1961-09-11

Mr. Speaker:: I have the honour to inform the house that consequent upon notification of a vacancy in the representation, given in this house on Friday, September 8, 1961, by the hon. member for Welland, and pursuant to section 10 of the House of Commons Act, I have addressed my warrant to the chief electoral officer for the issue of a new writ for the election of a member in the electoral district of Waterloo South.



ROYAL CANADIAN AIR FORCE


Hon. D. S. Harkness (Minister of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, it has been decided to procure a jet basic training aircraft for the R.C.A.F. The new aircraft, the Canadair-built CL-41, will replace the piston engined, propeller driven Harvard trainers which have been in service in the R.C.A.F. for more than 20 years.
The R.C.A.F. has been considering the introduction of a basic jet trainer for several years, and has tested and evaluated most of the training aircraft available in the western world. The introduction of a basic jet training aircraft will enable the R.C.A.F. to provide all-through jet training. The great majority of the pilots are trained for initial duty with the Canadian air division in Europe and the R.C.A.F. air defence command in Canada. Squadrons in both these forces are soon to be equipped with ultra high speed and high flying aircraft, and it was considered, essential that future pilot trainees be introduced to both high speed and high altitude flight at the earliest possible stage in their training.
The new trainer will not only introduce the pilot to these aspects of flight early in his flying training but will also enable him to have a greater amount of jet flying experience before he is introduced to operational aircraft.
The CL-41 is the newest and most modern jet trainer available. It is powered by a turbojet engine and, like all modern aircraft, has a tricycle undercarriage. It is pressurized and has an altitude capability of 44,500 feet. The CL-41 speed range is from 65 knots to
speeds in excess of 400 knots. It is equipped with an automatic ejection seat. The instrumentation and performance characteristics of the CL-41 will greatly facilitate transition to operational aircraft, and will enable the R.C.A.F. to produce more efficiently the skilled pilots required to fly modern high performance aircraft. The new trainer will enter service in 1963.



INDIAN ACT


Mr. Frank Howard (Skeena) moved: for leave to introduce Bill No. C-124, to amend the Indian Act.


Some hon. Members:: Explain.


Frank Howard: Mr. Speaker, this bill follows upon the unanimous recommendation of the joint Senate and House of Commons committee on Indian affairs which was presented on July 8, 1961, with respect to the possession and consumption of intoxicants, or liquor as they are commonly referred to. The bill seeks to put into effect that unanimous recommendation by placing the native Indian people in the same position with respect to rights and responsibilities as other Canadians regarding liquor off the reserve, and seeks to allow for liquor on a reserve after the majority of the members of a particular band have voted in favour of it.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.



CANADIAN WHEAT BOARD ACT


Mr. Hazen Argue (Assiniboia) moved: for leave to introduce Bill No. C-125, to amend the Canadian Wheat Board Act.


Mr. Herridge:: Explain.


Hazen Robert Argue: Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this bill is to take another step forward to bring about full equalization in respect of grain delivery opportunities to western producers by enabling the Canadian wheat board, if it felt it necessary, to purchase grain stored on farms.
Motion agreed to and bill read the first time.

Proposed Legislation NATIONAL HOUSING ACT



AMENDMENTS INCREASING AMOUNTS AVAILABLE FOR LOANS AND RESEARCH

Hon. D. J. Walker (Minisler of Public Works) moved: that the house go into committee at the next sitting to consider the following resolution, which has been recommended to the house by His Excellency:
That it is expedient to introduce a measure to amend the National Housing Act. 1954:
1.	To increase from one billion five hundred million dollars to two billion dollars the maximum charge on the consolidated revenue fund for direct loaning by Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation;
2.	To increase from five million dollars to ten million dollars the maximum charge on the consolidated revenue fund for housing research and community planning;
3.	To increase from fifty million dollars to one hundred million dollars the maximum charge on the consolidated revenue fund for loans for university housing projects;
4.	To increase from one hundred million dollars to two hundred million dollars the maximum charge on the consolidated revenue fund for loans for municipal sewage treatment projects.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.


Hon. George C. Nowlan (Acting Minister of Finance) moved: that the house go into committee at the next sitting to consider the following resolution, which has been recommended to the house by His Excellency:
That it is expedient to bring in a measure to confirm certain agreements entered into between the government of Canada and the governments of the provinces of Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, dated 13th July, 1961, 13th July, 1961, and 14th July, 1961, respectively, respecting the administration and control of natural resources in those provinces in order to vest those provinces with full power to administer and dispose of the school lands and the school land funds referred to in the said agreements.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.


[Stage Direction]
Motion No. 159-Mr. Robichaud:
For a copy of all correspondence, telegrams, and other documents exchanged between the board of broadcast governors or the Department of Transport or the Minister of National Revenue and all other persons concerning the granting of a licence for a television satellite or a rebroadcasting station to provide television service to the French-speaking population of Madawaska and Victoria counties in New Brunswick.
George Clyde Nowlan: Mr. Speaker, this of course should be an order for return, as it covers

several departments and does not involve a time limit. I have correspondence in my office in regard to this matter received during the past four years. I now have a file approximately a foot thick, and wonder whether this motion could stand until I have had an opportunity of discussing the situation with the hon. member with a view to shortening it.
Motion stands.



AIR TRANSPORT


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. Lionel Chevrier (Laurier):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Transport in connection with the decision of the government to allow Canadian Pacific Airlines to fly between western Canada and London. Must the British government give its approval to this decision, and if so has this been done?


Hon. Leon Balcer (Minisler of Transporl):: Mr. Speaker, following the decision of the government my colleague the minister of external affairs has received an aide memoir from the British government requesting further information and pointing out certain facts. This government is at the present time in the process of supplying this information to the British government.


Lionel Chevrier: I should like to ask a supplementary question. Was the United Kingdom government consulted before this government announced its decision in so far as the new air route was concerned?


Léon Balcer: Mr. Speaker, we have followed the necessary practice and procedure which must be followed in such circumstances.



COMBINES


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hazen Robert Argue: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Justice. Can the minister inform the house what action the government is taking following the recommendation of the restrictive trade practices commission that the government seek a court order to have a merger in the meat packing industry dissolved, or prevent further mergers taking place?


Hon. E. D. Fulton (Minister of Justice):: As
the release which accompanied the report when it was made public states, the minister is considering what further action should be

taken in the light of the report, in accordance with the usual considerations that have to be kept in mind.


Hazen Robert Argue: A supplementary question. Can the minister say whether it is anticipated that action will be required by parliament to prevent such mergers taking place?


Edmund Davie Fulton: Mr. Speaker, it would be quite impossible and I think improper for me to comment on that until such time as a decision is reached on whether there is any contravention of the present law in the facts disclosed in the report.



INDUSTRY


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. J. W. Pickersgill (Bonavisia-Twillin-gate):: Mr. Speaker, on Friday the Minister of Transport indicated that he would be tabling the regulations respecting shipbuilding in the house today. Has that been done simply by sending them to the Clerk? If so, would the minister consider, in view of the great interest in these regulations, asking the house to have them printed either in Votes and Proceedings or in Hansard of today?


Léon Balcer: Mr. Speaker, I will be pleased to move that these regulations be included in Votes and Proceedings of today.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Have they already been tabled?


Léon Balcer: Yes, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Speaker:: Does the house concur in the suggestion that the regulations mentioned by the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate be printed in today's Votes and Proceedings'?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: It is so ordered.



OFF-SHORE LANDS    INQUIRY AS TO CONFLICT OVER JURISDICTION

[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Herbert Wilfred Herridge: Mr. Speaker, I wish to address a question to the Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources. In view of the known desire of the minister to promote the spirit of goodwill among nations, governments and individuals, and in view of the fact that the government of British Columbia is reported awarding exploration rights to a million acres of offshore oil land to 12 companies, in opposition 90205-6-515
Inquiries of the Ministry to the federal governments claim to jurisdiction over all off-shore acres, will the minister inform the house whether he has been able to effect a reconciliation of views with respect to this constitutional enigma?


Hon. W. G. Dinsdale (Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources):: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his comments concerning my conciliatory abilities, but I think the subject matter to which he referred in his question would have to be decided by the courts.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: A supplementary question; I am not very quick on the draw this morning. Can the minister inform the house whether the government of Canada intends to take the initiative in bringing this matter before the supreme court?


Walter Gilbert Dinsdale: Mr. Speaker, the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources, on the advice of the legal officers, has administered these territories on behalf of the government on the basis of the opinion that the sea bed and subsoil resources are vested in the crown in the right of Canada. This applies not only to the lands under territorial waters but also to the continental shelf. Any reversal of that position would depend upon the advice of the courts.



NATIONAL DEFENCE


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. Paul Martin (Essex East):: Mr. Speaker, may I ask the Minister of National Defence whether he feels he is in a position to answer this question. If he is not in a position to answer today he may take it as notice. Can the minister pinpoint those target cities in Canada where it is proposed to establish emergency army headquarters, as was announced by the minister in his statement on Thursday last?


Douglas Scott Harkness: Mr. Speaker, I do not think it would be in the public interest to make a statement as to exactly where those various headquarters are located at the present time.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Everybody is going to know them.



AIRPORTS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. Hubert Badanai (Fort William):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the Minister of Transport. Owing to the lack of
8154	HOUSE OF
Inquiries of the Ministry necessary runway modifications, I am informed that T.C.A. will not operate Vanguard aircraft through the lakehead. Is the minister in a position to advise the house when the necessary improvement of runways at the Fort William airport will be carried out which will enable the more modern and larger aircraft to serve the lakehead area?


Léon Balcer: Mr. Speaker, I will be very pleased to give an answer to my hon. friend tomorrow or the day after.



OLD AGE SECURITY


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Frank Howard: I should like to direct a question to the Minister of National Health and Welfare. Along with his many other duties has he had time to complete his study of the Clark report and, if so, what action will be taken as a result thereof?


Hon. J. W. Monleilh (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, the study is still going on very, very seriously.


John Whitney Pickersgill: Very, very slowly.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I should like to ask a supplementary question. Can the minister tell the house whether we may expect some announcement by the minister before the end of the present session of parliament that the study has been completed?


Jay Waldo Monteith: Whenever there is anything to be made public concerning the study of the Clark report it will be announced in the house.



LABOUR CONDITIONS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Mr. John Matheson (Leeds):: I should like to ask the Minister of Labour a question. In view of the recently reported sharp decrease in immigration and the large emigration of skilled workers from Canada last year, can the Minister of Labour advise the house whether this trend has further aggravated the shortage of skilled workers in Canada?


Hon. Michael Starr (Minister of Labour):: Mr. Speaker, I would have to look into the situation in order to answer that question. If the hon. member will put his question on the order paper I will be glad to supply the information for him.



INDUSTRY


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Lionel Chevrier: Mr. Speaker, may I ask the Minister of National Revenue whether he has had an opportunity to look into the question which I put to him on Friday.


George Clyde Nowlan: I do not have the answer ready. I will deal with that tomorrow.



FISHERIES


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Hon. J. A. MacLean (Minister of Fisheries):: Mr. Speaker, on Friday the hon. member for Bonavista-Twillingate asked me if I had replied to a communication sent me on August 24 by the secretary treasurer of the federation of fishermen of Newfoundland.
I replied to this letter on September 7, telling the secretary of our concern over the low fish catches and the fire damage over considerable areas, and also that the St. John's office of my department is carrying out a special statistical survey, the information from which should be available by Friday of this week. I also informed him that on Monday of next week, September 18, the chairman of the fisheries prices support board will be going to St. John's to discuss these problems in detail with the federation of fishermen, the provincial authorities and others. I also said that at the present time I do not consider it necessary to set up a formal committee, but such may be desirable after I have received the full report.
I should add that my colleague the Solicitor General and the hon. member for St. John's East have also been in communication with me regarding the urgency of this situation and have requested my continued sympathetic consideration of the problem.


John Whitney Pickersgill: I should like to put a supplementary question. Can the minister assure us that the government will give to this problem the same urgent consideration that is being given to the short crop because of the drought in western Canada, in view of the fact that the conditions are exactly similar?


John Angus MacLean: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I think it is fair to say that this government gives sympathetic consideration to problems on a basis of equality regardless of where they arise in the country.



PUBLICATIONS


[Stage Direction]
On the orders of the day:
Right Hon. J. G. Diefenbaker (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, on Friday the hon. member for Kootenay West inquired regarding representations respecting the O'Leary commission report having been received from the United States. On August 4 the United States ambassador acquainted the government with the views of his government in this regard.


George Clyde Nowlan: that the house go into committee of supply.
Motion agreed to and the house went into committee, Mr. Chown in the chair.
The estimates of the following departments were first taken up and entered for consideration.



DEPARTMENT OF FINANCE

[Stage Direction]
111. Departmental administration, $1,911,211.

[Stage Direction]
The Speaker of the Senate-
190. Allowance in lieu of residence, $3,000.

[Stage Direction]
312. Payment, notwithstanding anything in the Financial Administration Act or the Senate and House of Commons Act respecting the independence of parliament, to each member of the Queen's privy council for Canada who is a minister for whom no salary or allowance in addition to the allowances under section 33 and section 44 of the Senate and House of Commons Act is provided (the acceptance of which shall not render such member ineligible or disqualify him as a member of the House of Commons) of a salary of $7,500 per annum and pro rata for any period less than a year, $7,500.

[Stage Direction]
453. Departmental administration, $2,550,941.
['Agreed.\nResolutions adopted in committee of supply this day reported and concurred in.']
The Deputy Chairman:: We will now proceed to the consideration of the estimates of the Department of External Affairs, vote No. 76.



[Stage Direction]
76. Departmental administration, $6,924,915.
Mr. Mandziuk:: When the committee rose at five o'clock on Friday last I had just completed my remarks concerning the Prime Minister's challenge to Russia to allow free elections in the countries under her domination, and the undiplomatic reaction thereto. Today we are bombarded with propaganda which is beamed at us and is intended to 90205-6-515J
Supply-External Affairs scare us into complete inaction. This propaganda gives us the impression that the whole western world, and the NATO countries in particular want war. We are told everyone wants war except Russia. Russia resumes nuclear tests, and we are told it is because of the threats to her security from the western world.
However, this propaganda makes no mention of the three years of fruitless effort by Great Britain and the United States to reach an agreement on the control or abolition of such tests. During those three years there have been 340 meetings and 340 "nyets" to every proposal made by the western powers. This propaganda machine makes no mention of the failure of the ten-nation disarmament commission, of which Canada is a member. This commission, too, failed because of the "nyets" to every proposal by the western powers. We certainly deplore Mr. Kennedy's decision to resume nuclear tests, but who should stand condemned by the world for having resumed such tests first and who, in the last few days, has exploded about half a dozen such bombs?
What is our hope for the future? Canada has made every effort to date, and the Canadian government is pressing to take every step in order to secure world peace. What appears to be the last resort is the charter of the United Nations, whose primary purpose is the maintenance of international peace and security. The Prime Minister said on September 1, while addressing the Canadian Bar Association in Winnipeg, "We must be ready to make use of the United Nations".
The setting up of the United Nations is the world's second attempt to ban wars and guarantee peace and freedom for all peoples. The first attempt in this century consisted of the league of nations. The league of nations redrew the boundaries of the various nations of the world; it freed some nations while it enslaved some others. But imperfect as that international organization was, it was scuttled by the two greedy conquerors and dictators, Hitler and Mussolini.
The United Nations today faces a like danger. What evidence of that have we? We have evidence in attacks upon the Secretary General of the United Nations, Dag Ham-marskjold; an intention to neutralize or completely destroy the prestige and powers of that great office which the United Nations at its inception gave this official. Second, we have no financial or moral assistance from communist bloc nations to support our efforts to keep the peace in other parts of the world. I have in mind the Gaza strip and the Congo.
There is a feeling in the country that world tension cannot be settled by two individuals, even if a meeting between Mr. Kennedy and



Supply-External Affairs Mr. Khrushchev should come about. What guarantee have we that this arrangement would last? We must still go back to the United Nations, because if this great body cannot assure peace in the world, nothing else can.


Gordon Campbell Chown: Order. I regret to inform the hon. member that his time has expired.


Mr. Carter:: Mr. Chairman, since coming to parliament in 1949 I have always followed the debates on external affairs with the utmost interest. However, not until today have I had the temerity to participate in a debate on foreign policy. I had no intention of entering this debate until last Friday, when I was impressed by the point made by a number of hon. members that the situation which faces us today is so grave that every hon. member has a responsibility to his constituents and to his country to put forward whatever ideas he may have on this subject.
To my mind the present world situation is analogous to two young people in hot rods rushing toward each other at terrific speed, each trying to make the other "chicken out". In such a situation the least we can expect is an accident. I do not pretend to speak for my constituents. I do not know how they feel about the present world situation. It is my opinion that most of them are not too well informed on what is going on in the world at large, and I know that many of them are too busy fighting fires and too concerned with eking out a bare existence to be able to give much thought to these matters. I rather suspect that this applies to the majority of people in my province, and perhaps throughout the nation. It is probably true of the majority of the nations in the Soviet bloc and of the three billion inhabitants of the world whose fate lies in the hands of those few people who have to work out the relationships among various nations. Our constituents for the most part are content to leave these matters to us, and they look to us for direction and leadership. In my opinion that is all the more reason why each one of us in this parliament should make whatever contribution we can.
Several hon. members have referred to the need for a critical analysis of western foreign policy. I should like to make it clear that the views which I am about to express are entirely my own. Looking back over the years since world war II it is very apparent that, with one or two exceptions, western policy has been dictated by events, and the events have been dictated or engineered by Moscow and Peking. This is an indisputable fact and we would do well to ask ourselves why this should be so.
In my opinion there are several reasons, and I think it behoves us to take an honest look at them and do what we can to correct them. Western policy has not been forward looking, in my opinion, because it has been too much concerned with preserving the status quo. This kind of thinking has coloured western policy by a mental attitude that is based on what I believe is a false concept, which is that everything would be all right in the world if all other peoples and nations were only just like us. This kind of thinking has blinded us to our own faults and failures; it is responsible for our self-righteous attitudes, our apathies, our indifference to the exploitations that have gone on in other countries, and the superiority complexes which we have developed and which are so apparent to other nations.
It seems to me that we in the west have very much to be sorry for in our dealings with other nations, and we should realize that our failures and weaknesses have contributed to the crisis with which we are now faced. In that regard we must bear our full share of responsibility. This should be a very humbling thought.
Perhaps this same mental block has blinded our diplomats to the basic fact that the present social order cannot endure in its present form. In the words of the poet, "The old order changeth, giving place to new". When one thinks of it, the present social order is not a very good one, when we realize that two billion human beings go to bed hungry every night. It is not even a very good social order for many Canadians.
There are many in my own province and particularly in my own constituency who are going to be faced with a very lean and hungry winter having regard to the bare necessities of food, shelter and clothing. It does not have to be that way. There is in the world enough for everybody's needs. However, we have not had the will to come to grips with the evils that prevent an equal distribution of the necessities of life. Hence there are in the world today two billion people who are not satisfied with the present order and who desire a change. There are also a number of committed communists who are dedicated to changing that order. There is therefore no doubt at all in my mind that change must and will come. The status quo cannot be preserved. The only question is this. What kind of new order shall we have in its place? Will it be an order shaped by the forces of communism, or will it be shaped by what we call our democratic ideas and values?
The democratic forces in the world today are numerically weak. Of the three billion people who inhabit the world, more than one

Supply-External Affairs is for the west to take the offensive. I have never seen a victory won through a series of retreats. However gradual and slight the retreats may be, they are nevertheless retreats. On the other hand, when Mr. Khrushchev has been faced with positive alternatives he has been forced to retreat. I therefore feel the west should assume the offensive in demanding first the unification of Germany, and second, a free vote supervised by the United Nations for all the satellite countries which have been swallowed behind the iron curtain.
I suggest we should not stop there, but should then call upon Mr. Khrushchev and his counterpart Mao Tse-tung to unite with the west in building a new world order free from fear, want and greed. This should be a new social order which under God will make for better human relationship, for unselfish co-operation, for cleaner business, cleaner politics and for the elimination of political, industrial and racial antagonisms. Surely this is an opportunity through which the west can seize the initiative and issue a challenge to the communist world. If order is ever to come out of chaos in national and international affairs some nation must at some time produce new leadership free from the bondage of fear, rising above ambition, and flexible to divine guidance. Such a nation would be at peace within itself and a peace maker withirt the international family.
Mr. Chairman, it is my conviction that Canada can be that nation. If we as members of parliament, to whom the people are looking for direction and leadership, possess the moral courage to speak out and say what we actually believe, and the guts to stand up and fight in order to give those things to our nation and the world, then Canada might well lead the world out of its present chaos.


Mr. Nesbitt:: Mr. Chairman, this morning I should like to confine my remarks in this debate to two subjects. I should first of all like to make some observations regarding the future of United Nations, and second concerning the present crisis in Berlin and NATO.
First of all regarding the United Nations, during the last few years there have been many changes, as all members appreciate. Having had the opportunity and honour of attending the United Nations in various capacities in the last number of years-I first went there as a parliamentary observer, at which time the hon. member for Essex East was vicechairman of the delegation-I can assure you the changes have been many. When I attended its deliberations originally something over 50 countries had membership in the United Nations, while there are now almost 100.

Accompanying this change in the membership of the United Nations have been a great many attendant problems. I think all will agree that the United Nations is the best organization that man has been able to devise to date, and that it must continue its operations in the future.
There are many dangers which confront the United Nations at the present time. There are many faults which exist in the United Nations itself. However, I suggest there is no advantage in acting like an ostrich, with our heads in the sand, pretending these faults do not exist. I suggest the best approach is to recognize them and attempt to correct them.
The first and principal danger to the United Nations is the present attack by the Soviet union in respect to its organization. I suggest one does not have to look far to see the reason for this. The United Nations has quite clearly on many occasions frustrated the ultimate designs of the Soviet union. It was quite clear at the fifteenth general assembly last year that one of the principal objectives of the Soviet delegates was to destroy or at least emasculate the United Nations organization. This was attempted in several ways, first of all by personal attack on the secretary general, Mr. Dag Hammarskjold, and second by suggesting changes in the structure of the United Nations.
The personal attacks on the secretary general were not successful last year. Toward the end of that general assembly, I believe in March, a vote was taken, the details of which are not important but which in effect turned out to be one of confidence in the secretary general, with the only delegates voting against him being those of the Soviet bloc. I feel safe in stating that so far these attacks upon the secretary general by the Soviet union and satellite delegates have been unsuccessful.
However, that does not mean they will not be successful in the future, because the Soviet union, as I am sure all members know, is a very determined country. Time does not mean the same thing to Russians as it means to the people of the west. We are accustomed to accomplishing objectives within a matter of months or a few years. On the contrary, the Russian concept of time certainly appears to be much different. There is ample indication that the Russians are prepared to wait five, ten or fifteen years, and perhaps longer, to attain their ultimate objectives. Last year no horses were spared, so to speak, in making these attacks upon the secretary general. Even when misprints appeared in United Nations documents Soviet delegates suggested they were manifestations of the inefficiency

of the secretary general. That is an example of the type of thing which occurred last year.
The other principal method employed by the Soviet delegates involved attacks upon and suggested changes in the structure of the United Nations. The suggested changes gained certain sympathy among other delegates to the United Nations chiefly because of the great enlargement in the number of organizations within the United Nations and because they had not expanded as perhaps they should have. I will have more to say in that regard in a few moments.
The suggestion by the delegates of the Soviet union involved a tripartite leadership or "Troika", a three headed affair much like Cerberus in mythology the three headed dog who guarded the gates to Hades. This suggestion sounded very logical, there being one head from the west, one from the Soviet bloc and one from the neutrals, whoever they may be. Under this set-up there would be three secretary generals each with a veto power. Recently, Mr. Khrushchev informed Mr. Sulzberger that was not the meaning of the suggestion. However, in view of Mr. Khrushchev's recent statement that the Soviet union would never be first to resume nuclear testing, I do not think much weight can be placed on his undertakings.
The effect of a three headed organization for all branches of the United Nations is pretty obvious. The secretary general's duty is to implement resolutions passed by the general assembly. In regard to the establishment of three secretaries general, I do not think I need go further than point out that the difficulties would be almost insurmountable in view of the difficulty experienced on the part of one secretary general in implementing some resolutions in the past. If we had three secretaries general attempting to implement resolutions, I suggest the Russian delegates would be successful in accomplishing their intentions, and completely stultifying the work of the United Nations. If this three headed monster were to be duplicated in all branches and organizations of the United Nations, I suggest the chaotic results are very obvious.
The Soviet union has not succeeded so far, but that does not mean it will not succeed; because the election of a new secretary general comes up before long and the Soviet union, with veto power in the security council, will not agree to the appointment of a secretary general. They can hold up the appointment until they get their own way or partly their own way, and that is a very great danger to the United Nations at the moment.
The second matter I mentioned in this regard is the question of United Nation's
Supply-External Affairs finances. This has become most serious. Last spring the United Nations came within hours of closing its doors because financial arrangements could not be made. Probably the public is not aware of this, and I should like to take a few moments to deal briefly with the subject.
The legislative processes of the United Nations are somewhat different from those in this parliament or elsewhere. You have the strange situation in the United Nations that the general assembly can pass a resolution and it will be accepted by a two thirds majority, but at the same time there are no financial arrangements to carry out the resolution. The arrangements are made in advance each year by the fifth committee reporting to the general assembly. This peculiar arrangement, where resolutions are passed with the finances to carry them out not provided for, has caused a great deal of trouble in the UN. The particular difficulty in this regard has to do with the peace-keeping arrangements of the United Nations. The United Nations emergency force in the Middle East has had its problems. The trouble is that those peace-keeping arrangements are not regular budgetary items in the UN. Arrangements were made to provide finances for the United Nations emergency force, and those were not contributed to by all the countries. The Russian excuse was that it was an illegal undertaking, and they have never contributed.
The present peace-keeping arrangement of the United Nations which has been in the public eye a great deal is the question of the Congo. Again we ran into the problem of how to finance this particular arrangement. To date the results in the Congo have been a great success for the United Nations. That force cannot be continued unless some permanent financial arrangement is made. In this regard and it is no secret at all, that France has said she will not contribute to this arrangement, and so have certain other states. The Soviet union, of course, says it will not, and certain other countries have also said that they will not contribute to it because they felt the money required was too much, they could not afford it. Many other reasons have been given.
It is a very serious matter, Mr. Chairman. If permanent financial arrangements cannot be made for the UN it will not be able to carry out its peace-keeping function. If this is not done the United Nations might just as well close its doors. If I may say so, Mr. Chairman, last year this temporary disaster was averted thanks to Canada. We came very close to having to close the doors of the UN. The secretary general had used up all the cash on hand to
8160	HOUSE OF
Supply-External Affairs carry on the Congo operations and he had borrowed from various other UN organizations. A temporary arrangement was made.
At the present time, again thanks to the initiative of Canada, a 15-man committee representing 15 countries is studying the whole question of how to provide finances for the UN operations, including the operation that is going on at the present time, but it is going to be a very difficult problem to work out. Many countries feel they cannot afford it, and other countries will not contribute because they have no desire to see the United Nations succeed in these fields.
There is a great danger here again. It is well known that the United States and certain other large countries have agreed to "pick up the tab", so to speak, for a number of these efforts. Of course many people feel that that would play right into the hands of the Soviet union, because if western countries finance those operations then the Soviet can turn around and say, "He who pays the piper calls the tune, and we told you so all along." This is something that I think should be avoided. Every country in the United Nations should contribute its own reasonable share to the conduct of those operations of the United Nations.
Now, strange as it may seem, a number of countries of the United Nations are not worried about certain large western countries footing the bill. The representative of one country, I shall not say which one, said to me, "Well, we do not see anything wrong in the United States paying the bill for this United Nations operation. After all, they supply the money and we supply the ideas". The remark was not made in jest; it was made in all seriousness, much to my surprise. But this is a thing we have to watch. In any event, the financial question before the United Nations is a very serious one, and something which should be watched with the greatest care.
Another great danger to the United Nations is the question of expansion of the councils. I refer to the security council and the economic and social council. The security council consists of 11 members, five of them being permanent and six elected, of whom three are elected each year. The economic and social council has 18 members. These councils have not been expanded since the United Nations first came into being.
As I have already pointed out, we now have almost 100 countries in the United Nations. Naturally the newer countries of Asia and Africa feel that they should have adequate representation on those councils. The western countries, Canada included, have taken the lead on various occasions to try to expand


those councils or inflate them in some way to provide quite adequate representation of Asians and Africans without giving up seats already held by the countries of Latin America, the western world, and so on. The Soviet union has steadfastly refused to permit expansion of those councils on the ground that it will not agree until the credentials of the representatives of the Peoples' Republic of China have been accepted by the credentials committee, and in effect communist China has a seat in the UN.
At first glance you would think that the Asian and African countries in the UN would be irritated by the Russian stand, refusing to give them adequate representation on those councils, but I have found at the United Nations that things are not always what they seem. Instead of being annoyed at the Soviet union over this, those countries have exerted great pressure on the west to dilute western representation on the councils and give up seats to the Asian and African countries. As a temporary measure this may seem reasonable, but again Soviet intransigence is evident. On the last two or three occasions temporary compromise arrangements have been made to give additional seats to the Asian and African countries at the expense of western representation. I think the Soviet union know this very well. By continuing to refuse to allow expansion of those councils they are being very effective; their objective of reducing the number of representatives of the west and of countries friendly to the west on those two councils is being achieved. This is something that should be watched with the greatest care.
Of course the western countries which dominated the United Nations when it was first formed no longer do so. It used to be that the Soviet and some of her allies and friends from time to time came close to mounting what is known at the United Nations as a "blocking third". That is, any important resolution before the general assembly must have a two thirds vote. Now the situation is that very often the western nations have dfficulty in acquiring a blocking third for resolutions put up by Asian and African countries, and often supported by the Soviet union. You may say, "What do you want with a blocking third?" Resolutions put up from time to time by other countries may be very good, but from time to time some of those resolutions are by no means the wisest, and this brings in the next two points that I should like to touch on briefly. I refer to two broad influences which are at work in the United Nations all the time. One is the anti-colonial

influence and the other is the cold war influence. These two influences seem to permeate virtually every debate and every resolution at the United Nations.
Anti-colonial feeling we can all understand. Every one of us can understand why people in Asia and Africa should have a strong anti-colonial feeling which reflects against the western powers. That we can understand, but often this influence is not manifested by means of logic at all but rather by emotion. In due course this situation will probably clear up, but at the present time it presents a very serious danger to the United Nations.
I should like to give a brief example of this influence. There is a resolution before the United Nations involving a plan put forward by the United States called, I believe, "Africa, a plan for economic and political development". This emphasis on this plan has been somewhat altered to overemphasize political development, and the particular emphasis has been that of setting target dates for the independence of a number of new states. On the face of it that sounds fine, but for very obvious reasons-for instance, to avoid a situation such as arose in the Congo- it is not desirable to set a specific date until the people in the area are able to take over the government of their country themselves.
The United Kingdom, of course, has been remarkably successful in this field, and it has been explained at the United Nations that the matter of target dates is not directed at the United Kingdom but rather at certain other countries. That may well be the case but once target dates are fixed they must be accepted by all and these are very impractical for the reasons I have pointed out. A number of countries in Africa and elsewhere have pointed out to me privately that they realize this is an impractical idea, but one of the less responsible countries has brought it forward and these governments naturally have to pay attention to the views of the electorate at home or, if there is no electorate, the people who live in the country. The result is that one country in Africa makes a matter an emotional issue on anti-colonial grounds and these other countries virtually have to go along, even though they really do not think the idea is sensible or practical.
That is the type of thing we have to watch there. A great many of the resolutions at the United Nations have become more and more dominated by emotional feeling rather than by logic. I think this is a matter that will clear up in due course, but at the present time it is a very great danger.
Together with the growth of the organization itself, we also seem to have had a growth of long, repetitious speeches and other things.
Supply-External Affairs This again will have to be dealt with, and perhaps some time when the United Nations organization is streamlined it will be possible to do something to restrict the number of times a person can speak in a debate. This will have to be worked out, but the present practice tends to bog down the work of the United Nations. People tend to lose interest, and I am afraid that sometimes a very bad appearance is presented to the public whose support is necessary for the continuance of the United Nations. I am sorry to say also that some countries seem to have personalities representing them whose views do not always accord with those of their governments. There is a tendency for a number of so-called personalities at the United Nations to put on shows of exhibitionism which certainly in no way assist the United Nations.
The last thing I should like to mention in this regard is the question of the cold war influence. Again, this is an influence that interferes with virtually every subject that comes before the United Nations. You will find that the cold war always creeps in in some way. You will find that some countries always vote one way and other countries always vote the other way, while a large number of countries will never stand up and be counted at all. We have seen some evidence outside the United Nations recently of how a number of neutral countries have behaved. I wonder what would have been said by some of these countries if the United States had been the country to start nuclear tests again, but when another country did it nothing much was said in that regard.
I have other comments on the cold war influence which I will make later. As I have pointed out, a number of countries will not stand up and be counted. It has been said that Canada and a number of other countries should lead a crusade for world peace and get things started. For goodness sake, no one has tried harder to do this than the Secretary of State for External Affairs. Let me give one example. Last year Canada had a moderate, sensible resolution concerning disarmament before the United Nations. Hardly anybody disagreed with its substance even publicly, although one or two said privately that they could not agree publicly although they agreed privately. When we tried to get a vote on it we could not do so, because such a large number of countries felt that the Soviet union did not approve and therefore they would not even vote on whether a vote should be taken on the resolution.
That is what you encounter at the United Nations. It is very frustrating to find that many countries will not do anything unless it has the approval of both the United States and the Soviet union. I do not wish to present

Supply-External Affairs too gloomy a view of the United Nations, but I think these are home truths that must be faced, and if the organization is to succeed we must find some way to get around these difficulties.
In the remainder of my remarks I should like to deal briefly with the question of the present crisis in Berlin and the subject of NATO. In particular I should like to refer to the stand of the New Democratic party on this subject. As everyone knows, this is a matter of great importance to everybody not only in Canada but in the world, and for that reason I think the political parties of Canada should make very clear what are their stands. The stand of the government party is quite clear, as is that of the official opposition, and they are substantially in agreement. The New Democratic party does not seem quite as clear or quite as certain.
There are a number of things I should like to bring to the attention of hon. members, and perhaps they will be clarified later by one of the members of the New Democratic party. In a nutshell, their policy would seem to be NATO if necessary but not necessarily NATO. The stand of the New Democratic party has been set forth quite clearly in party resolutions and by the hon. member for Kootenay West in his remarks in the house.
In this regard I think it is quite important that everyone should realize fully what the stand of those who support the new party has been in the past. I do not like going back into ancient history. There is no point in doing that, but if you do not go too far back into the past, say only to the end of world war II, I think such references are in order. I should like to refer to an editorial that appeared in the Montreal Gazette on January 24, 1955. It is headed "Canada's Bevanly Host", which is a reference, of course, to other things in the past. The editorial refers to the policy of the then C.C.F. party and reads in part as follows:
In fact, varying degrees of opposition have appeared within the C.C.F. to nearly every step taken since the end of the second world war to resist communist expansion.
When the Marshall plan was inaugurated, it was officially condemned by the Manitoba convention of the C.C.F. as being "framed to provide capitalists with markets, rather than to help the people of Europe".
When the United States supported the Atlantic pact (out of which NATO has grown) the provincial convention of the C.C.F. in British Columbia passed a resolution opposing "any further expenditures on arms". After the Korean war broke out, the C.C.F. premier of Saskatchewan, Hon. T. C. Douglas, said that the United States was trying to use the United Nations to protect the interests of certain oil corporations, notably Standard Oil. Under such circumstances the people of Saskatchewan were being called on "to send their sons to be slaughtered in foreign fields."

I think it is appropriate to put these things on the record. I believe people are entitled to know just what they are.
Referring to the policy of the New Democratic party, I recall that the hon. member for Kootenay West put this on the record at pages 8077 and 8078 of Hansard for September 7, 1961. The appropriate part of the quotation is at page 8078, and reads as follows:
It therefore opposes Canada's-
This refers to nuclear weapons.
-troops being supplied with such weapons at home or abroad. At present, except for those nations which have independently developed atomic capacity, neither NATO itself nor its members individually possess or control nuclear warheads. Should they do so, Canada must make it clear that it cannot remain in the alliance.
He went on to say that Canada should press for a demilitarized zone and certain other things. I believe these remarks have been dealt with adequately by the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. member for Essex East. I do not wish to take up the time of the committee with repetitious remarks. However, I should like to say that the government's view on this matter was made clear at the United Nations last year, in remarks made by myself. I should like to put on the record a brief quotation from these remarks, which were made during the debate in the first committee in relation to the Irish resolution concerning the dissemination of nuclear weapons. The quotation is as follows:
... if no steps are taken toward disarmament- if, indeed, we do not have even a beginning to serious negotiations on this subject-no country will be content to sit by in the hope that good will alone will prevent the widespread dissemination of the weapons. For our part, I must say quite clearly that Canada would not be able to accept this state of affairs for very long. We have worked and we will continue to work with every resource at our command to achieve an agreement on disarmament which would include provisions to deal with the frightening problem of nuclear weapons. If, however, there is no significant progress in this field in the immediate future, we will reconsider our position on the temporary measures which are proposed in this resolution.
I understand, therefore, that the policy of the new party is that under no circumstances must Canada ever be supplied with nuclear weapons for its troops at home, abroad or for NATO. The government stand on this matter has been made quite clear. At the present time we say no, but if events should take place in the world that might require these weapons then the government would have to give reconsideration to that position. To belong to an organization like NATO, which is a defensive organization against the pressures of the Soviet union, and say we will belong to this organization only so long as certain arms are not acquired by it is like using that old expression: "Mother, may I go

out to swim? Yes, my darling daughter; hang your clothes on a hickory limb, but don't go near the water." To put it another way, the situation would be the same as if one's neighbour were attacking you with a shotgun and the father said, "My son, go out and defend the family back yard, but don't use a shotgun because it might cause some damage to the trees; use a bow and arrow." This is substantially what this policy means.


Gordon Campbell Chown: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the parliamentary secretary, but his time has expired.


Wallace Bickford (Wally) Nesbitt: I have a very few more remarks to make-


Paul Joseph James Martin: I think the committee would want the parliamentary secretary to conclude his statement.


Gordon Campbell Chown: Will the committee give its unanimous consent to allowing the parliamentary secretary to continue?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Wallace Bickford (Wally) Nesbitt: I should like to express my thanks to the committee for permission to continue. I will try to make my remarks very brief.
In this regard, I should like to refer very briefly to the remarks of the hon. member for Peterborough. I do not wish to be accused of taking the hon. member's remarks out of context, and I shall most certainly attempt not to do that. However, there are one or two observations made by the hon. member which are pertinent. On page 8090 of Hansard for September 7 of this year I find the following statement:
However, we have no right to expect that West Berlin can be continued as a means of subverting the East German government. If it becomes a matter of helping to oppress people by our foreign policy we are going to be in serious difficulties indeed, as this will mean real war.
Regardless of the interpretation one might put on that particular observation, I think it is safe to say that it would seem clear, in my mind at least, that the hon. member for Peterborough feels the western nations are in some way trying to oppress the poor people of East Germany who, of course, have no means of defending themselves. This may be a wrong interpretation, but I feel it is the one that must be put on these remarks. Later on the same page the hon. member is reported to have said:
Mr. Khrushchev is not Hitler. He does not have the power.
I do not know about that. Perhaps the hon. member's source of information is different from mine, but it would certainly seem to me that Mr. Khrushchev has a considerable
Supply-External Affairs amount of power. Then on page 8091 the hon. member is reported to have said, referring to NATO:
We agree with that and we agree that it has played a real part.
He used the past tense. Perhaps nothing was meant by putting this in the past tense, but I feel no other interpretation can be put on those remarks but that NATO has been valuable in the past and will not be of much value in the future. A little later on the same page the hon. member is reported as saying:
On the other hand when we see the resumption of nuclear tests-
He is referring to NATO.
-we cannot see this as defensive at all-
I find difficulty in following that reasoning in view of the fact that it was the Soviet union, as everyone knows, that resumed the testing. I think everyone would agree that it would be the rankest folly if the United States authorities felt tests of a certain nature, underground ones, should not be carried out if the Soviet union were gaining a military advantage by its renewed tests. These remarks by themselves perhaps are not too important, but I think they do reflect a state of mind which must exist among a number of members of the new party. The hon. member has specifically designated himself as a new party man and not a member of the C.C.F. I believe, therefore, the public is really entitled to further clarification of the actual stand of that party. Certainly the impression one would gather is that, to say the least, there is only lukewarm support for NATO's past performance, and if the chips were down there might not be very much support at all.
Remarks were made by some other hon. members referring to Canada in two ways. One reference was to Canada's role as the linchpin between the Soviet union and the United States. Another was that Canada should be the waiter at the door holding the door open for the two to go back and forth between each other's dining rooms. While I do not for a moment question the sincerity of these suggestions, I think there is a certain misconception. The misconception is that Canada is a neutral country, and I should hope not in the connotation "neutral" has acquired lately. We are a member of NATO. Under the present circumstances I do not really know how anybody could expect the Soviet union, for instance, to accept Canada as a linchpin or neutral country in some sort of negotiation between the United States and the Soviet union. Canada is not a neutral country. I do not think Russia would be prepared to accept us in that role, any more than we would be prepared to accept Rumania in the same
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Supply-External Affairs role. This misconception that Canada is neutral is something that I think goes back to past history.
As I understand it, at the time the Leader of the Opposition was making his very famous and excellent contribution to the United Nations, Canada and Norway were among the countries which played a very active part in negotiations at that organization. At that time the membership of the United Nations was relatively small; it was about half the size it is now, and was very heavily dominated by western nations. Countries like Canada and Norway had the reputation of making good, sound, sensible suggestions. At that time the Soviet union was undoubtedly prepared to have Canada make certain suggestions.
However, the picture is quite different now. There are all these new, independent countries in the world, and a great many of them have varying degrees of neutralist views ranging to the extreme. These are the countries to which the Soviet union now looks, I think, rather than to ourselves; because clearly we are a part of NATO and it is very difficult for us to retain this role any longer in view of changed world conditions.
I do not think there is very much point in any of us living in a fool's paradise and thinking we have this position when in fact we probably no longer have it. I am not suggesting that Canada's good offices and Canada's suggestions are not acceptable at the United Nations. They are; very much so. At the United Nations our advice is constantly sought on many things. However, I do not think we still have the public role that perhaps we had a number of years ago, for the reasons I have suggested.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Niagara Falls, when making her speech the other night, made reference to the Scotch song, "I Know Where I'm Going". The hon. member suggested that perhaps we do not know where we are going. I may agree with that to a certain extent. But certainly the Soviet union knows where it is going. Ever since 1919 the ultimate objectives of the Soviet union have been abundantly clear. They are communisation of the world. There has never been any denying that. It is quite true that the paths to attain that objective change as circumstances change from day to day and year to year, but the ultimate objective is the same.
I remember one little conversation I overheard in New York between two delegates, who of course shall be nameless. One delegate was teasing a delegate of the Soviet group countries. He said, "I hear you are having a little trouble with China lately". This was last fall. The other delegate said, "Yes, that


is quite true; we are having a little argument with China. But I do not know what you are happy about, because after all the only argument is the best way to liquidate you people". I think frankness such as that is at least something that can be appreciated.
Dictatorships always have the advantage of being on the offensive. Democracies always have to move more slowly. We are on the defensive. The Soviet union has a planned objective and everything is directed toward that objective. They do startling and dynamic things. Certainly the leader of the Soviet union at the present time has all the showmanship abilities of the late P. T. Barnum; there are no two ways about that. Also, the speed with which the Soviet union acts and what it does are impressive and appeal to a great many neutralist countries.
It is no use fooling ourselves about this. The Soviet union, because of its achievements and quick action, gets a certain amount of fear, but it also gets respect and a certain amount of admiration from these neutralist countries. It has always been the same through history when there has been a society that is aggressive and dynamic. That has appealed to some people.
As the hon. member for Burin-Burgeo pointed out a few minutes ago, this is something we have to make clear to this country and to all the western world. It is no use just saying, "The Soviet union is wrong and we are right". These neutralist countries are not buying it. The Prime Minister has repeatedly pointed out on different occasions that the west must get a positive plan to sell to the rest of the world. As yet this has not been taken up. I hope that Canada, under the leadership of the Prime Minister, will continue to press for this and that the west will come up with a dynamic policy that will be bought by these other countries. It is no use just being on the defensive all the time, because if we are, I am afraid the ultimate results are clear.
Let me again refer to the question of Berlin. One hon. member said, "It is no use going to war over Berlin". That is quite true; it is not, over Berlin. I remember, as I am sure other hon. members of the house remember, the years 1936, 1937 and 1938. We saw Hitler coming along. First it was the Rhineland, then Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. It was not over Poland as such that Britain and France went to war with Germany. It was because the line which could not be crossed had to be drawn. I remember at that time we said "We have learned our lesson this time. We will never let it happen again." Ever since world war II we have seen nothing but this same attitude,

the peculiar idea that we can appease dictatorships. Instead of appeasement, however, all we do is whet their appetites.
We have seen this all through history since the dark ages. It happened in Great Britain when the Danes were attacking the coast of Britain. It was thought that the Danes could be bought off with gold. Well, the Danes took the gold and came back the next year for more. We are facing the same kind of situation now. In the experience I have had dealing with representatives of the Soviet union I have found they are tough and very practical people who will try anything if they think it will succeed. I thoroughly agree with the view expressed by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for External Affairs, that in the present situation we must be tough, but calm and resolute, and we must not panic. This is something the Soviet union understands and respects. If we keep our powder dry and remain firm in our stand I think negotiations can succeed and will succeed.


Mr. Regier:: Mr. Chairman, I had not intended to participate in this debate at the present time. However, the remarks which have just ended have made me rise. In the first place I wish to express my personal good wishes to our Secretary of State of External Affairs. I believe all Canada realizes the heavy burdens that are resting upon him. When he leads our delegation at the United Nations next week and for the weeks thereafter I believe all Canadians will wish him every success in his endeavours. I hope the men and women associated with him on behalf of our nation will exert their greatest efforts to reflect the attitude and policies that our minister has put forward on so many occasions in the past.
I very much regret that I noticed a considerable divergence of view between the speech just concluded by the parliamentary secretary and the attitude and views that have hitherto been expressed by the minister himself. I hope this is going to be looked into. I know the minister has appointed a new man to replace the hon. member as the deputy leader at the United Nations. I hope the man now appointed to be the deputy leader of the Canadian delegation will very honestly, sincerely and fairly represent the attitude of the minister in the dealings he will necessarily have from day to day with the representatives of other nations.
I believe in essence the hon. member for Oxford attempted to paint the world situation as a contest between capitalism and communism. I am glad this is not the basic conflict in the world of today, even though people in Moscow and in Washington would like to make it such. The vast majority of the world's
Supply-External Affairs population of today believe not only in political democracy, but also in economic and social democracy. These people outnumber the people in the communist bloc and in the bloc that is dominated by the United States of America. I predict that eventually these people who are interested in economic and social democracy in addition to political democracy are going to win the day. I hope they can win the day without the holocaust of nuclear war that either the communist or the capitalist world may attempt to launch in the world.
I think the hon. member for Oxford ought to do a bit of homework. He spoke at length on the external affairs policy of the new party. I assume he meant the New Democratic party. As his source of information he used an interpretation placed on our external affairs policy by the Montreal Gazette. May I inform him that the New Democratic party does not own the Montreal Gazette. It is more likely than not that the hon. member's own Tory party owns the Montreal Gazette. May I say that this is a very poor source of information as to what our foreign policy is.
The hon. member attempted to brand us as neutralists. We are not neutralists by any stretch of the imagination. In the world of today democracy could not survive without the ardent support the social democrats the world over are giving to the cause of political democracy. However, because we wish to extend political democracy, the capitalists of the world love to smear us and brand us as neutralists, pro-communists and all the other names they can invent.
The hon. member spoke of our policy on NATO. I will admit that our movement has reservations about NATO. If NATO is going to be nothing more than a mere tool in the hands of the Pentagon; if NATO is going to desert those in western Europe who believe in democracy then the earlier we get out of NATO, the better. Many of the delegates at the United Nations have repeatedly expressed to me their disappointment at what is happening to the NATO organization. The people who believe in democracy in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and France have severe reservations as to the course that is being pursued by NATO. Canada could help its allies in western Europe if, to use the term used by the hon. member, the Canadian government had the guts to stand for what the Canadian people believe in instead of echoing, time after time, the intentions and the aspirations of those who rule the roost in the Pentagon.
NATO has played a most useful role in our history. However, may I remind the government that acts of aggression have been committed within the past five or six years by

Supply-External Affairs member nations of the western world in greater number than those that have been committed by members of the communist bloc.
I am unwilling to forgive the communist bloc for those acts of aggression. I know they have occurred, and they are unforgivable. But those that the capitalist world have committed are equally unforgivable. Today across the line in their magazines it is openly admitted that the United States government intervened in the affairs of the Cuban people. At the time the event occurred we were expected to believe that our ally and, as I still say, our good neighbour to the south had nothing to do with the attempt to overthrow the government in that other nation. However, today their magazines gloat over their effort, and are beginning to analyse the reasons for their failure.
We will continue to support NATO if NATO is going to abide by its original intent, namely to act as a brake against potential communist expansion in western Europe, as was originally intended, and not as an instrument to launch a nuclear war. If it is going to act as a brake against potential communist expansion in western Europe, and if it is going to help to establish a little more economic unity in the western world, we will continue to support it. But let us make no mistake about the matter. The moment that NATO begins to adopt nuclear weapons-


Mr. Jones:: Will the hon. member permit a question?


Erhart Regier: -our movement and, I am sure, the Canadian people with us will oppose NATO. NATO was never intended to be an organization that might be responsible for blowing the whole world to bits. We say that no Canadian should be equipped with nuclear weapons either here or abroad. We say that nuclear weapons should never be permitted either on or above Canadian territory.
I should like to ask the government this question. How much truth is there in the newspaper reports I read yesterday to the effect that United States planes loaded with nuclear weapons are flying regular operations above Canadian territory? We at one time had an assurance from this government that for each and every such single flight a specific permit was required and was granted by the government of Canada. Does that situation hold good today? The Canadian people would like to have an answer. We had only a few days ago a report or a listing of the number of occasions on which nuclear weapons were accidentally almost exploded.


Henry Frank Jones: There was no accident about the explosion of nuclear weapons in Russia in the last few days.


Erhart Regier: We recognize the fact that the Russians have them, that the Americans have them and that the French have them. However, what we say is this. Let not any more of us have them. We have enough of them in existence in the world. What possible useful contribution could Canada make by adding to the existing amount of nuclear weapons the world has today? Already there are in the hands of the great nations of the world from 10 to 20 tons of t.n.t. for every man, woman and child in the world. Hence what useful contribution can we make, except an attempt to be big shots on the world scene? The Canadian people do not appreciate this sense of haste. As the Prime Minister has said, this is a time for brakemanship. These sabre rattling speeches in this House of Commons serve no useful purpose whatsoever. Washington and Moscow do not even listen to them, because they do not have to listen.
We ought to take a different attitude and approach. We ought to express our regrets and make it clear that we will defend the political democracy, which was won for us by our forefathers at such heavy cost, with our lives if necessary. However, to go beyond that position with appeals to military power on our part; appeals to individuals who believe they can survive a nuclear war; appeals to armament manufacturers, and appeals to a limited number of Canadian people, makes no useful contribution to the cause of world peace.
In respect to Berlin-and I am pleased that the hon. member for Burin-Burgeo identified his attitude in this regard as being his own and not the official attitude of the Liberal party-that hon. member suggested we must work toward the reunification of Berlin. I believe I know something about the philosophy of the German race, and I will make this prediction. With a reunified Germany today we will have a Germany tomorrow seeking not only revenge but the re-establishment of the old glory of the German reich, as it was once known, and the world will once again be thrown into a war.
I certainly agree that the people of Germany ought to be reunited if this can be done by peaceful means. However, I suggest the situation in Berlin is not now a threat to world peace of the magnitude painted by the United States press. No leading statesman has yet claimed an intention of bringing West Berlin under communist domination. No leading statesman has claimed that access by the West Berliners to East Berlin and East Berliners to West Berlin ought to be blocked. On the contrary, there has been an offer to guarantee access.

I suggest we should supply the initiative in this regard. We should state that past history has shown us we have reason to doubt the word of communism, and that pledges have not always been kept. We should state that we are unable to afford the further risk of a broken promise regarding the availability of access, and it must therefore be made to the United Nations, allowing that organization to ensure continued liberty in West Berlin so that in the event the communist state breaks its word it will then have offended not only the west but this world organization, with the result that the whole world will know the reliability of promises made by a communist regime.
The real issue in Berlin is the reunification of Germany, and the Canadian people state that the reunification of Germany is not worth fighting a world war for, with all its consequences. The people of Canada are unwilling to go to war for the attainment of a reunified Germany. They are willing to go to war if necessary to defend political democracy, but that is not the issue involved. The issue involves a close alliance between Washington and Bonn, and the Canadian people realize this in their hearts. That is the basic issue, and Canadian people ought to be informed of it.
If the west desires to make a useful contribution to world peace let it be stated to Russia that it will pull out of West Germany if Russia will do likewise in respect to East Germany, allowing the German people to settle their own problems. The borders could be guarded by the United Nations. Let it be further stated that such a reunified Germany should be forever without armaments. This was done in respect to Austria, and I suggest it can be done in the case of Germany.
I suggest the western world made the worst possible mistake when it agreed to rearm West Germany. When that was done it caused the postponement for possibly many years of any possibility of the reunification of Eastern and Western Germany, because in all logic the communists cannot be expected to withdraw their forces from East Germany as long as the forces of the west are stationed in West Germany and, even worse, as long as West Germany is growing in military might with an increasing attitude of aggressiveness as far as international forces are concerned.
I suggest our position is very clear. We are prepared to defend political democracy, but are not and never have been prepared to defend the interests of the international cartels; the oil monopolies, the chemical monopolies and those other monopolies with head offices in the United States of America.
Supply-External Affairs We believe with the peoples of Israel, the Scandinavian countries and social democratic forces of the world over, that we can only build world peace if war is avoided, because if war comes no one will build anything.
I was very much heartened by the words of a spokesman of the Conservative party, the hon. member for Edmonton-Strathcona who is reported at page 8136 of Hansard of September 8, 1961 as follows:
Therefore peaceful coexistence is the only existence there is. It is not an alternate form of action; it is the only possibility.
Hon. members in this group say hear, hear to that statement. It will not be the world of the west or of the east, but a new world in the event of a nuclear war, and that hon. member's statement epitomizes the basic policy of our hope.
At one o'clock the committee took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The committee resumed at 2.30 p.m.
John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Chairman, the events of the last few weeks have added a seriousness to the manner in which debates are conducted in this house. This was apparent in the contribution made by all hon. members who have voiced their views as to the ways to peace. In particular I want to refer to the Leader of the Opposition, who along with the hon. member from Essex East placed before the committee his views on this very important matter in a way that was in keeping with the responsibilities that rest on all of us, including the government of the day.
I am going to resist the invitation given by the last hon. gentleman to enter at this time into controversial things, since there will be an opportunity later on to deal with some of the matters to which he referred and also some of the references by other hon. gentlemen of the New Democratic party, who as a result of the changes that took place at a recent convention find themselves in a position difficult to explain; for the policies of March, April and May on NATO, as enunciated by the responsible leader of the former C.C.F. party, have gone through a metamorphosis that makes it somewhat difficult for those hon. gentlemen to square their consciences of May, June and July with the practical results of the changes that took place during that historic meeting. All I can say is that had we followed the advice given by the leader of the C.C.F. in those months in regard to NATO, in the light of the changes that have taken place I can see now how wrong we would have been. However, it is not of

Supply-External Affairs that that I intend to speak today. I am going to discuss in general something of the situation that faces us and something of the problems that we as members of parliament must meet.
I repeat what I said a moment ago. The thanks of the committee are due to all hon. members for the way in which they dealt with this very important question not only of West Berlin but of the world situation generally and the several things referred to by the Secretary of State for External Affairs in outlining matters for the consideration of the committee. I am not going into the field of defence today, or of measures that are being taken for national survival. These will be dealt with when the departmental estimates in which these matters are dealt with come before the committee. I want to say further in that connection that I appreciate the co-operation of the opposition and the attitude taken by all members of the opposition in permitting the motion for supply to go through this morning without debate in order to ensure that there would be no delay in the discussion of those questions of national and international importance that face us today.
I thank the Leader of the Opposition for the contribution he made in answering some myths that have achieved widespread circulation during recent weeks. One of them is that Berlin is a crisis that propaganda built, a view expressed by one or more journalists or pundits in various parts of Canada. The other is that Canadians are the victims of propaganda to make them believe there is a crisis over Berlin. The Leader of the Opposition dealt effectively with those who hold that view. In his attitude and in that of the hon. member for Essex East they gave an indication of the seriousness with which they view the international situation, and the need of each and every one of us to make the best contribution possible without regard to political considerations.
The Leader of the Opposition made some reference to a speech I made recently before the Canadian Bar Association, and gave general approval thereto. I can only say that this is one time I most heartily reciprocate the words he used, when he stated that he thought I struck the right note. In order to keep in harmony with that attitude, I say of him as he said of me that in his speech in the house the other day I thought he struck the right note.
While differences are bound to occur between government and opposition, differences which are a vital necessity of democratic government, there does come a time when issues transcend political considerations, and this is one of those times. All of us have as our purpose and our aim the maintenance and

the preservation of peace. Those of us who have responsibilities would like to do that which we are often asked to do, go into detail in regard to matters, when if we did that the result would be to deny that freedom of consultation which is of the essence of the relationship that must prevail among the free nations.
My opinion, and I think the attitude of the house, has been that this is an hour which demands moral strength and courage. Panic is the refuge of weakness. Confidence can be a weapon of peace. Communism breeds on fear and weakness. When I hear criticism of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization I sometimes wonder whether those who criticize realize that if it had not been for the defensive strength of NATO we might very well not be here today. That is how important NATO has been as a defensive organization, and how necessary it is today.
The ideals of democracy and peace in my opinion can best be served at this hour by showing the Kremlin that we will not sit back and allow the world in which we believe to be swept aside by the acceptance of those things that deny every principle of freedom for which we stand. We must at the same time speak words of measured carefulness so that nothing will be said which will add to the fires which today are burning.
Mr. Chairman, in the past two days the house has maintained that principle, that each and all of us have to speak and must speak our views. That is the essence of democracy. Some of us will have to go back on some of the views that we have expressed in the past. That is of the essence of democracy too. Though I do not often do so, I speak now of a colleague, the Secretary of State for External Affairs, and of the contribution he has made since assuming that office, a contribution outstanding and worthy of the sacrifice made by those of his generation who served with him in the first war. He believed in the United Nations, and in the United Nations and outside he built a structure of peace with disarmament. He carried the fight in the United Nations and at Geneva. That is why his speech the other day to me carried the conviction that comes from one who is speaking with the experience that he has had.
I see that some say he retreated. There is no retreat when one acknowledges that the idealism that he has expressed has not been accepted, and has been interpreted by the Kremlin and those associated with the Kremlin as a sign of weakness rather than of greatness. Some say he is too idealistic. Idealism has its place, Mr. Chairman, and if the free world sacrifices its idealism to godless materialism there will be little to

choose between communism and democracy in 50 years, whatever the result may be of the world contest. With all his heart, with all his devotion to the principle of disarmament, and with all his hopefulness that the clouds on the international horizon would be dissipated, in the light of recognition of the terrible danger of a nuclear war he told the house that we in the free world were on the threshold of potential world disaster.
That causes us to re-examine some of the principles of Canada's foreign policy which, in the light of the discussions that have taken place during this debate, indicate an area of agreement between the government and the opposition, with the opposition having at all times not only the right but the duty to point out, while agreeing with the objectives, what changes should be made that would be beneficial.
Canada's foreign policy can be summed up in three short paragraphs: First, continuing support for a strong and effective United Nations without which peace cannot be achieved, while recognizing that changes in the charter such as were indicated by the hon. member for Oxford ought to be made in the light of the experience since 1945. Second, the need of a strong and effective North Atlantic Treaty Organization, with which I will deal later. Finally, and I speak now for the government in this regard, we believe in the extension and development of a strong commonwealth of nations, believing that no other association throughout the world has a greater influence for good. Indeed, the adherence by its members to its principles, though unwritten, denies the acceptance of communism.
The position we are in today, and when I say this I speak of the attitude of some Canadians and others, is brought about as a result of the process of confusion and propaganda which is of the essence of communist philosophy. The communists deceive people into believing that the existing crisis was created by other nations.
There is no disagreement between the government and the opposition, Mr. Chairman, that the crisis was created by Khrushchev for his own purposes, just as he has created crises throughout the years. If it is not Korea it is Vie Nam. If it is not Vie Nam it is Berlin, and so on. There is no crisis of our making in East Berlin. We have not stirred up any crisis. Some say to me: "How can Canada consider doing anything else but bending the knee to Khrushchev over a paltry city of 2.5 million?" I quite understand the sentimental and emotional plea behind that. The sacrifice of 100,000 Canadians cannot but bring that emotional reaction if the broader situation is not examined.
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This is a larger question than West Berlin, a greater problem than its people. There is the pledged word of the western nations that the people of West Berlin will not be sacrificed, their freedom will not be destroyed; that the rights of access into West Berlin shall not be discontinued. Berlin has become the tangible symbol of a global difference between communism and the forces of freedom. The U.S.S.R. would endeavour to restrict the problem to a divided Berlin. Berlin is more than an isolated outpost. Khrushchev knows that he has already sealed off ingress and egress to West Berlin from East Berlin. He has done that because he realized that the outcome in connection with Berlin will determine, in a considerable measure, the future of freedom everywhere in the world.
When one walks in the streets of West Berlin it is difficult to realize that to thinking people everywhere in the world this small island, as it were, surrounded by communism, represents to the free world, as it represents to the communist world, the axis of the struggle as between communism and freedom. It is not a question of the reunification of Germany, as was mentioned here this morning. We are not dealing with that question. We are dealing with the pledged word of the free world. If we ever get the reputation amongst the uncommitted nations of the world that are standing with us that our word, under seal, means no more than a passing fancy, then indeed will Khrushchev have won the greatest victory communism has ever achieved.
One has to follow the course he has taken since the adjournment of the house, and it has been an interesting course. From time to time he has spoken the soft, sweet words of peace. These were followed by threats as to what would happen. One moment he is the smiling Khrushchev; the next moment he is engaged in his terror campaign. It is difficult to understand why he chose a time just before the Belgrade conference opened to announce the resumption of his nuclear testing program. Perhaps his purpose was to make the neutrals fearful that if they were critical of the U.S.S.R. they would be in danger. Why did he take that course? Well, he must have been preparing for some time because we were told today, I believe, that the fifth and sixth atomic explosions had occurred. Is he about to announce the production of an anti-missile missile following a short period of testing?
It is interesting to note that some of those who speak the loudest regarding the stand of Canada and the free world have been so silent in their condemnation of Khrushchev and the stand he has taken followed by his action regarding nuclear testing. He has

Supply-External Affairs placed the lives of people everywhere in the world in jeopardy. He has done so cynically. He said his purpose was, in effect, to let the people of the world realize their position and their danger. I find it difficult to understand, as did the Secretary of State for External Affairs, why the Belgrade conference did not make some outstanding declarations on this subject. I find it difficult to understand how they reacted so tepidly to Khrushchev's gross contempt of human safety.
The United States is now proceeding with testing. I have my own views in this regard. I can only say one thing. I hope that no action will be taken by any government belonging to the NATO organization without consultation in advance of that action. I realize that, as the Secretary of State for External Affairs has pointed out, they could take no other course. It is not for me to say that one would have hoped that having delayed for three years during the moratorium, a delay of the same number of weeks might have been helpful in the mobilization of world opinion.
What is Khrushchev's attitude? I am often told that if we could only try and be reasonable, how different things would be. Was there anything unreasonable in the request made by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the President of the United States that there be no testing in the atmosphere? Testing in the atmosphere, the cause of the deleterious nature of fall-out, should have been the last thing undertaken. There could have been tests underground. Mr. Khrushchev declared on Saturday that nuclear testing could be ended only by western acceptance of Soviet proposals for a German peace treaty and complete disarmament. What association is there between nuclear testing and a German peace treaty?
For the last year and a half the Secretary of State for External Affairs has been doing everything possible, as I said a moment ago, to bring about international agreement on disarmament. The Leader of the Opposition pointed out there were 300 or so meetings held in Geneva. There was hope. I remember the last time I talked to Prime Minister Macmillan. He said, "I think we are going to secure a continuing moratorium and indeed an agreement on testing." If we had been able to achieve that, we would have gone a long way, because we would have established that in this narrow field, inspection and control would operate in an experimental stage as a preparation for the larger field of disarmament whenever disarmament comes.
Mr. Khrushchev called on the United States and Great Britain to meet in settling the main problems of our times, general and complete disarmament. He said, "Let us seek
[Mr, Diefenbaker.J
seriously, in good faith, a solution of the question of concluding a German peace treaty so as to arrest in good time the sliding of states into the inferno of a rocket nuclear war". In other words, "I believe in negotiation", says Mr. Khrushchev. He says, "I will keep what I have and then I will take what you have or part of it". That is not the principle of negotiation.
What has his attitude been since last July, when the house last met? He has been moving to higher and more aggressive peaks of threat and intimidation week by week. It is very interesting to read the communist manifesto. I am not going into details with regard thereto, but I suggest to hon. members that they read the text of the Soviet party's draft program for the next 20 years. Hitler took 1,000 pages in "Mein Kampf". Khrushchev takes less than 50 pages, and he places before the world the blueprint of the architect, in which be builds a house for all mankind, with the U.S.S.R. having the only key to the premises.
It is well to read what he says. It reveals the cold ruthlessness that is apparent in the breaking of his nation's word by the resumption of tests. Today one hon. member said this is not a contest between capitalism and socialism. I immediately rise to say that in so far as communism is concerned it would bring about all its changes by revolution, infiltration and the destruction of the will to resist. This is what the Soviet party's draft program says:
The great October socialist revolution ushered in a new era in the history of mankind, the era of the downfall of capitalism and the establishment of communism. Socialism has triumphed in the Soviet union and has achieved decisive victories in the people's democracies; socialism has become a cause of practical significance to hundreds of millions of people, and the bearer of the revolutionary movement of the working class throughout the world.
Then it goes on to say:
The socialist revolution in European and Asian countries has resulted in the establishment of the world socialist system. A powerful wave of national liberation revolutions is sweeping away the colonial system of imperialism.
One does not have to sort out these
passages:
The victorious workers and peasants lacked knowledge of state administration and the experience necessary for the construction of a new society. The difficulties of socialist construction were greatly increased by the fact that for almost 30 years the U.S.S.R. was the world's only socialist state, and was subjected to incisive attacks by the hostile capitalist environment.
Then it says again:
Socialism has done away forever with the supremacy of private ownership of the means of production, that source of the division of society into antagonistic classes. Socialist ownership of the means of production has become the solid

economic foundation of society. Unlimited opportunities have been afforded for the development of the productive forces.
Then it also says:
Under the leadership of Lenin it worked out a plan for the radical transformation of the country, for the construction of socialism. On the basis of a thorough scientific analysis, Lenin elaborated the policy of the proletarian state for the entire period of transition from capitalism to socialism. He evolved the new economic policy (N.E.P.), designed to bring about the victory of socialism.
And so Khrushchev goes on. He says that within this generation the Kremlin will have succeeded everywhere in the world in bringing about the changes that are set out in that manifesto. He also indicates that coexistence means the acceptance by the free world of the will of the communist world.
1 think all of us are agreed as to the seriousness of the events of recent days. What should be done? There have been a number of suggestions made, all of them helpful. I am not going into a detailed analysis in any way of the matters that were referred to by the hon. members who spoke, and in particular those questions that were propounded by the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. member for Essex East. I am, however, going to say something regarding the possibility of the United Nations having a larger place in an endeavour to bring about a settlement of this problem.
There are some things the United Nations can do; there are others it cannot do. The United Nations is limited by the fact that Berlin is part of the peace settlement with Germany and is therefore, under the charter, reserved for consideration by the victorious powers. However, if the four powers decide they would like the United Nations to play a part, then there are roles the United Nations can play. There is the question of safeguarding the maintenance of peace; and where the peace is threatened, if the mapor-ity of the United Nations decide that this is being done by the U.S.S.R. or by any other nation, the matter could be brought before the United Nations. Mr. Khrushchev said in his interview with Mr. Sulzberger of the New York Times that he is not averse to United Nations discussions if the big four agree.
Various suggestions have been made. One is that the whole of the city of Berlin could be placed under the trusteeship of the United Nations, with access guaranteed by a U.N. force. There have been suggestions that the United Nations should be moved from New York to Berlin. Speaking for myself, I may say that suggestion has no appeal. The suggestion has been made by Senator Mansfield to which reference was made by the Leader of the Opposition. Other suggestions have also been made.
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I think the time has come when consideration might be given-and the United Nations might give consideration thereto-to the internationalizing of the city of Berlin under the United Nations, with its status to continue under United Nations presence. I realize that this suggestion would not receive the support of Mr. Khrushchev. However, it at least would bring about a step forward in the assurance that if negotiation failed, the United Nations would have something to which it could give its attention. It would require uncontrolled access by the west. It would also require a willingness on the part of the four powers to agree.
Someone has said that matters like this should not be discussed in advance of election campaigns in other parts of the world. I believe this is a serious enough matter that it should be discussed, if only for the purpose of directing the attention of mankind to a possible solution before it becomes too late to do so. As I said in Winnipeg and now repeat, Canada being one of the smaller nations, a member of NATO and of NORAD, with its record of sacrifice it has a right and a responsibility to place its views before mankind. After all, if the decision is left to four nations, without any suggestions having come from the smaller nations, the moral responsibility will rest on the governments of the smaller nations for having failed to advance their views.
There is one thing I wish to point out. I read that one of the pundits said that in the course of my Winnipeg speech I had not revealed the points which would be subject to negotiation. I can only say that I have never known any success to be attained by revealing in advance of negotiations the stand you are going to take. However, that does not mean that the stand should not have been determined upon. That does not imply either that the government of Canada, in its desire for peace, has not made a number of important suggestions which, in the perspective of the future, can be revealed.
The possibility of developing a role for the United Nations as a means of achieving a solution to the Berlin problem must necessarily be carefully examined. In the past the United Nations has made notable contributions to the peaceful settlement of disputes.
In point of fact the potentialities of the United Nations in this connection have not been ignored. This suggestion on my part regarding the United Nations is not new. I would point out that on March 19, 1959, in answer to a question by the Leader of the Opposition in which he inquired of me whether I would give a report about the conversations that had just been completed with

Supply-External Affairs the Prime Minister and the foreign secretary of the United Kingdom, as found at page 2049 of Hansard of that year I stated as follows:
Our talks were largely in the nature of an exchange of information and a review of the German and Berlin problems and of the various proposals for a settlement of those problems now under study in western capitals and in NATO. I should emphasize that neither Mr. Macmillan nor I attempted to crystallize any British or Canadian position on specific questions under discussion. However, I might add that it is my belief that the United Nations might play some significant role in the solution of the Berlin problem, and that this phase deserves further and more careful study. I think it would be generally agreed that it was clear there was no essential difference in the British and Canadian assessments of the world situation or in the basic aims and policies of our two countries with regard to the complex questions of Germany, Berlin and European security.
I do not think I can add anything more to what I have said. I know the Leader of the Opposition, with his great experience in these matters, will realize that I can go no further than the outline I have just given the house.
At that time the Leader of the Opposition said this:
It is particularly gratifying to hear the Prime Minister say that there may be a way in which the United Nations can, in due course, play a part in this Berlin situation in a manner which would be helpful to peace and security.
Then, speaking in the house on April 7, 1959, as found at page 2294 of Hansard of that year, these words:
By way of contributing to this process of clarification Canada offered a few suggestions concerning the problem of Berlin.
That reference is to clarification of the joint NATO viewpoint arising from the NATO ministerial meeting which was then taking place in Washington and at which the then minister of national defence, Hon. George Pearkes, V.C., represented Canada. I continued:
In the Canadian view no agreement can be acceptable to the west which places in jeopardy the security of West Berlin otr the freedom of its citizens.
That view was expressed two and a half years ago. I continued:
It is also the Canadian view that the NATO countries could not accept a solution which might endanger the ties between the Federal Republic of Germany and the other countries of western Europe.
Since then from time to time representations have been made. Indeed, I might return to the words of General Pearkes when, reporting on the conference on April 8, 1959, he said this as reported at page 2344 of Hansard of that year:
It is unnecessary for me to elaborate on what the Prime Minister has said, though I would call attention to the statement he made about the suggestion which was advanced by the Canadian delegation that in some manner the United Nations might be able to assist in the solution of the Berlin problem.

Later he stated:
Further study has been given to the possibility of the United Nations playing some part, and suggestions were made at the meeting as to how the United Nations might contribute something to the solution of the problem. I pointed out that we in Canada were anxious that consideration be given to ways by which the present arrangements over Berlin could be strengthened, either by supplementary or substitute arrangements. I pointed out that the Prime Minister had made his statement as of March 19, and then I went on to say that I would doubt if the United Nations could play a useful part unless a four power agreement had first been reached. I suggested that a settlement involving the United Nations need not be weaker, and conceivably might be more stable, than the present position in which the powers are now in Berlin by right of conquest. Although the effective introduction of the United Nations into the Berlin situation could probably be accomplished only through the agreement of the four powers, it could serve to engage the interest of other governments in the freedom and independence of Berlin in a way which no agreement reached solely among the occupying powers could do. Accordingly I suggested it would be worth while for the permanent council to study the possibilities of a trole for the United Nations in the application of a solution to the Berlin problem, and an assurance was given that a full study would be made by the permanent council of the suggestions which were put forward.
I would also point out that there was an occasion when the United Nations did endeavour to be of some assistance in connection with Berlin, but it was not very successful. That had to do with the committee of the United Nations which was set up some 10 years ago.
On September 1, I stated: "The charter of the United Nations declares the primary purpose of the United Nations to be the maintenance of international peace and security. It must be ready to make use of the United Nations". As recognized by the hon. gentlemen speaking for the opposition, there are a number of complicating factors, not the least of which is the question of the timing of any United Nations involvement.
The United Nations could, to begin with, exercise the function of promoter of an agreement on the Berlin problem by providing a focus for world opinion, which could have the effect of impelling the powers directly concerned to settle their differences by negotiation. Second, the United Nations could, if the powers concerned could be persuaded to agree, act in various roles as observer to verify that any new agreement reached was being fully implemented in accordance with its provision. Third, the United Nations could be assigned the more difficult task of operating an international regime in Berlin.
The problem is one of selecting the role which is most likely to contribute to the settlement of the Berlin problem in particular circumstances. This means essentially that the role of the United Nations must be

related to developments in negotiations toward a settlement. The four powers have primary responsibility in Berlin, and must first enter into direct negotiations. There are some indications at the moment that there is a reasonable prospect of there being negotiations. When I speak of a reasonable prospect, I am not speaking in anticipation of possible success, in view of Mr. Khrushchev's intrinsic position. If direct negotiations succeed might there be a possibility of providing a role for the United Nations, perhaps as guarantor of the agreement reached.
It is important to remember that the effective introduction of the United Nations into Berlin could only be done by agreement of all the four powers. I need not say that this may not be easily achieved. Whatever the difficulty might be, I think the little powers and other nations to be affected by the outcome of the Berlin problem have a right to an opportunity to be heard and to place their views clearly before a forum of most of the nations on earth. Furthermore, I can think of the possibility of the United Nations role being that of an observer in the city, or a supervisor on the access routes. Consideration of this possibility might facilitate negotiations and, if the idea were implemented, it might provide a stabilizing element in what is bound to remain a sensitive area throughout the years.
Those in general are some of the suggestions that I place before the house in regard to this question. The particulars of others are so sensitive in detail, if I may use that word again, they cannot be brought before the house, much as I would like to do so.
I now come to something else. What should the United Nations do in the world today?
I listened to the hon. member for Oxford. He spoke with the authority of four years of representation of Canada, and effective represensation. I have heard it said that no member of any of the delegations had a wider acquaintanceship and friendship than he. He gave us something of a picture of the United Nations.
Over and over again we listen to Khrushchev babbling about imperialism and colonialism, picturing himself, the leader of communism, as the exponent of freedom for peoples who are under domination. The Belgrade conference made a number of recommendations and suggestions, among which are the following:
Imperialism is weakening. Colonial empires and other forms of foreign oppression of peoples in Asia, Africa and Latin America are gradually disappearing from the stage of history... In the same way, the peoples of Latin America are continuing to make an increasingly effective contribution to the improvement of international relations.
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This article then continues as follows:
All this accelerates the end of the epoch of foreign oppression of peoples, but also makes peaceful co-operation among peoples, based on the principles of independence and equal rights, an essential condition for their freedom and progress.
Further on in this article appears the following statement:
The participants in the conference solemnly reaffirm their support to the "declaration of the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples," adopted at the fifteenth session of the general assembly of the United Nations, and recommend the immediate unconditional, total and final abolition of colonialism and imperialist domination in all its forms and manifestations.
A little later on they again reiterate this. I am surprised they do not include eastern Europe.
I recognize that there are many who would say that is something which should not be dealt with. Mr. Khrushchev unilaterally wants to set aside agreements entered into with regard to Berlin which were part of a general settlement between the victorious and the vanquished. I should like to see the United Nations given an opportunity of declaring its opposition to the type of imperialism which he has placed upon one hundred million people not only in eastern Europe but in other parts of the world.
When the Belgrade nations declared their belief in the right of peoples to self-determination and independence, and the free determination of the forms and methods of their economic, social and cultural development, I should like very much to have seen that declaration include the U.S.S.R. Why it was not included I have no idea. But there is a field in which I think we in the free world, in the United Nations, could place in proper perspective the arguments advanced by Khrushchev in this regard. Indeed I regard a stand such as this as one that would do much good, although I know there are others who say we must leave that alone. Why should the free world always be on the defensive? Unfortunately, because of our desire for peace, many of the things which ought to have been said have not been said. While we debate that stand in the interests of the maintenance of peace, Khrushchev continues to push forward inch by inch and mile by mile all over the world.
I am going to conclude by saying something about NATO. I think that by his threats and recriminations in the last few months Mr. Khrushchev has done much to bring about greater unity in NATO than ever before. I pointed out earlier, as did the Leader of the Opposition, that the countries in NATO are equals and that there is need of full and complete consultation. I repeat what I said earlier. I hope that never again will one of

Supply-External Affairs the member nations of NATO act without consultation with the other members of NATO.
The Leader of the Opposition was one of the committee of three in 1956. At that time responsibility was given to that committee to consider ways and means of putting principles about consultation into practice. That report which still serves as a useful reference document on the problem of consultation recognized the difficulties when it stated in paragraph 17:
North Atlantic political and economic co-operation, however, let alone unity, will not be brought about in a day or by a declaration, but by creating over the years and through a whole series of national acts and policies, the habits and traditions and precedents for such co-operation and unity. The process will be a slow and gradual one at best; slower than we might wish. We can be satisfied if It is steady and sure.
Then, in paragraph 40 we find the following:
One of those limitations is the hard fact that ultimate responsibility for decision and action still rests on national governments.
The Canadian government has consistently recognized the importance of consultation and the process of co-ordination in the alliance in the interests of greater unity. It has consistently urged that the alliance should adapt its machinery to changed circumstances and I have expressed the view that this can be accomplished within the existing framework of NATO. We believe that NATO's unity and strength derive from and will continue to derive in a large measure from a principle of equality of membership. Consequently we have opposed the formation of political blocs or directorates within the alliance which can only have the effect of weakening its unity and purpose by establishing some members in a preferred or dominant position in relation to the others.
When I was in Europe in November, 1958, I was able to make Canada's views clear to members of NATO at that time. It was almost simultaneous with the suggestion that a triumvirate should be set up. I said we would not accept it.
We have also urged that in its review of long term planning NATO should review the principles of consultation with a view to better co-ordination of allied policies. Recognition was given to these principles at the last meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Oslo, attended by the Secretary of State for External AfEairs, for the first time when agreement was reached on the main objectives which are to guide consultations and co-ordination of policies in NATO. The most important of these principles is "to achieve a common policy on subjects of direct concern to the alliance as a whole." Progress is being made. In these critical days the NATO council is meeting regularly through its permanent

representatives to fulfil its responsibilities but there is still room for improvement. I think I will say no more on that.
I think I ought to point out that while the committee of which the Leader of the Opposition was a member made certain recommendations and some changes have taken place, as yet we have not arrived at that point where consultation is as complete as I would like to see it.
With regard to the other questions that have arisen, they will be answered in detail by the Secretary of State for External Affairs-As Prime Minister, I have always followed the course of not interfering with the ministers in the discharge of their responsibilities except that in regard to foreign policy I have followed the tradition of the United Kingdom, that the Prime Minister must take a particular interest in that field of national activity on which the safety of the state so largely depends.
If we could only plan internationally to' meet all of the changes of attitude and the circuitous courses followed by Mr. Khrushchev, things would be much simpler. The Leader of the Opposition asked whether there was any planning, any consultation regarding the sealing off, or any anticipation of the sealing off of ingress and egress between East Berlin and West Berlin. I frankly tell you I do not think that was anticipated. However-and I am. answering him in this regard-there is planning and consultation to cover potential emergencies as they may arise with respect to western rights and responsibilities in Berlin.
I cannot, of course, disclose what action NATO governments propose to take if the Soviet government or the East Germans attempt to-block off access to Berlin. It would, however, be a mistake to imply that on this vital matter western interests are dependent on improvisation at the time of or after the time of the event. The occupying powers, specifically the United States, the United Kingdom and France, have special responsibilities to ensure maintenance of access for their troops stationed in Berlin, and for their supplies. Under the North Atlantic treaty and subsequent declarations of the NATO council all members have certain responsibilities in respect of Berlin.
The Leader of the Opposition implied that there might be a tendency to wait upon events improvidently before deciding on courses of action. I can tell the house that at the last NATO meeting in Oslo Canada took a leading part in urging the necessity of effective defence consultation on plans to meet contingencies which might arise in the Berlin situation. The United Kingdom, the United States and France are keeping the other members of NATO regularly informed of progress in their

planning against various contingencies which are seen as possibly arising over Berlin, and the government of Canada will continue to ensure that there is no slackening in the effectiveness of this consultation and planning.
This is no time for pessimism, Mr. Chairman. Equally it is not a time for optimism. Throughout the years all the free world has faced dire dangers. I remember in the fall of 1916 visiting the British House of Commons just prior to the change of administration and hearing the then prime minister, one of Britain's greatest, I think, the Right Hon. H. H. Asquith, say that they had passed through the gravest difficulties. A few weeks later I heard Lloyd George make his first speech as prime minister of the United Kingdom. I was one of seven Canadians who had that privilege. I might be asked how I happened to get into the gallery. As a matter of fact, Sir George Perley was on the troop ship returning to his job as high commissioner and he said that if at any time in the future there was anything I wanted I should get in touch with him. It was not many weeks before I did. I said, "I want a ticket to the gallery". He said, "That is a lot more difficult to secure than almost anything else you could ask for". I said, "That is what I want, that is what you promised me". I can tell you, Mr. Chairman, that is what I got.
I heard Lloyd George's speech and I have always remembered it. He had the power, the imagery and the command of language necessary for such an occasion. He compared the situation then to his boyhood days when he used to look toward the west with a mountain immediately in front of him. He wondered what was beyond that mountain so finally he climbed it and there was another mountain ahead. He said, "I knew that somewhere beyond there was hope for the world". I believe that today. I believe that if the free world will but stand firm, resolute and determined and at the same time not stubbornly unresilient to the necessities that are brought about through change, we shall come out of the Berlin problem stronger in the things of the spirit than ever before; for, as I see it, if we follow a course of defeatism by giving up our principles, we shall have laid the foundations for a future frightful to contemplate.
Communism does not understand any other principle than power. Communism does not believe in an immortal being who determines the course of mankind, even though sometimes taking generations to do so. We do, and if we do our part now without permitting ourselves to be intimidated I think there is a possibility that we shall be laying the foundations for a new relationship between the communist world and the world of freedom,
Supply-External Affairs a relationship which cannot be hoped to be attained if we capitulate to the degree Khrushchev asks us to. If we give up our principles, what have we to live for in the years ahead?
I remember that in the dark days of 1917 Quiller-Couch wrote a novel about two men who opposed one another, one of whom believed in the things of the spirit and the other of whom ridiculed such beliefs. The one who believed in the things of the spirit gave up his principles in order to defeat his opponent. He did. He won and when he had achieved victory there was no difference between him in his victory and his opponent if he had been successful.
I know there are some who say that they think the things of the spirit should not be considered. We are right in the stand we are taking in this matter. It is not only a question of the people of West Berlin although we gave our pledge there and must keep it. It is a question of whether we shall allow Khrushchev with intimidation and threats to push us back and back to a point where we have nothing but our past to look back on. If there is to be a future, if mankind is going forward to higher and better things, the things of the spirit are as important to nations as they are to individuals. It is in that spirit that I hope the free world will stand, prepared to make those changes which the realities demand but not prepared to sacrifice the principle in which we believe, the principle of the right of people to live under law even though the rule of law is not effective internationally.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: Mr. Chairman, it was not my intention to speak a second time in this debate, but I think now is the proper time to speak up and make the position of this party on one particular issue quite clear. I have listened with a great deal of interest to the majority of speakers and I listened with interest, as I am sure we all did, to the speech just concluded by the Prime Minister. I was interested in his sort of re-analysis of Canadian foreign policy and his indication of support of the United Nations. He knows our attitude in that respect. He referred to the government's policy with respect to NATO. I will not say anything more about that now because we will have something to say about it when the defence estimates are under discussion. He also referred to support for the commonwealth. I know the Prime Minister knows that we in this group, as I have said on numerous occasions, have a great affection for the commonwealth. We believe it can play an even stronger role than it has played to date, as an institution, if it is utilized.

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However, I rose particularly to mention this Berlin issue. I want to be quite clear that I understand the Prime Minister's remarks correctly. We were listening to him carefully and at one point we understood him to indicate that it was the government's position that if there were any change in the status of West Berlin, or a war, that we were honour bound in this country to support war. Am I correct in that interpretation?


John George Diefenbaker: What I said was this. If perchance, and all of us hope to the contrary, war came, we would become a participant because of our relationship, our undertakings and our pledges in NATO.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I want to make it quite clear that we in this group take the firm position that we cannot support the position that a world war should come over Berlin. We trust that negotiations will prevent it. This is our attitude toward the situation in West Berlin, and we believe it is the attitude of the majority of Canadian people as indicated by the press, by numerous publications and some hon. members here. We believe this position has been indicated to some extent by the speeches in this house, the speech by the hon. member for Leeds, by the hon. member for Edmonton-Strathcona, the hon. member for Niagara Falls and others. I am sure that this government will do all that is within its power to work for negotiations to have the problem settled through the utilization of the institution of the United Nations.
I do once again want to emphasize the attitude of the Canadian people. We feel very strongly on this question, Mr. Chairman. The Prime Minister took a somewhat different attitude from that of the hon. member for Edmonton-Strathcona. I give the hon. member great credit for a very courageous stand. He said, when speaking on September 8, as recorded at page 8136 of Hansard:
First, the hon. member for Greenwood mentioned coexistence.
I thought the hon. member for Greenwood made an excellent speech.
It is a peculiarity of the thinking today, in the United States particularly, that to mention the word "coexistence" puts one sort of into the appeasement class or that of a fellow traveller. Let us look at its very realistically. The communists are there in many countries. Their system is well and firmly entrenched. They are extremely powerful.
There is more than that. There is no doubt that they have the solid support of a large segment of their population. In fact, we can see no reasonable hope that in the very near future they are likely to be overthrown. They are there. They are strong. They are going to remain there unless they can be overthrown by force of arms and, as I

said before. I think that any question of overthrow by force of arms means we will be out of the frying pan and into the fire. It cannot be done without destroying us all.
Therefore peaceful coexistence is the only existence there is. It is not an alternate form of action; it is the only possibility. Therefore we must do all we can to try to relieve the tension which might destroy us all. Certainly if we are going to live in peace with our neighbours it would behoove us to have a foreign policy more in keeping with our Christian, democratic principles than merely an anti-communist line.
I thought the hon. member made a very courageous speech on that occasion. I should like to quote from an editorial in the August 29 issue of the Vancouver Sun. It is entitled, "The Dreams and the Facts."
"We are in an impossible situation over Berlin and our refusal of de facto recognition to east Germany is a position we shall have to abandon sooner or later."
Dr. Hugh Keenleyside said it. It would have sounded even better in the mouths of some western statesmen who permit themselves only to think it.
In public, spokesmen of the west still pay lip service to daydreams. Daydreams are more pleasant than facts, but not as useful in diplomatic bargaining.
One dream: Russia will permit free elections which would result in East Germany joining the west.
The fact: Russia won't give it up. She fears a reunited Germany. So do many people of the western world.
Dream: We shall pretend the east German state isn't there. Perhaps it will wither away.
Fact: The puppet state can be kept alive by Russia as long as she feels she needs it. Since we have rearmed West Germany, that is likely to be a long time.
Dream: All that is necessary is that the west show a united front in West Berlin.
Fact: It is a poor place for a front line. It is a western island more than 100 miles inside the Russian empire. Military experts say it is indefensible.
Dream: Khrushchev wouldn't dare start a war.
Fact: Khrushchev doesn't need to. He plans to sign a peace treaty, 16 years delayed, and give East Germany control of the West Berlin access routes.
Dream: We can fight our way in.
Fact: No one has shown how, except by launching a nuclear war which would result in certain destruction of Russia and the United States and perhaps everybody else too.
There is nothing new in these facts. No spies risk their lives for them. They are as well known in Moscow as in Ottawa or London.
Yet it is on such facts, as restated by Dr. Keenleyside Saturday, that western nations must build a policy designed to preserve West Berlin and peace.
Here, Canada could give a lead. But we are silent, while Washington's emotional cries about sacred honour fill the air.
Must Prime Minister Diefenbaker continue to stifle the calm and reasonable voice which Canada could interject into the Berlin affair?
Then, we find a former colleague of the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. member for Essex East taking the same point of view as members of this group. I quote from the Vancouver Sun of recent date, the Hon.

James Sinclair, former minister of fisheries in the Liberal government:
"Why any Canadian should die for the people who created Belsen, Buchenwald and Auschwitz is beyond me".
So said James Sinclair, former federal fisheries minister and veteran foreign observer.
Sinclair, speaking from his north Vancouver home, said that he believed the best thing that has ever happened in Europe was to have the most war-like nation divided in half.
Germany has started two wars in this century, and the Eichmann trial has reminded people just how the Germans behaved," he said.
He said he would rather see West Berlin absorbed by East Germany than another war.
"Even with a communist take-over in Berlin the West Germans of that city would still be living, which is more than we can say for the six million Jews that they sent to the ovens and gas chambers," he said.
The article goes on to say:
Sinclair termed the east-west division of Berlin an incredible blunder, adding: "When you make such a stupid blunder you cut your losses and adjust."
Then, a former minister of national defence, Hon. Ralph Campney, defence minister under the Liberal government, said:
If the price is to lose Berlin or have another war then there shouldn't be war.
But he said that the true issue is more than just Berlin, but rather the mistake made when the city was divided after the second world war.
44 "These mistakes should be corrected," he said, "by negotiation and compromise, and while Berlin might be lost to avoid another war I think there will eventually be a permanent division between east and west Germany."
Then Premier Douglas, the leader of the New Democratic party, has this to say:
If the east Germans cut off access to West Berlin after signing a separate peace treaty with Russia the matter should be dealt with by the United Nations.
He said Canada should make it clear to her NATO partners she isn't prepared to go to war over Russian recognition of the east German government.
"This is the real problem," he said, "whether or not the western powers are willing to recognize that East Germany exists."
"The only reason they're avoiding it is to please Adenauer in his dream of a reunified and rearmed Germany," said Douglas.
Douglas said he believes the west is working itself into a state of hysteria over the matter of access to West Berlin.
"Yet," he said, "there is no suggestion that the East Germans will cut off this access."
He said the west should come to some kind of terms with East Germany.
I took the time to read those editorials because they are receiving a great deal of support in British Columbia. Only today I received a letter from a retired squadron leader, a holder of the distinguished flying cross, in which he said, "I back you people up 100 per cent". I have received several letters of this type from men who served in the forces in world war I and world war II. 90205-6-516
Supply-External Affairs I rise to re-emphasize the point of view of this group and to say again that we are behind-


An hon. Member:: We know your point of view.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I am glad the hon. gentleman does. At least we state it and give it expression. We are behind this government in all it does and we are behind the Secretary of State for External Affairs in all he does to explore every avenue and to give some leadership in this direction to other countries. We should not follow on the tail of the United States, but should use our British commonwealth connections toward this end. There are many countries in the commonwealth who take the same stand as this party and who go arm in arm with Mr. Nehru and other leaders in the commonwealth who act with some moral force in the world to exert some influence at this critical time so that negotiations will continue.
I know how we all feel about the attitude of the Soviet union and how dismayed we were with the resumption of nuclear testing, and so on. We are all agreed about that. No one thinks more of freedom than the members of this group. I say that if freedom is to be maintained in the world today and if peace is to be maintained; if we are to develop civilization for the days ahead which will provide us with peace, and the majority of peoples in the world with a decent standard of living, it will come from that force which does not believe in capitalism or communism as it exists today but believes in democratic socialist principles applied through a Christian expression of life.


Mr. Regnier:: Mr. Chairman, it was a great
privilege for me to hear the speech made by the Prime Minister to the bar association in Winnipeg, the theme of which was that the fullest discussion and negotiation must take place before we can have any thought of war. I feel very humble today in speaking after the very great address given by the Prime Minister. However, I have always taken an interest in international affairs and in my maiden speech on May 29 I referred to this part of the speech from the throne:
My government will continue to make unremitting efforts to assist the peaceful solution of international problems and in the accomplishment by patient negotiation of a substantial measure of disarmament.
In referring to that passage I quoted a report appearing in the Ottawa Citizen of May 15 under the headline "Montgomery Feels Canada Should Lead Free Crusade".
I quote from that report:
It seems to me Canada is in a unique position to provide robust world leadership. Your nation

Supply-External Affairs cannot be charged with the stigma of colonialism; you're lucky that way. You have a very good amalgam of French and British blood; that's good.
It is quite clear to me that the nations of the world are looking to Canada for a lead. That is a fact. I am not saying that to please you. I would like to see Canada develop a foreign policy of its own, not tacked on to someone else, and give that lead.
I believe Montgomery is a man of great experience. He is a man who knows about wars and he is a lover of peace. He has taken an independent attitude on world problems and Canada might very well heed his advice.
I was very much touched by the reference made by the Prime Minister to our great Secretary of State for External Affairs, who has devoted so much of his time toward the maintenance of peace and disarmament. However, the Prime Minister stated about our worthy Secretary of State for External Affairs that in the opinion of the Kremlin his work showed weakness, instead of greatness. I think the battle for peace and disarmament is not ended; it must be sustained, and the more so when the need is greater.
Napoleon once said

and he was a man of war, as everyone knows-that even in war moral power is to physical as to three parts out of four.
Mahatma Gandhi relied only on moral power and he was able to obtain, by his passive resistance, the freedom and independence of India. Nehru today has nothing more than moral power to offer the world, yet both the west and the communists are competing for his approval and are shrinking from his disapproval.
As I said before, it was a great privilege for me to hear the speech made by the Right Hon. Prime Minister to the Canadian Bar Association on September 1.1 feel that Canada should never be committed to war by proxy. The key to our participation should never be left to those who dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Canadians want Canada to be free, not a mere appendage to our southern neighbour. Canadians have faith in the logic and humanity of our Prime Minister and Secretary of State for External Affairs. We cannot give a proxy to either NATO or NORAD. We cannot abdicate our right in advance to keep us from maintaining or breaking the peace.
I should like to quote a few proverbs and sayings in connection with war. Franklin said:
There never was a good war, or a bad peace.
General Grant of the United States said:
When wars do come, they fall upon the many, the producing class, who are the sufferers.
There is a German proverb which says:
A great war leaves the country with three armies-an army of cripples, an army of mourners and an army of thieves.
TMr. Regnier.]
Wellington said:
Men who have nice notions of religion have no business to be soldiers.
Wellington also said:
The next dreadful thing to a battle lost is a battle won.
Fielding said:
War is the sink of all injustice.
Tertullian said:
In disarming Peter, Christ disarmed every soldier.
We are presently suffering from a recurrent attack of war virus. This virus thrives on the thirst for conquest, thirst for turmoil and the innate ferocity and barbarism of man. Any student of history well knows that all wars have been futile in their results. I well recall in 1940 listening to a lecture by a professor of history at the University of Manitoba, Professor R. O. MacFarlane. He was also chairman of the royal commission on education in Manitoba and gave very great service in this respect. He stated at the time we were at war with Germany that after the war we would become the allies of Germany in a war against Russia.
This is what happened. Probably 20 years from now we may be allied with Russia in a war against China. If we could get all our scientists to study the history of mankind from the very beginning, I think they could through the use of computing machines, tell us the date of the next war. In my opinion, this is how human nature works. It is like that of the lemmings which periodically go and jump in the sea, driven by we do not know what. It seems to me that human nature is almost the same and that war will come. It is said that war is unthinkable, but I believe it is possible and I believe that we should really prepare for it.
How futile was the bloodshed in the past when one considers that the nation we have bombed and whose nationals we have killed by the thousands is our best friend today and that the nation we helped to defend is our deadly enemy today. How futile was our participation in such carnage when we realize that the avowed object of our participation was the defence of Poland and that one of the first provisions of the peace treaty provided for the enslavement of Poland. How naive were the leaders of the world who made the peace that divided the city of Berlin one half of it free and one half of it enslaved. Wars breed more wars. We won the war but we lost the peace.
The war spirit is a disease of the mind and of the heart caused by the lack of the love of God and the abandonment of Christian principles. The lesson of history teaches us

that today's friends will be tomorrow's enemies and that our objective of today will be altered tomorrow and perhaps be completely reversed. One should never be the aggressor, no matter what the provocation. No loss of prestige or, as the orientals say, loss of face, can be a sufficient reason to go to war. If we went to war for Berlin, Berlin would be destroyed and therefore the purpose would be non-existent. If we go to war, no matter what we do, history will show that we did not settle the question on Berlin.
I do not wish to leave the impression that I am opposed to war preparations because the old saying of the Romans si vis pacem, para bellum has always been true. I know that we must prepare for our defence. When I say that, I like to think of what was told to Canada at one time-it was on August 31, 1955-namely that there were two fronts to defend, the military front and the home front. We have acquitted ourselves very well with regard to that part that dealt with the military front but only now are we going to do something worth while for the home front. I scrapped a couple of pages of my speech because I was going to be very severe with the Liberal party. When I came to this house in 1958 and questioned the then minister of national health and welfare, he told me that under the Liberal regime they had prepared for a million casualties but they neglected to do anything to prevent those casualties. Either they wanted to justify the expense by not providing for doing away with casualties or they wanted to encourage some of their business friends by buying a great deal of material. At least it showed that they expected that it was possible to have a million casualties. I think there is no excuse for having done nothing about civil defence. I should like to express my great satisfaction in the announcement that we are going to train 100,000 men by groups of 25,000. I think this is a very good beginning. I want to reserve my comments until I get the full details of this organization. I have here the August number of a book called Pageant. In it there is an article entitled "Inside Russian Civil Defence". It took five years for Khrushchev who started that activity himself when he took power in 1955, the time when we were told that the time to act was now. I understand the civil defence organization was completed in Russia in 1960. Instead of commenting I am going to read this article fully. It is found at page 6 and is by Henry Jordan. He says this:
Our program has been muddled, and our attitude fatalistic. But the Soviets give every citizen years of intensive training. Should we be doing likewise? Here is the first, complete report on the little known Red plan for survival.
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Supply-External Affairs
Do you know what "fallout" is made of? Why it spreads? How to gauge the "delay period" after a nuclear bomb burst-the time it's still safe to be outdoors?
Do you know what kind of clothing will fully protect you against residual radiation? Or how to rid your kitchen utensils easily of dangerous radioactivity?
Being unable to answer these and other such questions makes you a definite risk in the age of nucleonics. But. as you are no doubt aware, you're in a vast and mostly excellent company: perhaps 98 per cent of us in these 50 states.
You may not consider knowing the answers to these questions of very much importance to your life. You, along with most Americans, may consider all civil defence activity a hopeless exercise in futility. We have been told by various philosophers, statesmen and some scientists that a nuclear war would finish our civilization if not life itself, turning this world into a ball of poisonous ashes-a cosmic monument to man's folly-no matter what our precautions or preparations.
Perhaps so. But it may surprise you to know that a few thousand miles away in the Soviet union every factory worker, high school senior, subway conductor, plant manager and housewife is able to answer the questions cited in his sleep- and many more besides.
As our intelligence men know only too well, all Soviet citizens from 16 to 60-upwards of 135 million people-have six years of the stiffest civil defense drill behind them. With only the bedridden and insane excepted, they were required to attend classes and were taken out on field exercises to learn in theory and practice how to survive war in the age of the fiery mushroom cloud and radioactive fallout.
The leaders in the Kremlin obviously hope that our interest in civil defence will continue to be desultory, that most of us will continue to believe -despite governmental exhortations-that we cannot survive a nuclear war. Soviet Premier Khrushchev himself has repeatedly uttered gloomy predictions that a war of rocket-propelled H-bombs would leave no victor, only total destruction.
But there are experts who warn that Khrushchev is no more sincere than Henry L. Menckens mournful undertaker "conducting a $900 funeral." He would not draft every man, woman and halfchild for army-type drills every 12 or 18 months, spend badly needed funds, manpower and materials on anti-nuclear shelters, anti-fallout masks and decontamination equipment, unless he considered the "unthinkable" war a possibility after all-and that measures could be taken to reduce the toll.
What is the exact nature of Soviet civil defence preparations? Is there anything we can learn from them? Should we be taking similar steps?
On the following pages, Pageant presents the first comprehensive report on Soviet civil defence ever put before the American public. The information comes from many sources-secret Soviet training manuals, military periodicals, intelligence reports, interviews with escapees.
What emerges is a picture of a nation systematically being readied for the ultimate horror of a nuclear war. The story may well shock many Americans out of their business as usual mood. It contains information vital to an understanding of the basic political battle of our times.
Probably nothing characterizes DOSAFF, the Soviet civil defence organization, more tellingly than the fact that all its activities are classified defence secrets. (The initials stand for Dobrovolnoe Obshchestvo Sodeistviia Armii, Aviatsii i Flotu or: "Volunteer Society for Assistance to Army, Air Force and Navy.") Appropriately, DOSAAF was in the administrative grip of the Soviet secret police until 1958, when an organizational shuffle put it

Supply-External Affairs under the Ministry of Internal Affairs. But experts on Soviet affairs point out that the shift changed nothing-95 per cent of the Ministry's work concerns secret police activities.
Informed observers believe there are two major reasons for the secrecy surrounding Russian civil defence. First, the Soviet leaders do not wish to alarm other countries into setting up similar survival programs. Second, they do not want anyone to draw the conclusion that the Soviet preparedness drive could mean planning for war, not peace.
Yet it was Khrushchev himself who violated the secrecy rule a few years ago. Then he boasted to a German newsman of how formidable the Soviet union was, and how her rockets would obliterate all enemies without great cost to the Russian people, who were made safe from nuclear horrors by the largest civil defence program in the world.
"After I took over, I brought up the cadres of permanent civil defence workers to twenty two million, most of them demobilized army personnel," Khrushchev declared. And this was not an unlikely figure, considering that in World War II DOSAAF's hard core, recruited from a far smaller population, was made up of 25 million people.
The reactivation of DOSAAF Khrushchev spoke about goes back to 1955, when he succeeded Georgi Malenkov as actual head of the Soviet state. Surely a thermonuclear war would be costly, reasoned Khrushchev. But with sufficient preparation on the civil defence front, Russia's losses could be minimized, while the overconfident Western world would be effectively destroyed.
Civil defence therefore headed the list of Khrushchev's new projects. He ordered an immediate "mass attack"-the popular Soviet term for crash program. Within a few weeks, of his assuming power, directives were issued and Russian adults and adolescents of both sexes-by Soviet count, 83 per cent of the population-"volunteered" for DOSAAF civil defence courses.
Simultaneously, millions of training pamphlets were turned out. They dealt with the nuclear facts of life-gamma rays, "thermal storm," and what could be learned from observation of the fireball and mushroom cloud of H-bomb blasts.
The training courses of 1955, the first of several, ran ten class hours mainly devoted to theory. This was supplemented by field exercises in decontamination and first aid held on week ends and Sundays, the number depending on local needs.
At the conclusion of the course, each trainee was required to appear before a board and take a stiff exam on his knowledge of civil defence procedures. Low marks resulted in a return to class for further training. High marks earned DOSAAF's students certificates, brass badges, and hints of job promotion.
Whatever other ends the DOSAAF drills served, they helped strip atomic war of some of its awesomeness. General Boris Olisov, commander of the Red Army's Corps of Engineers, made a revealing comment about this in the usual upside-down Kremlin fashion:
"The western imperialists keep magnifying the danger of nuclear war", he wrote in Red Star the Soviet Army newspaper. "Their plan is to frighten, bully and blackmail other nations into submission. But this will get them nowhere as far as the Soviet goes. Her people have lost all fear of nuclear attack, thanks to systematic training in all aspects of civil defence".
Elsewhere in the article, the general hinted about the nature of future DOSAAF drills.
"You can't get to know all about civil defence in one day or one course. Yet, as our trainees are finding out, the simple, old fashioned rules hold true even in this age. Jumping into a ditch raises

a man's chances to outlive a nuclear blast ten times. A ditch is still man's best friend."
What did the millions of DOSAAF students learn?
I interviewed a former trainee who had escaped to the west.
First of all, he revealed, the hazards of nuclear war were consistently minimized-often sensibly so. Fallout, the DOSAAF teachers lectured is literally "trash"-dust and debris. When one of the big bombs goes off, a violent updraft sucks tons of liquefied, vaporized earth, stone and metal skyward to heights of 100 thousand feet and more. This debris is "hot"-highly radioactive.
Rather quickly, the vapors and droplets solidify in the thin, cold air of the upper atmosphere and "fall out". While they are still tumbling downward like myriad specks of dust, the ground, even in the immediate blast area, is entirely free of radioactivity.
This is a last, desperate period of grace during which it is still safe to leave shelter, gather up one's family, fight fires, or give and get medical attention.
Depending on weather and wind, the period of "dead time" may last 50 minutes or eight hours. Then, when the first fallout fragments set Geiger counters clicking, people will take cover.
"Even a roof of cardboard can save your life," the DOSAAF textbook informed students. "But just as radioactive dust must be prevented from touching your skin, it also has to be kept out of your lungs. The cheapest face mask equipped with a cloth filter will do an adequate job. If you have no mask, breathe through a damp handkerchief.
In a further attempt to take the terror out of nuclear war, DOSAAF training put great emphasis on the fact that fallout is as perishable as a snowflake in the hot sun. Scientifically this is entirely correct. Ten hours after a bomb burst, all the rampaging, life-destroying radioactivity loses 90 per cent of its strength. Before two weeks are up, life in a city can gradually resume, since radiation by then will be down to one tenth of 1 per cent.
Advanced Course
In 1956, at the close of the short Russian summer, DOSAAF again beat the drums to call all citizens for a second round of survival lessons. Classes started without delay. This time the emphasis was on practical matters, like Olisov's ditches.
Millions of citizens drilled in practice digging. They set fire to huge trash piles and put them out again, timed by instructors' stopwatches. To limber up still further, they were taken, regardless of health, on 20-mile marches, so-called "exercises in emergency evacuation."
Evening classes tackled "how to" matters: How to keep food and water supplies from absorbing poisonous radioactivity, for example (by sealing out dust). How to rid kitchen utensils of dangerous radioactivity (by washing with soap and water). How to rid oneself of "hot" fallout (by washing and more washing).
In the vast Russian hinterlands, DOSAAF instructors stressed problems of the sod and barn.
With animals, by and large, they told students, proceed as with humans. Make sure they are under cover when fallout starts. If radioactive matter gets on their hides, scrub them with soap and water. Should their eyes turn red-irritated from looking at the bomb's fireball-rinse them with DOSAAF's special eyewash.
What if the earth itself gets a dose of ionizing poison? Wait for rain to settle the dust. Then plow the hot trash under. Chances are it won't bother you again. Each rainfall will wash the hot debris deeper while time scatters its radioactivity.
The second DOSAAF training course also covered weapons not mentioned before: poison gas and bacterial warfare.

Instructors lectured about plagues, pests, infected lice, bacillus-derived botulism toxin (so powerful that a thimbleful could make New York City's entire water supply too deadly to drink), and how to detect germs by use of a biological detector kit. Poison gases were dealt with just as thoroughly -how the various kinds act, how to identify them, what protection is available, how to give first aid and how to de-gas a building.


The Acting Chairman (Mr. McLennan):: Order. I regret to interrupt the hon. member, but I must inform him that his time has expired.


Laurier Arthur Régnier: Mr. Chairman I was reading an article. It would not take me more than a few minutes to complete reading two more pages. I wonder whether I could have the full article incorporated in Hansard?


William Alexander McLennan: Does the committee give consent to the hon. member to continue?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


William Alexander McLennan: Does the committee give consent to the hon. member to have the article printed in Hansard?


Paul Joseph James Martin: It is not in accord with our practice to incorporate an article in Hansard. Now that I have intervened, I think the hon. member would be permitted to read it. But, just to put in the article is against our practice. A table is different. If we started to allow hon. members to put in articles some hon. members could put in my speeches and this would be objectionable.


Henry Frank Jones: Mr. Chairman, I wonder whether this other issue has been settled. Did I understand the hon. member for St. Boniface requested that the article be printed as an appendix to Hansard?


Laurier Arthur Régnier: Objection was taken to that procedure. I think the hon. member for Essex East asked that I be allowed to complete reading the article instead of having it printed as an appendix to Hansard.


Paul Joseph James Martin: My point is that the suggestion that an hon. member should be allowed to put on the record a portion of a speech or commentary without the words having been read would be contrary to our practice. I have never seen it attempted. Tables are different. Now that there has been this intervention, I think the hon. gentleman ought to be allowed to read the article.


Laurier Arthur Régnier: I think there is no objection-[DOT]


Paul Joseph James Martin: The hon. member is going to read it, not just table it.


Laurier Arthur Régnier: I continue:
At the end of the second course-a total of 22 class hours and much field work-the final exam was supplemented with a practical experiment to
Supply-External Affairs emphasize the lessons learned. Every trainee was forced to spend 30 minutes in a room filled with chloropicrin, a lethal world war I gas that has a habit of penetrating seemingly tight masks.
Children Too
A third DOSAAF course started in mid-1959 and lasted into 1960. It required 14 class hours and again a locally determined number of week ends and Sunday sessions. The scope of its curriculum is reflected in the variety of questions students were asked in the final examinations. To mention only a few:
"What are the effects of 125 roentgen units of radiation on unprotected people (a) after one hour; (b) after 12 hours?
How do you put a breathing mask on a wounded person in 30 seconds?
What medical self-help procedures are available in case of (a) atomic, (b) gas, or (c) germ attack?"
Trainees able to answer 80 such questions received a somewhat cryptically inscribed badge: "Study in Air Defence."
The DOSAAF program does not forget children. They, too, have training to undergo. From the age of six they were required to attend lectures that told them of death rays you can't see or feel; insects that spread plagues; Geiger counters; how to tie on a gas mask; what to do when (a) one parent or (b) both parents are killed. Children who knew their lessons well were awarded shiny brass buttons with the imprint "Ready for Defence."
Concrete Mathematics
The ability to live through a nuclear conflict is not only a matter of knowledge. The Russians are well aware that it is a matter of solid radiation-proof shelters also.
As intelligence sources have pointed out, an entire government city has been under construction for some years seven miles from Moscow. It is now being rushed to completion. Hacked out of primeval rock, this emergency Kremlin is buried 1300 feet below ground level. It is designed to take a direct hit by a 20-megaton hydrogen bomb-the equivalent of 20 million pounds of t.n.t. Stores food, fuel and oxygen will be large enough to last through a two-year siege.
Thousands of smaller shelters are now being readied throughout the country-shelters calculated to take anything but a direct hit. There are also the deep subways of Moscow, Kiev, and Leningrad, designed years ago as bomb shelters as well as transport facilities. And a law passed in the 1930's made it mandatory to equip every new building, small family dwellings included, with bomb shelters of steel-reinforced concrete.
Obviously there is some civic delusion in this pretense that any kind of shelter could be a match for H-bombs. But basically, the leaders in the Kiemlin are as exact in their calculations as business machines.
Stripped of essentials, Soviet survival mathematics go like this: In a war, 50 to 100 nuclear bombs will drop on Russian soil. Where they hit, shelters will be smashed, all life extinct.
But immediately outside the impact area and beyond it, thousands of shelters will be intact, and, provided fallout precautions are taken, people will survive.
This viewpoint, of course, is no Soviet exclusive. It is shared by many American experts, and by organizations which have carried out critical surveys of this country's defence postures in recent years. Among them are the collective authors of the Rockefeller, Gaither, Johns Hopkins and the National Academy of Sciences reports, which called for an immediate crash program in shelter construction.

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But while our "reports" gathered dust and we did little or nothing, the purposeful men in the Kremlin pushed the construction of shelters for all. By the end of 1960, intelligence sources inform us, the program was completed-one U.S. expert called it the most extensive shelter program in the world.
And now that every Soviet town and crossroads had its shelter, DOSAAF in early spring of 1961 launched still another ambitious drill program, billed as "exercises in shelter management."
The typical Soviet big-city shelter, with a capacity of 2000 persons, is a mass of steel and concrete set deep underground. It is equipped with blastproof steel doors, emergency exit tunnels, airfiltering apparatus, its own water and power systems, detection devices for radiation, gases, and microbes, and enough food and compressed oxygen to last two weeks, the time necessary for radioactivity to drop to tolerable levels.
These shelters are engineered to withstand a nuclear bomb burst a few blocks away. Shelters in places unlikely to come under direct attack offer proportionately less elaborate protection. Those in rural areas, where fallout is the only worry, are little more than dugouts lined with lumber and roofed over with tin or scrap lumber.
"Two feet of dirt piled on the roof," DOSAAF instructors tell their classes, "will filter out 99 per cent of the fallout radiation."
A parallel features of the present drill is "evacuation exercises," and thereby hangs an interesting Soviet policy reversal.
All through the years, implacable regulations had called for city populations to stay put in case of war, allowing for certain exceptions.
But under recently decreed rules, only essential manpower stays behind. The vast majority- perhaps because of improved transportation-will be evacuated, first to staging areas 25 to 50 miles beyond city limits, then to Russia's vast, safe back country, along routes dotted with fallout-proof way stations.
In an atomic war, shelters or not, the dead in Russia would pile up. Estimates on the probable extent of the casualties are available. Last year, a Soviet military attache, toasting his way through a diplomatic dinner in Paris, let slip what he said was the Red Army's guess: two million dead.
"A bargain," he added. "During World War II we lost twenty five million."
Off-the-record American computations of Soviet losses, based on the probable numbers of targets and bombs involved, are remarkably close to the talkative Soviet official's two million.
But what would American losses be? Based on the current state of our civil defence preparations, if war came tomorrow our casualties would be 62 million dead and 24 million wounded.
The statistics of this carnage represent the result of dispassionate calculations by some of our best qualified experts. In the summer of 1959, the blood-chilling estimates were submitted at congressional committee hearings called by Representative Chet Holifield of California.
The official reaction was silence-tantamount, in the view of some observers, to an endorsement of the estimates and a tacit acknowledgment that one half of the nation would be maimed or slaughtered in any future atomic war.
The official Soviet position could be summed up like this: A well-informed, properly trained people who know the worst and the best about a disaster situation are not likely to lapse into hysteria and self-pitying thoughts of doom and surrender, or even simple resignation to fate.
Khrushchev must have had this in mind when a few years ago he commented with blunt cynicism: "A nuclear war will drive the capitalist popu-

lation into insanity. Only the people in the communist countries will hold up well. They know what to expect and are fully prepared for it."
To "prepare" us, we have our own "DOSAAF," in the OCDM-office of civil defence mobilization- headed by director Frank B. Ellis and forming part of the executive office of the president.
Unlike DOSAAF, OCDM has been accused of being in a state of suspended animation from the start. Critics have claimed that it dozed through one cold war crisis after another, and that it was not even shaken up by the roaring fireball which leapt into the Siberian sky on August 12, 1953, heralding the birth of the Soviet H-bomb.
Coupled with official lethargy, of course, has been that of the American citizen. Attempts to arouse him to support of a civil defence system have met with almost universal failure. Part of the trouble, too, is that officials have admitted both publicly and privately that our defence program is inadequate.
Director Ellis of the OCDM as late as last April characterized the American civil defence program as "completely inadequate". Ellis pressed a demand for a program almost tripled in size-and emphasized his seriousness by threatening to resign if funds for the expansion were not forthcoming. He was opposed by both the director of the budget and the president's special assistant for national security affairs; other administration projects, they said, had greater priority for funds.
The Kremlin, however, is never in doubt as to the day and age we live in and plows industriously ahead with large-scale, costly defence plans. Their reasoning seems to be that "the bomb" is here to stay, something to live with, and if possible to survive.
DOSAAF promises its students that they will be able to straighten out a radioactive city in no time at all. Streets, roofs, and house walls will be cleansed of radioactivity by teams with fire hoses. Since fallout is only dust made radioactive, decontamination of dwellings will amount to little more than a thorough spring cleaning. Soviet citizens are told they should do the job in tight clothing, gloves and breathing masks.


William Alexander McLennan: Order. I wonder whether the hon. member could indicate how much more he has.


Laurier Arthur Régnier: I believe I have three or four short paragraphs. I am sorry to inflict this punishment on the committee but I think it is very important to publicize civil defence in general.
When they are done with the job, the efficient DOSAAF will pick up the clothing and wash it free of radiation in one of its decontamination laundries.
Eyewash for Ivan? Is it really all that simple and innocuous?
No, it certainly isn't. DOSAAF glosses over many difficulties, but that is only customary with patriotic literature. Yet it is an undeniable fact that DOSAAF's relaxed views on fallout are shared by many American and British experts.
In some instances, the agreement is word for word. Some official DOSAAF publications are simply plagiarized versions of western works.
The works of Dr. Willard F. Libby, Nobel prize winner, former member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and a prolific writer on the atom, have been repeatedly pirated by the Russians.
No friend of the Soviets and an unwilling DOSAAF author, Dr. Libby nevertheless shares DOSAAF's views on fallout. Time and time again he has stated in scientific periodicals and before

congressional committees that what some have said of the danger of fallout is immensely exaggerated.
More than 160 bombs-both atomic and hydrogen, Including some of the largest and "dirtiest"- were set off between 1945 and 1958. Yet, as Dr. Lloyd W. Law of the national cancer institute told a congressional committee, the resulting fallout "was no more likely to produce cancer than two cigarettes a year".
For wearers of watches with luminous dials, Dr. Libby pointed out an interesting comparison: The radiation received from such a watch dial amounts to 40 units a year-as against one unit from thermonuclear bursts in an average year of testing.
That is the end of the article. I wish to thank the committee for putting up with my reading of this long article. I did not finish more than about one third of my speech but as I understand I can speak twice I will take a breathing spell and I may continue after another member has spoken. It took five years for Russia to complete its civil defence program. I should like to compliment the government for starting what one might call a crash program in civil defence and I think we will need all of five years with an accelerated program.


Mr. Churchill:: Mr. Chairman, I do not want to be too critical of the hon. member. In fact, I should like to commend him for drawing the attention of the house to what is going on with respect to this very important problem of civil defence in other countries. It is important that we should know about these matters, but I think that the committee has been very lenient and I hope this will not be considered a precedent for hon. members to read into the record very lengthy excerpts. If we were to adopt that practice and if it were extended, Hansard would be filled from time to time with articles drawn from sources outside the house. When the hon. member started to quote I did not realize that the quotation would be as lengthy as it was, and I hope he will not proceed later to complete the quotation from the document to which he has referred the committee. I thought that he would rather draw our attention to the source material and perhaps then summarize the gist of it. I hope that this will not be treated as a precedent for the reading into the record of long articles published outside the house. I think this goes contrary to the established rules of the House of Commons and would lead us into an adoption of a system which perhaps prevails in some other areas but is not normal in our parliamentary system.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
79. Canada's civilian participation as a member of the international commissions for supervision and control in Indo-China including authority, notwithstanding the Civil Service Act, for the appointment and fixing of salaries of commissioners, secretaries and staff by the governor in council, $224,810.
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Paul Joseph James Martin: In his speech the other day the Secretary of State for External Affairs did not touch on the situation in Laos. In view of the importance of this situation in the context of current international problems confronting us, and as Canada is a member of the reactivated international truce commission in Laos, I am sure that the committee will expect a statement from the minister with regard to the situation in that turbulent little country.
When we last met in this house in regard to matters on which the minister had an opportunity to make some comment, he was about to leave for the Geneva conference. Since that time the conference has met from time to time, and in so far as one can judge from what has transpired, no real progress has been made. The minister had taken a proper position with regard to supplying the commission with equipment essential for the prosecution of the assignment given to the commission, of which Canada is a member. We would like to have from the minister a report as to whether or not it has been given the kind of assistance, the necessary equipment, to enable it to discharge its functions properly.
The more fundamental question as to whether there has been an effective cease fire is another matter about which I think the committee would expect a report. Then, there is the still more important question of whether or not the conference is going to be able to achieve the purpose hoped for by the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries, namely, a truly independent and neutral government. Not much progress on that point seems to have been made. I noticed the other day that the vice premier of communist China, or perhaps it was Mr. Chou En-lai himself, who seemed to indicate that it was ridiculous to assume that in Laos there could be a truly independent neutral government. He indicated rather there would be a government that would express the wishes of the people, and that the consequence would be that it would be a government made up of individuals who did not support the position of the west, who did not really maintain a neutral position, but were closer to the communist orbit than any other.
In any event, this conference that is taking place does not give me, at least, any particular confidence in its outcome, although I would hope that the situation were otherwise. This problem of Laos has been with us for some time. It certainly has taken an aggravated form within the period of the last eight months, although ever since the Geneva accord of 1954 it has been a problem of concern not only to the United States

Supply-External Affairs but to all peace loving countries. One would wish that the west had shown the same foresight as hindsight, because what had been urged upon the United States in 1956 is now accepted by that country as the kind of condition it would like to see prevail. It is regrettable that that position could not have been taken earlier. In this particular instance, it is only right to say that strong representations were made by western countries, including Canada, as to what was the wisest course to take in Laos.
We cannot forgo the view that, just as Berlin is now engaging our attention, once that problem is resolved we might find tur-bulency and a critical situation developing in a new form in Laos. Now that we have an opportunity to review what is being done at the conference in Geneva, it would be well for us to anticipate in every way possible an arrangement that would avoid the kind of situation which could eventuate, that is another crisis on which the communist world would be prepared to hang its hat. We know of the infiltration that is going on from North Viet Nam under the direction of Ho Chi Minh, and the kind of obstruction that is coming from another communist area in Asia.
This is a situation in which we have an interest, as one of the nations. It is one that engages our specific interest because we are a member of the international truce commission. I would be grateful to the minister, as I am sure the committee would be, for an up to date report as to what is happening in Geneva. What is the situation with regard to discharging our role in accordance with our mandate as a member of the commission?


Mr. Green:: Mr. Chairman, the situation with regard to Laos is not as bad as the hon. member for Essex East has indicated, although one would be foolish to predict just what is going to happen. For example, I believe the monsoon season is now drawing to a close and the result may be an increase in military activity. The presence of the truce supervisory commission, of which India is chairman and Poland and Canada are members, has helped considerably to keep to a minimum the conflict in that unfortunate country.
Mind you, the commission has not yet received adequate equipment. There have been offers made, for example, recently by the royal government side and that particular picture is not as bad as it was a few weeks ago. I think the communists would like to see the commission have as little power and be just as ineffective as possible. On the other hand, throughout, we have taken the position that the commission had a job to do and that it should be given the tools with

which to do that job. It has been impossible for the commission to visit any spot where there has been actual fighting or which could be described as a danger spot. However, representatives of the three parties in Laos are meeting quite regularly. Sometimes the commission is allowed to sit in; sometimes it is not allowed to do so.
There seems to be a great deal of patience exercised on all sides. The hon. member, from his experience in the Orient, will agree there is not much use trying to be in a big hurry in that part of the world. Patience is one of the main requisites to getting along.
I have the utmost admiration for the way in which the Canadians on this commission have been functioning in Laos. We have about 26 officers and men from the Department of National Defence and eight or 10 from the Department of External Affairs under Mr. May-rand, who is our ambassador to Italy. I have been very pleased with the job they have done under most trying conditions. Canada in that part of the world is making a splendid contribution.
In Geneva, in the meantime, the 14-nation conference is working on a declaration of neutrality for Laos and on a pact which will establish the proper controls. For example, it will deal with getting outside fighting troops away from the country, the importation of arms, and that sort of thing. They have practically agreed upon a declaration of neutrality and are now working on the other document, which will be longer and a great deal more difficult to conclude.
The hon. member should not feel that progress is not being made. I should be very reluctant myself to be sitting in Geneva participating in all these discussions, because there have been a great many of them and there has been a tremendous amount of frustration. But Mr. Chester Ronning, our high commissioner in India, Mr. Paul Bridle, our ambassador to Turkey, and Brigadier Leech of the Department of National Defence, have been carrying on there day after day and week after week and considerable progress has been made.
I am hopeful it will be possible within the next few weeks for the 14-nation conference to reach agreement with regard to Laos. I cannot guarantee that will be the result, because the whole question may blow up. But there is considerable hope that a settlement will be reached. If that is the case, this may be the first field in which something worth while has been accomplished for the last many months.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Mr. Chairman, the minister is optimistic as to the possible conclusion of the conference that is under

way in Geneva. I do not wish to say much more about the situation in Laos except that I feel the minister's optimism, understandable though it is, nevertheless is not a realistic appreciation of the situation in that sector.
Of course the minister has an advantage that I do not possess. He is aware of the latest exchanges and the nature of all the discussions in Geneva. But it seems to me we ought to take a very realistic view of what is happening in the whole of Indo-China. While there may be a declaration of agreement on the question of the kind of neutrality that is to prevail regarding government in Laos, it would surprise me very much, in view of the record there and the infiltrations that are taking place via North Viet Nam and from across the Chinese-Burma border, if we can conclude that there have as yet been placed before us those guarantees which would give us the conviction that the solemn undertaking of those ideologically opposed to us will be observed. However, only time will tell.
The situation in Laos is not unrelated to what is taking place in South Viet Nam particularly. I take it that the truce commission continues to operate in Cambodia. While perhaps there is no great expense involved in the maintenance of the international truce commission in Cambodia, some justification ought to be given for its continuance. I am not saying it should not be continued, but when we talk of Cambodia we cannot overlook the forebodings of the former head of the government, Prince Sihanouk, who I believe has since resigned, repeating what he has done on other occasions. His apprehension as to what is likely to eventuate from the kind of discussions that have taken place in Geneva indicate that this is a theatre in which we could have increasing trouble in the future.
We hope this will be avoided, but in our survey of what is going on in the world it seems most desirable that we should at least have some idea of the dangers that lurk in that sector, not only because of its effect in Cambodia, Laos and North Viet Nam, but because of the ultimate consequences throughout southeast Asia.
One can very well see what would happen if by a process of attrition Laos were to go by the board. Then Cambodia might go and there would be an increasing strain upon the kind of defence that South Viet Nam would be able to put up against the forces of Ho Chi Minh. Then the consequences for Thailand and ultimately for other Asian countries like India are all part of the process which we must inevitably take into account in the kind of world in which we are living. Does the 90205-6-517
Supply-External Affairs minister wish to say anything about the truce commission, particularly in North Viet Nam?
The United States government has apparently been able to satisfy President Diem of its intention to increase its assistance to that country in various forms. What does this further assistance mean in terms of further obligations on the part of the international truce commission? Is there any prospect whatsoever of the truce commission in this country being called upon to liquidate its operation in the foreseeable future? I am not advising that; I am merely inquiring. I ask this question because I feel, as I am sure the minister does, that this is one of those areas where we can anticipate an increase in responsibility and concern.


Howard Charles Green: Mr. Chairman, I think the hon. member for Essex East is unduly pessimistic.


Paul Joseph James Martin: Realistic.


Howard Charles Green: He speaks of South Viet Nam falling, Cambodia falling, Laos falling, Thailand falling, Burma and India falling. They may. I cannot guarantee that they will not. But if I were foreign minister of the Soviet union I think I could record a much longer list of countries in which the Soviet union is not doing so well and where they should be shedding a lot of tears.
In my judgment, on the western side there is too much inferiority complex about the Russians; that they are always outsmarting us and we are always behind. This is not the case at all. They make a great many foolish mistakes. They made a very foolish mistake last week when they started nuclear testing. That is just one example of how foolish they can be. They make mistakes in southeast Asia just as they make mistakes everywhere else. We have made mistakes in southeast Asia also. However, the fact is that in Laos, while the situation last May was extremely serious from a military point of view when this convention first met in Geneva, today it is very much better. It is just possible that the three parties in Laos will be able to agree on a government. It may not be the kind of government the west wants; of course it will not be. However, it will probably be the kind of government that the Laotians want; and after all, that is the main test. I think we must look at these problems in these other countries, from that point of view.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I agree with that statement.


Howard Charles Green: As to Prince Sihanouk, the hon. member for Essex East says, "Oh, when we get a government, it will be a pro-communist government and the whole thing is terrible; we are just going to lose out right down the line". Let us try to be a bit more optimistic

Supply-External Affairs than that. We are going to have to face tensions of this kind not for a day or for a week but perhaps for ten years, 15 years, or 20 years and I think we must be a little bit more optimistic in our approach.
The hon. member mentions Cambodia. I think the head of state there resigned only as prime minister. I think he is still head of state. I refer to Prince Sihanouk. He is a very good leader. He was largely responsible for the conference taking place at all in Geneva. He went there and made a very statesmanlike speech in opening the conference. If things really work out in Laos it will be at least partially as a result of the leadership he gave. We have a skeleton commission in Cambodia. I do not know that they are needed there but Prince Sihanouk has asked that they remain. They are a great help in keeping peace in that country and in preventing either the communists or the western side from interfering, and he wants the commission to remain. He is extremely friendly to Canada. We have made a splendid contribution in that country and we intend to leave our representatives there as long as that situation continues.
In Viet Nam the commissioners deal with both North Viet Nam and South Viet Nam. They go over and visit the communists every once in a while and they come back to Saigon. We have plenty of trouble with that commission. The Polish representative and the Canadian representative do not always agree. Sometimes the Indian representative agrees with us and sometimes he agrees with the Poles. There have been many awkward situations but we are getting along and South Viet Nam has not fallen. I think the government of South Viet Nam is probably stronger now than it was a year ago. We are hoping that gradually this position will be worked out. In North Viet Nam, and South Viet Nam, Canada again is making a great contribution. It so happens that our commissioner there is Mr. C. J. Woodsworth, the son of J. S. Woods-worth, the founder of the C.C.F. party and he has been doing an excellent job.
These posts in southeast Asia are very difficult ones for Canadians. A fairly large group in the Department of External Affairs and in the Department of National Defence have now had service there. I believe this is one of the areas of the world in which Canada can help a great deal. We are not doing this under the United Nations. These commissions are in there as a result of having been set up at the Geneva conference in 1954. However, regardless of the fact that they are not United Nations commissions they are doing a good job. I realize that most of the reports from the region are full of woe and sadness and to the

effect that everything is going to pieces. However, the world has not gone to pieces yet. It may do so next week but it has not done so yet. In the meantime, let us keep our chins up.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I am sure that we all admire the minister's optimism. I suppose that a foreign minister must have optimism. However, I think it is the duty of an opposition, in the face of an optimism that is thought not to be fully realistic, to point out the situation as one sees it. I am not suggesting that the government of Canada or the minister, by their diplomatic efforts alone, can correct the situation. Obviously no one has made that claim. I am simply saying that from my own analysis of the situation-and I have been in the terrain and know the personalities involved- I do not share the confidence which the minister has in the situation.
He will recall having complained in this House of Commons, and properly so, about the inadequate air equipment, and the like, of the commission for the prosecution of its assignment which was, among other things, to see that there was a cease fire. Even at this late date the minister has indicated to the committee that there is a continuation of this problem of inadequate equipment. That situation, of course, arises not because Canada or the minister wants it to be the case but because there is on the part of someone a lack of co-operation which makes the work of the commission ineffective. I think the minister gave the basis for the complaint that exists, namely that the Soviet union and others are not interested in seeing an effective operation by the commission. That, of course, in itself is a serious matter. What I am saying is this. While one must not overstate a case, it is the duty of an opposition to anticipate. In this particular area we are seeing an operation that is causing concern and it will continue to do so unless there is an improvement through future developments. As long as the parties are talking in Geneva I do not suppose much that will be fundamentally damaging will eventuate.
All I am saying is that the protracted discussions indicate the importance of Indochina in the continuous effort of communist penetration taking place. I am not saying that we are losing at every point. I am not saying that the Soviet union is gaining at every point. I am not saying that it has not its adversities, drawbacks and failures. Of course it has. But what I am saying is that in this particular area, one of the vital areas in Asia, we are confronted with a situation which is part of these

various crises which confront us from time to time. Now it is Berlin. Tomorrow it will be somewhere else. Some day I am sure this particular situation will be another one about which we shall be registering our complaint against a policy of increasing illegitimate spheres of influence on the part of those who wish to impose the communist way of life on the rest of the world. I am not blaming the minister. I am not blaming the government. These are situations that have causes beyond the power of any one government to resolve. However, I do not believe that the situation in Indo-China is one that warrants the optimism of the minister. The minister will recall that two years ago he told us in this House of Commons that great progress was being made in disarmament. He did almost everything he could in that field, of course. We all know that. However, no great progress is being made in disarmament. It is well that we should look realistically at the situation so that we are not fooled by policies which may lull us for the moment but which eventually only play into the hands of those who se purpose it is to cause us to be complacent.
I speak thus not by way of criticism of the minister or of the government but to point out what I believe the real assessment of this situation should be.


Howard Charles Green: I am very glad the hon.
member tried to prove his case by referring to the question of disarmament. The idea seems to have been circulated that I am down in the dumps in regard to disarmament and have given up hope. Nothing could be further from the truth. I think the actual fact today is that because of the increased tension over Berlin and because of these nuclear tests millions upon millions of people around the world have decided their lives are in danger particularly from radiation. I believe the results will be a much greater urgency to the bringing about of a disarmament agreement at the next session of the general assembly of the United Nations than there has ever been before. There is not much point in giving up because that will not help anyone. What we want to do is stop this nuclear arms race which is becoming steadily faster.
While the unaligned countries at Belgrade last week may not have gone all out in their criticism of the Soviet union for conducting nuclear tests, their judgment in so doing has been to a degree backed up by the fact that within a very few days the United States announced its intention to conduct a nuclear test.
I have here a resolution passed by the unaligned countries on disarmament which reads as follows:
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Supply-External Affairs
The participants in the conference consider that disarmament is an imperative need and the most urgent task of mankind. A radical solution of this problem, which has become an urgent necessity in the present state of armaments, in the unanimous view of participating countries, can be achieved only by means of a general, complete and strictly and internationally controlled disarmament.
As I said the other day there is a new disarmament plan which I think is very important, and which may well make quite a difference to this whole situation. There will be an opportunity in New York within the next few weeks to mobilize world opinion against this nuclear arms race.
I do not wish to do any boasting here today but from the time of the second world war Canada has taken her full part in trying to bring about disarmament. Certainly during the last two years we have been in the forefront in taking action of this kind, and I believe there is a reasonable chance that there will be some success at the coming session of the general assembly. Certainly we will do the best we can to mobilize world opinion on this question.
It is very heartening to realize that we have the support of both opposition parties. I know there is not one member in this house on the government side, in the Liberal party or in the New Democratic party, who will not be behind us in this effort. I am not suggesting we will succeed. After all, Canada is not running the world yet, but we will do what we can. I hope there will not be a lot of Jeremiahs and crape hangers here in Ottawa, not only in the House of Commons but in the press gallery as well, continually ridiculing what we are trying to do. This issue may involve the whole future of civilization and it is much too serious a proposition to have doubting Thomases all over the place. For goodness sakes, let the duly elected leaders in Canada sitting here in the House of Commons realize that fact. If people outside wish to do a lot of calamity howling, let them do it, but here we must keep our chins up and do the best we can to meet this situation.
I have a report of a speech made by general of the army, Douglas MacArthur, in Manila early in July which gives me great encouragement. General MacArthur in my judgment was the outstanding military leader of the last war. First of all he defended the Philippines and then fought his way back and throughout gave wonderful leadership. There has probably never been a better general in the history of warfare. The following is his statement:
General MacArthur said the advances in military weaponry have destroyed the possibility of war

Supply-External Affairs being used as a means for settling international differences. He said that if global war could be outlawed "it would mark the greatest advance of civilization since the sermon on the mount".
If there is one thing the peoples of the east and west share, it is a desire for peace, he continued. But, he added, the constant acceleration of the preparations for war may, without specific intent, precipitate "a cataclysm of destruction".
General MacArthur said the world's leaders "must have sufficient imagination and courage to translate the universal wish for peace".
That is the aim of the Canadian government.


Mr. Pearson:: Mr. Chairman, I do not think anyone would wish to underestimate the importance of the minister's determination and optimism in this matter of disarmament. While the difficulties seem to be greater than they were, I do not think any of us fully realize that as difficulties become greater, there is more incentive to greater action for their removal. There is no doubt about that in our minds. Of course we have to foe realistic as well, and the words used by General MacArthur, which have just been quoted-the fact that nuclear weapons have destroyed the possibility of war-merely meant they have destroyed the possibility of war in the minds of sane persons in the sense of war settled nothing. But the minister himself told us the other day that we were on the brink of nuclear war and destruction. That is why some of us feel a little depressed about the situation, as the minister no doubt does himself, not as a reason for sitting back and doing nothing, but as a reason for moving forward in an attempt to do more. I know the minister and our delegates will do what they can at the United Nations along these lines.
The specific item with which we are dealing has to do with Indo-China and control of the commission there in Laos. In this regard it is not easy to be optimistic about progress. The minister has referred to the difficulties of acquiring equipment to assure the function of the commission. I find it impossible to believe that this can be an insurmountable difficulty. If the will to make progress is there, there should not be much trouble finding equipment. Canada could itself supply the equipment which is required for this commission. The difficulty in respect to equipment, I am sure the minister will agree, has been manufactured or at least exaggerated by those who have other reasons for holding up progress in this matter. What worries us on this side, as I am sure it worries the government, is the possibility of these discussions in Geneva being used as a screen behind which the communists can build up their strength in Laos so that when the time comes to break
up the discussions it will be very hard to get them out of Indo-China and Laos. That is what worries us.


Howard Charles Green: As I pointed out to the hon. member for Essex East it was very difficult to get them out last May when the conference commenced. It cannot be harder to get them out than it was when we met in Geneva then, because the situation today is a great deal better than it was at that time.
This whole area may blow up. I cannot guarantee for a minute that it will not, but I think there is a reasonable chance that some settlement will be worked out.


Lester Bowles Pearson: We hope the minister is right.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
82. Relief and repatriation of distressed Canadian citizens abroad and their dependents and for the reimbursement of the United Kingdom for relief expenditures incurred by its diplomatic and consular posts on Canadian account (part recoverable), $20,000.
Paul Joseph James Martin: Can the minister say whether or not there is any Canadian property formerly owned by Canadian religious bodies that has been taken over by the government of Cuba and for which no compensation has been paid?


Howard Charles Green: Is the hon. member for Essex East referring to properties in Cuba?


Paul Joseph James Martin: Yes. My hon. friend will recall that before the summer recess a group of religious sisters left Cuba on arrangements which the minister and our mission there had been able to effect. I did read afterwards that the convent which they were occupying had been taken over by the government of Cuba.


Howard Charles Green: I do not think that was a Canadian order; I think it was a Spanish order. We have had no complaints from Canadians about the loss of property in Cuba. We have had no complaints from religious bodies.


Lionel Chevrier: A community of nuns has come back from Cuba quite recently. I understand they have property there. What has happened to it?


Howard Charles Green: We have had no requests in connection with any such property.


Lionel Chevrier: Are there any Canadian missionaries in Cuba now?


Howard Charles Green: There are a few, and they are doing splendid work.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
[Stage Direction]
S3. Canadian representation at international conferences, $321,500.
Henry Frank Jones: I should like to make a couple of remarks in connection with this vote for Canadian representation at international conferences, particularly in view of some of the comments that were made earlier today and in the past few years. I think it is necessary that our representatives at international conferences, particularly in their relations with the communists, understand one of the elements of the struggle which is going on.
I think it is quite obvious from what the hon. member from Kootenay West said today when he characterized the problem of Berlin as being a crisis over Berlin that apparently he does not appreciate what the real crisis is. It certainly is not over Berlin, it is over the struggle between the communists and the democratic world.
We have now the new leader of the New Democratic party, the premier of Saskatchewan, vacillating in his advice to the country. Two years ago he said we should be in NATO. A year ago he said we should be out of NATO. Now he says we should remain in NATO only as long as NATO does exactly what we say. This sort of advice betokens lack of understanding of the serious challenge which faces us from the communist forces.
There is one thought that I should like to place on record in regard to our general approach to the communist challenge. In the last few years great emphasis has been laid on the western responses to Soviet initiative. Often one hears that the west is losing the propaganda war, and assertions of a like nature, implying the conclusion that if we lose the propaganda war we will have lost to communism. I want to make it clear, Mr. Chairman, it is my view that no one can seriously contend that we are losing in the realm of ideas. Certainly, there has not been a single country in the world which had adopted communism by a free vote. There is not one government in the world which has had the misfortune to fall to the communists which has ever given its people the opportunity to vote itself out of communism. These are very well known facts but their significance to the communists is perhaps not as fully appreciated in the non-communist world. We sometimes think that by stating these facts the communists will feel abashed. In truth they do not feel abashed at all and the reason they do not feel abashed is to be found in the basic fundamentals of their creed. The communists basically do not hope to achieve their end by persuasion. They do not hope to achieve their end by argument. Communism, and this runs all
Supply-External Affairs through their creed, is based on force. Hon. members recall Lenin's statement on this subject:
Communism is the dictatorship of the proletariat, unrestricted by law, and based on force.
This has continued to be basic communist doctrine right down to the present time. The recent draft summary of the program of the communist party of the Soviet union which was sent to all members by the U.S.S.R. embassy in Canada restates the emphasis on force in several ways throughout its pages. I should like to draw attention to a statement on page three of this draft summary. It reads:
The practice of the world's greatest revolution and socialist transformation of society that has achieved unprecedented heights of development and advance, has confirmed the historic correctness of Leninism and dealt a smashing blow at the ideology of social reformism.
In other words, they say revolution is the means which has proved to be triumphant and it has dealt a smashing blow at reform, evolution, and that they say confirmed the correctness of the earlier statement of Lenin that I quoted.
Communism is based on force. It gains power by force. It maintains its power by force. This is an assertion with which most people will readily agree. The corollary of this does not find such ready agreement. The corollary is simply this, that propaganda, persuasion, though of importance in the communist armoury, is nevertheless of secondary importance in their thinking. They use force when they can get away with it. They use threats of force when they think that force itself is too risky and they use propaganda in between times, sort of like the ball players of a ball club talking it up until they get the ball again.
I submit there is importance in recognizing that propaganda to the communists is secondary and is not used chiefly for the purpose of proselytizing but rather as an adjunct to force, that propaganda with them is secondary to force, secondary to threats. Threats of force in undermining the will to resist of anybody who opposes them may not seem significant, but I think it is, and it probably explains Hungary and the recent nuclear explosions in Russia. The Prime Minister described those latter explosions as being contemptuous of world opinion and that statement could have been made about the earlier use of force in Hungary. In fact, as the communists' opportunities for gaining adherents diminish in the world, as they will in the western world and elsewhere where living standards are rising very rapidly, they will be able to rely less and less on propaganda. The old rallying cry of the communists used

Supply-External Affairs to be: "Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains". Obviously this cannot be so these days. This is the very point where the communists have failed most miserably, in helping the common man. It is the workers they have failed chiefly above everybody else. Here in the second decade of the second half of the twentieth century the standard of living of the Russian people, for example, and the others are even worse, is far behind ours, behind that of the United States and of western Europe even though they have greater natural resources, more people and more land than Canada and the United States.
I should like to remind the committee that there was something in Russia before 1917 and that other nations have rebuilt since 1917 to a far higher standard of living than the Russians have. The communists have failed to help the ordinary people. I think this is emphasized dramatically when one realizes that a person on unemployment insurance payments in this country gets more than the majority of working Russians-a person in receipt of social aid gets more than employed Russians.
Not only have the communists not been able to feed and clothe their people by twentieth century standards but in addition they have not given them freedom either. I suppose you could imagine somebody throwing back their phrase to them and saying, "Communists of the world join in free enterprise; you have nothing to lose but your chains". They would have a better opportunity to do so, of course, if they could get out of their countries, but the point I want to emphasize is that they have failed most significantly in the very areas of human endeavour where success would have helped them to persuade. They have deliberately concentrated their efforts in fact in those areas of human endeavour which help them to intimidate, threaten, bully and enforce by force communist rule. They have in fact placed guns before butter, fear before food and force before freedom. These things are of the essence when you consider dealing or treating with them, when we send our representatives abroad in order to meet the communists at international gatherings and when we try to lead them along the path of reasonableness.
I was much impressed by the remarks of the hon. member for Greenwood the other day when he said that if we stick to it long enough perhaps they will lose their stimulus to aggression. We must stick to it in the meantime and never forget that at this time as in the past they rely chiefly on force. Therefore we must remain strong while we shift our response to their propaganda from the day-to-day meeting of their propaganda

utterances to an exposition of communism and an assertion of the positive values of the way of the western world in providing that happy combination of prosperity and freedom which it has been our good fortune to enjoy.


Lester Bowles Pearson: Mr. Chairman, does vote 83 cover all the international conferences to which we go during the year, including United Nations meetings? Does it cover all the expenses for Canadian representation?


Howard Charles Green: Yes.


Lester Bowles Pearson: So the total rental we pay for accommodation at all our conferences during the year is $18,000. Is that correct? I am looking at page 181 where the details are given. They show that last year travelling expenses of Canadian representatives were $255,000. Presumably that included not only their travelling expenses but also their meals, accommodation and so on. Then there is a figure for rental of $18,000. Does that cover rental of all the space we use at all international conferences including the United Nations assembly, where I suspect we have to take a good deal of space in hotels?


Howard Charles Green: In the case of the delegation to the United Nations, for example, they would use the regular office of our permanent representative, and this rental of $18,000 apparently is only for odds and ends of accommodation. For example, in Geneva we have a villa for an office now. It is not half as good as it sounds. Various nations have villas in the suburbs. The grass is very long and there is a cow in the next field. I presume that this $18,000 would cover accommodation of that kind.


Lester Bowles Pearson: But it does not cover hotel accommodation for delegates at meetings?


Howard Charles Green: No.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
86. Gift to commemorate the sesquicentennial anniversary of the republic of Mexico, $3,500.
Paul Joseph James Martin: Would the
minister tell us what was the gift given by Canada to commemorate the sesquicenten-nial anniversary of the independence of Mexico?


Howard Charles Green: It was a splendid totem pole from British Columbia.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I am surprised that a totem pole from British Columbia cost $3,500. I do not think we should measure our gifts in dollars but I notice that the next item, the gift to Nigeria, bears a higher amount. I am not complaining about that but I should like to know what that gift was.


Howard Charles Green: The gift to Mexico was on the occasion of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of their independence. The gift to Nigeria was for their independence day and it consisted of Canadian books.


Lester Bowles Pearson: Does the minister know what has happened to the totem pole?


Howard Charles Green: I know we have had a lot of trouble arranging to get it carved. I think it is not yet finished.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
External aid office-
88. Salaries and expenses, $525,923.
Lester Bowles Pearson: Mr. Chairman, this is a vote of $525,000 for the external aid office which is an increase of $70,000 over last year. Could the minister tell us something about the work of the office and whether it has succeeded in co-ordinating and bringing together all the activities of the government in so far as their administration is concerned in the field of international economic assistance?


Howard Charles Green: External aid formerly was divided among several departments, namely, the Department of Trade and Commerce, the Department of Finance and the Department of External Affairs. A committee of senior civil servants studied the situation and reported that it would be much more efficient to have one external aid office reporting directly to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. That was done last fall.
There was a great deal of work in setting up the office, but I am very pleased with the way in which it has been functioning. As the Leader of the Opposition knows, Mr. Moran is the director general of the external aid office. He came from a posting as high commissioner in Pakistan. I think there is excellent work being done.


Lester Bowles Pearson: I do know Mr. Moran and I think he is a very good man for this particular post. I know how efficient he is. I think it is an improvement over the previous situation to have the foreign aid co-ordinated in one office. This should make for efficiency and also for economy of administration.
Am I to take it that because of this development, which I think is a good one, all the recommendations to the government for foreign aid, the allocations for foreign aid, the responsibility in so far as officials are concerned for negotiations on those allocations, now go through this office to the minister and from the minister to the cabinet? It is all centralized in that way?


Howard Charles Green: There is an advisory board made up of the representatives of the three
Supply-External Affairs departments I have mentioned. Then, they make recommendations through the director general.


Paul Joseph James Martin: This would be a convenient item on which to say something about the principle involved in foreign aid. Canada has, of course, been a member of the Colombo plan from the very beginning. Since that time we have extended assistance to the West Indies, to certain countries in Africa under the special commonwealth African aid program, and we have likewise provided technical assistance under United Nations operations, and in other ways have given assistance to underdeveloped countries. There is a drive now under way, as the minister of course knows much better than I do, in the United States in particular, for increasing contributions on the part of nations that have been giving aid and nations that have not been giving assistance to underdeveloped countries. The President of the United States in his address in this house and in his inaugural speech, emphasized the growing awareness of the United States of the necessity for assisting underdeveloped countries on an increasing scale.
The United States government has, indeed, been seeking to persuade, and publicly, countries like West Germany and Japan to take a greater interest as donor countries in assistance to underdeveloped areas. I have recently been examining a publication prepared by Professors Millikan and Rostow, both of M.I.T., the latter now being one of the president's advisers, in which this whole problem is pointed up in an emphatic way. Their thesis is, of course, that in the light of the gross national product of certain countries, not enough assistance has been given by such countries to underdeveloped areas. The minister undoubtedly knows this publication. If he does not know it, he certainly knows the kind of thinking that now prevails in certain quarters, particularly in the United States.
Included among the countries regarded as not playing their full role is Canada. Canada is listed, I think, even below West Germany among those countries that did not give of their gross national product in proportion to other countries. This idea is going to receive increasing attention. It seems to me that it would be helpful if we could have from the minister some indication of the government's thinking in this particular. I am not seeking to be critical of the government because this program had its genesis under another administration. Looking at this problem objectively, I think one would want to know what recent thinking has meant. Are we going to make a real attack on poverty outside our
8192	HOUSE OF COMMONS
Supply-External Affairs own borders as well as at home. There has to be an increasing realization by countries who have been assisting underdeveloped areas of the need for an increase in the amount of their contributions.
The hon. member for Greenwood, of course, in the speeches he has made in this house has given us a lead, although he has not particularized the extent of the assistance we should provide in anything like the way Professors Millikan and Rostow have. We are all familiar of course, and the hon. member has helped familiarize us with the thinking and writing in this regard of Miss Barbara Ward who feels that the technique used in giving assistance under UNRRA might be used. In this way the total amount of foreign aid that is practical could be reached. Now, we are far short of her total figure. I am not now arguing for any particular figure for Canada, but it does seem to me, in the light of the thinking that is now going on particularly in the United States, we will not be able to escape a careful re-examination of the problem of foreign aid.
At six o'clock the committee took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The committee resumed at 7.30 p.m.
Paul Joseph James Martin: Mr. Chairman, I should like to finish the train of thought I had just before the adjournment. I had just concluded indicating what appeared to be the attitude being taken, particularly in the United States, with regard to increasing, perhaps on a more rationalized basis, the assistance now accorded by well-known donor countries to underdeveloped areas.
I had said that in recent publications which obviously support the administration in the United States it has been suggested that certain countries, in relation to their gross national product, were not bearing a proportional responsibility for assistance to needy countries.
I do not believe, given all the facts and having in mind the various headings under which assistance is given both here and in other countries, Canada need feel it has shirked its responsibility. But I believe this matter is going to compel itself more and more upon us, as well as on other nations. We all recognize that in the interdependent world in which we live one of the instruments by which peace will be maintained, short of aggressive intentions and acts, will be by recognizing that other countries have to be given an opportunity to enjoy a higher

standard of life through improved literacy, stimulus of the productive processes of their economic systems, and the like.
It is not without significance that one finds, apart from governments, writers, students and zealous individuals reminding us that in this kind of world we are indeed our brother's keeper and that only by recognizing this fact will we be able fully to contribute to the existence of peace in the world.
The crash program offered to Latin America by the President of the United States, for instance, is only one example of the new thinking, the shift in emphasis and the leadership that is being provided. I mentioned declarations made by various leaders in different areas. I single one out, not because he is the only one to have done so but because his pronouncement was the last one of great significance. I refer of course to the recent declaration of Pope John XXIII in his encyclical, in which he reminded not only his own adherents but the people of the world of our common responsibility to help other countries.
This is a problem which is not as easy of solution as many people suggest, because we have problems at home, as have other countries. We have unemployment; we have other problems of a domestic character that demand attention. It is not easy for governments, in the face of such difficulties, to discharge what I know the Secretary of State for External Affairs of Canada recognizes as an essential direction that Canada must pursue.
It is true that we paid special attention recently to the request that came from the Prime Minister of India with regard to an accelerated form of assistance to the third five-year plan of India. In that connection we recall that Miss Barbara Ward, who has written so knowingly and brilliantly on these matters, has suggested that in the interests of world peace priority should be given by the donor nations to assisting India in the herculean task that lies ahead in the prosecution of her third five-year plan.
Canada has joined with the United States, and I believe the United Kingdom and France, in providing further assistance to India in this regard. That of course was a step which we commended in this house. I know, in the examination of this problem, that particularly in the United States, again, considerable attention is being paid to the methods employed in the administration of the funds being provided for needy countries.
Professor Galbraith, now the United States ambassador in Delhi, recently wrote a useful memorandum which I think is made public in the Foreign Affairs magazine. He outlined that there was not only a need for recognizing the increasing magnitude of this problem

and the responsibility thereby imposed on countries like Canada, Great Britain, France, West Germany, Japan and others, but it was also necessary to realize that while these funds would be necessary on an increasing scale to assist underdeveloped areas, some tighter form of administration should be employed to make sure the best use was being made of the assistance given. He lists priorities of regions of the world or of countries in those regions. For instance, he mentions that much money could be wasted by ignoring the lack of certain factors in certain countries that require assistance. I am sure the minister has borne in mind all of these things. He is undoubtedly much more fully aware of them than I am. However, I mention them because I believe we are now entering a new era of assistance to underdeveloped countries.
Over the week end I noticed that the President of the United States is about to invite, so it is said, a prominent and able financier in the United States to take charge of a program of foreign aid assistance of that country, based on recommendations which have been made by Mr. Labouisse who has done so much in the United Nations when on loan from the United States state department, and now serving his country in Washington. The plans envisaged, according to the report, flow from his recommendations. They support the thinking that I detect in suggestions made by Professor Galbraith and others. In any event I am sure the minister will be the first to recognize the importance of this kind of effort in confronting the terrible situation that faces mankind at the present time. Altogether apart from the exigencies and the dictates of their own foreign policies, the western countries partic-ulary, through the Colombo plan, have shown an objective interest in assisting other countries. We have been an original member of the Colombo plan organization for some time but, as I see it, we are now entering a new area of legitimate pressure to take an added load of responsibility. I am sure that the government is giving this matter careful consideration.
In making the remarks I have made today on this subject I have not had in mind any basis for criticism. I realize only too well the difficulties involved. However, it would be reassuring to know from the minister at first hand in this House of Commons, what the government's views regarding these matters are, as I think large sections of our people are interested in this problem. Does it share the general view taken by the present administration in the United States? Does it share the view that an examination should be made of the extent of contributions made by various countries as stated in the publications I have
Supply-External Affairs mentioned? What is the expectancy of trying to meet these further suggested contributions that are being proposed by so many private individuals like Miss Barbara Ward and more particularly by those in office today in countries that have been providing this assistance to underdeveloped areas? This is a problem that I know is not easy of solution. However, it is one we face and one from which we cannot shrink; and I am sure it is one that, over the years, will indicate the appreciation we have had of the nature of the problem which faces mankind at the present time.


Mr. McGee:: I should like to raise on this particular item a few points having to do with the external aid office. Some of what I have to say will be in part repetition of matters I raised during the deliberations of the external affairs committee. However, before I begin, I cannot resist saying that I am waiting with fascination, after this afternoon's discussion, to find out whether the hon. member for Essex East has decided whether he is an optimistic pessimist or a pessimistic optimist. I hope he will let us know what his choice is in this regard before the conclusion of the discussion this evening.
I should also like to say that I congratulate the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for External Affairs on the type of leadership they have provided in this whole debate and in this whole period of crisis and international tension that is upon us. It is refreshing to find a clear and concise statement of policy being made and being heard and understood by the people of Canada.
Having said that, one can hardly avoid mentioning the hon. member for Greenwood when one is discussing external aid. The service the honourable and distinguished gentleman has rendered to this house in the last few years in espousing the cause of the effectiveness and in fact the necessity of aid to the underdeveloped and uncommitted countries of the world cannot be overestimated or too highly praised. However, in these last few years-and I feel I am getting to be a bit of a bore on this subject-I have been trying without too much success-and I must add quickly "with some success"-to extract from the Department of External Affairs and in particular from the external aid office some visual representation of the program upon which Canada has embarked and proposes to embark in the future, something which can be taken by those of us who served on the committee and those of us in the house who are interested in this phase of external affairs and by means of which we can-and I suppose I am obliged to use the word-sell this program, this idea, the urgency of this type

Supply-External Affairs of thinking and the type of foreign aid program we have, not only to our constituents but to the people of Canada at large. There are many of us on the committee and there are other members in the House of Commons who are willing and anxious to do this missionary work. The minister has done a tremendous amount, as has the Prime Minister, the hon. member for Greenwood and others, in carrying this message in a general sense to the people of Canada. However, there are those of us who are willing and anxious to help in this work and we are most anxious to get the material which we can take to interested groups in our constituencies. I shall have something more to say later about the type of material I have in mind. It would be helpful if this program could be accelerated and this material could be placed in our hands with as little delay as possible.
During the discussions on the foreign aid vote in the committee on external affairs the witnesses before the committee, and Mr. Moran in particular, underlined the difficulties and the complexities that confront any government, particularly one in the northern hemisphere, in providing the type of aid needed in the form in which it is required by the recipient countries. There are difficulties of having available here the type of expert required with the type of expert knowledge which has the highest priority in the system of needs established by the nation requesting this assistance. This provides not only a challenge to the foreign aid office itself but to our universities and in a larger sense to our business and industrial communities. The type of expert assistance required in many foreign aid areas can only be given by those expert individuals urgently required by industry and business in general in this country. I suggest this situation provides a further challenge to the industrial community of this country.
These industrial communities are now faced with competitive price and production challenges and are responding to urgent government requests to meet the increasing competition for our traditional markets. We have already seen evidence that there is progress in this regard. However, the challenge must not only be to serve our national interest but to relinquish from time to time these skilled individuals in order that they may move to those underdeveloped countries to perform the tasks which must be accomplished there. From my personal experience in dealing with many individuals in this country there is an expressed desire to participate in this aid field. As was indicated during the committee hearing, many individuals have the desire but not the skill or, on the contrary, have the skill without the desire.

I suggest there are two facets involved in the solution to this problem. The first lies in the need of a long range program of the type we have heard announced in the United States by President Kennedy, encompassing a five year term of foreign aid. This program has been successful to a certain degree and is certainly a long range plan which will not be terminated after two or three years before its effectiveness has been accomplished.
The problem with which we are faced regarding this aspect of our program has reference to the expert assistance most required by recipient countries, which for several reasons is not available for one, two or more years. I feel that in addition to the sense of urgency which exists among the personnel of the department there should be a sense of urgency in respect to co-operation by other departments of government.
The public accounts committee discussed the Canada council scholarship program. That is something which will be under way over a fairly long period of time. However, there is a choice with respect to sending experts abroad to recipient countries or bringing individuals from those countries to Canada for training. I will have more to say regarding the problems involved here, but this is a challenge we must meet.
The Canada council has through its scholarship program offered great assistance to many individuals in the field of culture, But there is one individual studying fourteenth century wills in England. While this may be a tremendous advantage in the way of cultural development I suggest there must be a system of priority and emergency regarding the designation of the types of fields to be undertaken. Certainly in this world of today, faced with the compelling challenge of communism, the emphasis should be switched from the study and interest in fourteenth century wills to engineering, tropical agriculture and other faculties which lend themselves to humanitarian aid to the underdeveloped countries which is, after all, a long range challenge to democracy. There should be co-operation in government activities to assist in the training of individuals in logical and effective skills in order to help in the development of these countries.
Regarding the method of communication of this message to Canadians at large on as extensive a basis as possible, it is my understanding there are five thousand students from Asia, from Africa and the West Indies studying under one auspices or another in Canada, and who upon their graduation return to their respective countries. I suggest this is one area which represents a real challenge to Canada.

It has been stated today and on previous occasions during this debate that the west always responds to the activities of the communists-the communists act and we react, having lost our initiative. I suggest in a sense it could be argued that we have lost our initiative in the same way a dog has lost initiative until the flea bites him. However, I feel the problem is more profound than that.
It seems to me in this area a unique opportunity is provided for Canadians particularly around university cities. As I have indicated, there are approximately five thousand young men and women coming to Canada from Africa, from Asia and the West Indies and other similar areas. It is the flavour of democracy which they acquire during their experience here which will be of greater value to Canada and certainly to the cause of democracy generally than perhaps many of the millions of dollars spent in other ways, of which we will hear more later this week.
These young men and women will return to the countries of their origin and will become beyond any shadow of a doubt the leaders and members of the corps surrounding the leaders which will guide their respective nations to their ultimate destinies in the coming generation.
This surely represents a challenge to Canadians which I am sure has already to some degree been accepted by groups who are actively sponsoring students in this country. The universities as well as other nonuniversity organizations have done a great deal in this field through providing facilities by which those individuals can meet with Canadian students. I feel that much more can be done in this direction by inviting these students from the universities into our homes and communities in order that they may see something of democratic society rather than strictly classroom activity in Canada.
I am proud to say that when this question was raised in the external affairs committee an important statement was made regarding the necessity for co-operation and assistance of the Canadian public at large, and that when I returned to my constituency, having contacted six or seven organizations and outlined the magnitude of the problem, I discovered each and every one of these organizations either undertook to bring the problem to the attention of their executives or, as my own service club indicated, something is being done in this regard at this present time. I feel this is of tremendous advantage in showing these foreign students something of the fibre and character of our democratic society.
As I suggest, this is being carried on by university women's groups, women's auxiliary groups, church groups, service clubs and
Supply-External Affairs others. I am convinced there are many others who would co-operate and continue to do so in the same way after being convinced of the necessity and importance of this type of progress.
As I have said earlier, this field represents a challenge we as Canadians certainly can accept. By continuing the good work in this direction, already to no little extent commenced, we can provide the bulwark of education in democracy and counteract the propaganda on the part of the communists. The flavour that these young people take home with them will not only represent the flavour of Canada but that of democracy as well. It is unfortunate that in certain cases we have failed in the past. I hope by offering an example without naming the particular location it will help to underline the problem without incurring any criticism.
It is a fact in recent years a girl student from Pakistan spent three full academic years winter and summer in one of our major Canadian cities. At no time in that three years had she been invited inside a Canadian home. I leave it to the hon. members to ask themselves this question: had they been in a similar situation and studying in a foreign land what would be their opinion after three years of that kind of treatment?


Mr. Morris:: I am sure hon. members will have taken careful note of the remarks of the Associate Minister of National Defence and one of the members for Queens, Prince Edward Island, on the first item of these departmental estimates, which derived in part from their recent attendance as observers at the meeting of the inter-American economic and social council at Punta del Este. What I have to say on this item is to be very brief and is intended in no way to be competitive with the suggestions they made with respect to the deepening and broadening of Canadian contacts with Latin America. However, I did feel that the want of some reference in the debate on the estimates to another area in which Canada has had deep and abiding connections might all unintentionally be taken as an indication of lesser concern among Canadian members of parliament. I refer to the West Indies.
During the past few years Canadian aid to the West Indies has operated under a program of assistance which was set up to cover the period from April 1, 1958 to March 31, 1963. The sum of $10 million was allocated by the government for expenditure during this period. A major part of this money, about $6 million was spent on two ships requested by the West Indies for interisland trade, the Federal Maple and the Federal Palm. The Federal Maple is now in service
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Supply-External Affairs in the West Indies. I had the pleasure of seeing her arrival in Port-of-Spain less than a month ago. Other projects under the Canadian aid program include the spending of a million dollars on the construction of a dock in St. Vincent. Equipment for harbour facilities is being provided for several of the smaller territories. As Canadians we shall also be carrying out a natural resources survey in Dominica and we shall be providing some $50,000 worth of equipment for a technical school in the lovely island of St. Christopher.
In the area of technical assistance a wide variety of experts from Canada has been sent to the West Indies. Their interests have covered a very wide range, from banking to teaching, and from postal service to public works, particularly in the field of housing. On the other hand, trainees have been sent to Canada for experience in public administration, in fisheries and in other fields of public endeavour. These are all in addition to the students qualifying for scholarships under the commonwealth scheme.
At the present time a joint survey is in progress in which Canada is participating with the United Kingdom and the United States to ascertain further needs of the smaller territories of the West Indies which have now set May 31, 1962 as the target date for their independence and their achievement of dominion status.
We in Canada intend to use a substantial portion of this aid program of $10 million, about $1J million of it, in assistance to the smaller territorial islands which compose the West Indies. The University College of the West Indies has been promised assistance. This will take the form of a residence for engineering students.
May I make this earnest suggestion to the Secretary of State for External Affairs who has the highest regard for and interest in the welfare of the West Indies as he has in other areas and urge him to take into consideration the possibilty of a further program of Canadian helpfulness to the West Indies within the concept of commonwealth brotherhood.
Speaking as a private member, may I say I do not personally favour a fixed term or a fixed amount. I suggest that probably it is not within the Canadian tradition to travel about the world with a satchel full of money. Probably it is not within our competence and it is not our style. I think a better program would be one in which we would give a firm and clear assurance to the West Indies that, in the interest of our historic connection, of our common bond of government philosophy, government practices, government ideas and ideals, within the framework of our commonwealth brotherhood, we will not hesitate


to bring before parliament measures originating in the West Indies, suggestions created in their own area, on which they desire our further assistance.


Howard Charles Green: Mr. Chairman, Canada's record in the field of external aid has been excellent from the start and in my judgment it continues to be properly described by that adjective. Mind you, in some ways we are an underdeveloped country. There is quite a difference between the capacity of Canada and that of some of the older countries, such as the United States, West Germany and the United Kingdom, to provide aid of this kind.
I was a little surprised to hear that some United States writers had been pointing the finger at Canada and had been saying that she should contribute more. That is not a very effective way of getting results. I would point out that I think that the Canadian aid has been quite a lot more effective in gaining friends for Canada abroad than has been the case with aid from some of the other nations which are now being a little critical of us.
We have been spending a great many million dollars each year for aid and I think that those payments have been supported by Canadians from coast to coast. Since I have been minister in this department I have heard very few complaints about Canada supplying aid.
Naturally we would like to get more money for the external aid office. The more money we can get, the better, because it makes our position much easier. We are able to make bigger fellows of ourselves and win more friends for Canada. But you know where the money comes from and we can only get so much.
Hon. members might be surprised to hear of the different ways in which we give aid. For example, under the Colombo plan there is an amount of $50 million a year, which is $15 million more than the former government gave-


Mr. Hellyer:: There has been some inflation since.


Howard Charles Green: -for aid to Burma, Ceylon, India, Indonesia, Malaya, Pakistan, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos and indirectly to Thailand under the Mekong river project, and in addition there is technical assistance under that plan. Then there are the Canada-West Indies aid program, the special commonwealth African aid program, the commonwealth technical assistance scheme, the commonwealth scholarship and fellowship plan in which Canada is providing one quarter of the thousand scholarships which are given throughout the commonwealth, the United Nations expanded program of technical assistance to underdeveloped countries, the

United Nations special fund, the United Nations technical assistance training centre at the University of British Columbia, the Indus basin development fund, the international development association, the international bank, the international finance corporation, the general fund of the international atomic energy agency, the Manitoba technical assistance scheme, which is a new scheme in which the federal government and the government of Manitoba are co-operating, and educational assistance to French speaking Africa. That is quite a list of schemes under which Canada is providing aid.
We try to provide this aid in an efficient way. There is not a great lot of ballyhoo about it and no great publicity campaigns but I suggest to members of the committee that it is very effective and that Canada has no reason whatsoever to feel ashamed of the effort she is making in this worthy field. We will do our utmost as time goes on. There is no question of the government's not being anxious to help in these different fields. For example, we are now giving consideration to a type of Colombo plan in the Caribbean area. This would include not only the West Indies Federation but, probably, British Guiana and British Honduras. I do not know whether we can work that out but we would like to initiate some plan of that type.
It is very helpful to have the submissions made by hon. members in the house. These always have some influence with the finance department, and I am very grateful for the suggestions that have been made by members who have taken part in the discussion of this item.


Mr. Macdonnell:: Mr. Chairman, I have already exposed the house to two or three speeches on this question and I shall not weary hon. members tonight. I shall be very brief but I did not want to miss the opportunity to put in my oar, however briefly.
I was happy to hear the recital by the minister of the things we are doing and which we know are worth while. I do not need to be told that the government is sympathetic. It is fair for us to remind the committee of the addition made to the Colombo plan and it is also proper for us to remind ourselves that the Secretary of State for External Affairs sometimes needs assistance in getting the moneys he would like from some other ministers whom we know and respect and whose duty it is to act as watchdogs. Accordingly I want to put on the record two or three things which have been said before, which are obvious but true, which are compelling and which if we disregard I believe we shall rue the day.
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There are, of course, three obvious arguments which we have heard again and again for aid to underdeveloped countries. For the moment I am thinking about the east, India and the other countries of that area. First of all, there is the humanitarian argument. If these people were going to bed hungry just across the road from us we would not go to bed until we had done something about it. Second, there is the political argument which is that it is tremendously in our interests, indeed, it is vital to us, that these underdeveloped countries shall develop economically under free institutions and not under communist institutions. What we would feel like if we heard tomorrow morning that India had decided to proceed from now on under communist institutions I do not like to think. Then there is the third argument, the economic argument, which some people rather deprecate because it sounds as if we were doing it for our own interests. I have no objection to doing something in our own interests as long as it is in the interests of other people too.
I want to give two illustrations to show what can happen as a result of foreign aid. They have both been given in the house before. One is the case of a project under the Colombo plan to which we contributed $37 million. It is worth saying again and again, for the benefit of those people who think that such sums represent barrels of dollars shipped abroad, that of that $37 million 95 per cent was represented by Canadian employment. In other words, 95 per cent of what we sent was Canadian goods or services.
The other thing I should like to reiterate and which I do not think can be said too often has to do with what happened in 1946 when we lent $1J billion to Britain. At that time the then minister of finance used as his strongest argument the point that we were going to finance people who would make purchases from us. This they did in a big way. A very large percentage of that $1J billion was used to buy goods in Canada.
I have one other thing I want to say. When the matter of aid is brought up I often find people saying that the money is misused, that there is corruption and lack of wisdom, and that really what we should be doing is simply sending out teachers and so on. That of course should be done. I welcome what the hon. member for York-Scarborough said tonight. It was really heartening to hear what he had to say about the way his projects were taken up. I just want to make the point that we here can do so much to help ourselves as well as others by this project, by sticking to it, by
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Supply-External Affairs feeling that it is part of our job and by feeling that unless we go through with it not only the other people concerned but we ourselves are going to suffer.


Lester Bowles Pearson: Mr. Chairman, this vote gives us the opportunity to discuss the general question of external aid. Perhaps by spending some time on it we may save time on the details of international economic assistance which are included in the following votes. I must say that I have some sympathy with the minister in his desire to discharge his obligations and the obligations of Canada in respect of international economic assistance. I know that he will get more trouble from the Department of Finance and the Minister of Finance than he will from the opposition in this regard because, however idealistic a view we take about our obligations in this matter and what we ought to do, we come up against the exigencies of domestic affairs and the desire of the Minister of Finance to balance his budget. As a result, these considerations of domestic policies, and this does not apply to any particular government at any particular time, perhaps have an effect on what we can do in the field of international economic assistance. There is always a relationship between what can be done in Canada for people who need help and what can be done for people in Pakistan who need help.
But the fact remains, Mr. Chairman, that in world opinion we are considered, and indeed we are, a fortunate, developed and rich country with a very high standard of living. We are expected, therefore, to play our part in bringing about a situation in the world where we will not have rich countries and slum countries, developed countries and underdeveloped countries. I do not know whether or not the minister agrees with me, but I have found that the use of this word "underdeveloped" in respect of countries that we are trying to assist economically can lead to serious trouble. Some of these countries that are now economically poor in relation to ours are far more developed in some other ways than we are. Some of these countries we are privileged to assist in the field of industrial development now had civilization long before we were even in North America.
When we talk about underdeveloped countries, therefore, we are thinking only of material underdevelopment. The fact remains, and I think statistics will show this, that in spite of the assistance which the richer countries have been able to give to some of the poorer, the gap between the richer and poorer countries rather than being remedied or lessened in the last 10 or 15 years, has perhaps increased. This is a sad commentary on planetary development. We still have, therefore, in

our own country an obligation, along with other countries, to do what we can to change this process and to lessen that gap.
I have recently, Mr. Chairman, been attending a private and unofficial meeting at Oxford university on the subject of tensions which arise out of development. At this conference the majority of the members were from Asia and Africa, from what we call the materially underdeveloped countries. I found it extremely interesting to listen to them talk about their economic, their development problems and the tensions that arise out of these problems. They feel that we in the western world, in what they consider to be the more developed and more fortunate countries from an industrial and economic point of view, can do much to help them sort of leap out of their situation into one which I suppose it has taken the western countries a thousand years to develop. They want to do it in a few years, to leap out of a subsistence economy into an economy which will provide them with television sets and what they consider to be the advantages of a material civilization. They are going to try to do that in 25 or 30 years, and it has taken other countries 600 or 1,000 years to do it.
They are not going to be content with the slow progress of industrial development we have had to face in the western world over these generations. They do feel, whether or not they are right, that we owe them something in this regard because most of them were colonial countries. They have a feeling that what they call the imperialist colonial countries of the west, somehow or other held them up and if it had not been for colonial occupation they might have made more progress. I think that is a very dubious doctrine, myself, but that is the way they feel. They expect this help from us, therefore.
I got the impression, not only at this meeting but at other meetings I have had- the minister I think must have acquired the same impression-that the value of the kind of assistance we are giving them in these estimates, and for the year 1961-62 we are providing $61,122,445 of help, is not to be determined by the number of dollars we are making available but by the spirit and understanding we show in relation to their problems. I think Canada has achieved a very good reputation in this regard, not merely because of or primarily because we have been able to help them through this appropriation, but because we have shown in Asia and in Africa, an understanding of their problems and sympathy for their difficulties. You cannot estimate the value of this in dollars and cents. We give them this help, not charity. They are very sensitive about that. If we give them the feeling we are

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doing something to help them, we do not get very far. It is not a matter of charity at all. They are very suspicious, and I am sure the minister knows about this, about help that is given to them in terms of the effect it will have on their association with us in the cold war.
We have made a good deal of progress in this regard, I think, in the last five or ten years, as I think the United States has. Economic assistance of this kind, if it is related to the cold war, is not going to do any good at all. The United States has had some rather disillusioning experiences. They have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into a country, and at the end of that time have found themselves more unpopular than before they gave anything at all. I think we have learned from that. I do not believe we can keep cold war considerations entirely out of economic assistance. I do not believe we could be expected, in Canada any more than in any other country, to give assistance to countries if that assistance is likely to be used against us politically. However, we cannot expect to get any results from economic assistance which is given to countries because we hope that by giving that assistance they will line up with us in the cold war. I think we have made a good deal of progress in the last few years in that regard. We help these countries because it is a good thing for us to do, it is a good thing for the peace of the world and because the world is one. Indeed, the world cannot exist half poverty stricken and half an affluent society.
In these discussions we have had during last week and which we have had previously, and the minister has attended a good many of them, there has been a good deal of argument as to how this assistance can best be given. Some of the items that follow this item deal with bilateral economic assistance and some of them deal with multilateral economic assistance. The general impression I got from talking to the representatives of what we call the receiving countries is that they would like to get their assistance on a multilateral basis so that there will be no suspicion of political strings attached. This is the reason we should undertake, whenever we can, to channel assistance through multilateral agencies, not by direct bilateral deals. I think, as realistic people, we must understand that while that is the ideal there is no possibility of the United States, for instance, and the United States is the greatest source of assistance in this field, channelling most of its aid multilaterally or through the United Nations. I think we have to accept that fact, that in a good many situations the most effective, the most practical way of doing it now is
by government to government. In that kind of operation, we can only hope that there will be a minimum of political strings attached.
I think, as I have said, we have made a good deal of improvement on that account in the western world in recent years. I recall arguing, at this particular meeting, with one of the African delegates on this question of strings attached. Unfortunately, most of these representatives of new countries recently emerged from colonial status are unduly sensitive about this question. They are almost morbid in their sensitivity about this. Every time they accept something they have the feeling that perhaps there is a string attached to it. However, it is not difficult to point out to them that if you get any kind of help from anybody in any situation, there are strings attached. If you have a private loan from a bank there is a string attached. We who are contributing countries should do what we can to make as certain as possible that the aid we give will be used for constructive purposes. We do this in the Colombo plan because there are strings attached to our aid under that plan. But they are only that the money we give will be constructively used. Because we discuss this with the receiving countries there is no feeling of suspicion attached to that particular string.
As one of the African delegates said to me a couple of weeks ago, "It is bad enough to have aid with political strings attached, but it is much worse to have political strings without any aid." Perhaps that is true, but I think we have got through that stage now. We used this approach continually in our discussions. I cannot think of any better way of providing assistance, apart from the United Nations, which is the ideal way of doing it than through such schemes as the Colombo plan. But there are limitations of practicability which we have to accept as realistic people to multilateral help. However, apart from the United Nations the best way of giving this help is through projects, procedures and mechanisms such as we have worked out under the Colombo plan arrangements. There we have a kind of multilateral arrangement with bilateral conversations between the receiving and distributing countries.
We had a great deal of discussion about this in Oxford a couple of weeks ago. I do not think the Colombo plan countries who have received aid from the contributing countries have ever felt at any time there was any string attached to that aid which was not justifiable. I think that is the way it should be done.
Reference has been made to the fact that we are not doing as much in Canada as we should. Perhaps no country at the present
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Supply-External Affairs time is doing as much as it should. At this particular meeting in Oxford we did not pass any resolution but there was a feeling that every contributing country should give one per cent of its national income for international economic assistance. If we relate our contribution of $62 million to our national income we are well below that 1 per cent. I think that is a desirable objective toward which we should work. I do not know whether my hon. friend from Essex East will agree with me on this, but I am not too much impressed with the fact that we should have a level of 1 per cent right across the board. After all, we have the principle of graduation in income tax, and I think those who are the richest should accept greater obligations than those who are not quite as rich. But I have no doubt in the world that we can do more.
This is not a political matter because more is being done now than was done a few years ago. Our income has grown and so has our contribution to economic assistance. However I think we can still do a great deal more and I think we should do more, because after all $40 million, $50 million or $100 million which is wisely spent in international economic assistance in the right places at this time might do more to increase stability and security in the world than spending $100 million or $150 million on some forms of arms defence.
Therefore without criticizing the minister or the government in what has been done I express the hope-and I feel quite strongly about this-that perhaps we can do more in the future than we have in the past in making this contribution, not so much to assist other countries but to assist ourselves; to assist security and stability in the world. I wish the minister well in his conflict with the Minister of Finance in this field.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: Mr. Chairman, I had intended to say a few words along the line just expressed by the leader of the official opposition. There is no necessity for me to take the time of the committee to repeat what he has said, except to say that we wholeheartedly support the remarks he has just made with respect to external aid and his suggestions with respect to our actions in the future.
I have just now returned from a reception given by the high commissioner for New Zealand. Strangely enough, I had an opportunity to talk with several representatives of countries interested in this type of aid from Canada. What the leader of the official opposition said is quite correct. I have heard it repeatedly. They very much appreciate our methods in this respect. They appreciate 

the fact that there are no strings attached and they are willing to co-operate with us to make certain the money is expended to their best advantage. I think our record throughout the world stands very well and in this respect I think the department has carried on the traditions of this country very well indeed.
I think it was a very good move to bring this type of assistance under the administration of one head, that is, external aid. I think it has brought together the loose ends and will make for even greater efficiency in the future. In conclusion I wish to say that, like the leader of the official opposition, we hope we can continue to do more and more in this respect. I say this because we believe this type of assistance and a program of co-operation builds good will within and without the commonwealth and is the sort of sound foundation to lay for the building of peace in the future.


Gordon Campbell Chown: Shall vote 88 carry?


Paul Joseph James Martin: Mr. Chairman, there is one other matter I wish to raise before vote 88 carries. I referred to it last Thursday when speaking on the first item of the debate that began that day.
I mentioned then that when the Associate Minister of National Defence was attending the recent conference in Uruguay as an official observer from Canada he had declared publicly that there was a necessity for extending economic aid to Latin America. I am not now suggesting a program, but when a minister of the crown takes publicly a position, I think it is incumbent upon him or his colleagues to indicate if he reflected government policy.
I believe that what the minister said a moment ago about the extent of our assistance was right. I think Canada is performing very outstanding work in the field of assisting economically underdeveloped areas. I observe the admonition of the Leader of the Opposition who so correctly stated that he thought we perhaps misrepresented the situation when we simply referred to underdeveloped countries.
The Associate Minister of National Defence made some very important observations. He said, for instance, as reported in the Toronto Globe and Mail on August 24, 1961:
-Latin Americans need help financially and technically to keep them from going communist.
He said, inter alia:
Their sympathies are with us now... We should keep it that way.
Then he said:
The feature that struck me was that Latin America seems to be at the crossroads. Either they will advance and achieve prosperity and progress through democratic free enterprise, or some nations

-unless they find a solution to their problems- quite easily will fall prey to communist theories and methods.
These are very important words. They would be important from the mouth of any public man, but when they issue forth from one who holds a position in the government of Canada I think they call for comment in this house. Was the associate minister indicating that the Canadian government has plans to join with the United States in its program of economic assistance? It may be that we have to look at those areas in the world where we can give assistance. There certainly is a limit to what countries can do. I have certainly not suggested that we have reached that limit; I have simply pointed out what the Associate Minister of National Defence said. In addition to the important matter of assistance to Latin America, it raises another matter that is not unrelated. I have suspected that one of the reasons why the government was not prepared to join the organization of American states, altogether apart from the initial contribution involved in such membership, was that there would inevitably flow from it some pressure to extend to Latin American countries a form of economic assistance that is non-existent now as far as Canada is concerned. When this matter was discussed in April the Prime Minister had indicated that when the departmental estimates were before the house, it would be given an opportunity of expressing its views. One drew the inference that the government at that time would indicate what its intentions were with regard to joining the organization of American states.
Twice in this house, namely last Thursday and last April, I have stated-and the Leader of the Opposition last April expressed his view as well

that the time had come when we should join the organization of American states. The mere joining of that organization does not in itself create any obligation on our part to extend economic aid to Latin American countries. That is something that we must consider in the light of our responsibilities toward these and other countries. However, it seems to me that some time before this item is passed the minister might find it convenient to indicate what the government's intentions are with regard to the kind of declaration made by his colleague the Associate Minister of National Defence and whether or not the government has reached a decision with regard to what might be regarded as a corollary problem, namely the proposal that we have obligations to countries in the sister American continents as well as to countries which are joined with us for defensive purposes in other organizations and with whom we are
Supply-External Affairs associated in the United Nations for the purpose of trying to mitigate the causes of war and to preserve world peace.
There is in this country a strong body of opinion that believes strongly that, because of our ties with Latin America culturally, in terms of language, religious community of interest and other common participations, we owe to them and to ourselves an affiliation such as that which would come from membership in the organization of American states. I would put it on a political ground, namely that the problems of our hemisphere are now giving evidence of increasing acuteness and possible danger that will affect us as well as the United States. We have a special point of view and a special interest which, notwithstanding the difficulties, it seems to me could be discharged more effectively by our accepting that responsibility. That responsibility in itself does not necessarily mean embarking at this time on programs that may be regarded as being beyond our financial capacity.
I simply make one further observation in this regard. Whatever reasons there were in the past for non-participation or for nonmembership, they do not seem to exist today. Commonwealth considerations or the attitude of the United States certainly are no longer valid reasons. Indeed we all recall the suggestion-and I am not now speaking of the propriety of it-made by the President of the United States in this House of Commons with regard to our membership. I am not saying that the President had no right to make that statement but I would have thought that, unless the matter had been cleared with the Canadian government beforehand, a more effective way of persuading us to join the organization would have been to refer to it possibly in talks privately with the minister over the tea table, if that is the kind of thing the minister has when he meets with a president around a table. In any event, I think this is an important matter and in view of the statement of the Prime Minister it would seem to me that there ought to be some declaration forthcoming from him.


Mr. Maiheson:: Before this item passes may I ask the minister another question, namely whether the devaluation policy of the government in any way affects the real value of our aid to these countries.


Howard Charles Green: The answer to the question asked by the hon. member for Leeds is no, Mr. Chairman, because the bulk of the money is actually spent in Canada. The hon. member for Essex East rather surprises me because he has become such a great enthusiast for Canada joining the organization of American states.

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Paul Joseph James Martin: Inspired by the leadership of the hon. gentleman a year ago.


Howard Charles Green: He is the one convert I have made to this policy.


Paul Joseph James Martin: And the member from Prince Edward Island.


Howard Charles Green: For 22 years I sat over there on the opposition side and not any kind of move was made by the Liberal government. However, in the last couple of years they have begun to grow enthusiastic. Perhaps they are learning, after a quarter of a century.
During these last two years we have been moving to strengthen Canada's relations with all of the Latin American countries. I think this has been a very important policy. The hon. member for Essex East referred to the statement made by the Associate Minister of National Defence who led a Canadian delegation to the meeting of the inter-American economic and social council held in Uruguay last month. That council was called together in order to consider ways of promoting economic growth and social development in Latin America. Our delegation has come back with very helpful information about Latin American conditions and in addition has made further friendly ties with all of the countries of Latin America. Had there been a meeting of the organization of American states this year we would have been represented by an observer delegation. That meeting was to have been held in Quito in February but it has been postponed indefinitely. When it takes place, however, a Canadian delegation will be in attendance.
In addition to that, we have decided to apply for membership in the United Nations economic commission for Latin America. This commission was established in 1948 by the United Nations in order to assist in raising the level of economic activity in the Latin America area, to strengthen economic relations between the countries of the region and other countries of the world and to carry out technical assistance programs in that area. Besides the 20 republics of Latin America, its membership includes the United States, France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The West Indies and British Guiana have become associate members and British Honduras has applied for the same status. Membership would provide a specialized forum in which to watch Latin American trade, policies and practices and a possible way to influence those countries away from protectionism and bilateralism, it will permit Canada to participate in the formation of policies for the area and possibly place us in a better position to supply capital goods to the mutual benefit of Latin American countries
and Canadian industry. It would also facilitate the search with other American nations in the appropriate bodies for solutions to the growing problem of raw material prices and production.
We have no plan under which we make bilateral contributions to Latin American countries. However, they do benefit under United Nations plans.
No record is kept of what proportion of Canada's contributions to those funds is used in Latin America but through that channel there is help given. There is also some help given in the way of scholarships by the Canada council and by the national research council. I would be very pleased in this field as well as in the general external aid field to be able to do a great deal more than we have been doing up to the present time. In my view there is another field in which help is being given and that is through the Export Credits Insurance Act. For example, arrangements have been made for guaranteeing payment for a big shipment to Chile. Some months ago there was a similar arrangement made for the export of steel rails to Mexico. Help of this kind is given and, incidentally, I think that kind of help should be included in the 1 per cent figure that the people in the United States talk so much about. They include everything they give in their 1 per cent figure and we can justifiably include guarantees of this type as well in that figure.
In so far as diplomatic representation is concerned, we have extended our diplomatic relations in Latin America. On Saturday I hope to sign an exchange of notes with the Guatemalan ambassador to the United States by which our ambassador in Mexico will be accredited to Guatemala. This will leave only one Latin American country with which Canada does not have diplomatic relations, namely, El Salvador. I think within a matter of months we can make a similar arrangement for representation in that country.
Another method by which contacts have been increased is by exchange of visits. Our own Prime Minister visited Mexico City, returning a visit by the President of Mexico. I have visited in Argentina, Chile and Peru. There has been also the recent visit of the Associate Minister of National Defence. On November 27 the president of Argentina is to come to Canada where he will pay a visit lasting three or four days.
I suggest we have moved very rapidly, certainly in comparison with any movements made by the Liberal government to strengthen ties with Latin America. In due course the curiosity of the hon. member for Essex East with regard to this question of joining the organization of American states will be

satisfied. However, I point out to him that one of the least effective ways of persuading Canada to adopt a policy is for the president or the head of state of another country to come here and tell us what we should do, no matter if it is done with the best intentions. Even when it is done in that way it is not the best way to get results, and I am rather surprised that the hon. member would suggest that we should at once have jumped through the hoop when the President of the United States made this suggestion.


Paul Joseph James Martin: He has not been in politics as long as you and I have.


Howard Charles Green: I suggest that is going quite far in advocating policy, but I do not think President Kennedy meant to interfere.
However, I explained some months ago that we thought this was a policy in respect of which the Canadian people should have an opportunity to consider; to see what they thought of it. There is greatly increased interest in the whole question as a result of President Kennedy's speech. Perhaps it is in the wrong way, but certainly it is increased interest. I think today there is more interest being taken in this question in Canada than there has been in the last 25 years, and there is an opportunity being given for public opinion to build up and, after all, in some cases that is not a bad idea. Certainly we do not have to rush into new policies. This would represent a major change in Canadian foreign policy. I feel it will be of great value to have the Canadian people realize just what the implications of such a move would be.


Lester Bowles Pearson: Mr. Chairman, we are not asking the minister with a view to having the association jump through the hoop merely on the suggestion of the President of the United States that it would be a desirable jump. Nor are we asking him to rush into this. As a matter of fact, long before the President made the statement in this house, the minister's predecessor had us at least half way through the hoop three years ago. The minister is now saying that what we have to do is give the people of Canada a chance to think about this matter. We must find out how they feel about it, giving the Canadian Institute of International Affairs an opportunity to tell us what to do, and that in due course we will make up our minds. While we all grow, I hope, in wisdom and stature in this particular situation, the opposition's interest has I think increased, but the minister's has lessened. The minister used to have very definite views about OAS. I must say I was impressed by his arguments of those days in favour of a particular course and assumed that when he had the responsibility he would implement
Supply-External Affairs the particular advice he gave us then. I think there is a good deal to be said for closer association with the organization of American states. We have made our position very clear on that point.
The minister has pointed out there have been other forms of closer association with Latin America. That is quite true. Diplomatic representation of Canada in this part of the world has grown; as it was always intended that it should grow. In the years after world war II we opened embassies and legations in various parts of the world, and the Latin American states were always on the list. But it was always a question of priority and finding the money in the Department of Finance, as well as the people to man the new posts. It is a good thing that representation in Latin America has developed. I think we are all in favour of that development. It certainly is a good thing that the minister and, of course, the Prime Minister can go down to Latin America to cultivate close and friendly contacts with the leaders of those governments. But there is this question which is predominant now in the public mind regarding the actual association of Canada with this particular western hemisphere organization. In consideration of this in the past I admit some worry about membership which meant some responsibility in the development of the organization because we were joining a lot of international clubs at that time. I think there was a limit at that time to what we could or should do, but circumstances have changed. There is now the fact that we are so worried about the establishment of communist bases on the western hemisphere and the feeling we have that the United States should be careful before it reacts too rashly to such a development. If we are to give the United States this kind of advice, as we did and rightly during the Cuban mix-up, and if we are to interest ourselves in these developments, then I think we have to take our responsibility in the organization which is concerned with these matters namely the organization of American states.
In his recent visit to the conference in Uruguay-and reference has been made to that-I think the Associate Minister of National Defence performed two very useful services. According to the press he stopped a revolution in Argentina, and he also brought home to us the importance of doing what we can in the richer countries to assist the poorer countries in Latin America; otherwise there is going to be very serious trouble down there. I thought that perhaps, in the light of that particular report by the Associate Minister

Supply-External Affairs of National Defence, the minister and the government had made up their minds to take responsibility without waiting for the report from the Canadian Institute of International Affairs and would now associate Canada with the organization of American states.


Mr. Mcllraiih:: I want to ask the minister this question arising out of his remarks. In referring to ways in which we had contributed aid in South America he included two items of assistance. I have one in particular in mind. He included as an item of assistance the insurance contract made under the Export Credits Insurance Corporation legislation. I am quite sure he did not intend that result to flow from his remarks. I have particular reference to the $12 million contract of assistance where capital goods were supplied to Chile. I think the minister will be very quick to agree with me that the purpose of that legislation was to enable our producers and manufacturers in Canada to compete more successfully with the producers in other countries that have the production capacity; and that from the point of view of the recipient country the benefit to them from our having this long term insurance or guarantee of the seller's contract is very little indeed because had they not got it from us they would presumably have got the capital equipment from another country. I would hope the minister would take a moment to correct any impression that may inadvertently have been created by his remarks that was not in accordance with the facts.


Howard Charles Green: I think this is done under section 21, of Part II of the act. In recent months this has been used in effect to help not only the Canadian firm but also the recipient country by giving extended credit which it could not get otherwise. In each of the cases I mentioned there was quite a large element of helping out the respective governments of Chile and Mexico. The same plan has been used with other countries, some of which are getting Colombo plan aid. It is not just a case of helping out a Canadian firm. It also helps the recipient country.


George James McIlraith: I do not want to leave it there. The minister will recall that when his colleague the Minister of Trade and Commerce was putting this legislation through the house he said that the purpose of it was-and the wording of the act will support this-to assist the Canadian producers to compete with the producers in other countries. It was in no sense a form of aid to recipient countries which might require assistance in developing their own economies. I think the matter should be clarified. There is a matter of government policy there because what the minister is now


claiming for section 21 of the export credits insurance legislation is something very different from what the house was led to believe when the legislation was put through and what I believe the legislation itself contains as its set purpose and objectives. I would hope that the minister would look further into the matter so that there will not be two views of the government that appear at least superficially to be in conflict on this point.


Howard Charles Green: I am sure the minister to whom the hon. member for Ottawa West referred, if he were here, would agree with me that the act was intended to serve both purposes.


Herbert Wilfred Herridge: I was very interested in the discussion with respect to Canada joining the organization of American states. We in this group fully appreciate the caution with which the government is proceeding in this direction. There are political, financial and other implications that have to be seriously considered. It is not as simple a matter as it appears on the surface.
The minister said that this period of consideration would give the Canadian people an opportunity to discuss the question and express their views, and so on. Before the government makes a final decision in this connection will it give the house an opportunity to discuss the question and the members an opportunity to bring to the attention of the minister the opinions of the Canadian people they happen to represent in the various constituencies.


Howard Charles Green: I think if and when such a step were taken it would be debated in the house. There would be a resolution or motion; I am not just sure what form of procedure would be followed. I think the hon. member can take it for granted that there would be an opportunity for discussion.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Contributions to international economic and special
aid programs-
Bilateral economic aid programs-
S9. Colombo plan, $50,000,000.
Lester Bowles Pearson: I believe this is a vote for the Colombo plan. The only question I should like to ask on the appropriation is this. As the minister knows, when the Colombo plan was established, it was designed primarily for capital assistance and to make it easier for those countries which were being helped to help themselves. I have the impression, and there may have been circumstances which made this necessary, that over recent years the proportion of capital assistance has been declining in relation to the proportion of consumer assistance. Can the minister give

us the figures for the Colombo plan which would bear on that particular fact?


Howard Charles Green: Any move in that direction has been because at least some of those countries, for example, India and Pakistan, which get between them $40 million of the $50 million, have pressed for commodities. They have done that for some years and they are pressing again this year. Mind you, the proceeds of the sale of those commodities are used on other projects, for example, hydroelectric projects, or various works of that kind.


Mr.   Mc@: Before this item carries will the minister advise the committee as to how much of the $50 million aid under the Colombo plan is made up of capital goods that go directly into the production for developing the economy of the recipient country. How much of it is made up of consumer goods? Of the part made up of consumer goods how much of that in turn is accompanied by an agreement for the provision of counterpart funds to be used in the development of the economy of the recipient country and how much of it has no strings attached at all?


Howard Charles Green: About half of the $50 million is expended directly on capital projects, about one quarter on wheat and the other quarter on such things as aluminum, copper and other commodities of that kind. The proceeds from the sales of wheat and metal and other commodities are used as counterpart funds for other projects in those countries.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
90. West Indies assistance program, $1,500,000.
Lionel Chevrier: What is the position of this program? I saw in the press this week, I believe, that the West Indies Federation had accepted delivery of one of the ships. I think it was the Royal Palm which was built at the Port Weller drydocks. Is there any other assistance over and above the additional ship that is being given and what is the position with respect to that ship now? When will it be completed and when will it be delivered?


Howard Charles Green: The first ship, which has been named the Federal Maple, is now in operation in the West Indies. Over the week end I read in a West Indies magazine of the initial trip of this ship to the various islands. The other ship, which is called the Federal Palm, is now on the way to the West Indies. In addition, there will be technical assistance by way of provision of Canadian experts, $206,750, training of West Indians in Canada, $34,250, the development of deep water docking facilities at St. Vincent island, $950,000, the provision of port handling equipment at eight islands of the federation, $450,000, a
Supply-External Affairs survey of the natural resources of the island of Dominica, $50,000, and The University College of the West Indies, $700,000.


Paul Joseph James Martin: This vote shows a decrease of $3,760,000. We all know the reason for the decrease, but having in mind, for instance, the initiative that is taken in providing assistance to certain West Indies countries where the problem of economic underdevelopment characterizes the situation and bearing in mind, for instance, the kind of speech we had from the junior member or senior member from Halifax, has the government any plan to keep this form of assistance to the West Indies at the present level for next year, for instance? When we talk about assistance to these areas, unless there is some explanation a reduction of this sort possibly will be misconstrued in certain quarters. I would be interested to know whether the government has in mind further forms of assistance to other countries that do need it.


Howard Charles Green: The provision of $10 million was by way of a gift to the West Indies in order to help them when they got their independence. It was never designed as an annual payment or a payment every three years or for any set period. What will be done in the future has not yet been finally decided. Some time ago I referred to the possibility of a Colombo type program for the Caribbean area but I am not yet sure just what steps will be taken.


Lester Bowles Pearson: On this vote I would merely wish to express the hope that something more could be done. I think that we in Canada have a special interest in and perhaps even some responsibility for the West Indies as they achieve independent status. They are perhaps as close to us as any other member of the commonwealth, or will be geographically, when they join us. I think we can be expected to take a special interest in the development of this area. Presumably, as I have read, they will be joining the organization of American states and perhaps any assistance we could give to them would be within the context of hemisphere assistance.
I think it would be a very good thing if we could concentrate some of our aid in respect of this new member of the commonwealth, as we hope it will be. It will be no use for the minister to say that we did not do anything at all in our day because in those days the West Indies islands were colonies and they got their help from the colonial development fund. But now that they are becoming independent they have a special claim on us. I know that every country in
8206	HOUSE OF
Supply-External Affairs the world has some claim to help from Canada but perhaps the West Indies have a special claim to our assistance and our understanding.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
91. Special commonwealth Africa aid program, $3,500,000.
Mr. Speakman:: Mr. Chairman, with respect to vote 91 and possibly vote 92 I should first of all like to say how pleased I am to see this new item of $3,500,000 this year for special commonwealth Africa aid. I should like to ask the minister how this amount is broken down. As hon. members know, I had the honor of attending the commonwealth parliamentary conference in London earlier this year. The African delegates pointed out their desperate need for educational aid, for teachers, for courses of education in Canada and for agricultural training, all of which we in Canada can offer. Canada is a country with much that we can give to these new nations. Canada is a country greatly admired by them because of our achievements. It might be of interest to hon. members to know that in the country of Basutoland there is one university which was founded by the Roman Catholic church of Canada and is maintained by them. I think that Canadians should be very proud of the fact that in Basutoland there is a university founded and maintained by Canadians.
These African delegates pleaded with me to bring to the attention of the Canadian government their need for educational assistance and agricultural development. I would hope that the government through the minister would not only continue this amount but increase it with special emphasis on those things which they so much need.


Howard Charles Green: 
about $1.35 million over a two-year period. In addition, 17 technical advisers have been recruited, of whom 10 are already in Africa and eight more will be recruited shortly. Numerous additional requests are being investigated. We have 27 teachers in Africa altogether, 25 technical trainees in Canada and 53 students in Canada. I think the 53 include students coming here under this plan and also the commonwealth scholarship plan. We are currently discussing a number of specific requests for the building of schools, road programs and assistance in the medical field.


Lionel Chevrier: I am glad that the hon. member for Wetaskiwin raised this question because I have a particular interest in another university in that area of the country. I refer to the one at Roma in Basutoland where Father Odilon Chevrier, a namesake and cousin of mine was for some years the rector of the university. I say the rest with some hesitation because I recall that when I was a boy my father set up a bursary or scholarship for the education of the first negro priest in the Catholic church. His name, I remember quite well, was Raphael Mohasi. He was ordained and has since passed away. Ever since that time coloured priests have been educated by virtue of that scholarship and have joined the ranks of the Oblates who are at the university in Roma. I felt that when the hon. member raised the question I might refer to this personal matter and I should at least pay tribute to the tremendous work done by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate at that university.
As the minister knows, they have a university here in Ottawa and their work in Basutoland specifically has been one not only of magnitude but has been a tremendous contribution to the inhabitants of that area. If there is any assistance that is going to the other university I am sure the minister, as well as the government, will want to give consideration to both of these universities.


Howard Charles Green: Mr. Chairman, under this plan the assistance is arranged from government to government and not from the Canadian government to any individual institution. Now, if an application is made through the colonial office by these people in Basutoland we would be very glad to consider it. We have not felt we could start dealing with individuals or individual institutions in any one of these countries.


Paul Joseph James Martin: I think it should be noted just in this connection that not only is the government giving assistance, but the Oblate fathers themselves are doing work in Canada through Reverend Father Breault, who happens to come from my constituency

and who is the Vicar-General in a diocese in Basutoland. Canadian citizens are helping by their contributions towards the assistance of a very worthy project in this particular area. In addition, therefore, to the vote that we are providing tonight, it should be noted as the hon. member for Laurier recalls, that assistance is being provided by Canadian citizens. I can say that the Vicar-General, who happens to come from my constituency and who is engaged in collecting money to assist in the building of this area, is doing very excellent work. I strongly support the tribute that the hon. member for Laurier paid to the university, of which he is so distinguished a graduate and which my own son is attending.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
93.	Commonwealth scholarship plan, $1,000,000.
Lionel Chevrier: I wanted to ask here for a statement by the minister as to how much of this million dollars has been spent and how it has been divided as between the various universities.


Howard Charles Green: During the last fiscal year there was about $300,000 spent. This year, we expect to spend the full million dollars. The students are in universities from coast to coast. I do not have a roll of them with me this evening. We can get that information for the hon. member and I shall be glad to see that it is sent to him. Apparently a roll was tabled in the external affairs committee.


Lionel Chevrier: Thank you. I note that according to the supplementary estimates the amount paid for educational assistance to independent French speaking African students is only $300,000. The minister announced this in the house some time ago, and I think the house was quite happy with the announcement because it was a step in the right direction, which everyone welcomed. I am not rising to criticize it in any way, but certainly to point out to the minister that perhaps he will want to see that there is a greater relationship between the two amounts spent than there appears to be in this amount of $1 million to the $300,000 in the supplementary estimates.


Howard Charles Green: In that connection, I think I should point out that the million dollars is for students in the commonwealth, while the $300,000 is for students who are not in the commonwealth but who are in the French community.


Lionel Chevrier: I realize that but my remarks still hold in connection with the relationship between the two. I think the minister should give consideration to the relationship between these two votes.
Supply-External Affairs


Mr. Slogan:: I should like to say a word about item 93 because I am a great believer in scholarships whether they are on a local level, whether they are exchange scholarships between various universities in Canada or exchange scholarships between universities in Canada and foreign universities or whether they are Canada council scholarships primarily in the cultural field or scholarships such as we are considering here under the commonwealth scholarship plan. I know, as one whose own education was assisted to a large degree by scholarships, of the economic assistance they provide. However, in this case I think we are more interested in the human relationships which stem from students visiting other universities being able to mix with the students, see how others live and think.
I should like to associate myself in extending congratulations to the government on this increase in the amount of money being expended for these scholarships in the coming year. This is certainly money well spent. There is only one matter I should like to raise. It arises out of a little story I heard when I was at the United Nations. Apparently some of the members of the commonwealth are being offered scholarships in the Soviet union, and there is the story of the Nigerian student who was the son of a prominent Nigerian family. This student went to study in the Soviet union. The reason I mention this story is that I sometimes wonder whether we utilize to the full our capacity to influence these students to our way of life, or the students who leave Canada to go abroad. I wonder whether we leave with them the impression that they have a moral obligation to be good ambassadors for Canada.
In this instance the young Nigerian student was practising boxing in the gym and unknown to him a picture was taken of him in a fighting position. This picture then appeared on a poster which proclaimed that this young negro from Nigeria had come to the Soviet union to learn about the great things going on there so he would be prepared to break the chains of slavery in the colonialized country from which he came. I think this is dishonest of course, and I use this illustration only to demonstrate the extent to which even in a case such as this the communist nations are utilizing their methods of propaganda.
My words are not directed primarily to the government but also to the universities themselves who make the selections, and to individuals who participate in this program. I think perhaps we have not utilized to the full our capacity to associate with these students coming to Canada from coast to coast and tried to demonstrate to them our

Supply-External Affairs way of life and our mode of thinking and, more important than that, why we live and think as we do.
Similarly, I think we should emphasize to all the people we send abroad that there is indeed room for them to be good ambassadors for Canada, as I am sure most of them are, because in their interrelationships at the university stage they are at a point in their lives when they are forming philosophies of life, and so forth, and these students coming to Canada and studying in our universities, then going back to their own native countries and assuming positions of leadership, will no doubt be very impressed with what they see and hear in Canada. Their way of thinking will also be influenced. They will then assume positions of leadership in their own countries. I think this influence can be increased to a very great extent and I hope hon. members who have anything to do with the program will keep this point in mind.
(Translation):


Mr. Pigeon:: Mr. Chairman, I should just like to say a few words to congratulate the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Green) for having put an amount of $300,000 at the disposal of the French speaking African countries to help them in the field of education. That step is a great improvement since, under the previous administration, no funds were provided for French Africa.
I would strongly recommend to the hon. member for Laurier (Mr. Chevrier) to bring pressure to bear on his friend, his leader, Mr. Lesage, so that the latter may give a reply to the federal government's offer to work jointly on the carrying out of a $300,000 educational assistance program for French Africa. That project was prepared by the Department of External Affairs.
Speaking of the commonwealth, people seem to think that there are French speaking people only in French Canada but there are some also in Mauritius which has a population of 650,000.
When he was passing through Montreal some time ago, Mr. Laventure, minister from Mauritius, said that his country was a member of the commonwealth and was asking that scholarships be granted, if possible, to the French people of Mauritius, so that those commonwealth citizens could attend Canadian universities.
I therefore submit this request, because Mauritius is a member country of the commonwealth and has a French speaking population of 650,000.
(Text):


Gordon Campbell Chown: Shall vote 93 carry?


Paul Theodore Hellyer: Mr. Chairman, I should like to ask the minister whether students who come

here from other countries to study are allowed to work here in the summer time in order to augment their incomes and help to defray their expenses?


Howard Charles Green: In most cases they get work, which is of help to them in their courses. They get work perhaps in a government department or in some private organization.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: The reason I asked this question, Mr. Chairman, is because I am of the opinion, perhaps erroneously, that there is some prohibition which prevents foreign students who are studying here accepting jobs.


Howard Charles Green: With regard to students who come here under the aid program, I think most of them get work. If they come here on their own, of course they have to be dealt with by the Department of Citizenship and Immigration.


Paul Theodore Hellyer: Mr. Chairman, I wonder
whether the minister would look into this matter, take it under advisement and see whether a broad policy could not be worked out. I know there might be some objection to this because there are so many Canadian students who have difficulty now in obtaining summertime employment. It would seem only fair that if we encourage students to come here from all around the world we should allow them the same opportunities as our own students to accept gainful employment in the summer months.
It seems to me we would expect the same consideration for our students studying abroad. I think we would expect reciprocal arrangements. I would urge the minister to consider this matter, and if remedial regulations are required, to take the matter up with his colleagues in order to see what can be done.


Mr. Benidickson:: Mr. Chairman, I do not imagine the Secretary of State for External Affairs would expect that at all times he would receive from this house complete endorsation or complete approval for his policies. However, as one who had the privilege last year of being an observer in the delegation to the United Nations general assembly I wish to say that we could not have a finer attitude on the part of the minister than he always displayed to hon. members of the opposition who were there as observers.
I recall the first time he appeared in New York after my arrival. I think this will be of interest to members of parliament on both sides of the chamber. The minister has a high regard for members of parliament and their attitudes to external affairs. Because of this he said to me, "Won't you sit on my right, Bill?" That is something I have

cherished in my recollections. However I do not think I moved from my modest place away down the line.
With all his expert advisers, the Secretary of State for External Affairs has a very high regard for his colleagues in the House of Commons. I wish to thank him for the privilege of being associated with him during the last session of the general assembly and for the courtesies he extended to me notwithstanding the fact that perhaps sometimes we do not agree on all points.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
99. Contribution to the United Nations relief and works agency for Palestine refugees in the near east, $500,000.
Paul Joseph James Martin: This is an item that has come before us now for some time year after year. It represents one of the great unsolved international social and economic problems of our time. Some one million refugees are covered in this particular area of activity. UNWRA or, as it is called, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine, provides assistance for this number of people. Over the week end I noticed in the New York Times that Joe Johnson of the Carnegie foundation has been sent by the government of the United States to look into certain aspects of the problem. Perhaps I am wrong in saying that he has been sent by the government of the United States. Perhaps he was sent by the United Nations. In any event, that gentleman who has spent so much of his time on international problems has been sent to take a look at this particular question, the solution for which does not seem to exist at the present time. I wonder whether the minister is in a position to say what his expectancy is with regard to this matter. I know that it is an extremely difficult one. It certainly depends upon circumstances beyond the control of this nation. However, having seen these refugees in some of their camps in this area and knowing how they feel, knowing of their embittered state and how almost inhuman the situation is, altogether apart from what may be the provocations, I would say that we cannot go on endlessly with this problem existing. The longer a solution is delayed, the more difficult the problem is going to become. Canada has borne its share of the cost of maintaining UNWRA. However, I am sure the minister would expect an opposition at this time to inquire what progress is being made in providing a solution to this situation and what steps towards ultimate humanitarian liquidation are likely to eventuate.


Howard Charles Green: I am afraid this problem is quite a long way from final solution. At each
90205-6-518
Supply-External Affairs session of the general assembly of the United Nations the whole situation is thoroughly canvassed and various remedies are proposed. However it will be some time yet before we get this matter settled. One of the hopeful features has been the training of the young refugees. For example, last year we gave $1,500,000, I believe it was, in flour. The proceeds from the sale of that flour were used to build technical schools. I believe there was one school in Jordan and one in Lebanon. At these schools the refugees who are in a condition to take training are taught a trade. I think this is one of the most hopeful features of the whole situation.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
103. Contribution to the program of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's science committee in an amount of $117,840 U.S., notwithstanding that payment may exceed or fall short of the equivalent in Canadian dollars, estimated as of December 1960, which is, $115,262.
Paul Joseph James Martin: Can the minister tell us about this vote and precisely what it seeks to do? I note that there is a slight reduction from last year, namely $9,000.


Howard Charles Green: This vote is for a science fellowship program. The funds are distributed to participating countries in the form of fellowships on their pro rata contribution, no nation receiving more than 15 per cent of the total fund. Had the cost sharing formula remained unchanged for 1961, Canada's dollar return would have been $120,750. It is not yet known, however, to what extent this will be affected by the adoption of a new cost sharing formula.


Lester Bowles Pearson: May I ask the minister this question, although perhaps I should know about this matter? What is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization science committee? What does it actually do apart from providing these scholarships?


Howard Charles Green: The main purpose of this program was to set up combined research by the different countries of NATO but evidently as yet it has not been as successful as was hoped when it was founded. Hence it involves merely these fellowships.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
105. To provide the international civil aviation organization with office accommodation at less than commercial rates, $247,789.
Lionel Chevrier: I should like to ask the minister whether the ICAO building in Montreal is going to be used at some time in the future exclusively for international civil aviation purposes. I understand that T.C.A.

Supply-External Affairs are looking for other quarters. I was wondering whether it is the intention of the government to use that building and all its floor space for ICAO purposes exclusively.


Howard Charles Green: Unfortunately I am not in a position to answer that question. We merely pay the rent for ICAO in this building. I believe that the question comes under the Minister of Transport.


William Moore Benidickson: Who owns this building? Is it not a Canadian government building?


Howard Charles Green: I believe it is owned by the Canadian National Railways.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
International Joint commission-
109. Salaries and expenses of the commission including, subject to the approval of the governor in council and notwithstanding the International Boundary Waters Treaty Act. as amended, payment of salary of the chairman at $17,500 per annum, $108,885.
Lionel Chevrier: There are two matters that I should like to bring to the attention of the minister here. One of them concerns perhaps the most important commodity in the world, the commodity of water. As the minister appreciates, the United States and Canada are using more and more water for industrial and consumption purposes-more particularly industrial purposes-than ever before. I am concerned at the moment with the water levels in the port of Montreal. They have been discussed at some length by the authority but more particularly the situation is expressed in a report prepared by the Montreal port council in which some fear is expressed regarding the water level. This report is signed by the chairman, R. L. Dunsmore. There are two short references in this report to the water level which I should like to bring to the attention of the minister. The first of these references reads as follows:
In the light of the low water levels last fall in the harbour, the criteria concerning water use priorities in the St. Lawrence river and lake Ontario established for the opening of the seaway were examined. It was noted that there were new rights of flood control, and water for hydroelectric power and navigational purposes up river from Montreal, and that the criterion concerning Montreal harbour water levels guaranteed only pre-seaway rights.
I doubt whether that is the juridical position, but whether it is or not makes no difference. The point is that there is fear in Montreal because of the lowering of the water level of the harbour.
It is further stated in this report as follows:
A ten thousand c.f.s. diversion means a drop of nearly half a foot in lake Ontario and at Montreal harbour.


The reason I bring this matter to the attention of the committee is that there is a clear obligation on the part of the government of Canada to see to it that water levels both upstream of the power development project in the international section as well as downstream in the St. Lawrence River is protected for navigation. That was clearly set out in the order of approval dated October 29, 1952 by the international joint commission.
Let me just place on Hansard the section which deals with that obligation and responsibility on the part of Canada, which reads as follows:
The works shall be so planned, located, constructed, maintained and operated as not to conflict with or restrain uses of the waters of the St. Lawrence river for purposes given preference over uses of water for power purposes by the treaty, namely, uses for domestic and sanitary purposes and uses for navigation, including the service of canals for the purposes of navigation, and shall be so planned, located, constructed, maintained and operated as to give effect to the provisions of this order.
In other words, notwithstanding the works on the international section, the first priority which must be granted and be given by the government of Canada is for the uses of domestic and sanitary purposes, and then next navigation, over and above power.
The international commission, having that in mind, established under this order a board of control to be known as the international St. Lawrence river board of control. The purposes and objects of that board were to make sure that the downstream interests as well as the upstream interests should in no way be affected.
Here I would like to pause to inform the minister that I believe the international joint commission has done a commendable job of work either through itself or through the board of control which I have mentioned.
On July 2, 1956, it issued a supplementary order of approval which deals with this matter, and which sets out what should be done in order to protect upstream and downstream interests. Perhaps I may just put the three recommendations of that order on the record. They are as follows:
(i)	A range of mean monthly elevations for lake Ontario of 244 feet (navigation season) to 248.0 feet as nearly as may be; and
(ii)	Criteria for a method of regulation of outflows and levels of lake Ontario applicable to the works in the international rapids section of the St. Lawrence river; and
(iii)	Plan of regulation No. 12-A-9, subject to minor adjustments that may result from further detailed study and evaluation by the commission;
The board of control working under the authority of that order has issued two volumes, one and two, dealing with the regulation of water levels of lake Ontario. The

reason I bring this subject to the attention of the minister is that at least the essential parts of this new plan 1958-A, have been put into operation. It is contained in this document and is a very detailed plan. I do not understand it and should like to say that it is an extremely difficult plan to understand.
However, I should like to draw to the attention of the minister the final recommendation contained in section VIII on page 43 of this volume, which is a part of the report to the international joint commission by the international St. Lawrence board of control. It reads as follows:
The board recommends adoption of the foregoing plan designated 1958-A, as the initial operating plan for regulation of the levels and outflows of lake Ontario having in mind that certain revisions may be necessary in the light of further studies and operating experience.
I am pleased that provision was included in this plan, namely, that certain revisions may be necessary in the light of further studies and operating experience. There is no doubt now that the plan, while on the whole it has worked satisfactorily, and while it is a difficult thing to control the level of outflows from lake Ontario, with all due respect to those who have prepared it is not working in the interests of navigation in the port of Montreal.
The port's council so found and the engineers who have studied the situation down there similarly think it is necessary to store a larger quantity of water in lake Ontario for the protection of downstream interests than is being stored at the present time.
I do not bring this situation to the attention of the minister in any critical way because, and I repeat, I think the international joint commission and the board of control have done a tremendous job in regard to a most difficult problem. I bring it to his attention because of its importance not only to the protection of upstream rights, but because of the necessary protection of downstream rights.
I understand that the power interests have a representative on the board of control. That is not the case in so far as navigation is concerned. I understand the reason for that is that since navigation is a matter which comes under the jurisdiction of the federal government it has been thought that the international joint commission and the Department of Transport would protect the rights of navigation. I have no doubt it is the intention of the Department of Transport to ensure that the interests of navigation are protected, but I bring this situation to the attention of the minister because of the report of the Montreal council. I should like to ask the minister
90205-6-518J
Supply-External Affairs to bring this fact to the attention of the international joint commission so there will be no lowering of the water level at the port of Montreal, because the slightest lowering of this level as a result of works and upstream ports, may be costly from an economical standpoint to the development of the port of Montreal.


Howard Charles Green: Since I come from one of Canada's leading ports myself I have been greatly concerned about this problem, particularly last year. I do not know that it has been so pressing in the summer of 1961. But the procedures and principles for determining release in the future are under consideration by the international joint commission at the present time. The international St. Lawrence river board of control is taking a review of plan of regulation 1958-A, to which the hon. member for Laurier has referred. General McNaughton announced that this review is being made when he appeared before the standing committee on external affairs on June 14 of this year. It is expected that in due course the commission, in the light of the board's review, will report to governments on what alterations, if any, should be made in the plan of regulation. We have this situation very much in mind. I am hoping that it can be solved to the satisfaction of the city of Montreal.


Lionel Chevrier: The other matter that I wanted to discuss, and I will do it as briefly as I can, is one that also comes under the international joint commission. It is one that has been discussed in the house from time to time. I will not deal with the subject save and except in so far as it refers to the international joint commission. I refer to the important development of the Champlain-Richelieu cut-off. I mention it from an entirely different angle because, as the minister has seen in the press recently, there is a general feeling in the United States that they should use their internal canals to a far greater extent than they have in the past. It has been stated on more than one occasion that it is the intention of the United States to do one of two things. First, to develop the Richelieu river from lake Champlain into the St. Lawrence river at Sorel or second, into the port of Montreal by way of an overland route, and from thence to use the St. Lawrence seaway that has been developed so that navigation can be continued to Chicago and down the Illinois and the Mississippi to the ports along the Gulf of Mexico. Therefore, there would be a use of the United States ports on their internal canals, either by the route which I have mentioned or the other alternative which is under serious

Supply-External Affairs consideration in the United States, namely the deepening of the New York state barge canal.
They have gone so far as to say that whether Canada determines this or not they intend to go ahead and develop that route. If, as it has been stated in congress and elsewhere, they develop the New York state barge canal rather than use the St. Lawrence seaway by way of the Champlain-Richelieu cut-off, then I believe that serious consideration should be given by the government to the harm that might befall the economy if the whole eastern part of the seaway were by-passed by traffic in that manner.
The deepening of the New York barge canal would cost infinitely more money than the development of the Champlain-Richelieu cutoff. Recently a statement apeared in La Presse of July 15, 1961, which I have here, in which the inertia of the federal government is attacked for the lack of consideration of the Champlain cut-off.
I said at the beginning that I did not intend to get into a contentious debate and I do not think it should be done at this stage. What I bring to the attention of the minister is this. It seems to me this whole matter can be avoided if the government will only set up a board of engineers to consider making surveys of a waterway from the international boundary downstream to the St. Lawrence river. If that is done-and I understand it can be done at very little cost-then at least we shall be co-operating with the United States interests.
I have also learned that the United States corps of engineers have started surveys on their side of the line and have obtained a great deal of information in so far as Canadian conditions are concerned with reference to locks, bridges, and the depth of water. Therefore, I only repeat here what has been said from this side of the house, namely that the government give additional consideration to the establishment at very little cost of a survey to ascertain where the most economical route would be because five of them have been found as alternative routes by the international joint commission in its interim report of 1937, and, next, the economics of this project.
The international joint commission dealt with it at some length in the interim report. There are two volumes which I have in my possession. In this interim report they asked that they be given jurisdiction in this matter when the St. Lawrence seaway had been completed. As the minister knows, the seaway has been in operation since 1959. It seems to those who have studied the question that


the time has arrived to ask the commission to continue its work which was interrupted in 1937.


Howard Charles Green: This question is under study by the several departments of government which are concerned but as yet we have had no report on that study. I am very keenly aware of the interest being taken in the whole project.


Lionel Chevrier: May I just add this. I know a study is being made by the several departments of government, but I have kept away from that. I am bringing to the attention of the minister the fact that the body to deal with this matter will be the international joint commission. I am not saying that it is, because I would not want to do the slightest thing that would dissuade the government from going ahead with this study. But since the international joint commission had it under consideration previously it may well be that it is the proper and logical body to deal with this matter at this time. If the government should come to that conclusion even before the report has been received from the interdepartmental committee I am sure it would be doing a great service to the Canadian people, in the light of what is happening in the United States at the present time.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Contributions to international economic and special
aid programs-
Bilateral economic aid programs-
512. West Indies assistance program-further amount required, $390,000.
William Moore Benidickson: What is the nature of our arrangement with the West Indies on this type of vote? My query was, does it include practically all of the West Indies as we know them and what are the terms of the bilateral economic aid program into which we are entering?


Howard Charles Green: This is part of the $10 million
which was provided in reality as a gift on the occasion of the West Indies Federation gaining its independence.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
516. Assessment for the United Nations Congo ad hoc account for 1961 in an amount of $3,080,733 U.S., notwithstanding that payment may exceed or fall short of the equivalent in Canadian dollars, estimated as of May, 1961, which is, $3,044,150.
William Moore Benidickson: This is a very large amount. Would the minister care to make any comment having regard to the troubles that apparently still exist in the Congo?


Howard Charles Green: Mr. Chairman, this is a good example of the high cost of getting results in the Congo. The United Nations operation in the Congo, which is known as ONUC, was established by the security council in July, 1960. The secretary general was called upon

to furnish wide-scale assistance, both military and civilian, to the Belgian Congo, which became independent on June 30 of last year.
To meet the initial costs of the Congo operation he relied heavily on his authority to borrow from the working capital fund and the reserves of the special fund and the expanded program of technical assistance. At the first part of the fifteenth session of the general assembly last fall the secretary general presented estimates for the Congo operation for the last six months of 1960 in the amount of over $66 mililon. The United Kingdom, the United States and Canada agreed to waive reimbursement for certain claims in order to reduce total costs of the operation to be assessed. In accordance with a decision by the cabinet, Canada waived some $600,000 representing initial airlift costs. We took and are still taking a very active part in the airlift to the Congo. As a result of these special contributions, the general assembly approved a budget of $48.5 million for assessment on members. It took no decision on the 1961 Congo costs until the resumed session of the general assembly in March and April of this year. The secretary general's estimates for 1961, which were submitted just prior to that resumed session, totalled $135 million. The advisory committee recommended that this amount be reduced to $120 million for 1961.
At the close of the resumed session, the general assembly adopted a resolution authorizing the expenditure of $100 million U.S. for the first ten months in 1961 and the general assembly will be required to consider the costs for the remaining two months of 1961 at its session which begins on September 19.
Canada believes that a decision of the security council which entails financial commitments imposes a mandatory obligation on members to pay. In the discussions on the financing of ONUC, Canada pressed these views but was forced to agree to compromises by which ad hoc accounts for ONUC were set up for 1960 and 1961. The resolution setting up the 1960 ad hoc account contained a paragraph which noted that the expenses were an obligation on all members in accordance with article 17 (2) of the charter. The resolution creating the 1961 ad hoc account, however, was watered down and while acknowledging the Congo costs as expenses of the organization it omitted reference to the legally binding nature of the obligation to pay.
The Congo expenses are assessed according to the regular scale of assessment of the organization. As a result of voluntary contributions by the United States, however, certain members with low assessment rates and in receipt of technical assistance were made eligible for rebates. The amount of these re-
Supply-External Affairs bates in 1960 was 50 per cent but the formula was revised for 1961 to give up to 80 per cent rebates.
The Canadian government has indicated Canada's strong support for the United Nations operation in the Congo from its inception. All the political considerations point to the necessity for continued Canadian support for United Nations action in the Congo. Early payment of the Canadian assessment for the 1961 costs is particularly important in order to give the organization much needed funds to keep the operation going in the face of a threatened heavy deficit resulting from the failure of certain members, particularly the Soviet bloc, to pay their assessments. For this reason the Canadian assessment for the 1961 Congo costs is included in the first supplementary estimates for 1961-62.
On the basis of the regular scale of assessment Canada's share of the $100 million costs of the operation in 1961 up to the end of October, that is, for the first ten months, is $3,080,733 U.S. This estimate provides for a contribution in that amount converted at the current rate of exchange.


William Moore Benidickson: I thank the minister for his explanation although if he looks at the language and having regard to the amount of money involved I think he will recognize that the language is somewhat loose when it refers to an estimate as of May, 1961. Even one month's expenditures are consequential so it would be important to know whether the cutoff date is May 1 or the end of May 1961.


Howard Charles Green: The significance of those words is that the figure is based on the exchange rate as of May, 1961.


William Moore Benidickson: At the first or at the end
of the month?


Howard Charles Green: We may need more money. We may need to come back for further money with the Canadian dollar down in value.


[Stage Direction]
Item agreed to.
Gordon Campbell Chown: That completes the estimates of the Department of External Affairs.


Howard Charles Green: May I just thank the members of the house and particularly members of the two opposition parties for their co-operation in getting these estimates through.


Gordon Campbell Chown: Is it the wish of the committee that we proceed now to the consideration of the estimates of the Department of National Defence?


Gordon Minto Churchill: I think, Mr. Chairman, that we might rise, report progress and commence the Department of National Defence tomorrow.
8214	HOUSE OF
Business of the House


Gordon Campbell Chown: Is that the wish of the committee?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
Resolutions adopted in committee of supply this day reported and concurred in.