1960-06-15

[Stage Direction]
Eleventh report of standing committee on miscellaneous private bills-Mr. McCleave.
Sixth report of standing committee on banking and commerce-Mr. Cathers.

Hon. George H. Hees (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to announce the appointment of Robert James Rankin, vice-chairman of the national harbours board, to the office of president of the St. Lawrence seaway authority as of August 1. Mr. Rankin will succeed B. J. Roberts, C.B.E., president of the seaway authority since February, 1958, who retires on July 31. Mr. Rankin has been vice-chairman of the national harbours board since February 1, 1958.
In going to his new post Mr. Rankin will add to his already extensive experience in marine matters. He formerly served as chairman of the port of Halifax commission for five years, and was a member of the commission at the time of his appointment as vice-chairman of the national harbours board. He played a notable role prior to that appointment in the economic development of the Atlantic provinces, and was president of the Atlantic provinces economic council in 1957. He is a former newspaperman, joining the staff of the Halifax Herald in 1921 and rising to the post of managing editor of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald before being named vice-president and member of the board of directors. He is a past president of the Canadian Press, serving in that capacity from 1954 to 1956.
Mr. Rankin was born in Chatham, Ontario, a son of the late Mr. and Mrs. J. B. Rankin, and received his education in the schools there. His wife is the former Constance Marguerite Buckler of Annapolis Royal. They have two sons. Mr. Rankin is a veteran of world war I, serving as signals officer with the 1st battalion, C.E.F.
I would also like to refer to the notable contribution Mr. B. J. Roberts has made to Canada over a long period of years. He is a former member and chairman of the national harbours board and a former assistant 79951-0-3124
deputy minister of finance. Over a period of 30 years he served on a number of important boards and commissions, and he was financial adviser to the British commonwealth air training plan during world war II. He was named a commander of the British empire after the war ended.
Mr. Roberts took over as president of the St. Lawrence seaway authority early in 1958, and supervised the final year of construction and the operation of the project since its opening in April last year. His contribution to the present successful operation of the seaway has been a very real one indeed.



ANNOUNCEMENT OF FINAL PAYMENT

[Stage Direction]
for 1958-59 crop
Hon. D. S. Harkness (Acting Minister of Trade and Commerce):: Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Minister of Trade and Commerce gave an undertaking to the house to make a statement on the final accounting for the 1958-59 pool account of the Canadian wheat board. In his unavoidable absence he has asked me to make his statement for him.
The 1958-59 pool account for wheat was closed as at May 20, 1960. The final accounting has been completed and I am now in a position to advise the house of the operating results of this pool.
Producers delivered 367.0 million bushels of wheat to the 1958-59 pool. An interim payment was made in respect of this pool in the period from February 22 to March 11, 1960 and involved the distribution of $36,699,415.19. After providing for payment costs and the Prairie Farm Assistance Act levy the final payment will amount to $33,919,322.24. The average final payment, therefore, basis producers' deliveries, will be 9.2425 cents per bushel.
The final payments on the principal grades of wheat delivered to the pool are as follows:
Cents per bushel
No. 1	northern	
9.374No. 2	northern	
9.869No. 3	northern	
6.342No. 4	northern	
5.009No. 5	wheat	
19.548No. 6	wheat	
24.518No. 1	amber Durum	
17.910No. 2	amber Durum	
16.784No. 3	amber Durum	
12.618Extra No. 4 amber Durum ...	15.217No. 4	amber Durum	
7.707No. 5	amber Durum	
19.548No. 6	amber Durum	
24.518
Starred Questions
In respect to the principal grades of wheat delivered to the pool, the total prices realized by producers were slightly less than the total prices received for the preceding pool. Before deduction for the Prairie Farm Assistance Act levy the total realized prices are as follows:
Dollars per bushel
			1958-59	1957-58
No.	1	northern 	.... 1.59569	1.62120No.	2	northern 	
1.56069	1.58592No.	3	northern 	.... 1.48507	1.49794No.	4	northern 	.... 1.40161	1.39630
I have been advised by the Canadian wheat board that the issuance of cheques to producers will commence about June 15, and payment will be completed during the first week of July.


Mr. Hazen Argue (Assiniboia):: The statement made by the minister is very similar to the statement made a year ago at this time. It further emphasizes the desirability of retaining the wheat board organization, since it does mean that producers marketing a given grade and quality of grain receive the same price. Final payment this year is about one-quarter of a cent higher than the final payment last year. When one considers that the producers' cost has gone up by more than 5 per cent in that period, this emphasizes the continuing need for the government to take supplementary measures to increase farm income in the west.



STARRED QUESTIONS


Mr. Pigeon: 1.	How many plays (texts and copyrights) have been bought each year by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation since the French network was set up?
2.	How many of these texts bought by the said corporation have been used each year?
3.	What has been, for the same period, the total amount paid each year for the texts actually used?


Mr. M. J. A. Lambert (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue):: Mr. Speaker, I am informed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that they are able to provide data on the purchase and use of plays on the French television network for the past three and a half years, from July, 1956, at which time the script bureau in the Montreal studios was organized, until the end of 1959. However, to obtain the information prior to July, 1956 would entail a great number of man hours and a survey of daily records. Therefore it is hoped that the information I have here, and which because of its statistical nature it is proposed be printed as an appendix to Hansard, will be sufficient for the purpose of this question.


Mr. Speaker:: Is it agreed that the statistical information referred to be printed as an appendix to Hansard?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
lEditor's note: The document above referred to is as follows:1
1.	and 2.
July to Dec. 1956 60 minute plays ... 90 minute plays .. Childrens programs
Half hour plays_____
Quarter hour plays
60 minute plays	
90 minute plays	
Quatuor-2 hour plays
(presented in four parts) ___
Children's programs	
Half hour plays	
Quarter hour plays	
60 minute plays	
90 minute plays	
Quatuor-2 hour plays
(presented in four parts) ___
Children's programs	
Half hour plays	
Quarter hour plays	
Spectaculars	
60 minute plays	
90 minute plays	
Quatuor-2 hours
(presented in four parts) ....
Children's programs	
Half hour plays	
Quarter hour plays	
3ought	Used
14	4
4	4
196	196
255	255
52	52
521	511
51	49
10	10
5	5
117	117
285	285
114	114
582	580
38	35
14	12
11	9
89	89
255	255
39	39
5	3
451	442
26	23
7	7
2	2
223	223
398	398
39	39
695	692
3.
Expenditures for plays (texts and copyrights) for the Montreal region covers French and English
plays:
Year 1952-53	 $ 22,000
1953-	54	
106,0001954-	55	
244,0001955-	56	
401,0001956-	57	
556,0001957-	58	
614,0001958-	59	
620,0001959-	60	
633,000
We have no breakdown of the cost of French plays versus English plays. To abstract the payments made related to plays used on the French television network would require an analysis of weekly performers' payrolls for each year. This would entail a great deal of work, and it is therefore hoped that the above information will suffice.


RADIOLOGICAL PROTECTION REPORT, 1959
Mr. Marlin (Essex Easl): 1.	Has the government received a copy of the 1959 report of the international commission on radiological protection?
2.	If so, has the government taken any steps to follow the recommendations of this report insofar as lowering the permissible strontium 90 level in food and water is concerned?


Hon. J. W. Monteiih (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, the answer to part 1 is yes.
The answer to part 2 is as follows. The data contained in the new report of the international commission on radiological protection have been used in the preparation of the annual report of the radiation protection division for 1959. They will continue to form a basis for interpretation of the findings of my department until further recommendations are published by the international commission on radiological protection.
It is to be emphasized, however, that the recommended maximum permissible concentrations given in the new report do not refer to food, but only to air and water. Using additional data contained in the report, members of my department have calculated a maximum permissible level of strontium 90 in the average diet of Canadians. This figure is 79 micromicrocuries strontium 90 per gram of calcium as compared with the ICRP value for water of 33 micromicrocuries strontium 90 per litre. The previous permissible level for strontium 90 in the average Canadian diet based on the 1955 ICRP recommendations was similarly calculated to be 98 micromicrocuries per gram of calcium.


C.M.H.C. LOW COST MINIMUM HOUSE DESIGNS
Mr. Fisher: 1.	Has the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation developed any so-called low-cost minimum house designs?
2.	If so, how many, when, and to what estimated cost (by regions if there are estimated variations) ?
3.	How many such minimum houses have been started since the publicizing of the designs?
4.	What is the pattern of such housing starts by region?


Hon. D. J. Walker (Minister of Public Works):: Mr. Speaker, since these answers involve much statistical information, are rather lengthy, and will in any event be printed in Hansard, may I ask for the consent of the house to dispense with the reading of the answers?


Mr. Speaker:: Is it agreed?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
[Editor's note: The answers above referred to are as follows: 1
15, 1960	4947
Starred Questions
1.	Yes.
2.	In October 1958, Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation made available a plan known as design 2,000. This design provides the minimum accommodation permissible by the building standards. The plan has been useful in rural areas and smaller centres. The corporation also has available 11 house designs with floor areas of less than 900 square feet. The estimated cost excluding land varied in each region (see answer No. 4 below).
3.	From January 1, 1959 to April 30, 1960, a total of 1,829 loans were approved under the National Housing Act on houses with floor areas of less than 900 square feet.
4.	Housing units under N.H.A. with floor area under 900 square feet-January 1, 1959 -April 30, 1960.
	No. of		Average Estimated Building
Province	Units	CostNewfoundland	5	$ 9,500Prince Edward Island	1	8,400Nova Scotia	46	8,500New Brunswick	183	9,100Quebec	360	8,200Ontario	501	9,200Manitoba	172	9,200Saskatchewan	157	9,800Alberta	263	8,900British Columbia	130	9,300Northwest Territories]	11	12,100Yukon Territory Canada	J	1,829	$ 9,000


HUSSARS ARMOURY, COTE DES NEIGES, MONTREAL
Mr. Hellyer: 1.	Was the Hussars Armoury at Cote des Neiges painted recently by casual labourers employed by the Department of National Defence?
2.	If so, is this the practice which has been followed on previous occasions?
3.	If not, what is the reason for the change?


Hon. Pierre Sevigny (Associate Minister of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, the answers are as follows:
1.	Yes; some interior painting was done at this armoury during March, 1960.
2.	Yes.
3.	Not applicable.



IMMIGRATION


Mr. Crestohl: 1.	How many people were admitted to Canada for permanent landing during each of the years 1956, 1957, 1958 and 1959?
2.	How many people were ordered deported, and by whom, during each of the aforementioned years?

Starred Questions
3.	How many of these deportations, in each of the above years, were appealed to the minister?
(a)	How many deportation orders in each of the above years were reversed by the minister?
(b)	How many were taken to the civil courts?
(c)	How many were quashed by the courts?
(d)	How many are still under consideration by the minister?
(e)	How many are still under consideration by the courts?


Hon. Ellen L. Fairclough (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, the answers are as follows:
1.	In 1956-164,857.
In 1957-282,164.
In 1958-124,851.
In 1959-106,928.
2.	In 1956, by the minister-12.
In 1956, by special inquiry officer-2,597. In 1957, by the minister-14.
In 1957, by special inquiry officer-1,670. In 1958, by the minister-5.
In 1958, by special inquiry officer-2,335. In 1959, by the minister-2.
In 1959, by special inquiry officer-2,753.
3.	In 1956-873.
In 1957-543.
In 1958-743.
In 1959-960.
3(a) In 1956-308.
In 1957-137.
In 1958-129.
In 1959-159.
3(b) In 1956-1.
In 1957-6.
In 1958-4.
In 1959-8.
3(c) In 1956-0 In 1957-4.
In 1958-1.
In 1959-0.
3	(d) 1956, 5.
In 1957, 8.
In 1958, 8.
In 1959, 13.
3	(e) 1956, none.
In 1957, none.
In 1958, none.
In 1959, 3.



STATELESS PERSONS


Mr. Crestohl: 1.	How many stateless persons who arrived in Canada in each of the years 1956, 1957, 1958 and 1959, were given permanent landing (a) on arrival; (b) after arrival?
2.	How many were refused permanent landing?
3.	How many were ordered deported?
4.	How many were actually deported?
5.	Were any of these deportees returned to their countries of birth? If so, how many?
6.	To what other countries were these stateless persons deported from Canada? How many to each country?

7.	How many were deported to countries commonly known as being behind the iron curtain?
8.	How many were deported to countries commonly known as Arab countries?
9.	How many are still in Canada without landing?
10.	What is their status?


Ellen Louks Fairclough: The answer to parts 1 (a) and (b) is that it is not possible to distinguish in immigration records those persons granted permanent admission on arrival and those granted permanent admission at some time subsequent to their arrival.
The answer is 1956, 4,867; 1957, 7,725; 1958, 5,817; 1959, 2,785.
The answer to part 2 is, in 1956, 70; in 1957, 33; in 1958, 42; in 1959, 52.
The answer to part 3 is the same as the answer to part 2. These questions are synonymous.
The answer to question 4 is in 1956, 4; in 1957, 2; in 1958, 1; in 1959, 1.
The answer to question 5 is that it is not known whether the countries to which these people were deported were also the countries of their birth.
The answer to part 6 is that in 1956 one person went to Australia, one to Austria, one to Germany, one to the Republic of Sudan. In 1957 one went to Brazil, one to the United States of America. In 1958 one went to Austria and in 1959 one went to France.
The answer to part 7 is none.
The answer to part 8 is none.
The answer to part 9 is that the number is unknown.
Part 10 is answered by part 9.



CHIPPEWA INDIAN RESERVE, SARNIA

Mr. Hellyer: 1. Under the terms of the contract between Dimensional Investments Limited and the Chippewa Indian band for the purchase by Dimensional of part of the Indian reserve at Sarnia, what are the dates and amounts of payments due to date?
2.	Have all payments been made on the dates due? If not, what extensions have been granted and for what periods in each case?


Ellen Louks Fairclough: Mr. Speaker, the answer to the first part of this question is that due dates of payments and amounts are:
(a)	On or before the signing of the agreement for sale, March 14, 1959, $1,101,435.63;
(b)	Ten monthly instalments of $50,000 each commencing April 30, 1959, $500,000;
(c)	Four quarterly instalments of $25,000 each commencing June 15, 1959, $100,000;
(d)	For entitlement of conveyance of four parcels of land, $459,042.55;

(e)	Two half yearly interest payments September 15, 1959 and March 15, 1960, $241,908.46.
In reply to the second part of the question I may say that all payments have been made on due date or within the 30 days' grace allowed by the sale agreement.



UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE FUND INVESTMENT TRANSACTIONS

Mr. Martin (Essex East): 1.	What changes were made in the investment portfolio of the unemployment insurance fund during the months of April and May of this year?
2.	What were the amounts involved in the buying and selling of bonds and other securities?
3.	On the individual transactions, what were the amounts of the profits realized or losses sustained?


Hon. Donald M. Fleming (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, during the month of April the unemployment insurance fund sold $13 million of Canada bonds maturing September, 1965. On the sale there was a recorded book loss of $910,000. At the beginning of April the fund held $6J million of treasury bills. These were disposed of during the month of April. There are several transactions-I perhaps should have mentioned this in my answer the other day-where the fund simply acquires bills to earn interest for a few days, when it has some money, but does not accumulate any treasury bills. Those that were purchased in April and simply held for a few days, and which were not reported to me the other day, were all disposed of in April.


Mr. Martin (Essex East):: This is the third time this has happened.


Donald Methuen Fleming: The net result in April was that there was a net profit of $15,826.50 made on these transactions.
During the month of May bonds of the September, 1972 maturity totalling $8,750,000 par value were sold with a recorded book loss of $812,500. So far as treasury bills are concerned, there was one transaction where the commission simply held money in treasury bills for eight days in order to earn interest. It put in $500,000 and took it out at the end of eight days with a profit of $220. No treasury bills were held at either April 30 or May 31.



CIVIL DEFENCE EXPENDITURES

Mr. Marlin (Essex East): 1.	What was the total amount spent in all departments of government during 1959-60 fiscal year on civil defence, survival and emergency measures?
2.	What is the total amount of the estimated expenditures in all departments of government for the 1960-61 fiscal year for civil defence, survival and emergency measures?
Motions for Papers


Hon. Leon Balcer (Acting Secretary of Stale):: Mr. Speaker, this question should stand as an order for return, as the information has to come from more than one department.


Mr. Speaker:: Order for return.



QUESTION PASSED AS ORDER FOR RETURN


Mr. Martin (Essex East): 1.	What was the total amount spent in all departments of government during 1959-60 fiscal year on civil defence, survival and emergency measures?
2.	What is the total amount of the estimated expenditures in all departments of government for the 1960-61 fiscal year for civil defence, survival and emergency measures?



MOTIONS FOR PAPERS


[Stage Direction]
Motion No. 118-Mr. Crestohl:
For a copy of the immigration regulations and all amendments to-date; the orders-in-council approving same; all departmental rulings which are being used in determining the admissibility of immigrants under general and special circumstances and conditions.
Ellen Louks Fairclough: Mr. Speaker, with regard to the first part of this motion, regulations under the Immigration Act are made by order in council and are printed in The Canada Gazette which, of course, is available. If the hon. member wishes we will be glad to gather them together for him.
With regard to the second part of the question, departmental rulings and decisions on individual immigration cases are not codified, and in any event they would be regarded as privileged documents. If the hon. member wishes me to supply him with the information as to the first part of the question I will be very glad to do so.


Mr. L. D. Crestohl (Cartier):: Mr. Speaker, may I point out that the second part of the question refers to any departmental rulings which become general standards for admissibility into Canada. These are the only rulings in which I am interested, not individual rulings.


Ellen Louks Fairclough: I am sorry, but under these circumstances I am afraid we consider these rulings to be privileged documents and, as I said, they are not codified. I could not collect them in any event.


Mr. Speaker:: Shall I put the motion?


Leon David Crestohl: Mr. Speaker, I do not think any good purpose would be served or that any satisfaction would be afforded to me by putting the motion. I trust I will be able to

Inquiries of the Ministry address myself to the minister and perhaps $100 million he sought on the hustings in she will be able to give me information as 1957. "I want a lot more now", said Mr. to some departmental rulings which have Frost.
become generally accepted.	Right Hon. j. G. Diefenbaker (Prime


Mr. Speaker:: Shall the motion stand?	Minister): The answer, Mr. Speaker, is no
,	comment.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Pickersgill:: Oliver Twist.


Mr. Speaker:: Stand.
Motion stands.



CHIPPEWA INDIAN RESERVE, SARNIA

[Stage Direction]
Motion No. 119-Mr. Hellyer:
For a copy of all papers and other documents, filed by Dimensional Investments Limited with the Department of Citizenship and Immigration prior to its purchase of part of the Chippewa Indian reserve for the purpose of demonstrating its financial ability to undertake the proposed transaction.
Ellen Louks Fairclough: Mr. Speaker, all of the information described in this motion was supplied on July 16, 1959, in response to notice of motion No. 105 moved by the hon. member for Trinity.


Mr. Speaker:: In the circumstances, shall I put the motion?


Some hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Speaker:: Does the hon. member wish the motion to be withdrawn?


Mr. Hellyer:: I think what the minister is saying, Mr. Speaker, is that there are no such documents. There were none included in that return to which she has just referred. If there are no such papers I am willing to have the motion dropped.


Ellen Louks Fairclough: Everything was given to the hon. member.


Mr. Mcllrailh:: Nothing was given to him.


Mr. Speaker:: Does the house agree that this motion be withdrawn?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
Order discharged and motion withdrawn.



DOMINION-PROVINCIAL RELATIONS REPORTED STATEMENT BY PREMIER FROST RESPECTING FEDERAL GRANT

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. L. B. Pearson (Leader of the Opposition):: I should like to ask the Prime Minister whether he has any comment to make on a statement made by Premier Frost yesterday during what is described as a mixed business and pleasure trip to Ottawa, when he said that when he comes to Ottawa next month he will ask for much more than the



NATIONAL PARKS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Harold E. Winch (Vancouver East):: should like to direct a question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. Is the minister able to comment on the request he received from the lower mainland park advisory committee for information as to the progress being made toward the establishment of an international park at Point Roberts?


Hon. Howard C. Green (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: No, Mr. Speaker. I just received a similar letter myself this morning. I have not been able as yet to look into the question.



TRANSPORT


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
John Whitney Pickersgill: May I ask the Minister of Transport whether the announcement he made this morning of a new chairman for the St. Lawrence seaway authority foreshadows inclusion of the Chignecto canal in the St. Lawrence seaway?


George Harris Hees: Mr. Speaker, I think the announcement I made spoke for itself.



GREAT SLAVE LAKE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. M. A. Hardie (Mackenzie River):: I wish to address a question to the Prime Minister, and ask whether he has received any report or recommendation from the commission set up over a year ago to study the route of the proposed railway to Great Slave lake.


Right Hon. J. G. Diefenbaker (Prime Minister):: No, sir.


Mervyn Arthur Hardie: Does the right hon. gentleman not think that since this commission held its final hearing some time in November last, it is high time it made a decision?


John George Diefenbaker: I have been in communication with the chairman of the commission on a number of occasions, and I understand that the report will shortly be available. I was assured by the chief commissioner that he and those associated with him had given the matter the fullest consideration, and that they could not have given such consideration had they made an earlier report.



AIR TRANSPORT


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. John Prait (Jacques Carlier-Lasalle):: I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Transport. I am sorry not to have had an opportunity to send him notice of it. However, there has been a great exchange of correspondence and I am sure he is well aware of the situation. The question I should like to ask him is this. In view of the many complaints received by his department, is it his intention to prohibit jet aircraft from taking off from an airport such as Dorval during the normal hours of sleeping? If so, when? If not, why not?


Lester Bowles Pearson: What are the normal hours?


George Harris Hees: I feel that the hon. member, being an aggressive, up to date and constructive member of this house, would not want Canada to do anything that would impede the progress of the jet age in conformity with what is being done in most other countries throughout the world today.
(Translation):

On the orders of the day:


Mr. Guy Rouleau (Dollard):: Mr. Speaker, as a member for parliament interested in the welfare of my fellow citizens who have elected me for many years, I should like to put a question to the Minister of Transport which he might consider as supplementary to the one directed by the hon. member for Jacques Cartier-Lasalle (Mr. Pratt).
Is it the minister's intention to meet today, as reported in the press, with his worship the mayor and the council members of Ville St. Laurent, who wish to make representations about the too frequent and intense noises made, in the last two months, by jet planes from Dorval airport flying over the residential district of Ville St. Laurent?
79951-0-313
Inquiries of the Ministry


George Harris Hees: Mr. Speaker, when the hon. member talks at such speed, it is very hard for me to understand everything he says. I shall then take this question as notice and answer it tomorrow.
(Text):


Guy Rouleau: May I then repeat my question in English? Is it the intention of the minister-


Mr. Speaker:: What is the hon. member asking? Is he asking that he repeat his question?


Guy Rouleau: Yes.


Mr. Speaker:: It was translated. The question was translated, and the minister has taken it as notice.


Guy Rouleau: If I may ask him the question in English, the question is very simple-


Mr. Speaker:: I expect the answer would be the same in English as it was in French.


Hon. Lionel Chevrier (Laurier):: Your
Honour has now raised the question of the principle of a matter which, I think, has been determined from time to time. There have been questions asked in French of ministers on the orders of the day, and either because the translation system was not functioning properly, as they have stated, or because the questions were of an urgent nature, those questions were repeated in English and Your Honour allowed them. In view of the fact that a similar question by the hon. member for Jacques Cartier has been allowed, I think this question should be allowed in this case.


George Harris Hees: I would be glad to answer the hon. member's question, and am glad to be able to say that contrary to the policy followed by the government of which the hon. member was a supporter some years ago this government is very happy to see municipal representatives from any part of the country who wish to discuss any matter of importance with us. Naturally I shall be very glad to meet the deputation that wants to see me about this important question.


Guy Rouleau: Is the minister going to see the delegation today?


George Harris Hees: I was not aware that they were in town today, but I will do everything I can to accommodate them and see them if a suitable time can be arranged. (Translation):

On the orders of the day:


Guy Rouleau: In his reply to the member for Jacques Cartier-Lasalle (Mr. Pratt), the Minister of Transport suggested that it was difficult for him to satisfy

Inquiries of the Ministry the people of Dorval. Would he tell me whether he intends to do his utmost to ensure peace for residents of Ville St. Laurent who are represented in this house by a member of the opposition?
(Text):


George Harris Hees: I could understand enough of what the hon. member said to answer his question. I shall be very happy to listen to the representations put to me by the mayor of St. Laurent and his delegation. I will give them serious attention and do whatever is possible to accommodate the mayor and the delegation in respect to whatever they ask. Again I underline that this represents a great departure from the policy followed by the former government.



INDIAN AFFAIRS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. Ellen L. Fairclough (Minister of
Citizenship and Immigration): Mr. Speaker, on Monday the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate (Mr. Pickersgill) inquired concerning the reported eviction of Mr. Kenneth Plain, a member of the Sarnia band, from property held by him on the Sarnia Indian reserve.
Mr. Plain held two parcels of land that were surrendered by the band and sold on terms set by the band in the surrender itself. One parcel comprised 2 acres, the other 9.6 acres. For his interest in these two parcels together Mr. Plain agreed to accept $36,000. The 2 acre parcel has already been paid for in full and title transferred. Mr. Plain received $6,206.90. Total payments made to him amount to $12,612.49. While his valuation of his house located on the 2 acre parcel appears to have been included in the over-all price, he has the right to remove it within six months from the date the purchase price has been paid in full.
Mr. Plain apparently contends that he is not required to move his house until payment has been made in full for both parcels of land. They do not adjoin one another.
The matter has been studied from a legal and equitable standpoint, and it would appear that from neither angle is Mr. Plain on sound ground. Legally the conditions of sale are governed by the surrender itself and the sale contract, not by the option signed by him, which is invalid under section 28 of the Indian Act. The importance of the option is its evidence of his agreement as to price.
Equitably he has already received a substantial payment on account of his house, which was valued in 1957 at $7,000, and may 
move it. The balance owing on the 9.6 acre parcel will be paid to him when the sale of it is completed. If the sale should fall through his ownership of the parcel will be re-established, and he will retain what had been paid thereon.
The purchaser has given Mr. Plain more than the six months' notice required to move his house, and desires possession in order that the land may be used as intended. I may say that the matter is really outside the control of my department, as title has passed.

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Paul Theodore Hellyer: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. Would the minister advise the house why she allowed the sale of $7 million worth of land to a company with a minimum capitalization of $40,000 without proof of their financial ability-


Some hon. Members:: Order.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The hon. member is asking a question which as I understand it relates to matters beyond the jurisdiction of the minister, who did not make the sale in question. Furthermore, the question seems to be more an argument than a search for information.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: Mr. Speaker, surely the question is not beyond the jurisdiction of the minister. Whether or not it is argumentative, perhaps the minister would care to comment on the question.


Ellen Louks Fairclough: Mr. Speaker, all I can say is the decision that was taken has been justified, in that the payments have been made up to date and the Indians are now in possession of nearly $2.5 million.



SAUGEEN RESERVE-SURRENDER OF LAND FOR HIGHWAY

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Frank Howard (Skeena):: I wish to direct a question to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration regarding the action of the Ontario department of highways in building a highway through the Saugeen Indian reserve. Can the minister indicate what steps and procedures were followed leading up to the surrender of this land and, in particular, whether the requirements of the Indian Act relating to the band's decision to surrender this land were fully met?


Ellen Louks Fairclough: The provisions of the Indian Act are always followed with regard to the surrender of Indian land. I make a particular point of seeing that the interests of the Indians are preserved. In this case, however, I will look into the matter further and get an answer for the hon. member.



EXTERNAL AFFAIRS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Howard Charles Green: Yesterday, Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Essex East asked about the disarmament conference, and today there may be further questions arising from the tabling by the Prime Minister yesterday of the exchange of letters between himself and Mr. Khrushchev about the latest Soviet disarmament proposals. Perhaps I could deal with this situation by making a brief statement on the Canadian position at this time.


Mr. Speaker:: Has the minister leave to make a statement at this time?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Howard Charles Green: In the Canadian view it is important that in these negotiations all ten nations represented on the committee should lose no opportunity to explore every possible avenue of progress in disarmament. The Canadian delegation has constantly in mind, and tries to make certain that the whole committee bears in mind, that not only two nations or ten nations but all the nations of the world have a vital interest in disarmament. It is certain that the members of the committee will be held to account by the other nations of the world if they neglect opportunities for progress in disarmament.
It was in this spirit that the Prime Minister replied to Mr. Khrushchev's letter forwarding the latest Soviet proposals. The Canadian government wants these proposals to receive a patient and searching examination in the ten-nation committee, as marking the opening of a phase of detailed, businesslike and uninterrupted negotiations. We believed that there should be no hasty, ill-considered reaction to the new Soviet proposals, but the most careful and constructive examination of these proposals in the committee which circumstances permit. General Burns has been instructed accordingly, and I am happy to say that the other members of the western five on the committee fully shared this view.
79951-0-313i
Inquiries of the Ministry
I am particularly glad to report this unanimous view of the western representatives because, as the house is aware, the members of the western group have had their differences from time to time in the past. The Canadian delegation for its part has, on several occasions, been instructed to present views contrary to those expressed by other members of the western five, whenever this seemed warranted. We would not hesitate to authorize the Canadian delegation to follow a similarly independent line again if circumstances so dictated. But for the present no such need exists, and M. Moch has rightly stressed the solidarity of the western five in the statement to which the hon. member for Essex East referred. The western five advanced their proposals some time ago and indicated their willingness to enter upon detailed negotiations. The eastern nations are now speaking in support of the new Soviet proposals of June 2, and have indicated that these provide a basis for negotiation. These latest proposals are now being further explained by the eastern countries, partly as a result of questioning by the western members of the committee.
In the course of this clarification on June 9 General Burns pointed to several examples of ways in which the new Soviet proposals represent an advance over earlier Soviet positions; for instance, with respect to the prohibition of weapons of mass destruction in outer space; the control over launching of rockets for peaceful purposes; the provision for a joint study of the cessation of production of nuclear weapons and destruction of stockpiles; and the inclusion of measures for peacekeeping machinery in accordance with the United Nations charter. In making this statement, General Bums emphasized that the Canadian delegation wished to approach the new Soviet proposals in the most constructive way. He chose the examples I have mentioned because they are among the measures to which the Canadian government attaches special significance.
It is my view that the time has come, perhaps through an examination of equivalent features of new Soviet proposals and the western proposals, to begin a process of negotiation of balanced concessions. This was the sort of package approach to which I referred earlier in the house when I reported on the NATO ministerial meeting at Istanbul. I should like to emphasize, however, that by "package" I do not mean that the one side or the other should hold out for its present proposals on an all or nothing basis; the packages I have in mind, as I have tried to explain, are smaller and would contain provisions of equivalent significance to both sides. The goal would remain general and complete

Inquiries of the Ministry disarmament under effective international control, but it would be accomplished by a stage by stage process throughout which concessions would be balanced in such a way that neither side would obtain a temporary military superiority.
For the first time in these negotiations the Soviet delegation has admitted that there will have to be some sort of international machinery to maintain peace in a disarmed world. The proposals are also considerably more detailed and therefore less obscure than the proposals Mr. Khrushchev made to the general assembly of the United Nations in 1959. They also make some provision for the initiation of a process of study before measures of disarmament are actually taken. This is important because no responsible government will agree to any disarmament proposal, much less a complex of disarmament measures, until it has reached a clear understanding with the other governments concerned of the exact implications of agreement.
Therefore I believe that attention should now be given to the possibility of negotiating on parts, if not on the whole, of the two plans. In the course of the next few days in Geneva General Burns will be making suggestions as to how this necessary process might be undertaken through joint studies.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Mr. Speaker, the house will welcome this statement by the Secretary of State for External Affairs, which in a general way brings us up to date in regard to the current discussions in the ten power disarmament committee. I must say, however, that we are not really further advanced in our appreciation of the possibilities of progress.
It will be remembered that when this matter was first discussed during the present session the minister expressed a strong note of optimism indicating that he believed that we would see progress in the field of disarmament. Unfortunately events have not borne out the minister's assurances and anticipations. The minister now tempers his optimism by the realities of the situation.
The last proposal of Chairman Khrushchev does not seem to represent anything fundamentally new or different from proposals already made, and seems to bear many resemblances to the proposal put forward by Mr. Jules Moch, the delegate of France, a short time ago, particularly the implementation of a partial disarmament program directed toward eliminating the means of delivering nuclear weapons to targets.
What I believe this parliament had hoped to receive from the minister, and what I believe this country expects to receive from

the minister, is some indication of the government's determination to display the kind of independence about which the minister spoke when he participated in the foreign affairs debate in February in this house. As the minister said, Canada is a member of the ten power group. In some respects she holds the position of representing not only the viewpoint of Canadians but of the middle powers and the smaller nations of the world.
We have not yet had, it seems, any indication of the determination of this government and of its spokesmen to take independent positions where these can properly and constructively be taken. The minister referred to one of the initiatives that seemed to establish that the Canadian government had taken an independent position, but he did not give any indication of what that independent position was.


Howard Charles Green: I did not refer to one, I referred to several.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Yes. We all realize that the minister is sincere in this matter, but as he has been told on several occasions this session, sincerity and optimism are no substitutes for effective contribution, and we can only hope that it will be possible for Canada to take a line which will bring about the kind of results which already have flowed from the initiative taken by France.
Canada expects her representatives and her government to live up to assurances given, namely to abandon the course of honest broker and pursue a course that reflected the independence of this nation and its determination to contribute to disarmament under conditions of security.


Howard Charles Green: May I point out to the hon. member that Canada has taken a stand with France on the place of nuclear weapons in disarmament. The hon. member does not want to see when Canada does take an independent stand; he just looks out of his blind eye.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Mr. Speaker:: Order.


Mr. Marlin (Essex Easl):: May I ask the
Secretary of State for External Affairs whether it is not a fact-


Some hon. Members:: Order.


Murdo William Martin: I am asking a question of the Secretary of State for External Affairs.


Mr. Speaker:: In due course the hon. member will have his chance to ask his question.


Mr. H. W. Herridge (Koolenay West):: Mr. Speaker, the members of this group are rather surprised at the negative and fainthearted approach to the problems mentioned

by the minister upon which the hon. member for Essex East has commented in his reply to the minister's statement. As I have said before, unless we have faith in ourselves and faith that we as Canadians can make a contribution toward disarmament and ultimate world peace, we will never get anywhere. That is necessary first.
We are pleased with the minister's approach and the tenor of his remarks, and we welcome his statement with reference to Canada being willing to take independent action if necessary. We trust that the minister will take strong and independent action, and will take an independent approach and view, when it is considered necessary.
Now, Mr. Speaker, with all the gloomy approach of the hon. member for Essex East, he must realize that these Soviet proposals represent concessions. Whether we agree with them or not they are proposals which contain concessions and indicate a certain change of view. We in this group say it is better to present proposals which contain concessions and present an opportunity for study by other people than to indulge in sabre rattling.
The C.C.F. party believes that this government should give serious consideration to all proposals from any source looking toward disarmament, and we say let us keep on exploring, as the minister indicated in his statement, every avenue toward a solution of these tremendous problems facing mankind at the present time.


FREIGHT RATES
[Stage Direction]
.tAPESEED-REQUEST FOR REMOVAL OF ALLEGED

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Reynold Rapp (Humboldt-Melforl):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to direct a question to the Minister of Transport. Since the board of transport commissioners have announced the greatly regrettable decision of not classifying rapeseed as a grain, thus leaving this young grain industry in the west in a deplorable position, would the minister not consider it advisable as Minister of Transport to devise other ways and means by which this grain could be put on an equitable basis with other western grains as far as freight charges are concerned?


George Harris Hees: Mr. Speaker, I know how important this matter is to the constituents of the hon. member for Humboldt-Melfort, because he has spoken to me about it on many occasions in a very progressive, constructive way typical of a first class member of parliament and
Inquiries of the Ministry typical of so many members of parliament who have been elected here during the past three years.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


George Harris Hees: I can assure the hon. member-


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I do not recall that there is any election on at the present time.


George Harris Hees: As you know very well, Mr. Speaker, elections have no effect on our approach to public matters. However, I can assure the hon. member that this matter will be kept under very active consideration indeed.


Lionel Chevrier: May I
direct a supplementary question to the Minister of Transport arising out of the question which was directed to him concerning rapeseed. Has the minister given consideration to overruling the board of transport commissioners under the Railway Act, in the same manner that he has overruled other boards under his department?


George Harris Hees: As the hon. member knows very well, this government always gives consideration to any possible means of doing constructive and useful things for the people of this country.


George James McIlraith: Why don't you grow up?


An hon. Member:: Look who's talking.


UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Paul Joseph James Martin: In view of the reply which the Minister of Finance gave me this morning with regard to starred question No. 183 dealing with the investment portfolio of the unemployment insurance fund, and the corrections included in his answer to some replies he gave erroneously several days ago, may I ask the minister whether he has a detailed table showing the portfolio of the unemployment insurance fund and whether he would mind tabling it so that we may have an opportunity of examining it.


Donald Methuen Fleming: First, I cannot accept the statement made by the hon. member. As to the question he asks, I have not the portfolio here with me. If the hon. member wishes to have details of the portfolio as of a particular month's end I think there will be no difficulty about obtaining them. Perhaps he will indicate the month's end he has in mind.

War Veterans Allowance Act


Paul Joseph James Martin: Will the minister give us a detailed statement showing the transactions during the last 12 months?


Donald Methuen Fleming: As I indicated in my answer in the house on June 10, it has not been the practice, certainly in periods that are close to the date of the questions, to give the details of the transactions.
What has been done in the past, as I indicated at that time, is to give month-end positions. That is what the hon. member asked for in his first question just now.


Paul Joseph James Martin: We will put it on the order paper. Apparently that is the only way to get answers from this government.


WAR VETERANS ALLOWANCE ACT
Hon. A. J. Brooks (Minister of Veterans Affairs) moved: that the house go into committee on Bill No. C-71, to amend the War Veterans Allowance Act.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Rea in the chair.
On clause 1-Payment where recipient absent from Canada.


Alfred Johnson Brooks: Mr. Chairman, there is nothing controversial in the bill. It was before the committee on veterans affairs, was carefully studied by that committee and has been recommended to this committee without amendment.
The purpose of this bill was explained when the resolution was before us a few days ago. Hon. members will recall that there are two main provisions. The first provides for the payment of the war veterans allowance to recipients outside of Canada. The second provision is designed to establish a corresponding Canadian residence qualification for former members of our armed forces or those of our allies who served during world war II, thus allowing treatment of these veterans on a basis similar to that now available to veterans of our armed forces or those of our allies who served in earlier wars. There is nothing further I need say at the present time, but I would be pleased to answer any questions hon. members have.


Mr. Carter:: Mr. Chairman, unfortunately I was not able to attend the sittings of the veterans committee when this bill was under discussion. For the purpose of clarification I should like to ask one or two questions which I think could be properly asked on this first clause.

As I understand the provisions of the War Veterans Allowance Act there are three separate groups of veterans who can qualify for these benefits. The first group comprises veterans who are 60 years of age and over who can qualify without a means test. The second group comprises veterans under 60 who can qualify if they are totally and permanently unemployable. The third group comprises veterans who are in receipt of a pension, but whose pension is less than the ceiling permitted under the veterans charter and therefore they are eligible to receive a supplementary payment through the war veterans allowance to bring their total income up to the ceiling.
I gather that all three groups are qualified to benefit under this bill provided they are in receipt of the allowance before they leave Canada and have resided here for 12 months piror to leaving, with the exception of the imperial veterans, of course, who have to be in Canada for 10 years to qualify.
Since the means test applies to these veterans, are they permitted to draw the war veterans allowance for a full 12 months while outside Canada? If so, what machinery exists in case their income changes during their absence? That would affect the means test under which they receive it.


Alfred Johnson Brooks: The hon. member for Burin-Burgeo is quite correct in saying there are three types of war veterans allowance recipients. All are subject to the means test, even the veteran who is a pensioner. As far as the 12 months' residence period is concerned, those affected will be entitled to receive the war veterans allowance outside of Canada but they will be subject to a means test just the same. If they are living in Great Britain our offices there will see that a means test of some kind is applied. I refer to those who will leave Canada and go to Great Britain. Those in the United States who are properly qualified recipients when they leave Canada will also be subject to review by some official in our consular offices in the United States, or whatever country in which they may be living.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: Mr. Chairman, I do not intend to speak at length on the committee stage of this bill. Since it received second reading the bill has been studied by the members of the standing committee on veterans affairs. Most of their time was taken up in seeking information from the officials of the department on where this legislation would be administered. I agree that it does represent some new and probably unusual problems. In fact that was the reason given by the former minister for refusing to introduce legislation

of this kind. He told us in the house and personally that it presented administrative problems too difficult for him to consider introducing the legislation. However, the committee on the whole was well satisfied with the answers given by the officials of the administration.
I think most of us realize that this is somewhat experimental. No doubt changes will be made in the procedures and practices in connection with the administration of this act overseas. I do suggest to the minister that it might be advisable for the department to publish a small pamphlet dealing with this act, to explain in simple language to persons who might apply just what the amendments mean. Although the bill is relatively simple to hon. members who have had some experience in reading legislation, and even though it might be quite clear to one who has dealt with legislation, it would not be clear to some people. I suggest it would be advisable to have a small pamphlet printed pointing out the terms of the legislation and informing the veterans or the dependants seeking information how to proceed to make application and what would happen with respect to their payments and so on when they went overseas. I make that suggestion. It could be done in a two-page pamphlet, and it would be of great assistance. The number that would be required would be relatively small indeed.


Alfred Johnson Brooks: I may say to the hon. member at once that we are making provision to carry out just the very idea he has expressed. We shall have rules and regulations that will explain the legislation and those who leave Canada will be informed of their rights.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I am delighted to hear that. I have always been somewhat under the impression that there was a degree of mental telepathy between the Minister of Veterans Affairs and the member for Kootenay West. I am glad to have that confirmed.


Alfred Johnson Brooks: The Minister of Veterans Affairs made the suggestion first.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I am glad to hear it. I suggest that this legislation be given royal assent at the first opportunity so that the relatively small number of veterans' dependants, compared with the large number who come under the veterans charter, will be able to take advantage of it at the earliest possible opportunity.
In conclusion, I am sure I am speaking for members of all parties in this house when I say we are glad to know that this legislation when it is proclaimed will bring happiness to many people, particularly veterans' dependants.
War Veterans Allowance Act


Mr. Weichel:: I believe that Bill No. C-71 is a step in the right direction. There may be certain problems, but we have great confidence in our minister, his deputy and his department to check on any problems that may arise. I give it wholehearted support.


Chesley William Carter: Mr. Chairman, we indicated our support of this legislation on the resolution, and the fact that it has come back from the committee without any amendment of course gives no reason for us to change our position. I do not want to take time to repeat what we said at the resolution stage. There is just one question I should like to ask the minister. A veteran is in receipt of a war veterans allowance, and he leaves Canada for 12 months. I understand that during the 12 months he can continue to receive the allowance, provided he meets the conditions under which it is payable. Does he have to come back to Canada and stay in Canada another 12 months before he can leave again?


Alfred Johnson Brooks: If he is properly qualified when he leaves Canada-that is if he has been a resident here for at least 12 months and leaves, then he can stay out of Canada for as long as he likes; he does not have to come back again. If he had not the 12 months' qualification of residence before he leaves Canada, then he would have to come back and complete 12 months' residence before he would be qualified to receive the allowance for any longer period outside of Canada.


Chesley William Carter: He does not have to return? How does he renew his application, directly to the department here in Ottawa or through some local agent?


Alfred Johnson Brooks: He does not need to, any more than if he had remained in Canada. He has the same rights outside of Canada, if he is a properly qualified war veterans allowance recipient, that he would have in Canada. If he has had 12 months' residence in Canada and leaves, he may continue to draw his allowance outside of Canada just the same as though he were living in Canada except, of course, that he will have to be subject to the means test. We will have regulations providing for that.


Chesley William Carter: He does not have to return to Canada any more if he does not wish to?


Alfred Johnson Brooks: No.


An hon. Member:: He just told you that.


[Stage Direction]
Clause agreed to.
Clauses 2 to 5 inclusive agreed to.
Title agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.
[Stage Direction]
Supply-Post Office SUPPLY
The house in committee of supply, Mr. Rea in the chair.

[Stage Direction]
304. Departmental administration including Canada's share of the upkeep of the international bureaux at Berne and Montevideo, $1,926,670.
The Deputy Chairman:: Order. This item will be found on page 59 of the blue book, and the details on page 410. Shall the item carry?


Chesley William Carter: Mr. Chairman, I should like to say a word or two in reply to the statement made by the Postmaster General when he replied to the hon. member for St. John's East on June 8. The hon. member for St. John's East had asked the Postmaster General to reconsider the present policy of not providing post office buildings for small revenue offices, and he went on to outline conditions in his own riding.
Earlier I had made a similar plea to the minister, as recorded at page 4298 of Hansard of May 27. In the course of my remarks on that day I suggested to the minister that the post office buildings were classified on the basis of revenue, because a post office building is not supplied unless the revenue exceeds $3,000. When the minister replied to me the same day he said, as recorded on page 4305 of Hansard:
The hon. member for Burin-Burgeo spoke a little while ago, and I would tell him that the classification of post offices does not rest on revenue but rests on a unit of work basis.
The reply made by the minister to the hon. member for St. John's East on June 8 does not conform with the statement the minister made in replying to me. As found on page 4705 of Hansard the Postmaster General made the following reply to the hon. member for St. John's East:
As to the hon. member for St. John's East who spoke about revenue post offices in Newfoundland, may I say that we can have but one policy for buildings right across Canada. I think the weakness in the suggestion he put forward-and I say this without any criticism-was contained in his own observation that in these areas where they would like to have a government building constructed they cannot afford one for themselves and the postmaster cannot afford to put a special one up because his revenue is only a few hundred dollars a year.
That was the very point I was trying to make. I do not want to take the time to elaborate on it, because I have already spoken about the matter on previous occasions. However, I think the Postmaster General's own argument is weak when he says that the policy is based on the revenue and that because these little post offices only generate

revenue of a few hundred dollars they do not deserve any special consideration with respect to accommodation.
I wish to point out to the Postmaster General that the spending of 5 cents for a stamp in one of these small post offices, which has a total revenue of only $400 or $500 a year, generates probably $2 or $3 in revenue in some other post office in Canada. I know that most of the post offices in my riding are small revenue operations and come within this classification, but the revenue of the Moncton post office and of the St. John's post office is greatly increased because of the revenue generated in these small offices. A person sends a letter with a 5 cent stamp on it to a mail order house such as Eaton's or Simpson's in Moncton, Halifax or St. John's, and as a result the revenue in the other post office will be many times the 5 cent stamp. It may be a couple of dollars.
I think the minister's argument is weak on that score, because it is the total revenue of the post office and the need of the community that should be taken into account. I think these should be the overriding factors. I do not think it is fair to exclude small offices on the basis of revenue. I pointed out to the Postmaster General the other day that this results in discrimination between one postmaster and another. In his reply to the hon. member for St. John's East the other day the minister went on to say:
In these circumstances there is very little point in putting up a special government building. We depend upon local quarters provided by the postmaster.
In my opinion such a policy is discriminatory as between one postmaster in one settlement and another postmaster in another settlement. An undue burden is placed on the postmaster when he has to find accommodation, and there is discrimination between settlements where such accommodation is readily available and other settlements of smaller size and smaller revenue where suitable accommodation is not available under any circumstances. I would ask the Postmaster General to take another look at the whole policy and see if something better than what we have at present cannot be worked out.


Frank Howard: Mr. Chairman, I should like to lend my support to the query initiated by the hon. member for Port Arthur and supported by other members who have spoken as to the necessity for the use of the words "personal and confidential" on letters we get from the minister. I suppose I could read one letter I have here which is marked "personal and confidential" but because it is so marked perhaps it would not be wise for me to do so. Instead I will

paraphrase it to indicate its contents, and in doing so I do not think I will be violating any confidence.
The letter contains two paragraphs comprising six lines in all. In the first paragraph I am requested to refer to a letter I wrote, and the second paragraph advises me that some information on the matter will be available shortly. That is the gist of the letter. The minister in his replies did not make any specific reference to this point, but as a result of the valid questions asked about the policy of using these words I would have thought that subsequently he might have taken steps to alter his approach to this matter. I find, however, that is not so, because this morning I received another communication from the minister relating to a matter coming under his jurisdiction and it is also marked "personal and confidential".
I realize there are circumstances under which letters might properly be so marked, but to make wholesale use of the words "personal and confidential" on such letters is in my opinion going beyond reasonable limits. I hope the minister will undertake to explain to the house his reasons for the use of the words "personal and confidential". Perhaps he will also undertake to lessen the use of these words on letters in order that members who receive communications from him may, with a clear conscience, communicate to the people responsible for the initiation of the matter in the first place the contents of the minister's letters so they may know what is taking place with respect to the problem of the individual or community, as the case may be.
I should like to deal with some local problems in my constituency, which is primarily a rural one, the largest urban community having a population of 10,000 or 11,000 people. The feeling I wish to convey to the minister applies to other governmental services as well as the postal service. However, so far as postal service is concerned the feeling exists in a number of these rural communities that they tend to suffer because the bulk of postal service and facilities is concentrated in the more heavily settled or urban areas. The people in the smaller communities tend to feel that they are left out of the scheme of things and are not given the consideration they should be given. This feeling relates to the building of post offices, the regularity with which mail is transported in and out of these smaller communities, and a number of other such matters.
Inasmuch as my constituency, as I said, is primarily rural, I should like to make reference to one or two problems there. I hope the minister will undertake to deal with them,
Supply-Post Office
either orally in his answers in the committee but more particularly administratively within his department.
We have one area which has just been opened up by an access road just north of Terrace. I refer to the communities along the Nass river. Prior to a road being built some 75 or 80 miles in length northward to the Nass river, the main contact was by steamer or by their boats down the Nass river to Prince Rupert. However, their main contact is developing with the community of Terrace and along the Nass river. Primarily the people are of Indian origin. There are four Indian villages containing approximately 1,800 people. The Indian affairs branch has recently established in Terrace a new agency which covers these particular Indian communities. That is just another indication that their point of contact with communities other than their own is now through Terrace rather than Prince Rupert, as it was formerly.
The postal service, of course, has not been good in the past although in recent months there have been some changes with regard to the system which existed. There is one community with approximately 400 people namely Greenville. I have been corresponding with the minister about this matter and the people, the band of Indians in that village of Greenville, have also been in communication with the department. I do not know whether they have been in communication with the minister directly but they have been in communication at least with officials of his department. The last time I inquired into this matter, which was a month or so ago, there was what I understand is classified as a winter service which makes a monthly mail delivery from November to April by steamboat or steamer not to the community of Greenville itself but to a community which is a port of call for steamers, called Kincolith.
It is not possible for steamers to operate up the Nass river to Greenville, so they call in at this community of Kincolith further down near the mouth of the Nass river. Then the mail is transferred from Kincolith up to Greenville by boats of individual residents. They follow the fishing industry, and they have quite a number of these boats. They use them to keep in touch with Kincolith and to pick up and deliver their mail. Then, of course, with the mail arriving once a month, many of the people find that unless they can have someone take the mail out for them and mail it at a larger community such as Prince Rupert or Terrace, their correspondence lags back for a period of two months. This is so especially in ordering materials and goods and supplies by mail. They find that they may receive communications on one steamer with

Supply-Post Office
respect to it and be prevented from answering until one month later, when the steamboat calls again at Kincolith.
This matter was raised quite extensively by a letter dated last December 2 from the Greenville council to Mr. Catterall, who I understand is district director of postal services in Vancouver. At least that is the designation given on this letter, and I believe that is the correct title. I wish to read only this one part of it. I might point out that the copy of the letter I have here to Mr. Catterall is dated December 2, 1959 and starts out by saying:
Due to irregular mail schedule I just received your letter of October 29, 1959 a few days ago-
This is a reference to a letter from Mr. Catterall, district director of postal services in Vancouver, which was dated October 29, 1959 and which reached Greenville on the Nass river, as he said "a few days ago", which I would say would be somewhere near the end of November or the first part of December. It therefore took approximately a month from the date of the letter from Mr. Catterall for it to get from the Post Office Department in Vancouver to the people in Greenville.
I relate that incident only to indicate the time that is consumed and the delays involved in letters going into or out of this particular community of Greenville. I make reference only to that community, but others are in the same boat. The correspondence to which I have made reference here and the letter from Mr. Catterall had, in fact, reference to their request for a fortnightly service through Terrace via the road communication or road connection from Terrace up to the Nass river.
From being there and talking to the people I understand there is now postal service by road from Terrace to two other Indian villages on the Nass river, namely Aiyansh and Canyon city. Although the post office is at Aiyansh, there is a fortnightly service from Terrace up the Nass river to Aiyansh. The Greenville people desire-and quite justifiably so, because they are only a few miles down the river from Aiyansh-to be served by postal facilities on the same basis as the communities of Aiyansh and Canyon city. They request a fortnightly service by road from Terrace and back out that way again, because all their communications and their contacts with other communities, as I indicated earlier, are now through and into Terrace rather than the coastal area on down the river to Prince Rupert except during the fishing season, when they fish in and out of that area and use their boats.

As I have said, I have had communications with the minister about this matter, and as far as I can gather from those communications the matter is still under study, in an attempt, I imagine, to get whatever statistical information is necessary as to the volume of mail incoming and outgoing, the regularity with which mail service might be supplied in the future, cost factors and things of that kind. If the minister has some knowledge or information with regard to that matter at this time, it would be helpful if he could indicate it to the committee and to me. However, if it is not immediately available, I will appreciate it greatly if he will tackle this problem with the usual assiduity with which he tackles other problems and will find a solution to it within the shortest possible time.
I also want to make reference, if I may, to another basic problem in the constituency which I represent. This is something about which the minister and I have corresponded, as have many other people, for quite a period of time. It has to do with letter carrier delivery service by postmen in the community of Kitimat.
I wonder if at this stage I might be permitted to make a reference to another matter. This dates back, incidentally, as far as I am personally concerned, to within a few days after I was honoured by being elected in June, 1957, but also goes beyond that to the activities of my predecessor in this house who also dealt with the question. I feel free to make reference to this particular letter from the Postmaster General because this is one which does not have "personal and confidential" marked on it. I might add that it is dated July 15, 1957, so perhaps it predates the institution of the personal and confidential system.
In any event, with respect to establishing postal facilities at Kitimat, the minister was kind enough to write a three-page reply to the query I posed and the request I made to him, and he rejected at that time the possibility of establishing a letter carrier delivery service for five reasons. I will make reference to those reasons without reading the letter itself, though if that is desired I will read it in its entirety to make sure that I do not misinterpret what it says.
But just to give a precis of the reasons for the rejection, the first was because of what might be called the pocket development of the community. There are areas in Kitimat which are fairly well populated and developed, and there are also areas in Kitimat which are relatively sparsely populated. The town planners of Kitimat laid out the program of construction so that it would function in this

way, so there would be what you could call pocket development areas. Apparently this would entail a great deal more costly method of providing letter carrier service than if there was a large area of population such as there is, say, in the city of Ottawa, where there is block after block after block of dwellings.
The second reason was that the public transportation schedules there do not coincide, or did not at that time, with the times when transportation would be required by the letter carriers of the post office.
The third was that there is a substantial part of the population living in bunkhouses, staff houses or dormitories; that these people are not permanent residents, and that to provide a letter carrier service for them would mean that it would have to be discontinued when the dormitories or the staff houses closed down and the people moved out of the community because construction ceased or moved into permanent housing.
The fourth reason was that there was a very high level of employment at Kitimat and it would not be possible to recruit a suitable staff of letter carriers to keep it up to the necessary strength. I do not know whether this means that the salary structure in other employment would be sufficiently high to attract workers to a greater degree than would a lower salary schedule, but I imagine this is what it gets at.
Then finally, and I took issue with this as soon as I read it, it was stated that because of unusual climatic conditions in the area there would be considerable risk of interruption of delivery service during the winter months. I imagine the reference is to rain and snow. While it does rain in Kitimat, I do not think it rains any more there than in some of the other communities in that area.
These are the reasons given. I would like to point out that even though this was the initial objection there was not much validity to any of the five objections raised by the minister. In this regard I am sure the minister received communications from other individuals in Kitimat, although I do not know. However, because Kitimat was a new community and proceeded on a planned and orderly basis, it could be classified as pocket development, but I think in all fairness it is not too much different from any of these so-called suburban areas surrounding many of our larger cities today in which there are parks, playgrounds, shopping centres and an expanse of space between them. So this to me does not have that degree of validity which would warrant rejection of a letter carrier system, and it does not affect the distance a
Supply-Post Office
postman would have to walk. The neighbourhoods themselves are compact, and it is not much different from any of the modern suburban developments surrounding many of our cities.
With regard to the public transportation system in Kitimat, which everyone at that time admitted was not too good, the minister was sent a copy of the Kitimat bus schedule showing that buses ran continuously throughout the day from 7.05 a.m. until the last full through service at 7.35 in the evening. Then there were bus services following that time to selected areas. Throughout the day there was regular bus service from one end of the community to the other; and while it may not have been too good, it would not interfere in any way with the operations of a letter carrier. Now that we have these scooters perhaps you can disregard that point in any event.
The third point, as to there being a number of dormitories, staff houses, bunkhouses and so on has no validity either, because this was not considered in the initial request for letter carrier service by myself or the individuals concerned. The fact that they would be temporarily housed was not considered in the original request; we thought it should be excluded.
There was a high level of employment in Kitimat, but here I must draw a parallel between the city of Prince Rupert and Kitimat because we are in somewhat the same class, or were at that time, and have similar populations. The wage level in private industry in that city was comparable with Kitimat; but even if the high level of employment in Kitimat was used as an objection to establishing letter carrier service, I hope that does not imply that we need to have a large number of people unemployed before any sort of government services are established. Other than that I do not see what validity that argument has. If it was the wage level which was the deciding factor in engaging people, rather than their working for private industry, then it would seem to me that is a substantial and valid argument for increasing the salaries paid to letter carriers to make them comparable with industry.
The references to unusual climatic conditions, and so on, as I said are not too understandable because we have letter carrier service in Prince Rupert. I could file a great deal of information from the provincial department of agriculture, which conducts surveys of rainfall, snowfall and weather conditions throughout the communities, and I can say there is not too much difference between Prince Rupert and Kitimat so far as rain and snow are concerned. But the

Supply-Post Office
fact is that we have letter carrier delivery service in Prince Rupert but not in Kitimat.
Subsequent to these arguments being dispelled by additional correspondence which I had with the minister, I received a further communication from him. Again this is not classified as "personal and confidential", or at least there is no "personal and confidential" stamp on it. This was over a year ago and followed a detailed survey of Kitimat itself. This letter dealt exclusively with the number of points of call; the criterion used apparently is whether there will be a minimum of 2,500 points of call within what is called a compact, well-built area. That determines whether or not there will be a letter carrier service. At that time, in 1958, they were able to count only 2,240 calls at points where the necessary requirements were met. So there were 260 points of call less than the minimum number required.
Admittedly, since that time the construction program at Kitimat has been seriously curtailed. Some 1,700 or 1,800 construction employees were denied the right to work and continue the construction program at Kitimat. This dislocated the economy of Kitimat to a serious degree and resulted in many of the bunkhouses, staff houses and dormitories being closed, though I do not think that affected the over-all picture very much since these places were not included in the initial consideration which was given to this matter. It is true also that following the curtailment of construction the Aluminum Company of Canada proceeded to develop a more efficient system of production in the plant at Kitimat which resulted in a smaller number of people being employed to achieve the same volume of production. This also contributed to upsetting the economy of the area. Following this trend a number of vacancies occurred in the homes which had been built as permanent residences, and this state of affairs continued for a number of months.
However, I have been keeping in close touch with the development of the aluminum industry and the effect of this development on Kitimat. Gradually over the past few months there has been an increase in activity in the industry, up to a point where at the present time it is either in full production or close to full production having regard to the facilities available. There is once again an increase in community activity. Whether it is sufficient to make up for recent losses I do not know, but I think the most serious difficulties have been overcome and the effects of the economic collapse are being adjusted. Accordingly I think this would be a good time to consider making an additional investigation in order

to see whether a letter carrier service can be established in Kitimat in future.
It has been indicated to me that my time has just about expired, so I will conclude by leaving that particular question for the minister to deal with.


Mr. Van Horne:: Mr. Chairman, in my area postal services have improved considerably in the last three years. There is one little problem I should like to take up, and it has to do with the town of Dalhousie, an important and expanding community where the International Paper Company has just announced a development project which will double the capacity of its mill at a cost of some $8 million.
The town of Campbellton as well as the city of Edmundston and other towns of similar size have daily delivery of mail, and I understand the Post Office Department has every intention of introducing a daily delivery service in Dalhousie. I was in Dalhousie about a month ago and a delegation came to me wanting to know why places such as Campbellton could have daily delivery service while places such as Dalhousie had to wait so long to get them. I feel sure the minister will take whatever steps are necessary in this direction.
Another point I wish to raise concerns mail delivery in Madawaska county, where residents have been waiting now for over a year for the introduction of rural route services. The reason given for the delay is that there are no boxes available, but with so many people in this country out of work that does not appear to me a very strong reason, beoause I am sure that boxes could easily and quickly be provided.
I was pleased to get a letter from the minister yesterday, and I may tell him that though it was marked "personal and confidential" I had it published in the local newspaper, containing as it did information that rural route delivery of mail would be inaugurated in St. Joseph beginning July 1. I thank the minister very much for giving such prompt consideration to this matter. I live in an area where people live four or five to what is called a range-


Charles Edward Rea: Order. It being one o'clock, I do now leave the chair.
At one o'clock the committee took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The committee resumed at 2.30 p.m.
John (Jack) Henry Horner: Mr. Chairman, I was about to conclude my remarks when one o'clock came. The contractors who are awarded the

contracts to which I referred accept them in many cases with a considerable personal sacrifice to themselves because the prices at which they are obliged to bid in order to get the work do not always give them sufficient money to encourage them to give the additional little services that people have come to expect.
In many outlying areas you will have a few people-perhaps 5, 10 or 15 families- living along what is called a range, or in French, rang. The contractors will by-pass those families. I feel that is a practice that should not be tolerated. Although perhaps few in number those people should have an equal right to have their mail delivered to their doors when the rural route systems are established. When bids are being called I believe it would be an excellent idea to make it clear in the tender form that these little areas wherever they may be, have to be serviced.
I am pleased to note that the establishment of rural route services in areas such as mine has been speeded up. In many communities that are small in size it is not easy or possible to secure a responsible person to act as postmaster. The establishment of rural route service is an excellent trend.
I wish now to raise what I consider to be an important point and one concerning which I have received many complaints. I have always felt that when a merchant in a small town or village is appointed as postmaster he is given a competitive advantage over the other merchants in the community. This leads to abuses because people are obliged to go to the store in any event to cash their family allowance or pension cheques and to get their mail. Naturally the merchant who serves as postmaster has a knowledge of their affairs and can advance them credit because he knows when their cheques will come in. Because they are already in the store they may prefer to make their purchases there. I feel that the merchants who complain of this have a legitimate complaint. The establishment of rural route systems such as that to be inaugurated in St. Joseph in Madawaska county will to a great degree eliminate the practice that leads to the abuses I have just mentioned. I feel it is wrong to appoint a small town or village merchant as postmaster for the reasons I have stated.
In some areas, of course, our people do not like the idea of having rural route service. In some areas the people prefer it over all other systems of service. I have in my riding a very fine community called Tidehead. They want a post office. It is a rather large community and it could serve as headquarters for the rural route mail for many communities
Supply*-Post Office
adjoining Tidehead. I feel that more consideration should be given to the feelings of the people who live in the small communities. If they want a post office let us give them one and if they want rural route service let us see that they have it. I feel that the post office has to look on this enterprise as does any other business that is trying to give satisfaction to the people. In attempting to give that satisfaction the department should attempt to accommodate people in every way possible. I see no reason why we should wait any longer for daily delivery from door to door by carrier service in the town of Dal-housie.
In saying these things I also wish to congratulate the Postmaster General who has been extremely co-operative with me in anything I have had to do with his department. I can assure hon. members that the service has always been very speedy. I shall expect to see the points I have raised corrected and I am confident they will be. I am grateful for the opportunity of bringing these matters to the attention of the committee.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: Mr. Chairman, when I look across the aisle and see the minister of socialist enterprise-


Mr. Hamilton (Notre Dame de Grace):: object immediately.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: -memory opens the door to the near past. It seems such a short time ago that the present minister sat on the opposition benches pouring sulphurous language in a mellifluous voice over the head of the former postmaster general. We who have been here for some time have seen the evolution of a near rebel in opposition to a responsible minister. The hon. member for Port Arthur said, "A complete metamorphosis", and I think that is an excellent term because the minister has come out of his chrysalis. History repeats itself and advancing age and increased responsibility have had this mellowing effect. That is part of the democratic system.
The minister is doing a good job. He is doing many of the things for which he condemned the former minister and doing them in the same way. However, he has used hn imagination and put new life into the department. I appreciate the courtesy with which he has dealt with any problems I have brought to his attention and the promptitude with which he has dealt with matters I have discussed. I give the minister full credit for industry, activity and imagination so far as the Post Office Department is concerned.
However, the minister has caused me at times an unnecessary amount of thought and labour because in reply to all my correspondence he marks it "personal and confidential",

Supply-Post Office
even if it is just a question of putting a new rail up on the village post office steps. I bring this up because I know other hon. members have been caused a tremendous amount of extra work, and he has overburdened many of us with this practice. I wonder whether there is some unknown recondite reason for the practice which we call the personal and confidential technique.
I want to show the committee what unnecessary work it is causing us. In order to do that I am going to read a letter. The name of the recipient of this letter is purely fictitious. It is not intended to refer to any person either living or dead. However, the subject matter of the letter represents in two or three paragraphs the kind of letters I have had to write to my constituents because I receive letters from the minister all marked "personal and confidential". This is a typical letter.


William McLean Hamilton: Mr. Chairman, I am sorry, but I know the hon. member does not want to break the rules of the house. He will find a citation in the rules which prohibits the reading of imaginary letters.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: Pardon me; I have in effect changed only the name. The letter is composite in form.


William McLean Hamilton: Is
this one complete letter exactly as received from the department?


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: This is a letter I have composed as a result of my experience. The letter is addressed to:
Captain, The Honourable Algernon Claude Hamilton, Old Cove, British Columbia Re: Derelicton of duty,
Postmaster, Old Cove, B.C.


William McLean Hamilton: Mr. Chairman, the hon. member is completely out of order in reading imaginary letters.


Mr. Denis:: No.


The Chairman:: I would ask the Postmaster General to refer me to the rule because it seems to me if the letter was written by the hon. member it would be the same thing as if it were part of his speech.


Azellus Denis: The only thing you could accuse him of would be reading his speech.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: Mr. Chairman, I am reading this letter to indicate the type of letter I have to write because every letter I receive from the Postmaster General is marked "personal and confidential". I think I am entitled to present my point of view and support my argument with this illustration. I know of no rule in the book which prevents
[Mr. Herridge.)
my reading a letter which illustrates the correspondence I am required to write. May I continue, Mr. Chairman?


William McLean Hamilton: If the
hon. member has something else to say I suggest that he say it and in the meantime I shall find the rule in Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I am not going to be put off easily in that way.


Some hon. Members:: Go ahead, read the letter.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: In fairness I am giving the Postmaster General time to find the citation.


Jacques Flynn: Maybe the Postmaster General is referring to citation 158 on page 134 of Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms, fourth edition, which reads as follows:
It is against the general principles which govern debate to read to the house an imaginary letter supposed to have been written by one of the sitting members of parliament.
Does this meet the point the minister has in mind. I doubt whether on this citation I can draw the line that the Postmaster General has indicated. If the hon. member who is speaking says that it is the kind of letter that he himself has written, or that he is supposed to have written from time to time, I do not think this citation would apply. To my way of thinking this means a letter written by some other hon. member.


William McLean Hamilton: Mr. Chairman, I thank you for finding me the citation from your more adequate references. It is exactly the one I was looking for. It says:
It is against the general principles which govern debate to read to the house-
This is what the hon. member is intending to do.
-an imaginary letter-[DOT]
He has already said that is what it is.
-supposed to have been written by one of the sitting members of parliament.
I am a sitting member of parliament at the present time and the hon. member is ascribing the letter to me.


Jacques Flynn: I think the hon. member has indicated that the letter he wished to quote is one that he would write or that he ordinarily writes to one of his constituents, and not a letter from the Postmaster General, if I heard him correctly.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: This is purely the type of letter I am required to write because of this personal and confidential technique. I will now proceed with the letter:

My dear Algernon:
I have discussed the contents of your letter of March 1, last, with the appropriate person. However, it would not be what is played at Lords to divulge his name.
Before proceeding with your complaint, I shall answer your query as to what sort of a chap the Postmaster General is. While from your point of view he wears the wrong coloured tie, and has been known to enter the House of Commons in a vest of style and colour that would cause you some dismay, I must, in fairness, say his heart is in the right place, he is most industrious and his unconventional vests do indicate an imagination that I think has had a beneficial effect on the administration since he took office.
Now to your complaint. The letter I have received from the appropriate person is marked "personal and confidential". Therefore, I find it necessary to write allegorically and all I can say is that with my knowledge of the appropriate person's ability to smell a rat when he sees it hovering in the air, and later to nip it in the bud, I am confident that the administrative "dry-rot" you brought to my attention will be lopped off in due course, to your complete satisfaction.
While you may convey the information contained in this letter to this village post office patrons, on no account disclose the source of your information. However, you have my permission to say it came from an authoritative but undisclosed Ottawa source.
Trusting I have made the situation quite clear in a personal and confidential way, I remain
Your old Comrade-in-Arms.


Mr. Pugh:: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order, I think we ought to have the correspondence completed. I wonder whether we can have the reply to that letter filed? I simply want it because I want to see what a member of parliament looks like when he starts writing letters to himself.


Mr. Lamberi:: For purposes of information may I ask the erudite member how one smells a rat hovering in the air and nips it in the bud.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I can answer that. I have used that allegorical statement as a result of reading a Conservative member's remarks made in the British House of Commons in 1876.
I have drawn this to the minister's attention and I am sure he will reconsider this technique because, mind you, in addition to marking it "personal and confidential" he sends a tissue copy of his letter. I do not know what to do with it. I have not been able to find any use for it to date. I do hope the minister will find his way clear to change his technique.
When I receive a letter marked "personal and confidential" I treat it as personal and confidential, but I do wish the personal and confidential would apply to, shall I say, strictly confidential matters and I do not mind when necessary on personal matters. I would ask the minister to comment on this question when he replies. I am not the only
Supply-Post Office
one who has suffered from this practice. Members on the government side have also expressed their adverse opinion of it. As a matter of fact, this is one of the major criticisms this afternoon.
Having said that, I now proceed. As I see it, a member's responsibilities when it comes to discussing estimates are two in number. The first is to deal with the policies of the department in general, if he has any criticism of same, and the second is to bring to the attention of the committee any particular problem that concerns his constituents, and that is what most members do when they discuss estimates.
Before I proceed with a few remarks about general policy, I wish to say in all sincerity, because we hear some sections of the civil service criticized on occasions, that the Canadian people are very fortunate in having an excellent, efficient and first-class staff in the Post Office Department from the deputy minister right down through the administrative level. We accept this service daily without realizing the planning and consideration that has to go into the distribution of mail in Canada to the satisfaction of the public every day of the year. I think we should recognize that fact. Any matters I have brought to the attention of the minister or his senior officials have always been approached from the point of view that people would adopt who are operating a successful socialist enterprise for the public advantage.
With respect to the staff throughout the country we should also recognize the very good service that is rendered by the many people in the more humble positions. The service goes on day after day and is accepted just as we accept the work of the tracklayer on the railways in carrying out his monotonous daily task so that we may travel with speed and in comfort. I hope that the minister will use all his influence to see that the excellent services rendered by post office staffs and postmen tramping their beats are recognized by adequate increases in their salaries to conform with the increased cost of living.
I have a few other matters to bring to the minister's attention. A constituent of mine wrote me about a question that concerns civil rights. I wrote the minister about it and I have his reply here but I cannot quote it because it is marked "personal and confidential". I think the gentleman who wrote me has a point. The minister in writing to me indicated that he thought-how shall I put it-in view of it being marked confidential that he had made the implicit

Supply-Post Office
explicit, but I cannot agree. That is all I
can say at the present time. In any event,
this gentleman wrote me and said:

I would appreciate any information that is available on a matter which offhand I would consider as coming under civil rights. I am not familiar with what category my subject would come under other than civil rights.
Now as I understand, under our form of government the individual can live a private life, his business being his own in so far as the general public is concerned as long as he abides by the law. We have to fill out forms for income taxes, we give certain information for voters' lists, answer questions when we take on employment with a firm; we also give the post office our name and our address and we as in my case rent a box with a number from said post office. Now I would take from this that the information given each of the above is strictly for their own use and not for release to the general public.
Now it has come to my attention that a person can purchase from any post office in Canada for the sum of $2 a list of citizens that gives their name, address in the area which they choose to have knowledge of. I do not think this is the correct thing to do. The post office is a government agency and should not be used as an information bureau.
He goes on to say:
I would go to the post office and inquire, and the only answer was that if I put a stamp on it and mailed it they would see it got to the party.
He is referring to when he went to the post office to inquire about a person's address.
In short they were not allowed to divulge a person's mailing address. I can see the wisdom to this; they in those years respected the privacy of the individual. This present system leaves you open to a shower of phony advertising literature and such, it may be lucrative to the post office but the post office is supposed to be a very private business. I think stern measures should be taken to tighten up and attend to the business of handling mail and nothing in the way of as I said before of being an information bureau for a $2 bill.
I think my correspondent has a point there. He says he has gone to the post office and asked for the address of a person and has been told that if he will put a stamp on the letter they will supply the address and forward it but will not give the address. At the same time apparently a commercial company by paying $2	can get a	list	of	thepatrons of a certain	post office	and	on	the
basis of that list distribute their advertising literature. Personally I think my correspondent has a point. I promised him to raise the question on the estimates of the Post Office Department and I should like the minister to deal with it briefly when he replies to the eulogies and criticisms from the opposition benches.
I have one other	suggestion	and	it	hasto do with stamps. I must say	that	on	the
whole I think there has been an improvement in the design and quality of the stamps issued by the Post Office Department since 
the minister came into office. But I do suggest that possibly there could be considerable improvement if there was an opportunity provided for Canadians living in all sections of Canada and having various backgrounds and aptitudes to make some contribution to the design of these stamps. I suggest it would be a good idea to have some form of competition for Canadian artists who do this kind of work so that the minister's selection will not be confined to a few professionals who submit designs but will be made on as wide a base of talent in this direction as Canada can provide.
I have also been asked to mention to the minister that some remarkable subjects for stamp design are to be found in the Kootenays. There is the Kootenay-Columbia district, the Indians and their particularly interesting chiefs, the Thompson period, the Hudson Bay period, the stern-wheel steamers and various well known characters in mining, lumbering and agriculture. I have been asked to mention that because we in the Kootenay district are under the impression that we have not received due recognition from several of the government departments, including the Post Office Department, that go in for illustrating certain books and stamps.
I come now to the local and the concrete. The residents of Rossland were very pleased when the Department of Public Works decided to build a new post office.


Leon David Crestohl: May I ask the hon. member a question? Does he not think that the present member for Kootenay West is perhaps a qualified person to be considered as a subject for a stamp design?


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I welcome the hon. member's fine suggestion but 1 have always understood that high rank and station and great contributions to the state should not be recognized until the person is dead. As a matter of fact, I would rather have a new post office or two while I am alive. The people of Rossland were very pleased when it was decided to build a new post office. The first recommendation was to renovate the old one. After going through the building it was my personal opinion that it would be a waste of money, that it would cost a great deal more to renovate the old building than was anticipated, and once again, as usual, the member for Kootenay West was correct. The public works staff reinvestigated the whole situation and it was decided finally to build a new post office. I hope that every effort will be made to meet the responsible persons in Rossland such as members of the city council and representatives of the chamber of commerce and other organizations so that

the new post office will be located in the very best site possible to serve the interests of Rossland people. I understand this building is now being given consideration and will be undertaken next year.
I also want to bring to the attention of the Postmaster General the necessity of the officials in his department watching developments in the Kootenay district closely, particularly the need of changes at times in rural routes. There is one district where there were only five people a few years ago and at the present time there are 1,000. The development in the district is causing changes that will require adjustment in the service given. I cannot think of any drastic or particular one at the present time but I bring the matter to the minister's attention because of the changes occurring from increases in population, the building of new highways, the introduction of new bus services and transportation services and so on.
I come now to a problem that concerns the little village that is closest to where I live, namely the not well known but well situated and beautiful village of Nakusp. The chamber of commerce, the women's institute and the organizations there have been concerned in the last year or two about the time it takes to get mail from Vancouver into our district. The time is such that on occasion business people are required to use the long distance telephone much more than would be necessary if the mail service was a bit faster. It has been suggested that the minister's officials give consideration to the bus leaving Nelson a few hours later than it leaves at the present time so that it can bring mail there after the plane arrives at Castlegar in the afternoon. I mention this matter because of complaints and ask the minister to have it checked.
The minister knows that for some years I have urged the necessity of a postal bag from Revelstoke to Nakusp and distribution from there to all points south as far as Edgewood. I know the minister's officials investigated the situation and found that the volume of mail was somewhat small. I was very surprised to hear the cost of handling this bag in view of the fact that it is a government ferry that runs from Arrowhead to Nakusp and mail is brought up from Revelstoke to Arrowhead on contract. I thought it would cost a dollar a day or something of that sort. I cannot see any reason for the expense that was indicated by the report I received. However, I will let that matter rest at the present time.
I want to bring to the minister's attention the fact that a new highway is being built now and that it is likely that in the future there will be a bus running from Revelstoke
Supply-Post Office
south to Nelson via Nakusp. I urge that the officials of the department watch these developments so that they can take advantage of these changed transportation circumstances as soon as possible after they occur.
I have had one or two other complaints, although this is a minor one. In a number of places I have been informed that the rural mail list is often incomplete or inaccurate as to the address concerned or as to occupation. I suppose the minister does not live as close to the rank and file as do I. I live among the people. I am not in an exalted position. However, I hear what the ordinary person has to say about public affairs.


William McLean Hamilton: Mr. Chairman, I not only live among the people; I am one of the people.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I am glad to hear that. I am glad to know the minister is human. With regard to those sitting on the government benches there have been a few cases where I doubted that. However, even in a thing like an incorrect occupation, dissatisfaction can be caused. I had a gentleman come to me who is manager of a lumberyard, and he was down in the post office directory from year to year as a labourer. A person's occupation should be correctly stated. I have had a few of these cases brought to my attention. I urge that the local postmasters should be asked to check these lists; and not just send the old list in annually but to check the list carefully and to make certain that the address and the occupation of every patron is correct. That is not a very socialist suggestion but I represent all the people of Kootenay West. This suggestion comes from some of my Conservative friends but I am quite willing to advance it when they elect me as their representative to serve all the people.
I have one more suggestion to make, and it is my last one. I have received a few letters complaining of the low pay of the casual help employed in the larger post offices such as those in Trail and Nelson. I have also had letters from a few other points dealing with the situation in general. If my information is correct, it appears to me that the pay received by casual help in British Columbia for work in the post office on certain occasions is very much below the prevailing rates; in fact I am informed in some cases it is 50 per cent of the prevailing rate. When the Department of Public Works lets a contract in a district the contractor must agree to pay prevailing rates. I suggest that consideration be given to the prevailing rates in any district when casual help is being employed.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I once again want to emphasize this fact. Tremendous

Supply-Post Office
progress is taking place in Kootenay West. Tremendous developments are in sight and expansion is going on now at a rapid rate, and it will continue to go on in this garden of Eden in Canada. I urge that the minister's officials keep a close watch on these developments and these changing situations so that they will be ready at the first opportunity to adjust, rearrange or increase the services that are now provided so that they will continue to provide the efficient service that we have enjoyed throughout the years.


Mr. Aiken:: In common with other hon. members who have made some comment on the estimates of the Postmaster General, I should like to commence by complimenting him and his department on the excellent services they have been giving. Representing as I do a riding which is mainly rural and which has a number of rural routes and small post offices, I find that a great deal of the work I have to do relates to the Post Office Department. I must say that with very few exceptions I have received very good service and have been able to give good service to those people who wrote to me with problems or complaints.
There are just two matters which I should like to draw to the attention of the Postmaster General and the officials this afternoon. The first one relates to the tender system for rural routes. As we all know, the present system is-and I think properly so-that the lowest tenderer on the rural route is awarded the job. I think this is a fair system to be undertaken. However, I have found a number of difficulties that I think should be carefully considered by the department. In a number of cases there is evidence that a contractor or a proposed contractor will make a bid which is excessively low, much lower than that of all the other people who have bid. I feel that sometimes the person who has made this low bid has not done so properly. He may have one of three reasons for making an extremely low bid. The first one is that he may have wanted to eliminate all the other competition on the route and then hope to come back to the department in two years and get an increase back to what he should have had in the first place. In a number of cases I think there is definite evidence that people have put in ridiculously low bids and they go along just on the expectation they will apply and get an increase later on.
Another reason that this thing happens is that the person is incapable of estimating his job properly. The third is that he may not be properly equipped and that although he is able to give an estimate, he may do a poor job. After all, he is carrying the royal mail and the person who is selected ought to have

proper equipment and ought to be able to give good service. My request to the Postmaster General is that in cases where he receives a bid which is quite low in comparison with other tenders he should make an independent investigation to see whether the person who is bidding is actually the proper person for doing the job and capable of carrying the mail in a satisfactory way.
The second matter I should like to bring to the minister's attention concerns the urban mail delivery service in the town of Parry Sound. This has been one of the matters that the residents of that town have been requesting for some years. They have a post office which has sufficient revenue for mail delivery service door to door. They are just a little short of the number of persons required for mail delivery service. A check was made within the past year and at first it was thought that there were enough people, but subsequently it turned out on a re-check that there were not enough. It has been drawn to my attention that people who were potential customers were not counted for some reason or other as householders, and I therefore urge the Postmaster General to have a further check made as soon as possible of the number of householders qualified to receive mail to see if a few extra people can be found so that mail delivery can be provided to this town, which is actually increasing very rapidly each year in population and industry.
With those two matters and the compliments I gave to the Postmaster General I should just like to add that as regards the rural mail delivery services particularly the department has given very good co-operation in any extension of rural mail routes where requested, and they have stretched their regulations to the limit in lots of cases in order to give good mail delivery service.
(Translation):


Mr. Caron:: Mr. Chairman, as the hon. member for Kootenay West (Mr. Herridge) stated earlier, it cannot be said that the present Postmaster General (Mr. Hamilton) is doing much worse than his predecessor, but we are always surprised to find that the former critic of the Post Office Department did not introduce the changes he was suggesting when he was in the opposition.
However, what struck me most, and what amused me particularly in the minister's introductory statement on his departmental estimates, is his remarks about visiting post offices at all hours of the day or night and noting the cheerfulness of postal workers.

That part of his speech struck me for two reasons. In the first place, it is rather unusual for a Postmaster General to go about post offices by day and by night to check on the cheerfulness of his staff. It is somewhat outside the bounds of logic.
Then again, does not the minister trust his employees? If he does not, well let him replace them, and let him tell us his reasons for doing so, namely that they are incompetent.
A minister going through post offices at two or three in the morning to check up on the cheerfulness of his personnel, that is really laughable.
Besides, I note that the minister is laughing just now. He might well do so, because if he had thought twice, he would not have said that.
The minister said he noted the cheerfulness of the staff.
Well, he must have made his visits at the wrong hours, because I have been meeting large numbers of post office employees, and civil servants generally-particularly people working outdoors-and I can assure you their mood is not so cheerful as that.
If there is one minister who is being criticized by his staff at this time for his lack of action, it is certainly the Postmaster General.
His employees have been trying to get raises for their colleagues. Raises have been granted to 50,000 employees, but not to postal workers. In fact, postal workers seem to have been placed at the bottom of the list.


Mr. Grafftey:: Would the hon. member allow me a question?


Alexis Pierre Caron: Certainly.


William Heward Grafftey: Could the hon. member cite a single case in support of his statements to the house?


Alexis Pierre Caron: It is not my practice to reveal my sources of information, because I would not want government employees to be penalized for daring to talk to a Liberal member.


William Heward Grafftey: Would the hon. member-


Alexis Pierre Caron: If my hon. friend would get out of his hole in the ground, he might find a good many dissatisfied people in his own constituency. Besides, it is a matter of common knowledge.


William Heward Grafftey: That is not true, and that is no answer.


Alexis Pierre Caron: You only have to take a look at the civil servants' newspaper to see how
Supply-Post Office
much dissatisfaction there is, and in the same paper, you will see the complaints of postal employees, who are of course dissatisfied with their present situation, because the raises to which they are entitled are being held up.
All we have to do is to look around and see what is going on. Members of parliament should not be asked to give their sources of information; it could only mean trouble for those who gave out the information. I know there is discontent, and especially people are wondering whether the delay in granting postal workers the raise they were promised is not meant as a punishment for those who have been waging the great battle for salary increases. They were the ones who carried the battle, and it now seems as if someone is out to punish them for it; in fact they will probably be the last to get the promised raise. If there are people in fact, who really fought the great battle for civil service salary increases-


William Heward Grafftey: Please be responsible, be responsible.


Alexis Pierre Caron: Mr. Chairman, would you tell that thing over there to shut up? I am sick and tired of my hon. friend's interventions. In the matter of irresponsibility, I have never seen the like of him.
I wonder whether this delay in granting the requested increases is not a punishment inflicted on postal workers. In fact not only will they not get their increases immediately but, judging from the present attitude of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fleming) there will be no retroactivity, whether they get their raise in two or three days, or in a month, they will not benefit from the retroactivity granted to the 50,000 who already got their increase in April.
They stand to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars because they waged the battle to help Canadian civil servants who were ill paid, particularly since the election of the present government.
The present minister may have fine qualities, he may have great accomplishments to his credit, but he certainly slipped in failing to insist on salary increases for the people who deliver the mail day in and day out, rain or shine, summer and winter, under extremes of hot and cold weather, carrying heavy bags to serve the public. I think those people deserved a better deal than they have received.
The minister, who introduced the use of scooters in his department, also referred to small carts that are being put to the test,

Supply-Post Office
similar to those used to carry golf clubs. I have had the opportunity to discuss this with a few mail carriers, and their reaction was that the idea was absolutely unthinkable and that, for all practical purposes, they could not accept them. They have been wondering whether the minister was thinking of using this new device to throw an additional load on the already overburdened workers and thus cut down the staff.
Why not buy them a horse and cart, as used by bread and milk salesmen who do not travel very fast and go from door to door.
In my view, Mr. Chairman, postal employees have certainly not received the consideration they deserved from their minister, and I hope that when their raises do come- as they are bound to eventually-the minister will see that they be retroactive to April 1, as in the case of the first 50,000 who got their raises. Then, perhaps, they might be able to believe that the minister has really looked after his departmental staff.
I do not want to take too much time, because I would hate to be accused of delaying the Post Office Department's estimates, but there is one thing I should like to submit to the minister. It is known that the city of Hull has been expanding considerably, and that, in addition to the old section on the eastern side of Brewers creek we now have a new section on the western side, which already has grown larger than the old.
The post office has a sort of little nook there where mail carriers go and fetch the mail they have to deliver. Furthermore, boxes have to be installed on street corners, from which mail carriers may pick up additional mail for delivery. That area includes four important districts, that is Tetreau, Wright, Lafontaine and Dollard. Consequently, it would be necessary and urgent that the Post Office Department build another post office there which would, first of all, allow mail carriers to pick up their bagful of mail; at the same time we would be rid of those horrible boxes that stand on street corners, especially in the most developed areas, which are so picturesque.
Mr. Chairman, several members have already referred to that mania of the Postmaster General's of writing "personal and confidential" letters. Besides, you know very well that a letter is not necessarily of a personal and confidential nature just because its sender has chosen to write in those words at the top of the sheet. To be genuinely so, such letters must be of a personal and confidential character. In fact, I will quote one

of them, even, if it is not considered delicate to do so. It is a letter which is in no way of a personal or confidential character, and I wrote to the minister to tell him that I did not consider it as such. Furthermore, after having advised the minister, I sent a copy of it to the persons concerned and I had a right to, because it was in no way of a personal or confidential character. Under the circumstances, I was fully justified to do what I did. Here is the letter referred to:
Personal and confidential Dear Mr. Caron:
This is in reference to your letter of May 10, in which you ask that letter carrier service be established in Gatineau.
An inquiry to establish whether Gatineau meets the required conditions for mail carrier service has just been completed. The matter is still under consideration but no decision has yet been taken. I am sorry 1 am unable to give you a definite answer at this time, but I hope to be in a position to do so in the near future.
Sincerely,
William Hamilton, Postmaster General.
Can anyone look upon that letter as being a personal and confidential letter? Is the minister out to prevent members of parliament from transmitting to their constituents the news they get from departments? I do not know. I would not like to accuse the minister unfairly, but I am inclined to believe that there is something there which borders on mania. I would ask him, whenever he wants a letter to be personal and confidential, to include in it facts that are genuinely of a personal and confidential nature. However, as everyone knows, letters such as the one I have just read are not of a personal or confidential character.
I have another one of the same type, in which there is absolutely nothing of a personal and confidential character-I do not want to take time to read it-and in which the minister advises me that the matter does not come under his department; and he adds:
I am sending a copy of your letter to the Minister of Public Works.
Is there anything personal and confidential in those two letters?
I ask the minister to change his ways by sending us replies that will allow us to supply information to those concerned.
I shall now revert to the subject of door to door delivery in Gatineau. The population of this town numbers 13,000 at present. Some people have to travel one and a half miles

to get their mail and post their letters. The minister will perhaps claim that he is following the established practice. I admit that this was probably the practice followed in the past, but I remember that when he was on this side of the house, the present Potsmaster General urged the government to bring about all necessary changes. He is now holding that office and it is his own responsibility. If changes had to be made when he was in the opposition, why does he not make them now that he is in a position to do so?
It will be claimed perhaps that the population is not high enough and that the volume of business is not such as to justify the building of a post office. The reason for this is obvious enough. Deprived of proper facilities, those people deal with the Hull or Ottawa post office, and the local post office pays the piper. If proper service was provided, we would have the required volume of business.
Moreover, even with door to door delivery, people would have to go to the post office to purchase postage stamps. Stamp distribution centres should be established in various places for this purpose. Nothing is easier than to allow certain grocers or merchants to sell postage stamps and enable the public to purchase the stamps they need. In this way, the volume of business of the Gatineau post office would reach the required figure.
Moreover, the minister would have made one of the improvements he was asking for when he was sitting on this side of the house.
Well, I remind him of the past, of the great improvements he used to ask for, in short, I ask him to remember everything he said when he was on this side. For instance, he stated that postal service should be available to the public, that it was a public service and that the reason for the existence of the Post Office Department was the public.
I am asking him for the same thing. Let him carry out what he suggested. Let him make the postal system available to the people who need it, by making a few changes and a few improvements. Even if it is impossible to have a door to door delivery service immediately, let there be, at least, some letter boxes, and a few merchants should be allowed to sell stamps, so that people who want to post their letters will not have to walk one and a half miles to do so.
I must say that, as far as Gatineau Point is concerned, I submitted the matter to the
Supply-Post Office
minister who received me very courteously -I have to admit that the minister is always urbane when we approach him-and I asked him to have the post office enlarged. At the present time, there are up to three families using the same postal box, because the population is constantly growing. In fact, from 3,500 it has gone up to over 7,000, and the post office is now too small. There is no more room to put in letter boxes in the present building, because it is not large enough. The municipality of Gatineau Point cannot be satisfied in this way.
(Text):
As far as the municipality of Gatineau Point is concerned, as well as Gatineau itself, there too the department should put up letter boxes for the posting of mail from that community, and business people should be allowed to sell stamps, so that the citizens need not walk great distances to buy them, because some people have to walk up to a mile and a half to get to the post office.
I therefore ask the minister to look after these matters. Anyhow, he cannot do otherwise, because he himself advocated those changes when he was sitting on this side of the house. Well, now that he is sitting on government benches and that he has the necessary authority, let him proceed with those changes he was asking for, and we will not begrudge him our approval.
(Text):


Mr. Drysdale:: I should like to take this opportunity to make one or two remarks. As the representative of a fast-growing community in western Canada I should like to draw certain matters to the attention of the Postmaster General. I hasten to assure the hon. gentleman that my words are not words of criticism but of constructive suggestion and, later on, there may even be words of commendation.
The municipality of Burnaby has a population of some 100,000 and an area of 40 square miles. Yet Burnaby is without its own central post office. New Westminster and Vancouver have complete postal facilities. If consideration is being given to the establishment of a federal building in central Burnaby I would suggest the location be in the vicinity of our municipal hall. I feel that consideration should be given to the establishment of a post office for Burnaby.
I also suggest that the Postmaster General give attention to the idea of having a Burnaby postmark. I realize that these things are perhaps relatively insignificant in the view of other hon. members of the committee but

Supply-Post Office
anyone who realizes the pride of a municipality or city will realize the importance of the suggestions I am advancing.
In forwarding these suggestions I feel I should also bring to the minister's attention the fact that there is discussion in the Vancouver area concerning the metropolitaniza-tion of the whole area. I would point out that Burnaby is the heart of the lower mainland, the geographic centre of the mainland of lower British Columbia. I think he should give consideration to the long range possibilities of the establishment of a post office in the Burnaby area. In the last 20 years the population of Burnaby has risen from 50,000 to 100,000 within an area of 40 square miles and with the present dynamic leadership being given in the community not only by the municipal council but by the board of trade there is every indication that the population will perhaps double again in the next 10 or 15 years.
I wish also to direct the minister's attention to a similar situation existing in the municipality of Richmond which I also represent. Strangely enough the population of this area also doubled in the last 20 years. Richmond has a present population, I believe, of 40,000 and covers an area of 57 square miles. I would point out that all airmail from the Vancouver area goes through Richmond because the Vancouver international air port is located there. I wonder if the minister would also give consideration to the establishment of a central post office in Richmond. We would like to see it located in the federal building in that area.
From time to time I understand that the Postmaster General receives certain complaints. I am at times critical when I feel that criticism is justified but I should like to point out to the minister that since my election in 1958 I have had occasion to bring to his attention only three or four complaints regarding the postal service in my riding. I have no hesitation in saying that in each instance the minister had the situation thoroughly investigated and in every case I received a satisfactory reply.
I wish to express appreciation to the minister for his being of assistance to me in another matter. Some criticism appeared in the local newspapers in my riding concerning the postal service in the area. I thought perhaps the criticism was not based on fact. The minister was kind enough to make arrangements under which I was able to take the four local editors from Burnaby and Richmond on a tour of the Vancouver post office. They were able to ask any questions they wished and an effort was made to explain anything which caused them difficulty.
[Mr. Drysdale.l
Since that time I have seen no criticism editorially in those newspapers.
Having worked in post offices during Christmas vacations I have developed a first hand approach to the subject of this department based on my experience as a letter carrier and sorter of mail. I am amazed at the few mistakes that are made by the post offices. I feel that some hon. members in presenting the complaints they have received magnify the minor mistakes that have been made. I would suggest that this is out of all proportion. The minister's department is probably subject to attack more than any other department for the reason that through every letter, post card and circular the Postmaster General representatively goes into the homes of Canadians. If there is any delay in the receipt of good news or bad or any minor delay in mail delivery we tend to ascribe the difficulties to the Postmaster General.
In studying the situation in my area and in attempting to bring problems or complaints to the attention of local departmental officials in both Vancouver and Burnaby I have found a genuine interest on their part in correcting any of the real or alleged delays. A suggestion was made to me which I will pass on because it may be valuable to other hon. members. When a person complains about delay in receiving a letter I am always pleased if they send me the particular letter so that I can then trace it and assist in discovering the reason for the delay. This provides the post office officials with an opportunity to clear up the difficulty.
I appreciate having had this opportunity to bring forward these few points which I know will be of interest to my constituents and to commend the minister on the excellent job he is doing.


Mr. Godin:: Mr. Chairman, I should like to make a few brief remarks concerning problems of general interest relative to the question of good relationships between the Post Office Department and the public. I feel this is of importance because this department more than any other department of government is in daily contact with Canadian citizens through the postal services.
I have a file of letters here. All the numerous communications I have had with the minister's department have been dealt with courteously but the replies have been marked "personal and confidential" and therefore it will be difficult for me to deal with some of the problems I have in mind.
The first problem with which I wish to deal concerns the amalgamation of the city of Sudbury. Amalgamations are a common occurrence today and have taken place not

only in Sudbury but elsewhere in Ontario. A part of my riding was amalgamated with the city of Sudbury and this has created a problem for the postal department. I am proud of the fact that the amalgamation took place but the residents of the area affected are entitled to expect the same postal services that are provided elsewhere in the municipality. I realize that this cannot be done immediately and I know that the local officials in Sudbury are investigating the matter of adequate postal services in this area. I appreciate, too, that this situation developed shortly after the government took office. I know that the personnel of the department in Sudbury are making every effort to have action taken on the question.
I feel that in instances like this the Post Office Department should take the initiative in having special studies made. A lack of action in this respect creates poor public relations between the department and the local citizens. I urge the minister to have a study made as rapidly as possible. If this were done it would reduce the number of complaints that are sent to members of parliament and the Postmaster General. People write to us because they have no one else to whom they can address their complaints. I appreciate very much receiving those complaints. It is their right to make the complaints and it is my duty to listen to them. I am certainly willing to receive them and pass them on to the minister on every occasion.
In this area, of course, some people have rural service only. Under the amalgamation the area became part of the greater city of Sudbury. Therefore, the people feel that they should receive door to door service promptly. Based on the population of the subdivision of this area, they should receive it.
Without quoting the actual words of the letters of the Postmaster General, his last letter simply indicated to me that the investigation which he told me was going on a month or two before had not even begun. This is the type of thing I find very hard to explain to my constituents, and it is difficult for them to feel satisfied with the approach of the minister to this problem. This is not an absolutely grave complaint but it is a proper one. I am sure the minister will realize that if there is a change in the community life and his department is affected he should make absolutely sure that he has the staff in the field to take care of the change. Possibly the personnel in the Sudbury area are overloaded with work; possibly they cannot find the time to make the investigation which is required to rearrange certain routes
Supply-Post Office
and give to the citizens the postal service which will be as good as that formerly given to the limited city of Sudbury. The citizens could be notified as soon as it is done, or they should be told that it will be done shortly. If that were done they would realize that it is not possible to make the change and rearrange the postal services in a few weeks or a month. If the matter is long delayed, especially as we were advised that the investigation which we were told was going on had not even begun some months after, the people should be informed about it.
I think it is proper that the minister should be advised that a rapid study of the problem should be made. The acuteness of the problem was known to his department, no doubt, long before this amalgamation application. I know that the one in Sudbury was discussed for at least three or four years. The citizens knew in advance that the amalgamation would take place on January 1 the following year. The department should have known that and that was the time to make the study. I am not saying that the amalgamation took place five years ago; I am saying that the application was made five years ago and the amalgamation took place since the present Postmaster General took office. Therefore he has the previous experience to know something about it and also he has the facilities since he became the Postmaster General.
(Translation):
Mr. Chairman, I would like also to bring to the attention of the Postmaster General the problem of the Val Caron post office. I am glad to make these few comments to him in French, knowing that he understands this language quite well.
I have had the opportunity to make representations to the minister for more than two years with regard to the Val Caron post office. According to his replies, the situation there would be satisfactory. I want to point out to the minister that the Val Caron post office-I am not talking about the service, but about the building itself-and even though there are some in even worse shape- is located in an old garage which has been converted to the purpose. I personally know the town of Val Caron and the whole neighbouring area, and I can assure the minister that the building which houses the postal service is not at all adequate for this village. People who are forced to use it have to face difficulties, particularly in the wintertime, that do not exist anywhere else.
I am happy to tell the house that at Palmer, not far from there, the minister has built a post office in a municipality almost similar to that of Val Caron. People of that town are quite proud of their new post office.

Supply-Post Office
I feel it would be appropriate to consider the situation which prevails at Val Caron. It seems to me that we could rent a more suitable building or allow the owner of the garage that houses the post office to put up a building of which my fellow citizens would be proud, a building more in harmony with its surroundings.
Mr. Chairman, now that I have made those few remarks, I must say that I have always received favourable consideration from the minister, even if he did not always give me satisfaction.
(Text):


Mr. Regnier:: Mr. Chairman, it is a privilege for me to speak on behalf of my constituency of St. Boniface, not to make complaints but to express my commendation of and thanks for the service given to the people of St. Boniface in the new area of Windsor Park, by granting them door to door service. In Charleswood we had door to door service last year, and this year we have received the drop rate of four cents on mail. We tried hard to obtain the four cent rate for the town of Transcona, and this month it has also been extended to that town. It has also been extended to places as far away as 10 miles from the city of St. Boniface, such as the village of St. Norbert and Fort Whyte, St. Charles, Pacific Junction, Tod post office in the municipality of St. Vital, and Birds Hill.
It is remarkable how well the people have been served since 1957. The year 1957 was the first time there was an improvement in that district by having a door to door delivery in the town of Transcona. Now the whole district, the metropolitan area of greater Winnipeg, has received the four cent rate.
I should like to thank the minister, his department and also the employees in the city of St. Boniface very much for their cooperation and their faithful service in the conduct of their duties.
There is another improvement that is being planned, namely the new post office for the city of St. Boniface. I understand this building will conform with the improvements in a city of 35,000 people which is growing fast, and it will harmonize with all the wonderful buildings that the city of St. Boniface is already blessed with. As you know, the city of St. Boniface is one of the oldest cities west of the capital. It has a French speaking population, is a city of culture and has wonderful buildings. I am sure the new building will conform to the present architectural style and the importance of such a city.
I should like to make one request. I believe the Post Office Department should issue

a stamp to commemorate the religious character of Christmas and counteract the emphasis on commercialism. I know that the Post Office Department has issued many worthy stamps to commemorate different historic events and I think the department should not forget to commemorate the nativity, the greatest event so far as Christianity throughout the world is concerned. I am sure this will be done. I do not want to take more time as many hon. members wish to speak. I have nothing but thanks to offer to the minister and his department.


Murdo William Martin: Mr. Chairman, I am not going to speak very long on this subject today but there are two or three matters I should like to raise at this time. The first, and certainly one of the most important that the minister should consider, is the pay and remuneration of the letter carriers. I think the rate of pay these men are receiving is disgraceful. I know that other speakers have referred to the yeoman service they render in all kinds of weather and certainly that is even more applicable in the area from which I come. The letter carriers have to go out when the temperature is 35, 40, 45 or 50 degrees below zero and sometimes have to wade through a couple of feet of snow that has fallen during the night. To me it is wonderful how they can even carry on their work. Certainly their rate of pay is in no way commensurate with the duties they perform for the public.
I have known some cases where letter carriers, after building up a few year's seniority in the department, have endeavoured to build themselves homes and when they came to pay the bills they found they had to leave the department, thus losing their seniority and all their benefits, and go back to work in the mines for a period of five years or so until they had reduced their mortgages before they could go back to the work of their choice in the department. I think it is a disgrace that they should lose all of their back benefits and I suggest that the minister should look into the matter very carefully and see if something cannot be done.
There is another small matter I should like to bring to the attention of the minister. As the hon. member for Burnaby-Richmond said, while it may not be of vital national importance it certainly is important to the people in the particular area of my riding. I refer to the condition of the present post office premises in the combined towns of Ramore and Holtyre. The building is certainly not intended for this type of work. It cannot be expanded, and if the minister's

inspectors would go there I think they certainly would agree with the local people that there is a very great need for a new postal building to serve these two communities.
There is one other matter that has been brought to my attention by more than one person and has to do with what is possibly a policy of the minister's department. To illustrate the point I should like to refer to the remarks of the minister when he first introduced his estimates on May 27. As found at the bottom of page 4282 of Hansard, he said at that time:
In any organization as large as the Post Office Department the relations between management and staff are of critical importance.
I am glad to see that the minister realizes the importance of good relations between the employees and the employer, particularly in an undertaking as important as our postal service. As found in the second column on the same page he went on to say:
During my term as Postmaster General I have had ample opportunity to study these men and women at their work. I have made a practice of dropping in unexpectedly and at odd hours of the day and night. I have been in offices at midnight; I have been in offices at 6 a.m., and I have been in offices at just about every interval between those two times. I never failed to be impressed with the employees' cheerfulness, their capability and their determination to do their work swiftly and well. I have found in the postal service a quality of devotion and integrity that is, perhaps, unusual in this day of materialism and mass production.
I should like to commend the minister for those remarks, particularly his reference to the devotion to duty of postal employees, but with reference to the first part of his remarks I am wondering how they tie in with certain complaints I have received. Probably the minister can explain whether a matter of policy that is applied across the country is involved. The complaints brought to my attention have to do with the new post office and federal building nearing completion in the town of Timmins. Although I have not seen it yet, I have been given to understand that there is what I believe is called an observation gallery in the building.
I understand that the gallery is closed in with one-way glass. In other words, people can look out through this glass but people cannot look in. I understand that the purpose is for supervision of the employees and so on. I should like to ask hon. members whether they would feel completely at ease in their work if they realized that at any time big brother, the Postmaster General, might be looking over their shoulders. The employees who have brought this matter to my attention say that they have a sort of creepy feeling. They never know who is
79951-0-314
Supply-Post Office
watching them and when and they feel that their integrity is being questioned more than it should be. As I say, I do not know if this is a departmental policy and possibly the minister could give some explanation of the matter. These complaints have been brought to my attention and I thought it was only right that I should bring them forward for the consideration of the minister.


Mr. Skoreyko:: Mr. Chairman, I rise to speak for only a minute or two. First of all, may I say that I think the minister is deserving of a compliment from myself as a member for a riding for which very little was done for a good number of years. Since my election in 1958 I along with other members from the area have been able to get the minister to consider plans for the establishment and erection of a new post office in the riding of Edmonton East. These facilities have been needed for a good many years and I wish to congratulate the minister on the way he has approached this problem and on the fact that the matter is finally in the planning stage.
The second problem I wish to bring to the minister's attention is one that has been brought to the attention of former ministers of the department by the east Edmonton businessmen's association. I refer to the need for facilities in the 118th avenue area. This is a section of the city of Edmonton where for some years business has been carried on in much the same way as in a small suburban town on the outskirts of a city.
There is suitable development in this area and the minister is aware of it as he visited this particular area with me last fall. I hope that serious consideration will be given to the establishment very soon of facilities in this area.
The second problem is one respecting a small town in the outskirts of my riding of Edmonton East, namely the town of Beverly. Ten years ago when this small town had a population of 2,500 people there were two postal facilities, namely two drug stores. The population of this area is now in excess of 10,000 people and they are being served by those two small drug stores some 40 blocks apart. I understand the minister is initiating an investigation into this particular area and service, and I hope that some good news will be forthcoming very soon in this regard.
I have only one other point to mention and this was brought to my attention by the hon. member for Hastings-Frontenac. It is with respect to postage on overseas shipments to underprivileged countries and disaster areas. I am speaking specifically of shipments made by our welfare organizations which are obliged to pay the full postal rate

Supply-Post Office
on these shipments. I suggest that this is a burden on these organizations.


Mr. Regier:: I do not intend unduly to delay the passage of item No. 1 of the estimates, Mr. Chairman. However, I believe the minister realizes that once we overcome the hurdle of item No. 1 there ought to be little delay in processing the remaining items under his department. I want to underline the point I made on May 27 which was not replied to at that time. I realize the minister was very optimistic and hoped that after a brief reply we might agree to the passage of item No. 1 at the time. I refer to my plea that the number necessary under the regulations for the institution of door to door delivery be greatly reduced. With all the unemployment we have in Canada at the present time and also with the changes in the living habits of the Canadian population, I feel that the old regulation calling for a minimum of 2,500 calls in any post office before door to door delivery is begun is in line for major consideration. I believe that half of that number ought to be adequate.
I know there are problems of hiring men and giving them the five-day week when giving delivery for six days a week is involved. However, according to my calculations, a community having 1,250 householders would require four men, with three men always on the go. To those four men we might even, under these conditions, be able to grant the eight-hour day and the five-day week.
I think that a new look might be taken at this problem. I would ask the minister whether some consideration will be given to this proposal. I think it might enable the department to pay a little more attention to municipal boundaries if this were done. In my riding it would enable the people of Port Moody to receive their mail via the Port Moody post office rather than, as is the case under present conditions, roughly one third of them having to get their mail out of the New Westminster post office in order to have the advantage of door to door delivery.
I should like to underline the pleas made in this chamber by the hon. member for New Westminster and the hon. member for Burn-aby-Richmond that growing and relatively new communities in major urban areas surrounding larger cities be supplied with separate post offices of their own. The minister's reply to the hon. member for New Westminster with regard to the Newton post office is found at page 4704 of Hansard. The minister had this to say:
I believe he also knows that we are looking at the question of a post office building for that area. However, we do not want to be drawn into the erection of a building on a specific location in an
[Mr. Skoreyko.l
area which is expanding and growing as rapidly as is that one until at least there is some firm indication as to the pattern of growth which is going to take place in the years ahead.
I recall that a number of years ago, if not as recently as one year ago, there was in the estimates an item for the building of a new post office in Newton. If the government knew as early as that time that a new post office was needed in that area or that municipality, and had obviously agreed that it was going to build one or that one ought to be built,
I must ask the minister in all sincerity whether that item was in the estimates at the time for political reasons only or whether there was any degree of sincerity toward obtaining a vote in this chamber for the supplying of the people of Newton with a post office. In particular, I should like him to explain why after the decision by the House of Commons to allow the building of a federal building at Newton there are apparently now no plans to proceed or even to use the money that was originally allowed.
The hon. member for Burnaby-Richmond underlined the growing need for a post office in Burnaby in order to meet the requirements of the residents of Burnaby. I do not agree at all with his contention that there is only a small number of complaints as to the delivery of mail in Burnaby. In my experience the service rendered with regard to the delivery of mail has declined from year to year. It is my contention that the delivery of mail is going to decline in efficiency until at long last the government is going to grant us our own distribution arrangements.
I should also like the minister to explain what the present attitude of his department is with regard to the rental of post office buildings. I know the former minister of public works took a very firm position in this regard. It was his opinion, which was expressed in this house, that wherever possible the Department of Public Works ought to own the building and that there ought to be no arrangement whereby the department would grant a rental lease to an individual, who would then take that lease, go to the bank and obtain the loan necessary to finance entirely the cost of a building and who would be able to repay the whole of the cost of the building out of the rentals outlined in the lease, and then at the end of a five, seven or ten-year period he would remain the owner of the building toward the ownership of which he had supplied nothing except a little bit of organizational ability.
We have at this time a building in North Burnaby not owned by the department. We have a building in Port Moody not owned by the government and there is a building on the Kingsway not owned by the government. The

rental in at least one of these three cases is one of the highest rentals on a square footage basis that the Post Office Department is obligated to pay anywhere in the dominion. I would like to see the attitude of the government expressed as being identical with the attitude expressed a year or more ago, and I would like to see a little more action on the part of the government to implement this attitude, and that they either purchase existing buildings or erect their own buildings wherever it is economically right to do so, rather than renting buildings at exorbitant rates.
I should also like to make one additional reference to the reply of the minister to the representations of the hon. member for Vancouver East. The attitude of our group is that the taxpayers of Canada ought not to subsidize the distribution of advertising through the mails. I noted the minister's reply both on May 27 and again on June 8 when he emphasized that it is very important that there be the widest distribution of newspapers and magazines into the homes of the people of Canada.
I agree with that basic attitude of the minister. However, it is not the appearance and the distribution of the magazines and newspapers and other educational media that we take exception to; we feel that there is an undue amount of brain washing already in eixstence on the Canadian cultural scene and we do not like to see the post office being misused in order to enhance the interests of the advertisers of our nation.
The minister also said, as reported on page 4705 of Hansard for June 8:
-I see no necessity to ask the house to authorize any increase in the first-class postal rate.
May I assure the minister that neither the hon. member for Vancouver East nor any other member of our group advocated an increase in first-class postal rates at this or at any other time. However, we now adopt the attitude that the minister adopted when he was in opposition in 1954 when he advocated that the users of first-class mail be not penalized in order to make possible the distribution of the very heavy burden of advertising, which is indeed a heavy burden on our employees in the Post Office Department.


Mr. Hamilton (Noire Dame de Grace):: May
I ask the hon. member a question before he resumes his seat. Did I understand him to say that the attitude of his group was that the taxpayers of Canada should not be asked to contribute to what I think he said was a subsidy on this particular class of mail?


Erhart Regier: We do not mind a subsidy on the distribution of educational information 79951-0-314J
Supply-Post Office
such as contained in text books, novels, newspapers or magazines. However, we do take very serious objection to the post office having to subsidize the commercial advertising enterprises of Canada.


Mr. Simpson:: Mr. Chairman, I should like to take this opportunity of bringing to the attention of the minister a problem which is of vital importance to the residents of one of our enterprising young communities in northern Manitoba. At the community of Snow Lake, Manitoba the people are receiving at the present time only tri-weekly mail service. This service has been going on for some time and up until very recently it was possibly the best service which could be provided by the Post Office Department because at that time there was only tri-weekly service on the trains travelling on the Hudson bay line from The Pas to Churchill. But now with further development at the new town-site of Thompson, Canadian National Railways have now inaugurated a daily service going northwards out of The Pas, and I would like the minister to give the very fullest consideration to investigating this situation to see if it would not be possible to take advantage of the new train service to give the people of Snow Lake a daily mail service.
In yesterday's mail I received a letter from the local administrator of that point. Attached to that letter was a very lengthy petition signed by the majority of the residents of Snow Lake. I understand that the original of this petition has been directed to the minister, and I sincerely request that this matter be given every consideration. I would like to point out that I am sure the people of Snow Lake would be very gratified to know that plans are under way for the construction of a new post office, and I certainly hope that this will be carried out as quickly as possible. The postmaster at Snow Lake has been performing very satisfactory service under sometimes adverse conditions due to lack of space in relation to the volume of mail which comes into this new community. This is a mining community, everyone there is employed, and I am quite sure I am safe in saying that there is a large volume of mail going in and out of Snow Lake.
There is one more small matter I should like to bring to the attention of the minister concerning another point in northern Manitoba, Cranberry Portage. Some time ago complaints came in from the residents of Cranberry Portage in relation to the facilities of the post office at that point. As the result of these complaints an investigation took place and all of the complaints were fully investigated. One of the recommendations which came out of the investigation by the

Supply-Post Office
officials who made the investigation was that it was very desirable to have a post office at that point located in a separate self-contained building entirely apart from the building which it is now in, which also houses a general store. In January this recommendation went in and I was advised by the Post Office Department that they felt this should be done. I should like the minister to investigate this problem and, if possible, advise me as to just what progress has been made.
In closing I should like to commend the minister on the work he has been doing in operating the department and to thank him for the co-operation I have had in the past. I should also like to make a strong plea to him to see if improved mail services cannot be had for the people of Snow Lake. I do not believe it would be too difficult. Snow Lake is located about 36 miles off the Hudson bay line and has access by road to the railhead at Wekusko and trains arrive in We-kusko every day. It may need some new arrangement with the contractor who transports the mail from Wekusko to Snow Lake, but this mail contractor has some obligation to meet each train every day in other work which he performs and I do not think it would be too difficult to make arrangments for mail to be carried between Wekusko and Snow Lake.


Mr. Smith (Lincoln):: I should like to ask the minister briefly about a matter in connection with curbside mail boxes. We have one in the riding which I represent which was put in on a trial basis. I believe there are others in other parts of Canada. I should like to have the minister tell us what success they have had with these curbside mail boxes where you can drive up in your car and put your mail in the box. It has been very popular in the city of St. Catharines and I understand there has been a request for a few more. The one we have was one of the first put in, but I think there could be some improvement in the design of the box itself. The one important factor is to make it weather-proof so that wind driven snow cannot get into the box. There are two types of curbside boxes. There is one with a conveyor belt that takes the mail into the post offices. I am not thinking of that. I am thinking of the boxes placed on residential streets where you can drive up in your car, put the mail in it and drive away.


Mr. Garland:: I am reluctant to add an off note to what seems to be a happy afternoon with compliments flying and, I am sure, Compliments which are well deserved in some cases, but there is a matter which I feel is my duty to raise. Before doing so

I should like to take this opportunity to say that Canada is fortunate in having such a high calibre of civil servant across the country, and of that group none are more loyal or more devoted than those employed in the Post Office Department.
My question arises from two directives which were issued during 1959 in the Post Office Department and which seem to me to smell strongly of political meddling in the public service. It has to do with the functions of civil servants carrying out their normal duties and I think it adversely affects this important postal service to the Canadian people. Perhaps I could explain best and more briefly by citing an example of the appointment of a subpostmaster or the transfer and appointment of a subpostmaster.
With the development which has taken place in this country and around many of the large cities of this country I think this is becoming more and more of a problem as more and more of these offices are required to be opened. As I said, I think I can best explain by taking an instance where a subpostmaster resigns. Normally the procedure to be followed as I understand it would be for officials to explore the possibilities, to reexamine the area with a view to appointing a new subpostmaster. Now I understand that on the basis of a directive from Ottawa dated February 17, 1959 which dealt with the transfer and appointment of subpostmasters, and a further one of May 26, 1959 which dealt with the opening of subpost offices, postal officials from coast to coast have been affected, and as a result of those directives they are unable to take the necessary action to maintain this service. On the contrary they must wait for instructions, and any applications, I understand, that are received locally, and this applies to all Canada, must be forwarded to Ottawa for approval, which seems to me can only mean political approval.
That is a backward step. It is a step which I think interferes with the normal functions of officials of the Post Office Department. That sort of thing may have been good enough back in the old horse and buggy days but I do not think it is good enough for 1960 and I would ask the Postmaster General if he will give serious consideration to rescinding these two directives, the one of February 17 dealing with the transfer and appointment of subpostmasters and the one of May 26 dealing with the opening of subpost offices. I ask him if he will consider rescinding these directives which I believe are politically inspired.


Mr. McFarlane:: I should like to make a few brief remarks on the subject of the postal service through Nelson and points east and point out, first of all, that at the present time

there is a very close connection with the postal service at Nelson. I understand that one truck brings the mail into Nelson and the other leaves almost immediately, so that if the Vancouver mail truck is late getting in the mail is held up indefinitely until a connection can be made. I would suggest that more leeway be allowed in connecting truck times between Nelson and points east.
Another point I wish to raise concerns registered mail services. I do not think we are providing the service that we should provide to many of the rural communities. I had an instance brought to my attention where a letter was registered at a point in the lake Windermere valley to another point eight miles away. In view of the regulations which require, apparently, that the letter has to go to a subpost office, by the time it had gone around it was 10 days before the letter was finally received although there was only such a short distance involved. So I would like to suggest that a small bag or pouch be utilized for this purpose so that registered mail could be handled without this serious delay.
Another point I should like to draw to the attention of the minister concerns airmail service. I feel that in many of these smaller communities especially in our area when first-class mail is picked up it should be immediately transferred to a point where it will connect with air mail service. It should be forwarded by air mail from the distribution point rather than being transported by truck as it is at the present time.
I should like to cite an example of what I mean. If a letter is mailed in Creston in time to catch the mail truck out of Creston at ten o'clock in the morning the letter is taken to Cranbrook. It travels by truck until it reaches Calgary the following day. It is late getting into Calgary and it is not delivered in Calgary until the following morning. If that first-class mail out of Creston were transferred at the post office in Cranbrook to the air mail service it would be in Calgary within four hours after mailing in Creston.
This is something to which we should give consideration. We are giving air mail service to the larger centres and I feel similar services could be provided to smaller communities rather than allowing first-class mail to take the usual course of delivery.
Apart from these suggestions I have made we are very well satisfied with the rules and regulations of the Post Office Department. I believe that the Postmaster General is turning out sound regulations and that he and his staff are doing an excellent job of mail delivery under conditions that are often difficult in our part of the country,
Supply-Post Office
particularly in the winter months. I would be grateful if the two or three matters I have mentioned could be given consideration. I do not feel it is asking too much to have given to people in rural areas the postal service that is given to people in larger centres.


Mr. Peters:: Mr. Chairman, the Post Office Department is one of the most highly socialized operations in the world today. We want it to be as efficient as possible because it proves something we want proved not only here but throughout the world.


Mr. McCleave:: We will keep the hon. member away from it then.


William Arnold Peters: Canada has done a good job in supplying mail service at a reasonable price and the results are highly satisfactory. The salaries of postal employees come under the Civil Service Act and do not come within the purview of the minister. The Postmaster General should pay closer attention to the wages and working conditions in post offices than he has in the past.
The minister spoke of his visits to post offices throughout Canada and stated that he arrived at all hours of the day and night. When I worked in the mines we sometimes had bosses drop in unexpectedly. Mines are dark, dismal and not well lighted and sometimes we would take a long lunch hour. We never appreciated unexpected visits from our boss under those circumstances. I draw this to the minister's attention.
I suggest that if we raised the salaries of postal employees we would not have to have snooper systems or runways and pilfering would be reduced. I appreciate that runways are not only a technological advance but serve as a check on employees. The days are gone when supervision of this kind is required. We should improve salary standards and working conditions.
Progress has been made in terms of promotions within the department but the progress is not fast enough to suit me. I recently travelled on a train with a friend with whom I had worked in a mine. He is an honest and conscientious employee. He accepted a job in the Post Office Department in Ottawa two or three years ago and although the wages were adequate and the working conditions not unpleasant he has already grown dissatisfied with the lack of opportunities for promotion or advancement. I have heard this from other employees of post offices including the one at Kirkland Lake of which I have knowledge. Promotions are not always accorded under civil service regulations on the basis of seniority or in accordance with skill or acquired knowledge. Often someone

Supply-Post Office
is brought in from outside which precludes opportunities for advancement among the local employees.


Francis Alvin George Hamilton: Perhaps the hon. gentleman would permit me to make a statement at this point. If the hon. member will look in the official gallery he will see the deputy minister who started off his career as a clerk in the department. He will see another official, just below the deputy minister in rank, who began his career as a letter carrier. He will also observe another couple of fellows in the official gallery who started off slugging mail bags somewhere in the back of a post office. If the hon. gentleman would direct his attention to the table of the house I believe he would see another man who started off in the Post Office Department as well. I believe that is a pretty good answer to there being inadequate opportunities for advancement within the department. The answer can be found in the gentlemen sitting up in the official gallery.


William Arnold Peters: I am amazed and gratified by that information. My hon. friend described the situation as he sees it. It may be that promotions are slow through no fault of the system but through a failure of the departmental officials to disseminate information about opportunities for advancement among employees of the department.
There are a number of other problems that 1 should like to discuss. Some of them affect the wage structure of the postal employees for the work they do. I have had complaints in my riding from people getting $270 a month on which they have to keep a family. They are doing a job which involves walking up to 14 miles a day carrying heavy mail bags. They have responsibility for confidential matters and for financial documents. They have responsibility that is considerably above that which would be given to an individual in any other industry at that rate of pay. I think they have grounds for complaint.
In many instances they object to the fact that they cannot use their own cars for transporting their mail sacks from the general post office to where they are going to deliver their mail. Most of them have cars and they would like to throw the bag in the back seat and drive 20 or 30 blocks and then pick up their route from there and leave the car parked on a side street and pick it up again after they are through. They tell me they are not allowed to do this. This may be true of only one or two post offices, but it is true in one. They object to this; they think they should be allowed to use their cars. There may be very good reasons why they are not allowed to use them, but in the

smaller communities they could use the same system that is used in the suburbs of large cities where they have pick-up depots. The mail is taken to those depots and the mail man, instead of going to the main post office gets his mail from this particular depot. This may be an answer in part to the problem.
We have another problem that affects my riding because it is an urban and rural riding. I refer to the matter of rural mail delivery. The minister may say that this is not general, and I will agree. It is not even general in my riding, but it happens to be general in this particular area. We have asked for a survey to be made to see whether something can be done to solve this particular problem. I understand the department is working on it. I received this letter which will explain the problem fairly well:
As you probably know, this rural route is operated from Charlton some seven miles west of Englehart. At present we enjoy thrice weekly delivery and pick-up, i.e., Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. There is an R.R. 2 also serviced from Charlton which only gets twice weekly delivery.
Though only having three deliveries a week is bad enough, yet the length of time taken for mail to reach us from outside points, and the time for mail picked up here to get to its destination is absolutely unbelievable.
For instance, a letter requiring an immediate reply is received here on a Thursday. The reply is picked up on the Saturday. It does not leave Charlton until the following Monday and its arrival, say, in Toronto is on Tuesday and delivery there may not be till Wednesday. Mail for Kirkland Lake some 25 miles away has to be placed on the train, taken to North Bay then after sorting brought back by train to Swastika thence to Kirkland.
Incoming mail is just as bad. It takes papers (and letters) just as long to reach us from Kirkland as from Toronto.
Toronto is 400 miles away. I continue:
Papers published in Kirkland on Friday are not delivered here till the next Tuesday, the Toronto papers for the same day also arriving at the same time.
Letters from Tarzwell, only a few miles north of here are first taken to Swastika, thence to North Bay, then back to Englehart, then to Charlton and finally, days later, arrive at their addressees.
He goes on to say it is useless to complain to the officials and this is the part I should like to read:
Just one additional delivery through the week, on Monday, would mean an awful lot to us, and, if such could be effected I would certainly see that you are given the credit for bringing this about.
He wrote me another letter subsequent to this and this is what he said in part:
I have another glaring example of the inefficient, inadequate mail service in this locality.
At 10.03 p.m. on March 18 a telegram was handed in to Canadian National Telegraphs in Toronto. It was received in Englehart the same night. As we, in this modern community have no phones, the wire was mailed to me on Saturday, March 19. I received it at 11 a.m. Tuesday March 22.

Luckily, the telegram only announced the birth of a grand-daughter, but the whole point is that it would have been the same had the wire carried the news of a death or a fatal illness. And, of course, it could happen to anyone living on these ill-served mail routes.
In this connection it is interesting to note that the ''Telegram"-
This is the Telegram newspaper.
-of Saturday, March 19 carried the birth announcement. It arrived at the same time as the telegram which was sent some 24 hours earlier. And we in Canada are so far ahead of other nations in our ways of life, or are we?
All I want to do is to point out that we have problems and some of these problems concern our rural delivery routes. We have not kept up to date on those routes as we have in the urban areas. In my opinion we have the opportunity now of combining many of the rural routes, particularly in my area. I cannot speak for other areas but I think that conditions there are much about the same. The rural routes were laid out when we were driving horses, when the mail, certainly in the wintertime, had to be delivered by horse-drawn conveyances and the routes had to be kept to certain limits. Now automobiles are used in the summer time and in the main the routes are all snowplowed in the winter time. It would be a very simple matter in some instances to combine two and in other instances more than two rural delivery routes so that mail could be delivered much faster and much more effectively than it is at the present time.
On a number of occasions I have asked for changes in these mail routes. The method of proceeding is to take out a petition. When a petition is taken out it makes a lot of people angry because it means changing from a rural post office to rural delivery. After the petition is taken out, and overwhelmingly those petitions are in favour of one type of service or the other, nothing happens. In some cases this action is repeated two or three times over a period of four or five years with the same result.


William McLean Hamilton: The
hon. member refers to some cases. Will he give me two or three examples?


William Arnold Peters: I am thinking of one in particular, namely Uno Park. The second one is Thornloe. I have been involved in the one at Uno Park on two occasions. I do not know what the result is of the last request of two or three months ago but I do know that a gentleman who took out the petition, who had raised the matter with me the first time, tells me that none of his close neighbours will talk to him any more because they
Supply-Post Office
wanted the post office instead of the rural delivery, and yet the petition was quite highly supported.
This type of thing does not make for good relations in the community when it is done on this basis. The situation is changing. Conditions must have been laid down in the first place for establishing the set-up that was established. Conditions change all the time. I am thinking of road clearance and snow removal in the wintertime. Conditions are vastly changed from what they were. This means that the service can be changed and in many instances better service can be given.
We have another problem that I am concerned with which is in the transitional stage now. To date it has not produced any bad results in my area but I think it can and will, and also in Cochrane north. I refer to the sorting of mail on trains. There used to be mail cars on all O.N.R. trains but now sorting is done only on some of them. It meant that when the post office closed at six o'clock, or at whatever time it might close, people who wanted to get mail on the train would go to the station and drop their mail in the appropriate box, depending on whether the letter was to go north or south, and the mail would be delivered the next morning. The service from Ottawa or Toronto to northern Ontario is very fast provided certain conditions are met. If I mail a letter at four o'clock this afternoon and it leaves our subpost office and goes to the station directly rather than going through the main post office it will be delivered in Kirkland Lake tomorrow afternoon. If it goes through the local post office it may be a matter of many days. If it happens to be a brown envelope it will sometimes take four or five days, but normally first-class mail will be delivered immediately.
This situation is repeated all along the line, and one reason that return mail service has been so satisfactory is that the mail is sorted on the train by the postal staff. Even in the case of mail addressed to a small community ten miles away from the point of mailing, the postal staff are able to operate speedily enough to be able to drop this mail off at its destination although it may only be a few miles away. Service to these communities takes one day or less.
I am told that a number of postal employees have been taken off the northern run, that the sorting is only done at the centres now and that the mail is transported by truck. As a result, there is no service available to many of the small communities as was the case before. If mail is left at the post office after hours it remains there until

Supply-Post Office
the next day because obviously there is nobody there to sort it. The truck driver can only handle sorted mail and mail cannot be given to the truck driver to take to its destination until it is sorted because he is hired on the basis of conveying mail and not to handle or deal with it in any other way. There would be no cancellation of the stamps if the truck driver were to take such mail and I understand he is instructed not to do so, which I think is quite right.
We in northern Ontario would like more consideration to be given to this matter before any further curtailment in the sorting of mail on mail cars takes place. It may be that reconsideration can be given to those areas where this practice has been discontinued because it was serving a very useful purpose and providing a service that we need badly. We are a long distance from the main centres and a great deal of our business is done by mail. Telegrams are even more difficult to deliver to many of the small communities. Our mail service has been very satisfactory and we would like to see it kept on as high a level of efficiency as possible.
I have seen the situation that has developed in other areas of Ontario and which may develop in our area. I can remember being in southwestern Ontario a few years ago and a letter from Toronto to Dundalk, Orangeville or Collingwood took five days to get to its destination. I know that because my cheque used to be sent to me by mail and I would go to the post office every day for five or six days before I got my cheque. I hope that the minister, in giving consideration to the better distribution of mail to small communities, will take this matter into account. I have talked to people in the area I have mentioned and the mail service there is no better now than it was when I was there.
I suggest that the same thing could happen in northern Ontario and I say there is no reason why it should. We have been very satisfied with the mail service we have had and we would like to continue to receive that type of service. Therefore I ask the minister to give very careful consideration to the matter of changing from the sorting of mail on the train and using a truck distribution service instead. In the limited areas where the new service has been used or where it has not been possible to give service by rail because of the discontinuation of rail service to communities such as Matachewan the results have not been very satisfactory. When the railway went into that area the postal service was much better than it is now with the present system of transportation by truck and bus.


Mr. Richard (Ottawa East):: Mr. Chairman, I do not want to say very much on this item but I cannot help adding some words in praise of the Post Office Department. I think it should be said that the administrative staff of the department is excellent. As Canadians we should be proud of our post office system. I do not take anything away, of course, from the hard working minister because in working hard and giving attention to his department I think he rates as high as anyone who has occupied that office in the past. My heart does not bleed too much for the situation of the administrative staff generally. I think their conditions of work are good and their salaries are fairly well rated at the present time.
But I am always interested in learning more about the mail sorters and the men who deliver the mail. I should like the minister to bring me up to date as to their situation. I have always thought that these men are entitled to special consideration. Although they are not professionals as far as education is concerned, they are professionals having regard to the service they give. They make our lives a little more cheerful when we go to the door to receive our mail. I do not know whether they are trained that way, but I like to see the postman come to my door. In spite of any trouble he may have in his home life, he always seems to forget that, always inquires about me and tries to find out if he can be helpful. For that alone I think they should receive special consideration with respect to their remuneration.
There is one situation that always worries me. These men toil under rather heavy loads that we would not like to have to carry every day. There has been some improvement in this regard in recent years, but there still must be some men who after five, ten or fifteen years become physically not as able to do the job and cannot carry on. This applies also to some sorters whose work involves the use of their eyes and physical effort. I should like to know what happens to these men if after a period of time they cannot carry on their work. Are they placed in positions in other sections of the department at equal remuneration or do many have to leave their employment altogether? It is my impression that there are not many who lose their positions on account of the fact that they cannot carry on the work they have been doing. I hope the minister will be able to answer this question and at the same time I hope he will be able to tell the committee that he appreciates as much as any other member that the sorters and the men who carry our mail are entitled to special consideration in their rates of pay. I hope he will


I960
[Stage Direction]
lead the fight at all times, as he should, to see that the civil service commission realizes that our letter carriers are not just people who are walking the streets and throwing letters in mail boxes but are professionals in their field. I think all members of the house will agree with me on that.
Mr. Benidickson:: Mr. Chairman, I want to assure the minister that I am not rising with anything but good will for him and for the department. Over the years I have found that the department takes into consideration in a very friendly spirit representations made to it by members of parliament, no matter what their political persuasion may be. I have always been pleased, as I say, with the investigations that have been taking place as a result of inquiries I have made or suggestions I have advanced to the Post Office Department. If I have any criticism at all, it is not of the personnel in the head office or in the district offices; it is rather I think of a system that has developed, shall I say.
While they respond with the utmost consideration to suggestions that have come from me as to improvements in services, over the years I have developed the feeling that somehow, perhaps under pressure from treasury board, there has been an extra consciousness of the budget and a fear of adding anything different or new to the budget. Sometimes they find it necessary to do something after a community or after a member of parliament makes a request. I sometimes think they should perhaps initiate some of these things themselves much more quickly when conditions change.
A great number of trains have been taken off. I sometimes think that the staff itself has not been too quick to adopt alternatives to replace perhaps a daily service to which we were accustomed to; and, for instance, when local trains are no longer in existence, to substitute transportation by truck or otherwise. Too often they seem to wait for a nudge from the community or from the member of parliament. I think the difficulty does not lie in the fact that they do not see these things. Rather I think the difficulty lies in the fact that they have had such a great amount of pressure upon them as to the need of not increasing their expenses that we sometimes find it necessary to make suggestions more often than we seem to be obliged to in connection with some other departments.
I do not want to repeat some of the excellent suggestions that have been made today, last Wednesday and on a previous occasion when the minister was before us with the administration item. I think perhaps 79951-0-315
Supply-Post Office
I might be introducing something that has not been discussed so far. I want to draw the attention of the minister and his officials to the fact that in some of the northern areas of our country where the population might be predominantly Indian we have in recent years been experiencing a change in the life that is being led there. Instead of sending many of the youngsters out to residential schools there has been a trend to establish day schools. Instead of sending the people out to hospitals and to doctors there has developed a pattern of small nursing stations through the community. I think the minister will be well acquainted with the fact that the economics branch of Indian affairs is attempting to have projects for timber resources development and the development of fisheries in the lakes in order to guide them to try to develop these activities. In consequence, their existence to a great extent is not the nomadic, moving-around type of existence as they have had in the past. We have now in many places- and certainly this situation applies in the constituency of Kenora-Rainy River-greater permanency in the life that is being led there. In consequence, air services are improved. The local services are on a regular basis rather than on a charter basis in many instances I could indicate to the department. Inasmuch as this regular schedule service is available at several of the headquarters of our bands I feel that a careful look should be given to the desirability of establishing the normal postal services that would be provided to that number of people if they were situated in any other part of the country. There is greater permanency now. The nomadic life is not being led. I think there is justification for setting up postal services.
There are one or two other items upon which the minister would perhaps care to comment either now or when we meet the appropriate item in his estimates. We are all aware that the annual report that is publicly available refers to the year ending something more than a year ago. Perhaps the minister might give us an indication of what has happened in the meantime with respect to commemorative stamps and perhaps he might give us an outline of what his schedule is with respect to new stamps for the present fiscal year.
In the annual report of the department for the year ended March 31, 1959 I note that the minister indicated the numbers of post office savings banks that are provided. Can he break that figure down as to the number of points in which there are postal savings banks but in which there would not be a branch of one of our chartered banks.

Supply-Post Office
I have had some experience with the benefits that have developed from the easing of regulations which are referred to on page 11 of the same report. The wording of the report is as follows:
-the regulations restricting letter carrier delivery across vacant land have been eased.
I wonder whether it would not be appropriate for us to have on Hansard, from the experience gained, a short description of the effects of these new regulations. I certainly know that in one of the larger communities of my area this easing has proved helpful because, by reason of the terrain in our part of northern Ontario where we have a great deal of water and a number of rocks, we have settlements established in fingers of the area which are sometimes quite a distance from the centre of the community.
Reference was made the other day, in reply to a question by the hon. member for Port Arthur, to the possibility of establishing group boxes in some of our communities where settlement is now some distance from the one and only post office in the community. In both instances I think he was referring to communities which have not a population that would under present regulations, justify the establishment of a letter carrier delivery system. In his reply last Wednesday the minister did not completely give me the information that I perhaps would be seeking, namely whether or not delivery by means of group boxes can be provided even in communities where letter carrier delivery service has not been established.
The other item with regard to which I would appreciate having some information on record because there is a great deal of interest in the matter is what the progress has been in the minimum numbers of householders that have been required over the years before the Post Office Department would entertain a request for letter carrier service. I think the number is now 2,500. But as I recall it, the last time in my constituency that we were able to persuade the department to institute a new letter carrier service the figure prevailing then was either 1,600 or 1,800. I was just wondering when the 2,500 unit figure was established.
In the debate and in the departmental report reference has been made to marine services. Does the postal transportation department provide marine mail service except by utilizing some already existing water carrier that is operating on a schedule similar to the arrangements that have been provided historically by the railway? If not, in what circumstances does the department enter into the establishment of new contracts with carriers perhaps carrying only mail?

I am not going to repeat at any length the feelings that have been expressed by hon. members on all sides of the chamber that the services provided by our letter carriers and some of our more humble clerks and sorters in the offices do not, under present conditions, seem to be remunerated on a scale that to many of us seems to be comparable and fair with respect to other occupations, both those in the non-government service in our highly organized union communities and indeed in some of the other departments.
I gave a specific illustration to the minister which rather continues to arouse my concern. I think in a community like Rainy River the postmaster has responsibilities, but without detailed information of the functions of that post and the funcitons of non-managerial numbers of the staff of the customs or immigration branch, I do not think his responsibilities are comparable with that of a routine member of the staff at the border point who would inspect visitors. I think that is an example and perhaps the post office has not been able to be as persuasive in the matter of increased salaries for some of its personnel as have some other departments. I think the difference in salary between those two posts is about $1,500. In my view there is no comparison between the attitude taken by the members of the community as to the responsibility of the postmaster himself and one who is not the senior man in either the department of customs or the department of immigration, one who is simply doing border checking at that point without the responsibilities of management.


Mr. Broome:: Mr. Chairman, I have in my riding an association called the superannuated civil servants. I have had several meetings with their executive in regard to a problem which is not properly a problem of the Postmaster General but which I should like to draw to his attention and ask his good offices to try to further the aims of this group.
A prime problem in a large city is that of casual help at Christmastime and the postmaster likes to get experienced personnel to act as straw bosses, so to speak, foremen, over help which has had no previous post office experience. But according to the act which governs superannuation and pensions, these men cannot earn in any one month more than they earned at the time they left the service. This is a very fair regulation and a very right and proper one. However, I think its application to casual help could bear a little looking into because I know of one case where a man in the city of Vancouver worked through at the request of the postmaster and his pay had to be adjusted to 65 cents an

hour because it simply went over the amount he was allowed to earn. In other cases they have to make a refund.
I have had letters on this and I have seen the letters which deal with it. The department has acted according to the letter of the law, but I would like the Postmaster General, if he would, to confer with his colleague the Minister of Finance and see whether some arrangement can be made whereby casual help who are only employed for a few weeks or a month might be exempted from these regulations.


Mr. Mitchell:: Mr. Chairman, I shall only take a moment of the minister's time but I want to draw to his attention one or two difficulties we are having at Sudbury, particularly since the amalgamation which took place on January 1 of this year.
In this amalgamated area naturally the four cents local postage rate will apply, with the exception of one area. I have had a great amount of correspondence complaining about people who receive their mail at this particular post office, which is not a sub, where letters have been mailed to them carrying a four cents stamp but when they go to pick up their mail they are charged two cents extra for this service.
I might say that this area is much closer to the city than some of the annexed areas which are already, and have been for some time, enjoying carrier service, with the exception of the one area about which I am speaking. I know that this post office was recently renovated by the Post Office Department and I would presume that a lease of some length has been taken on this building. However, I suggest that when this lease is over this post office be removed and the area that it serves can then in many cases apply for carrier service which is enjoyed by other areas much further removed from the central post office in the city, areas such as Minnow Lake, Gatchell, New Sudbury and part of Lockerby, the community of which I am speaking. All these areas are already enjoying letter carrier service, but the area around this post office is not.
At the same time there are two areas adjacent to it on either side which would like to qualify for rural route delivery and have community boxes established, but due to the location of the post office I am led to believe that rural route service cannot apply within half a mile of either side of a recognized post office. If such is the case I hope it will be looked into and that service can be given to these two areas in the form of a rural route service, which they will be 79951-0-315J
Supply-Post Office
pleased to get instead of having to travel the great distance to this post office. I know that many of the people living in these areas are having their mail delivered to their business addresses in the city rather than trying to pick it up at the Lockerby post office.
The particular beef I have, of course, is the four cents stamp and the two cents additional at this one post office, but nowhere else in the amalgamated area. (Translation):


Mr. Deschalelels:: Mr. Chairman, may I call the attention of the Postmaster General (Mr. Hamilton) to a stamp that was sent to me recently, from a source I cannot reveal.
At first sight, I thought it was a prehistoric animal, but using a magnifying glass, I was able to read the name of the Hon. Wilfrid Labbe, a member of the Union Na-tionale and of Mr. Barrette's cabinet.
May I also suggest to the minister that there should be a rule against affixing such stamps to letters. The one I have here gives the impression of being a current issue, and I really do not think we should tolerate the use of such stamps on correspondence that is sent and delivered through the Post Office Department.
We owe it to ourselves to allow all charitable organizations to use promotion stamps, but surely not stamps such as the one I received, which incidentally was quite unattractive. Besides, in my estimation envelopes are no place for such stamps.
I therefore ask the minister to inquire as to whether stamps of this type, used purely for election purposes-because such stamps are misleadingly similar to regular stamps-might have been cancelled in post offices, thus causing the government to lose revenue.
I leave the matter with the minister, and I am sending the stamp over to him so that he may have a look at it. However, I would ask him to return it, because after June 22, such stamps will become rarities, indeed, and I would like to hang on to that one. (Text):


Mr. Fisher:: Mr. Chairman, I would like to clear up one or two small points which I made in my previous remarks when I was talking about the scope of the football pools in Britain. Apparently I understated the number of pools and the amount of business they did. I was really only referring to one pool, and while it is the largest of the pool organizations it is only one of eight comparable organizations.

Supply-Post Office
There is one other point which might make it right and proper in terms of Tory pride to go along with. For example, the equivalent to our Minister of Finance in Great Britain also has a type of legalized gamble going, in that people who buy certain types of bonds and savings certificates over there have what amounts to an opportunity to win big prizes.


Charles Edward Rea: Order. I might just point out that when the hon. member discussed this the other day the Postmaster General referred to the fact that this came under the Criminal Code. I do not think, therefore, that the hon. gentleman can continue along that line.


Douglas Mason Fisher: I imagined it was affected by the operations of the Post Office Department, but I could be mistaken. Anyway I have had some mail since making my remarks which indicates that there are a substantial number of people desperately trying to play the football pools who are fed up with the attempts of the Postmaster General to block their efforts.
I turn now to something which I know is the responsibility of the minister. This is something which the hon. member for Vancouver East brought up. He compared the attitude of the minister toward the loss in carrying newspapers and periodicals in the old days with his actions now. One of the points in which I would be interested is the relationship in the loss, which I understand to be about $26 million-I say "loss" but I really mean loss of revenue, because that is what it is, rather than an actual loss-between the carrying of a large number of United States periodicals which now come to our country and the Canadian periodicals and newspapers. Could the minister give us a breakdown? These are newspapers as against periodicals, although I know that technically a newspaper is a periodical. There are only 100 daily newspapers in Canada at the moment and there are not too many weeklies. I wonder if the minister would have any kind of a break-down so that we could analyse this $26 million loss in revenue to see if it would not be possible to kill two birds with one stone, that is, to get more revenue and to give Canadian periodicals an advantage as compared with the United States magazines which come in and not only take away circulation but advertising revenue.
I know this could be looked upon as an extra tax, and there may be difficulties about dealing with magazines coming in from another country. I get magazines sent to me very week from Britain and it always seems fantastic that a big bundle of magazines can come in all the way from London for a one

and a half penny stamp. Maybe there has been some international agreement worked out, but if it is a fact we are losing so much revenue, and if a substantial proportion of it is the result of carrying United States and other foreign periodicals, we might consider some agreement to raise the price to the post office for carrying it.
One of the ironies about the newspaper situation in Canada today is a political one.
1	do not know of a newspaper in Canada that claims to be anything other than a spokesman of free enterprise. I am thinking especially of a Thompson paper or a paper such as the Globe and Mail which I understand has the largest circulation of any newspaper in Canada. These newspapers are preeminently for private enterprise and it always puzzled me to think that there might be this inconsistency about free enterprise. There is, of course, the fact that these free enterprises allow their employees in Ottawa to exist in government rooms at government expense down the third floor corridor, for example. But here is a bigger and more costly thing. We have these free enterprisers being, in effect, subsidized by the public purse if this loss of $26 million represents substantially the fact that the post office is carrying Canadian newspapers and periodicals. For that reason I should like to get a closer idea of the relative amount. I would like to know how much subsidy we are giving to these free enterprisers to publish free enterprise Canadian newspapers.
Take the Globe and Mail, for example, which takes delight in pointing out all the subsidies on western wheat and all the subsidies paid to farmers in general. These papers continually preach the gospel of free enterprise, rugged individualism, standing on your own two feet and so on, yet this is a paper which I understand has the largest mailed circulation of any daily newspaper in Canada and as a consequence this free enterprise operation is in receipt of substantial assistance from the government.
There is another aspect of this question which I suppose the minister has already considered. That is the question of the reason for this subsidy. If the minister looks at volume
2	of the History of Canadian Journalism, which is a book writen by a journalist whose name is Craick-perhaps the hon. gentleman has already done so; it really is not a history of Canadian journalism, but the story of Canadian publishers; it is a rather dull story except that they have always been lobbying down in Ottawa to keep this particular privilege-


William Heward Grafftey: You are very wordy. You take up a lot of time.


IS, 1960
Douglas Mason Fisher: If it were worth while, I would appreciate the hon. member's comment. But this story indicates that shortly after confederation-


William Heward Grafftey: Stop lecturing to us and get to the point.


Charles Edward Rea: Order.


William Heward Grafftey: Lecture, lecture, lecture.


Charles Edward Rea: Order.


Douglas Mason Fisher: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am always willing to defer to people who would like to take the floor, but if the hon. member refuses to get up-


William Heward Grafftey: Tiresome forensics.


Charles Edward Rea: Order.


Douglas Mason Fisher: These publishers right after confederation, came to Ottawa every time it appeared that parliament was trying to get the post office to raise the charges on this particular kind of mail and their argument always was that they performed a primary role in educating the Canadian people. I think this argument probably had much greater substance in the nineteenth century than it has today when educational advantages are so much more evident and when people can turn to the schools, to books, to public libraries and to radio and television services. So it seems to me that this particular argument in favour of this kind of subsidy no longer stands.
The argument used to be that to many people on back farms and in distant parts of Canada the newspapers were the only means of providing cheap information. It does not seem to me that this argument stands up any longer, so I think we should ask these free enterprisers to be free enterprisers and stop leaning on the Canadian government in this regard.
The last point I wish to make relates to post office employees. I think every member of parliament has had conversations with the postal carriers, and I think it is generally agreed that this particular group, as a result of the rationalization of the department which bespeaks efficiency, works rather hard. It is my general impression that it is almost impossible for them to have a soft touch.
In terms of requests for increased wages they are not in the bargaining position that trade unionists are. Two things are pointed out to them in reply to their arguments for higher pay. They are often told that there is a waiting list of people who want to become letter carriers. There is no market demand competing for their services as there is in the case of dentists or people in other
Supply-Post Office
occupations. The other factor is that the services they render to the post office are of little use beyond the postal service. In other words, it is almost impossible for a letter carrier to work for three of four years and then value that service in the labour market at a high level because it is not sufficiently specialized to make him much more useful an employee than someone who enters the labour market for the first time.
According to postal employees with whom I have spoken the factors I have outlined render it difficult for them to present a case. There is no competition in the labour market for their services and there is no increment in their earning value when they are working for the department. This is becoming more and more the fate of many people in the kind of employment situation we are building up today with large organizations in which there is no particular specialization. I hope the minister will realize that these are factors that the employees have little chance to change.
Another related factor is that the income level at which these men happen to be is not a very high one. Indeed, it seems to me that it is one of the lowest in the civil service just in terms of the physical exertion and mental alertness that are required. That kind of physical exertion and mental alertness has no parallel value in the market place and yet it seems to me it should be recognized by putting it on a higher base of pay. I hope the minister is pressing his colleagues and especially the Minister of Finance who is the important minister in this area with all the energy and persuasion at his command to see that this group of employees gets an increase in pay and I hope a substantially higher minimum. By that I mean between $300 and $700, somewhere in that range. If we could return to our constituencies with the good news already abroad I know it would make it pleasanter for members of parliament.
I may be out of order in raising the following point because it relates to privileges of members of parliament. Has the minister had any discussion with anyone about the question of the parliamentary frank that we have as members? Has there been any thought of extending it for a longer period? No one would want to see hon. members using the frank on a year-round basis for the purpose of mailing out party propaganda and circulars and so on. I know that other hon. members I have talked to have a problem similar to mine and especially those hon. members from Quebec and the maritimes. The parliamentary frank is a great convenience. There is more than the question of the cost of stamps involved. It would be a great convenience if

Supply-Post Office
we could have franking privileges both in Ottawa and in our constituencies for most of the year. With the sessions becoming so lengthy and with the regular follow-up that is required on much of the correspondence one has, the purchase of postage stamps is a substantial financial whack. In addition there is the added annoying inconvenience of going out to purchase the stamps, sticking them on, and so on, the cost of which has to be met by a group of people who do not have great resources.
Has the minister the power of initiating any discussion along these lines or, as a member of parliament, would the minister consider taking up the suggestion and seeing what the people who have the power and initiative may think or feel about it?


Frank Howard: Will the minister reply?


Francis Alvin George Hamilton: Mr. Chairman, I will try to be as brief as possible at this point. Some of the questions raised have been answered and I shall attempt to deal with some of the other matters in general terms. As hon. members have perhaps come to know, when there are certain points which require so much detail that they cannot be dealt with successfully and succinctly here in the committee it has been our practice to write the hon. member concerned immediately following the debate giving him the information requested.
As I have stated, some of the points raised come up year after year. I have come to the conclusion that this is almost automatic in the post office service. I wish to make the following brief excursion because I think it is interesting. I was interested to learn that what we thought was a new and modern process, the idea of photographing letters on reduced strips of film and sending the filmstrips by air mail, goes back not only through the wars but through peacetime to the Franco-German war of 1871 when the French post office successfully worked out such a system.
According to "An Outline of Postal History and Practice", a most interesting book, the French post office photographed letters at that time on to thin films of collodion. As the book states:
The films were rolled up tightly and placed In a small quill, which was attached to one of the tail feathers of the bird.
The bird was a carrier pigeon which served as the basis of the air mail delivery of those letters. Several hundreds of thousands of letters at that time were sent in this fashion between the United Kingdom and France almost 100 years ago. I believe this illustrates my point that the same kind of questions do crop up from time to time here in the committee.

A number of hon. members dealt with the question of salaries. I know that they know that this is basically a matter for the Minister of Finance. I think they also realize that it is one that is receiving sympathetic consideration at the present time and that I am personally very much aware both of their views and of those of the post office employees.
When speaking of the employees of the department 1 should on their behalf express the thanks of every one of them for the kind things which have been said about them here today. The hon. member for St. Denis earlier on took issue with me for having reported to the committee the accomplishments of the Post Office Department. I make no apology for doing so but I am very much aware, as I also pointed out at that time, that our success is based not only on the efforts of any one individual but on the tremendous efforts of a vast group of people.
The second thing that appeared to arouse the interest and curiosity of many hon. members was the use of the phrase "personal and confidential" on a fair amount of my correspondence. I was actually happy to find that this was referred to by approximately 12 hon. members many of whom made special speeches on this subject because when we reach the point at which the use of the phrase "personal and confidential" on a letter which goes to a member of parliament is the subject for debate in the consideration of the estimates of this department we have certainly reached a point at which there is apparently not too much in the department itself and its administration to be criticized. In reaching that point hon. members are, as it were, scraping the very bottom of the barrel.
Actually the hon. member for St. Jean-Iberville-Napierville gave us an example illustrating one of the principal reasons why this phrase is used on my correspondence when he said a letter sent to him had not been opened until he could open it himself and this caused him to miss an invitation which I had sent to him. I regret the fact that he missed the invitation, but members of parliament are writing me constantly on various matters, many of which are of interest only to themselves, many of which as far as I know they do not want bruited around too widely. As a result, I have tried, by marking these letters in this way, to ensure that the information goes directly to the member of parliament and is used by him as he sees fit. In many instances members have come to me and said, "I have this letter; have you any objection to the information being used?" And invariably, or almost invariably, I have said, "Absolutely not". But at least this does


I960
[Stage Direction]
respect a member of parliament and insures the fact that the information goes directly to him.
Incidentally, Mr. Chairman, I remember getting a letter on one occasion from the hon. member for Essex East when he was a minister. It brought birthday greetings and it was marked "personal". I think probably the same sort of thing applied at that time.
Individual problems such as those of the hon. member for Skeena, as I have said, we will deal with and report on. Since he spoke this morning I have been able to get some information. In so far as the service at this community of Nass river is concerned, we are attempting to improve its quality. We have got a contractor all ready to do it along the route, but now we have to cross the river and at the moment we are looking for somebody who will contract a boat service across the river at Greenville because the route is on the far side, as he knows. We hope to be successful in that respect.
The hon. member mentioned the letter carrier service in Kitimat. As he knows so well, our requirement is 2,500 houses. The present number is substantially under that; it is at the 2,000 mark, that is actually occupied houses, at the moment, and as soon as it reaches the 2,500 mark we will be delighted to institute the service there because other considerations such as weather are not going to stop the post office; I assure him of that.
The hon. member for Restigouche-Mada-waska made a number of interesting points. In the case of Dalhousie, we look forward to introducing letter carrier service there but it has not reached our requirements. I can assure him there is no shortage of rural mail boxes, nor are we overlooking areas where it is possible to give rural mail service.
The hon. member for Kootenay West said that his major criticism was with regard to the use of "personal and confidential" on letters and then he went on and spoke for 20 minutes on other matters so that his criticism in that respect must have been very forceful indeed. He asked us to keep post office lists more exact in so far as occupations are concerned. We do our best in that respect. Having indicated he likes to use the lists, he then criticized us for having them or, rather, he suggested someone else had criticized us for having them; that that information was information which should not be made available. Actually these lists are basically similar to those that one will find in a telephone directory, in electoral lists or anywhere else. The information is exactly the same although it may be arranged in a slightly different way by the post offices.
The reason, of course, that we do not give forwarding addresses from post offices is that
Supply-Post Office
in many instances this is information not respecting that particular post office but another one far away, and we are not interested in becoming an information service for bill collectors and the like. However, the regular publication of lists of patrons of a particular post office is quite a legitimate process. I appreciated the hon. member's observations on the question of stamp design and the other matters which I will deal with because they were particular points of interest only to him. I will deal with them as soon as we can get the information for him.
The hon. member for Parry Sound-Mus-koka suggested that in some instances people tendered too low for rural mail routes, and suggested there was something rather wrong and improper in this. There is an act of parliament which lays down the obligation. It says "shall" not "may" in so far as the Postmaster General is concerned in requiring him toward the tender to the lowest suitable tenderer. In those circumstances we follow the wishes of parliament. We will be delighted to supply letter carrier service to Parry Sound as soon as they reach the required number of householders.
I was grateful for the observations of the hon. member for Hull, although I am sorry he objects to my visiting post offices. I appreciated the remarks of the hon. member for Burnaby-Richmond and those of the hon. member for Nickel Belt. We will do our best to meet their suggestions.
It was very nice of the hon. member for St. Boniface to say the kind things he did about the new service they are getting in his area. The hon. member for Timmins again spoke on certain questions. There is one particularly that I think I should mention. This is a misunderstanding on his part in so far as observation galleries in post offices are concerned. They are there for one purpose only, and that is the detection of theft by employees in the department. They are specifically not used-our employees are forbidden to use them-for the normal purposes of supervision. They come into operation only when investigation or complaint has disclosed the fact that in a given post office thefts seem to be occurring. At that time investigators who are officially authorized to do it move into those galleries because we have found that post office employees tend not to steal mail when somebody is standing three feet behind them and looking over their shoulders. Therefore our investigators move into those galleries and watch the men from there and this is the only purpose for which they are used.
The hon. member for Edmonton East raised a number of points which we will attempt to deal with, as did the hon. member
49S0
[Stage Direction]
Supply-Post Office
tor Burnaby-Coquitlam, dealing specifically with the minimum number of calls required for letter carrier delivery. This is something which has been changed from time to time by the department and which we are always watching with considerable interest. As the hon. member for Churchill knows, certain matters are now under study in so far as the points he raised are concerned.
The hon. member for Lincoln asked specifically regarding curbside mail boxes. We have had a reasonable degree of success with those in certain communities. In other communities, interestingly enough, they have proved, for whatever reason we do not know, not to have the same popularity. Our general practice is to introduce them into whatever communities would like to have them.
The hon. member for Nipissing raised the question of subpostmasters and that those were now being handled from Ottawa. He implied that he saw political motives in this change, motives which I can assure you, Mr. Chairman, do not exist. The basic problem is simply this. Subpost offices are located in large cities as he knows, or at least in cities, and in many cities there is a tendency, because they do not know anybody in the post office, for the storekeeper or whoever is interested to write to Ottawa. We have decided, rather than overlook some people to centralize all those requests in one place, together with the report from the local people, and then make a decision on that basis. In this way no one is overlooked and it is also possible to take the veterans preference and other matters into consideration.
We are already investigating the matters which the member for Kootenay East raised. With respect to what the hon. member for Timiskaming said, I think I dealt with his remarks by pointing out the people in the gallery who have been with the Post Office Department for 30 or 40 years-I am tremendously proud to be associated with a department of this kind-and who started at the bottom and have ended up at the top. With respect to the question of dissemination of information on promotions, if you have the initiative, Mr. Chairman, you get where you want to go. Promotional opportunities are advertised in every branch of the department.
The hon. member inferred that we were falling behind because we were not sorting mail on the trains as much as we used to and he said that we should go back to this practice. In many cases we would be delighted to go back to it but unfortunately we have been forced off the trains and into the use of trucks because of the elimination of trips, the elimination of trains, the introduction of rail diesel cars which do not have the facilities

and similar reasons. Actually the voluntary doing away with a sortation car on a train in order to go to the road is, to the best of my knowledge, an unheard of thing in the department. It is only when we have to that we do it.
I thank the hon. member for Ottawa East for his very kind words with reference to the Post Office Department. I can tell him that in most cases, interestingly enough, letter carriers are able to carry on until their retirement age. I will probably get hit over the head for saying this but may I say that I do not know of any group of men anywhere in the country who are more genuinely enthusiastic about their job. I think that is what makes them happy when they call on the hon. member and other people. Most of them stay with their jobs until they retire. Those who do not are absorbed internally within the department, almost always as sorters for whom there is a steady demand.
The hon. member for Kenora-Rainy River raised a good number of fairly technical points which I think can perhaps be dealt with directly by correspondence. The hon. member for Vancouver South referred to the question of superannuation. This is very definitely under study at the present time and personally I agree with the point of view he expressed. With respect to the points raised by the hon. member for Sudbury and the question of amalgamation within his area, we are doing our best to work this out to the satisfaction of the citizens of Sudbury. The hon. member for Maisonneuve-Rosemont referred to imitation stamps. They cannot be confused with regular stamps unless our regulations are broken because on the face of the envelope we only allow our own stamps. These other stamps are quite welcome on the back of envelopes. There is no opportunity for confusion there.
The hon. member for Port Arthur raised a number of technical points. On the question of payment of postage on periodicals I come back to the basic fact that we are in the peculiar position of being next door to a large country which has a large circulation of its publications in our nation. We have to choose between refusing all revenue from them, which happens in some cases, or in other cases allowing them to be mailed in Canada at our rates. It is a nice balance actually to try to determine what the rate picture should be.
So far as the parliamentary frank is concerned, that is entirely a matter for parliament itself to decide. It is written into the statute and it would require an act of parliament to change it. I have sympathy with the hon. member but on the other hand I am very

much aware of the fact that all other people throughout Canada use stamps on their correspondence. Therefore I am inclined to think that members of parliament might want to use stamps on their correspondence when parliament is not sitting.
Douglas Mason Fisher: On that point may I mention this factor? Many people are aware that it is not necessary to put stamps on letters to members of parliament but they are not aware that this privilege lapses within 10 days of the end of a session. Then the member not only has to put up the nickle for the stamp but also has to pay the forfeit. This does not happen rarely but quite often. The minister has a public relations department and perhaps he could do a better job of advertising this situation than individual members of parliament.
I should also like to ask him whether it it is possible for him to procure a breakdown of the figure of $26 million in rough categories as to Canadian and United States periodicals versus newspapers.


William McLean Hamilton: There is nothing on file here nor with my officials in the gallery on this point. So far as Canadian publications are concerned, I think it would be difficult, if not impossible, to differentiate between magazines and newspapers. I may be wrong but from memory I think they are bulked together for the purposes of our accounts. However, we certainly could work out some sort of figures to indicate the relationship between publications mailed from the United States and those which are mailed in Canada. I would be glad to develop some figures along those lines.


Douglas Mason Fisher: I appreciate that. I am not asking that the information be given in the house. The minister can send it to me. I imagine that in building up the figure of $26 million some cost factors had to be taken into account. I imagine it is item by item rather than by weight. If the minister could give us some of these factors I should like to have them.


Francis Alvin George Hamilton: We
will be glad to try to work this out for the hon. member and get any information he requires because I think it would be of interest to all.


Frank Howard: I have one or two comments with respect to the "personal and confidential" matter. This is not a case of scraping the bottom of the barrel but rather it is a matter of concern to the individual who has a letter addressed to him. As I understood the minister he said that such letters may be used
Supply-Post Office
by those who received them as they see fit. Therefore I assume that I can disregard any reference to "personal and confidential" on letters from now on and use them as I see fit. That is what I understood the minister to say.


William McLean Hamilton: What I actually said was that a number of members had got in touch with me and said that they would like to use the information and I told them to go ahead and use it as they saw fit. However, I am not slow to take a hint. I must say that I will not put "personal and confidential" on as much of my correspondence as has been the case up until now. On the other hand, if members find information turning up in other places and causing them some difficulty, I do not want them to come back and say that I did not do what I said I was going to do. As I say, I am quick to take a hint.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
305.	Operations including salaries and other expenses of staff post offices, district offices, railway mail service staffs, and supplies, equipment and other items for revenue post offices, including administration, $105,664,147.
Frank Howard: In the details of this item on page 415 there is a reference to mail bags, the third item on that page, and the amount this year is $753,000 odd. The next item is one for uniforms and letter carrier satchels. It is my understanding that the initial making and repairing afterwards of all mail bags is done in our federal penitentiaries.


William McLean Hamilton: No,
Mr. Chairman. We still operate on the basis of tender so far as mail bags are concerned. I would say that approximately 50 per cent go to the penitentiaries. Some contracts are also let to private contractors. However, repairs are done in the penitentiaries.


An hon. Member:: Six o'clock.


Charles Edward Rea: Shall I rise, report certain resolutions and ask leave to sit again at the next sitting of the house?


William McLean Hamilton: I do
not want to hurry the committee but we have only a few items remaining here. As we have a long day tomorrow, if the estimates went through tonight it might help a great deal, even if we go on for a few minutes longer now.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Charles Edward Rea: Shall vote 305 carry?


Frank Howard: I have another point I wish to deal with. This may take somewhat longer than the minister contemplates. However, I do not know. The minister indicates the

Supply-Post Office
amount of approximately $753,000 for mail bags. This includes the initial cost. Is this for new mail bags this year or is it for new mail bags plus repairs to old ones?


William McLean Hamilton: This is our estimate for new mail bags plus the work done in repairing old ones for which we are obliged to pay this year.


Frank Howard: As to the cost item, how do you relate the cost of making mail bags and repairing them in a penitentiary by inmates? What rate per hour or per unit is charged as compared with what you are obliged to pay on a tender basis?


William McLean Hamilton: As
an example, out letter bags, the small ones, run about $1.95; the larger ones run about $2.98 plus the clamp locks. The repairs are paid at the rate of 30 cents a bag.


Frank Howard: You have some mail bags made in penitentiaries. I refer to new ones. What is your cost with respect to those made in penitentiaries? As to the $1.95 for the small ones and $2.98 for the large ones, that is your tender or estimated cost of having that work done by industry. I was wondering what that same cost is for making them new in the penitentiaries.


William McLean Hamilton: Actually the prices I quoted were the last prices which we had actually paid. I have this information right here. However, I do not have the figure split between those bags made in penitentiaries and those made by private industry. I would have to send out and get that information. I thought the hon. member had it. However, the basic principle is this. We call for tenders and we follow the principle of going to the lowest tenderer with, however, the reservation that a portion of this work must go to the penitentiaries. Hence there will be occasions on which we will be obliged to pass over a low tender in order to put work into a penitentiary.


Frank Howard: The minister has indicated that the information about the cost charged by the Department of Justice or the penitentiary branch to his department would be somewhere.


William McLean Hamilton: May
I just add one brief statement, namely that the penitentiaries, of course, if they are not low, must come down to be low before they get the contract.


Frank Howard: The Department of Justice or the penitentiaries bid? Is that what happens?


William McLean Hamilton: That is right.


Frank Howard: Perhaps this might be something that might be dealt with more appropriately under the penitentiaries branch in order to see whether they are competing fairly. I imagine the wages paid in the penitentiaries are somewhat less than those paid in private industry and would have a bearing on whether or not the penitentiary is able to compete with industry in this matter.


William McLean Hamilton: think that is something which should be discussed with the Department of Justice.


Azellus Denis: We have a complaint about the Casselman post office building on which the inscription is only in English. As 99.9 per cent of the population is French, I hope the Postmaster General will see the Minister of Public Works about this matter.


William McLean Hamilton: anything over 30 per cent of the people who are using that post office are French, we will certainly see that a bilingual sign is put on it. That is our principle.
If 99.9 per cent of the population are French, as the hon. gentleman suggests, we will just put on a French sign.


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

John Whitney Pickersgill: Before you leave the chair, Mr. Speaker, may I ask whether the acting house leader can indicate what the business will be for the rest of the week.


Alfred Johnson Brooks: Tomorrow, as announced in the business last night, I may tell the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate that he will have his day in court as we are taking up the estimates of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. After that we will take those of the Department of Mines and Technical Surveys and, if we have time, those of the Department of Veterans Affairs.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Would that be the business for Friday as well?


Alfred Johnson Brooks: No. The business for Friday will be announced tomorrow night.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: If I may be permitted to make an observation at this time, as a representative of the socialist and therefore orderly thinking and planning group, may I say that we should like to know why it is necessary to keep bobbing around with the estimates. We should like, as far as possible, to take one set of estimates and to complete them before going on to others. We know that on occasion the ministers are obliged to be

absent from the chamber. However, I think it makes for much more orderly debate to have as far as possible the estimates completed one after the other.


John Whitney Pickersgill: I think perhaps I might rise on a question of privilege on this matter and explain to the house that the government
Business of the House
made a change last evening in order to suit the convenience of the official opposition because of certain unexpected things that happened today.


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

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

Mr. Tucker: 1.	What outlays, If any, have been made by the Canadian travel bureau for advertising and publicity for the years 1957 to 1959 inclusive?
2.	To which advertising agencies have such advertising outlays been made?
3.	Has the advertising account of the Canadian travel bureau been transferred within the past year?
4.	If so, to what agency?
5.	Who are the directors of such agency?
Answer by: Hon. Alvin Hamilton (Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources):
The answers to the above questions are related to advertising in the fiscal years 1957-58 to 1959-60 inclusive.
1.	1957-58, $1,252,550.75; 1958-59, $1,366,944.19; 1959-60, $1,415,938.58.
2.	Cockfield Brown and Company Limited, Harold F. Stanfield Limited, F. H. Hayhurst Company Limited, Locke Johnson Company
Limited, Stanfield, Johnson and Hill Limited, Dalton K. Camp and Associates.
3.	Yes, in part.
4.	As part of a policy to have the three magazine, newspaper and Atlantic provinces' advertising campaigns handled by separate agencies, the bureau's advertising account has been handled from time to time by several agencies, Dalton K. Camp and Associates being added last year.
5.	President, Mr. Dalton K. Camp; vice president, Mr. C. W. Kettlewell; secretary-treasurer, Mr. F. J. Boyer.
[The following items were passed in committee of supply]:



POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT

[Stage Direction]
304.	Departmental administration including Canada's share of the upkeep of the international bureaux at Berne and Montevideo, $1,926,670.
305.	Operations including salaries and other expenses of staff post offices, district offices, railway mail service staffs, and supplies, equipment and other items for revenue post offices, including administration, $105,664,147.
306.	Transportation-movement of mail by land, air and water, including administration, $61,316,459.
307.	Financial services including audit of revenue, money order and savings bank business; and postage stamps, $3,123,671.
[Stage Direction]
Thursday, June 16, 1960

[Stage Direction]
Eleventh report of standing committee on miscellaneous private bills-Mr. McCleave.
Sixth report of standing committee on banking and commerce-Mr. Cathers.

George Harris Hees: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to announce the appointment of Robert James Rankin, vice-chairman of the national harbours board, to the office of president of the St. Lawrence seaway authority as of August 1. Mr. Rankin will succeed B. J. Roberts, C.B.E., president of the seaway authority since February, 1958, who retires on July 31. Mr. Rankin has been vice-chairman of the national harbours board since February 1, 1958.
In going to his new post Mr. Rankin will add to his already extensive experience in marine matters. He formerly served as chairman of the port of Halifax commission for five years, and was a member of the commission at the time of his appointment as vice-chairman of the national harbours board. He played a notable role prior to that appointment in the economic development of the Atlantic provinces, and was president of the Atlantic provinces economic council in 1957. He is a former newspaperman, joining the staff of the Halifax Herald in 1921 and rising to the post of managing editor of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald before being named vice-president and member of the board of directors. He is a past president of the Canadian Press, serving in that capacity from 1954 to 1956.
Mr. Rankin was born in Chatham, Ontario, a son of the late Mr. and Mrs. J. B. Rankin, and received his education in the schools there. His wife is the former Constance Marguerite Buckler of Annapolis Royal. They have two sons. Mr. Rankin is a veteran of world war I, serving as signals officer with the 1st battalion, C.E.F.
I would also like to refer to the notable contribution Mr. B. J. Roberts has made to Canada over a long period of years. He is a former member and chairman of the national harbours board and a former assistant 79951-0-3124
deputy minister of finance. Over a period of 30 years he served on a number of important boards and commissions, and he was financial adviser to the British commonwealth air training plan during world war II. He was named a commander of the British empire after the war ended.
Mr. Roberts took over as president of the St. Lawrence seaway authority early in 1958, and supervised the final year of construction and the operation of the project since its opening in April last year. His contribution to the present successful operation of the seaway has been a very real one indeed.



ANNOUNCEMENT OF FINAL PAYMENT

[Stage Direction]
for 1958-59 crop
Douglas Scott Harkness: Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Minister of Trade and Commerce gave an undertaking to the house to make a statement on the final accounting for the 1958-59 pool account of the Canadian wheat board. In his unavoidable absence he has asked me to make his statement for him.
The 1958-59 pool account for wheat was closed as at May 20, 1960. The final accounting has been completed and I am now in a position to advise the house of the operating results of this pool.
Producers delivered 367.0 million bushels of wheat to the 1958-59 pool. An interim payment was made in respect of this pool in the period from February 22 to March 11, 1960 and involved the distribution of $36,699,415.19. After providing for payment costs and the Prairie Farm Assistance Act levy the final payment will amount to $33,919,322.24. The average final payment, therefore, basis producers' deliveries, will be 9.2425 cents per bushel.
The final payments on the principal grades of wheat delivered to the pool are as follows:
Cents per bushel
No. 1	northern	
9.374No. 2	northern	
9.869No. 3	northern	
6.342No. 4	northern	
5.009No. 5	wheat	
19.548No. 6	wheat	
24.518No. 1	amber Durum	
17.910No. 2	amber Durum	
16.784No. 3	amber Durum	
12.618Extra No. 4 amber Durum ...	15.217No. 4	amber Durum	
7.707No. 5	amber Durum	
19.548No. 6	amber Durum	
24.518
Starred Questions
In respect to the principal grades of wheat delivered to the pool, the total prices realized by producers were slightly less than the total prices received for the preceding pool. Before deduction for the Prairie Farm Assistance Act levy the total realized prices are as follows:
Dollars per bushel
			1958-59	1957-58
No.	1	northern 	.... 1.59569	1.62120No.	2	northern 	
1.56069	1.58592No.	3	northern 	.... 1.48507	1.49794No.	4	northern 	.... 1.40161	1.39630
I have been advised by the Canadian wheat board that the issuance of cheques to producers will commence about June 15, and payment will be completed during the first week of July.


Hazen Robert Argue: The statement made by the minister is very similar to the statement made a year ago at this time. It further emphasizes the desirability of retaining the wheat board organization, since it does mean that producers marketing a given grade and quality of grain receive the same price. Final payment this year is about one-quarter of a cent higher than the final payment last year. When one considers that the producers' cost has gone up by more than 5 per cent in that period, this emphasizes the continuing need for the government to take supplementary measures to increase farm income in the west.



STARRED QUESTIONS


Mr. Pigeon: 1.	How many plays (texts and copyrights) have been bought each year by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation since the French network was set up?
2.	How many of these texts bought by the said corporation have been used each year?
3.	What has been, for the same period, the total amount paid each year for the texts actually used?


Marcel Joseph Aimé Lambert: Mr. Speaker, I am informed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that they are able to provide data on the purchase and use of plays on the French television network for the past three and a half years, from July, 1956, at which time the script bureau in the Montreal studios was organized, until the end of 1959. However, to obtain the information prior to July, 1956 would entail a great number of man hours and a survey of daily records. Therefore it is hoped that the information I have here, and which because of its statistical nature it is proposed be printed as an appendix to Hansard, will be sufficient for the purpose of this question.


Mr. Speaker:: Is it agreed that the statistical information referred to be printed as an appendix to Hansard?


Some hon. Members:: 
RADIOLOGICAL PROTECTION REPORT, 1959
Mr. Marlin (Essex Easl): 1.	Has the government received a copy of the 1959 report of the international commission on radiological protection?
2.	If so, has the government taken any steps to follow the recommendations of this report insofar as lowering the permissible strontium 90 level in food and water is concerned?


Jay Waldo Monteith: Mr. Speaker, the answer to part 1 is yes.
The answer to part 2 is as follows. The data contained in the new report of the international commission on radiological protection have been used in the preparation of the annual report of the radiation protection division for 1959. They will continue to form a basis for interpretation of the findings of my department until further recommendations are published by the international commission on radiological protection.
It is to be emphasized, however, that the recommended maximum permissible concentrations given in the new report do not refer to food, but only to air and water. Using additional data contained in the report, members of my department have calculated a maximum permissible level of strontium 90 in the average diet of Canadians. This figure is 79 micromicrocuries strontium 90 per gram of calcium as compared with the ICRP value for water of 33 micromicrocuries strontium 90 per litre. The previous permissible level for strontium 90 in the average Canadian diet based on the 1955 ICRP recommendations was similarly calculated to be 98 micromicrocuries per gram of calcium.


C.M.H.C. LOW COST MINIMUM HOUSE DESIGNS
Mr. Fisher: 1.	Has the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation developed any so-called low-cost minimum house designs?
2.	If so, how many, when, and to what estimated cost (by regions if there are estimated variations) ?
3.	How many such minimum houses have been started since the publicizing of the designs?
4.	What is the pattern of such housing starts by region?


David James Walker: Mr. Speaker, since these answers involve much statistical information, are rather lengthy, and will in any event be printed in Hansard, may I ask for the consent of the house to dispense with the reading of the answers?


Mr. Speaker:: Is it agreed?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
[Editor's note: The answers above referred to are as follows: 1
15, 1960	4947
Starred Questions
1.	Yes.
2.	In October 1958, Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation made available a plan known as design 2,000. This design provides the minimum accommodation permissible by the building standards. The plan has been useful in rural areas and smaller centres. The corporation also has available 11 house designs with floor areas of less than 900 square feet. The estimated cost excluding land varied in each region (see answer No. 4 below).
3.	From January 1, 1959 to April 30, 1960, a total of 1,829 loans were approved under the National Housing Act on houses with floor areas of less than 900 square feet.
4.	Housing units under N.H.A. with floor area under 900 square feet-January 1, 1959 -April 30, 1960.
	No. of		Average Estimated Building
Province	Units	CostNewfoundland	5	$ 9,500Prince Edward Island	1	8,400Nova Scotia	46	8,500New Brunswick	183	9,100Quebec	360	8,200Ontario	501	9,200Manitoba	172	9,200Saskatchewan	157	9,800Alberta	263	8,900British Columbia	130	9,300Northwest Territories]	11	12,100Yukon Territory Canada	J	1,829	$ 9,000


HUSSARS ARMOURY, COTE DES NEIGES, MONTREAL
Mr. Hellyer: 1.	Was the Hussars Armoury at Cote des Neiges painted recently by casual labourers employed by the Department of National Defence?
2.	If so, is this the practice which has been followed on previous occasions?
3.	If not, what is the reason for the change?


Joseph Pierre Albert Sévigny: Mr. Speaker, the answers are as follows:
1.	Yes; some interior painting was done at this armoury during March, 1960.
2.	Yes.
3.	Not applicable.



IMMIGRATION


Mr. Crestohl: 1.	How many people were admitted to Canada for permanent landing during each of the years 1956, 1957, 1958 and 1959?
2.	How many people were ordered deported, and by whom, during each of the aforementioned years?

Starred Questions
3.	How many of these deportations, in each of the above years, were appealed to the minister?
(a)	How many deportation orders in each of the above years were reversed by the minister?
(b)	How many were taken to the civil courts?
(c)	How many were quashed by the courts?
(d)	How many are still under consideration by the minister?
(e)	How many are still under consideration by the courts?


Ellen Louks Fairclough: Mr. Speaker, the answers are as follows:
1.	In 1956-164,857.
In 1957-282,164.
In 1958-124,851.
In 1959-106,928.
2.	In 1956, by the minister-12.
In 1956, by special inquiry officer-2,597. In 1957, by the minister-14.
In 1957, by special inquiry officer-1,670. In 1958, by the minister-5.
In 1958, by special inquiry officer-2,335. In 1959, by the minister-2.
In 1959, by special inquiry officer-2,753.
3.	In 1956-873.
In 1957-543.
In 1958-743.
In 1959-960.
3(a) In 1956-308.
In 1957-137.
In 1958-129.
In 1959-159.
3(b) In 1956-1.
In 1957-6.
In 1958-4.
In 1959-8.
3(c) In 1956-0 In 1957-4.
In 1958-1.
In 1959-0.
3 (d) 1956, 5.
In 1957, 8.
In 1958, 8.
In 1959, 13.
3 (e) 1956, none.
In 1957, none.
In 1958, none.
In 1959, 3.



STATELESS PERSONS


Mr. Crestohl: 1.	How many stateless persons who arrived in Canada in each of the years 1956, 1957, 1958 and 1959, were given permanent landing (a) on arrival; (b) after arrival?
2.	How many were refused permanent landing?
3.	How many were ordered deported?
4.	How many were actually deported?
5.	Were any of these deportees returned to their countries of birth? If so, how many?
6.	To what other countries were these stateless persons deported from Canada? How many to each country?

7.	How many were deported to countries commonly known as being behind the iron curtain?
8.	How many were deported to countries commonly known as Arab countries?
9.	How many are still in Canada without landing?
10.	What is their status?


Ellen Louks Fairclough: The answer to parts 1 (a) and (b) is that it is not possible to distinguish in immigration records those persons granted permanent admission on arrival and those granted permanent admission at some time subsequent to their arrival.
The answer is 1956, 4,867; 1957, 7,725; 1958, 5,817; 1959, 2,785.
The answer to part 2 is, in 1956, 70; in 1957, 33; in 1958, 42; in 1959, 52.
The answer to part 3 is the same as the answer to part 2. These questions are synonymous.
The answer to question 4 is in 1956, 4; in 1957, 2; in 1958, 1; in 1959, 1.
The answer to question 5 is that it is not known whether the countries to which these people were deported were also the countries of their birth.
The answer to part 6 is that in 1956 one person went to Australia, one to Austria, one to Germany, one to the Republic of Sudan. In 1957 one went to Brazil, one to the United States of America. In 1958 one went to Austria and in 1959 one went to France.
The answer to part 7 is none.
The answer to part 8 is none.
The answer to part 9 is that the number is unknown.
Part 10 is answered by part 9.



CHIPPEWA INDIAN RESERVE, SARNIA

Mr. Hellyer: 1. Under the terms of the contract between Dimensional Investments Limited and the Chippewa Indian band for the purchase by Dimensional of part of the Indian reserve at Sarnia, what are the dates and amounts of payments due to date?
2.	Have all payments been made on the dates due? If not, what extensions have been granted and for what periods in each case?


Ellen Louks Fairclough: Mr. Speaker, the answer to the first part of this question is that due dates of payments and amounts are:
(a)	On or before the signing of the agreement for sale, March 14, 1959, $1,101,435.63;
(b)	Ten monthly instalments of $50,000 each commencing April 30, 1959, $500,000;
(c)	Four quarterly instalments of $25,000 each commencing June 15, 1959, $100,000;
(d)	For entitlement of conveyance of four parcels of land, $459,042.55;

(e)	Two half yearly interest payments September 15, 1959 and March 15, 1960, $241,908.46.
In reply to the second part of the question I may say that all payments have been made on due date or within the 30 days' grace allowed by the sale agreement.



UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE FUND INVESTMENT TRANSACTIONS

Mr. Martin (Essex East): 1.	What changes were made in the investment portfolio of the unemployment insurance fund during the months of April and May of this year?
2.	What were the amounts involved in the buying and selling of bonds and other securities?
3.	On the individual transactions, what were the amounts of the profits realized or losses sustained?


Donald Methuen Fleming: Mr. Speaker, during the month of April the unemployment insurance fund sold $13 million of Canada bonds maturing September, 1965. On the sale there was a recorded book loss of $910,000. At the beginning of April the fund held $6J million of treasury bills. These were disposed of during the month of April. There are several transactions-I perhaps should have mentioned this in my answer the other day-where the fund simply acquires bills to earn interest for a few days, when it has some money, but does not accumulate any treasury bills. Those that were purchased in April and simply held for a few days, and which were not reported to me the other day, were all disposed of in April.


Paul Joseph James Martin: This is the third time this has happened.


Donald Methuen Fleming: The net result in April was that there was a net profit of $15,826.50 made on these transactions.
During the month of May bonds of the September, 1972 maturity totalling $8,750,000 par value were sold with a recorded book loss of $812,500. So far as treasury bills are concerned, there was one transaction where the commission simply held money in treasury bills for eight days in order to earn interest. It put in $500,000 and took it out at the end of eight days with a profit of $220. No treasury bills were held at either April 30 or May 31.



CIVIL DEFENCE EXPENDITURES

Mr. Marlin (Essex East): 1.	What was the total amount spent in all departments of government during 1959-60 fiscal year on civil defence, survival and emergency measures?
2.	What is the total amount of the estimated expenditures in all departments of government for the 1960-61 fiscal year for civil defence, survival and emergency measures?
Motions for Papers


Léon Balcer: Mr. Speaker, this question should stand as an order for return, as the information has to come from more than one department.


Mr. Speaker:: Order for return.



QUESTION PASSED AS ORDER FOR RETURN


Mr. Martin (Essex East): 1.	What was the total amount spent in all departments of government during 1959-60 fiscal year on civil defence, survival and emergency measures?
2.	What is the total amount of the estimated expenditures in all departments of government for the 1960-61 fiscal year for civil defence, survival and emergency measures?



MOTIONS FOR PAPERS


[Stage Direction]
Motion No. 118-Mr. Crestohl:
For a copy of the immigration regulations and all amendments to-date; the orders-in-council approving same; all departmental rulings which are being used in determining the admissibility of immigrants under general and special circumstances and conditions.
Ellen Louks Fairclough: Mr. Speaker, with regard to the first part of this motion, regulations under the Immigration Act are made by order in council and are printed in The Canada Gazette which, of course, is available. If the hon. member wishes we will be glad to gather them together for him.
With regard to the second part of the question, departmental rulings and decisions on individual immigration cases are not codified, and in any event they would be regarded as privileged documents. If the hon. member wishes me to supply him with the information as to the first part of the question I will be very glad to do so.


Leon David Crestohl: Mr. Speaker, may I point out that the second part of the question refers to any departmental rulings which become general standards for admissibility into Canada. These are the only rulings in which I am interested, not individual rulings.


Ellen Louks Fairclough: I am sorry, but under these circumstances I am afraid we consider these rulings to be privileged documents and, as I said, they are not codified. I could not collect them in any event.


Mr. Speaker:: Shall I put the motion?


Leon David Crestohl: Mr. Speaker, I do not think any good purpose would be served or that any satisfaction would be afforded to me by putting the motion. I trust I will be able to

Inquiries of the Ministry address myself to the minister and perhaps $100 million he sought on the hustings in she will be able to give me information as 1957. "I want a lot more now", said Mr. to some departmental rulings which have Frost.
become generally accepted.	Right Hon. j. G. Diefenbaker (Prime


Mr. Speaker:: Shall the motion stand?	Minister): The answer, Mr. Speaker, is no
,	comment.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Oliver Twist.


Mr. Speaker:: Stand.
Motion stands.



CHIPPEWA INDIAN RESERVE, SARNIA

[Stage Direction]
Motion No. 119-Mr. Hellyer:
For a copy of all papers and other documents, filed by Dimensional Investments Limited with the Department of Citizenship and Immigration prior to its purchase of part of the Chippewa Indian reserve for the purpose of demonstrating its financial ability to undertake the proposed transaction.
Ellen Louks Fairclough: Mr. Speaker, all of the information described in this motion was supplied on July 16, 1959, in response to notice of motion No. 105 moved by the hon. member for Trinity.


Mr. Speaker:: In the circumstances, shall I put the motion?


Some hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Speaker:: Does the hon. member wish the motion to be withdrawn?


Paul Theodore Hellyer: I think what the minister is saying, Mr. Speaker, is that there are no such documents. There were none included in that return to which she has just referred. If there are no such papers I am willing to have the motion dropped.


Ellen Louks Fairclough: Everything was given to the hon. member.


George James McIlraith: Nothing was given to him.


Mr. Speaker:: Does the house agree that this motion be withdrawn?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
Order discharged and motion withdrawn.



DOMINION-PROVINCIAL RELATIONS REPORTED STATEMENT BY PREMIER FROST RESPECTING FEDERAL GRANT

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Lester Bowles Pearson: I should like to ask the Prime Minister whether he has any comment to make on a statement made by Premier Frost yesterday during what is described as a mixed business and pleasure trip to Ottawa, when he said that when he comes to Ottawa next month he will ask for much more than the



NATIONAL PARKS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Harold Edward Winch: should like to direct a question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. Is the minister able to comment on the request he received from the lower mainland park advisory committee for information as to the progress being made toward the establishment of an international park at Point Roberts?


Howard Charles Green: No, Mr. Speaker. I just received a similar letter myself this morning. I have not been able as yet to look into the question.



TRANSPORT


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
John Whitney Pickersgill: May I ask the Minister of Transport whether the announcement he made this morning of a new chairman for the St. Lawrence seaway authority foreshadows inclusion of the Chignecto canal in the St. Lawrence seaway?


George Harris Hees: Mr. Speaker, I think the announcement I made spoke for itself.



GREAT SLAVE LAKE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mervyn Arthur Hardie: I wish to address a question to the Prime Minister, and ask whether he has received any report or recommendation from the commission set up over a year ago to study the route of the proposed railway to Great Slave lake.


John George Diefenbaker: No, sir.


Mervyn Arthur Hardie: Does the right hon. gentleman not think that since this commission held its final hearing some time in November last, it is high time it made a decision?


John George Diefenbaker: I have been in communication with the chairman of the commission on a number of occasions, and I understand that the report will shortly be available. I was assured by the chief commissioner that he and those associated with him had given the matter the fullest consideration, and that they could not have given such consideration had they made an earlier report.



AIR TRANSPORT


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Robert John Pratt: I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Transport. I am sorry not to have had an opportunity to send him notice of it. However, there has been a great exchange of correspondence and I am sure he is well aware of the situation. The question I should like to ask him is this. In view of the many complaints received by his department, is it his intention to prohibit jet aircraft from taking off from an airport such as Dorval during the normal hours of sleeping? If so, when? If not, why not?


Lester Bowles Pearson: What are the normal hours?


George Harris Hees: I feel that the hon. member, being an aggressive, up to date and constructive member of this house, would not want Canada to do anything that would impede the progress of the jet age in conformity with what is being done in most other countries throughout the world today.
(Translation):

On the orders of the day:


Guy Rouleau: Mr. Speaker, as a member for parliament interested in the welfare of my fellow citizens who have elected me for many years, I should like to put a question to the Minister of Transport which he might consider as supplementary to the one directed by the hon. member for Jacques Cartier-Lasalle (Mr. Pratt).
Is it the minister's intention to meet today, as reported in the press, with his worship the mayor and the council members of Ville St. Laurent, who wish to make representations about the too frequent and intense noises made, in the last two months, by jet planes from Dorval airport flying over the residential district of Ville St. Laurent?
79951-0-313
Inquiries of the Ministry


George Harris Hees: Mr. Speaker, when the hon. member talks at such speed, it is very hard for me to understand everything he says. I shall then take this question as notice and answer it tomorrow.
(Text):


Guy Rouleau: May I then repeat my question in English? Is it the intention of the minister-


Mr. Speaker:: What is the hon. member asking? Is he asking that he repeat his question?


Guy Rouleau: Yes.


Mr. Speaker:: It was translated. The question was translated, and the minister has taken it as notice.


Guy Rouleau: If I may ask him the question in English, the question is very simple-


Mr. Speaker:: I expect the answer would be the same in English as it was in French.


Lionel Chevrier: Your
Honour has now raised the question of the principle of a matter which, I think, has been determined from time to time. There have been questions asked in French of ministers on the orders of the day, and either because the translation system was not functioning properly, as they have stated, or because the questions were of an urgent nature, those questions were repeated in English and Your Honour allowed them. In view of the fact that a similar question by the hon. member for Jacques Cartier has been allowed, I think this question should be allowed in this case.


George Harris Hees: I would be glad to answer the hon. member's question, and am glad to be able to say that contrary to the policy followed by the government of which the hon. member was a supporter some years ago this government is very happy to see municipal representatives from any part of the country who wish to discuss any matter of importance with us. Naturally I shall be very glad to meet the deputation that wants to see me about this important question.


Guy Rouleau: Is the minister going to see the delegation today?


George Harris Hees: I was not aware that they were in town today, but I will do everything I can to accommodate them and see them if a suitable time can be arranged. (Translation):

On the orders of the day:


Guy Rouleau: In his reply to the member for Jacques Cartier-Lasalle (Mr. Pratt), the Minister of Transport suggested that it was difficult for him to satisfy

Inquiries of the Ministry the people of Dorval. Would he tell me whether he intends to do his utmost to ensure peace for residents of Ville St. Laurent who are represented in this house by a member of the opposition?
(Text):


George Harris Hees: I could understand enough of what the hon. member said to answer his question. I shall be very happy to listen to the representations put to me by the mayor of St. Laurent and his delegation. I will give them serious attention and do whatever is possible to accommodate the mayor and the delegation in respect to whatever they ask. Again I underline that this represents a great departure from the policy followed by the former government.



INDIAN AFFAIRS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. Ellen L. Fairclough (Minister of
Citizenship and Immigration): Mr. Speaker, on Monday the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate (Mr. Pickersgill) inquired concerning the reported eviction of Mr. Kenneth Plain, a member of the Sarnia band, from property held by him on the Sarnia Indian reserve.
Mr. Plain held two parcels of land that were surrendered by the band and sold on terms set by the band in the surrender itself. One parcel comprised 2 acres, the other 9.6 acres. For his interest in these two parcels together Mr. Plain agreed to accept $36,000. The 2 acre parcel has already been paid for in full and title transferred. Mr. Plain received $6,206.90. Total payments made to him amount to $12,612.49. While his valuation of his house located on the 2 acre parcel appears to have been included in the over-all price, he has the right to remove it within six months from the date the purchase price has been paid in full.
Mr. Plain apparently contends that he is not required to move his house until payment has been made in full for both parcels of land. They do not adjoin one another.
The matter has been studied from a legal and equitable standpoint, and it would appear that from neither angle is Mr. Plain on sound ground. Legally the conditions of sale are governed by the surrender itself and the sale contract, not by the option signed by him, which is invalid under section 28 of the Indian Act. The importance of the option is its evidence of his agreement as to price.
Equitably he has already received a substantial payment on account of his house, which was valued in 1957 at $7,000, and may 
move it. The balance owing on the 9.6 acre parcel will be paid to him when the sale of it is completed. If the sale should fall through his ownership of the parcel will be re-established, and he will retain what had been paid thereon.
The purchaser has given Mr. Plain more than the six months' notice required to move his house, and desires possession in order that the land may be used as intended. I may say that the matter is really outside the control of my department, as title has passed.

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Paul Theodore Hellyer: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. Would the minister advise the house why she allowed the sale of $7 million worth of land to a company with a minimum capitalization of $40,000 without proof of their financial ability-


Some hon. Members:: Order.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The hon. member is asking a question which as I understand it relates to matters beyond the jurisdiction of the minister, who did not make the sale in question. Furthermore, the question seems to be more an argument than a search for information.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: Mr. Speaker, surely the question is not beyond the jurisdiction of the minister. Whether or not it is argumentative, perhaps the minister would care to comment on the question.


Ellen Louks Fairclough: Mr. Speaker, all I can say is the decision that was taken has been justified, in that the payments have been made up to date and the Indians are now in possession of nearly $2.5 million.



SAUGEEN RESERVE-SURRENDER OF LAND FOR HIGHWAY

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Frank Howard: I wish to direct a question to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration regarding the action of the Ontario department of highways in building a highway through the Saugeen Indian reserve. Can the minister indicate what steps and procedures were followed leading up to the surrender of this land and, in particular, whether the requirements of the Indian Act relating to the band's decision to surrender this land were fully met?


Ellen Louks Fairclough: The provisions of the Indian Act are always followed with regard to the surrender of Indian land. I make a particular point of seeing that the interests of the Indians are preserved. In this case, however, I will look into the matter further and get an answer for the hon. member.



EXTERNAL AFFAIRS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Howard Charles Green: Yesterday, Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Essex East asked about the disarmament conference, and today there may be further questions arising from the tabling by the Prime Minister yesterday of the exchange of letters between himself and Mr. Khrushchev about the latest Soviet disarmament proposals. Perhaps I could deal with this situation by making a brief statement on the Canadian position at this time.


Mr. Speaker:: Has the minister leave to make a statement at this time?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Howard Charles Green: In the Canadian view it is important that in these negotiations all ten nations represented on the committee should lose no opportunity to explore every possible avenue of progress in disarmament. The Canadian delegation has constantly in mind, and tries to make certain that the whole committee bears in mind, that not only two nations or ten nations but all the nations of the world have a vital interest in disarmament. It is certain that the members of the committee will be held to account by the other nations of the world if they neglect opportunities for progress in disarmament.
It was in this spirit that the Prime Minister replied to Mr. Khrushchev's letter forwarding the latest Soviet proposals. The Canadian government wants these proposals to receive a patient and searching examination in the ten-nation committee, as marking the opening of a phase of detailed, businesslike and uninterrupted negotiations. We believed that there should be no hasty, ill-considered reaction to the new Soviet proposals, but the most careful and constructive examination of these proposals in the committee which circumstances permit. General Burns has been instructed accordingly, and I am happy to say that the other members of the western five on the committee fully shared this view.
79951-0-313i
Inquiries of the Ministry
I am particularly glad to report this unanimous view of the western representatives because, as the house is aware, the members of the western group have had their differences from time to time in the past. The Canadian delegation for its part has, on several occasions, been instructed to present views contrary to those expressed by other members of the western five, whenever this seemed warranted. We would not hesitate to authorize the Canadian delegation to follow a similarly independent line again if circumstances so dictated. But for the present no such need exists, and M. Moch has rightly stressed the solidarity of the western five in the statement to which the hon. member for Essex East referred. The western five advanced their proposals some time ago and indicated their willingness to enter upon detailed negotiations. The eastern nations are now speaking in support of the new Soviet proposals of June 2, and have indicated that these provide a basis for negotiation. These latest proposals are now being further explained by the eastern countries, partly as a result of questioning by the western members of the committee.
In the course of this clarification on June 9 General Burns pointed to several examples of ways in which the new Soviet proposals represent an advance over earlier Soviet positions; for instance, with respect to the prohibition of weapons of mass destruction in outer space; the control over launching of rockets for peaceful purposes; the provision for a joint study of the cessation of production of nuclear weapons and destruction of stockpiles; and the inclusion of measures for peacekeeping machinery in accordance with the United Nations charter. In making this statement, General Bums emphasized that the Canadian delegation wished to approach the new Soviet proposals in the most constructive way. He chose the examples I have mentioned because they are among the measures to which the Canadian government attaches special significance.
It is my view that the time has come, perhaps through an examination of equivalent features of new Soviet proposals and the western proposals, to begin a process of negotiation of balanced concessions. This was the sort of package approach to which I referred earlier in the house when I reported on the NATO ministerial meeting at Istanbul. I should like to emphasize, however, that by "package" I do not mean that the one side or the other should hold out for its present proposals on an all or nothing basis; the packages I have in mind, as I have tried to explain, are smaller and would contain provisions of equivalent significance to both sides. The goal would remain general and complete

Inquiries of the Ministry disarmament under effective international control, but it would be accomplished by a stage by stage process throughout which concessions would be balanced in such a way that neither side would obtain a temporary military superiority.
For the first time in these negotiations the Soviet delegation has admitted that there will have to be some sort of international machinery to maintain peace in a disarmed world. The proposals are also considerably more detailed and therefore less obscure than the proposals Mr. Khrushchev made to the general assembly of the United Nations in 1959. They also make some provision for the initiation of a process of study before measures of disarmament are actually taken. This is important because no responsible government will agree to any disarmament proposal, much less a complex of disarmament measures, until it has reached a clear understanding with the other governments concerned of the exact implications of agreement.
Therefore I believe that attention should now be given to the possibility of negotiating on parts, if not on the whole, of the two plans. In the course of the next few days in Geneva General Burns will be making suggestions as to how this necessary process might be undertaken through joint studies.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Mr. Speaker, the house will welcome this statement by the Secretary of State for External Affairs, which in a general way brings us up to date in regard to the current discussions in the ten power disarmament committee. I must say, however, that we are not really further advanced in our appreciation of the possibilities of progress.
It will be remembered that when this matter was first discussed during the present session the minister expressed a strong note of optimism indicating that he believed that we would see progress in the field of disarmament. Unfortunately events have not borne out the minister's assurances and anticipations. The minister now tempers his optimism by the realities of the situation.
The last proposal of Chairman Khrushchev does not seem to represent anything fundamentally new or different from proposals already made, and seems to bear many resemblances to the proposal put forward by Mr. Jules Moch, the delegate of France, a short time ago, particularly the implementation of a partial disarmament program directed toward eliminating the means of delivering nuclear weapons to targets.
What I believe this parliament had hoped to receive from the minister, and what I believe this country expects to receive from

the minister, is some indication of the government's determination to display the kind of independence about which the minister spoke when he participated in the foreign affairs debate in February in this house. As the minister said, Canada is a member of the ten power group. In some respects she holds the position of representing not only the viewpoint of Canadians but of the middle powers and the smaller nations of the world.
We have not yet had, it seems, any indication of the determination of this government and of its spokesmen to take independent positions where these can properly and constructively be taken. The minister referred to one of the initiatives that seemed to establish that the Canadian government had taken an independent position, but he did not give any indication of what that independent position was.


Howard Charles Green: I did not refer to one, I referred to several.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Yes. We all realize that the minister is sincere in this matter, but as he has been told on several occasions this session, sincerity and optimism are no substitutes for effective contribution, and we can only hope that it will be possible for Canada to take a line which will bring about the kind of results which already have flowed from the initiative taken by France.
Canada expects her representatives and her government to live up to assurances given, namely to abandon the course of honest broker and pursue a course that reflected the independence of this nation and its determination to contribute to disarmament under conditions of security.


Howard Charles Green: May I point out to the hon. member that Canada has taken a stand with France on the place of nuclear weapons in disarmament. The hon. member does not want to see when Canada does take an independent stand; he just looks out of his blind eye.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


Mr. Speaker:: Order.


Murdo William Martin: May I ask the
Secretary of State for External Affairs whether it is not a fact-


Some hon. Members:: Order.


Murdo William Martin: I am asking a question of the Secretary of State for External Affairs.


Mr. Speaker:: In due course the hon. member will have his chance to ask his question.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: Mr. Speaker, the members of this group are rather surprised at the negative and fainthearted approach to the problems mentioned

by the minister upon which the hon. member for Essex East has commented in his reply to the minister's statement. As I have said before, unless we have faith in ourselves and faith that we as Canadians can make a contribution toward disarmament and ultimate world peace, we will never get anywhere. That is necessary first.
We are pleased with the minister's approach and the tenor of his remarks, and we welcome his statement with reference to Canada being willing to take independent action if necessary. We trust that the minister will take strong and independent action, and will take an independent approach and view, when it is considered necessary.
Now, Mr. Speaker, with all the gloomy approach of the hon. member for Essex East, he must realize that these Soviet proposals represent concessions. Whether we agree with them or not they are proposals which contain concessions and indicate a certain change of view. We in this group say it is better to present proposals which contain concessions and present an opportunity for study by other people than to indulge in sabre rattling.
The C.C.F. party believes that this government should give serious consideration to all proposals from any source looking toward disarmament, and we say let us keep on exploring, as the minister indicated in his statement, every avenue toward a solution of these tremendous problems facing mankind at the present time.


FREIGHT RATES
[Stage Direction]
.tAPESEED-REQUEST FOR REMOVAL OF ALLEGED

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Reynold Rapp: Mr. Speaker, I would like to direct a question to the Minister of Transport. Since the board of transport commissioners have announced the greatly regrettable decision of not classifying rapeseed as a grain, thus leaving this young grain industry in the west in a deplorable position, would the minister not consider it advisable as Minister of Transport to devise other ways and means by which this grain could be put on an equitable basis with other western grains as far as freight charges are concerned?


George Harris Hees: Mr. Speaker, I know how important this matter is to the constituents of the hon. member for Humboldt-Melfort, because he has spoken to me about it on many occasions in a very progressive, constructive way typical of a first class member of parliament and
Inquiries of the Ministry typical of so many members of parliament who have been elected here during the past three years.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh.


George Harris Hees: I can assure the hon. member-


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I do not recall that there is any election on at the present time.


George Harris Hees: As you know very well, Mr. Speaker, elections have no effect on our approach to public matters. However, I can assure the hon. member that this matter will be kept under very active consideration indeed.


Lionel Chevrier: May I
direct a supplementary question to the Minister of Transport arising out of the question which was directed to him concerning rapeseed. Has the minister given consideration to overruling the board of transport commissioners under the Railway Act, in the same manner that he has overruled other boards under his department?


George Harris Hees: As the hon. member knows very well, this government always gives consideration to any possible means of doing constructive and useful things for the people of this country.


George James McIlraith: Why don't you grow up?


An hon. Member:: Look who's talking.


UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Paul Joseph James Martin: In view of the reply which the Minister of Finance gave me this morning with regard to starred question No. 183 dealing with the investment portfolio of the unemployment insurance fund, and the corrections included in his answer to some replies he gave erroneously several days ago, may I ask the minister whether he has a detailed table showing the portfolio of the unemployment insurance fund and whether he would mind tabling it so that we may have an opportunity of examining it.


Donald Methuen Fleming: First, I cannot accept the statement made by the hon. member. As to the question he asks, I have not the portfolio here with me. If the hon. member wishes to have details of the portfolio as of a particular month's end I think there will be no difficulty about obtaining them. Perhaps he will indicate the month's end he has in mind.

War Veterans Allowance Act


Paul Joseph James Martin: Will the minister give us a detailed statement showing the transactions during the last 12 months?


Donald Methuen Fleming: As I indicated in my answer in the house on June 10, it has not been the practice, certainly in periods that are close to the date of the questions, to give the details of the transactions.
What has been done in the past, as I indicated at that time, is to give month-end positions. That is what the hon. member asked for in his first question just now.


Paul Joseph James Martin: We will put it on the order paper. Apparently that is the only way to get answers from this government.


WAR VETERANS ALLOWANCE ACT
Alfred Johnson Brooks: that the house go into committee on Bill No. C-71, to amend the War Veterans Allowance Act.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Rea in the chair.
On clause 1-Payment where recipient absent from Canada.


Alfred Johnson Brooks: Mr. Chairman, there is nothing controversial in the bill. It was before the committee on veterans affairs, was carefully studied by that committee and has been recommended to this committee without amendment.
The purpose of this bill was explained when the resolution was before us a few days ago. Hon. members will recall that there are two main provisions. The first provides for the payment of the war veterans allowance to recipients outside of Canada. The second provision is designed to establish a corresponding Canadian residence qualification for former members of our armed forces or those of our allies who served during world war II, thus allowing treatment of these veterans on a basis similar to that now available to veterans of our armed forces or those of our allies who served in earlier wars. There is nothing further I need say at the present time, but I would be pleased to answer any questions hon. members have.


Chesley William Carter: Mr. Chairman, unfortunately I was not able to attend the sittings of the veterans committee when this bill was under discussion. For the purpose of clarification I should like to ask one or two questions which I think could be properly asked on this first clause.

As I understand the provisions of the War Veterans Allowance Act there are three separate groups of veterans who can qualify for these benefits. The first group comprises veterans who are 60 years of age and over who can qualify without a means test. The second group comprises veterans under 60 who can qualify if they are totally and permanently unemployable. The third group comprises veterans who are in receipt of a pension, but whose pension is less than the ceiling permitted under the veterans charter and therefore they are eligible to receive a supplementary payment through the war veterans allowance to bring their total income up to the ceiling.
I gather that all three groups are qualified to benefit under this bill provided they are in receipt of the allowance before they leave Canada and have resided here for 12 months piror to leaving, with the exception of the imperial veterans, of course, who have to be in Canada for 10 years to qualify.
Since the means test applies to these veterans, are they permitted to draw the war veterans allowance for a full 12 months while outside Canada? If so, what machinery exists in case their income changes during their absence? That would affect the means test under which they receive it.


Alfred Johnson Brooks: The hon. member for Burin-Burgeo is quite correct in saying there are three types of war veterans allowance recipients. All are subject to the means test, even the veteran who is a pensioner. As far as the 12 months' residence period is concerned, those affected will be entitled to receive the war veterans allowance outside of Canada but they will be subject to a means test just the same. If they are living in Great Britain our offices there will see that a means test of some kind is applied. I refer to those who will leave Canada and go to Great Britain. Those in the United States who are properly qualified recipients when they leave Canada will also be subject to review by some official in our consular offices in the United States, or whatever country in which they may be living.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: Mr. Chairman, I do not intend to speak at length on the committee stage of this bill. Since it received second reading the bill has been studied by the members of the standing committee on veterans affairs. Most of their time was taken up in seeking information from the officials of the department on where this legislation would be administered. I agree that it does represent some new and probably unusual problems. In fact that was the reason given by the former minister for refusing to introduce legislation

of this kind. He told us in the house and personally that it presented administrative problems too difficult for him to consider introducing the legislation. However, the committee on the whole was well satisfied with the answers given by the officials of the administration.
I think most of us realize that this is somewhat experimental. No doubt changes will be made in the procedures and practices in connection with the administration of this act overseas. I do suggest to the minister that it might be advisable for the department to publish a small pamphlet dealing with this act, to explain in simple language to persons who might apply just what the amendments mean. Although the bill is relatively simple to hon. members who have had some experience in reading legislation, and even though it might be quite clear to one who has dealt with legislation, it would not be clear to some people. I suggest it would be advisable to have a small pamphlet printed pointing out the terms of the legislation and informing the veterans or the dependants seeking information how to proceed to make application and what would happen with respect to their payments and so on when they went overseas. I make that suggestion. It could be done in a two-page pamphlet, and it would be of great assistance. The number that would be required would be relatively small indeed.


Alfred Johnson Brooks: I may say to the hon. member at once that we are making provision to carry out just the very idea he has expressed. We shall have rules and regulations that will explain the legislation and those who leave Canada will be informed of their rights.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I am delighted to hear that. I have always been somewhat under the impression that there was a degree of mental telepathy between the Minister of Veterans Affairs and the member for Kootenay West. I am glad to have that confirmed.


Alfred Johnson Brooks: The Minister of Veterans Affairs made the suggestion first.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I am glad to hear it. I suggest that this legislation be given royal assent at the first opportunity so that the relatively small number of veterans' dependants, compared with the large number who come under the veterans charter, will be able to take advantage of it at the earliest possible opportunity.
In conclusion, I am sure I am speaking for members of all parties in this house when I say we are glad to know that this legislation when it is proclaimed will bring happiness to many people, particularly veterans' dependants.
War Veterans Allowance Act


Oscar William Weichel: I believe that Bill No. C-71 is a step in the right direction. There may be certain problems, but we have great confidence in our minister, his deputy and his department to check on any problems that may arise. I give it wholehearted support.


Chesley William Carter: Mr. Chairman, we indicated our support of this legislation on the resolution, and the fact that it has come back from the committee without any amendment of course gives no reason for us to change our position. I do not want to take time to repeat what we said at the resolution stage. There is just one question I should like to ask the minister. A veteran is in receipt of a war veterans allowance, and he leaves Canada for 12 months. I understand that during the 12 months he can continue to receive the allowance, provided he meets the conditions under which it is payable. Does he have to come back to Canada and stay in Canada another 12 months before he can leave again?


Alfred Johnson Brooks: If he is properly qualified when he leaves Canada-that is if he has been a resident here for at least 12 months and leaves, then he can stay out of Canada for as long as he likes; he does not have to come back again. If he had not the 12 months' qualification of residence before he leaves Canada, then he would have to come back and complete 12 months' residence before he would be qualified to receive the allowance for any longer period outside of Canada.


Chesley William Carter: He does not have to return? How does he renew his application, directly to the department here in Ottawa or through some local agent?


Alfred Johnson Brooks: He does not need to, any more than if he had remained in Canada. He has the same rights outside of Canada, if he is a properly qualified war veterans allowance recipient, that he would have in Canada. If he has had 12 months' residence in Canada and leaves, he may continue to draw his allowance outside of Canada just the same as though he were living in Canada except, of course, that he will have to be subject to the means test. We will have regulations providing for that.


Chesley William Carter: He does not have to return to Canada any more if he does not wish to?


Alfred Johnson Brooks: No.


An hon. Member:: He just told you that.


[Stage Direction]
Clause agreed to.
Clauses 2 to 5 inclusive agreed to.
Title agreed to.
Bill reported, read the third time and passed.
[Stage Direction]
Supply-Post Office SUPPLY
The house in committee of supply, Mr. Rea in the chair.

[Stage Direction]
304. Departmental administration including Canada's share of the upkeep of the international bureaux at Berne and Montevideo, $1,926,670.
Charles Edward Rea: Order. This item will be found on page 59 of the blue book, and the details on page 410. Shall the item carry?


Chesley William Carter: Mr. Chairman, I should like to say a word or two in reply to the statement made by the Postmaster General when he replied to the hon. member for St. John's East on June 8. The hon. member for St. John's East had asked the Postmaster General to reconsider the present policy of not providing post office buildings for small revenue offices, and he went on to outline conditions in his own riding.
Earlier I had made a similar plea to the minister, as recorded at page 4298 of Hansard of May 27. In the course of my remarks on that day I suggested to the minister that the post office buildings were classified on the basis of revenue, because a post office building is not supplied unless the revenue exceeds $3,000. When the minister replied to me the same day he said, as recorded on page 4305 of Hansard:
The hon. member for Burin-Burgeo spoke a little while ago, and I would tell him that the classification of post offices does not rest on revenue but rests on a unit of work basis.
The reply made by the minister to the hon. member for St. John's East on June 8 does not conform with the statement the minister made in replying to me. As found on page 4705 of Hansard the Postmaster General made the following reply to the hon. member for St. John's East:
As to the hon. member for St. John's East who spoke about revenue post offices in Newfoundland, may I say that we can have but one policy for buildings right across Canada. I think the weakness in the suggestion he put forward-and I say this without any criticism-was contained in his own observation that in these areas where they would like to have a government building constructed they cannot afford one for themselves and the postmaster cannot afford to put a special one up because his revenue is only a few hundred dollars a year.
That was the very point I was trying to make. I do not want to take the time to elaborate on it, because I have already spoken about the matter on previous occasions. However, I think the Postmaster General's own argument is weak when he says that the policy is based on the revenue and that because these little post offices only generate

revenue of a few hundred dollars they do not deserve any special consideration with respect to accommodation.
I wish to point out to the Postmaster General that the spending of 5 cents for a stamp in one of these small post offices, which has a total revenue of only $400 or $500 a year, generates probably $2 or $3 in revenue in some other post office in Canada. I know that most of the post offices in my riding are small revenue operations and come within this classification, but the revenue of the Moncton post office and of the St. John's post office is greatly increased because of the revenue generated in these small offices. A person sends a letter with a 5 cent stamp on it to a mail order house such as Eaton's or Simpson's in Moncton, Halifax or St. John's, and as a result the revenue in the other post office will be many times the 5 cent stamp. It may be a couple of dollars.
I think the minister's argument is weak on that score, because it is the total revenue of the post office and the need of the community that should be taken into account. I think these should be the overriding factors. I do not think it is fair to exclude small offices on the basis of revenue. I pointed out to the Postmaster General the other day that this results in discrimination between one postmaster and another. In his reply to the hon. member for St. John's East the other day the minister went on to say:
In these circumstances there is very little point in putting up a special government building. We depend upon local quarters provided by the postmaster.
In my opinion such a policy is discriminatory as between one postmaster in one settlement and another postmaster in another settlement. An undue burden is placed on the postmaster when he has to find accommodation, and there is discrimination between settlements where such accommodation is readily available and other settlements of smaller size and smaller revenue where suitable accommodation is not available under any circumstances. I would ask the Postmaster General to take another look at the whole policy and see if something better than what we have at present cannot be worked out.


Frank Howard: Mr. Chairman, I should like to lend my support to the query initiated by the hon. member for Port Arthur and supported by other members who have spoken as to the necessity for the use of the words "personal and confidential" on letters we get from the minister. I suppose I could read one letter I have here which is marked "personal and confidential" but because it is so marked perhaps it would not be wise for me to do so. Instead I will

paraphrase it to indicate its contents, and in doing so I do not think I will be violating any confidence.
The letter contains two paragraphs comprising six lines in all. In the first paragraph I am requested to refer to a letter I wrote, and the second paragraph advises me that some information on the matter will be available shortly. That is the gist of the letter. The minister in his replies did not make any specific reference to this point, but as a result of the valid questions asked about the policy of using these words I would have thought that subsequently he might have taken steps to alter his approach to this matter. I find, however, that is not so, because this morning I received another communication from the minister relating to a matter coming under his jurisdiction and it is also marked "personal and confidential".
I realize there are circumstances under which letters might properly be so marked, but to make wholesale use of the words "personal and confidential" on such letters is in my opinion going beyond reasonable limits. I hope the minister will undertake to explain to the house his reasons for the use of the words "personal and confidential". Perhaps he will also undertake to lessen the use of these words on letters in order that members who receive communications from him may, with a clear conscience, communicate to the people responsible for the initiation of the matter in the first place the contents of the minister's letters so they may know what is taking place with respect to the problem of the individual or community, as the case may be.
I should like to deal with some local problems in my constituency, which is primarily a rural one, the largest urban community having a population of 10,000 or 11,000 people. The feeling I wish to convey to the minister applies to other governmental services as well as the postal service. However, so far as postal service is concerned the feeling exists in a number of these rural communities that they tend to suffer because the bulk of postal service and facilities is concentrated in the more heavily settled or urban areas. The people in the smaller communities tend to feel that they are left out of the scheme of things and are not given the consideration they should be given. This feeling relates to the building of post offices, the regularity with which mail is transported in and out of these smaller communities, and a number of other such matters.
Inasmuch as my constituency, as I said, is primarily rural, I should like to make reference to one or two problems there. I hope the minister will undertake to deal with them,
Supply-Post Office
either orally in his answers in the committee but more particularly administratively within his department.
We have one area which has just been opened up by an access road just north of Terrace. I refer to the communities along the Nass river. Prior to a road being built some 75 or 80 miles in length northward to the Nass river, the main contact was by steamer or by their boats down the Nass river to Prince Rupert. However, their main contact is developing with the community of Terrace and along the Nass river. Primarily the people are of Indian origin. There are four Indian villages containing approximately 1,800 people. The Indian affairs branch has recently established in Terrace a new agency which covers these particular Indian communities. That is just another indication that their point of contact with communities other than their own is now through Terrace rather than Prince Rupert, as it was formerly.
The postal service, of course, has not been good in the past although in recent months there have been some changes with regard to the system which existed. There is one community with approximately 400 people namely Greenville. I have been corresponding with the minister about this matter and the people, the band of Indians in that village of Greenville, have also been in communication with the department. I do not know whether they have been in communication with the minister directly but they have been in communication at least with officials of his department. The last time I inquired into this matter, which was a month or so ago, there was what I understand is classified as a winter service which makes a monthly mail delivery from November to April by steamboat or steamer not to the community of Greenville itself but to a community which is a port of call for steamers, called Kincolith.
It is not possible for steamers to operate up the Nass river to Greenville, so they call in at this community of Kincolith further down near the mouth of the Nass river. Then the mail is transferred from Kincolith up to Greenville by boats of individual residents. They follow the fishing industry, and they have quite a number of these boats. They use them to keep in touch with Kincolith and to pick up and deliver their mail. Then, of course, with the mail arriving once a month, many of the people find that unless they can have someone take the mail out for them and mail it at a larger community such as Prince Rupert or Terrace, their correspondence lags back for a period of two months. This is so especially in ordering materials and goods and supplies by mail. They find that they may receive communications on one steamer with

Supply-Post Office
respect to it and be prevented from answering until one month later, when the steamboat calls again at Kincolith.
This matter was raised quite extensively by a letter dated last December 2 from the Greenville council to Mr. Catterall, who I understand is district director of postal services in Vancouver. At least that is the designation given on this letter, and I believe that is the correct title. I wish to read only this one part of it. I might point out that the copy of the letter I have here to Mr. Catterall is dated December 2, 1959 and starts out by saying:
Due to irregular mail schedule I just received your letter of October 29, 1959 a few days ago-
This is a reference to a letter from Mr. Catterall, district director of postal services in Vancouver, which was dated October 29, 1959 and which reached Greenville on the Nass river, as he said "a few days ago", which I would say would be somewhere near the end of November or the first part of December. It therefore took approximately a month from the date of the letter from Mr. Catterall for it to get from the Post Office Department in Vancouver to the people in Greenville.
I relate that incident only to indicate the time that is consumed and the delays involved in letters going into or out of this particular community of Greenville. I make reference only to that community, but others are in the same boat. The correspondence to which I have made reference here and the letter from Mr. Catterall had, in fact, reference to their request for a fortnightly service through Terrace via the road communication or road connection from Terrace up to the Nass river.
From being there and talking to the people I understand there is now postal service by road from Terrace to two other Indian villages on the Nass river, namely Aiyansh and Canyon city. Although the post office is at Aiyansh, there is a fortnightly service from Terrace up the Nass river to Aiyansh. The Greenville people desire-and quite justifiably so, because they are only a few miles down the river from Aiyansh-to be served by postal facilities on the same basis as the communities of Aiyansh and Canyon city. They request a fortnightly service by road from Terrace and back out that way again, because all their communications and their contacts with other communities, as I indicated earlier, are now through and into Terrace rather than the coastal area on down the river to Prince Rupert except during the fishing season, when they fish in and out of that area and use their boats.

As I have said, I have had communications with the minister about this matter, and as far as I can gather from those communications the matter is still under study, in an attempt, I imagine, to get whatever statistical information is necessary as to the volume of mail incoming and outgoing, the regularity with which mail service might be supplied in the future, cost factors and things of that kind. If the minister has some knowledge or information with regard to that matter at this time, it would be helpful if he could indicate it to the committee and to me. However, if it is not immediately available, I will appreciate it greatly if he will tackle this problem with the usual assiduity with which he tackles other problems and will find a solution to it within the shortest possible time.
I also want to make reference, if I may, to another basic problem in the constituency which I represent. This is something about which the minister and I have corresponded, as have many other people, for quite a period of time. It has to do with letter carrier delivery service by postmen in the community of Kitimat.
I wonder if at this stage I might be permitted to make a reference to another matter. This dates back, incidentally, as far as I am personally concerned, to within a few days after I was honoured by being elected in June, 1957, but also goes beyond that to the activities of my predecessor in this house who also dealt with the question. I feel free to make reference to this particular letter from the Postmaster General because this is one which does not have "personal and confidential" marked on it. I might add that it is dated July 15, 1957, so perhaps it predates the institution of the personal and confidential system.
In any event, with respect to establishing postal facilities at Kitimat, the minister was kind enough to write a three-page reply to the query I posed and the request I made to him, and he rejected at that time the possibility of establishing a letter carrier delivery service for five reasons. I will make reference to those reasons without reading the letter itself, though if that is desired I will read it in its entirety to make sure that I do not misinterpret what it says.
But just to give a precis of the reasons for the rejection, the first was because of what might be called the pocket development of the community. There are areas in Kitimat which are fairly well populated and developed, and there are also areas in Kitimat which are relatively sparsely populated. The town planners of Kitimat laid out the program of construction so that it would function in this

way, so there would be what you could call pocket development areas. Apparently this would entail a great deal more costly method of providing letter carrier service than if there was a large area of population such as there is, say, in the city of Ottawa, where there is block after block after block of dwellings.
The second reason was that the public transportation schedules there do not coincide, or did not at that time, with the times when transportation would be required by the letter carriers of the post office.
The third was that there is a substantial part of the population living in bunkhouses, staff houses or dormitories; that these people are not permanent residents, and that to provide a letter carrier service for them would mean that it would have to be discontinued when the dormitories or the staff houses closed down and the people moved out of the community because construction ceased or moved into permanent housing.
The fourth reason was that there was a very high level of employment at Kitimat and it would not be possible to recruit a suitable staff of letter carriers to keep it up to the necessary strength. I do not know whether this means that the salary structure in other employment would be sufficiently high to attract workers to a greater degree than would a lower salary schedule, but I imagine this is what it gets at.
Then finally, and I took issue with this as soon as I read it, it was stated that because of unusual climatic conditions in the area there would be considerable risk of interruption of delivery service during the winter months. I imagine the reference is to rain and snow. While it does rain in Kitimat, I do not think it rains any more there than in some of the other communities in that area.
These are the reasons given. I would like to point out that even though this was the initial objection there was not much validity to any of the five objections raised by the minister. In this regard I am sure the minister received communications from other individuals in Kitimat, although I do not know. However, because Kitimat was a new community and proceeded on a planned and orderly basis, it could be classified as pocket development, but I think in all fairness it is not too much different from any of these so-called suburban areas surrounding many of our larger cities today in which there are parks, playgrounds, shopping centres and an expanse of space between them. So this to me does not have that degree of validity which would warrant rejection of a letter carrier system, and it does not affect the distance a
Supply-Post Office
postman would have to walk. The neighbourhoods themselves are compact, and it is not much different from any of the modern suburban developments surrounding many of our cities.
With regard to the public transportation system in Kitimat, which everyone at that time admitted was not too good, the minister was sent a copy of the Kitimat bus schedule showing that buses ran continuously throughout the day from 7.05 a.m. until the last full through service at 7.35 in the evening. Then there were bus services following that time to selected areas. Throughout the day there was regular bus service from one end of the community to the other; and while it may not have been too good, it would not interfere in any way with the operations of a letter carrier. Now that we have these scooters perhaps you can disregard that point in any event.
The third point, as to there being a number of dormitories, staff houses, bunkhouses and so on has no validity either, because this was not considered in the initial request for letter carrier service by myself or the individuals concerned. The fact that they would be temporarily housed was not considered in the original request; we thought it should be excluded.
There was a high level of employment in Kitimat, but here I must draw a parallel between the city of Prince Rupert and Kitimat because we are in somewhat the same class, or were at that time, and have similar populations. The wage level in private industry in that city was comparable with Kitimat; but even if the high level of employment in Kitimat was used as an objection to establishing letter carrier service, I hope that does not imply that we need to have a large number of people unemployed before any sort of government services are established. Other than that I do not see what validity that argument has. If it was the wage level which was the deciding factor in engaging people, rather than their working for private industry, then it would seem to me that is a substantial and valid argument for increasing the salaries paid to letter carriers to make them comparable with industry.
The references to unusual climatic conditions, and so on, as I said are not too understandable because we have letter carrier service in Prince Rupert. I could file a great deal of information from the provincial department of agriculture, which conducts surveys of rainfall, snowfall and weather conditions throughout the communities, and I can say there is not too much difference between Prince Rupert and Kitimat so far as rain and snow are concerned. But the

Supply-Post Office
fact is that we have letter carrier delivery service in Prince Rupert but not in Kitimat.
Subsequent to these arguments being dispelled by additional correspondence which I had with the minister, I received a further communication from him. Again this is not classified as "personal and confidential", or at least there is no "personal and confidential" stamp on it. This was over a year ago and followed a detailed survey of Kitimat itself. This letter dealt exclusively with the number of points of call; the criterion used apparently is whether there will be a minimum of 2,500 points of call within what is called a compact, well-built area. That determines whether or not there will be a letter carrier service. At that time, in 1958, they were able to count only 2,240 calls at points where the necessary requirements were met. So there were 260 points of call less than the minimum number required.
Admittedly, since that time the construction program at Kitimat has been seriously curtailed. Some 1,700 or 1,800 construction employees were denied the right to work and continue the construction program at Kitimat. This dislocated the economy of Kitimat to a serious degree and resulted in many of the bunkhouses, staff houses and dormitories being closed, though I do not think that affected the over-all picture very much since these places were not included in the initial consideration which was given to this matter. It is true also that following the curtailment of construction the Aluminum Company of Canada proceeded to develop a more efficient system of production in the plant at Kitimat which resulted in a smaller number of people being employed to achieve the same volume of production. This also contributed to upsetting the economy of the area. Following this trend a number of vacancies occurred in the homes which had been built as permanent residences, and this state of affairs continued for a number of months.
However, I have been keeping in close touch with the development of the aluminum industry and the effect of this development on Kitimat. Gradually over the past few months there has been an increase in activity in the industry, up to a point where at the present time it is either in full production or close to full production having regard to the facilities available. There is once again an increase in community activity. Whether it is sufficient to make up for recent losses I do not know, but I think the most serious difficulties have been overcome and the effects of the economic collapse are being adjusted. Accordingly I think this would be a good time to consider making an additional investigation in order

to see whether a letter carrier service can be established in Kitimat in future.
It has been indicated to me that my time has just about expired, so I will conclude by leaving that particular question for the minister to deal with.


John (Jack) Henry Horner: Mr. Chairman, in my area postal services have improved considerably in the last three years. There is one little problem I should like to take up, and it has to do with the town of Dalhousie, an important and expanding community where the International Paper Company has just announced a development project which will double the capacity of its mill at a cost of some $8 million.
The town of Campbellton as well as the city of Edmundston and other towns of similar size have daily delivery of mail, and I understand the Post Office Department has every intention of introducing a daily delivery service in Dalhousie. I was in Dalhousie about a month ago and a delegation came to me wanting to know why places such as Campbellton could have daily delivery service while places such as Dalhousie had to wait so long to get them. I feel sure the minister will take whatever steps are necessary in this direction.
Another point I wish to raise concerns mail delivery in Madawaska county, where residents have been waiting now for over a year for the introduction of rural route services. The reason given for the delay is that there are no boxes available, but with so many people in this country out of work that does not appear to me a very strong reason, beoause I am sure that boxes could easily and quickly be provided.
I was pleased to get a letter from the minister yesterday, and I may tell him that though it was marked "personal and confidential" I had it published in the local newspaper, containing as it did information that rural route delivery of mail would be inaugurated in St. Joseph beginning July 1. I thank the minister very much for giving such prompt consideration to this matter. I live in an area where people live four or five to what is called a range-


Charles Edward Rea: Order. It being one o'clock, I do now leave the chair.
At one o'clock the committee took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The committee resumed at 2.30 p.m.
John (Jack) Henry Horner: Mr. Chairman, I was about to conclude my remarks when one o'clock came. The contractors who are awarded the

contracts to which I referred accept them in many cases with a considerable personal sacrifice to themselves because the prices at which they are obliged to bid in order to get the work do not always give them sufficient money to encourage them to give the additional little services that people have come to expect.
In many outlying areas you will have a few people-perhaps 5, 10 or 15 families- living along what is called a range, or in French, rang. The contractors will by-pass those families. I feel that is a practice that should not be tolerated. Although perhaps few in number those people should have an equal right to have their mail delivered to their doors when the rural route systems are established. When bids are being called I believe it would be an excellent idea to make it clear in the tender form that these little areas wherever they may be, have to be serviced.
I am pleased to note that the establishment of rural route services in areas such as mine has been speeded up. In many communities that are small in size it is not easy or possible to secure a responsible person to act as postmaster. The establishment of rural route service is an excellent trend.
I wish now to raise what I consider to be an important point and one concerning which I have received many complaints. I have always felt that when a merchant in a small town or village is appointed as postmaster he is given a competitive advantage over the other merchants in the community. This leads to abuses because people are obliged to go to the store in any event to cash their family allowance or pension cheques and to get their mail. Naturally the merchant who serves as postmaster has a knowledge of their affairs and can advance them credit because he knows when their cheques will come in. Because they are already in the store they may prefer to make their purchases there. I feel that the merchants who complain of this have a legitimate complaint. The establishment of rural route systems such as that to be inaugurated in St. Joseph in Madawaska county will to a great degree eliminate the practice that leads to the abuses I have just mentioned. I feel it is wrong to appoint a small town or village merchant as postmaster for the reasons I have stated.
In some areas, of course, our people do not like the idea of having rural route service. In some areas the people prefer it over all other systems of service. I have in my riding a very fine community called Tidehead. They want a post office. It is a rather large community and it could serve as headquarters for the rural route mail for many communities
Supply*-Post Office
adjoining Tidehead. I feel that more consideration should be given to the feelings of the people who live in the small communities. If they want a post office let us give them one and if they want rural route service let us see that they have it. I feel that the post office has to look on this enterprise as does any other business that is trying to give satisfaction to the people. In attempting to give that satisfaction the department should attempt to accommodate people in every way possible. I see no reason why we should wait any longer for daily delivery from door to door by carrier service in the town of Dal-housie.
In saying these things I also wish to congratulate the Postmaster General who has been extremely co-operative with me in anything I have had to do with his department. I can assure hon. members that the service has always been very speedy. I shall expect to see the points I have raised corrected and I am confident they will be. I am grateful for the opportunity of bringing these matters to the attention of the committee.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: Mr. Chairman, when I look across the aisle and see the minister of socialist enterprise-


William McLean Hamilton: object immediately.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: -memory opens the door to the near past. It seems such a short time ago that the present minister sat on the opposition benches pouring sulphurous language in a mellifluous voice over the head of the former postmaster general. We who have been here for some time have seen the evolution of a near rebel in opposition to a responsible minister. The hon. member for Port Arthur said, "A complete metamorphosis", and I think that is an excellent term because the minister has come out of his chrysalis. History repeats itself and advancing age and increased responsibility have had this mellowing effect. That is part of the democratic system.
The minister is doing a good job. He is doing many of the things for which he condemned the former minister and doing them in the same way. However, he has used hn imagination and put new life into the department. I appreciate the courtesy with which he has dealt with any problems I have brought to his attention and the promptitude with which he has dealt with matters I have discussed. I give the minister full credit for industry, activity and imagination so far as the Post Office Department is concerned.
However, the minister has caused me at times an unnecessary amount of thought and labour because in reply to all my correspondence he marks it "personal and confidential",

Supply-Post Office
even if it is just a question of putting a new rail up on the village post office steps. I bring this up because I know other hon. members have been caused a tremendous amount of extra work, and he has overburdened many of us with this practice. I wonder whether there is some unknown recondite reason for the practice which we call the personal and confidential technique.
I want to show the committee what unnecessary work it is causing us. In order to do that I am going to read a letter. The name of the recipient of this letter is purely fictitious. It is not intended to refer to any person either living or dead. However, the subject matter of the letter represents in two or three paragraphs the kind of letters I have had to write to my constituents because I receive letters from the minister all marked "personal and confidential". This is a typical letter.


William McLean Hamilton: Mr. Chairman, I am sorry, but I know the hon. member does not want to break the rules of the house. He will find a citation in the rules which prohibits the reading of imaginary letters.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: Pardon me; I have in effect changed only the name. The letter is composite in form.


William McLean Hamilton: Is
this one complete letter exactly as received from the department?


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: This is a letter I have composed as a result of my experience. The letter is addressed to:
Captain, The Honourable Algernon Claude Hamilton, Old Cove, British Columbia Re: Derelicton of duty,
Postmaster, Old Cove, B.C.


William McLean Hamilton: Mr. Chairman, the hon. member is completely out of order in reading imaginary letters.


Azellus Denis: No.


Jacques Flynn: I would ask the Postmaster General to refer me to the rule because it seems to me if the letter was written by the hon. member it would be the same thing as if it were part of his speech.


Azellus Denis: The only thing you could accuse him of would be reading his speech.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: Mr. Chairman, I am reading this letter to indicate the type of letter I have to write because every letter I receive from the Postmaster General is marked "personal and confidential". I think I am entitled to present my point of view and support my argument with this illustration. I know of no rule in the book which prevents
[Mr. Herridge.)
my reading a letter which illustrates the correspondence I am required to write. May I continue, Mr. Chairman?


William McLean Hamilton: If the
hon. member has something else to say I suggest that he say it and in the meantime I shall find the rule in Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I am not going to be put off easily in that way.


Some hon. Members:: Go ahead, read the letter.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: In fairness I am giving the Postmaster General time to find the citation.


Jacques Flynn: Maybe the Postmaster General is referring to citation 158 on page 134 of Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms, fourth edition, which reads as follows:
It is against the general principles which govern debate to read to the house an imaginary letter supposed to have been written by one of the sitting members of parliament.
Does this meet the point the minister has in mind. I doubt whether on this citation I can draw the line that the Postmaster General has indicated. If the hon. member who is speaking says that it is the kind of letter that he himself has written, or that he is supposed to have written from time to time, I do not think this citation would apply. To my way of thinking this means a letter written by some other hon. member.


William McLean Hamilton: Mr. Chairman, I thank you for finding me the citation from your more adequate references. It is exactly the one I was looking for. It says:
It is against the general principles which govern debate to read to the house-
This is what the hon. member is intending to do.
-an imaginary letter-[DOT]
He has already said that is what it is.
-supposed to have been written by one of the sitting members of parliament.
I am a sitting member of parliament at the present time and the hon. member is ascribing the letter to me.


Jacques Flynn: I think the hon. member has indicated that the letter he wished to quote is one that he would write or that he ordinarily writes to one of his constituents, and not a letter from the Postmaster General, if I heard him correctly.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: This is purely the type of letter I am required to write because of this personal and confidential technique. I will now proceed with the letter:

My dear Algernon:
I have discussed the contents of your letter of March 1, last, with the appropriate person. However, it would not be what is played at Lords to divulge his name.
Before proceeding with your complaint, I shall answer your query as to what sort of a chap the Postmaster General is. While from your point of view he wears the wrong coloured tie, and has been known to enter the House of Commons in a vest of style and colour that would cause you some dismay, I must, in fairness, say his heart is in the right place, he is most industrious and his unconventional vests do indicate an imagination that I think has had a beneficial effect on the administration since he took office.
Now to your complaint. The letter I have received from the appropriate person is marked "personal and confidential". Therefore, I find it necessary to write allegorically and all I can say is that with my knowledge of the appropriate person's ability to smell a rat when he sees it hovering in the air, and later to nip it in the bud, I am confident that the administrative "dry-rot" you brought to my attention will be lopped off in due course, to your complete satisfaction.
While you may convey the information contained in this letter to this village post office patrons, on no account disclose the source of your information. However, you have my permission to say it came from an authoritative but undisclosed Ottawa source.
Trusting I have made the situation quite clear in a personal and confidential way, I remain
Your old Comrade-in-Arms.


David Vaughan Pugh: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order, I think we ought to have the correspondence completed. I wonder whether we can have the reply to that letter filed? I simply want it because I want to see what a member of parliament looks like when he starts writing letters to himself.


Norman Platt Lambert: For purposes of information may I ask the erudite member how one smells a rat hovering in the air and nips it in the bud.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I can answer that. I have used that allegorical statement as a result of reading a Conservative member's remarks made in the British House of Commons in 1876.
I have drawn this to the minister's attention and I am sure he will reconsider this technique because, mind you, in addition to marking it "personal and confidential" he sends a tissue copy of his letter. I do not know what to do with it. I have not been able to find any use for it to date. I do hope the minister will find his way clear to change his technique.
When I receive a letter marked "personal and confidential" I treat it as personal and confidential, but I do wish the personal and confidential would apply to, shall I say, strictly confidential matters and I do not mind when necessary on personal matters. I would ask the minister to comment on this question when he replies. I am not the only
Supply-Post Office
one who has suffered from this practice. Members on the government side have also expressed their adverse opinion of it. As a matter of fact, this is one of the major criticisms this afternoon.
Having said that, I now proceed. As I see it, a member's responsibilities when it comes to discussing estimates are two in number. The first is to deal with the policies of the department in general, if he has any criticism of same, and the second is to bring to the attention of the committee any particular problem that concerns his constituents, and that is what most members do when they discuss estimates.
Before I proceed with a few remarks about general policy, I wish to say in all sincerity, because we hear some sections of the civil service criticized on occasions, that the Canadian people are very fortunate in having an excellent, efficient and first-class staff in the Post Office Department from the deputy minister right down through the administrative level. We accept this service daily without realizing the planning and consideration that has to go into the distribution of mail in Canada to the satisfaction of the public every day of the year. I think we should recognize that fact. Any matters I have brought to the attention of the minister or his senior officials have always been approached from the point of view that people would adopt who are operating a successful socialist enterprise for the public advantage.
With respect to the staff throughout the country we should also recognize the very good service that is rendered by the many people in the more humble positions. The service goes on day after day and is accepted just as we accept the work of the tracklayer on the railways in carrying out his monotonous daily task so that we may travel with speed and in comfort. I hope that the minister will use all his influence to see that the excellent services rendered by post office staffs and postmen tramping their beats are recognized by adequate increases in their salaries to conform with the increased cost of living.
I have a few other matters to bring to the minister's attention. A constituent of mine wrote me about a question that concerns civil rights. I wrote the minister about it and I have his reply here but I cannot quote it because it is marked "personal and confidential". I think the gentleman who wrote me has a point. The minister in writing to me indicated that he thought-how shall I put it-in view of it being marked confidential that he had made the implicit

Supply-Post Office
explicit, but I cannot agree. That is all I
can say at the present time. In any event,
this gentleman wrote me and said:

I would appreciate any information that is available on a matter which offhand I would consider as coming under civil rights. I am not familiar with what category my subject would come under other than civil rights.
Now as I understand, under our form of government the individual can live a private life, his business being his own in so far as the general public is concerned as long as he abides by the law. We have to fill out forms for income taxes, we give certain information for voters' lists, answer questions when we take on employment with a firm; we also give the post office our name and our address and we as in my case rent a box with a number from said post office. Now I would take from this that the information given each of the above is strictly for their own use and not for release to the general public.
Now it has come to my attention that a person can purchase from any post office in Canada for the sum of $2 a list of citizens that gives their name, address in the area which they choose to have knowledge of. I do not think this is the correct thing to do. The post office is a government agency and should not be used as an information bureau.
He goes on to say:
I would go to the post office and inquire, and the only answer was that if I put a stamp on it and mailed it they would see it got to the party.
He is referring to when he went to the post office to inquire about a person's address.
In short they were not allowed to divulge a person's mailing address. I can see the wisdom to this; they in those years respected the privacy of the individual. This present system leaves you open to a shower of phony advertising literature and such, it may be lucrative to the post office but the post office is supposed to be a very private business. I think stern measures should be taken to tighten up and attend to the business of handling mail and nothing in the way of as I said before of being an information bureau for a $2 bill.
I think my correspondent has a point there. He says he has gone to the post office and asked for the address of a person and has been told that if he will put a stamp on the letter they will supply the address and forward it but will not give the address. At the same time apparently a commercial company by paying $2	can get a	list	of	thepatrons of a certain	post office	and	on	the
basis of that list distribute their advertising literature. Personally I think my correspondent has a point. I promised him to raise the question on the estimates of the Post Office Department and I should like the minister to deal with it briefly when he replies to the eulogies and criticisms from the opposition benches.
I have one other	suggestion	and	it	hasto do with stamps. I must say	that	on	the
whole I think there has been an improvement in the design and quality of the stamps issued by the Post Office Department since 
the minister came into office. But I do suggest that possibly there could be considerable improvement if there was an opportunity provided for Canadians living in all sections of Canada and having various backgrounds and aptitudes to make some contribution to the design of these stamps. I suggest it would be a good idea to have some form of competition for Canadian artists who do this kind of work so that the minister's selection will not be confined to a few professionals who submit designs but will be made on as wide a base of talent in this direction as Canada can provide.
I have also been asked to mention to the minister that some remarkable subjects for stamp design are to be found in the Kootenays. There is the Kootenay-Columbia district, the Indians and their particularly interesting chiefs, the Thompson period, the Hudson Bay period, the stern-wheel steamers and various well known characters in mining, lumbering and agriculture. I have been asked to mention that because we in the Kootenay district are under the impression that we have not received due recognition from several of the government departments, including the Post Office Department, that go in for illustrating certain books and stamps.
I come now to the local and the concrete. The residents of Rossland were very pleased when the Department of Public Works decided to build a new post office.


Leon David Crestohl: May I ask the hon. member a question? Does he not think that the present member for Kootenay West is perhaps a qualified person to be considered as a subject for a stamp design?


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I welcome the hon. member's fine suggestion but 1 have always understood that high rank and station and great contributions to the state should not be recognized until the person is dead. As a matter of fact, I would rather have a new post office or two while I am alive. The people of Rossland were very pleased when it was decided to build a new post office. The first recommendation was to renovate the old one. After going through the building it was my personal opinion that it would be a waste of money, that it would cost a great deal more to renovate the old building than was anticipated, and once again, as usual, the member for Kootenay West was correct. The public works staff reinvestigated the whole situation and it was decided finally to build a new post office. I hope that every effort will be made to meet the responsible persons in Rossland such as members of the city council and representatives of the chamber of commerce and other organizations so that

the new post office will be located in the very best site possible to serve the interests of Rossland people. I understand this building is now being given consideration and will be undertaken next year.
I also want to bring to the attention of the Postmaster General the necessity of the officials in his department watching developments in the Kootenay district closely, particularly the need of changes at times in rural routes. There is one district where there were only five people a few years ago and at the present time there are 1,000. The development in the district is causing changes that will require adjustment in the service given. I cannot think of any drastic or particular one at the present time but I bring the matter to the minister's attention because of the changes occurring from increases in population, the building of new highways, the introduction of new bus services and transportation services and so on.
I come now to a problem that concerns the little village that is closest to where I live, namely the not well known but well situated and beautiful village of Nakusp. The chamber of commerce, the women's institute and the organizations there have been concerned in the last year or two about the time it takes to get mail from Vancouver into our district. The time is such that on occasion business people are required to use the long distance telephone much more than would be necessary if the mail service was a bit faster. It has been suggested that the minister's officials give consideration to the bus leaving Nelson a few hours later than it leaves at the present time so that it can bring mail there after the plane arrives at Castlegar in the afternoon. I mention this matter because of complaints and ask the minister to have it checked.
The minister knows that for some years I have urged the necessity of a postal bag from Revelstoke to Nakusp and distribution from there to all points south as far as Edgewood. I know the minister's officials investigated the situation and found that the volume of mail was somewhat small. I was very surprised to hear the cost of handling this bag in view of the fact that it is a government ferry that runs from Arrowhead to Nakusp and mail is brought up from Revelstoke to Arrowhead on contract. I thought it would cost a dollar a day or something of that sort. I cannot see any reason for the expense that was indicated by the report I received. However, I will let that matter rest at the present time.
I want to bring to the minister's attention the fact that a new highway is being built now and that it is likely that in the future there will be a bus running from Revelstoke
Supply-Post Office
south to Nelson via Nakusp. I urge that the officials of the department watch these developments so that they can take advantage of these changed transportation circumstances as soon as possible after they occur.
I have had one or two other complaints, although this is a minor one. In a number of places I have been informed that the rural mail list is often incomplete or inaccurate as to the address concerned or as to occupation. I suppose the minister does not live as close to the rank and file as do I. I live among the people. I am not in an exalted position. However, I hear what the ordinary person has to say about public affairs.


William McLean Hamilton: Mr. Chairman, I not only live among the people; I am one of the people.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I am glad to hear that. I am glad to know the minister is human. With regard to those sitting on the government benches there have been a few cases where I doubted that. However, even in a thing like an incorrect occupation, dissatisfaction can be caused. I had a gentleman come to me who is manager of a lumberyard, and he was down in the post office directory from year to year as a labourer. A person's occupation should be correctly stated. I have had a few of these cases brought to my attention. I urge that the local postmasters should be asked to check these lists; and not just send the old list in annually but to check the list carefully and to make certain that the address and the occupation of every patron is correct. That is not a very socialist suggestion but I represent all the people of Kootenay West. This suggestion comes from some of my Conservative friends but I am quite willing to advance it when they elect me as their representative to serve all the people.
I have one more suggestion to make, and it is my last one. I have received a few letters complaining of the low pay of the casual help employed in the larger post offices such as those in Trail and Nelson. I have also had letters from a few other points dealing with the situation in general. If my information is correct, it appears to me that the pay received by casual help in British Columbia for work in the post office on certain occasions is very much below the prevailing rates; in fact I am informed in some cases it is 50 per cent of the prevailing rate. When the Department of Public Works lets a contract in a district the contractor must agree to pay prevailing rates. I suggest that consideration be given to the prevailing rates in any district when casual help is being employed.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I once again want to emphasize this fact. Tremendous

Supply-Post Office
progress is taking place in Kootenay West. Tremendous developments are in sight and expansion is going on now at a rapid rate, and it will continue to go on in this garden of Eden in Canada. I urge that the minister's officials keep a close watch on these developments and these changing situations so that they will be ready at the first opportunity to adjust, rearrange or increase the services that are now provided so that they will continue to provide the efficient service that we have enjoyed throughout the years.


Gordon Harvey Aiken: In common with other hon. members who have made some comment on the estimates of the Postmaster General, I should like to commence by complimenting him and his department on the excellent services they have been giving. Representing as I do a riding which is mainly rural and which has a number of rural routes and small post offices, I find that a great deal of the work I have to do relates to the Post Office Department. I must say that with very few exceptions I have received very good service and have been able to give good service to those people who wrote to me with problems or complaints.
There are just two matters which I should like to draw to the attention of the Postmaster General and the officials this afternoon. The first one relates to the tender system for rural routes. As we all know, the present system is-and I think properly so-that the lowest tenderer on the rural route is awarded the job. I think this is a fair system to be undertaken. However, I have found a number of difficulties that I think should be carefully considered by the department. In a number of cases there is evidence that a contractor or a proposed contractor will make a bid which is excessively low, much lower than that of all the other people who have bid. I feel that sometimes the person who has made this low bid has not done so properly. He may have one of three reasons for making an extremely low bid. The first one is that he may have wanted to eliminate all the other competition on the route and then hope to come back to the department in two years and get an increase back to what he should have had in the first place. In a number of cases I think there is definite evidence that people have put in ridiculously low bids and they go along just on the expectation they will apply and get an increase later on.
Another reason that this thing happens is that the person is incapable of estimating his job properly. The third is that he may not be properly equipped and that although he is able to give an estimate, he may do a poor job. After all, he is carrying the royal mail and the person who is selected ought to have

proper equipment and ought to be able to give good service. My request to the Postmaster General is that in cases where he receives a bid which is quite low in comparison with other tenders he should make an independent investigation to see whether the person who is bidding is actually the proper person for doing the job and capable of carrying the mail in a satisfactory way.
The second matter I should like to bring to the minister's attention concerns the urban mail delivery service in the town of Parry Sound. This has been one of the matters that the residents of that town have been requesting for some years. They have a post office which has sufficient revenue for mail delivery service door to door. They are just a little short of the number of persons required for mail delivery service. A check was made within the past year and at first it was thought that there were enough people, but subsequently it turned out on a re-check that there were not enough. It has been drawn to my attention that people who were potential customers were not counted for some reason or other as householders, and I therefore urge the Postmaster General to have a further check made as soon as possible of the number of householders qualified to receive mail to see if a few extra people can be found so that mail delivery can be provided to this town, which is actually increasing very rapidly each year in population and industry.
With those two matters and the compliments I gave to the Postmaster General I should just like to add that as regards the rural mail delivery services particularly the department has given very good co-operation in any extension of rural mail routes where requested, and they have stretched their regulations to the limit in lots of cases in order to give good mail delivery service.
(Translation):


Alexis Pierre Caron: Mr. Chairman, as the hon. member for Kootenay West (Mr. Herridge) stated earlier, it cannot be said that the present Postmaster General (Mr. Hamilton) is doing much worse than his predecessor, but we are always surprised to find that the former critic of the Post Office Department did not introduce the changes he was suggesting when he was in the opposition.
However, what struck me most, and what amused me particularly in the minister's introductory statement on his departmental estimates, is his remarks about visiting post offices at all hours of the day or night and noting the cheerfulness of postal workers.

That part of his speech struck me for two reasons. In the first place, it is rather unusual for a Postmaster General to go about post offices by day and by night to check on the cheerfulness of his staff. It is somewhat outside the bounds of logic.
Then again, does not the minister trust his employees? If he does not, well let him replace them, and let him tell us his reasons for doing so, namely that they are incompetent.
A minister going through post offices at two or three in the morning to check up on the cheerfulness of his personnel, that is really laughable.
Besides, I note that the minister is laughing just now. He might well do so, because if he had thought twice, he would not have said that.
The minister said he noted the cheerfulness of the staff.
Well, he must have made his visits at the wrong hours, because I have been meeting large numbers of post office employees, and civil servants generally-particularly people working outdoors-and I can assure you their mood is not so cheerful as that.
If there is one minister who is being criticized by his staff at this time for his lack of action, it is certainly the Postmaster General.
His employees have been trying to get raises for their colleagues. Raises have been granted to 50,000 employees, but not to postal workers. In fact, postal workers seem to have been placed at the bottom of the list.


William Heward Grafftey: Would the hon. member allow me a question?


Alexis Pierre Caron: Certainly.


William Heward Grafftey: Could the hon. member cite a single case in support of his statements to the house?


Alexis Pierre Caron: It is not my practice to reveal my sources of information, because I would not want government employees to be penalized for daring to talk to a Liberal member.


William Heward Grafftey: Would the hon. member-


Alexis Pierre Caron: If my hon. friend would get out of his hole in the ground, he might find a good many dissatisfied people in his own constituency. Besides, it is a matter of common knowledge.


William Heward Grafftey: That is not true, and that is no answer.


Alexis Pierre Caron: You only have to take a look at the civil servants' newspaper to see how
Supply-Post Office
much dissatisfaction there is, and in the same paper, you will see the complaints of postal employees, who are of course dissatisfied with their present situation, because the raises to which they are entitled are being held up.
All we have to do is to look around and see what is going on. Members of parliament should not be asked to give their sources of information; it could only mean trouble for those who gave out the information. I know there is discontent, and especially people are wondering whether the delay in granting postal workers the raise they were promised is not meant as a punishment for those who have been waging the great battle for salary increases. They were the ones who carried the battle, and it now seems as if someone is out to punish them for it; in fact they will probably be the last to get the promised raise. If there are people in fact, who really fought the great battle for civil service salary increases-


William Heward Grafftey: Please be responsible, be responsible.


Alexis Pierre Caron: Mr. Chairman, would you tell that thing over there to shut up? I am sick and tired of my hon. friend's interventions. In the matter of irresponsibility, I have never seen the like of him.
I wonder whether this delay in granting the requested increases is not a punishment inflicted on postal workers. In fact not only will they not get their increases immediately but, judging from the present attitude of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fleming) there will be no retroactivity, whether they get their raise in two or three days, or in a month, they will not benefit from the retroactivity granted to the 50,000 who already got their increase in April.
They stand to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars because they waged the battle to help Canadian civil servants who were ill paid, particularly since the election of the present government.
The present minister may have fine qualities, he may have great accomplishments to his credit, but he certainly slipped in failing to insist on salary increases for the people who deliver the mail day in and day out, rain or shine, summer and winter, under extremes of hot and cold weather, carrying heavy bags to serve the public. I think those people deserved a better deal than they have received.
The minister, who introduced the use of scooters in his department, also referred to small carts that are being put to the test,

Supply-Post Office
similar to those used to carry golf clubs. I have had the opportunity to discuss this with a few mail carriers, and their reaction was that the idea was absolutely unthinkable and that, for all practical purposes, they could not accept them. They have been wondering whether the minister was thinking of using this new device to throw an additional load on the already overburdened workers and thus cut down the staff.
Why not buy them a horse and cart, as used by bread and milk salesmen who do not travel very fast and go from door to door.
In my view, Mr. Chairman, postal employees have certainly not received the consideration they deserved from their minister, and I hope that when their raises do come- as they are bound to eventually-the minister will see that they be retroactive to April 1, as in the case of the first 50,000 who got their raises. Then, perhaps, they might be able to believe that the minister has really looked after his departmental staff.
I do not want to take too much time, because I would hate to be accused of delaying the Post Office Department's estimates, but there is one thing I should like to submit to the minister. It is known that the city of Hull has been expanding considerably, and that, in addition to the old section on the eastern side of Brewers creek we now have a new section on the western side, which already has grown larger than the old.
The post office has a sort of little nook there where mail carriers go and fetch the mail they have to deliver. Furthermore, boxes have to be installed on street corners, from which mail carriers may pick up additional mail for delivery. That area includes four important districts, that is Tetreau, Wright, Lafontaine and Dollard. Consequently, it would be necessary and urgent that the Post Office Department build another post office there which would, first of all, allow mail carriers to pick up their bagful of mail; at the same time we would be rid of those horrible boxes that stand on street corners, especially in the most developed areas, which are so picturesque.
Mr. Chairman, several members have already referred to that mania of the Postmaster General's of writing "personal and confidential" letters. Besides, you know very well that a letter is not necessarily of a personal and confidential nature just because its sender has chosen to write in those words at the top of the sheet. To be genuinely so, such letters must be of a personal and confidential character. In fact, I will quote one

of them, even, if it is not considered delicate to do so. It is a letter which is in no way of a personal or confidential character, and I wrote to the minister to tell him that I did not consider it as such. Furthermore, after having advised the minister, I sent a copy of it to the persons concerned and I had a right to, because it was in no way of a personal or confidential character. Under the circumstances, I was fully justified to do what I did. Here is the letter referred to:
Personal and confidential Dear Mr. Caron:
This is in reference to your letter of May 10, in which you ask that letter carrier service be established in Gatineau.
An inquiry to establish whether Gatineau meets the required conditions for mail carrier service has just been completed. The matter is still under consideration but no decision has yet been taken. I am sorry 1 am unable to give you a definite answer at this time, but I hope to be in a position to do so in the near future.
Sincerely,
William Hamilton, Postmaster General.
Can anyone look upon that letter as being a personal and confidential letter? Is the minister out to prevent members of parliament from transmitting to their constituents the news they get from departments? I do not know. I would not like to accuse the minister unfairly, but I am inclined to believe that there is something there which borders on mania. I would ask him, whenever he wants a letter to be personal and confidential, to include in it facts that are genuinely of a personal and confidential nature. However, as everyone knows, letters such as the one I have just read are not of a personal or confidential character.
I have another one of the same type, in which there is absolutely nothing of a personal and confidential character-I do not want to take time to read it-and in which the minister advises me that the matter does not come under his department; and he adds:
I am sending a copy of your letter to the Minister of Public Works.
Is there anything personal and confidential in those two letters?
I ask the minister to change his ways by sending us replies that will allow us to supply information to those concerned.
I shall now revert to the subject of door to door delivery in Gatineau. The population of this town numbers 13,000 at present. Some people have to travel one and a half miles

to get their mail and post their letters. The minister will perhaps claim that he is following the established practice. I admit that this was probably the practice followed in the past, but I remember that when he was on this side of the house, the present Potsmaster General urged the government to bring about all necessary changes. He is now holding that office and it is his own responsibility. If changes had to be made when he was in the opposition, why does he not make them now that he is in a position to do so?
It will be claimed perhaps that the population is not high enough and that the volume of business is not such as to justify the building of a post office. The reason for this is obvious enough. Deprived of proper facilities, those people deal with the Hull or Ottawa post office, and the local post office pays the piper. If proper service was provided, we would have the required volume of business.
Moreover, even with door to door delivery, people would have to go to the post office to purchase postage stamps. Stamp distribution centres should be established in various places for this purpose. Nothing is easier than to allow certain grocers or merchants to sell postage stamps and enable the public to purchase the stamps they need. In this way, the volume of business of the Gatineau post office would reach the required figure.
Moreover, the minister would have made one of the improvements he was asking for when he was sitting on this side of the house.
Well, I remind him of the past, of the great improvements he used to ask for, in short, I ask him to remember everything he said when he was on this side. For instance, he stated that postal service should be available to the public, that it was a public service and that the reason for the existence of the Post Office Department was the public.
I am asking him for the same thing. Let him carry out what he suggested. Let him make the postal system available to the people who need it, by making a few changes and a few improvements. Even if it is impossible to have a door to door delivery service immediately, let there be, at least, some letter boxes, and a few merchants should be allowed to sell stamps, so that people who want to post their letters will not have to walk one and a half miles to do so.
I must say that, as far as Gatineau Point is concerned, I submitted the matter to the
Supply-Post Office
minister who received me very courteously -I have to admit that the minister is always urbane when we approach him-and I asked him to have the post office enlarged. At the present time, there are up to three families using the same postal box, because the population is constantly growing. In fact, from 3,500 it has gone up to over 7,000, and the post office is now too small. There is no more room to put in letter boxes in the present building, because it is not large enough. The municipality of Gatineau Point cannot be satisfied in this way.
(Text):
As far as the municipality of Gatineau Point is concerned, as well as Gatineau itself, there too the department should put up letter boxes for the posting of mail from that community, and business people should be allowed to sell stamps, so that the citizens need not walk great distances to buy them, because some people have to walk up to a mile and a half to get to the post office.
I therefore ask the minister to look after these matters. Anyhow, he cannot do otherwise, because he himself advocated those changes when he was sitting on this side of the house. Well, now that he is sitting on government benches and that he has the necessary authority, let him proceed with those changes he was asking for, and we will not begrudge him our approval.
(Text):


John Andrew W. Drysdale: I should like to take this opportunity to make one or two remarks. As the representative of a fast-growing community in western Canada I should like to draw certain matters to the attention of the Postmaster General. I hasten to assure the hon. gentleman that my words are not words of criticism but of constructive suggestion and, later on, there may even be words of commendation.
The municipality of Burnaby has a population of some 100,000 and an area of 40 square miles. Yet Burnaby is without its own central post office. New Westminster and Vancouver have complete postal facilities. If consideration is being given to the establishment of a federal building in central Burnaby I would suggest the location be in the vicinity of our municipal hall. I feel that consideration should be given to the establishment of a post office for Burnaby.
I also suggest that the Postmaster General give attention to the idea of having a Burnaby postmark. I realize that these things are perhaps relatively insignificant in the view of other hon. members of the committee but

Supply-Post Office
anyone who realizes the pride of a municipality or city will realize the importance of the suggestions I am advancing.
In forwarding these suggestions I feel I should also bring to the minister's attention the fact that there is discussion in the Vancouver area concerning the metropolitaniza-tion of the whole area. I would point out that Burnaby is the heart of the lower mainland, the geographic centre of the mainland of lower British Columbia. I think he should give consideration to the long range possibilities of the establishment of a post office in the Burnaby area. In the last 20 years the population of Burnaby has risen from 50,000 to 100,000 within an area of 40 square miles and with the present dynamic leadership being given in the community not only by the municipal council but by the board of trade there is every indication that the population will perhaps double again in the next 10 or 15 years.
I wish also to direct the minister's attention to a similar situation existing in the municipality of Richmond which I also represent. Strangely enough the population of this area also doubled in the last 20 years. Richmond has a present population, I believe, of 40,000 and covers an area of 57 square miles. I would point out that all airmail from the Vancouver area goes through Richmond because the Vancouver international air port is located there. I wonder if the minister would also give consideration to the establishment of a central post office in Richmond. We would like to see it located in the federal building in that area.
From time to time I understand that the Postmaster General receives certain complaints. I am at times critical when I feel that criticism is justified but I should like to point out to the minister that since my election in 1958 I have had occasion to bring to his attention only three or four complaints regarding the postal service in my riding. I have no hesitation in saying that in each instance the minister had the situation thoroughly investigated and in every case I received a satisfactory reply.
I wish to express appreciation to the minister for his being of assistance to me in another matter. Some criticism appeared in the local newspapers in my riding concerning the postal service in the area. I thought perhaps the criticism was not based on fact. The minister was kind enough to make arrangements under which I was able to take the four local editors from Burnaby and Richmond on a tour of the Vancouver post office. They were able to ask any questions they wished and an effort was made to explain anything which caused them difficulty.
[Mr. Drysdale.l
Since that time I have seen no criticism editorially in those newspapers.
Having worked in post offices during Christmas vacations I have developed a first hand approach to the subject of this department based on my experience as a letter carrier and sorter of mail. I am amazed at the few mistakes that are made by the post offices. I feel that some hon. members in presenting the complaints they have received magnify the minor mistakes that have been made. I would suggest that this is out of all proportion. The minister's department is probably subject to attack more than any other department for the reason that through every letter, post card and circular the Postmaster General representatively goes into the homes of Canadians. If there is any delay in the receipt of good news or bad or any minor delay in mail delivery we tend to ascribe the difficulties to the Postmaster General.
In studying the situation in my area and in attempting to bring problems or complaints to the attention of local departmental officials in both Vancouver and Burnaby I have found a genuine interest on their part in correcting any of the real or alleged delays. A suggestion was made to me which I will pass on because it may be valuable to other hon. members. When a person complains about delay in receiving a letter I am always pleased if they send me the particular letter so that I can then trace it and assist in discovering the reason for the delay. This provides the post office officials with an opportunity to clear up the difficulty.
I appreciate having had this opportunity to bring forward these few points which I know will be of interest to my constituents and to commend the minister on the excellent job he is doing.


Osias.-J. Godin: Mr. Chairman, I should like to make a few brief remarks concerning problems of general interest relative to the question of good relationships between the Post Office Department and the public. I feel this is of importance because this department more than any other department of government is in daily contact with Canadian citizens through the postal services.
I have a file of letters here. All the numerous communications I have had with the minister's department have been dealt with courteously but the replies have been marked "personal and confidential" and therefore it will be difficult for me to deal with some of the problems I have in mind.
The first problem with which I wish to deal concerns the amalgamation of the city of Sudbury. Amalgamations are a common occurrence today and have taken place not

only in Sudbury but elsewhere in Ontario. A part of my riding was amalgamated with the city of Sudbury and this has created a problem for the postal department. I am proud of the fact that the amalgamation took place but the residents of the area affected are entitled to expect the same postal services that are provided elsewhere in the municipality. I realize that this cannot be done immediately and I know that the local officials in Sudbury are investigating the matter of adequate postal services in this area. I appreciate, too, that this situation developed shortly after the government took office. I know that the personnel of the department in Sudbury are making every effort to have action taken on the question.
I feel that in instances like this the Post Office Department should take the initiative in having special studies made. A lack of action in this respect creates poor public relations between the department and the local citizens. I urge the minister to have a study made as rapidly as possible. If this were done it would reduce the number of complaints that are sent to members of parliament and the Postmaster General. People write to us because they have no one else to whom they can address their complaints. I appreciate very much receiving those complaints. It is their right to make the complaints and it is my duty to listen to them. I am certainly willing to receive them and pass them on to the minister on every occasion.
In this area, of course, some people have rural service only. Under the amalgamation the area became part of the greater city of Sudbury. Therefore, the people feel that they should receive door to door service promptly. Based on the population of the subdivision of this area, they should receive it.
Without quoting the actual words of the letters of the Postmaster General, his last letter simply indicated to me that the investigation which he told me was going on a month or two before had not even begun. This is the type of thing I find very hard to explain to my constituents, and it is difficult for them to feel satisfied with the approach of the minister to this problem. This is not an absolutely grave complaint but it is a proper one. I am sure the minister will realize that if there is a change in the community life and his department is affected he should make absolutely sure that he has the staff in the field to take care of the change. Possibly the personnel in the Sudbury area are overloaded with work; possibly they cannot find the time to make the investigation which is required to rearrange certain routes
Supply-Post Office
and give to the citizens the postal service which will be as good as that formerly given to the limited city of Sudbury. The citizens could be notified as soon as it is done, or they should be told that it will be done shortly. If that were done they would realize that it is not possible to make the change and rearrange the postal services in a few weeks or a month. If the matter is long delayed, especially as we were advised that the investigation which we were told was going on had not even begun some months after, the people should be informed about it.
I think it is proper that the minister should be advised that a rapid study of the problem should be made. The acuteness of the problem was known to his department, no doubt, long before this amalgamation application. I know that the one in Sudbury was discussed for at least three or four years. The citizens knew in advance that the amalgamation would take place on January 1 the following year. The department should have known that and that was the time to make the study. I am not saying that the amalgamation took place five years ago; I am saying that the application was made five years ago and the amalgamation took place since the present Postmaster General took office. Therefore he has the previous experience to know something about it and also he has the facilities since he became the Postmaster General.
(Translation):
Mr. Chairman, I would like also to bring to the attention of the Postmaster General the problem of the Val Caron post office. I am glad to make these few comments to him in French, knowing that he understands this language quite well.
I have had the opportunity to make representations to the minister for more than two years with regard to the Val Caron post office. According to his replies, the situation there would be satisfactory. I want to point out to the minister that the Val Caron post office-I am not talking about the service, but about the building itself-and even though there are some in even worse shape- is located in an old garage which has been converted to the purpose. I personally know the town of Val Caron and the whole neighbouring area, and I can assure the minister that the building which houses the postal service is not at all adequate for this village. People who are forced to use it have to face difficulties, particularly in the wintertime, that do not exist anywhere else.
I am happy to tell the house that at Palmer, not far from there, the minister has built a post office in a municipality almost similar to that of Val Caron. People of that town are quite proud of their new post office.

Supply-Post Office
I feel it would be appropriate to consider the situation which prevails at Val Caron. It seems to me that we could rent a more suitable building or allow the owner of the garage that houses the post office to put up a building of which my fellow citizens would be proud, a building more in harmony with its surroundings.
Mr. Chairman, now that I have made those few remarks, I must say that I have always received favourable consideration from the minister, even if he did not always give me satisfaction.
(Text):


Laurier Arthur Régnier: Mr. Chairman, it is a privilege for me to speak on behalf of my constituency of St. Boniface, not to make complaints but to express my commendation of and thanks for the service given to the people of St. Boniface in the new area of Windsor Park, by granting them door to door service. In Charleswood we had door to door service last year, and this year we have received the drop rate of four cents on mail. We tried hard to obtain the four cent rate for the town of Transcona, and this month it has also been extended to that town. It has also been extended to places as far away as 10 miles from the city of St. Boniface, such as the village of St. Norbert and Fort Whyte, St. Charles, Pacific Junction, Tod post office in the municipality of St. Vital, and Birds Hill.
It is remarkable how well the people have been served since 1957. The year 1957 was the first time there was an improvement in that district by having a door to door delivery in the town of Transcona. Now the whole district, the metropolitan area of greater Winnipeg, has received the four cent rate.
I should like to thank the minister, his department and also the employees in the city of St. Boniface very much for their cooperation and their faithful service in the conduct of their duties.
There is another improvement that is being planned, namely the new post office for the city of St. Boniface. I understand this building will conform with the improvements in a city of 35,000 people which is growing fast, and it will harmonize with all the wonderful buildings that the city of St. Boniface is already blessed with. As you know, the city of St. Boniface is one of the oldest cities west of the capital. It has a French speaking population, is a city of culture and has wonderful buildings. I am sure the new building will conform to the present architectural style and the importance of such a city.
I should like to make one request. I believe the Post Office Department should issue

a stamp to commemorate the religious character of Christmas and counteract the emphasis on commercialism. I know that the Post Office Department has issued many worthy stamps to commemorate different historic events and I think the department should not forget to commemorate the nativity, the greatest event so far as Christianity throughout the world is concerned. I am sure this will be done. I do not want to take more time as many hon. members wish to speak. I have nothing but thanks to offer to the minister and his department.


Murdo William Martin: Mr. Chairman, I am not going to speak very long on this subject today but there are two or three matters I should like to raise at this time. The first, and certainly one of the most important that the minister should consider, is the pay and remuneration of the letter carriers. I think the rate of pay these men are receiving is disgraceful. I know that other speakers have referred to the yeoman service they render in all kinds of weather and certainly that is even more applicable in the area from which I come. The letter carriers have to go out when the temperature is 35, 40, 45 or 50 degrees below zero and sometimes have to wade through a couple of feet of snow that has fallen during the night. To me it is wonderful how they can even carry on their work. Certainly their rate of pay is in no way commensurate with the duties they perform for the public.
I have known some cases where letter carriers, after building up a few year's seniority in the department, have endeavoured to build themselves homes and when they came to pay the bills they found they had to leave the department, thus losing their seniority and all their benefits, and go back to work in the mines for a period of five years or so until they had reduced their mortgages before they could go back to the work of their choice in the department. I think it is a disgrace that they should lose all of their back benefits and I suggest that the minister should look into the matter very carefully and see if something cannot be done.
There is another small matter I should like to bring to the attention of the minister. As the hon. member for Burnaby-Richmond said, while it may not be of vital national importance it certainly is important to the people in the particular area of my riding. I refer to the condition of the present post office premises in the combined towns of Ramore and Holtyre. The building is certainly not intended for this type of work. It cannot be expanded, and if the minister's

inspectors would go there I think they certainly would agree with the local people that there is a very great need for a new postal building to serve these two communities.
There is one other matter that has been brought to my attention by more than one person and has to do with what is possibly a policy of the minister's department. To illustrate the point I should like to refer to the remarks of the minister when he first introduced his estimates on May 27. As found at the bottom of page 4282 of Hansard, he said at that time:
In any organization as large as the Post Office Department the relations between management and staff are of critical importance.
I am glad to see that the minister realizes the importance of good relations between the employees and the employer, particularly in an undertaking as important as our postal service. As found in the second column on the same page he went on to say:
During my term as Postmaster General I have had ample opportunity to study these men and women at their work. I have made a practice of dropping in unexpectedly and at odd hours of the day and night. I have been in offices at midnight; I have been in offices at 6 a.m., and I have been in offices at just about every interval between those two times. I never failed to be impressed with the employees' cheerfulness, their capability and their determination to do their work swiftly and well. I have found in the postal service a quality of devotion and integrity that is, perhaps, unusual in this day of materialism and mass production.
I should like to commend the minister for those remarks, particularly his reference to the devotion to duty of postal employees, but with reference to the first part of his remarks I am wondering how they tie in with certain complaints I have received. Probably the minister can explain whether a matter of policy that is applied across the country is involved. The complaints brought to my attention have to do with the new post office and federal building nearing completion in the town of Timmins. Although I have not seen it yet, I have been given to understand that there is what I believe is called an observation gallery in the building.
I understand that the gallery is closed in with one-way glass. In other words, people can look out through this glass but people cannot look in. I understand that the purpose is for supervision of the employees and so on. I should like to ask hon. members whether they would feel completely at ease in their work if they realized that at any time big brother, the Postmaster General, might be looking over their shoulders. The employees who have brought this matter to my attention say that they have a sort of creepy feeling. They never know who is
79951-0-314
Supply-Post Office
watching them and when and they feel that their integrity is being questioned more than it should be. As I say, I do not know if this is a departmental policy and possibly the minister could give some explanation of the matter. These complaints have been brought to my attention and I thought it was only right that I should bring them forward for the consideration of the minister.


William Skoreyko: Mr. Chairman, I rise to speak for only a minute or two. First of all, may I say that I think the minister is deserving of a compliment from myself as a member for a riding for which very little was done for a good number of years. Since my election in 1958 I along with other members from the area have been able to get the minister to consider plans for the establishment and erection of a new post office in the riding of Edmonton East. These facilities have been needed for a good many years and I wish to congratulate the minister on the way he has approached this problem and on the fact that the matter is finally in the planning stage.
The second problem I wish to bring to the minister's attention is one that has been brought to the attention of former ministers of the department by the east Edmonton businessmen's association. I refer to the need for facilities in the 118th avenue area. This is a section of the city of Edmonton where for some years business has been carried on in much the same way as in a small suburban town on the outskirts of a city.
There is suitable development in this area and the minister is aware of it as he visited this particular area with me last fall. I hope that serious consideration will be given to the establishment very soon of facilities in this area.
The second problem is one respecting a small town in the outskirts of my riding of Edmonton East, namely the town of Beverly. Ten years ago when this small town had a population of 2,500 people there were two postal facilities, namely two drug stores. The population of this area is now in excess of 10,000 people and they are being served by those two small drug stores some 40 blocks apart. I understand the minister is initiating an investigation into this particular area and service, and I hope that some good news will be forthcoming very soon in this regard.
I have only one other point to mention and this was brought to my attention by the hon. member for Hastings-Frontenac. It is with respect to postage on overseas shipments to underprivileged countries and disaster areas. I am speaking specifically of shipments made by our welfare organizations which are obliged to pay the full postal rate

Supply-Post Office
on these shipments. I suggest that this is a burden on these organizations.


Erhart Regier: I do not intend unduly to delay the passage of item No. 1 of the estimates, Mr. Chairman. However, I believe the minister realizes that once we overcome the hurdle of item No. 1 there ought to be little delay in processing the remaining items under his department. I want to underline the point I made on May 27 which was not replied to at that time. I realize the minister was very optimistic and hoped that after a brief reply we might agree to the passage of item No. 1 at the time. I refer to my plea that the number necessary under the regulations for the institution of door to door delivery be greatly reduced. With all the unemployment we have in Canada at the present time and also with the changes in the living habits of the Canadian population, I feel that the old regulation calling for a minimum of 2,500 calls in any post office before door to door delivery is begun is in line for major consideration. I believe that half of that number ought to be adequate.
I know there are problems of hiring men and giving them the five-day week when giving delivery for six days a week is involved. However, according to my calculations, a community having 1,250 householders would require four men, with three men always on the go. To those four men we might even, under these conditions, be able to grant the eight-hour day and the five-day week.
I think that a new look might be taken at this problem. I would ask the minister whether some consideration will be given to this proposal. I think it might enable the department to pay a little more attention to municipal boundaries if this were done. In my riding it would enable the people of Port Moody to receive their mail via the Port Moody post office rather than, as is the case under present conditions, roughly one third of them having to get their mail out of the New Westminster post office in order to have the advantage of door to door delivery.
I should like to underline the pleas made in this chamber by the hon. member for New Westminster and the hon. member for Burn-aby-Richmond that growing and relatively new communities in major urban areas surrounding larger cities be supplied with separate post offices of their own. The minister's reply to the hon. member for New Westminster with regard to the Newton post office is found at page 4704 of Hansard. The minister had this to say:
I believe he also knows that we are looking at the question of a post office building for that area. However, we do not want to be drawn into the erection of a building on a specific location in an
[Mr. Skoreyko.l
area which is expanding and growing as rapidly as is that one until at least there is some firm indication as to the pattern of growth which is going to take place in the years ahead.
I recall that a number of years ago, if not as recently as one year ago, there was in the estimates an item for the building of a new post office in Newton. If the government knew as early as that time that a new post office was needed in that area or that municipality, and had obviously agreed that it was going to build one or that one ought to be built,
I must ask the minister in all sincerity whether that item was in the estimates at the time for political reasons only or whether there was any degree of sincerity toward obtaining a vote in this chamber for the supplying of the people of Newton with a post office. In particular, I should like him to explain why after the decision by the House of Commons to allow the building of a federal building at Newton there are apparently now no plans to proceed or even to use the money that was originally allowed.
The hon. member for Burnaby-Richmond underlined the growing need for a post office in Burnaby in order to meet the requirements of the residents of Burnaby. I do not agree at all with his contention that there is only a small number of complaints as to the delivery of mail in Burnaby. In my experience the service rendered with regard to the delivery of mail has declined from year to year. It is my contention that the delivery of mail is going to decline in efficiency until at long last the government is going to grant us our own distribution arrangements.
I should also like the minister to explain what the present attitude of his department is with regard to the rental of post office buildings. I know the former minister of public works took a very firm position in this regard. It was his opinion, which was expressed in this house, that wherever possible the Department of Public Works ought to own the building and that there ought to be no arrangement whereby the department would grant a rental lease to an individual, who would then take that lease, go to the bank and obtain the loan necessary to finance entirely the cost of a building and who would be able to repay the whole of the cost of the building out of the rentals outlined in the lease, and then at the end of a five, seven or ten-year period he would remain the owner of the building toward the ownership of which he had supplied nothing except a little bit of organizational ability.
We have at this time a building in North Burnaby not owned by the department. We have a building in Port Moody not owned by the government and there is a building on the Kingsway not owned by the government. The

rental in at least one of these three cases is one of the highest rentals on a square footage basis that the Post Office Department is obligated to pay anywhere in the dominion. I would like to see the attitude of the government expressed as being identical with the attitude expressed a year or more ago, and I would like to see a little more action on the part of the government to implement this attitude, and that they either purchase existing buildings or erect their own buildings wherever it is economically right to do so, rather than renting buildings at exorbitant rates.
I should also like to make one additional reference to the reply of the minister to the representations of the hon. member for Vancouver East. The attitude of our group is that the taxpayers of Canada ought not to subsidize the distribution of advertising through the mails. I noted the minister's reply both on May 27 and again on June 8 when he emphasized that it is very important that there be the widest distribution of newspapers and magazines into the homes of the people of Canada.
I agree with that basic attitude of the minister. However, it is not the appearance and the distribution of the magazines and newspapers and other educational media that we take exception to; we feel that there is an undue amount of brain washing already in eixstence on the Canadian cultural scene and we do not like to see the post office being misused in order to enhance the interests of the advertisers of our nation.
The minister also said, as reported on page 4705 of Hansard for June 8:
-I see no necessity to ask the house to authorize any increase in the first-class postal rate.
May I assure the minister that neither the hon. member for Vancouver East nor any other member of our group advocated an increase in first-class postal rates at this or at any other time. However, we now adopt the attitude that the minister adopted when he was in opposition in 1954 when he advocated that the users of first-class mail be not penalized in order to make possible the distribution of the very heavy burden of advertising, which is indeed a heavy burden on our employees in the Post Office Department.


Francis Alvin George Hamilton: May
I ask the hon. member a question before he resumes his seat. Did I understand him to say that the attitude of his group was that the taxpayers of Canada should not be asked to contribute to what I think he said was a subsidy on this particular class of mail?


Erhart Regier: We do not mind a subsidy on the distribution of educational information 79951-0-314J
Supply-Post Office
such as contained in text books, novels, newspapers or magazines. However, we do take very serious objection to the post office having to subsidize the commercial advertising enterprises of Canada.


Robert Simpson: Mr. Chairman, I should like to take this opportunity of bringing to the attention of the minister a problem which is of vital importance to the residents of one of our enterprising young communities in northern Manitoba. At the community of Snow Lake, Manitoba the people are receiving at the present time only tri-weekly mail service. This service has been going on for some time and up until very recently it was possibly the best service which could be provided by the Post Office Department because at that time there was only tri-weekly service on the trains travelling on the Hudson bay line from The Pas to Churchill. But now with further development at the new town-site of Thompson, Canadian National Railways have now inaugurated a daily service going northwards out of The Pas, and I would like the minister to give the very fullest consideration to investigating this situation to see if it would not be possible to take advantage of the new train service to give the people of Snow Lake a daily mail service.
In yesterday's mail I received a letter from the local administrator of that point. Attached to that letter was a very lengthy petition signed by the majority of the residents of Snow Lake. I understand that the original of this petition has been directed to the minister, and I sincerely request that this matter be given every consideration. I would like to point out that I am sure the people of Snow Lake would be very gratified to know that plans are under way for the construction of a new post office, and I certainly hope that this will be carried out as quickly as possible. The postmaster at Snow Lake has been performing very satisfactory service under sometimes adverse conditions due to lack of space in relation to the volume of mail which comes into this new community. This is a mining community, everyone there is employed, and I am quite sure I am safe in saying that there is a large volume of mail going in and out of Snow Lake.
There is one more small matter I should like to bring to the attention of the minister concerning another point in northern Manitoba, Cranberry Portage. Some time ago complaints came in from the residents of Cranberry Portage in relation to the facilities of the post office at that point. As the result of these complaints an investigation took place and all of the complaints were fully investigated. One of the recommendations which came out of the investigation by the

Supply-Post Office
officials who made the investigation was that it was very desirable to have a post office at that point located in a separate self-contained building entirely apart from the building which it is now in, which also houses a general store. In January this recommendation went in and I was advised by the Post Office Department that they felt this should be done. I should like the minister to investigate this problem and, if possible, advise me as to just what progress has been made.
In closing I should like to commend the minister on the work he has been doing in operating the department and to thank him for the co-operation I have had in the past. I should also like to make a strong plea to him to see if improved mail services cannot be had for the people of Snow Lake. I do not believe it would be too difficult. Snow Lake is located about 36 miles off the Hudson bay line and has access by road to the railhead at Wekusko and trains arrive in We-kusko every day. It may need some new arrangement with the contractor who transports the mail from Wekusko to Snow Lake, but this mail contractor has some obligation to meet each train every day in other work which he performs and I do not think it would be too difficult to make arrangments for mail to be carried between Wekusko and Snow Lake.


John Smith: I should like to ask the minister briefly about a matter in connection with curbside mail boxes. We have one in the riding which I represent which was put in on a trial basis. I believe there are others in other parts of Canada. I should like to have the minister tell us what success they have had with these curbside mail boxes where you can drive up in your car and put your mail in the box. It has been very popular in the city of St. Catharines and I understand there has been a request for a few more. The one we have was one of the first put in, but I think there could be some improvement in the design of the box itself. The one important factor is to make it weather-proof so that wind driven snow cannot get into the box. There are two types of curbside boxes. There is one with a conveyor belt that takes the mail into the post offices. I am not thinking of that. I am thinking of the boxes placed on residential streets where you can drive up in your car, put the mail in it and drive away.


John Richard Garland: I am reluctant to add an off note to what seems to be a happy afternoon with compliments flying and, I am sure, Compliments which are well deserved in some cases, but there is a matter which I feel is my duty to raise. Before doing so

I should like to take this opportunity to say that Canada is fortunate in having such a high calibre of civil servant across the country, and of that group none are more loyal or more devoted than those employed in the Post Office Department.
My question arises from two directives which were issued during 1959 in the Post Office Department and which seem to me to smell strongly of political meddling in the public service. It has to do with the functions of civil servants carrying out their normal duties and I think it adversely affects this important postal service to the Canadian people. Perhaps I could explain best and more briefly by citing an example of the appointment of a subpostmaster or the transfer and appointment of a subpostmaster.
With the development which has taken place in this country and around many of the large cities of this country I think this is becoming more and more of a problem as more and more of these offices are required to be opened. As I said, I think I can best explain by taking an instance where a subpostmaster resigns. Normally the procedure to be followed as I understand it would be for officials to explore the possibilities, to reexamine the area with a view to appointing a new subpostmaster. Now I understand that on the basis of a directive from Ottawa dated February 17, 1959 which dealt with the transfer and appointment of subpostmasters, and a further one of May 26, 1959 which dealt with the opening of subpost offices, postal officials from coast to coast have been affected, and as a result of those directives they are unable to take the necessary action to maintain this service. On the contrary they must wait for instructions, and any applications, I understand, that are received locally, and this applies to all Canada, must be forwarded to Ottawa for approval, which seems to me can only mean political approval.
That is a backward step. It is a step which I think interferes with the normal functions of officials of the Post Office Department. That sort of thing may have been good enough back in the old horse and buggy days but I do not think it is good enough for 1960 and I would ask the Postmaster General if he will give serious consideration to rescinding these two directives, the one of February 17 dealing with the transfer and appointment of subpostmasters and the one of May 26 dealing with the opening of subpost offices. I ask him if he will consider rescinding these directives which I believe are politically inspired.


Murray Lincoln McFarlane: I should like to make a few brief remarks on the subject of the postal service through Nelson and points east and point out, first of all, that at the present time

there is a very close connection with the postal service at Nelson. I understand that one truck brings the mail into Nelson and the other leaves almost immediately, so that if the Vancouver mail truck is late getting in the mail is held up indefinitely until a connection can be made. I would suggest that more leeway be allowed in connecting truck times between Nelson and points east.
Another point I wish to raise concerns registered mail services. I do not think we are providing the service that we should provide to many of the rural communities. I had an instance brought to my attention where a letter was registered at a point in the lake Windermere valley to another point eight miles away. In view of the regulations which require, apparently, that the letter has to go to a subpost office, by the time it had gone around it was 10 days before the letter was finally received although there was only such a short distance involved. So I would like to suggest that a small bag or pouch be utilized for this purpose so that registered mail could be handled without this serious delay.
Another point I should like to draw to the attention of the minister concerns airmail service. I feel that in many of these smaller communities especially in our area when first-class mail is picked up it should be immediately transferred to a point where it will connect with air mail service. It should be forwarded by air mail from the distribution point rather than being transported by truck as it is at the present time.
I should like to cite an example of what I mean. If a letter is mailed in Creston in time to catch the mail truck out of Creston at ten o'clock in the morning the letter is taken to Cranbrook. It travels by truck until it reaches Calgary the following day. It is late getting into Calgary and it is not delivered in Calgary until the following morning. If that first-class mail out of Creston were transferred at the post office in Cranbrook to the air mail service it would be in Calgary within four hours after mailing in Creston.
This is something to which we should give consideration. We are giving air mail service to the larger centres and I feel similar services could be provided to smaller communities rather than allowing first-class mail to take the usual course of delivery.
Apart from these suggestions I have made we are very well satisfied with the rules and regulations of the Post Office Department. I believe that the Postmaster General is turning out sound regulations and that he and his staff are doing an excellent job of mail delivery under conditions that are often difficult in our part of the country,
Supply-Post Office
particularly in the winter months. I would be grateful if the two or three matters I have mentioned could be given consideration. I do not feel it is asking too much to have given to people in rural areas the postal service that is given to people in larger centres.


William Arnold Peters: Mr. Chairman, the Post Office Department is one of the most highly socialized operations in the world today. We want it to be as efficient as possible because it proves something we want proved not only here but throughout the world.


Robert Jardine McCleave: We will keep the hon. member away from it then.


William Arnold Peters: Canada has done a good job in supplying mail service at a reasonable price and the results are highly satisfactory. The salaries of postal employees come under the Civil Service Act and do not come within the purview of the minister. The Postmaster General should pay closer attention to the wages and working conditions in post offices than he has in the past.
The minister spoke of his visits to post offices throughout Canada and stated that he arrived at all hours of the day and night. When I worked in the mines we sometimes had bosses drop in unexpectedly. Mines are dark, dismal and not well lighted and sometimes we would take a long lunch hour. We never appreciated unexpected visits from our boss under those circumstances. I draw this to the minister's attention.
I suggest that if we raised the salaries of postal employees we would not have to have snooper systems or runways and pilfering would be reduced. I appreciate that runways are not only a technological advance but serve as a check on employees. The days are gone when supervision of this kind is required. We should improve salary standards and working conditions.
Progress has been made in terms of promotions within the department but the progress is not fast enough to suit me. I recently travelled on a train with a friend with whom I had worked in a mine. He is an honest and conscientious employee. He accepted a job in the Post Office Department in Ottawa two or three years ago and although the wages were adequate and the working conditions not unpleasant he has already grown dissatisfied with the lack of opportunities for promotion or advancement. I have heard this from other employees of post offices including the one at Kirkland Lake of which I have knowledge. Promotions are not always accorded under civil service regulations on the basis of seniority or in accordance with skill or acquired knowledge. Often someone

Supply-Post Office
is brought in from outside which precludes opportunities for advancement among the local employees.


Francis Alvin George Hamilton: Perhaps the hon. gentleman would permit me to make a statement at this point. If the hon. member will look in the official gallery he will see the deputy minister who started off his career as a clerk in the department. He will see another official, just below the deputy minister in rank, who began his career as a letter carrier. He will also observe another couple of fellows in the official gallery who started off slugging mail bags somewhere in the back of a post office. If the hon. gentleman would direct his attention to the table of the house I believe he would see another man who started off in the Post Office Department as well. I believe that is a pretty good answer to there being inadequate opportunities for advancement within the department. The answer can be found in the gentlemen sitting up in the official gallery.


William Arnold Peters: I am amazed and gratified by that information. My hon. friend described the situation as he sees it. It may be that promotions are slow through no fault of the system but through a failure of the departmental officials to disseminate information about opportunities for advancement among employees of the department.
There are a number of other problems that 1 should like to discuss. Some of them affect the wage structure of the postal employees for the work they do. I have had complaints in my riding from people getting $270 a month on which they have to keep a family. They are doing a job which involves walking up to 14 miles a day carrying heavy mail bags. They have responsibility for confidential matters and for financial documents. They have responsibility that is considerably above that which would be given to an individual in any other industry at that rate of pay. I think they have grounds for complaint.
In many instances they object to the fact that they cannot use their own cars for transporting their mail sacks from the general post office to where they are going to deliver their mail. Most of them have cars and they would like to throw the bag in the back seat and drive 20 or 30 blocks and then pick up their route from there and leave the car parked on a side street and pick it up again after they are through. They tell me they are not allowed to do this. This may be true of only one or two post offices, but it is true in one. They object to this; they think they should be allowed to use their cars. There may be very good reasons why they are not allowed to use them, but in the

smaller communities they could use the same system that is used in the suburbs of large cities where they have pick-up depots. The mail is taken to those depots and the mail man, instead of going to the main post office gets his mail from this particular depot. This may be an answer in part to the problem.
We have another problem that affects my riding because it is an urban and rural riding. I refer to the matter of rural mail delivery. The minister may say that this is not general, and I will agree. It is not even general in my riding, but it happens to be general in this particular area. We have asked for a survey to be made to see whether something can be done to solve this particular problem. I understand the department is working on it. I received this letter which will explain the problem fairly well:
As you probably know, this rural route is operated from Charlton some seven miles west of Englehart. At present we enjoy thrice weekly delivery and pick-up, i.e., Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. There is an R.R. 2 also serviced from Charlton which only gets twice weekly delivery.
Though only having three deliveries a week is bad enough, yet the length of time taken for mail to reach us from outside points, and the time for mail picked up here to get to its destination is absolutely unbelievable.
For instance, a letter requiring an immediate reply is received here on a Thursday. The reply is picked up on the Saturday. It does not leave Charlton until the following Monday and its arrival, say, in Toronto is on Tuesday and delivery there may not be till Wednesday. Mail for Kirkland Lake some 25 miles away has to be placed on the train, taken to North Bay then after sorting brought back by train to Swastika thence to Kirkland.
Incoming mail is just as bad. It takes papers (and letters) just as long to reach us from Kirkland as from Toronto.
Toronto is 400 miles away. I continue:
Papers published in Kirkland on Friday are not delivered here till the next Tuesday, the Toronto papers for the same day also arriving at the same time.
Letters from Tarzwell, only a few miles north of here are first taken to Swastika, thence to North Bay, then back to Englehart, then to Charlton and finally, days later, arrive at their addressees.
He goes on to say it is useless to complain to the officials and this is the part I should like to read:
Just one additional delivery through the week, on Monday, would mean an awful lot to us, and, if such could be effected I would certainly see that you are given the credit for bringing this about.
He wrote me another letter subsequent to this and this is what he said in part:
I have another glaring example of the inefficient, inadequate mail service in this locality.
At 10.03 p.m. on March 18 a telegram was handed in to Canadian National Telegraphs in Toronto. It was received in Englehart the same night. As we, in this modern community have no phones, the wire was mailed to me on Saturday, March 19. I received it at 11 a.m. Tuesday March 22.

Luckily, the telegram only announced the birth of a grand-daughter, but the whole point is that it would have been the same had the wire carried the news of a death or a fatal illness. And, of course, it could happen to anyone living on these ill-served mail routes.
In this connection it is interesting to note that the ''Telegram"-
This is the Telegram newspaper.
-of Saturday, March 19 carried the birth announcement. It arrived at the same time as the telegram which was sent some 24 hours earlier. And we in Canada are so far ahead of other nations in our ways of life, or are we?
All I want to do is to point out that we have problems and some of these problems concern our rural delivery routes. We have not kept up to date on those routes as we have in the urban areas. In my opinion we have the opportunity now of combining many of the rural routes, particularly in my area. I cannot speak for other areas but I think that conditions there are much about the same. The rural routes were laid out when we were driving horses, when the mail, certainly in the wintertime, had to be delivered by horse-drawn conveyances and the routes had to be kept to certain limits. Now automobiles are used in the summer time and in the main the routes are all snowplowed in the winter time. It would be a very simple matter in some instances to combine two and in other instances more than two rural delivery routes so that mail could be delivered much faster and much more effectively than it is at the present time.
On a number of occasions I have asked for changes in these mail routes. The method of proceeding is to take out a petition. When a petition is taken out it makes a lot of people angry because it means changing from a rural post office to rural delivery. After the petition is taken out, and overwhelmingly those petitions are in favour of one type of service or the other, nothing happens. In some cases this action is repeated two or three times over a period of four or five years with the same result.


William McLean Hamilton: The
hon. member refers to some cases. Will he give me two or three examples?


William Arnold Peters: I am thinking of one in particular, namely Uno Park. The second one is Thornloe. I have been involved in the one at Uno Park on two occasions. I do not know what the result is of the last request of two or three months ago but I do know that a gentleman who took out the petition, who had raised the matter with me the first time, tells me that none of his close neighbours will talk to him any more because they
Supply-Post Office
wanted the post office instead of the rural delivery, and yet the petition was quite highly supported.
This type of thing does not make for good relations in the community when it is done on this basis. The situation is changing. Conditions must have been laid down in the first place for establishing the set-up that was established. Conditions change all the time. I am thinking of road clearance and snow removal in the wintertime. Conditions are vastly changed from what they were. This means that the service can be changed and in many instances better service can be given.
We have another problem that I am concerned with which is in the transitional stage now. To date it has not produced any bad results in my area but I think it can and will, and also in Cochrane north. I refer to the sorting of mail on trains. There used to be mail cars on all O.N.R. trains but now sorting is done only on some of them. It meant that when the post office closed at six o'clock, or at whatever time it might close, people who wanted to get mail on the train would go to the station and drop their mail in the appropriate box, depending on whether the letter was to go north or south, and the mail would be delivered the next morning. The service from Ottawa or Toronto to northern Ontario is very fast provided certain conditions are met. If I mail a letter at four o'clock this afternoon and it leaves our subpost office and goes to the station directly rather than going through the main post office it will be delivered in Kirkland Lake tomorrow afternoon. If it goes through the local post office it may be a matter of many days. If it happens to be a brown envelope it will sometimes take four or five days, but normally first-class mail will be delivered immediately.
This situation is repeated all along the line, and one reason that return mail service has been so satisfactory is that the mail is sorted on the train by the postal staff. Even in the case of mail addressed to a small community ten miles away from the point of mailing, the postal staff are able to operate speedily enough to be able to drop this mail off at its destination although it may only be a few miles away. Service to these communities takes one day or less.
I am told that a number of postal employees have been taken off the northern run, that the sorting is only done at the centres now and that the mail is transported by truck. As a result, there is no service available to many of the small communities as was the case before. If mail is left at the post office after hours it remains there until

Supply-Post Office
the next day because obviously there is nobody there to sort it. The truck driver can only handle sorted mail and mail cannot be given to the truck driver to take to its destination until it is sorted because he is hired on the basis of conveying mail and not to handle or deal with it in any other way. There would be no cancellation of the stamps if the truck driver were to take such mail and I understand he is instructed not to do so, which I think is quite right.
We in northern Ontario would like more consideration to be given to this matter before any further curtailment in the sorting of mail on mail cars takes place. It may be that reconsideration can be given to those areas where this practice has been discontinued because it was serving a very useful purpose and providing a service that we need badly. We are a long distance from the main centres and a great deal of our business is done by mail. Telegrams are even more difficult to deliver to many of the small communities. Our mail service has been very satisfactory and we would like to see it kept on as high a level of efficiency as possible.
I have seen the situation that has developed in other areas of Ontario and which may develop in our area. I can remember being in southwestern Ontario a few years ago and a letter from Toronto to Dundalk, Orangeville or Collingwood took five days to get to its destination. I know that because my cheque used to be sent to me by mail and I would go to the post office every day for five or six days before I got my cheque. I hope that the minister, in giving consideration to the better distribution of mail to small communities, will take this matter into account. I have talked to people in the area I have mentioned and the mail service there is no better now than it was when I was there.
I suggest that the same thing could happen in northern Ontario and I say there is no reason why it should. We have been very satisfied with the mail service we have had and we would like to continue to receive that type of service. Therefore I ask the minister to give very careful consideration to the matter of changing from the sorting of mail on the train and using a truck distribution service instead. In the limited areas where the new service has been used or where it has not been possible to give service by rail because of the discontinuation of rail service to communities such as Matachewan the results have not been very satisfactory. When the railway went into that area the postal service was much better than it is now with the present system of transportation by truck and bus.


Jean-Thomas Richard: Mr. Chairman, I do not want to say very much on this item but I cannot help adding some words in praise of the Post Office Department. I think it should be said that the administrative staff of the department is excellent. As Canadians we should be proud of our post office system. I do not take anything away, of course, from the hard working minister because in working hard and giving attention to his department I think he rates as high as anyone who has occupied that office in the past. My heart does not bleed too much for the situation of the administrative staff generally. I think their conditions of work are good and their salaries are fairly well rated at the present time.
But I am always interested in learning more about the mail sorters and the men who deliver the mail. I should like the minister to bring me up to date as to their situation. I have always thought that these men are entitled to special consideration. Although they are not professionals as far as education is concerned, they are professionals having regard to the service they give. They make our lives a little more cheerful when we go to the door to receive our mail. I do not know whether they are trained that way, but I like to see the postman come to my door. In spite of any trouble he may have in his home life, he always seems to forget that, always inquires about me and tries to find out if he can be helpful. For that alone I think they should receive special consideration with respect to their remuneration.
There is one situation that always worries me. These men toil under rather heavy loads that we would not like to have to carry every day. There has been some improvement in this regard in recent years, but there still must be some men who after five, ten or fifteen years become physically not as able to do the job and cannot carry on. This applies also to some sorters whose work involves the use of their eyes and physical effort. I should like to know what happens to these men if after a period of time they cannot carry on their work. Are they placed in positions in other sections of the department at equal remuneration or do many have to leave their employment altogether? It is my impression that there are not many who lose their positions on account of the fact that they cannot carry on the work they have been doing. I hope the minister will be able to answer this question and at the same time I hope he will be able to tell the committee that he appreciates as much as any other member that the sorters and the men who carry our mail are entitled to special consideration in their rates of pay. I hope he will


I960
[Stage Direction]
lead the fight at all times, as he should, to see that the civil service commission realizes that our letter carriers are not just people who are walking the streets and throwing letters in mail boxes but are professionals in their field. I think all members of the house will agree with me on that.
William Moore Benidickson: Mr. Chairman, I want to assure the minister that I am not rising with anything but good will for him and for the department. Over the years I have found that the department takes into consideration in a very friendly spirit representations made to it by members of parliament, no matter what their political persuasion may be. I have always been pleased, as I say, with the investigations that have been taking place as a result of inquiries I have made or suggestions I have advanced to the Post Office Department. If I have any criticism at all, it is not of the personnel in the head office or in the district offices; it is rather I think of a system that has developed, shall I say.
While they respond with the utmost consideration to suggestions that have come from me as to improvements in services, over the years I have developed the feeling that somehow, perhaps under pressure from treasury board, there has been an extra consciousness of the budget and a fear of adding anything different or new to the budget. Sometimes they find it necessary to do something after a community or after a member of parliament makes a request. I sometimes think they should perhaps initiate some of these things themselves much more quickly when conditions change.
A great number of trains have been taken off. I sometimes think that the staff itself has not been too quick to adopt alternatives to replace perhaps a daily service to which we were accustomed to; and, for instance, when local trains are no longer in existence, to substitute transportation by truck or otherwise. Too often they seem to wait for a nudge from the community or from the member of parliament. I think the difficulty does not lie in the fact that they do not see these things. Rather I think the difficulty lies in the fact that they have had such a great amount of pressure upon them as to the need of not increasing their expenses that we sometimes find it necessary to make suggestions more often than we seem to be obliged to in connection with some other departments.
I do not want to repeat some of the excellent suggestions that have been made today, last Wednesday and on a previous occasion when the minister was before us with the administration item. I think perhaps 79951-0-315
Supply-Post Office
I might be introducing something that has not been discussed so far. I want to draw the attention of the minister and his officials to the fact that in some of the northern areas of our country where the population might be predominantly Indian we have in recent years been experiencing a change in the life that is being led there. Instead of sending many of the youngsters out to residential schools there has been a trend to establish day schools. Instead of sending the people out to hospitals and to doctors there has developed a pattern of small nursing stations through the community. I think the minister will be well acquainted with the fact that the economics branch of Indian affairs is attempting to have projects for timber resources development and the development of fisheries in the lakes in order to guide them to try to develop these activities. In consequence, their existence to a great extent is not the nomadic, moving-around type of existence as they have had in the past. We have now in many places- and certainly this situation applies in the constituency of Kenora-Rainy River-greater permanency in the life that is being led there. In consequence, air services are improved. The local services are on a regular basis rather than on a charter basis in many instances I could indicate to the department. Inasmuch as this regular schedule service is available at several of the headquarters of our bands I feel that a careful look should be given to the desirability of establishing the normal postal services that would be provided to that number of people if they were situated in any other part of the country. There is greater permanency now. The nomadic life is not being led. I think there is justification for setting up postal services.
There are one or two other items upon which the minister would perhaps care to comment either now or when we meet the appropriate item in his estimates. We are all aware that the annual report that is publicly available refers to the year ending something more than a year ago. Perhaps the minister might give us an indication of what has happened in the meantime with respect to commemorative stamps and perhaps he might give us an outline of what his schedule is with respect to new stamps for the present fiscal year.
In the annual report of the department for the year ended March 31, 1959 I note that the minister indicated the numbers of post office savings banks that are provided. Can he break that figure down as to the number of points in which there are postal savings banks but in which there would not be a branch of one of our chartered banks.

Supply-Post Office
I have had some experience with the benefits that have developed from the easing of regulations which are referred to on page 11 of the same report. The wording of the report is as follows:
-the regulations restricting letter carrier delivery across vacant land have been eased.
I wonder whether it would not be appropriate for us to have on Hansard, from the experience gained, a short description of the effects of these new regulations. I certainly know that in one of the larger communities of my area this easing has proved helpful because, by reason of the terrain in our part of northern Ontario where we have a great deal of water and a number of rocks, we have settlements established in fingers of the area which are sometimes quite a distance from the centre of the community.
Reference was made the other day, in reply to a question by the hon. member for Port Arthur, to the possibility of establishing group boxes in some of our communities where settlement is now some distance from the one and only post office in the community. In both instances I think he was referring to communities which have not a population that would under present regulations, justify the establishment of a letter carrier delivery system. In his reply last Wednesday the minister did not completely give me the information that I perhaps would be seeking, namely whether or not delivery by means of group boxes can be provided even in communities where letter carrier delivery service has not been established.
The other item with regard to which I would appreciate having some information on record because there is a great deal of interest in the matter is what the progress has been in the minimum numbers of householders that have been required over the years before the Post Office Department would entertain a request for letter carrier service. I think the number is now 2,500. But as I recall it, the last time in my constituency that we were able to persuade the department to institute a new letter carrier service the figure prevailing then was either 1,600 or 1,800. I was just wondering when the 2,500 unit figure was established.
In the debate and in the departmental report reference has been made to marine services. Does the postal transportation department provide marine mail service except by utilizing some already existing water carrier that is operating on a schedule similar to the arrangements that have been provided historically by the railway? If not, in what circumstances does the department enter into the establishment of new contracts with carriers perhaps carrying only mail?

I am not going to repeat at any length the feelings that have been expressed by hon. members on all sides of the chamber that the services provided by our letter carriers and some of our more humble clerks and sorters in the offices do not, under present conditions, seem to be remunerated on a scale that to many of us seems to be comparable and fair with respect to other occupations, both those in the non-government service in our highly organized union communities and indeed in some of the other departments.
I gave a specific illustration to the minister which rather continues to arouse my concern. I think in a community like Rainy River the postmaster has responsibilities, but without detailed information of the functions of that post and the funcitons of non-managerial numbers of the staff of the customs or immigration branch, I do not think his responsibilities are comparable with that of a routine member of the staff at the border point who would inspect visitors. I think that is an example and perhaps the post office has not been able to be as persuasive in the matter of increased salaries for some of its personnel as have some other departments. I think the difference in salary between those two posts is about $1,500. In my view there is no comparison between the attitude taken by the members of the community as to the responsibility of the postmaster himself and one who is not the senior man in either the department of customs or the department of immigration, one who is simply doing border checking at that point without the responsibilities of management.


Ernest James Broome: Mr. Chairman, I have in my riding an association called the superannuated civil servants. I have had several meetings with their executive in regard to a problem which is not properly a problem of the Postmaster General but which I should like to draw to his attention and ask his good offices to try to further the aims of this group.
A prime problem in a large city is that of casual help at Christmastime and the postmaster likes to get experienced personnel to act as straw bosses, so to speak, foremen, over help which has had no previous post office experience. But according to the act which governs superannuation and pensions, these men cannot earn in any one month more than they earned at the time they left the service. This is a very fair regulation and a very right and proper one. However, I think its application to casual help could bear a little looking into because I know of one case where a man in the city of Vancouver worked through at the request of the postmaster and his pay had to be adjusted to 65 cents an

hour because it simply went over the amount he was allowed to earn. In other cases they have to make a refund.
I have had letters on this and I have seen the letters which deal with it. The department has acted according to the letter of the law, but I would like the Postmaster General, if he would, to confer with his colleague the Minister of Finance and see whether some arrangement can be made whereby casual help who are only employed for a few weeks or a month might be exempted from these regulations.


David Rodger Mitchell: Mr. Chairman, I shall only take a moment of the minister's time but I want to draw to his attention one or two difficulties we are having at Sudbury, particularly since the amalgamation which took place on January 1 of this year.
In this amalgamated area naturally the four cents local postage rate will apply, with the exception of one area. I have had a great amount of correspondence complaining about people who receive their mail at this particular post office, which is not a sub, where letters have been mailed to them carrying a four cents stamp but when they go to pick up their mail they are charged two cents extra for this service.
I might say that this area is much closer to the city than some of the annexed areas which are already, and have been for some time, enjoying carrier service, with the exception of the one area about which I am speaking. I know that this post office was recently renovated by the Post Office Department and I would presume that a lease of some length has been taken on this building. However, I suggest that when this lease is over this post office be removed and the area that it serves can then in many cases apply for carrier service which is enjoyed by other areas much further removed from the central post office in the city, areas such as Minnow Lake, Gatchell, New Sudbury and part of Lockerby, the community of which I am speaking. All these areas are already enjoying letter carrier service, but the area around this post office is not.
At the same time there are two areas adjacent to it on either side which would like to qualify for rural route delivery and have community boxes established, but due to the location of the post office I am led to believe that rural route service cannot apply within half a mile of either side of a recognized post office. If such is the case I hope it will be looked into and that service can be given to these two areas in the form of a rural route service, which they will be 79951-0-315J
Supply-Post Office
pleased to get instead of having to travel the great distance to this post office. I know that many of the people living in these areas are having their mail delivered to their business addresses in the city rather than trying to pick it up at the Lockerby post office.
The particular beef I have, of course, is the four cents stamp and the two cents additional at this one post office, but nowhere else in the amalgamated area. (Translation):


Jean-Paul Deschatelets: Mr. Chairman, may I call the attention of the Postmaster General (Mr. Hamilton) to a stamp that was sent to me recently, from a source I cannot reveal.
At first sight, I thought it was a prehistoric animal, but using a magnifying glass, I was able to read the name of the Hon. Wilfrid Labbe, a member of the Union Na-tionale and of Mr. Barrette's cabinet.
May I also suggest to the minister that there should be a rule against affixing such stamps to letters. The one I have here gives the impression of being a current issue, and I really do not think we should tolerate the use of such stamps on correspondence that is sent and delivered through the Post Office Department.
We owe it to ourselves to allow all charitable organizations to use promotion stamps, but surely not stamps such as the one I received, which incidentally was quite unattractive. Besides, in my estimation envelopes are no place for such stamps.
I therefore ask the minister to inquire as to whether stamps of this type, used purely for election purposes-because such stamps are misleadingly similar to regular stamps-might have been cancelled in post offices, thus causing the government to lose revenue.
I leave the matter with the minister, and I am sending the stamp over to him so that he may have a look at it. However, I would ask him to return it, because after June 22, such stamps will become rarities, indeed, and I would like to hang on to that one. (Text):


Douglas Mason Fisher: Mr. Chairman, I would like to clear up one or two small points which I made in my previous remarks when I was talking about the scope of the football pools in Britain. Apparently I understated the number of pools and the amount of business they did. I was really only referring to one pool, and while it is the largest of the pool organizations it is only one of eight comparable organizations.

Supply-Post Office
There is one other point which might make it right and proper in terms of Tory pride to go along with. For example, the equivalent to our Minister of Finance in Great Britain also has a type of legalized gamble going, in that people who buy certain types of bonds and savings certificates over there have what amounts to an opportunity to win big prizes.


Charles Edward Rea: Order. I might just point out that when the hon. member discussed this the other day the Postmaster General referred to the fact that this came under the Criminal Code. I do not think, therefore, that the hon. gentleman can continue along that line.


Douglas Mason Fisher: I imagined it was affected by the operations of the Post Office Department, but I could be mistaken. Anyway I have had some mail since making my remarks which indicates that there are a substantial number of people desperately trying to play the football pools who are fed up with the attempts of the Postmaster General to block their efforts.
I turn now to something which I know is the responsibility of the minister. This is something which the hon. member for Vancouver East brought up. He compared the attitude of the minister toward the loss in carrying newspapers and periodicals in the old days with his actions now. One of the points in which I would be interested is the relationship in the loss, which I understand to be about $26 million-I say "loss" but I really mean loss of revenue, because that is what it is, rather than an actual loss-between the carrying of a large number of United States periodicals which now come to our country and the Canadian periodicals and newspapers. Could the minister give us a breakdown? These are newspapers as against periodicals, although I know that technically a newspaper is a periodical. There are only 100 daily newspapers in Canada at the moment and there are not too many weeklies. I wonder if the minister would have any kind of a break-down so that we could analyse this $26 million loss in revenue to see if it would not be possible to kill two birds with one stone, that is, to get more revenue and to give Canadian periodicals an advantage as compared with the United States magazines which come in and not only take away circulation but advertising revenue.
I know this could be looked upon as an extra tax, and there may be difficulties about dealing with magazines coming in from another country. I get magazines sent to me very week from Britain and it always seems fantastic that a big bundle of magazines can come in all the way from London for a one

and a half penny stamp. Maybe there has been some international agreement worked out, but if it is a fact we are losing so much revenue, and if a substantial proportion of it is the result of carrying United States and other foreign periodicals, we might consider some agreement to raise the price to the post office for carrying it.
One of the ironies about the newspaper situation in Canada today is a political one.
1	do not know of a newspaper in Canada that claims to be anything other than a spokesman of free enterprise. I am thinking especially of a Thompson paper or a paper such as the Globe and Mail which I understand has the largest circulation of any newspaper in Canada. These newspapers are preeminently for private enterprise and it always puzzled me to think that there might be this inconsistency about free enterprise. There is, of course, the fact that these free enterprises allow their employees in Ottawa to exist in government rooms at government expense down the third floor corridor, for example. But here is a bigger and more costly thing. We have these free enterprisers being, in effect, subsidized by the public purse if this loss of $26 million represents substantially the fact that the post office is carrying Canadian newspapers and periodicals. For that reason I should like to get a closer idea of the relative amount. I would like to know how much subsidy we are giving to these free enterprisers to publish free enterprise Canadian newspapers.
Take the Globe and Mail, for example, which takes delight in pointing out all the subsidies on western wheat and all the subsidies paid to farmers in general. These papers continually preach the gospel of free enterprise, rugged individualism, standing on your own two feet and so on, yet this is a paper which I understand has the largest mailed circulation of any daily newspaper in Canada and as a consequence this free enterprise operation is in receipt of substantial assistance from the government.
There is another aspect of this question which I suppose the minister has already considered. That is the question of the reason for this subsidy. If the minister looks at volume
2	of the History of Canadian Journalism, which is a book writen by a journalist whose name is Craick-perhaps the hon. gentleman has already done so; it really is not a history of Canadian journalism, but the story of Canadian publishers; it is a rather dull story except that they have always been lobbying down in Ottawa to keep this particular privilege-


William Heward Grafftey: You are very wordy. You take up a lot of time.


IS, 1960
Douglas Mason Fisher: If it were worth while, I would appreciate the hon. member's comment. But this story indicates that shortly after confederation-


William Heward Grafftey: Stop lecturing to us and get to the point.


Charles Edward Rea: Order.


William Heward Grafftey: Lecture, lecture, lecture.


Charles Edward Rea: Order.


Douglas Mason Fisher: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am always willing to defer to people who would like to take the floor, but if the hon. member refuses to get up-


William Heward Grafftey: Tiresome forensics.


Charles Edward Rea: Order.


Douglas Mason Fisher: These publishers right after confederation, came to Ottawa every time it appeared that parliament was trying to get the post office to raise the charges on this particular kind of mail and their argument always was that they performed a primary role in educating the Canadian people. I think this argument probably had much greater substance in the nineteenth century than it has today when educational advantages are so much more evident and when people can turn to the schools, to books, to public libraries and to radio and television services. So it seems to me that this particular argument in favour of this kind of subsidy no longer stands.
The argument used to be that to many people on back farms and in distant parts of Canada the newspapers were the only means of providing cheap information. It does not seem to me that this argument stands up any longer, so I think we should ask these free enterprisers to be free enterprisers and stop leaning on the Canadian government in this regard.
The last point I wish to make relates to post office employees. I think every member of parliament has had conversations with the postal carriers, and I think it is generally agreed that this particular group, as a result of the rationalization of the department which bespeaks efficiency, works rather hard. It is my general impression that it is almost impossible for them to have a soft touch.
In terms of requests for increased wages they are not in the bargaining position that trade unionists are. Two things are pointed out to them in reply to their arguments for higher pay. They are often told that there is a waiting list of people who want to become letter carriers. There is no market demand competing for their services as there is in the case of dentists or people in other
Supply-Post Office
occupations. The other factor is that the services they render to the post office are of little use beyond the postal service. In other words, it is almost impossible for a letter carrier to work for three of four years and then value that service in the labour market at a high level because it is not sufficiently specialized to make him much more useful an employee than someone who enters the labour market for the first time.
According to postal employees with whom I have spoken the factors I have outlined render it difficult for them to present a case. There is no competition in the labour market for their services and there is no increment in their earning value when they are working for the department. This is becoming more and more the fate of many people in the kind of employment situation we are building up today with large organizations in which there is no particular specialization. I hope the minister will realize that these are factors that the employees have little chance to change.
Another related factor is that the income level at which these men happen to be is not a very high one. Indeed, it seems to me that it is one of the lowest in the civil service just in terms of the physical exertion and mental alertness that are required. That kind of physical exertion and mental alertness has no parallel value in the market place and yet it seems to me it should be recognized by putting it on a higher base of pay. I hope the minister is pressing his colleagues and especially the Minister of Finance who is the important minister in this area with all the energy and persuasion at his command to see that this group of employees gets an increase in pay and I hope a substantially higher minimum. By that I mean between $300 and $700, somewhere in that range. If we could return to our constituencies with the good news already abroad I know it would make it pleasanter for members of parliament.
I may be out of order in raising the following point because it relates to privileges of members of parliament. Has the minister had any discussion with anyone about the question of the parliamentary frank that we have as members? Has there been any thought of extending it for a longer period? No one would want to see hon. members using the frank on a year-round basis for the purpose of mailing out party propaganda and circulars and so on. I know that other hon. members I have talked to have a problem similar to mine and especially those hon. members from Quebec and the maritimes. The parliamentary frank is a great convenience. There is more than the question of the cost of stamps involved. It would be a great convenience if

Supply-Post Office
we could have franking privileges both in Ottawa and in our constituencies for most of the year. With the sessions becoming so lengthy and with the regular follow-up that is required on much of the correspondence one has, the purchase of postage stamps is a substantial financial whack. In addition there is the added annoying inconvenience of going out to purchase the stamps, sticking them on, and so on, the cost of which has to be met by a group of people who do not have great resources.
Has the minister the power of initiating any discussion along these lines or, as a member of parliament, would the minister consider taking up the suggestion and seeing what the people who have the power and initiative may think or feel about it?


Frank Howard: Will the minister reply?


Francis Alvin George Hamilton: Mr. Chairman, I will try to be as brief as possible at this point. Some of the questions raised have been answered and I shall attempt to deal with some of the other matters in general terms. As hon. members have perhaps come to know, when there are certain points which require so much detail that they cannot be dealt with successfully and succinctly here in the committee it has been our practice to write the hon. member concerned immediately following the debate giving him the information requested.
As I have stated, some of the points raised come up year after year. I have come to the conclusion that this is almost automatic in the post office service. I wish to make the following brief excursion because I think it is interesting. I was interested to learn that what we thought was a new and modern process, the idea of photographing letters on reduced strips of film and sending the filmstrips by air mail, goes back not only through the wars but through peacetime to the Franco-German war of 1871 when the French post office successfully worked out such a system.
According to "An Outline of Postal History and Practice", a most interesting book, the French post office photographed letters at that time on to thin films of collodion. As the book states:
The films were rolled up tightly and placed In a small quill, which was attached to one of the tail feathers of the bird.
The bird was a carrier pigeon which served as the basis of the air mail delivery of those letters. Several hundreds of thousands of letters at that time were sent in this fashion between the United Kingdom and France almost 100 years ago. I believe this illustrates my point that the same kind of questions do crop up from time to time here in the committee.

A number of hon. members dealt with the question of salaries. I know that they know that this is basically a matter for the Minister of Finance. I think they also realize that it is one that is receiving sympathetic consideration at the present time and that I am personally very much aware both of their views and of those of the post office employees.
When speaking of the employees of the department 1 should on their behalf express the thanks of every one of them for the kind things which have been said about them here today. The hon. member for St. Denis earlier on took issue with me for having reported to the committee the accomplishments of the Post Office Department. I make no apology for doing so but I am very much aware, as I also pointed out at that time, that our success is based not only on the efforts of any one individual but on the tremendous efforts of a vast group of people.
The second thing that appeared to arouse the interest and curiosity of many hon. members was the use of the phrase "personal and confidential" on a fair amount of my correspondence. I was actually happy to find that this was referred to by approximately 12 hon. members many of whom made special speeches on this subject because when we reach the point at which the use of the phrase "personal and confidential" on a letter which goes to a member of parliament is the subject for debate in the consideration of the estimates of this department we have certainly reached a point at which there is apparently not too much in the department itself and its administration to be criticized. In reaching that point hon. members are, as it were, scraping the very bottom of the barrel.
Actually the hon. member for St. Jean-Iberville-Napierville gave us an example illustrating one of the principal reasons why this phrase is used on my correspondence when he said a letter sent to him had not been opened until he could open it himself and this caused him to miss an invitation which I had sent to him. I regret the fact that he missed the invitation, but members of parliament are writing me constantly on various matters, many of which are of interest only to themselves, many of which as far as I know they do not want bruited around too widely. As a result, I have tried, by marking these letters in this way, to ensure that the information goes directly to the member of parliament and is used by him as he sees fit. In many instances members have come to me and said, "I have this letter; have you any objection to the information being used?" And invariably, or almost invariably, I have said, "Absolutely not". But at least this does


I960
[Stage Direction]
respect a member of parliament and insures the fact that the information goes directly to him.
Incidentally, Mr. Chairman, I remember getting a letter on one occasion from the hon. member for Essex East when he was a minister. It brought birthday greetings and it was marked "personal". I think probably the same sort of thing applied at that time.
Individual problems such as those of the hon. member for Skeena, as I have said, we will deal with and report on. Since he spoke this morning I have been able to get some information. In so far as the service at this community of Nass river is concerned, we are attempting to improve its quality. We have got a contractor all ready to do it along the route, but now we have to cross the river and at the moment we are looking for somebody who will contract a boat service across the river at Greenville because the route is on the far side, as he knows. We hope to be successful in that respect.
The hon. member mentioned the letter carrier service in Kitimat. As he knows so well, our requirement is 2,500 houses. The present number is substantially under that; it is at the 2,000 mark, that is actually occupied houses, at the moment, and as soon as it reaches the 2,500 mark we will be delighted to institute the service there because other considerations such as weather are not going to stop the post office; I assure him of that.
The hon. member for Restigouche-Mada-waska made a number of interesting points. In the case of Dalhousie, we look forward to introducing letter carrier service there but it has not reached our requirements. I can assure him there is no shortage of rural mail boxes, nor are we overlooking areas where it is possible to give rural mail service.
The hon. member for Kootenay West said that his major criticism was with regard to the use of "personal and confidential" on letters and then he went on and spoke for 20 minutes on other matters so that his criticism in that respect must have been very forceful indeed. He asked us to keep post office lists more exact in so far as occupations are concerned. We do our best in that respect. Having indicated he likes to use the lists, he then criticized us for having them or, rather, he suggested someone else had criticized us for having them; that that information was information which should not be made available. Actually these lists are basically similar to those that one will find in a telephone directory, in electoral lists or anywhere else. The information is exactly the same although it may be arranged in a slightly different way by the post offices.
The reason, of course, that we do not give forwarding addresses from post offices is that
Supply-Post Office
in many instances this is information not respecting that particular post office but another one far away, and we are not interested in becoming an information service for bill collectors and the like. However, the regular publication of lists of patrons of a particular post office is quite a legitimate process. I appreciated the hon. member's observations on the question of stamp design and the other matters which I will deal with because they were particular points of interest only to him. I will deal with them as soon as we can get the information for him.
The hon. member for Parry Sound-Mus-koka suggested that in some instances people tendered too low for rural mail routes, and suggested there was something rather wrong and improper in this. There is an act of parliament which lays down the obligation. It says "shall" not "may" in so far as the Postmaster General is concerned in requiring him toward the tender to the lowest suitable tenderer. In those circumstances we follow the wishes of parliament. We will be delighted to supply letter carrier service to Parry Sound as soon as they reach the required number of householders.
I was grateful for the observations of the hon. member for Hull, although I am sorry he objects to my visiting post offices. I appreciated the remarks of the hon. member for Burnaby-Richmond and those of the hon. member for Nickel Belt. We will do our best to meet their suggestions.
It was very nice of the hon. member for St. Boniface to say the kind things he did about the new service they are getting in his area. The hon. member for Timmins again spoke on certain questions. There is one particularly that I think I should mention. This is a misunderstanding on his part in so far as observation galleries in post offices are concerned. They are there for one purpose only, and that is the detection of theft by employees in the department. They are specifically not used-our employees are forbidden to use them-for the normal purposes of supervision. They come into operation only when investigation or complaint has disclosed the fact that in a given post office thefts seem to be occurring. At that time investigators who are officially authorized to do it move into those galleries because we have found that post office employees tend not to steal mail when somebody is standing three feet behind them and looking over their shoulders. Therefore our investigators move into those galleries and watch the men from there and this is the only purpose for which they are used.
The hon. member for Edmonton East raised a number of points which we will attempt to deal with, as did the hon. member
49S0
[Stage Direction]
Supply-Post Office
tor Burnaby-Coquitlam, dealing specifically with the minimum number of calls required for letter carrier delivery. This is something which has been changed from time to time by the department and which we are always watching with considerable interest. As the hon. member for Churchill knows, certain matters are now under study in so far as the points he raised are concerned.
The hon. member for Lincoln asked specifically regarding curbside mail boxes. We have had a reasonable degree of success with those in certain communities. In other communities, interestingly enough, they have proved, for whatever reason we do not know, not to have the same popularity. Our general practice is to introduce them into whatever communities would like to have them.
The hon. member for Nipissing raised the question of subpostmasters and that those were now being handled from Ottawa. He implied that he saw political motives in this change, motives which I can assure you, Mr. Chairman, do not exist. The basic problem is simply this. Subpost offices are located in large cities as he knows, or at least in cities, and in many cities there is a tendency, because they do not know anybody in the post office, for the storekeeper or whoever is interested to write to Ottawa. We have decided, rather than overlook some people to centralize all those requests in one place, together with the report from the local people, and then make a decision on that basis. In this way no one is overlooked and it is also possible to take the veterans preference and other matters into consideration.
We are already investigating the matters which the member for Kootenay East raised. With respect to what the hon. member for Timiskaming said, I think I dealt with his remarks by pointing out the people in the gallery who have been with the Post Office Department for 30 or 40 years-I am tremendously proud to be associated with a department of this kind-and who started at the bottom and have ended up at the top. With respect to the question of dissemination of information on promotions, if you have the initiative, Mr. Chairman, you get where you want to go. Promotional opportunities are advertised in every branch of the department.
The hon. member inferred that we were falling behind because we were not sorting mail on the trains as much as we used to and he said that we should go back to this practice. In many cases we would be delighted to go back to it but unfortunately we have been forced off the trains and into the use of trucks because of the elimination of trips, the elimination of trains, the introduction of rail diesel cars which do not have the facilities

and similar reasons. Actually the voluntary doing away with a sortation car on a train in order to go to the road is, to the best of my knowledge, an unheard of thing in the department. It is only when we have to that we do it.
I thank the hon. member for Ottawa East for his very kind words with reference to the Post Office Department. I can tell him that in most cases, interestingly enough, letter carriers are able to carry on until their retirement age. I will probably get hit over the head for saying this but may I say that I do not know of any group of men anywhere in the country who are more genuinely enthusiastic about their job. I think that is what makes them happy when they call on the hon. member and other people. Most of them stay with their jobs until they retire. Those who do not are absorbed internally within the department, almost always as sorters for whom there is a steady demand.
The hon. member for Kenora-Rainy River raised a good number of fairly technical points which I think can perhaps be dealt with directly by correspondence. The hon. member for Vancouver South referred to the question of superannuation. This is very definitely under study at the present time and personally I agree with the point of view he expressed. With respect to the points raised by the hon. member for Sudbury and the question of amalgamation within his area, we are doing our best to work this out to the satisfaction of the citizens of Sudbury. The hon. member for Maisonneuve-Rosemont referred to imitation stamps. They cannot be confused with regular stamps unless our regulations are broken because on the face of the envelope we only allow our own stamps. These other stamps are quite welcome on the back of envelopes. There is no opportunity for confusion there.
The hon. member for Port Arthur raised a number of technical points. On the question of payment of postage on periodicals I come back to the basic fact that we are in the peculiar position of being next door to a large country which has a large circulation of its publications in our nation. We have to choose between refusing all revenue from them, which happens in some cases, or in other cases allowing them to be mailed in Canada at our rates. It is a nice balance actually to try to determine what the rate picture should be.
So far as the parliamentary frank is concerned, that is entirely a matter for parliament itself to decide. It is written into the statute and it would require an act of parliament to change it. I have sympathy with the hon. member but on the other hand I am very

much aware of the fact that all other people throughout Canada use stamps on their correspondence. Therefore I am inclined to think that members of parliament might want to use stamps on their correspondence when parliament is not sitting.
Douglas Mason Fisher: On that point may I mention this factor? Many people are aware that it is not necessary to put stamps on letters to members of parliament but they are not aware that this privilege lapses within 10 days of the end of a session. Then the member not only has to put up the nickle for the stamp but also has to pay the forfeit. This does not happen rarely but quite often. The minister has a public relations department and perhaps he could do a better job of advertising this situation than individual members of parliament.
I should also like to ask him whether it it is possible for him to procure a breakdown of the figure of $26 million in rough categories as to Canadian and United States periodicals versus newspapers.


William McLean Hamilton: There is nothing on file here nor with my officials in the gallery on this point. So far as Canadian publications are concerned, I think it would be difficult, if not impossible, to differentiate between magazines and newspapers. I may be wrong but from memory I think they are bulked together for the purposes of our accounts. However, we certainly could work out some sort of figures to indicate the relationship between publications mailed from the United States and those which are mailed in Canada. I would be glad to develop some figures along those lines.


Douglas Mason Fisher: I appreciate that. I am not asking that the information be given in the house. The minister can send it to me. I imagine that in building up the figure of $26 million some cost factors had to be taken into account. I imagine it is item by item rather than by weight. If the minister could give us some of these factors I should like to have them.


Francis Alvin George Hamilton: We
will be glad to try to work this out for the hon. member and get any information he requires because I think it would be of interest to all.


Frank Howard: I have one or two comments with respect to the "personal and confidential" matter. This is not a case of scraping the bottom of the barrel but rather it is a matter of concern to the individual who has a letter addressed to him. As I understood the minister he said that such letters may be used
Supply-Post Office
by those who received them as they see fit. Therefore I assume that I can disregard any reference to "personal and confidential" on letters from now on and use them as I see fit. That is what I understood the minister to say.


William McLean Hamilton: What I actually said was that a number of members had got in touch with me and said that they would like to use the information and I told them to go ahead and use it as they saw fit. However, I am not slow to take a hint. I must say that I will not put "personal and confidential" on as much of my correspondence as has been the case up until now. On the other hand, if members find information turning up in other places and causing them some difficulty, I do not want them to come back and say that I did not do what I said I was going to do. As I say, I am quick to take a hint.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
305.	Operations including salaries and other expenses of staff post offices, district offices, railway mail service staffs, and supplies, equipment and other items for revenue post offices, including administration, $105,664,147.
Frank Howard: In the details of this item on page 415 there is a reference to mail bags, the third item on that page, and the amount this year is $753,000 odd. The next item is one for uniforms and letter carrier satchels. It is my understanding that the initial making and repairing afterwards of all mail bags is done in our federal penitentiaries.


William McLean Hamilton: No,
Mr. Chairman. We still operate on the basis of tender so far as mail bags are concerned. I would say that approximately 50 per cent go to the penitentiaries. Some contracts are also let to private contractors. However, repairs are done in the penitentiaries.


An hon. Member:: Six o'clock.


Charles Edward Rea: Shall I rise, report certain resolutions and ask leave to sit again at the next sitting of the house?


William McLean Hamilton: I do
not want to hurry the committee but we have only a few items remaining here. As we have a long day tomorrow, if the estimates went through tonight it might help a great deal, even if we go on for a few minutes longer now.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Charles Edward Rea: Shall vote 305 carry?


Frank Howard: I have another point I wish to deal with. This may take somewhat longer than the minister contemplates. However, I do not know. The minister indicates the

Supply-Post Office
amount of approximately $753,000 for mail bags. This includes the initial cost. Is this for new mail bags this year or is it for new mail bags plus repairs to old ones?


William McLean Hamilton: This is our estimate for new mail bags plus the work done in repairing old ones for which we are obliged to pay this year.


Frank Howard: As to the cost item, how do you relate the cost of making mail bags and repairing them in a penitentiary by inmates? What rate per hour or per unit is charged as compared with what you are obliged to pay on a tender basis?


William McLean Hamilton: As
an example, out letter bags, the small ones, run about $1.95; the larger ones run about $2.98 plus the clamp locks. The repairs are paid at the rate of 30 cents a bag.


Frank Howard: You have some mail bags made in penitentiaries. I refer to new ones. What is your cost with respect to those made in penitentiaries? As to the $1.95 for the small ones and $2.98 for the large ones, that is your tender or estimated cost of having that work done by industry. I was wondering what that same cost is for making them new in the penitentiaries.


William McLean Hamilton: Actually the prices I quoted were the last prices which we had actually paid. I have this information right here. However, I do not have the figure split between those bags made in penitentiaries and those made by private industry. I would have to send out and get that information. I thought the hon. member had it. However, the basic principle is this. We call for tenders and we follow the principle of going to the lowest tenderer with, however, the reservation that a portion of this work must go to the penitentiaries. Hence there will be occasions on which we will be obliged to pass over a low tender in order to put work into a penitentiary.


Frank Howard: The minister has indicated that the information about the cost charged by the Department of Justice or the penitentiary branch to his department would be somewhere.


William McLean Hamilton: May
I just add one brief statement, namely that the penitentiaries, of course, if they are not low, must come down to be low before they get the contract.


Frank Howard: The Department of Justice or the penitentiaries bid? Is that what happens?


William McLean Hamilton: That is right.


Frank Howard: Perhaps this might be something that might be dealt with more appropriately under the penitentiaries branch in order to see whether they are competing fairly. I imagine the wages paid in the penitentiaries are somewhat less than those paid in private industry and would have a bearing on whether or not the penitentiary is able to compete with industry in this matter.


William McLean Hamilton: think that is something which should be discussed with the Department of Justice.


Azellus Denis: We have a complaint about the Casselman post office building on which the inscription is only in English. As 99.9 per cent of the population is French, I hope the Postmaster General will see the Minister of Public Works about this matter.


William McLean Hamilton: anything over 30 per cent of the people who are using that post office are French, we will certainly see that a bilingual sign is put on it. That is our principle.
If 99.9 per cent of the population are French, as the hon. gentleman suggests, we will just put on a French sign.


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

John Whitney Pickersgill: Before you leave the chair, Mr. Speaker, may I ask whether the acting house leader can indicate what the business will be for the rest of the week.


Alfred Johnson Brooks: Tomorrow, as announced in the business last night, I may tell the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate that he will have his day in court as we are taking up the estimates of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. After that we will take those of the Department of Mines and Technical Surveys and, if we have time, those of the Department of Veterans Affairs.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Would that be the business for Friday as well?


Alfred Johnson Brooks: No. The business for Friday will be announced tomorrow night.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: If I may be permitted to make an observation at this time, as a representative of the socialist and therefore orderly thinking and planning group, may I say that we should like to know why it is necessary to keep bobbing around with the estimates. We should like, as far as possible, to take one set of estimates and to complete them before going on to others. We know that on occasion the ministers are obliged to be

absent from the chamber. However, I think it makes for much more orderly debate to have as far as possible the estimates completed one after the other.


John Whitney Pickersgill: I think perhaps I might rise on a question of privilege on this matter and explain to the house that the government
Business of the House
made a change last evening in order to suit the convenience of the official opposition because of certain unexpected things that happened today.


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

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

Mr. Tucker: 1.	What outlays, If any, have been made by the Canadian travel bureau for advertising and publicity for the years 1957 to 1959 inclusive?
2.	To which advertising agencies have such advertising outlays been made?
3.	Has the advertising account of the Canadian travel bureau been transferred within the past year?
4.	If so, to what agency?
5.	Who are the directors of such agency?
Answer by: Hon. Alvin Hamilton (Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources):
The answers to the above questions are related to advertising in the fiscal years 1957-58 to 1959-60 inclusive.
1.	1957-58, $1,252,550.75; 1958-59, $1,366,944.19; 1959-60, $1,415,938.58.
2.	Cockfield Brown and Company Limited, Harold F. Stanfield Limited, F. H. Hayhurst Company Limited, Locke Johnson Company
Limited, Stanfield, Johnson and Hill Limited, Dalton K. Camp and Associates.
3.	Yes, in part.
4.	As part of a policy to have the three magazine, newspaper and Atlantic provinces' advertising campaigns handled by separate agencies, the bureau's advertising account has been handled from time to time by several agencies, Dalton K. Camp and Associates being added last year.
5.	President, Mr. Dalton K. Camp; vice president, Mr. C. W. Kettlewell; secretary-treasurer, Mr. F. J. Boyer.
[The following items were passed in committee of supply]:



POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT

[Stage Direction]
304.	Departmental administration including Canada's share of the upkeep of the international bureaux at Berne and Montevideo, $1,926,670.
305.	Operations including salaries and other expenses of staff post offices, district offices, railway mail service staffs, and supplies, equipment and other items for revenue post offices, including administration, $105,664,147.
306.	Transportation-movement of mail by land, air and water, including administration, $61,316,459.
307.	Financial services including audit of revenue, money order and savings bank business; and postage stamps, $3,123,671.
[Stage Direction]
Thursday, June 16, 1960