund Davie Fulton: I said that if he had the courage of his convictions he would have founded a motion upon the allegation he was attempting to make and the hon. gentleman said I had made an unjustifiable attack upon him because, by inference, he said we knew very well that he could not bring forward a motion at this stage of the session.


Hazen Robert Argue: The minister is not doing too well.


James Ross Fulton: I must admit that I am dealing with a pretty poor argument made by the hon. member for Assiniboia.


Lionel Chevrier: You are putting forward a worse one.


John Whitney Pickersgill: It should be all the easier for you, in that case.


James Ross Fulton: I cannot do very well on the basis of that material.


Lester Bowles Pearson: Then why are you struggling so hard?


James Ross Fulton: I would like to impress upon the hon. member that if he thinks there is anything of any nature whatsoever, from what he has heard, which he thinks is inaccurate or unjust, then he could bring it

before the committee on privileges and elections. Without answering what was said or attempting to give evidence as to what was said, the hon. gentleman has a right at his hand, and I read from citation 105 of Beauchesne's fourth edition at page 96:
It is the practice in the House of Commons to bring up a question of privilege after prayers, and before the house has taken up the orders of the day. Only in very aggravated cases, requiring the immediate interposition of the house, will any business be suddenly interrupted. May says, that the proceedings of the house may be interrupted at any moment, save during the process of a division, by a motion based on a matter of privilege, when a matter has recently arisen which directly concerns the privileges of the house, and in that case the house will entertain the motion forthwith. Bourinot quotes an ancient authority as saying: "Whether any question is or is not before the house, and even in the midst of another discussion, if a member should rise to complain of a breach of privileges of the house, they have always instantly heard him."
It is perfectly clear that had the hon. gentleman intended to raise as a matter of substance the matter which he raised by inference in his speech this afternoon and if, and I said this afternoon, he had the courage of the convictions on the basis of which he made those statements, it is open to him at any time to bring forward a motion of privilege and in that motion of privilege to state what it is he has in mind. The house would then, according to the citations I have read, have to take it into consideration immediately, in my submission, and I therefore suggest once again that hon. members should have the courtesy to accept the assurances of the Minister of Trade and Commerce with regard to his statement made yesterday. If they do not, there is only one course open to them which in decency they should take, and that is to raise the matter directly on a question of privilege so that the matter can be dealt with in the way in which it should be dealt with, and in these circumstances there is no doubt what would be the outcome. I suggest, therefore, that the hon. member for Assiniboia, apparently not being prepared to take that course, should admit that what he said about the Minister of Trade and Commerce was quite unjustified, and not that which he would like to see remain on the record.
It has become increasingly evident that this thing is a fishing expedition. All hon. members opposite want to do is to have us table a report which they themselves say should not be tabled at this stage in the House of Commons. The answer to the whole situation is that circumstances here are entirely different from the circumstances when the report was produced and tabled in January of this year. That was a report on the economic forecast for 1957. The budget had been based

on it; the budget had been brought in and passed, and, some 12 or 12 months after that report had been prepared it was tabled by the Prime Minister as part of the record; part of the record which should have been placed before the Canadian people to show the extent to which the previous government had, for political advantage, disregarded the warnings of its economic advisers and attempted to convince the Canadian people that all was rosy when, in fact, they knew it was not rosy.
In this case, any economic report made for 1958 would have been made a matter of a few months ago. The budget in all its stages has not yet been concluded and no attempt has been made, as the Minister of Finance has pointed out, to do other than lay the economic facts before the Canadian people, balancing the prospects for good against indications which may not be so attractive. There has been no attempt to mislead the Canadian people as there was in March 1957-


Lester Bowles Pearson: That is untrue.


Edmund Davie Fulton: -and in so far as the report is current it should not be tabled now. In January, 1958, however, that report was a dead issue-


Lester Bowles Pearson: Not politically.


Edmund Davie Fulton: -in so far as economic events were concerned. It was far from being a dead issue politically as far as hon. gentlemen opposite were concerned. They are still smarting, now, under the recollection of those events and today they are attempting to retrieve a little of their lost fortunes by seeking to drive this house into following a course which they themselves know should not be followed.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Would the hon. gentleman permit a question? Does the minister think that reports and documents of this kind prepared by civil servants for the confidential use of ministers should be made public at any time in any circumstances?


Edmund Davie Fulton: I take it there is party solidarity over there. I would point out to the hon. gentleman that his leader has just asked that this report be tabled. They are the ones who are asking for its publication. We are refusing.


John Whitney Pickersgill: I will repeat my question-


Lester Bowles Pearson: Because you have given it out.


John Whitney Pickersgill: I asked the minister for the minister's views, not for mine.


Lionel Chevrier: Mr. Speaker, the house has been treated this afternoon and last evening to two lengthy
Canadian Economic Outlook asides by the Minister of Finance who spoke at great length last night and again today- not to deal with the amendment that is before the house but to deal, as has been said by the hon. member for Essex East (Mr. Martin) with his own budget speech made earlier in the year.
There has been a great deal of cross-fire this afternoon. I will attempt to speak with as much calm as it is possible for me to do in the circumstances. But before I rose I had thought that the Minister of Trade and Commerce (Mr. Churchill) who is so loquacious during the question period and at other times would, at least, have risen in his place to speak on the amendment. Thus far he has chosen not to say a thing. I hope that after I have completed my remarks he will rise and tell us what his position is with reference to the amendment which is now before the house, because the Minister of Finance has said not a word about the amendment.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I thought I said quite a bit about it.


Lionel Chevrier: The minister has refused to deal with it. He has ignored the amendment and, instead, has gone to great lengths to put on record in Hansard matters which are entirely extraneous to the subject which is now before us.
Mr. Speaker, when the Minister of Finance rose to speak last night, our minds went back to the premiere of the performance he was trying to give. We all remember January 20 very well; the star performer was none other than the Prime Minister, and while I stated on that occasion that his performance was evidence of great weakness, I must admit now that it was a performance which had a certain technical competence. But last night when we saw the under-study attempting to repeat that performance it descended into burlesque and-I can assure the Minister of Finance-poor burlesque at that.


Donald Methuen Fleming: You are quite a good judge of that.


Lionel Chevrier: So we had no difficulty in understanding why the hon. gentleman was not successful in getting the leadership of his party-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Edmund Davie Fulton: What about the hon. member for Essex East?
(Translation):


Lionel Chevrier: And, as I am able to
speak in the other official language of this country, I should like to tell the minister, in French, that the speech he delivered last night reminded me of La Fontaine's fable

Canadian Economic Outlook about a frog which, one day, wished to bloat itself bigger than an ox. The Minister of Finance, failed, last night, in his attempt to do likewise. He could not manage, by his speech, to inflate himself to the size of the ox, and he had no more success than the frog.
(Text):
Why was the minister so angry last evening?


Donald Methuen Fleming: He was not a bit angry.


Lionel Chevrier: Why was he so vituperative? When he sat on this side of the house, of course, he spent a great deal of time engaging in personal attacks on those of us who were on the other side of the house.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Poor fellows, my heart bleeds for you.


Lionel Chevrier: We had scorn, vituperation and personal attacks poured on my leader last evening but not on the amendment, however, because as I said earlier the minister refused to deal with it and ignored it completely.
Mr. Pallet!: How can you deal with nothing?


Donald Methuen Fleming: I thought I said something about it.


Lionel Chevrier: By his conduct the minister revealed that he has little or no respect for the civil service. That is clear from the manner in which the members of the civil service have been treated. It seems to me, sir, that the report, their advice to the government and the manner in which they have treated the report has undermined the value of confidential advice from the civil service. Here we had the position of the Prime Minister (Mr. Diefenbaker) last year tabling not a confidential report as has been stated in this house but a secret report-


John George Diefenbaker: Oh, that is nonsense.


Lionel Chevrier: My hon. friend says that is nonsense.


John Whitney Pickersgill: It was stamped "secret" on the face of it.


Lionel Chevrier: Let me say to my hon. friend that minister after minister in the former administration rose in their places here and said that in their copy of the 1957 economic report there were four pages on which the word "secret" had been stamped and that somebody had torn the four pages off and the report instead of being secret was now confidential.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Mr. Gardiner produced the full copy in the house.


Lionel Chevrier: My friend the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate (Mr. Pickersgill) reminds me that the Right Hon. Mr. Gardiner produced a full copy of the report.
IMr. Chevrier.]


Donald Methuen Fleming: You would be well advised to have a better source from which to quote.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Look at Hansard.


John George Diefenbaker: I have it here and it is marked "confidential".


Lester Bowles Pearson: That is the report with a new cover.


John George Diefenbaker: That is completely
unworthy of you.


John Whitney Pickersgill: That is one with the cover torn off.


Lionel Chevrier: Let us examine what the Prime Minister said. When I spoke in that debate I held in my hand the original which had been tabled in the house and it took me many hours before I was able to get it-the original which the Prime Minister had had in his hand at the time he spoke-and in that original it was clear that some pages had been torn out because the tabs had been left on. I was not able to say at that time and neither am I able to say now that it was the Prime Minister who had torn them off and I am not even suggesting he did but the statement I made then and the statement I make now is that the four pages that were marked "secret" had been torn off by someone. Of that I think there is no doubt. The remaining pages were marked "confidential".
In any event here was a report, secret and confidential, which was tabled contrary to the practice and the tradition of this house and I venture to say to the Prime Minister with all respect to the position he now occupies that I doubt very much if his predecessor in office-


John Whitney Pickersgill: Or any of them.


Lionel Chevrier: -or indeed any of them would have done any such thing as that which was done on the occasion of that debate.
May I return to the Minister of Finance and that very sarcastic, violent and vituperative speech of his which he made last night. The minister in his budget speech did not even indicate that he did not take into account the report concerning the Canadian outlook for 1958. Because of the attitude now taken the whole civil service is damaged. That, of course, is typical of the minister.


Donald Methuen Fleming: How ridiculous can you be?


Lionel Chevrier: The minister says how
ridiculous that statement is.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I asked you how ridiculous you could be and now you are going on to prove it.


Lionel Chevrier: Last January in announcing additional grants to the provinces the Minister of Finance did not even use the advice of his civil servants in making the calculations as to what the amount should have been.


Donald Methuen Fleming: How do you know?


Lionel Chevrier: I presume he did not because he rose at a later date and had to change and amend the amounts which he tabled at that time.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Another assumption. Why not get some facts once in a while?


John Whitney Pickersgill: Ask the minister if he did.


Lionel Chevrier: My facts are certainly as accurate as some of the facts which the Minister of Finance put on the record last night and I hope that if he ever finds time to read his speech he will observe what inconsequential statements he made over a period of several hours.
Let me come back to what I was saying to the minister. He has shown the same attitude here with reference to this discussion. He has failed to appreciate the importance of the contributions of his advisers.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Why not make a speech instead of reading it?


John Whitney Pickersgill: Look who is talking about reading.


Lionel Chevrier: He displayed the same attitude which caused him not long ago to slap down the governor of the Bank of Canada. That is exactly what he did. He tried to play the same record which the Prime Minister played last January and I can assure the house that that record fell pretty flat last night and even flatter this afternoon when the minister sat down.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Even flatter now, eh?


Lionel Chevrier: That indicates to me that what has happened was that the members of the government were not prepared for this amendment. They expected an amendment which was other than this and I believe I can say with some degree of accuracy that what was expected on the other side of the house was a demand for the production of the 1958 hidden report. Hon. gentlemen opposite were ready to argue that point. And the interesting thing about it is that the Minister of Finance was caught off base. He expected something in the amendment which was not there. He was caught off base and instead of dealing with the amendment as he should have he proceeded to re-read his budget speech over and over again, a speech which was very
Canadian Economic Outlook monotonous when he read it on budget night and still more monotonous when he gave it to us again last evening.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I expected a manly amendment, not that puny excuse for an amendment.


Lionel Chevrier: I shall deal with the amendment in a moment when I get to it but what I am doing now is dealing with the speech of my hon. friend and the expressions he used in referring to my leader.
At six o'clock the house took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The house resumed at eight o'clock.
Lionel Chevrier: Mr. Speaker, before I return to what I was discussing when the house took recess at six o'clock I should like to say a word concerning the subamendment of the C.C.F. party. When the hon. member for Essex East spoke earlier in the debate he indicated that at first glance he was not disposed to support the subamendment and I can say as well that when I looked at it I was not, at first glance, disposed to support it either. If the government would table the whole document we would then wish to consult the document before basing any vote upon its contents but all we have are excerpts published by the Toronto Star. They indicate that the Minister of Finance disregarded the advice of the experts and in the light of what information is available to us we feel we should vote for the subamendment.
Returning now to the discussion that took place earlier, upon the reading of Hansard, I was somewhat surprised, when I was dealing with the secret document, at the intervention made by the Prime Minister. He said of me, "This is completely unworthy of you."


John George Diefenbaker: No, no. Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Pearson) and I were talking back and forth. The Leader of the Opposition made some observation and I made an observation which had no reference to the hon. member for Laurier (Mr. Chevrier). There was a cross-fire between us.


Lester Bowles Pearson: I am the guilty one.


John George Diefenbaker: I do not know what the statement was.


Lionel Chevrier: I am very happy to hear the Prime Minister say that it is not I who is unworthy. In any event, I want to come back to the discussion earlier so that there

Canadian Economic Outlook can be no doubt about the nature of the report that was under discussion on January 20 because there certainly seemed to be some doubt in the Prime Minister's mind as to exactly what it was. I should like to refer to the debate which took place on January 21, 1958, page 3559 of Hansard. At that time I had made the following comment:
I have another remark to make with reference to this document, Mr. Speaker. The document I hold in my hand is marked "confidential", but something has been taken from it. I make this statement not because I was a member of the government, since I have not been a member of the government for the last three years. But look at this document. A page has been torn from it, and those who have torn the page off here left a fragment of it there and on the back of it is a blue portion indicating it has been tampered with. I am informed by my former colleagues that its covers were blue; and that part of the report which normally indicates . . . that it is a secret document. Therefore, I ask this question. Why was this tabled and marked "confidential", whereas the rest of it is secret? Where is the rest of it? Where are the other pages which should be attached to this?
I should like to quote from a statement in the same volume at page 4199 attributed to the Right Hon. Mr. Gardiner as follows:
When I got my copy on March 29, 1957, I made a note on it to send it west. I took it out west and read it. Of course, I had to get it back again and that document is marked, right on the front page, with the word "secret". Of course, I did not read it to the press and to my constituents out west at election time. And then on the second page it is marked "secret" again and, of course, I did not read that document to others.
I simply desired to put those two quotations on Hansard so that there might be no doubt about the statement I made earlier as to the fact that this document was not so much a confidential document as it was a secret document. Now, I presume from the agitation I saw the Prime Minister display earlier that he will take part in the debate and I hope that he will as I also hope that the Minister of Trade and Commerce will take part in the debate. After all, this document was prepared by officers of his department. They are the ones who prepared both the 1957 and 1958 documents. He has made certain statements challenging the accuracy of press reports and it would seem to me that certainly he, of all ministers, should take part in the discussion.
We were wondering, therefore, just at what stage the Prime Minister will enter the debate. This afternoon he indicated that he intended to contribute to the discussion. He threw the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fleming) into the debate last night and then today the Minister of Justice (Mr. Fulton). The Minister of Justice was doing so poorly before six o'clock that he was scratched before he had a chance to finish his speech.

All this, it seems to me, points to a speech by the Prime Minister in an effort to prop up the sagging prestige of the government in this debate. But knowing the Prime Minister as I do and having a great deal of respect for his ability and skill, I have a feeling that when he does enter the debate he will indicate in no uncertain terms that if he tabled this report it was at the request of members on this side of the house. I am referring, of course, to "The Canadian Economic Outlook for 1957" report. I should like to say here that during the course of that debate the former member for Winnipeg North Centre challenged him to produce the document and I believe that my colleague, the hon. member for Essex East did likewise.
What I think the house should not forget, and what I think the house should have uppermost in its mind, is that the Prime Minister cannot get away from the fact that he was asked to table this document by these two hon. gentlemen, in accordance with the rules. During the period prior to six o'clock on January 20, 1958, he read at great length from the secret document. In fact, I believe he quoted some 26 excerpts from the document. He charged that it had been concealed by the former administration. He made charges that the former administration was responsible for the condition in which the country was at that time, and had concealed the evidence. After having read from that document for a period of at least two hours [DOT]-I remember the speech quite well-and quoting extracts from it at great length, under the rules of the house there was no alternative for him but to table the document.
I may wish to come back to this in a moment, but now I should like to say something about that loquacious, sarcastic, vituperative speech made by the Minister of Finance. This speech, sir, divides itself into two parts. In the first part, he poured out ridicule and scorn upon my leader without, I submit with deference, dealing with the substance of the amendment before the house. In my opinion, that speech was unworthy, if that expression can now be used by me, of the Minister of Finance. Then, too, there is another thing to which I should like to take exception, and it is that during the course of my remarks earlier today I made some reference to the Minister of Finance and from the other side of the house came the charge, "Cheap". Well, sir, there could have been nothing cheaper than that which came out of the mouth of the Minister of Finance than the reference which he made to my leader, dealing with his speech on January 20, when he stated that after that speech the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Pearson) was alone and walked out

of this house without anyone accompanying him. If ever there was a cheap assertion, that was one which came from the Minister of Finance.


An hon. Member:: It is true, though.


Lionel Chevrier: It is not true because I say here, on my responsibility as a member of parliament, that I sat beside the Leader of the Opposition and I walked out of the house with him on that occasion. But I will add this, however. Last night, after the flat speech of the Minister of Finance nobody accompanied him; no one came up to his seat save the loud-mouthed Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Harkness).


Mr. Stinson:: That is not true.


John Whitney Pickersgill: We remember the day the Minister of Finance walked out alone, too.


Frederick Coles Stinson: That is not true.


Lionel Chevrier: This business of cheap assertions is a double-edged sword and can be used by both sides of the house. It would have been a great deal better if the Minister of Finance had never used it.


Mr. Ricard:: Hit where you can, below the belt.


Lionel Chevrier: Hon. members opposite do not like this. I am not surprised they do not like it. They do not like any part of this debate. They are in difficulties, and about that there can be no doubt. If they are not in difficulty, why do they not table "The Canadian Economic Outlook for 1958"?


Mr. McPhillips:: Parlez en frangais.


Lionel Chevrier: That remark from the hon. member for Victoria (Mr. McPhillips) indicates the truth of my statement that members on the other side of the house are upset by this amendment; that members on the other side of the house not only do not like this amendment but find themselves considerably embarrassed. Why do they not tell us what is in the report?


Mr. Small:: You will get the business in a few minutes.


Lionel Chevrier: I have no doubt that in a few minutes the Prime Minister will rise and give us an example of his skill in this kind of debate. However, no matter how skilful he is he will never be able to get out of the embarrassment in which he has placed not only himself but his followers on the other side of the house.


Robert Hardy Small: You will come out of your trance.


Lionel Chevrier: If he were not embarrassed he would allow the Minister of Trade and
Canadian Economic Outlook Commerce to rise in his place and tell us what his position is. Why does not the Minister of Trade and Commerce speak?


Thomas Miller Bell: Because you are talking too long.


Lionel Chevrier: He has no hesitation about getting up and making changes in press statements as he did earlier today and yesterday, but as yet he will not say a word. He is tongue-tied today, and that is surprising for that loquacious minister. At least, he should tell us what the position is. But no, they call on the Minister of Finance and on the Minister of Justice. Of course, without doubt, the Prime Minister will close the debate after a little while.
But I am being taken away from the subject matter of my remarks. I wanted to refer, sir, to the second part of the speech made by the Minister of Finance. The second part of his speech dealt with the economic situation in 1957, utterly disregarding the report, "The Canadian Economic Outlook for 1958". Really, to use his own expression, it was a runt of a speech.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Lionel Chevrier: My hon. friends say "Oh", but I am using exactly the same words the Minister of Finance used. If they are applicable to the amendment, let me say that they are equally applicable to the speech made by the Minister of Finance.


Mr. Benidickson:: More so.


Lionel Chevrier: The attitude of the Minister of Finance shows that he is completely irresponsible or that he has not understood the amendment which is before the house. I should like to deal with the amendment, which can be divided into two parts. It reads as follows:
"this house is of the opinion that the actions of the government in connection with 'The Canadian Economic Outlook' have seriously weakened the value of confidential advice from civil servants with resultant damage to the proper formulation of economic and fiscal policies".
Those are the two points contained in the amendment. First, we believe that the conduct of the government has seriously weakened the benefit of confidential advice from civil servants. If this charge is justified, and the Minister of Finance did not establish that it was not, then it means that the relationship between the government and the civil service has deteriorated and has worsened. A good relationship between the two is essential in a democracy and under the rules such as we have them in this house. It is evident that the situation between the civil service and the present
3126	HOUSE OF
Canadian Economic Outlook government has worsened and has deteriorated considerably. No one is more capable of telling us about that than the Minister of Trade and Commerce.


William Heward Grafftey: Irresponsible.


Lionel Chevrier: Just listen to this to see how irresponsible it is. Let me tell the hon. member for Brome-Missisquoi (Mr. Grafftey) that at least ten members of the civil service who resigned-


William Heward Grafftey: You resigned yourself.


Lionel Chevrier: Several of those were members of the civil service in the Department of Trade and Commerce.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I am sure the hon. member who has the floor is finding difficulty with so many people interrupting. I am not sure whether he is having more difficulty from behind or in front, but from all parts of the house there seem to be constant interruptions. I would ask hon. members to hear the hon. member who has the floor.


Lionel Chevrier: Mr. Speaker, I was saying that there has been a deterioration between the government and the civil service. That fact is evidenced by the resignations that have taken place, no less than a substantial number of them-I believe four or five-from the department of the Minister of Trade and Commerce. The Minister of Trade and Commerce the other day, dealing with that subject, said they all had good reason to resign and that they sent letters of resignation giving the reasons therefor. I am quite sure that they had good reasons to resign. I believe the minister as well as I believe the reasons given by those members of the civil service for their resignations. The point I am making is this. I am convinced in my own mind and in my own heart that these men would still be in the civil service if the former administration were still in office.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Lionel Chevrier: Then we have had attacks made upon the civil service by members of parliament before this report leaked out as well as since that time. These charges have been renewed without any evidence yet to justify the charge. I need only refer to the editorial which appeared in the Globe and Mail and which dealt with the alternatives which could have happened in this leak. May I quote from the editorial under the name of Mr. Robert Duffy which appeared in the Globe and Mail of August 4, 1958:
That may be generally true, but in this case Trade and Commerce Minister Churchill was 

already on record with an admission made outside the house, that the newspaper extracts from the report were perfectly accurate.
In fairness to the minister, I must say that statement was denied by him earlier.


Gordon Minto Churchill: Thank you.


Lionel Chevrier: I continue:
If the ministers were merely confused, however, there was a more interesting reaction from some Conservative backbenchers. The quick suspicion was that some official had passed the secret report to the Liberals, who passed it on to the newspaper, in order to create an issue embarrassing to the government.
It may have happened that way, but there is another possibility. Conceivably, some government supporter may have disclosed the document, in pursuit of his own ends. There are rivalries within a government as well as between political parties. And as a general rule most government departments feel that the Finance Minister and the Treasury Board are not giving them enough money to spend.
That gives some indication of where the leak might have come. Then there is the attitude of the no less arrogant Minister of Agriculture who fires a member of the public service and makes criminal accusations against him which are absolutely without foundation. There is a well-known rule of law that a man is presumed innocent until found guilty. The minister reversed the rule, however, and found him guilty without trial.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I would remind the hon. member that that matter was discussed at considerable length in a previous debate and is not relevant tonight.


An hon. Member:: And his time is up.


An hon. Member:: You hope.


Lionel Chevrier: Mr. Speaker, as always I accept your ruling and I bow to it.
If I may, I should like to return to the arrogant Minister of Finance who has now come into the house. In his absence I was telling him that the amendment which he ignored completely dealt with a number of things, the things in particular that should have been drawn to his attention. I had arrived at the second point made in our amendment which is derived from the first and which is to the effect that the value of confidential advice from the civil service having been seriously weakened, great damage has been done to the formulation of economic and fiscal policies. We all know that in the preparation of the budget and in determining what are going to be the levels of public expenditures and taxes for a given year the government cannot escape the responsibility of making some kind of assessment of what the over-all economic outlook

and the over-all economic situation is going to be for that year. The Canadian people have the right to expect that procedure. The Canadian people have been accustomed to that procedure. The government must in fulfilling its responsibilities take the advice of its senior civil servants, get the best possible advice it can in the preparation of the budget; it should have not only the best expert advice but the best system, the best method of assessment of the economic situation, otherwise, if that were not the case, serious mistakes could be made when the estimates of public expenditure and taxes are prepared, with the result that Canadians would not benefit from the most effective policies designed to cope with any possible undesirable economic situation.
Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance in dealing with his budget quoted from a white paper prepared by the Department of Trade and Commerce entitled "Private and Public Investment for Canada; Outlook for 1958". What he did, was to refer to that document in dealing with the composition of the gross national product, which is made up by government expenditures, exports minus imports, investments and consumer expenditures. Those added up equal the gross national product. He used the figures which are to be found at page 7 of this "Outlook for 1958". As can be found at page 1235 of Hansard, he said this:
The expanded role of social capital is illustrated in the 1958 Outlook for Private and Public Investment published by my colleague the Minister of Trade and Commerce. Present investment intentions of business for capital outlays in 1958 are about 11 per cent below the 1957 level. Planned outlays for housing, government departments and institutional services on the other hand are 14 per cent higher.


Mr. Speaker:: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member but his time has expired.


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, having followed the course of the debate in its entirety, there are some matters which I feel might be dealt with at this time in order to remove some of the smoke screen which has been brought into the discussion by members of the opposition.
As I listened to my hon. friend the member for Laurier (Mr. Chevrier) when he spoke of the civil service I could not but be in agreement with him. There is no disagreement with respect to the fact that our civil service makes a contribution worthy of the finest traditions of public service, but he went out of his way to say that because of the fact that a number of civil servants in high positions had resigned this must have
Canadian Economic Outlook been because of some disagreement with the government. He should have looked to his right and to his left-


John Whitney Pickersgill: That is diversion No. 1.


John George Diefenbaker: He should have looked at his leader at his right and to the pick of the pack on his left.


John Whitney Pickersgill: That is diversion No. 2.


Lester Bowles Pearson: We resigned to go into a government not to leave one.


John George Diefenbaker: Ah, they are starting to explain. Let me say to my hon. friend the hon. member for Laurier that some resigned from the civil service to get a better job in government than they would have had outside of it and in that respect I am sure he will require no identification; some resigned from the civil service or the public service in the expectation of greater rewards in government.
So there they sit, three of them who have at one time or another resigned from the civil or public service of Canada and have found their way into parliament. I do not think there is any argument that it is to the credit of civil servants who find they can improve their positions-and they certainly can, especially those in the higher areas of the civil service and indeed all areas of the civil service have before them at all times the magnetic attraction of far greater advantages, monetary and otherwise, than the civil service can offer-that they stay in the civil service and give to our country the benefit of their wisdom and advice.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


John George Diefenbaker: Anyone who endeavours to bring into this discussion the veiled suggestion or even the suspicion that the members of this government have a lesser regard for the civil service of Canada than have the members of the opposition should be reminded that the answer to such a suggestion is immediately apparent. I witnessed the crocodile tears of the hon. gentlemen opposite-oh, how they love the civil service, but they waited until this government came to power for the increases which we eventually brought in for former civil servants.


John Whitney Pickersgill: That is a noble argument.


John George Diefenbaker: My hon. friend, the
member for Bonavista-Twillingate (Mr. Pickersgill) would acquire an even greater reputation for wisdom if he could for once maintain silence.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Mr. Speaker, when I require instructions from the Prime Minister I will ask him for them.

Canadian Economic Outlook


John George Diefenbaker: When some members
first come into the house they feel, and this is quite natural, that the contribution to this House of Commons is measured by the number of interjections, but the hon. member has had experience both in the civil service and also in parliament and I am sure that he has learned long before this that these interjections are never interpreted as evidence of statesmanship.


John Whitney Pickersgill: The hon. gentleman ought
to know, he has lots to his credit.


John George Diefenbaker: Returning once more to
the tremendous feeling of members of the opposition for the public service, I have here a speech delivered by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Pearson) a day or so before the end of last March in which he scored the Conservatives for the reign of terror in the civil service and he said something should be done.


Lester Bowles Pearson: On a point of order, I never
at any time during the election talked about any reign of terror with regard to the civil service and I challenge the Prime Minister to quote anything to prove that I did so.


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, that is
the best answer, my hon. friend says he did not say it-


Lester Bowles Pearson: Well, read it.


John George Diefenbaker: And I have here an
article headed, "Pearson Scores Tories' Reign of Terror in Civil Service". My hon. friend says he did not say that and this is the best argument one could possibly evince as to why no reliance should be placed on the type of thing upon which the opposition is placing so much reliance at the present time, namely, an expurgated, an imaginative press report-


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Lester Bowles Pearson: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has made the allegation that I said there was a reign of terror in the civil service. I asked him to read any statement attributed to me in which I am supposed to have said that.


John George Diefenbaker: I have just read you
the heading.


Lester Bowles Pearson: Never mind the heading,
read the statement.


William Moore Benidickson: Read it.


John George Diefenbaker: I shall go on, I shall read it.


Lester Bowles Pearson: Read it.


John George Diefenbaker: And this after their
record-after all, the gentleman was a member of a government which refused to do anything on behalf of former civil service employees.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Another diversion.


John George Diefenbaker: And refused to do anything-


An hon. Member:: Answer the point of order.


John George Diefenbaker: -to ease the actual hardships suffered by civil servants superannuated under the old law of pre-pay-raise rates. Why did they not do this?


Lester Bowles Pearson: On the point of order. Would the Prime Minister read from that statement in which I am supposed to have said there was a reign of terror in the civil service or will he withdraw his allegation.


Mr. Speaker:: I understood the hon. member to say he had made no such statement and following that assertion the Prime Minister accepted assurance of the Leader of the Opposition. It was therefore not proceeded with.


Lester Bowles Pearson: Someone has said, apparently that I said this-


John George Diefenbaker: The hon. member said he did not say it.


Hédard-J. Robichaud: Where is this reign of terror?


John Whitney Pickersgill: Just like January 20, bits and pieces.


John George Diefenbaker: All this chattering indicates guilty consciences.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


John George Diefenbaker: My hon. friend said he did not say it. This was an article written by Richard Jackson, headed "Pearson Scores Tories' Reign of Terror in Civil Service", and I accept my hon. friend's denial.


Lester Bowles Pearson: No, Mr. Speaker, on the point of order, the Prime Minister cannot get away with that. I asked him to admit that there is no reference to a statement of mine that there was a reign of terror. Would he please read the article in which I am said to have said this or withdraw his statement.


William Moore Benidickson: The Minister of Finance (Mr. Fleming) is reading it for him.


Mr. Speaker:: I understand the hon. member raised a point of order that he had not said the words which were read by the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister has accepted his statement. That, it seems to me, closes the matter.


John Whitney Pickersgill: The words are not there, it is just another fabrication.


Lester Bowles Pearson: On the point of order, the Prime Minister has said that the article says I stated there was a reign of terror in the civil service. I ask him to read the article to prove that I made that statement-


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I do not think the hon. member should ask the Prime Minister to read a statement which contradicts him.


Lester Bowles Pearson: Then he should withdraw it.


Some hon. Members:: Withdraw.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The Prime Minister has already accepted the statement of the Leader of the Opposition that he did not use the expression "reign of terror" and I do not think it is in order for the Leader of the Opposition now to ask the Prime Minister to read the report which the Leader of the Opposition contradicted.


John George Diefenbaker: I have accepted the denial and that is the end of it.


An hon. Member:: He can't read it.


John George Diefenbaker: I will come back to this; with all that deep solicitude and heartfelt yearning for the civil servant, why did they not do something when they were in office-


Some hon. Members:: We did.


John George Diefenbaker: -with regard to the excivil servants who over and over again were asking for assistance?


John Whitney Pickersgill: Would the Prime Minister permit a question?


Some hon. Members:: Sit down.


Mr. Speaker:: Order.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Would the Prime Minister permit a question?


An hon. Member:: He won't permit a question.


John George Diefenbaker: I know the purpose of this. They realize I have only a few minutes, and they spend their time like this.


Lester Bowles Pearson: You took two hours this afternoon.


John George Diefenbaker: The hon. member for Laurier spoke disparagingly of the speech of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fleming) and also of the speech of the Minister of Justice (Mr. Fulton) because, he stated, they did not have any regard to the amendment. I ask gentlemen opposite to read their speeches and see how closely, beginning with that of their leader, they have any reference to the subject
Canadian Economic Outlook matter of the amendment. Here this afternoon they have been using the same arguments. Indeed, I have before me almost identical speeches which they used in the campaign. Over and over again they dealt with this subject. Even the member for Essex East (Mr. Martin) did so in a pompous manner in a couple of speeches, and let me say this: the people of Canada realized what the issue was; they realized it was a fact that for a period of a year and a half, conditions being what they were, members of the present opposition and members of the government of that day had placed before the people of Canada self selected statistics.


John Whitney Pickersgill: That is untrue.


John George Diefenbaker: They concealed the facts. They hid them, as they know, and if today we had some exhibition of repentance on their part we could at least say that forgiveness might be given. But as they return to this amendment, trying to restore life to a subject matter long since dead, one that they have gone over again and again, there is a sense of guilt and realization that they did what we said they did; they hid the facts.


John Whitney Pickersgill: What about the Prime Minister's speech to the federal-provincial conference five months after?


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, the more the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate tries to speak, the more he gives one a realization of something I have never been able to understand-that every time he speaks it is always a member of the other side who is elected.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege.


Some hon. Members:: Oh. Sit down.


John Whitney Pickersgill: It concerns the statement made by the Prime Minister-


Gordon Minto Churchill: Take it and like it.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member has risen on a question of privilege.


John Whitney Pickersgill: My question of privilege is this: The Prime Minister stated that wherever I spoke the candidate on the other side was elected. I spoke 30 times in Bonavista-Twillingate and got 76 per cent of the votes.


Some hon. Members:: Withdraw.


An hon. Member:: They had sooner elect you than listen.


Mr. Speaker:: The Prime Minister has very little time and I ask that he be allowed to proceed without interruption.


John George Diefenbaker: I am sorry I made that earlier statement. Evidently it took him 30 speeches to win his constituency. To return
3130	HOUSE OF
Canadian Economic Outlook to the point I was making. With that conscience that pricks them for having concealed the facts, frustrated in their souls, overcome because of the fact that the depression which they predicted during the election campaign with such avid and vocal anticipation has not been achieved, they realize that the people of Canada know clearly from the facts that they have concealed the evidence-


John Whitney Pickersgill: What has happened to the facts now?


Douglas Scott Harkness: Restrain yourselves.


John George Diefenbaker: *-of a situation-


An hon. Member:: Give 'em hell.


John George Diefenbaker: -that was dangerous to the welfare of the Canadian people.
Now, Mr. Speaker, in the last couple of days they are clad in sack cloth and ashes. They wail their lamentations; they beat their breasts-[DOT]


An hon. Member:: That sounds like Billy Graham.


John George Diefenbaker: The Leader of the Opposition came out with a fighting speech,-a speech of pulsating prophecy finally terminating in a pusillanimous amendment similar in nature to that which was introduced into this house on the twentieth day of January last. What do they say? They say we should bring to the house a document of which they allege sections abstracted therefrom have been published in a newspaper in this country.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Do you deny it?


John George Diefenbaker: They raise their voices and say that a confidential document should never be brought to light, that it should never be revealed. Their guilty conscience was shown a little while ago by the hon. member for Laurier who said: I know that the Prime Minister will say we forced him to table the document. That was a fine example of prevision. This was the Janus-faced position they took.


Mr. Mcllrailh:: You are the one who revealed it.


John George Diefenbaker: If you would make your position clear in debate, the people of Ottawa would appreciate it.
Here is the position they take. They say the document should not be produced because it is confidential. Then, in a state of synthetic indignation, they demand that we table-


An hon. Member:: Secret report.


John George Diefenbaker: In the British House of Commons documents designated as confidential and secret have been produced. And on the twentieth day of January last, as the 

hon. member for Laurier admitted, it was as the result of a demand on the part of the opposition that this document-


An hon. Member:: Secret report.


John George Diefenbaker: This reminds me, Mr. Speaker,-


John Whitney Pickersgill: I am rising on a point of order.


Mr. Speaker:: Before the hon. member makes his point of order, may I remind him that his last question of privilege was not a question of privilege.


John Whitney Pickersgill: I think my point of order will be found to be a point of order, and my point of order is that when an hon. member cites a document it is the rule of the house that it be tabled.


John George Diefenbaker: The hon. member for Essex East as well as the former member for Winnipeg North Centre-*


Paul Joseph James Martin: I rise on a point of order.


John Whitney Pickersgill: We have had a good
education.


Some hon. Members:: Dictatorship.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I must hear the hon. member on a point of order.


Paul Joseph James Martin: The hon. gentleman said it was as the result of a request of mine. I made no such request. At page 3531 of Hansard for January 20, 1958, the hon. member said:
If the house desires it I will be very happy to do so.
At that point I interjected and said that he must do it under the rules.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. May I say to hon.
members that whenever they disagree with what was said by another hon. member who has the floor, a point of order does not arise. Explanations can be made and may be made at the end of the speech but not by interrupting the hon. member who has the floor.


Donald Methuen Fleming: They are just
attempting to take up the Prime Minister's limited time.


Lionel Chevrier: That is exactly what you did.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Nonsense.


Lionel Chevrier: Do not be so innocent because you are not innocent, you know.


Lester Bowles Pearson: Mr. Speaker, you have stated that the point of order that must be made must be stated at the time.


Mr. Speaker:: Yes, a point of order must be made but I have just indicated that these

are not points of order. If an hon. member disagrees with what is said by the hon. member who has the floor and wishes to make an explanation he should reserve it until the hon. member has finished.


Lionel Chevrier: The Minister of Public
Works (Mr. Green) has no right to lose his temper.


John Whitney Pickersgill: The Minister of Public Works is really enjoying this debate.


Douglas Scott Harkness: You know no more about points of order than you do about anything else.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I must insist on some order so that this debate may proceed. It has only eleven minutes to run.


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, it is
apparent that any argument I could advance would do nothing other than hurt the souls of hon. members opposite. Reports have been produced before on a number of occasions and see the position in which the opposition have placed themselves. They say that documents such as this shall not be produced.


An hon. Member:: Three times.


John George Diefenbaker: They say that is the rule. I answered that by referring to the practice in the British house. Secondly, they say that in this case because they believe that the secrecy of the document has been violated by publication in the press-


Lester Bowles Pearson: Hear, hear.


John George Diefenbaker: -therefore they have a right to expect the production of this document in the House of Commons. Mr. Speaker, that stand is one that has no logic about it.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Just common sense.


John George Diefenbaker: It suggests this: a document is secret, a document is confidential, a document shall not be tabled in the House of Commons; but if some newspaper somewhere in an article states that there is some secret or confidential document and purports to make a quotation from that document-


Lester Bowles Pearson: Which you will not deny.


John George Diefenbaker: -then, by reason of that situation, the document must be placed before the House of Commons.


Some hon. Members:: That is right.


John George Diefenbaker: Just to state that proposition, Mr. Speaker, is to indicate the ridiculous nature of the proposition. The hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Argue) said that if another government does anything like this it is wrong and that if we do it it is right.
Canadian Economic Outlook That doctrine is far removed from the facts of this case and I am going to detail them now.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


John George Diefenbaker: I brought the matter before the House of Commons on January 20, 1958.


Mr. Caron:: Wrong again.


John George Diefenbaker: I was able to show the utterly hypocritical attitude of the former government.


Joseph-Alphonse-Anaclet Habel: The same attitude you are displaying today.


John George Diefenbaker: I was able to do this simply by taking the same document, quoting from it, and producing it at their request.


Some hon. Members:: Oh no.


Paul Joseph James Martin: You produced it under the rules of this house.


John George Diefenbaker: The reason that they now endeavour to howl me down is this.


Joseph-Alphonse-Anaclet Habel: We want honesty.


John George Diefenbaker: They are afraid of an argument meeting their contentions of today and yesterday. Let us examine what I said on January 20 last. I refer hon. members to page 3534 of Hansard where I am reported as having said:
It is of a confidential nature and it has to do with events immediately ahead in the economic field and for that reason documents of such a type have naturally not been tabled in the past. This, of course, is because if there is going to be a rising economy according to such a document then that encourages business interests but if it says that in a certain area there is going to be a reducing economy then that inevitably would have a detrimental effect.
However, the point I made was that they did have that document and they did not act upon it but, instead of acting upon it, they actually placed before the House of Commons at the time of the budget a picture of a buoyant economy, hopeful for the future-
And then an interjection occurred when an hon. member said "We were scuttled".


John Whitney Pickersgill: That statement is not true, of course, and the Prime Minister (Mr. Diefenbaker) knows it.


William Moore Benidickson: That is not so.


John Whitney Pickersgill: The Prime Minister knows that is not true and I should be very glad to quote from Mr. Harris' speech in support of my contention.


John George Diefenbaker: I continue:
-and assured the country that it would be continuing as they said it was.

Canadian Economic Outlook
And then again on the following day, January 21, as reported at page 3550 of Hansard, I said:
I would say it would not be in the public interest to table any reports that are coterminous with the time ot application of such reports.
I wish to make it clear that we have no objection to the production of the economic report for this year provided it is not as I said last spring, and as the authorities state, coterminous with the year during which the report has application.


John Whitney Pickersgill: The Minister of Finance (Mr. Fleming) said it was already out of date.


John George Diefenbaker: I assure the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate that we will pro' duce the report for 1958 immediately after this year ends. It would be detrimental until January 1959. That has been the attitude in the past. That has been the practice in other parliamentary institutions.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Not at all.


John George Diefenbaker: That is the stand which we take in regard to this document.


Lester Bowles Pearson: You did not take that stand in January.


John George Diefenbaker: Next January, if there is any request-


John Whitney Pickersgill: Would the Prime Minister permit a question?


Some hon. Members:: No, sit down.


Howard Charles Green: Sit down.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Would the Prime Minister permit a question?


Some hon. Members:: He said no.


John Whitney Pickersgill: He has only to say no.


Some hon. Members:: He did.


William Moore Benidickson: Will the Prime Minister say no?


John Whitney Pickersgill: Would the Prime Minister permit a question?


John George Diefenbaker: If there is any request for the tabling of this report-


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate cannot proceed unless the hon. member yields the floor.


John Whitney Pickersgill: I asked the Prime Minister if he would permit a question.


John George Diefenbaker: If in January 1959 there is any request for the production of this document it will be made available and then my hon. friends opposite examining that document in the light of the economic events that have occurred in this country from May and


June of this year on will be able to determine whether or not the policies as enunciated in the budget had some regard to the economic and financial prospects of this nation. The production of the previous report that was made in the house at their request-


John Whitney Pickersgill: Under the rules.


Murdo William Martin: Do not misstate the facts.


John George Diefenbaker: -concerned a report
referring to the year 1957. The production of the document occurred in 1958. The reason why they are so disturbed, Mr. Speaker, is this. The production of that document in the year following its preparation told the story in this house of the conjured fantasies of the terrible economic conditions they said we were responsible for and laid the responsibility on their doorstep.


John Whitney Pickersgill: That statement is totally untrue.


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, the contribution at all times in argument of my friend the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate is that the other person does not tell the truth.


Some hon. Members:: That is right.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Particularly in this case.


John George Diefenbaker: That is perhaps the most intelligent contribution that the hon. member can make to the debates of this house. It is a simple one but it seems to be about the measure of the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate.


Thomas Miller Bell: And he is a
sailor too.


John George Diefenbaker: Now, Mr. Speaker, we are concealing no document from the house.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Hédard-J. Robichaud: Is it marked "secret"?


Lionel Chevrier: Is that true or false?


John George Diefenbaker: We are following the practice followed in other parliaments.


George James McIlraith: Yes, in Russia.


John George Diefenbaker: And, next spring, in
January, February or March when parliament assembles we shall gladly produce that document and my hope is that the prophecies made by the Minister of Finance will then be found in keeping with the facts rather than with the picture of black despondency that characterizes the opposition. Do you know what is wrong with them? They hoped that things would be worse.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Lester Bowles Pearson: No.


John George Diefenbaker: They do not understand the fact, as put on the record by the Minister of Finance today, that our trade is increasing. They do not understand the fact that our wheat marketing has shown unusual powers of disposal.


Hédard-J. Robichaud: Unemployment is increasing.


John George Diefenbaker: It is one of the hardest things for them to take when today, for the first time in 30 months, there was the largest reduction in the cost of living in any one month. They raise these arguments, Mr. Speaker. I have got the speeches of the Leader of the Opposition here. Job was supposed to be the greatest authority on lamentations until the Leader of the Opposition came along.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Jeremiah.


John George Diefenbaker: Jeremiah, as my hon. friend who sits beside me says. Job was the patient one. That is my position. Now, Mr. Speaker, let me say this. They said all these things only a few months ago. They wailed, they used weasel words like those they used today. They brought in smoke screens. Today they bring in the civil service and the press.


Hédard-J. Robichaud: You brought in a red herring.


John George Diefenbaker: That is exactly what it is. My hon. friend knows that they brought in protestations about the press. I am one of those who have been in politics for many years and I have always said-I am not saying it just today or for this occasion- that the press, except for slight errors and mistakes that naturally creep in, has always occupied to my way of thinking a high position in the finest traditions of this country. I have always said that.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


John George Diefenbaker: But they bring in the press in order to becloud the issue. They bring in the civil service; they bring in all these things. Do you know why they have said all these things, Mr. Speaker. Well, I have never placed too much reliance on Gallup polls but on March 31 last we had 54 per cent of the vote of the people of Canada.


An hon. Member:: That was an accident.


John George Diefenbaker: Since then they have been saying all these things and telling the people how terrible things are but in the last report the figure is 60 per cent, the highest in history. I do not know who the
Canadian Economic Outlook advisers of the Leader of the Opposition are but I understand that he has recently brought in the same people he had during the election campaign. I am glad of that. They have used this type of argument and not attended to the discharge of responsibility as an opposition; they have befogged the situation on a matter such as this at a time when they say conditions are serious. When the opportunity came to them to deal seriously with economic conditions prevailing in Canada, the United States and elsewhere, conditions which are improving more rapidly in this country than in any other, they brought up a subject such as this which they know is simply a case of having a guilty heart and returning once more to something that revealed to the people of Canada the utter duplicity of the policies they put into effect in 1956 when they knew better or should have known better.


Murdo William Martin: A pretty poor defence.


John George Diefenbaker: Now, sir, I think you have indicated that my time is up. There are other matters I could have dealt with but I want to make one thing clear. There are two sides to their position. The document is secret. It must not be produced. They have to say that so they will be consistent with what they said last January. Then they say that the situation now is different because a newspaper purported to copy something which is only alleged so far as anyone is concerned and therefore the document has to be produced.


Some hon. Members:: Time.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. It being 9.06 p.m. it is my duty, pursuant to section 4(d) of standing order 56, to interrupt the proceedings and forthwith put the question on any amendment or amendments now before the house.


FINANCE
Erhart Regier: Mr. Speaker, I have a grievance which I feel I must raise at this time because it deals with a matter which is not subject to a decision of the house in the normal course of events in that the government has undertaken an action for which, according to the authority vested in it, it did not have to ask the permission of this house. The action was taken within recent weeks as a decision of the government. I am, of course, referring to the bond conversion deal of the Conservative government, which is part of the new vision in the field of Canadian finance.
I want to be fair before I make my complaint by listing the only two advantages which I can see in this bond conversion deal so far as the people of Canada are concerned. In the first place, it is anti-inflationary in that it makes out of short term securities long term holdings and thereby removes from the potential buying power of the Canadian economy as much money as is being converted. The other advantage is that it clears the decks of the money markets of an overloading of short term securities, an overloading which was flooding the money markets.
Conversion Loan-Interest Rates
I believe, and I say this sincerely, that on the whole this government has not yet made many serious mistakes. Its sins have been mostly sins of omission. In my opinion, however, this is the first major blunder, the first major sin committed by the regime of the present Prime Minister (Mr. Diefen-baker). The move is unprecedented in that it involves the conversion of from 40 to 60 per cent of the national public debt, depending upon the figure you take as being the real national public debt. It involves an unprecedented $6,400 million. It involves a rise in interest rates on government bonds from the 3 per cent which is now being paid to a high of 41 per cent on the converted bonds. The Tory party is here really revealing itself as the traditional high interest party which it has always been in the entire history of Canada.
It is unique in that it converts callable bonds into non-callable bonds. It is unique in that every effort is being made to see that as far as possible all conversions should be into 25-year bonds. The conversion is also unique in that it is a conversion of bonds which are as yet unmatured into bonds carrying a higher interest rate. Many governments of Canada have in past years converted or called in unmatured bonds; they have called them in for the purpose of converting them to bonds carrying a lower interest rate. However, this government, for some reason that it has not yet explained to the country, is calling in bonds, in some instances many years before the date of maturity, and offering a higher interest rate if the holders will accept the new long-term bonds.
The Minister of Finance (Mr. Fleming) also announced a uniquely high rate on a short term loan when he announced that the government had arranged for $400 million until the fall at 2J per cent. That also is new as far as interest rates go for this type of money. I have read the budget speech of the Minister of Finance and I am going to say that on June 17 he did not contemplate the move he had undertaken since June 17, because throughout the budget speech the implication was very clear that the most the minister was expecting to have to convert and borrow on the money market this year was $3,400 million. I can come to only one conclusion: This deal is so unheard of and so unreasonable that the minister found, after announcing his plans in the budget, that he was unable to get the $3,400 million that he expected to raise this year; $1,900 million to meet the victory bonds that were maturing, some $700 million to carry the deficit and another $800 million, roughly, to cover what are commonly called contingent liabilities.
3136	HOUSE OF
Conversion Loan-Interest Rates And it is my conviction that the people who have control over the investment resources of Canada have held a gun to the heads of this government and have forced the hand of this government into converting the whole of these victory bonds.


Donald Methuen Fleming: Utterly ridiculous.


Erhart Regier: The government only had to convert $1,900 million worth of bonds, because that is the total that were falling due this year, and I fail to understand why the government could not wait until next year before converting the issues falling due next year, and so on. Why did they have to convert $6,400 million worth of bonds? I must ask this question: who is the boss of Canada? Is it the government which the people elected on March 31, or is it the boys on Bay street and St. James street? I ask, furthermore, if this is the pay off for the election funds of the Conservative party-a 50 per cent increase in the pay of the money lenders of Canada. I wonder what the Prime Minister (Mr. Dief-enbaker) would say if the school teachers, the civil servants or the farmers, or any other class of people in Canada, were to ask for a 50 per cent increase in their take home pay? Yet this is exactly what the Minister of Finance has told the money-lenders of Canada they can receive.
Not only is a bonus being paid to these people, but the government has been lavish in the commission rates which it is paying to the money-lenders for the conversion of these bonds. In addition, I notice the government has embarked on a very extensive and national publicity campaign and has inserted full page ads in every little weekly from one end of Canada to the other. The cost of the publicity of this new approach in the financing of the public debt is bound to be enormous. What the whole thing will cost, only the years can tell. I have made a very rough estimate, and I believe that over the 25-year period, assuming that the whole of this issue will be converted, and assuming that the rise in interest rates on other borrowings in Canada is going to amount to approximately three times that of the increase on the bonds, we get a gross cost to the Canadian people of $10,000 million over the next 25-year period.
This deal is already affecting other interest rates in Canada. There are many lending institutions attached to the federal government whose interest rates are directly allied to whatever interest rates the federal government agrees to pay on its long term bonds. I refer to money that is being borrowed by the people of Canada under the Central Mortgage and Housing Act, or National Housing Act loans; I refer to money being lent to the


farmers of Canada by the Canadian farm loan board, and so on. There are many other institutions in Canada through whose assistance people borrow money from government agencies, and whose interest rates are going to be very directly affected. Interest rates on provincial government obligations are bound to rise; interest rates of municipal governments, hospital boards, and school boards are also going to rise, and if these rates do not rise, these institutions will have to pay through the nose in the other way by having to sell debentures at less than par.
It is going to affect the rates at which Canadian commercial undertakings will be able to borrow money and, in addition, affect the rates which the ordinary individual will have to pay on his private borrowings. After all, why should any lending institution be very interested in lending money to an individual at 5 per cent, 5J per cent or 6 per cent if it can lend to the federal government on a 25-year non-callable basis and be assured of a return of 4J per cent? The total price that the people are going to be asked to pay for the privilege of having a Conservative government will be fantastic; the whole scheme is bound to work hardship on the ordinary taxpayers and consumers of Canada.
Why do I feel so keenly about this? Let us look at what is happening to one individual- and I am going to take as an example someone I know-someone who in wartime scraped and denied himself of many things he would liked to have had. However, he knew he was supposed to help the government to ward off inflation; he was urged to buy victory bonds to help win the war and, like the good old soul he was, he invested $2,000 of his hard-earned savings in victory bonds. After the war he found that rents had climbed sky high, and felt obliged to buy a new home. So he decided to sell his victory bonds. He took them to the bank, and what did he get? Did he get 100 cents on the dollar as the banks and insurance houses are now getting? This particular man got 93 cents, and lost $140 of his investment right there. Those who bought those bonds at a discount are now the holders of the bonds. It is estimated that only one out of ten or possibly one out of 12 of these victory bonds are now held by individuals in Canada as individuals.


Mr. Pallell:: According to whose estimates?


Erhart Regier: By far the most of them, approximately 85 per cent or more, are in the hands of institutions and the like.


Donald Methuen Fleming: That is not true. Why not inform yourself of the facts and stick to the truth?


Erhart Regier: Will the Minister of Finance deny that our reputable financial newspapers and magazines in Canada are wrong when they say that only one out of ten, one out of eleven or one out of 12 bonds are held by individuals as individuals? If so, I should be very glad to have him put that on the record.


Donald Methuen Fleming: I deny about 95 per cent of the nonsense the hon. member has been speaking tonight.


William Moore Benidickson: Which 95 per cent?


Donald Methuen Fleming: He is making very harmful statements and is speaking a lot of rubbish.


Erhart Regier: I notice, Mr. Speaker, that every time I hit the minister where it hurts the minister immediately replies by charging that everything I say is nonsense. I have grown used to that over the years.


Donald Methuen Fleming: What the hon. member is saying is worse than nonsense. It is extremely harmful and mischievous.


Erhart Regier: I know that millions of Canadians were forced by the exigencies of the situation to cash in their victory bonds and were required to accept 92 and 93 cents on the dollar. It was an inflated dollar they received. They are not inclined to look kindly upon the move whereby the government says, "We know you investment people paid only 92 or 93 cents on the dollar but we will give you 100 cents on the dollar. What is more we will pay you a cash bonus and a commission for converting the bonds which you yourselves hold and what is even more we will give you a new bond by which you will be assured an interest rate from 4-J per cent over the next 25 years involving not only this generation but the next generation of taxpayers."
If ever there was a case of "To him who hath shall be given and from him who hath not shall be taken even that which he hath" this is it. The people of Canada who held these victory bonds and who hated to have to sell them at a discount a few years ago are going to remember this sell-out of the welfare of the common people, of Canada on the part of the Conservative government. The Canadian people remember the slogans, "Ward off inflation," "help win the war," "be patriotic," "save your money and do not buy a car or a house or washing machine or frigidaire that you need so badly".
Had the government of the day told us of the sell-out that would take place once the war and the immediate post-war period was over the Canadian people would have hesitated before investing their money in victory bonds. The rise in the interest rate surely was
57071-3-198
Conversion Loan-Interest Rates not an effort the people of Canada expected this government would employ when it said it would relax the tight money policy of the former Liberal administration. If the Canadian people had had any inkling that the Tory government was going to relax the tight money policy by giving a 50 per cent raise in pay, as it were, to the money-lenders of Canada, I believe the election results would have been entirely different.
This represents a gift, a handout to the money-lenders of this country. In my view it speaks louder than any words of the Minister of Finance or of the Prime Minister (Mr. Diefenbaker) concerning where the allegiance of the Tory party lies. It lies today where it has always lain, with Bay street and with St. James street which in this case were able to finance a larger advertising campaign and put on a bigger show than the Liberal party was able to do and that is why the Tories are in office at the present time.


Donald Methuen Fleming: There is not a word of truth in that.


Erhart Regier: Is that all you have to say?


Donald Methuen Fleming: That is all that
rubbish deserves to have said about it.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. Is the house ready for the question?


William Moore Benidickson: Is the minister not going to reply?


Some hon. Members:: Question.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Rea in the chair.
The estimates of the following departments were first taken up and entered for consideration:


LEGISLATION
[Stage Direction]
The Senate-
The Speaker of the Senate-
181. Allowance in lieu of residence, $3,000.
DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL REVENUE Customs and excise divisions-
259. General administration, $4,089,027.

[Stage Direction]
383. Departmental administration, $282,666.
Proceedings reported.

Lionel Chevrier: Mr. Speaker, may I ask the
government leader what the business will be for tomorrow.


Howard Charles Green: Tomorrow, Mr. Speaker, we intend to ask for interim supply and then

Business of the House
take the resolution which is No. 23 on today's order paper, concerning a measure to authorize the Canadian National Railway Company to make certain capital expenditures. I do not know if it will be possible but perhaps that could be put through all stages tomorrow. Then we will go on with the list of legislation which I mentioned last night.


Lionel Chevrier: Mr. Speaker, may I ask the house leader if he could tell us what will happen on the three remaining days of the week?


Howard Charles Green: After all the unkind things the hon. member for Laurier said about me in my capacity as house leader yesterday afternoon I am not at all certain whether it is wise to give him this information.


Lionel Chevrier: I thought I was extremely courteous in my references to you.


Howard Charles Green: I did not see that part of your address.


Lionel Chevrier: The only person of whom I was not courteous was the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fleming) but I am afraid I had reason to act that way.


Howard Charles Green: Oh, what you said to him does not matter.


Donald Methuen Fleming: It rolls right off.


William Moore Benidickson: He does not budge a bit.


Howard Charles Green: We may have to take some of the measures I have listed for tomorrow on Thursday if they do not go through but the
plan is to take the estimates of the Department of Justice and of the Secretary of State and then the items coming under the description of legislation for which His Honour the Speaker is responsible.
On Friday we intend to take the estimates of the Department of National Defence and of Defence Production, both of which have been through the estimates committee. On Saturday we intend to take the estimates of the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources. If that is not telling the hon. member for Laurier the business of the house a long way ahead, I do not know what more I could do.


Lionel Chevrier: I must say, Mr. Speaker, that for the first time this session the house leader has projected his mind so far in advance that I am satisfied.


James Ross Fulton: What nonsense. You are dizzy.


Douglas Mason Fisher: Mr. Speaker, may I ask the house leader when we are going to reach item No. 2 on the order paper. I see no reason for it being delayed. I am sure there is unanimity in the house and I know that in a certain part of the country there is an interest in seeing it become law.


Howard Charles Green: We cannot take estimates on Monday or Tuesday without a special motion and we wish to avoid another foolish debate like the one we have had in these last two days. There will be legislation called on next Monday and Tuesday and I hope we can cover this particular item on one or the other of those days.


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